Now is the time
You may not be a Midwesterner but if you are reading this right now, you’re probably concerned. With a lot. And why wouldn’t you be? If you’re sane and in possession of your mental faculties, the deepening sense of vertigo is enough to make you sick.
The impossible is upon us - despite what our eyes and ears are telling the mind, it still reels from the shocking assault on our republic.
We are a month into this formal madness and it shows no sign of relenting. This is by design - to overwhelm, overstimulate and dull the senses. Even the principled mind is prone to exhaustion and needs a goddamn break.
But you will not find a respite here - instead I hope to offer my notes and observations of this unfolding crisis, and perhaps a dose of clarity, a signal amongst the noise.
I can claim no expertise or formal professional insight outside of a middling liberal arts degree and years of reading. But for decades I have been duly noting the ups and downs of political life, the ebb and flow of cultural tides and now, the utter shock of fascism.
The diagnosis is clear but the prognosis is murky. The flows of history can rhyme and inform, give warnings and signs, but it cannot predict. The future is not written and we must be open to all the possibilities, great or terrible, that lie before us.
This will require much from all of us. Should this cancer flourish and take hold, many difficult decisions will be ahead of us. It will take courage and discipline to navigate the coming storm.
To see it through, we must honor our values - every personal interaction, every dollar spent and every moment of your time matters. It adds up. What we do decides what we hold dear, not what we say.
Above all, we must adhere to the facts. It was the soiling of truth, the willingness to bend reality to fit convenient narratives that brought us here.
We have been rudderless and deaf, our attention siphoned into the coffers of technocrats and billionaires while the very contours of thought and experience are blinded by cheap spectacle. From this maw of mass nihilism, a new fascism has emerged. And it is hungry.
The instinct to shirk from confrontation or to mollify the source of conflict is natural (if not all together Midwestern). Accommodating the abyss will not save us.
It is here whether we wish it or not - the only way out is through. I hope you’ll join me along the way, however this ends.
See you next week.
- A Concerned Midwesterner