I’ve been writing political opinion nonstop for 20 years. But I’m done.
Life was different when the Philadelphia Inquirer gifted me a column in January 2004. Both major parties believed in the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, and traditional democratic values. It was beyond unthinkable that either side would condone a plotted coup and morph into a criminal cult.
We opinion journalists are not so naive as to believe what we write can change the world. But we generally do hope what we write can perhaps make the world just a wee bit better on any given day by offering some grist for those who have the capacity to think. This was true of the America I loved in my younger life, but I no longer recognize the America we’re stuck with. I’ve hit the wall on how to write about it. In the quality time I have left, I won’t expend precious brain cells inveighing in vain about the MAGA dark age.
Early next year, I’ll resurface on Substack, the online home for writers. My “newsletter” (Substack lingo) will be light on politics and heavy on other interests: books, movies, baseball, Boomer music, streaming TV, trips, memories, whatever strikes my fancy. I don’t assume there will be many readers, but tapping a keyboard is in my DNA. To tweak a line from French philosopher Rene Descartes, I write therefore I am.
Roughly 75 million of us are wrestling with how to recalibrate and soldier on, how to attain and sustain equilibrium in a land turned upside down, a land that has left us, in the words of St. Paul the Apostle, “at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in deceit.”
I’m busy grieving the loss of all-American verities I once took for granted. I was raised to believe that the rule of law was good. That decency was good. That empathy was good. That veracity was good. That education was good. But clearly I’m out of sync with the times. The will of the people – don’t get me started about those people – have flipped the script.
Many factors have brought us to this pitiable abyss, but what concerns me most is the epidemic of ignorance. Half the electorate (the winning half) rejects factual reality. That’s how it works in Hungary, where Viktor Orban has dismantled democracy by building his own disinformation domain.
Predictability is the death of creativity. I should know. My standard column, these last nine years, has started with a lament (Look what Trump is saying/doing!) and ended with a warning (If voters don’t wake up, things will get worse!). Writing about Trump deadens the mind and sucks out the soul.
My colleagues are doing their best right now – spotlighting Trump’s new roster of freaks and pervs, the “crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence is the best guarantee of their loyalty.” The high purpose of political journalism is to speak truth to power, but half the electorate has sanctioned oligarchical power.
So I’m bailing until I reboot. Steely Dan sang, “When Black Friday comes / I’m gonna dig myself a hole / Gonna lay down in it ’til I satisfy my soul.” Our Black Friday is now at hand. I need not add my wee voice to the plethora of opinion writers who are seething anew over the latest Trumpist turns of the screw. Starting in January, my Substack newsletter will be titled “Subject to Change,” and, post by post, it certainly will. That’s how I hope to cope.
I suspect that you too are determined to navigate the coming storm by nurturing what makes you happy, what satisfies your soul. As the self-help guru Kamal Ravikant says, “Love yourself like your life depends on it.” I now join you in that quest.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com
