Not sure how you mean this, but I definitely thought about, don't mean this as definitive, and went in increments of five years, with, of course, many other factors.

Seems like there's a line to be drawn from Occupy Wall Street to Bernie as national figure to AOC to Mamdani. Many other factors, of course! But maybe messy, beautiful 2011, crushed so brutally by Bloomberg & countless other mayors, forgotten in the Trump years since, was a turning point after all.

I feel obligated to point out that GOP VP JD is not ENTIRELY unprecedented. bsky.app/profile/seth...

Reviewing old notes today, I recall that the false fascist appropriation of "antisemitism" as a rallying cry has precedent in 2011 US rightwing celebs--Beck, O'Reilly, Geller--apologetics for Christian nationalist mass murderer Anders Breivik by dismissing his victims as antisemites. (They weren't.)

Jul 10, 2011 "The Yiddish writer feels like a strategist maneuvering invisible armies in legendary lands." -- Jacob Glatstein/Yankev Glatshteyn, 1936

"A writer's job is to tell us what the rabbit was doing in the hat in the first place." Barbara Grizutti Harrison v. Joan Didion: www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/10...

So many factors involved in the decline since '08 of reported narrative nonfiction, but the rise of AI in a saner world would herald a revival, since reporting--the kind where you put your body in places with other people--is something AI can't do. Mediocre fiction? No problem. Reportage? It can't.

Trump retreating for now from his explicitly stated ambition of militarily occupying US cities. Hooray! Happy New Year! Don't forget he'll try again! And let's remember some of what worked, even if there are parts yr not a fan of: Protest! Courts. Journalism. Mayors. Military slow-walking.

"If you see this, post a random image from your device."

“Did you believe you had sufficient evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction against Donald Trump for interference with the lawful transfer of power?” JACK SMITH: “Yes.”

Not one but two scary things here. First, most obviously: 100 million. Close to a 1/3 of U.S. now deemed not-American. Yes, it's trolling. Yes, AND. Second: It's simultaneously a nod toward an old imaginary white US, & an emptied out post-apocalypse. It's acknowledging the ambition is cataclysm.

On Jack Smith deposition, now released: 100% obvious why GOP refused to allow this as open testimony, aired live. It's damning. Testimony from John Dean or Alex ("wiretaps") Butterfield in Watergate days would have 1/10th the impact if just in print. What Smith says is far more incriminating.

Alexandria

Professors and teachers: Consider assigning your students some of the many AI-related suicide/murder court documents. I'm going to in my creative writing courses. This could be relevant material in any classroom in which you think AI is a factor. Which is to say, all of them.

First new essay I published this year, "Bodies Will Swing," last Feb. Portrait of just one MAGA woman, looking forward to what had been promised by the campaign. *That* didn't happen. Countless bodies, though, were beaten, disappeared, killed by other means. slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/bodies-wil...

My Cassandra cred's pretty solid--20+ years on far right beat, ten on Trump, nobody ever accused me of being a ray of sunshine. But at the end of this bad year, I think this too is true: fascism took so much, & yet nowhere near all it could & wants. There's so much left to fight for.

Statement Re: OU Discrimination Investigation Today, my client, Mel Curth, submitted her appeal of the University's Institutional Equity Office finding that she engaged in arbitrary and capricious grading of a student's assignment in violation of that student's religious liberty.

Mirroring Project 2025 "conservative promise," the Trump admin has pushed Congress to gut public media, dismantled Voice of America & Radio Free Asia, used FCC to go after & sued outlets for editorial choice, more. This weakens public sense of reality & shared facts. www.poynter.org/reporting-ed...

Did a lot of teaching this year and not a lot of writing, but kept a newsletter stacked with author interviews and ran an essay on Denis Johnson to close out the year. open.substack.com/pub/kevinkoc...

Put more aggressively than I'd express it, but yes.

Using the word "journalist" to describe this person and what he does, muddies and allows complete capture of the term by propagandists and mis-informationalists. Don't cede the meaning of terms, especially from a "journalism" outlet. WORDS HAVE MEANINGS DAMNIT.

I'd really like to see My Undesirable Friends, named by many as a best of the year, but apparently after streaming briefly it disappeared. Anyone know how to see it? And has there been reporting on whether this is just documentary economics or Russian interference?

Don McLean once called me up to shout that he'd make sure I never worked in folk music again. "Ok," I said, since I never had. But I guess he kept his promise, since I also haven't worked in folk music since. I am not a musician.

This is the kind of critical local reporting that reveals how a dangerous fascist lie that's destroying lives gets built. I found it when I checked into X, as I do to monitor rightwing chatter. There it's mildly viral; here, close to crickets. Why, and how can we change that?

If you’re even just interested in MTG’s “rehabilitation” as dumb entertainment you’ve been so seduced by social media that you are now effectively seeing the world through the same lens as the worst odds-not-stakes, horse race reporter. Avert your eyes!

Fenway Park concession workers just made history. They led the first strike in the park’s history and turned it into higher pay, clearer staffing standards, and protections for the future. Huge congratulations to all the workers who made this possible.

How stochastic terrorism works - Trump leverages the threats he induces against even Marjorie Taylor Greene's family www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/m... One important reason that so many Rs are scared to challenge him.

Here, far more than majority of working journalists, are some of the villains people could focus on when they just say “the media.” Fact that so few know about outfits like this is a measure of their awful success.

I recorded the sound of the Prince Rupert Daily News shutting down after a 101 years of service. As the machine chugged to a stop, you could hear the men who ran the printer crying.

Our photographer Alex Kormann captured the exact moment the presses stopped for the last time in Minneapolis, ending a 158 history of locally printed newspapers.

That’s pretty damning

WaPo lead story is even by Bezos-era standards a disgrace, a long, almost entirely anonymously sourced press release for Vance & Musk that ends with declaring the latter akin to the Buddha. By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Natalie Allison, & Faiz Siddiqui. Bylines matter on work this obsequious.

As @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social faculty I think we all take pride in this distinguished alumna in government using her education to call citizens “hoes” for criticizing the regime. I know that’s what I try to teach my students! “Students,” I say, “never question power.”

Still unreported, should be investigated: ICE shot Richard outside a mall. I visited mall security office. Guard said ICE and LAPD came in, used thumb drive to copy mall’s video footage, and THEN DELETED THE EVIDENCE from mall’s local drives. He showed me the missing timeline part saying “no data.”

damn. I just searched and the piece I wrote for them years ago about domestic violence and Title IX is gone

I was gonna say don’t let the fascists claim Tolkien, they’re wrong, but then you see something like this and realize, no, they do understand it, they get that they’re the baddies

In the U.S., we don’t think enough now about Iraq. About what administration after administration did there. That “we” is doing a lot of work. I’ve met a lot of vets who think a great deal about this, some with pride, some with regret, some with horror. Political conclusions don’t follow neatly.

Learning from Neil Shea’s excellent new book Frostlines that there’s a point at which Russia, Norway, and Finland meet, extremely remote, nobody there, just signs letting you know that somewhere in the trees the cameras of all three countries are watching you.

A small victory for people and direct services organizations who help their unhoused neighbors in California: As of January 1, it should (theoretically!) be illegal to punish people for offering outreach and support.

NEW 👉👉 Atlanta Activist’s Arrest Underscores Search, Surveillance Powers of Border Agencies Samuel Tunick’s story is part of a wider trend of surveillance at border crossings. Legal and security experts weigh in on possible precautions citizens can take. unicornriot.ninja/2025/sources...

This is even by the low standards of the day egregiously bad “reporting” by NYT’s Anemona Hartocollis. Here’s a key image from Don’s dissection, which I encourage you to read.

Thinking about the airplay of this song in my white working class hometown in the 1980s. How it spoke to a lot of people’s imaginations. How it might have, in its original, moved those imaginations.

I wasn’t going to read this—I know what Navarro is—but I’m glad I clicked. There are worse people in the world, but never has there been such a crushingly devastating profile. Here is the true, puny, pathetic essence of Trumpism.

Fascism, as the song goes, is bound to lose. But believing that—knowing that—doesn’t mean you believe any old strategy will work. I don’t believe Schumerism will work. I don’t believe civil war will work. I favor popular fronts, local & mass organizing, vibrant democratic culture, long haul work.

Until Trump began conspiracies about mail voting, Republicans were fully on board with GRACE PERIODS for ballots to arrive as long as postmarked by Election Day. They passed it overwhelmingly in KS, OH, & elsewhere. But now Trump hates it. So 4 red states—KS, OH, ND, UT—all banned it this year.

Not much of a photo but I love living in Vermont where I can see Jupiter tonight so clearly, and it amazes me that the little phone in my pocket can make a picture sharp enough that you can see the shape of a planet.

To me key detail in this scary report is that the would-be murderers loathed mosques and preferred online bubbles of those who wouldn't challenge them. True of the murder mind in every religion, which cannot tolerate the daily life of a diverse group. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...