Dear beleaguered subscribers,
Well, this isn’t good. It won’t have come to any great shock to those who read this publication, but Donald Trump is heading back to the White House, and Republicans are poised to cram through as much of the Project 2025 agenda as they can get away with. This is bad news. It’s bad news for the climate, since Donald Trump is committed to accelerating the climate catastrophe. It’s bad news for workers, since a Trump administration is likely to rip up workplace safety regulations and undercut unions. It’s bad news for Palestinians, since Trump is likely to let Israel do whatever it wants to Gaza, including resettling it. And it’s bad news for anyone who values their basic freedoms, since Trump is an authoritarian. Personally I am not looking forward to the next four years!
I’ve written a detailed analysis of how this calamitous outcome came about. Unlike writers at some other publications, I don’t blame America as a whole. I pinpoint specific failures by the leadership of the Democratic Party that allowed a manifestly incompetent and venal showman to triumph in what should have been a winnable race. (I’m already at work expanding this analysis into a short book, tentatively titled Clusterfuck: How the Democratic Party Ceded America to the Far Right.)
But I do not feel hopeless right now, even though the political situation is dire. Pessimism is suicidal because to act on it guarantees the worst will occur. And there is a small “silver lining,” which is that crises do create opportunities. As I explained in a recent appearance on the always excellent Unfucking The Republic podcast, because Republican policies are extremely unpopular (they had to lie about Project 2025 in order to take power), Trump will almost certainly be a failure as a president, and there will be a major popular backlash. People aren’t going to like it when the climate catastrophe worsens, their financial situations don’t improve, and they continue to be stuck with unaffordable healthcare and broken infrastructure. Trump is a bullshitter and it’s going to be clear, as it became clear to Britons under Boris Johnson, that this inept man cannot deliver the promised age of “greatness.” This failure will create an opportunity for us to rebuild civil society and create something new in the ashes of the current Democratic Party. It’s not going to be easy or fun. But we must face the future with confidence and determination.
Independent media is going to be an absolutely critical piece of any successful fight against Trumpism. Trump triumphed in part because of a right-wing propaganda machine that is immensely successful at making people fear bogeymen (immigrants, trans people, a rotating cast of Middle East countries, etc.) We have to equip people with critical thinking skills that can help them see through propaganda and avoid being taken in by it. At Current Affairs, we work every day to figure out how to respond effectively to the right. We know from reader feedback that we have an effect on a small scale, opening people’s minds to new ideas. But we need to expand our work.
For that, we need support. We have got to be able to hire more staff and pay higher salaries. We are tiny and cash-strapped. We can bring this fight effectively to the right, but we need external support in order to do that. We estimate that with 2,500 additional print subscribers, our existing work will be fully financially sustainable. So please consider signing up friends, and spreading the word. We are also a 501c3 nonprofit, and donations go toward paying for new work. We have been very fortunate over the last year to receive some substantial donations from loyal Current Affairs readers that have helped us move to a new office and grow our staff. But to achieve our full potential, we urgently need to find new sources of funding. Please consider making a donation to Current Affairs to help us in the fight over the next four years. I can promise you that of all the things you could support that will help undo the right-wing political project, building independent progressive media is one of the absolute most effective. We would love to find some foundations and donors who can help us sustain and grow this work over the long term so do be in touch if you have any leads!
