Weekend Thoughts/New TV Schedule/Q&A May 5, 8-9pmET

Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will be tomorrow, May 5, 8-9pmET. Paying subscribers will receive a link to join the Zoom gathering at 5pmET that day. If you’re new to these, I talk for about 15-20 minutes once we get settled in, often on topics that subscribers have told me via email they would like to hear discussed. Then it’s over to you, the Lucid community, for questions and comments that I respond to.

Sometimes we have a guest, as on May 10, 1-2ET, when Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor (authors of the new book, Solidarity) will join us for a special conversation about resistance, hope, and collaboration.

Looking ahead, there will be no Q&A on May 17. It is my birthday and, more importantly, the last evening of my visit with my mother in England. Our Q&As will resume on Friday, May 24, 1-2pmET.

The first part of these Q&As is always recorded so those who cannot attend can benefit. I send you the video via email a few days later.

If you’d like to join these inspiring discussions, you can sign up as paying or upgrade to paid here:

As can happen in TV land, my appearance schedule has changed. For MSNBC viewers, I am on Ayman tonight for two segments starting at 8pmET. Tomorrow I am on CNN Newsroom between 5-7pmET speaking with Jessica Dean about Trump refusing to rule out political violence after the 2024 election.

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This week I enjoyed participating in two written Q&As about the state of politics in the US and abroad now and in the future. The first one, which centers on Project 2025, was published yesterday in Joyce Vance’s wonderful Substack newsletter, Civil Discourse. It is paywalled but there is a one-time free link option. I will writing about Project 2025 soon for Lucid.

The second will appear in Project Syndicate’s magazine, PS Quarterly, in June, when my piece in the New Republic’s special issue on what a Trump second term would look like will also come out. For the New Republic, I was assigned the lead piece on politics and government and did a deep dive into Project 2025.

I enjoy “looking forward” even though I am trained to work on the past. The past offers many lessons for us to understand what is happening today and what may happen in the future. Today seeing forward means tracking the signs of an anti-authoritarian order that is emerging around the world even as autocrats dig in to preserve their privileges, starting or expanding on imperialist wars, repressing their people, and more.

We are at an inflection point, and not only in the US. We are living through a dense and impactful moment and what each of us does can make a difference. As I wrote to Joyce Vance, informing our fellow Americans about what might be coming is something we can do. We have all the information we need, including from Trump himself (most recently, from his interview with TIME), to understand the misery, repression, and chaos that a Democratic defeat would bring to America.

While it’s not easy to have such conversations with those who “dwell in the disinformation tunnel,” as I call it, it is in our power to try and reach them, including by bringing up the specter of political violence. “Is this what you really want?” is always a good question.

I look forward to having our own conversations as we move through this tumultous period together, refining our thinking on the most important issues of our times.

As always, stay well, and stay lucid.

Ruth

Aerial photograph of sunrise over the clouds. Getty Images.