Where do you even start, writing your weekly reflections after a week from hell like this last one?
While I could write an essay that is adjacent, or even just tangentially related to, current events, I don’t have anything like that ready for primetime. Several ideas are percolating, but they still need to steep for a while.
So that leaves my analysis of current events, and holy shit are they “not great,” to use my native Midwestern idiom with its folksy penchant for understatement.
Amid Democrats naively celebrating the fourth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection as the restoration of America’s peaceful transfer of power; Meta racing to go as “anti-woke” (and specifically anti-trans) as possible; another media bloodbath with major layoffs at Vox, HuffPo, and WaPo; the Supreme Court just barely allowing Donald Trump to be sentenced in New York knowing he’d get less than a slap on the wrist for his 34 felony convictions; and devastating fires in Los Angeles itself—a situation clearly related to climate change—this has been a very bad week.

As these events unfolded, America’s Democrats have (as usual) failed to put out effective messaging, while our authoritarian Republicans continue to run rampant with harmful misinformation.
The criticism of Democrats always ruffles feathers among a certain sort of American liberal, but I contend that such good-faith criticism is necessary and important, even though I do not vote third party or abstain from voting. I want to make this clear. I vote for Dems, and I absolutely will exercise my right to criticize them for failing to meet the political moment and for the party leadership’s decades of fecklessness and naive institutionalism that eased the path of ever more extreme Republicans—Christian fascists—to power.
The primary blame for American fascism lies with the fascists, of course. But there is still blame to go around for the only people who were, in our unhealthy two-party presidential (as opposed to parliamentary) system, positioned to put up a real fight and refused to. Instead of stepping up, Democratic leadership has largely stood by and sung “God Bless America” while Republicans come for our human rights and tech moguls are strangling what’s left of American civil society to death.
On Monday, January 6 came and went, and Democrats naively celebrated the return of the “peaceful transfer of power” instead of warning the country that, “fairly” elected or not, dangerous fascists are about to take the reins of all three branches of the federal government. (Sure, the judicial branch is supposed to be “apolitical,” but what a laugh that is these days.)
At The New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie called out the Dems for celebrating prematurely, arguing that a peaceful transfer of power would have been unlikely if outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris had prevailed in November’s election. I very much do not endorse the Times and do not recommend subscribing to it, and yet there are some good professionals there, and Bouie is one of them. I also maintain a subscription myself, a necessary evil since much of my work involves media criticism. Here’s a gift link to Bouie’s commentary, so you can read it without subscribing if you’re so inclined.
Below the paywall, as I comment further on the disastrous state of my country, I’ll make further reading recommendations for paid subscribers to The Bugbear Dispatch. I would like to be able to make each issue of this newsletter free, but I cannot currently afford to do so, so if you are able to pay for a subscription and have been reading for a while, I humbly suggest that you get one—and perhaps consider getting one for a friend or relative, too. Okay, pitch over.
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