Best of "Can We Still Govern?" in 2023: Volume I
The Most Read Stories of 2023
Hey readers!
As another year comes to a close, it’s time to share some highlights from my blog/newsletter. Thank you for all of your support, and if you are not a subscriber, please consider signing up.
In this piece (lets call it Volume I), I’m sharing the five most-read pieces from last year. If you believe in the wisdom of crowds, this is the one for you. Watch for Volume II, which will share personal favorites I am most proud of.
Lets get into it.
Supreme Court Justice sponsor Harlan Crow was an unfamiliar name to most of us before this year. But for those of us who have dined on his yacht, one thing is clear: he is definitely not a Nazi
The next three pieces were about higher education, or more precisely, the intersection of higher education and right-wing politics. The fact that people are responding to these stories reflects, I think, the fact that traditional media has credulously gone along with a narrative of campuses as hotbeds of woke intolerance. Some of this exists. But the money and the power shaping campus is coming from deep-pocketed donors able to remove university presidents, political appointees who are taking leadership roles in higher ed, and a right-wing media created to monitor and punish their political opponents on campus.
There are groups on American campuses who say they are for freedom, but spend their time recording their fellow students or faculty in the hope of getting them punished. This is the story of one of them, and what the surveilled campus feels like.
A major change on campus since about 2010 is the creation of multiple media outlets dedicated to tracking and attacking students and faculty. I was featured in one of these stories, and dug deeper to understand this political media ecosystem.
Attacking campuses is one thing. But what happens when the far right actually takes control. We are seeing this play out now in Florida. The answer is cronyism, censorship and incompetence.
My most-read story of 2023 was a call to action, encouraging people to comment on Schedule F, Trump’s plan to massively politicize the federal bureaucracy. This reflects, I think, a deep hunger for people to be able to do something, anything, to push back against what is feeling like a deep sense of dread about a potentially authoritarian future. We will need more of that energy in the coming year.
Thanks for following along!