I recorded this Substack Live last night to share some end-of-year thoughts about where we are as a country and where we need to go.
I talk about the moral dimensions of history—what we owe to past generations who sacrificed for the freedoms we’re now fighting to preserve. About FDR and Eisenhower and the greatest generation who understood that power comes with responsibility, not just opportunity for extraction.
I talk about why I’m more optimistic now than I’ve been in months, even as I document the collapse happening around us. Signs of moral life returning to the Republican coalition. Americans across the political spectrum starting to put their foot on the brakes.
And I talk about why this moment—with Trump abandoning our democratic allies, dismantling the Blue Water Navy program, preparing for war in the Caribbean—is more dangerous than most people realize. This isn’t just another political crisis. This is the kind of geopolitical fracturing that led 400,000 American soldiers to die the last time it happened.
But here’s the thing: we’re still a fighting democracy. The fact that I can say all this, that you can watch it, that we can organize resistance—that matters. Try doing this in China or Russia. You’d be dead.
So now is the time to act. Not to calculate whether you have the right subject position to speak up. Not to wait for someone else to do it. Not to sit there wondering if this is “really” fascism yet or if we should wait for threat level midnight.
Now is the time to look into your heart, point at evil, call it evil, and do what’s right.
Masked men kidnapping people off the streets in violation of the Fourth Amendment: bad, illegal, unconstitutional. Deportations to torture prisons: wrong, full stop. Using copyright law to suppress journalism about government brutality: institutional capture operating in real time.
We don’t need perfect information to know what matters. We need to honor what past generations fought for by fighting for it again now.
That’s my end of year message. Watch if you’re in the mood. And thank you—especially paid subscribers—for supporting this work and making it possible.
—Mike
