These kinds of personal reflections are inevitably somewhat self-indulgent, and I know that’s not for everybody. I promise I will do this sparingly. But since I am asking readers for financial support, I think it is only fair to be as transparent as possible.

At the outset, I gave myself one year to figure out if I could make it work. After six months, Democracy Americana has not reached sustainability yet – and as of right now, it is an open question if I can get it there.

In this piece, I write about why I left academia last summer, why I left America – and why I left Substack, seeking to de-risk from my dependence on U.S. tech feudalists. I still believe it was the right decision. But it’s also clear that leaving Substack has really hurt Democracy Americana.

Is this newsletter “worth” your money? I’ll say this: The average essay I send out comes in at about 4,000 words. These are proper deep dives. Every week. Others will always be faster or cover the news more broadly. But I don’t think anyone will be more thorough.

The newsletter has really struggled to attract new subscribers since I left Substack - while the monthly churn (existing subscribers canceling their subscriptions) has gone up significantly. My readership now shrinks with every piece I publish. I’ll need to find a way to reverse that trend.

A second such recurring series I would like to tentatively call “How Progress Happens in American History” – which will explore the moments in U.S. history when transformative change happened, how it happened, why it was possible, and what we can learn from that.

Finally: “Why We Fight Over the Past.” This series will closely track the Trumpist assault on history – and situate it in the longer-term struggle over who gets to tell the nation’s story and thereby define its identity.