Three Weeks On - The Bulwark
Three weeks ago I let my Bulwark sub expire, how am I doing without that daily dopamine hit?
I’ve written before about the decision I made to let my sub lapse. It wasn’t the cost, as I can afford the $100 per year. No, it was that this bastion of the Never Trump “former” Republicans who say a lot of the right things, but over time, it became a rather tiring exercise of them pointing out the insanity of the MAGA and MAGA-Adjacent right (good), but not having any effect on fixing that.
Instead, they have doubled down on the pillorying of Democrats, belittling them and their foibles1. They do this by both-sides-ing digging deep to match right and left. By inviting the same tired guests to post and participate in the podcasts. By lionizing people like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, almost castigating Democrats that turn their noses up at these mostly abhorrent people.
I stayed away mostly for 3 weeks. In the last week, I have dipped my toe in to the daily “Morning Shots” newsletter, and I have been reminded why I cancelled my sub (and even removed myself from the “free” tier.)
I get it, the far left is bad on the Israel/Hamas situation, and that some bad behavior at so-called “elite” institutions is concerning. But come on, the vast VAST majority of the Democratic politicians in office have been very good on this. But that isn’t good enough.
Then there is the recent podcast with Adam Kinzinger, where they tongue bathe his sack about how great he was. But that fucker VOTED for Trump, and had Trump eked out a win, would be perfectly happy moving his policy (ha ha) forward in the house.
And then they have their pet centrist liberals that they carry water for. Like Ruy Texiera2. I swear to fucking God that he really should not be given airtime.
I glanced at the comments the day after the Texiera podcast, and they were full of all sorts of grumbles and gripes. One comment stuck out, someone was arguing that they pay the $100 a year for JVL’s Triad and Joe Perticone’s Press Pass newsletters. That pretty much was my calculus.
I miss some of it, but not enough to cave in. And when they announce that they are adding Ruy Texiera to their staff, it will reinforce my red line that bringing AB Stoddard in was the time to go.
I made the right decision.
And I will agree, the far left is fucking insane, but the far left has very little pull in the general coalition. Where as the MAGA far right is the fucking majority.
They mention this hack so much that they have to be negotiating to hire Ruy. That would increase their bubble.
I’m in the sticking around for Joe P and JVL camp and Tim and Sarah. Also, there’s Ben Wittes on the podcast. Tom Arnold with Tim was great last Sunday, too. I do understand where you’re coming from and suppose there could be a tipping point.
The holding up of unthinking college students and Ruy T is an excuse to quickly skip on through. That’s an increasingly good thing with the number of substacks and podcasts I find myself at. At least the pods can be consumed at one and a half speed while doing something else.
Yeah, I've scaled back my participation a good bit and find I'm not missing much. I don't listen to any of the podcasts any more and am close to hate-reading the two dailies. If they do bring Teixeira on, I'll give up the remainder of my subscription as lost and will stop reading altogether.