America, Wake the Fuck Up!

The headline above (and the photograph below) represent a call to arms that’s not being heeded. We Americans are indeed asleep at the wheels of our lives; sooner or later we will crash. Why can’t we wake up?

Only one in six of us chooses to exercise our mind by regularly reading for pleasure these days.1 Reading the news certainly does not qualify as reading for pleasure, but that’s declining as well: there were somewhat more than eight million unique monthly visitors to the top 50 U.S. news websites each month in 2022, down 20% from the previous year, which itself was down 20% from 2020.2 In 2025, the number is likely smaller still.

How long does one of these unique visitors spend on a major news website? Just under 1 minute and 30 seconds.3 Talk about your well-informed citizenry.

Well, let’s say you are one of our remaining well-informed citizens. You read books for pleasure, and you read the New York Times, the closest thing we have to a national newspaper, each morning. How is that going for you?

It’s probably not going all that well for you, elite reader. Let’s use some of today’s (August 23, 2025) Times headlines as an example:

—”In Trump’s Second Term, Far-Right Agenda Enters the Mainstream”

—”Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief”

—”As Trump Targets the Smithsonian, Museums Across the U.S. Feel a Chill”

—”After Gaza Famine Report, U.S. Is Mostly Silent and Israel Defiant”

—”How Redistricting Wars Could Give the G.O.P. Up to 7 Seats”

—”Trump Gets His Revenge on John Bolton. Who’s Next?”

Is this not depressing? And notice that none of these stories even references the recent, farcical Putin-Trump “Summit.” John Bolton referenced it, though, on Thursday evening: he said Putin had “rolled” Trump. On Friday morning, the F.B.I. rolled Bolton’s house.

Take a look at that last piece referenced above, which is actually a Times editorial. The paper does a good job of outlining Trump’s hypocrisy and mendacity, closing with this line: “The president has given all Americans reason to believe that justice is now applied selectively and unfairly.”

Well, d’uh. I think we already knew that. The question is, what are we going to do about it? The Times offers no suggestions. Chances are excellent that your local Democratic Party leader has nothing to offer either. And the DSA, which I reported on favorably in my last post, is too far removed from power to help much (even if Mamdani does become mayor of New York).

No wonder so many Americans have stopped reading.

It would be nice if the Democrats were bold enough to play hardball like their right-wing counterparts—for example, by fake-persecuting, fake-prosecuting Republican leaders based in Democratic-led states. That would most likely accelerate the country’s division and escalate the political stakes, but score some wins for the blue side in the process.

E pluribus unum is likely dead anyway. The only way the U.S. will ever become a united country again is if those of us currently sleeping through its ongoing dismemberment never wake up.