Three Years
And Miles to Go
Just a reminder that the first post-election edition of Ask Mary Anything within Reason begins at 6:00 p.m. ET:
First, some emergency art—a poem that reminds us, with extraordinary economy of language, what really matters.
The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
I launched The Good in Us three years ago today and I’ve been trying to take stock of how much we’ve been through since then. It’s hard to comprehend what has unfolded—how much the landscape has changed, how much we have.
We learned a lot earlier this week about the many reasons we lost—from the institutional and structural and characterological—but the main reason, which is both a cause and effect, is the massive, coordinated right-wing media ecosphere which has overtaken traditional/legacy media and which the left has done nothing to challenge.
Ever since Fox came on the air in 1996 and Rush Limbaugh dominated talk radio, traditional/legacy media has been losing ground. I do not at all discount the other very salient deficiencies with which we’ve been confronted, but it is also true that, for years now, Democrats have been buying TV ads while Republicans have been buying TV stations—and radio stations, local newspapers, and podcasting networks.
Week after week, the heirs of Limbaugh—Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owen, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Glenn Beck—dominate the top ten of Apple, Shopify, and iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel).
The right-wing media company, Sinclair, has taken over local TV, radio, and newspapers. The Bott Radio Network inundates the airwaves with white evangelical Christian talk radio. Elon Musk has been allowed to turn Twitter into a fascist cesspool. Through these means and others, a majority of the country’s citizens has been fed a consistent anti-democratic message and a steady diet of disinformation.
In 2022, Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban said this to CPAC: “Have your own media.” The right listened.
The pro-democracy coalition needs to find a way to counter the onslaught of coordinated disinformation swamping the American electorate. This week, our democracy suffered a serious blow. If it’s going to survive, a strong independent media is required.
As I’ve said in the past, subscribers to The Good in Us help make it possible for me to do other work—and I appreciate the faith you’ve placed in me to do that work, just as I appreciate your patience as I tried to figure out how to be most effective in the lead up to the 2024 election.
We’re in a whole new fight now. The stakes are higher, and the road ahead is harder. There is no giving up, but we need to find a better way forward. Your support continues to be vital to those efforts.
Here’s a poem that, for me, perfectly captured how I felt on Wednesday.
Holding Vigil
My cousin asks if I can describe this moment,
the heaviness of it, like sitting outside
the operating room while someone you love
is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chairs
eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine
which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise,
waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out
in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down
to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels
as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about
is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat
asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are.
I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity,
the fact that we are all waiting in the same
hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support,
and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up?
Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil,
as families do, and bringing each other coffee
from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it
while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral,
which is also what happens at times like these,
and
I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment,
heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand,
in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep
of human history, a soap bubble, because empires
are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations
die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens
all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization,
your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator,
and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about
when she wakes at three in the morning,
cause she’s got two daughters,
and that’s the thing,
it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day
and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food,
cheap clothing,
but right now I’m talking about the babies,
and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls
and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer,
the icebergs for the love of God—every single
blessed being on the face of this earth
is holding its breath in this moment,
and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin,
then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it
we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
- Alison Luterman
Here's what I wrote to President Biden today at whitehouse.gov/contact:
Dear President Biden, thank you for the many achievements of your presidency. There’s one more act that would cement your legacy as the most progressive leader in my lifetime: RESIGN.
Yes, please resign and make Kamala Harris the 47th President of the United States for the last two months of democracy in America. Let her become our first Madam President. Let Doug Emhoff become the first First Gentleman.
Urge her to appoint Pete Buttigieg as her Vice-President. Let his husband (Chasten Buttigieg) become the second Gentleman.
When you were running for President in 2020, you swore to appoint a woman as your running mate and you kept that promise. Now you have the opportunity to double-down on that pledge and give us a woman of color for our first female President and a gay man for the President of the Senate.
This would be a shining moment in American history. You are uniquely positioned to gift us with this slice of joy. Thank you for considering this petition.