Well I know of one level of action: Blue state AG’s are building courses of action and following through. They have meetings on a regular basis to crowdsource what they learn, experience, and do fighting this regimes out of control behaviour. They obviously don’t, can’t solve everything, but I think they are at least one way of doing what you suggest.
There are credible accusations of child rape against a sitting President and we hear crickets from media. They barely bother to address it. Or the crypto scam that has enriched his family billions. The list is endless and the silence is deafening. What they’ve spent the last two weeks doing- and i’m talking about the ‘liberals’ at MSNOW and the like- is begging for better sound-bite justifications for starting a war in Iran and supporting Israel in their genocide in Gaza and bombing of Lebanon. They are most mad that the voters weren’t lied to better so that we all could applaud the war with a clean conscious. It’s actually quite stunning and pathetic how truly awful our “4th estate” is at the job of reporting facts and informing the public.
THANK YOU and several others on Substack for being so dogged in your pursuit of truth and for keeping us properly informed of what is actually happening❤️👏✌️
Thank you for this explanation. It really is true. It’s just an outrage machine with no teeth. I keep hoping that the midterms will bring back accountability.
What a real-accountability future also requires is a free and open internet with decentralized federated social communication platforms, and for the public to know what those are and how to use them. Corporate platforms that can be yanked or corrupted on a whim, ones that shadowban and demonetize at will, ones bankrolled by the Network State bros and TESCREAL-pilled billionaires are never going to be a sustainable vehicle for the dissemination of information and the public cataloging of the truth. And if we lose Section 230, we lose the open internet.
Journalism's new role in America is not to hold power to account, because that power is no longer accountable. Journalism's role is the same as it ever was. The light you shine on power continues to help people to understand it, come to terms with it and respond to it. You are right that how people respond to your stories is the key and the good news is that response is there.
Your reflection on people creating the 'shadow' architecture of services and safekeeping knowledge is on the right track. But the old democratic institutions are now irrelevant and America should not mourn their loss. They were only power's patriarchal and colonising means to this end anyway. Americans can do better than preserve old structures in the shadows.
The fact is that most Americans are no longer participants but are commodities in the global economy, along with the rest of us humans. People's human rights are at best irrelevant and at worst inefficiencies in structures of economic power.
The good news is that literally billions of people, especially in the global south, never participated in the global economy. Others, especially in the global north, are literally leaving the economy to the less than 1% who own it, and turning their focus instead on learning to live well in spite of it.
With the knowledge saved and lessons learned, Americans are free to explore and build new social contracts with each other and the world. Maybe even to deliver on their aspirations of a society that celebrates personal independence, protects individual rights and exercises power "of the people, by the people."
Re-creating American democratic society might not require a revolution, but to simply 'turn the other cheek'.
As for journalism, keep doing what you have been doing: observe and describe, with rigorous objectivity, both the old systems of power as well as the emerging alternatives. We read by that light.
It seems like the most outrageous crimes committed by this admin are only in the news for two weeks maximum. Our attention spans are being destroyed by social media and I'm including myself in that number! Letting a brain damaging pandemic continue unabated is also hurting us.
You are correct, but it might not be as bad as your write. Much as you hate President Trump he is moving as fast as possible to take apart the deep state/Trans National Crime Syndicate/cartels that have been doing the damage you so hate. You are correct in that the whole system (including the courts) have been captured. Removing that control is not a short term issue. Iran seems like a stand alone problem, but it isn't. It is the key to removing a large measure of control the TNCS has imposed on the world with its weapon - chaos. When Iran is free peace will breakout in a lot of places, energy will be available at real market prices and prosperity will return to many people.
Don't stop kicking over rocks and exposing the corruption. The more free people understand the depth of the corruption the easier it is to remove it. BTW - you are a great writer weaving the story into an understandable picture. God Bless You.
We taxpayers are being robbed blind, right and left but mostly from the right. So we need to tax the morbidly rich who have reaped so much wealth by burrowing into our politics. Beyond that, and perhaps more long-term effective, we need some good old fashioned turn of the century (the 19th to the 20th) trust busting. The consolidated traditional media and “new” (read social) media must be broken apart and should again resemble original FCC rules against multiple ownership of different media entities in single markets. And at this point with a worldwide web, our country — even the world — is a single market. And algorithmic stalking of us — that thing that makes the advertising dollars that ran to new media and killed old media — must be reined in, made illegal. The internet was supposed to be the enhanced public square, perhaps a marketplace of ideas; it has become, instead, a corral of product placement and “hucksting” , and we are the cattle in the corral. We didn’t enter willingly as shoppers, we were lured in by the pied piping of fleeting images and provocative tweets. We are now (to change metaphors) fish in a barrel as consumers and as voters and as taxpayers. We signed up for digital convenience, not data capture. As for how we return to a sense of injustice when investigative journalism shows us the crooks and the crooked, cutting away the algorithms might help with that as well. Without the constant digital opiates injected through our eyes and turning us all more ADHD than we already were, we might actually give some thought to what’s right and what’s wrong. We might stop and watch the sunset against the Golden Gate Bridge again if we weren’t being led from one post and one product to another by the screen in our palms.
Yes!
Well I know of one level of action: Blue state AG’s are building courses of action and following through. They have meetings on a regular basis to crowdsource what they learn, experience, and do fighting this regimes out of control behaviour. They obviously don’t, can’t solve everything, but I think they are at least one way of doing what you suggest.
The only Heroes WE can Trust, & depend on, are US. ALL We really need.
🌎🕊🤲🏼
There are credible accusations of child rape against a sitting President and we hear crickets from media. They barely bother to address it. Or the crypto scam that has enriched his family billions. The list is endless and the silence is deafening. What they’ve spent the last two weeks doing- and i’m talking about the ‘liberals’ at MSNOW and the like- is begging for better sound-bite justifications for starting a war in Iran and supporting Israel in their genocide in Gaza and bombing of Lebanon. They are most mad that the voters weren’t lied to better so that we all could applaud the war with a clean conscious. It’s actually quite stunning and pathetic how truly awful our “4th estate” is at the job of reporting facts and informing the public.
THANK YOU and several others on Substack for being so dogged in your pursuit of truth and for keeping us properly informed of what is actually happening❤️👏✌️
Thank you for this explanation. It really is true. It’s just an outrage machine with no teeth. I keep hoping that the midterms will bring back accountability.
Please don't stop!
You are a breath of fresh air. And very much needed at this time. You have some great ideas for the future. Thank you very much.
What a real-accountability future also requires is a free and open internet with decentralized federated social communication platforms, and for the public to know what those are and how to use them. Corporate platforms that can be yanked or corrupted on a whim, ones that shadowban and demonetize at will, ones bankrolled by the Network State bros and TESCREAL-pilled billionaires are never going to be a sustainable vehicle for the dissemination of information and the public cataloging of the truth. And if we lose Section 230, we lose the open internet.
The Fediverse is the way, folks.
https://fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-what-is-the-fediverse/
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/12/on-its-30th-birthday-section-230-remains-the-linchpin-for-users-speech/
I sure appreciate you and your principled support for journalism.
Journalism's new role in America is not to hold power to account, because that power is no longer accountable. Journalism's role is the same as it ever was. The light you shine on power continues to help people to understand it, come to terms with it and respond to it. You are right that how people respond to your stories is the key and the good news is that response is there.
Your reflection on people creating the 'shadow' architecture of services and safekeeping knowledge is on the right track. But the old democratic institutions are now irrelevant and America should not mourn their loss. They were only power's patriarchal and colonising means to this end anyway. Americans can do better than preserve old structures in the shadows.
The fact is that most Americans are no longer participants but are commodities in the global economy, along with the rest of us humans. People's human rights are at best irrelevant and at worst inefficiencies in structures of economic power.
The good news is that literally billions of people, especially in the global south, never participated in the global economy. Others, especially in the global north, are literally leaving the economy to the less than 1% who own it, and turning their focus instead on learning to live well in spite of it.
With the knowledge saved and lessons learned, Americans are free to explore and build new social contracts with each other and the world. Maybe even to deliver on their aspirations of a society that celebrates personal independence, protects individual rights and exercises power "of the people, by the people."
Re-creating American democratic society might not require a revolution, but to simply 'turn the other cheek'.
As for journalism, keep doing what you have been doing: observe and describe, with rigorous objectivity, both the old systems of power as well as the emerging alternatives. We read by that light.
It seems like the most outrageous crimes committed by this admin are only in the news for two weeks maximum. Our attention spans are being destroyed by social media and I'm including myself in that number! Letting a brain damaging pandemic continue unabated is also hurting us.
The women leading us: Alisa+Sarah+Kait+Ellie+++
Keep going. Hold truth to power. With the truth, we can also demand accountability and justice.
Thank you. Another great article - insightful with just the right amount of outrage, which takes some serious discipline nowadays. Keep it up.
You are correct, but it might not be as bad as your write. Much as you hate President Trump he is moving as fast as possible to take apart the deep state/Trans National Crime Syndicate/cartels that have been doing the damage you so hate. You are correct in that the whole system (including the courts) have been captured. Removing that control is not a short term issue. Iran seems like a stand alone problem, but it isn't. It is the key to removing a large measure of control the TNCS has imposed on the world with its weapon - chaos. When Iran is free peace will breakout in a lot of places, energy will be available at real market prices and prosperity will return to many people.
Don't stop kicking over rocks and exposing the corruption. The more free people understand the depth of the corruption the easier it is to remove it. BTW - you are a great writer weaving the story into an understandable picture. God Bless You.
We taxpayers are being robbed blind, right and left but mostly from the right. So we need to tax the morbidly rich who have reaped so much wealth by burrowing into our politics. Beyond that, and perhaps more long-term effective, we need some good old fashioned turn of the century (the 19th to the 20th) trust busting. The consolidated traditional media and “new” (read social) media must be broken apart and should again resemble original FCC rules against multiple ownership of different media entities in single markets. And at this point with a worldwide web, our country — even the world — is a single market. And algorithmic stalking of us — that thing that makes the advertising dollars that ran to new media and killed old media — must be reined in, made illegal. The internet was supposed to be the enhanced public square, perhaps a marketplace of ideas; it has become, instead, a corral of product placement and “hucksting” , and we are the cattle in the corral. We didn’t enter willingly as shoppers, we were lured in by the pied piping of fleeting images and provocative tweets. We are now (to change metaphors) fish in a barrel as consumers and as voters and as taxpayers. We signed up for digital convenience, not data capture. As for how we return to a sense of injustice when investigative journalism shows us the crooks and the crooked, cutting away the algorithms might help with that as well. Without the constant digital opiates injected through our eyes and turning us all more ADHD than we already were, we might actually give some thought to what’s right and what’s wrong. We might stop and watch the sunset against the Golden Gate Bridge again if we weren’t being led from one post and one product to another by the screen in our palms.