Lucid Turns Three! A Special Event on Mar. 31 and a Thank You

Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A is Friday, March 29, 1-2pmET. Our guest is Jeff Goodell, New York Times bestselling author of, most recently, the book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He has covered climate change for more than two decades for Rolling Stone and many other publications. He was a 2016 New America Fellow and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. 

Paying subscribers will receive a link to register for the Zoom gathering on Friday morning. If you'd like to join us, you can sign up as paid or upgrade your subscription here. Here's a coupon for 30% off for a year, in honor of Lucid's third anniversary:

I also want to announce a special event for all Lucid subscribers: a Q&A on Sunday, March 31, 8-9pmET. For this larger-scale event, I will be taking questions ahead of time: please send your questions to me at contact.ruthbenghiat@gmail.com by Sunday morning. You can register for this event here. Make sure to check spam if you register and don’t see a join link from Zoom in your inbox. It is often there.

This week, I will be posting every day, bringing you important gems from the Lucid archive, and pieces from 2021 and 2022 that predicted developments that are now dominating politics.

I start with my very first essay, "Drain the Swamp," which looked at how Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump have all used the myth of authoritarian competence as a cover for systematic crime and theft. Corruption is the prime mover of authoritarian politics, and it has been a consistent focus of Lucid, up to my recent piece on Putin’s kleptocracy.

While my work for Lucid builds on decades of research on fascism and other authoritarianisms, I started this newsletter in the aftermath of the terrible coup attempt of Jan. 6. We are living through historic times that pose unprecedented challenges and existential threats.

With disinformation proliferating, including in the areas of medical and climate science, and hundreds of millions living under the influence of falsehoods, we need clear-headed thinking and analysis more than ever.  

We also need emotional balance. Lucid’s logo incorporates calming colors and places Lucid as an anchor or point of stability.

The last few years have shown us how interconnected things are. We have new networks of solidarity and protest, but a powerful autocratic axis is also emerging, with hubs in Moscow, Beijing, Budapest, Rome, Ankara, and beyond. If Trump prevails in November, the U.S. will play a leading role.

That’s why Prime Minister Viktor Orban broke protocol on his recent visit to the U.S. by meeting not with his counterpart, President Joe Biden, but with the fictional president of the MAGA alternate universe, and with the Heritage Foundation, which is planning the state and civil society structures of a future American autocracy.

Lucid has always emphasized that attacks on democracy in the U.S. should be assessed through a global framework. A founding principle of Lucid is that we in America can look to global experiences of autocracy and resistance to it for wisdom, as well as to our own powerful civil rights and other resistance traditions.

A global framework also reflects who we are as a group. Lucid's subscribers are located in all 50 U.S. states and in 159 countries, meaning the newsletter reaches people in democracies and people living in places with reduced or non-existent democratic freedoms.

Finally, this 3rd anniversary is an opportunity to thank all of you for being on this journey with me. Lucid would not be viable without your support. A community has formed and that is something precious.

I hope you will help me to grow Lucid over the next fateful year. If each of you shares Lucid with someone else, and those who can afford less than $3/month (the price with the discount, below) become paying subscribers, we can multiply our reach. More paying subscribers means I can take on larger research projects that I have long wanted to do.

I hear from so many of you that Lucid is a support system of sorts and a guide to what to prioritize in your civic and political work. Let's help others understand the big picture, think about the big issues, and feel part of something constructive.

Here's a link to share Lucid, and a link to gift a subscription:

As always, stay well and stay Lucid.

Ruth