the imbroglio 2.0

If you aren’t familiar with Timothy Snyder, now is the time to get to know him. He is a history professor at Yale but  probably most famous as the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century and On Freedom (which astoundingly, does not seem to have a Wikipedia entry!?).  The first of the 20 lessons in On Tyranny is “Do not obey in advance,” which we can see the oligarchs and  companies are already violating by giving millions to the Trump “inauguration” fund. As John Gruber noted on Daring Fireball, most of these companies either gave much less or nothing at all to Biden’s inauguration 4 years ago.

Back to Snyder, who is one of (if not the) most brilliant and incisive of the public intellectuals in the “resistance” we are going to need if the U.S. is going to make it through the next four years. For evidence, look no further than his recent proposal that the Democrats form an official “shadow cabinet” to stand in public and ongoing opposition to all of the madness that’s about to descend upon us. I won’t try to explain what he means by this; you should read it yourself, as well as his followup post digging a little deeper into how the “shadow” or “people’s” cabinet might work. It’s not just a brilliant idea, it may be the best idea I’ve heard since the election on how the opposition should move forward. 

I’ve cut way back on my news and politics consumption since the election in November and I’m far happier not to be following every development second-by-second as I was before then. Again, Gruber has explained this better than I ever could:

 My take on Trump post-election has been to stop paying attention, as best I can, to anything he says. I’m only paying attention to what he does. With any other national leader, there’s a correlation between their words and their eventual actions that makes paying attention to what they say worthwhile. With Trump, there’s almost no correlation, and his endless stream of outrageous proclamations amounts to nothing but a distraction.

For me, this applies not just to Trump, but to all of the Trump-related sycophants and psychos filling just about every media channel with lies and fantasies, or “flooding the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon so famously put it.  My wife says this is what Rachel Maddow has been saying for a long time, too — ignore what they say; pay attention to what they do. It may not be an original or surprising idea, but it’s one that has been helping me stay sane, nonetheless. 

Still, Timothy Snyder is someone who cuts through the bullshit and to whom it’s always worth paying attention. His analysis of Trump’s cabinet picks as basically a decaptitation strike on the U.S. government seems terrifyingly correct, and his arguments that what we’re facing is a Musk-Trump, or Mump, regime also seems spot on.  

Snyder writes on Substack and I would recommend you follow him, except Substack sucks and I don’t think anyone should give it a penny. It’s really a shame that Snyder puts his work there because Substack is the sort of enshittified coporate platform that is the antithesis of what he otherwise writes about — open, democratic systems where all voices are welcome acknowledged, safe, and equal. As to why Substack sucks, you could start with “Don’t call it a Substack” by Anil Dash, as well as one of the general critiques of its apparent support for nazis.

Nobody’s perfect and I understand how Substack provides a busy person with little or no technical expertise — someone like Snyder, maybe — a push-button way to start a blog/newsletter and reach an audience. Still, there are plenty of alternatives and I bet if Snyder asked, he would immediately have hundreds of highly qualified readers ready to help him move to one of them for free. (I’m certianly not qualified, sorry.) 

Instead of subscribing to Snyder’s blog via Substack, just subscribe to its RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader. I like Reeder Classic, but there are many others.