“You’re Not Allowed to Give Up”

In Which I Stubbornly Refuse to Issue a Memecoin

Not gonna happen.

I’d like to talk to readers about my plans for the first year of the Trump administration—and how I need your help.

I have entertained a more optimistic scenario in which the worst parts of Donald Trump’s agenda get bogged down in resistance and the incompetence of his own appointees. (See a federal judge rejecting Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship and heaping scorn on his lawyers.) But Trump’s first days in office have suggested a less optimistic scenario given the striking lack of effective resistance from Republicans in the Senate, from many Democrats (who have forgotten that it is the duty of the opposition to oppose), and from much of the media.

But when things look bad, I’ve got Alexei Navalny’s voice in my head telling me, “You’re not allowed to give up.” If an Episcopalian bishop giving Trump a boilerplate Christian sermon about mercy toward immigrants causes him and his supporters to freak out, that doesn’t make them look powerful and unstoppable. It makes them look frightened and fragile.

In either case, my plan is the same. First, I intend to keep saying “I told you so” wherever it’s appropriate, which is going to be a lot. It’s not that I have been especially prescient—though I think I’ve done pretty well—but rather that most of what’s happening right now has been planned and threatened for a long time, so I’ve already had plenty of opportunities to analyze it and explain it. I have a new article planned for the next couple of days that is just going to be current news items from Trump’s first week and excerpts from explainers I wrote on these issues two or four or eight years ago.

And I don’t mean to say “I told you so” in a hectoring way. The next few years are going to be a learning experience, and when things go wrong, those of us who have thought this all through ahead of time will have the opportunity to explain to the public why things went wrong. Someone has referred to a bunch of the current Trump policies as “touching the stove,” like a child who has long resented being forbidden to do something, who is determined to do it and has to learn the consequences directly. So I’ll be ready and waiting to explain that this is why we’re not supposed to touch the stove.

(And yes, I’ll also have some stern words about where the left failed. I’m planning an article explaining how their political strategy was undermined by a fundamentally wrong theory on the issue of race.)

But the second thing I am going to do is where you come in. I need to build a fund, a reserve of money, to sustain The Tracinski Letter and my other work, particularly through the first half of the year. So I am launching a fundraising push to try to put aside between $5,000 and $15,000.

There are three ways you can help. If you are merely lurking on this list, please subscribe.

If you know others who are sympathetic to the defense of liberty, recommend The Tracinski Letter to them or maybe give them a gift subscription.

If you’re already on my subscriber list, please give a donation to support this work. The link below takes you to a PayPal donation page which allows you to set your own amount, but just $100 or $250—or $1000, if you can afford it—would make a huge difference.

(And if you’re old-fashioned and prefer to send a check, send it to The Tracinski Letter at PO Box 6997, Charlottesville, VA 22906.)

Let me explain why this is particularly about money. We intellectuals like to talk about ideas and values and principles because that’s our job and that’s what we care about. If money was our main motivation, we’d be doing something that pays better. But the money is important, because it’s how we’re able to wake up every morning and keep doing this while paying the mortgage and keeping the lights on. In short, you don’t get pro-liberty intellectuals unless someone’s willing to pay for them. And that’s the problem right now.

What our readers might not realize is that behind the scenes, behind the collapse of classical liberal ideas in the current administration’s agenda, there is a parallel story about the collapse of economic opportunities for those who espouse those ideas.

The immediate impetus for this is that I have reason to believe one of the outlets I regularly write for and have gotten a few grants from is retrenching and is not going to be supporting that kind of activity much longer. I was not surprised to hear this, because it’s part of a wider trend of which I am acutely aware. A lot of the institutions that supported classical liberal or libertarian intellectuals benefited from being part of a wide right-of-center ideological coalition, which made it possible for them to attract conservative donors. But conservatism is overwhelmingly nationalist conservatism now, and the classical liberals and libertarians are being kicked out of the coalition. I have written before, after the killing of the Weekly Standard, about how Trumpism has little need for intellectuals of any kind.

To give an idea of the anti-intellectualism of the current moment, I was particularly struck by how much easier and more profitable it is these days to cash in on the political enthusiasms of the masses by starting a totally fraudulent “memecoin”—as Donald Trump has done, and as some enterprising conmen did by stealing the name of this son. (There is a whole article to write on that, too, in which I regret I will have to mention the phrase “Hawk Tuah.” My apologies in advance.)

If this is how people make money off politics and culture now, then it’s no wonder we’re in the state we’re in. That’s what we need to counterbalance, and that’s why I need your help.

So think of this as the TracinskiCoin fundraising challenge. No, I’m not going to pump-and-dump a memecoin. I am going to respect my readers’ intelligence and ask for your money honestly.

I don’t like to do what some people do in their fund-raising letters and make it sound like The Tracinski Letter is about to go belly up, and I’m going to have to get a job selling insurance if you don’t give now—because that’s not quite true. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve always found new sources for support and been able to keep moving forward. Like I said, I’m not allowed to give up.

Then again, part of how I’ve managed to do that is because you, my readers, have been generously willing to kick me a few extra dollars now and again. So I ask you to please give again so we can all keep going through these uncertain times.