RIP Democracy: The Newsletter

Introduction

Welcome to The Cameron Journal Newsletter!

Each week I send out the latest headlines, the latest videos from The Cameron Journal and commentary about the week’s events. If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the about page.I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us. Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.

Updates

Happy Saturday, everyone! This has been another long and exhausting week here at The Cameron Journal. I’ve recently had a bit of a “pop” around the podcast, and in the last two weeks, I have recorded 17 new guests for future episodes. I’ve been doing 2-3 recordings on my recording days, and today, I’m tempted to take a vow of silence. The new content is so good, and there are so many excellent conversations about a variety of topics. Fortunately, this week is a bit less crazy, but there is still so much new content to create and make! There were some great new articles out in The Cameron Journal this week, too, which only adds to the excitement.

Obviously, this week has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster with the inauguration and the first working week of the Trump administration. I have had to take some of my own advice and take some breaks from the news. Twitter has been particularly frustrating and depressing. It’s the primary social media platform I use and it is too much at times.

On the bright side, I finally finished the line edits for America’s Lost Generation and I’m doing a bit of a re-write of the ending but on the bright side, that means it will be going into production and I can re-open the pre-orders for the book! It’s a big move forward here.

Let’s dive into the headlines.

Write your book in 2025!

You can write a book in 2025, and I can help! My new writing courses are out now, and you can sign up for Fiction, Non-Fiction or both! To learn more, please visit The Cameron Journal Academy and check out my course: The Power of Story.

The Latest

He’s Back!

This week President Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. I watched the whole thing and talked about it on The Cameron Journal Newshour (see video below) and all I have to say is this: republican democracy was nice while it lasted. 250 years is the average and we made it about 248 or so. Not so bad as democracies go.

January 6 pardons and Treason

As anticipated, President Trump pardoned everyone connected with the January 6, 2021, insurrection this week. It was one of his first acts as President. We knew it was coming and it has happened. Among his flurry of Executive Orders, he has also attempted to re-define treason more broadly to include immigrants who protested against the war in Gaza and also against those who would use the federal government for “lawfare.”

One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism and the collapse of democracy is the non-prosecution of those who seek to destroy the government or stand against the government. The investigation took 6 months to even get off the ground and although people were arrested, it took time to get through all of the various legal actions against various J6 people. Some of the cases, like the QAnon Shaman, were not very strong and should not have been brought but many others were quite worthy. On the Right, they view these people as legal hostages, especially those who sat in prison without much movement on their cases (and there were several of those). In my interview with a journalist who was there, he did not see it for what it was: violent protest. It all seemed like an unfortunate thing that happened. I guess all those calls to “Hang Mike Pence” don’t count as violence.

The other counterpoint that is often made is that after the 2020 “summer of love,” it seemed like it was “open season” on violent protest because there were insufficient crackdowns on the violent protests that rocked the country following the George Floyd killing. I don’t really understand how those two things correlate, but they have correlated in the minds of our fellow citizens. In their view, J6 was a counter-protest to everything going wrong with the country. We don’t have enough distance from it now to understand it fully but history will be helpful in giving us a new view in some time. However, when it comes to prosecuting traitors and those who commit treason, we’re just not very good at it.

After the Civil War, not much was done to the Confederates who had taken up arms against the United States. Only 5 were banned from public office for life. Jefferson Davis was the only person who saw any real consequences beyond seizure of property (Robert E. Lee). We passed 3 amendments to the Constitution and proceeded to work on Reconstruction of the devastated southern states which abruptly ended in 1877 because it was too expensive, taking too long, and didn’t seem worth the trouble. Sound familiar?

Ultimately, this brings the whole J6 incident to a close in American history. As fate would have it, it turns out you can attack the nation’s capital and stand in open rebellion to the government and not much will really happen to you. God Bless America.

Changing the conversation on race

This week I published my new article, “Changing the Conversation on Race.” I wrote it on spec for another publication but they were less than interested in the final product. That’s how writing goes. However, it ended up being quite prescient to a conversation I had this week about what the conversation we have had about race and race relations over the last several years and this quote in particular stood out to me, “It seems like ever since Obama was elected its been, ‘Fuck Whitey’.”

That’s a bit sobering isn’t it?

However, given my section on J6, race riots and such I suppose it all starts to make sense. If there is one thing I have learned this week is that the White Racial Consciousness that I have written about since the 2016 election is on naked display, more so than ever before.

This is a long one so grab a drink and dive in. Check out the new article here:

We Need to Change the Narrative Around Race

From The Cameron Journal

Keep up with The Cameron Journal Podcast

The Interview:

The Cameron Journal Newshour: