Jared, thank you for your discernment in these fraught times, comparatively with history. You’re a great teacher, making things clear. I remember once reading Bandi Lee writing that truthful knowledge actually reduces stress, since we can develop pathways to navigate and ground ourselves personally and hopefully collectively. Whether or not we are actually very successful, at least we are moving forward in ways that show our core values in family and community pockets. Also, re those I know who voted for Trump, I can have good discussions with them when focusing on the increasing greed and power of the very wealthy. It’ll hit home more when they see themselves negatively affected. I can’t find anything about the Bari Weiss news, but I think it was Marc Elias who recently said he was going to limit his posts here because of who is or will be running Substack and so he has created his own site.
This describes the complexity of our society but brings home the commonalities Americans share--probably the first thing I've read that gives me some hope. You are an exceptional writer.
I'm skeptical that the United States will ever begin to “reindustrialize.” It's difficult to see a reality in which our standard of living drops to below that of nations that compete with us for factories. The US has only ever had a manufacturing advantage when we invented some new shit and/or bombed our competitors capacity out of existence.
Unfortunately I think the Red States have created a situation where they can properly exploit people and the growing Cold War with China, which is throwing a kink into the global system, when matched with investments into chips manufacturing and the like, is going to set this off. It won’t be widespread or national, but likely limited to those states where unionizing is all but made illegal and where regulations have been eradicated.
Jared- Just saw the Bari Weiss news. Would you please find another home for this? The people who run Substack are absolute trash humans. Why do you force your fans to give them their hard-earned money? They are the enemy for crying out loud.
I hadn’t heard anything about this until now. I don’t believe we any corporate platform has pure intentions but I’m going to look and see if there actually better alternatives and weigh my options. But this system is so corrupted that there’s not a pure way to do any of this.
FWIW, your voice is important enough to me that I just bought a year's sub to your little Substack allotment. I would gladly eat the year's sub if you shutdown today.
I don’t know if it’s good for publishing newsletters, but I wish more people would get on Mastodon. Everyone’s going to Blue Sky, but it’s owned by a bunch of crypto bros. Plus Mastodon’s interface works MUCH better on a tablet than Blue Sky. Mastodon is the most secure, according to this review. https://www.protectstar.com/en/blog/top-5-most-secure-social-media-platforms
Great article. It’s coalition building time!
Gosh darn Jared -- you're getting really good at this.
Your analysis also helps as Sue Philipson reminds us (see also, Bandi Lee): ". . . truthful knowledge actually reduces stress."
Jared, thank you for your discernment in these fraught times, comparatively with history. You’re a great teacher, making things clear. I remember once reading Bandi Lee writing that truthful knowledge actually reduces stress, since we can develop pathways to navigate and ground ourselves personally and hopefully collectively. Whether or not we are actually very successful, at least we are moving forward in ways that show our core values in family and community pockets. Also, re those I know who voted for Trump, I can have good discussions with them when focusing on the increasing greed and power of the very wealthy. It’ll hit home more when they see themselves negatively affected. I can’t find anything about the Bari Weiss news, but I think it was Marc Elias who recently said he was going to limit his posts here because of who is or will be running Substack and so he has created his own site.
Americans can’t think about class because then they would have to think about race.
Thank you so much for this essay. I'm going to read a couple more times and share.
This describes the complexity of our society but brings home the commonalities Americans share--probably the first thing I've read that gives me some hope. You are an exceptional writer.
I'm skeptical that the United States will ever begin to “reindustrialize.” It's difficult to see a reality in which our standard of living drops to below that of nations that compete with us for factories. The US has only ever had a manufacturing advantage when we invented some new shit and/or bombed our competitors capacity out of existence.
Unfortunately I think the Red States have created a situation where they can properly exploit people and the growing Cold War with China, which is throwing a kink into the global system, when matched with investments into chips manufacturing and the like, is going to set this off. It won’t be widespread or national, but likely limited to those states where unionizing is all but made illegal and where regulations have been eradicated.
Jared- Just saw the Bari Weiss news. Would you please find another home for this? The people who run Substack are absolute trash humans. Why do you force your fans to give them their hard-earned money? They are the enemy for crying out loud.
I hadn’t heard anything about this until now. I don’t believe we any corporate platform has pure intentions but I’m going to look and see if there actually better alternatives and weigh my options. But this system is so corrupted that there’s not a pure way to do any of this.
Not looking for purity. Just don't like forking my hard-won frogskins over to known "Nazi bars".
Molly White is openly offering to help anyone seeking to make the switch off of S/S. See here: https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki/post/3ldjwgjja7c24
If you're not up on just how awful an operation S/S is for authors as well as audience, please check out these two recent pieces:
https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/
https://mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/death-by-thousand-substacks
FWIW, your voice is important enough to me that I just bought a year's sub to your little Substack allotment. I would gladly eat the year's sub if you shutdown today.
I don’t know if it’s good for publishing newsletters, but I wish more people would get on Mastodon. Everyone’s going to Blue Sky, but it’s owned by a bunch of crypto bros. Plus Mastodon’s interface works MUCH better on a tablet than Blue Sky. Mastodon is the most secure, according to this review. https://www.protectstar.com/en/blog/top-5-most-secure-social-media-platforms
By design, as you have just pointed out.