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Hey guys, it’s Sarah.
You don’t need me to tell you how bad things are. You live in the world. You’ve got eyes.
America is at war. The economy is slowing. Jobs are going away. Energy costs are up. Inflation is coming back. And all of it was preventable.
We were in good shape until our fellow citizens handed the country back to a brain-addled crook who is not just wrecking the country, but shoveling billions of dollars into his family’s holdings.
And yet . . . I’m fired up!
I just got back from our live shows in Texas and there is nothing that gives me energy, hope, and motivation like being with our people.
Because our people—people just like you—built The Bulwark.
We started The Bulwark in 2019 with no real idea what we were doing. We thought we’d . . . I don’t know . . . save conservatism from Donald Trump? That idea lasted about ten weeks before we realized that the conservative movement we grew up in was gone. Completely, totally obliterated—to borrow a phrase.
So we decided we’d try to save America instead.
That was a better objective, obviously—and it’s what we’re still focused on. But that’s what The Bulwark was trying to do. What we still didn’t understand is what The Bulwark was.
In the beginning, we were just throwing stuff at the wall. We had a website, a podcast, a newsletter. We started growing and thought that maybe we were becoming a media company.
But you guys understood that The Bulwark was something else. It was a community.
Our readers and listeners understood this before we did. They saw that The Bulwark could be a rallying point. A rock on which we could build a movement. They understood that resistance isn’t an idea. It’s people.
We’re all experts in authoritarianism now, which is depressing. But it’s important. Important to name the enemy. Important to understand how it works.
The authoritarian’s method is exhaustion. The authoritarian doesn’t want a big fight. He wants to grind you down. To sap your will to resist with one stupid, dangerous, depressing action after another.
Our people understood this instinctively and they understood that the authoritarian’s great weakness is solidarity. The authoritarian fears community, because he knows that individuals get exhausted, but communities don’t.
People in community with one another give energy. They grow strong.
And that’s what I felt at the theaters in Texas. I got to hug and laugh and curse with our people. I got to look in their eyes and see their passion. See their will to fight.
Normal media companies have audiences. We have a community. We have people standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us every day. Lifting each other up. Getting energized. Refusing to give in.
If that sounds like the kind of thing you want to be part of, become a Bulwark+ member today. There is no community like this one, and there is no better time to become a part of it.
Sarah Longwell
Publisher, The Bulwark
Upgrade to Bulwark+ today—at 20% off for the next year.
Your membership helps to support the work we do here covering the mayhem and elevating pro-democracy voices. Plus, each paid membership helps to ensure we can give one away to someone who wants to join this fight but doesn’t the means—because the only way through is together.
This limited-time discount ends Sunday.
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