Forget all the usual, anecdotal ways into an explanation of what is happening at this moment, because we appear to be in that stage of the fall where it all starts happening at once.
Following the firing — let’s call it what it is — of Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump went even further in comments on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, saying that any broadcast company that allows criticism of the president to air on television should lose their FCC license.
Legacy media is adjusting its coverage and hiring right-wing propagandists under threat of lawsuits from Trump and his government — when those outlets aren’t settling those lawsuits and paying Trump off.
The nation’s largest media outlets are also firing reporters for speaking out against the Trump administration, and for putting Charlie Kirk’s legacy in its proper context: he did not deserve to be murdered; he was also a hateful person who viewed a future America in which minorities and the vulnerable were punished or cast aside for their mere existence. Both of these things — the reality of Kirk’s hateful words and policy positions and the evil of his murder — can exist simultaneously.
The mainstream press has been unable to consider these two truths at once, capitulating to an American right that is demanding all Americans sufficiently mourn Kirk on the terms his supporters dictate.
That ain’t freedom.
If we are going to keep our freedoms, we have to focus our energies in areas we actually have influence and some control over.
I’m lucky enough to have a small amount of influence thanks to the readers of this newsletter, but I need your help.
American Doom’s work is made possible thanks to paid subscriptions. Those funds keep everything you read here free for your fellow citizens.
But only a small number of our 13,000 subscribers are paid. I’d like to see a lot more than that — not so I can make more money. For, if financial riches were my goal, I would not have become a journalist in the first place.
No, I would like to see more of you choose to spend some of your hard-earned dollars here because I think it sends an important message — however small — that Americans support independent, adversarial journalism at a time when free speech faces the greatest threat of my lifetime.
That’s no small thing, even though it takes just a few dollars a month to do.
Thank you for your support. - jg
