![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/applebaum.jpg\")
\nAnne Applebaum. Source: Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n
Journalism — even good journalism, if we could get it — is too narrow a view of events to help intelligent people adapt to the ugly, complicated, and chaotic situation in which we now find ourselves. Now more than ever we need historians and public intellectuals, people like Anne Applebaum.<\/p>\n
In today’s New York Times, there is a transcript of an Ezra Klein podcast with Anne Applebaum, Trump Kicks Down the Guardrails<\/a>. It’s a must-read.<\/p>\n There can be no real discussion of our current situation without an awareness of people who have been in similar situations in the past and the tyrants who put them there. How did it end? What did people do about it? I have journalist friends in high places who are very proud that their work is “descriptive, not prescriptive.” That’s not enough. Without a prescription, a strategy, for coordinated action, what’s to stand in the way of Trump and his regime of grifters, sickos, kleptocrats, and clowns? <\/p>\n As we all hold our breath and wait for Trump 2.0 to get his hands on the levers of power, Applebaum has this advice:<\/p>\n “The worst result or the worst consequence of this kind of government, if that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to have, and of course we still don\u2019t know yet, is that people become apathetic. They say: This is all so overwhelming, it\u2019s so huge. I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s true and what\u2019s not true anymore, and I\u2019m just going to stay home.<\/p>\n “Try to overcome that. And it almost doesn\u2019t matter what it is that you do. Involve yourself in a local group, a discussion group. Join a political party. Run for local office. Try to be present in your community in some way. Do something that makes you active. And that makes you feel that you\u2019re taking part in the governance of your country.”<\/em><\/p>\n That’s pretty weak tea, but it’s a necessary start. As for figuring out what’s true and what’s not true, sometimes that’s hard, and we need help from people with a particular kind of knowledge. But often it’s dead easy. If something serves the interests of grifters, sickos, kleptocrats and clowns, then it’s probably a lie, no matter how many people believe it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anne Applebaum. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Journalism — even good journalism, if we could get it — is too narrow a view of events to help intelligent people adapt to the ugly, complicated, and chaotic situation in which we now find ourselves. Now more than ever we need historians and public intellectuals, people like Anne Applebaum. … Continue reading “Journalism isn’t enough”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30023"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30036,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023\/revisions\/30036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}