I was working as a mason's assistant during the summer of the Watergate Investigating Committee hearings in 1973. We were replastering the Brown University chemistry labs. Like most teaching labs at the time, we had televisions everywhere. I tuned in to the hearings while I worked. The committee was headed by Constitutional scholar Sam Earvin. The Republican delegation was headed up by Howard Baker. Everyone, including the witnesses worked in good faith.
There was no partisan bickering or sloganeering. Once the oval office tapes came to light and the Supreme Court required that Nixon turn them over, it was curtains for Nixon. You may recall, that it was a Republican delegation headed by Barry Goldwater who eventually talked Nixon into taking his last trip on Marine One.
In 1979, on a postdoc, I found myself working on Senate Banking Committee staff. As a dyed in the wool Dem, I thought I could tell the bad guys from the good guys. Then, in my first conference committee meeting, with the doors closed and the press shut out, I saw true comradery and affection between the Democrat and Republican members. They could work the differences out of pending legislation with ease. Mostly by splitting the difference and moving on.
What ended all this, in my view, was one man: Grover Norquist. He perfected the practice of primarying Republican members of Congress who did not toe the hard right line. Gradually, even the most popular moderate Republican members were run out of office. Donald Trump has taken Norquist's techniques to the next level in order to rip the spine out of every Republican in Congress since John McCain died.
Job One is campaign finance reform starting with Citizen's United. Nothing is more important.
As a voter, this is what’s frustrating—both parties talk like they’re on opposite sides of dark money, but nothing actually changes.
Republicans say it’s about free speech and keeping government out of it. Democrats say it’s about transparency and fairness. But year after year, the system stays exactly the same—and both sides keep using it.
If this was really a top priority, you’d expect real action. Democrats have pushed disclosure bills, but when they’ve had the power, it hasn’t felt like an urgent fix. Republicans defend the system more openly, but they also benefit from it just the same.
A lot of talking and not much doing. One side criticizes dark money while still taking advantage of it. The other side supports the rules and continues to use them. Either way, the end result doesn’t change. Why?
The argument that America’s current crisis of trust stems from unresolved breaches stretching back decades, 100 years or even 200 years misses the more immediate and powerful driver: modern media systems that curate and shape perception in real time.
Today’s breakdown in confidence doesn’t require reaching back to the Revolution, Reconstruction, Watergate, or the Iraq War. The breach is happening now, daily, through a media ecosystem that is no longer primarily in the business of informing—but incentivized to influence. Major media institutions operate within corporate and political frameworks where narrative alignment, audience capture, and revenue models often outweigh neutral truth-seeking.
This isn’t speculation—it’s structural. Advertising dependence, consolidation of media ownership, and algorithm-driven amplification have created an environment where emotionally charged, divisive content outperforms balanced reporting. The result is not just bias, but systematic steering of public perception, where the same event can be framed in entirely different ways depending on the outlet.
Trust erodes not because Americans failed to resolve the Civil War or Civil Rights properly, but because citizens no longer believe they are being told the truth in the present moment. When reality itself appears fragmented—when facts feel negotiable—confidence in institutions collapses quickly.
In short, the breach is not buried in history. It is engineered in the present, distributed at scale, and reinforced daily into your place of work, your home and on your phone. Any serious attempt at “reckoning” must start there—not in the past, but in the systems actively shaping public understanding right now.
Dingdingding! The question of course, is - how to actually change the media systems? They won't change as long as they're making money hand over fist, and the increasing usage of LLMs to "write" the news turns even fluff pieces into propaganda.
Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote a very compelling book that encompasses this type of "reckoning" in cycles of American history. Basically they say we are due for one at the end of every saeculum (80-100yrs). A massive, society-altering event takes place which causes long bubbling and unresolved grievances to explode, forcing leaders and society to confront the inconvenient truths they kicked down the road for decades. Destroys old order and builds a new.
Examples include WW2, Civil War, Revolutionary War, Glorious Revolution, Armada Crisis, War of the Roses.
As a smart friend of mine puts it, "Climate change is the crisis all other crises report to." It's amazing how distracted the entire planet is right now and how impossible _any_ collective action solution seems.
The Fourth Turning is the single most cohesive theory of history I’ve ever read. The modern locating of Generations as “being shaped by history in their youth, shaping history in their adulthood” - with a human nature based set of outcomes that flow from the dual needs of community + individuation - is keenly brilliant. It explains why history “rhymes”. There are only a few generational moods that wax and wane along a civilization’s cycle of focusing on the collective or the heroic individual. It’s the Rosetta Stone for all of this (IMHO).
Trump's use of a war in Iran to distract us from his preference for raping children is a risk that the nation has tried before. Defeating Reconstruction, resisting Women's suffrage, opposing Civil Rights in the Sixties, and many others are all efforts that plainly defy our Declaration and Constitution but are entered into by people who are more concerned with their own interpretations of justice and who think that America is capable of carrying these contradictions into the future. Our nuclear weapons, our amazing military, our economy, and lately the fact we are 'protected' by two oceans are being used as excuses for our unforgivable behavior. Iran has plainly defeated Trump's ill-considered war and despite his best efforts to fan-dance that reality away, Americans will be paying for his foolishness and hatred for a long time.
I love Richardson's matter-of-fact history readings, but, Scott, if you are reading this, her "optimistic nostalgia," while comforting in hard times, is the reason why Americans keep digging themselves deeper into the hole of hate. Perhaps you should glance at "The Myth of the Eternal Return" by Mircea Eliade. For those who believe in myths, cyclical history is reassuring. After the rain, sunny skies... And to a certain extent it will control how we deal with the future. Thus guaranteeing the continued decline of the nation. I can hear the MAGA fascists already rewriting their corruption and spinelessness, and the Dems offering up a candidate who will promote the idea that we all have to get along somehow... And the electorate, in its moderation, wanting desperately to move on without looking back. Reconstruction... the end of a Civil War brought about by the south, but immediately forgiven. The opinion hubs like Substack will promote reconciliation by amnesia, and the opinion leaders will do the bothsides and whatabout dances. And we'll lurch on, while the rest of the world treats us like what we are, a country that refuses any real kind of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, like silly children who spread crap all over the place and refuse to clean it up and yell at the adults trying to tell them where the brooms and mops are. When Roosevelt and Truman came to the aid of Europe, it was not only about ideals and values. It was about world order. The ideals of democracy, which is or should be a dynamic process, were too important to allow for the threat coming from the Nazis and from whatever Stalin was (essentially an old Georgian mafioso, a kind of sly and intelligent form of Trump)... Now Europe is trying to remind Americans of that moment. And American voters are staring at the price of gas, at the price of eggs, and at their navels. They - and many Europeans - have forgotten that along with many wonderful rights like free speech and habeas corpus, democracy demands responsibility not only to obey laws, but also to be informed. The moment Trump said he loves the uneducated was the moment people should have rejected him. And yet, it says so much about the DNA of the country....
There is no moving on or building together without the hard work of owning the misery inflicted upon others (black Americans, minorities, other nations) owning the lies, the hypocrisy and the betrayal- of self, of values, of others - as a nation.
And that sort of identity altering hard work is the kind one resists at individual and collective levels with all the might. Better double down in the myth of “the greatest country” - the sort of pathetic superiority complex maintained at enormous cost to truth and reality abdication or swim in conspiracy theories or build various enemies while ignoring the real ones - trauma coping mechanisms.
Anything but dismantle received identity and face self and the world with embarrassment, empathy- the painful vulnerability that is the only possible path to heal, correct, repair, build honestly, durably.
I know adults who would rather burn themselves and their lives on some pyrrhic victory than do this hard work. For that at scale, look at Russia right now
As an avid consumer of your portfolio, I know that you’ll be musing on the theme of reckoning quite a bit going forward.
Here’s the suggestion… so many of us are fatigued and saddened by the state of our country and world. Perhaps in your title/content/messaging you can lean more into REMEDY over reckoning? Even you stated here that you were surprised by Dr. Cox Richardson‘s optimism. We are so starved for it. I recommend solution-focused messaging
so that your ideas and suggestions will be more readily received and shared.
Agreed - I have a recent college grad & a class of 2026 almost grad - desperate for ‘work/a job’. I try to be an understanding optimist for them - ‘the world sucks now, but everything works out.’ Poor kids - pandemic ruined High School (NYC kept them home a lot). Now, graduating into this economy & mess. Their gen are taking a ‘shellacking.’
Here’s a significant way to impact this fall’s elections. Our democracy has become an oligarchy, a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. Now is the time to initiate a grassroots campaign to pursue the following. Several Democrats and progressive organizations have compiled separate tax reform proposals. I envision having these proposals consolidated into one bill that will benefit the vast majority of Americans. Having a consolidated bill, "True Tax Reform 2026: The Sequel," introduced to Congress well before this fall's elections will very well influence who individuals vote for based on a candidate's view on this bill. Please share this with your Democratic congressional representatives and others.
This is a list of proposals that can be consolidated into one bill:
Keep Your Pay Act: Cory Booker
Equal Tax Act: Senators Edward Markey, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Jeff Merkley
Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act: Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Rashida Tlaib
Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act: Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna
Tax on Extreme Wealth and For the 99.8% Act: Senator Bernie Sanders
Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act: Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Don Beyer
The Ultra-Millionaires Tax: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representatives Brendan F. Boyle and Pramila Jayapal
Defund the Oligarchs Resolution: Senator Elizabeth Warren
American Homeownership Act: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jeff Merkley
21st Century ROAD to Housing Act: Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott
Billionaires Income Tax Act: Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Donald Beyer and Steve Cohen
The Money Agenda 250: Patriotic Millionaires
The Five & Dime Tax: Tax the Greedy Billionaires
Executive Summary: Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute
Court of International Trade Tariff Refunds: Senators Ron Wyden, Edward J. Markey, and Jeanne Shaheen
The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2011: Senators Ron Wyden and Dan Coates
* Review provisions in H.R. 1 and executive orders- void and add provisions as needed.
America is Unfair !!! I can hear Communist China calling your name ... just leave already ... America does not need self proclaimed victims to usher in Soviet Union style Socialism or Communist China AUthoritarianism ... Billionairs provide jobs! Destroy Americas Capital and America is Destroyed!
I found this one unconvincing. For starters, it supposes that our government USED TO run well, ignoring massive trust-burners like The Great Depression or Vietnam. "Twas always thus" doesn't make the current situation any more bearable, but it does suggest the problem is foundational -- not recent. Second, I think Congressional self-dealing is a different order of magnitude problem than the fact we no longer have three co-equal branches of government. (It is also a much easier fix.)
But the biggest problem is that it ignores the fact we already HAVE the answer: vote the bastards out. 90+% of the time we return the problem children to office, signaling that while we may moan about the fact they do nothing but make themselves rich, we're not so unhappy we won't renew their contract.
We HAVE all the power that we need. Now we have to use it.
They are referenced in this piece, but only with a few words regarding the stain of bankers getting bonuses rather than jail sentences after the mortgage crisis. Maybe as a more effective rhetorical exercise, this piece could have spent more than fleeting words regarding Clinton and Obama. But whether you choose to blow that up into a sweeping rejection of the article as an exercise in bias... That would be your rhetorical choice to reject dialogue. Instead, you can trade the snark for pointing out the imbalance in a meaningful rebuttal. A choice.
‘Prosecuting the rampant corruption of Trump’s family and associates will deliver justice, but if we fail to also address congressional corruption (insider trading, Citizens United spending) we’re putting a Band-Aid over a wound that needs to be cauterized. Does our society have the courage to go deeper and the attention span to see it through?’ b r a v o
I wish I could share HCR’s optimism; too many forces (💰) seemingly want the 250 year experiment dissolved.
the healing that will be needed after this moment is remarkable. We have to start preparing now, but all the organizations that would be at the center of this work are under considerable strain. We have to think about what new version of our organizations could serve this purpose and build it. quickly.
I was working as a mason's assistant during the summer of the Watergate Investigating Committee hearings in 1973. We were replastering the Brown University chemistry labs. Like most teaching labs at the time, we had televisions everywhere. I tuned in to the hearings while I worked. The committee was headed by Constitutional scholar Sam Earvin. The Republican delegation was headed up by Howard Baker. Everyone, including the witnesses worked in good faith.
There was no partisan bickering or sloganeering. Once the oval office tapes came to light and the Supreme Court required that Nixon turn them over, it was curtains for Nixon. You may recall, that it was a Republican delegation headed by Barry Goldwater who eventually talked Nixon into taking his last trip on Marine One.
In 1979, on a postdoc, I found myself working on Senate Banking Committee staff. As a dyed in the wool Dem, I thought I could tell the bad guys from the good guys. Then, in my first conference committee meeting, with the doors closed and the press shut out, I saw true comradery and affection between the Democrat and Republican members. They could work the differences out of pending legislation with ease. Mostly by splitting the difference and moving on.
What ended all this, in my view, was one man: Grover Norquist. He perfected the practice of primarying Republican members of Congress who did not toe the hard right line. Gradually, even the most popular moderate Republican members were run out of office. Donald Trump has taken Norquist's techniques to the next level in order to rip the spine out of every Republican in Congress since John McCain died.
Job One is campaign finance reform starting with Citizen's United. Nothing is more important.
As a voter, this is what’s frustrating—both parties talk like they’re on opposite sides of dark money, but nothing actually changes.
Republicans say it’s about free speech and keeping government out of it. Democrats say it’s about transparency and fairness. But year after year, the system stays exactly the same—and both sides keep using it.
If this was really a top priority, you’d expect real action. Democrats have pushed disclosure bills, but when they’ve had the power, it hasn’t felt like an urgent fix. Republicans defend the system more openly, but they also benefit from it just the same.
A lot of talking and not much doing. One side criticizes dark money while still taking advantage of it. The other side supports the rules and continues to use them. Either way, the end result doesn’t change. Why?
The argument that America’s current crisis of trust stems from unresolved breaches stretching back decades, 100 years or even 200 years misses the more immediate and powerful driver: modern media systems that curate and shape perception in real time.
Today’s breakdown in confidence doesn’t require reaching back to the Revolution, Reconstruction, Watergate, or the Iraq War. The breach is happening now, daily, through a media ecosystem that is no longer primarily in the business of informing—but incentivized to influence. Major media institutions operate within corporate and political frameworks where narrative alignment, audience capture, and revenue models often outweigh neutral truth-seeking.
This isn’t speculation—it’s structural. Advertising dependence, consolidation of media ownership, and algorithm-driven amplification have created an environment where emotionally charged, divisive content outperforms balanced reporting. The result is not just bias, but systematic steering of public perception, where the same event can be framed in entirely different ways depending on the outlet.
Trust erodes not because Americans failed to resolve the Civil War or Civil Rights properly, but because citizens no longer believe they are being told the truth in the present moment. When reality itself appears fragmented—when facts feel negotiable—confidence in institutions collapses quickly.
In short, the breach is not buried in history. It is engineered in the present, distributed at scale, and reinforced daily into your place of work, your home and on your phone. Any serious attempt at “reckoning” must start there—not in the past, but in the systems actively shaping public understanding right now.
Dingdingding! The question of course, is - how to actually change the media systems? They won't change as long as they're making money hand over fist, and the increasing usage of LLMs to "write" the news turns even fluff pieces into propaganda.
Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote a very compelling book that encompasses this type of "reckoning" in cycles of American history. Basically they say we are due for one at the end of every saeculum (80-100yrs). A massive, society-altering event takes place which causes long bubbling and unresolved grievances to explode, forcing leaders and society to confront the inconvenient truths they kicked down the road for decades. Destroys old order and builds a new.
Examples include WW2, Civil War, Revolutionary War, Glorious Revolution, Armada Crisis, War of the Roses.
Current timetable of upcoming reckonings
May 2026
Jet fuel crisis
Oil, gas & fuel crisis
Fertilizer crisis
June - August 2026
Food crisis
Industry crisis
September - December 2026
Economy crisis
Social & political crisis
2027
Nuremberg Trials 2.0
Economic Reset
Disclosure
As a smart friend of mine puts it, "Climate change is the crisis all other crises report to." It's amazing how distracted the entire planet is right now and how impossible _any_ collective action solution seems.
The Fourth Turning is the single most cohesive theory of history I’ve ever read. The modern locating of Generations as “being shaped by history in their youth, shaping history in their adulthood” - with a human nature based set of outcomes that flow from the dual needs of community + individuation - is keenly brilliant. It explains why history “rhymes”. There are only a few generational moods that wax and wane along a civilization’s cycle of focusing on the collective or the heroic individual. It’s the Rosetta Stone for all of this (IMHO).
Trump's use of a war in Iran to distract us from his preference for raping children is a risk that the nation has tried before. Defeating Reconstruction, resisting Women's suffrage, opposing Civil Rights in the Sixties, and many others are all efforts that plainly defy our Declaration and Constitution but are entered into by people who are more concerned with their own interpretations of justice and who think that America is capable of carrying these contradictions into the future. Our nuclear weapons, our amazing military, our economy, and lately the fact we are 'protected' by two oceans are being used as excuses for our unforgivable behavior. Iran has plainly defeated Trump's ill-considered war and despite his best efforts to fan-dance that reality away, Americans will be paying for his foolishness and hatred for a long time.
I love Richardson's matter-of-fact history readings, but, Scott, if you are reading this, her "optimistic nostalgia," while comforting in hard times, is the reason why Americans keep digging themselves deeper into the hole of hate. Perhaps you should glance at "The Myth of the Eternal Return" by Mircea Eliade. For those who believe in myths, cyclical history is reassuring. After the rain, sunny skies... And to a certain extent it will control how we deal with the future. Thus guaranteeing the continued decline of the nation. I can hear the MAGA fascists already rewriting their corruption and spinelessness, and the Dems offering up a candidate who will promote the idea that we all have to get along somehow... And the electorate, in its moderation, wanting desperately to move on without looking back. Reconstruction... the end of a Civil War brought about by the south, but immediately forgiven. The opinion hubs like Substack will promote reconciliation by amnesia, and the opinion leaders will do the bothsides and whatabout dances. And we'll lurch on, while the rest of the world treats us like what we are, a country that refuses any real kind of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, like silly children who spread crap all over the place and refuse to clean it up and yell at the adults trying to tell them where the brooms and mops are. When Roosevelt and Truman came to the aid of Europe, it was not only about ideals and values. It was about world order. The ideals of democracy, which is or should be a dynamic process, were too important to allow for the threat coming from the Nazis and from whatever Stalin was (essentially an old Georgian mafioso, a kind of sly and intelligent form of Trump)... Now Europe is trying to remind Americans of that moment. And American voters are staring at the price of gas, at the price of eggs, and at their navels. They - and many Europeans - have forgotten that along with many wonderful rights like free speech and habeas corpus, democracy demands responsibility not only to obey laws, but also to be informed. The moment Trump said he loves the uneducated was the moment people should have rejected him. And yet, it says so much about the DNA of the country....
There is no moving on or building together without the hard work of owning the misery inflicted upon others (black Americans, minorities, other nations) owning the lies, the hypocrisy and the betrayal- of self, of values, of others - as a nation.
And that sort of identity altering hard work is the kind one resists at individual and collective levels with all the might. Better double down in the myth of “the greatest country” - the sort of pathetic superiority complex maintained at enormous cost to truth and reality abdication or swim in conspiracy theories or build various enemies while ignoring the real ones - trauma coping mechanisms.
Anything but dismantle received identity and face self and the world with embarrassment, empathy- the painful vulnerability that is the only possible path to heal, correct, repair, build honestly, durably.
I know adults who would rather burn themselves and their lives on some pyrrhic victory than do this hard work. For that at scale, look at Russia right now
Good piece, Scott.
Greetings all!
Scott,
Just a quick suggestion…
As an avid consumer of your portfolio, I know that you’ll be musing on the theme of reckoning quite a bit going forward.
Here’s the suggestion… so many of us are fatigued and saddened by the state of our country and world. Perhaps in your title/content/messaging you can lean more into REMEDY over reckoning? Even you stated here that you were surprised by Dr. Cox Richardson‘s optimism. We are so starved for it. I recommend solution-focused messaging
so that your ideas and suggestions will be more readily received and shared.
Keep up the good work!
Jackie from Chicago (and NYU Mom)
Agreed - I have a recent college grad & a class of 2026 almost grad - desperate for ‘work/a job’. I try to be an understanding optimist for them - ‘the world sucks now, but everything works out.’ Poor kids - pandemic ruined High School (NYC kept them home a lot). Now, graduating into this economy & mess. Their gen are taking a ‘shellacking.’
Here’s a significant way to impact this fall’s elections. Our democracy has become an oligarchy, a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. Now is the time to initiate a grassroots campaign to pursue the following. Several Democrats and progressive organizations have compiled separate tax reform proposals. I envision having these proposals consolidated into one bill that will benefit the vast majority of Americans. Having a consolidated bill, "True Tax Reform 2026: The Sequel," introduced to Congress well before this fall's elections will very well influence who individuals vote for based on a candidate's view on this bill. Please share this with your Democratic congressional representatives and others.
This is a list of proposals that can be consolidated into one bill:
Keep Your Pay Act: Cory Booker
Equal Tax Act: Senators Edward Markey, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Jeff Merkley
Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act: Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Rashida Tlaib
Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act: Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna
Tax on Extreme Wealth and For the 99.8% Act: Senator Bernie Sanders
Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act: Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Don Beyer
The Ultra-Millionaires Tax: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representatives Brendan F. Boyle and Pramila Jayapal
Defund the Oligarchs Resolution: Senator Elizabeth Warren
American Homeownership Act: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jeff Merkley
21st Century ROAD to Housing Act: Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott
Billionaires Income Tax Act: Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Donald Beyer and Steve Cohen
The Money Agenda 250: Patriotic Millionaires
The Five & Dime Tax: Tax the Greedy Billionaires
Executive Summary: Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute
Court of International Trade Tariff Refunds: Senators Ron Wyden, Edward J. Markey, and Jeanne Shaheen
The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2011: Senators Ron Wyden and Dan Coates
* Review provisions in H.R. 1 and executive orders- void and add provisions as needed.
America is Unfair !!! I can hear Communist China calling your name ... just leave already ... America does not need self proclaimed victims to usher in Soviet Union style Socialism or Communist China AUthoritarianism ... Billionairs provide jobs! Destroy Americas Capital and America is Destroyed!
Reminded (again) of Lawrence Lessig's quote: "Campaign finance reform isn't the biggest problem facing the country - but it's the first."
I found this one unconvincing. For starters, it supposes that our government USED TO run well, ignoring massive trust-burners like The Great Depression or Vietnam. "Twas always thus" doesn't make the current situation any more bearable, but it does suggest the problem is foundational -- not recent. Second, I think Congressional self-dealing is a different order of magnitude problem than the fact we no longer have three co-equal branches of government. (It is also a much easier fix.)
But the biggest problem is that it ignores the fact we already HAVE the answer: vote the bastards out. 90+% of the time we return the problem children to office, signaling that while we may moan about the fact they do nothing but make themselves rich, we're not so unhappy we won't renew their contract.
We HAVE all the power that we need. Now we have to use it.
Hey Scott- just be forewarned - and tell your sons when asked while living in your uptiopiain London-
No, I'm not Jewish, man.
And never wear your kippah- even on holy days- or be seen going to temple..
You might not like what happens
The grass isnt greener there, but you wont admit it.
You should change your name to Dr. Doom. It fits you well.
Any "breaches" during Obama's 2 terms?
They are referenced in this piece, but only with a few words regarding the stain of bankers getting bonuses rather than jail sentences after the mortgage crisis. Maybe as a more effective rhetorical exercise, this piece could have spent more than fleeting words regarding Clinton and Obama. But whether you choose to blow that up into a sweeping rejection of the article as an exercise in bias... That would be your rhetorical choice to reject dialogue. Instead, you can trade the snark for pointing out the imbalance in a meaningful rebuttal. A choice.
Actually 3 terms if you count the "Biden" presidency
‘Prosecuting the rampant corruption of Trump’s family and associates will deliver justice, but if we fail to also address congressional corruption (insider trading, Citizens United spending) we’re putting a Band-Aid over a wound that needs to be cauterized. Does our society have the courage to go deeper and the attention span to see it through?’ b r a v o
I wish I could share HCR’s optimism; too many forces (💰) seemingly want the 250 year experiment dissolved.
•Power
•Profit
•Patriarchy
the healing that will be needed after this moment is remarkable. We have to start preparing now, but all the organizations that would be at the center of this work are under considerable strain. We have to think about what new version of our organizations could serve this purpose and build it. quickly.
A great companion piece and highly thorough analysis is at https://protectdemocracy.substack.com/p/nearly-half?r=s00eu&utm_medium=ios