What You Do Speaks So Loudly
"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
American media—the sibling of American politics—is a failed industry and its repeated and widespread failures continue to damage the fabric of American life.
Today, truth is lost and talk is lower than cheap. Actions define a person, a company, and a nation. Sadly, we’ve become a nation of talkers, not doers, and it is not a good look.
We can trace the origins of this collapse to 1980 and the rise of deregulation. A free and robust media, like airports and railways, is essential American infrastructure. Yet, we’ve let it decay. We’ve removed competition and a diversity of voices and allowed a handful of rich white men in Manhattan to shape the story.
Willful ignorance is the worst kind of ignorance
There is mounting evidence that misinformation is gaining an increasing foothold in American society and that conspiracy theories are going mainstream.
Thirty-nine percent of Americans agree there is a deep state working to undermine President Trump. This belief is driven primarily by Republicans and FOX News viewers (a majority of both groups agree with this), though nearly half of white men and rural residents (49% each) agree as well.
The poll didn’t reveal how many Americans believe that Don Trump and several U.S. Senators are currently Russian assets.
A Few Substackers Are Stacking Dollars
Substack—the email platform that delivers this email to you—is making it possible for a select group of writers to make a substantial living via the platform’s paid subscription model.
According to The New York Times, history professor, Heather Cox Richardson, is on track to make a million dollars a year from her Substack newsletter. She’s a great thinker and synthesizer of the day’s political events, and it makes me happy to see her stock is rising.
Please, Do Not ‘Hepeat’
Don’t you love it when a man steps in and repeats what you've just said? There's now a word for it. It's called "hepeating," and it describes when a man appropriates your comments or ideas and then is praised for them being his own.
Newsletter Lagniappe
The Year in ‘Pulp: 2020
ICYMI, Russia is all up in digital networks and it’s a real problem, especially since we do not know what “digital warfare” looks like.
During all those Zoom office calls, did it ever occur to you that the quietest colleagues might also be the most competent?
HBO’s documentary about the Bee Gee’s is well worth watching.
“To get a grip on strategy, we do not need to lengthen the time horizon of our thinking, but its depth. Far from being about things we are going to do in the future, strategy is about what we are going to do now to shape the future to our advantage.” -Stephen Bungay
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