The US government is attacking its own people (and others), but you don't have to spend your life feeling helpless or marinating in fear and fury.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-just-happened-7ad4

Watch this episode

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mSClVKYVFlU

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews/video/7596153371589987598?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

This week's episode covers the gravity of the moment in the US, the curse of glib centrist pundits, and how to come together in useful ways to fight the abuses the federal government is inflicting on civilians daily. Andrea Pitzer considers recent violence, particularly the murder of Renee Good, and looks at the ways we absorb current events and how we talk to one another and why they matter. Referencing the tendency to snipe at others who have similar views, Andrea addresses that the upside is that we do want to connect and change the current landscape. But the downside is that we often just go online to tear into or demotivate one other. Meanwhile, many pundits exist in some other universe entirely, where nothing changes or nothing matters.

Dissecting a clip of David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour, Andrea outlines how his comparison of the conflict between ICE and unarmed civilians to an Ivy League football game reveals centrist pundit preoccupations and uselessness. They want to preserve a status quo in which there are two morally equivalent sides, while they get to referee. Yet the work of demonstrators and the brave people standing up to ICE across the country (especially in Minneapolis right now) are making a difference. US public opinion on ICE is shifting quickly and dramatically, which will help motivate politicians who haven't yet found a voice to protect the American people in the short run—and in the long run offers an opening to shatter the agencies that are methodically brutalizing the country. Andrea closes with an idea of how we might bring our voices together more powerfully going forward.