Eyes on the prize: "what are you going to do about it?"

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo would certainly want to say his web newsroom is a very small fish in the media ocean. But he built it from nothing; it's solvent; and it feels unique to me, anchored by Marshall's sense of history and society. (Like Marshall, I'm a dropout from academic history studies who never stopped learning from our past.)

He has potent thoughts about the Trump regime's attempt to cow and conquer our information sources in the wake of the Kirk assassination. I think Marshall would say this was always where Trump was going; the murder of one right wing agitator is just a convenient pretext.

Marshall's insights are not all bleak. The old media system is collapsing, but interest in consuming what he calls "non-gelded" media is likely to replace or even exceed what is repressed by corporate conglomerate dynosaurs that do Trump's bidding. The moment makes this possible.

Nonetheless his summation of our situation is bracing. Here's a portion of it: 

... most elected Democrats remain in the mode of believing they are a party of government temporarily out of power. They are that too. 

But really they’re an opposition party in the midst of an attempted authoritarian takeover of the American Republic. That means many things. But here’s one of the most important. Last night Sen. Chris Murphy went on Bluesky (and likely other platforms) denouncing [Trump Federal Communications Commission  Chair Brendan] Carr’s criminal and unconstitutional actions — a “history making abuse of your power” he called it. Murphy went on to say, “It will define your legacy and one day you will come to regret punishing free speech and trying to destroy democracy.”

It was the best thing I’d seen any elected official say in response to yesterday’s events and one of the only meaningful ones. But on the next round, I’d recommend Murphy put a finer edge on those remarks. 

I don’t care and I suspect Carr doesn’t care about one day regretting some principle he transgressed. He knows what he’s done. Just one year ago he was on X saying that “free speech” is the “counterweight” to tyranny. “That’s why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream,” Carr wrote at the time. He knows what he’s doing. 

I want lawmakers to be telling people like Carr and his ilk not that they’ll have regrets but that they’ll face consequences.

I hear all these people telling me how there won’t be a 2026 election, or that it won’t be free and fair or a bunch of other things. My question to them, or maybe to you is, what are you going to do about it? 

History is long. No one is in the saddle forever. It is critical for an opposition to give the people a vision of forward trajectory in time, that this isn’t the end of the story, that consequences can be delayed but not evaded. It’s such a demonstrable point. Think even of the longest lasting fascist or authoritarian dictatorships. Franco? About 35 years. Pinochet? 16 years, ousted by a referendum. 

I don’t imagine this will last for even a tiny fraction of that length of time. My point is simply to demonstrate the incontestable point: no one remains in the saddle forever. That’s true even in the most extreme cases. A reckoning comes and everyone needs to be on notice.

Trump is already unpopular. He is getting more unpopular. His actions are unpopular. 

It is the elites, the big diversified corporations and monopolies who have tossed aside most rapidly Americans’ instinctive disdain for kings and dictators. 

It’s down at the most democratic level of our system where the resistance is strongest and growing — juries that refuse to indict or convict amid Trump’s bogus crime crackdown, voters who are showing they’ve had enough. 

He slashes at the civic orthodoxies and values we were all raised on. This remains his opposition’s greatest advantage. It simply needs to be exploited. 

Adam Smith says there’s a lot of ruin in a nation. There’s a lot of ruin in a democracy. We’re in a very bad situation. To me, all I care about is what to do in response. ...

Do read it all.