What comes next

Some thoughts to live by, and rules of procedure for the next four years.

Well, this will probably be my last post for the year that was, 2024. And what a wild year it has been! I want to take a moment to thank all of you for subscribing to American Doom. Over the crazy months of the campaign, your support gave me something to be truly grateful for. I can honestly say I was excited to get up every day and to write and report for this newsletter. I still am, and that’s a testament to the support of everyone who has come here since February, when I launched Doom. If you’re a free subscriber, you might consider a paid subscription to support the independent journalism I’m producing here. I think it’s going to be important over the next few years.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can share American Doom with your friends or purchase a gift subscription below. Nothing says Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays like a subscription to a newsletter about the downfall of the country!

If you just want to contribute to the Doom Coffee Fund, you can do that too. Stay tuned at the end of this post for a list of the Best of Doom 2024. I hope everyone has a great holiday, and I’ll see you on the other side.

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A properly tuned bullshit detector will be of the essence beginning next month. It comes in handy not just for determining things like whether the new quarterback has the juice to become a star based on little else other than what I call old guy instinct, but also for determining what’s worth paying attention to in the news.

In the months and years ahead, it will be an important task to choose how to expend one’s energy. There will be so much noise — so much endless, chaotic noise — coming out of Washington that it will be difficult to know what to pay attention to, what to care about, and what to let go of. This is, of course, much easier said than done.

As I continue to prepare for the incoming Trump administration I thought it might be useful to lay out some ground rules dictating what I expect the next four years to look like. This information could also be helpful in determining what deserves your attention amid the deluge of news that we’ll all be inundated with over the next four years.

First, the highest priority and greatest danger of the second Trump administration will be threats to democracy. All Republican presidents and some Democratic ones have stretched the lengths of executive power, but Trump will take that to another level. He’ll be backed by people who have a much more authoritarian interpretation of democracy than any administration in modern history. Some of those people simply believe in a version of our government that lends more authority to the office of the president; others are outright anti-democratic or fascist. (Trump’s limited understanding of these concepts is rooted in the much more simplistic idea that he should be able to do whatever he wants and everyone should answer to him. It’s less of a political ideology as it is a sort of mobster mentality.) Understanding this, much of the back-biting and equivocating over Trump’s cabinet nominees is below the level of paying attention to.

Rule No. One - No one will save us

With rare exceptions, Republicans in Congress will capitulate and confirm whomever Trump nominates. This brings me to the first rule of the second Trump administration: no one is coming to save us. Unlike last time, the checks and balances that held Trump back from carrying out his most authoritarian policies are gone. If they do exist — likely in the form of Republican members of Congress from purple districts or states — they’ll almost always bend, and break.

Similarly, Big Tech and corporate America can’t be trusted to do the right thing either. Our tech barons are now lining up behind Trump. Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are helping to fund Trump’s inauguration (and making much more public noise about it than in previous years, per NPR), signaling that they’re willing to bow to the incoming president to preserve their wealth and power. How far they’re willing to go remains to be seen, but it seems like the more powerful one gets, the deeper the bottom.