Please don’t worry about me

Friends,

I’m receiving an increasing number of messages from some of you who are concerned about me. Please don’t be.

Some are concerned about my safety. “You’re speaking out so much and so visibly that they’ll try to get rid of you,” one of you warns.

I assure you I won’t take unnecessary risks. But I’m not going to stop speaking out.

Others of you are concerned about my health. “You’re writing this Substack every day, you’re the subject of a new movie, and you’ve got a book coming out. You’re pushing 80. Get enough sleep! Don’t work so hard!” is a typical comment.

I do get enough sleep (although as I get older, it’s more challenging to get a full night in).

But I have to work hard because we’re in a national emergency. I need to get you the facts, arguments, and analyses you need to take an active role against the Trump regime.

Your active role can be no more than sharing my posts with your friends and colleagues — so they have the facts, arguments, and analyses they need to effectively resist. Or inviting your conservative Uncle Bob to see “The Last Class.” (Or sending him a copy of my upcoming book.)

I’m also trying to give you a larger context for seeing what’s happening and what we must do.

Showing, for example, why it’s impossible to appease a tyrant like Trump because tyrants always see appeasement as a sign of weakness and will demand even more.

Or how abducting people — off the street or from their places of work or courthouses or even their homes, without giving them any reasons or an opportunity to object — violates the basic tenets of a free society.

Or how Trump’s vision of civil rights and rejection of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is nothing more than white rights and white supremacy.

And how all these connect to Trump’s white Christian male nationalism.

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

In other words: I write and post every day, and have written a new book and done a movie, because the stakes are so damn high.

I do all this 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 they were 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, for which I do apologize.