An Apology

I'm sorry to fill up your inbox so much

Friends,

Several of you have asked how I manage to produce this Substack every day, seven days a week — often two or three times a day. Is there just one of you? you ask. Do you get any sleep? Do you have a life?

There’s just one of me (except on Saturdays, when Heather Lofthouse joins me for the Coffee Klatch). I do sleep (although as I get older, it’s harder to get a full night in). And I do have a life (I take long walks, read great novels, spend time with my wonderful family and friends).

I post so much because we’re in a national emergency, and I want to do what I can to get you the facts, arguments, and analyses you need to take an active role resisting and putting an end to the Trump regime.

He’s getting madder and more dangerous by the day.

Your active role can be phoning your senators and representatives and giving them more backbone in fighting Trump. Protecting vulnerable members of our communities from him and his agents. Marching, demonstrating. Getting out the vote. Or simply sharing my posts with your friends and colleagues — so they also have the facts, arguments, and analyses they need to effectively resist.

I also want to frame for you what’s happening — giving the news a larger context and meaning.

Showing, for example, why it’s impossible to appease Trump because tyrants always see appeasement as a sign of weakness and will demand more and more (as Trump has done with Columbia University and law firms such as Paul Weiss).

Or how the fights over abortion, transgender rights, equal marriage rights, and rights against domestic abuse are really about preserving the most intimate forms of freedom — including freedom from men who believe in patriarchy.

Or how Trump’s — and Harmeet Dhillon’s, Samuel Alito’s, and Clarence Thomas’s — vision of “civil rights” is really about white rights.

And how all these connect to the larger fight against Trump’s white Christian male nationalism.

I want to give you the strength, courage, and reassurance you need to get through this nightmare without drowning in denial or despair.

In other words: I write and post at least once every day because the stakes are so damn high.

But mostly, I post every day because I believe in you. I believe in your values. In your thoughtfulness. In your determination to leave this nation and this world a better place than it was before Trump.

I believe that together we will get through this and we will prevail.

Please don’t worry about me. I have only a certain number of years left when I can do as much as I’m doing, and I might as well take full advantage of it.

My only real worry is that I’m overloading you and overfilling your inbox, for which I do apologize.

— Robert Reich