Silence Enables the Autocrat; Talk about Policy Outcomes, not Personalities
And how to become a Premium member for quarterly forecasts and small Q&As
Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. I am in Italy “on vacation.” I put this between quotes because the assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump is a historic event in itself and in its possible outcomes, and I want to be present for you.
The relaxation gods did grant me a boutique hotel on the beach with wifi so bad that I cannot even do a video Facetime call, much less appear on television. So MSNBC, DW, BBC, PBS, and all the other requests will have to wait.
Tomorrow I am going on a boat to see a medieval abbey, or on a train trip to see a neighboring town. Or I will do neither of those things and just spend the day “lollygagging around,” as my Scottish mother used to say.
Mid-week I’ll publish my essay on the cycles of violence around assassination attempts on strongmen. There are lessons to be learned from the four attempts on Benito Mussolini’s life, which triggered the creation of a police state in Italy.
A Few Thoughts about Continuing the Work
I wanted to be in touch with you today because things are happening quickly and what is done in the next weeks is key to the future of our democracy. Many of you are not on X so here are two posts of mine. The first one, below, is in response to people feeling that they can no longer call out Trump/MAGA violence in the wake of Trump being the victim of a shooting.
As I pointed out in yesterday’s post on MAGA narratives about the shooting, the reason MAGA loyalists such as J.D. Vance are targeting people who have called out Trump as authoritarian, calling them “fascists” and blaming them for the shooting, is because those call-outs have educated Americans effectively to recognize the danger we are in.
So the last thing we should be doing now is silencing ourselves. MAGA is leaning in to make us feel we must go along with the erasure of the movement’s violence. And if we do that, we can sure that more violence is coming our way.
Afraid to talk about Trump right now? You can continue to talk about the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and the ghastly outcomes of a Republican return to the White House. The collective popular and media focus on Project 2025 has led many Americans to wake up to the dangers that will befall us if Trump is re-elected. Focus on policies, not personalities. That’s always a good rule.
Becoming a Premium/Founding Member
I have not really advertised the benefits of becoming a premium member (Substack also calls this category Founding member). It is $250/year and the extra benefits include quarterly forecasts/predictions about global and US affairs, and quarterly small zooms which are more like collective conversations.
As Lucid grows, and the Q&As become bigger (they are regularly almost 400 people now) some may want a more intimate experience, so I wanted to mention it as an option. You can click on Founding/Premium member and upgrade if so inclined.
Full disclosure - I am in state leadership for Moms Demand Action here in NJ, so I am well-versed in the topic of gun violence. All I want to say on that topic is that you please ask yourself how often the topic of the American GV epidemic has been brought up since the events of Saturday. Little children are being killed on our streets every single day - and the daily toll is well over 110 people PER DAY in America. The president expressed his outrage at the press conference last week. We should be outraged too. Every single day.
I'm using all this as more inspiration to do the work. To wit:
What I did over the weekend:
Requested & started writing postcards targeting infrequent voters of color in Milwaukee.
Requested 200 more Postcards to Swing States - have already completed 300 to NC & 200 to FL. This batch I requested whatever is most needed.
Signed up for more weekly shifts with VoteRiders volunteer helpline to help voters get ID & registered to vote.
Wrote 10 letters to voters in AZ with VoteRiders.
Eyes on the prize, people. The courts were never going to save us - we are the ones we have been waiting for - WE ARE THE CHANGE WE SEEK.
Do the work. This too shall pass, and we owe it to future generations not only to not freak out, but to DOUBLE DOWN and more. Let's go.
UPDATE 6:30 pm - If you would like to join Moms Demand Action, the largest gun safety movement in the U.S., please text JOIN to 644-33. I hope this community will get to hear someone from the gun safety movement at some point. It's the guns.
Yes, it was so clear what they were doing when they started calling for a stop to describing the MAGA movement as fascist and authoritarian. So…lucid!