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.
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Updates
Welcome to February, everyone! January always lasts forever, and those 31 days seem like they just go on and on until forever. But now we are in the shortest month which will get us to March (another month that lasts forever and a day). Things have been busy around The Cameron Journal. We have tons of new content and our new Plato course (see more info below). The Cameron Journal is growing, so thank you to everyone who has been supporting The Cameron Journal. Don’t forget to follow me on socials and forward this email to friends who would like the kind of content I offer here.
On the personal side, I’m still very much working on my public speaking engagements. I’m currently going through an update of my press and speaking packets for 2025, which is always an ordeal and a half but a good problem to have. I also just scheduled several archival posts from the audio version of the podcast before we made the big video switch in 2023. I uploaded all those videos last year, and they did pretty good, but I wanted to add them onto The Cameron Journal for posterity but also for easy access!
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of interviews, and after I get done writing this, I’m going to be editing some 26 new podcast episodes coming out! This means that we’ll have 2–3 interviews a week. However, there are some great ones coming out on everything from current events to…..steamier…..subjects like romance books! Make sure to keep an eye out on all podcast channels and YouTube for the latest episodes!
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.
Study Plato with Daniel Sanderson
We’ve partnered with Daniel Sanderson, through The Cameron Journal Academy, to offer his new Plato course, Re-imagining Plato. If you’re interested in getting in-depth with this Stoic philosopher, this is the course for you, and it’s only $100 for lifetime access!
The Latest
Let’s dive into the stories I’m following this week!
How the Government Spends Your Money
This week, Elon Musk has begun delivering on the Republican Party’s long-standing dream of making the government smaller and cutting the size of the Federal Government. There is also a federal payments pause that is causing havoc for federal programs across the government and across the country. He has hired a crack team of Gen Zeds to go in and interview people to decide if what they do is important, hack into treasury systems, review the Federal payments system and do mass layoffs and firings including eliminating the primary tool of foreign aid: USAID. I’m not going to say that USAID is an organization that is pure as the wind driven snow. It is not. Foreign Aid programs have been used as CIA fronts for various manipulations of foreign governments and has been a source of corruption in those countries. However, that is not the whole picture, USAID also does a great deal of good. They save lives, feed people, and provide healthcare for people with no access. USAID was a Cold War program to bolster pro-Western feelings in the 3rd world to stop them from becoming closer to Moscow and Communism. It is a wonderful bit of PR for the United States and it is a reflection of our national character as a generous society. This decision to kill the entire program, although currently blocked by a court, will kill people.
Other expenses have come under scrutiny, like federal subscriptions to Politico Pro and the New York Times. NOAA has been ordered to reduce staff by 50% and the National Science Foundation has also been ordered to cut staff and expenses. President Trump has ordered the Department of Education to begin studying how to shut itself down or reduce itself to minimum size. Welcome to running government as a business.
Interestingly, these subscriptions and programs have been branded as “funding the Left machine” and “giving money to your enemies.” As I tweeted this week, that is the psychology behind these changes. Elon Musk, Trump, and the MAGA movement do not view the rest of us as fellow Americans, fellow citizens, or colleagues. We are the enemy. Let that sink in. The relationship between MAGA since the election has not become less adversarial, it has increased. As I wrote last week about that phrase, “The Blue Empire.” The generally feeling right now is that the Democrats have been funneling money out of the government to their friends in various NGOs and programs in order to “destroy America.”
All kinds of foreign aid (except to Israel) have come under scrutiny because there are so many things wrong right here in America. This is a fair criticism but a disingenuous one. The reality is that foreign aid is a valuable part of our international diplomacy strategy. As General Milley once pointed out, the less money we spend on foreign aid, “the more bullets I have to buy.” Speaking of defense, supposedly, they are setting their sights on the Pentagon next as a source to root out bad spending and corruption.
What I find interesting is that no one is talking about the impact on the economy. Pulling funding from these programs and firing people will have impacts across the system. People will need to be looking for jobs in a tight labor market. People will lose houses and marriages after too long, and the removal of this money from the economy will cost everyone money. That doesn’t even touch on the impact of the lack of information or the services that these programs once provided.
The reality is that Congress passes laws to create new programs, and those programs then grow, hire people, and achieve various goals with Congressional oversight. Some programs get more oversight than others, but the reality is that the present state of the government is the result of decades of both parties creating various programs, departments, and agencies to serve the interests of the American people. But now that sort of thing is passe. The old Republican adage that “government does nothing well” is now the policy of the government under Trump.
Fast Fashion
It looks like fast fashion may be in trouble here. The Trump administration has ended “deminimus package limits.” What the hell does that mean? Under the old rules, packages valued under $800 were not subject to customs enforcement. Brands like Shein, Temu, and certain sellers on Amazon would be able to easily ship in products directly from China to American consumers.
It looks like that system will be ending, and things will need to be shipped from local warehouses and ordered in bulk, which will certainly shift their business models and may break the back of fast fashion. If there is one thing American’s love, it’s cheap crap from China, and the popularity of these ultra-low cost shopping apps have shown that the American consumer likes cheap stuff, but with 10% tariffs on China and other tariffs on the way, it looks like the age of cheap stuff from China may be curtailed at least and coming to an end at worst.
The Right-Wing and Normal Framing
The last thing I want to talk about this week is the idea of “normal.” As one friend put it, normal is a setting on the dryer and no way to live your life. One of the things I’ve noticed in our political dialogue is that the Right gets the privilege of being “normal,” and everything to the Left is “abnormal” and therefore, wrong. Part of this is the burden of progressivism, in so much that anyone advocating for change is advocating for a shift away from the status quo. Conservatism is in favor of the status quo and wants to protect it.
That’s not quite how things work now, but despite the massive changes being wrought by a nominally conservative government, they are not making these changes to protect anything. They are trying to go back to a mythical past where things were smaller, better, and more efficient. That was deemed as “normal.” This word is troubling, this normal word. Is there really such a thing? What would that look like? I can say for sure that it hardly includes LGBT people and racial issues are not on the table either.
Most Americans, and certainly MAGA, do not want to address these issues at any real level or work to make society more inclusive of certain groups. In their view, one of the punishments for not being white or straight is that you aren’t included. Being included, becomes a privilege of both birth and behavior. It is discrimination by fiat. Rather than finding ways to have a more inclusive and expansive society, the current mood is to exclude people. Not born in the US? Out. Gay? Out you go too. Trans? Not even talking about it, out. Black? Hispanic? Out and out too. If you are somewhat talented, then you might be able to get certain jobs, but you’ll never really be a part of our society. That is for a privileged few, for that is the only way it has any value. Many of us don’t think that value proposition is quite right, but I will stake it down and say that is the real thing MAGA wants. They want to be special again. They intend to be on top again with everyone bowing and scraping to be like them. They would rather not be just another American: they would like to be THE American. Being “normal” is a privilege reserved for a special few who get to exist in that space. As I wrote in my essay, “The Death of the White, Christian, Heteronormative Narrative” (re-released later this year) I talked openly about how this group desires, above all, the right to sit firmly at the top of the social hierarchy while everyone else takes a lesser position. That is what the normal framing is really all about.
From The Cameron Journal
From our new Philosophy series with Executive Contributor Daniel Sanderson:
From my new collection: What the Hell is Going On?
Articles of interest from the week:
Keep up with The Cameron Journal Podcast
The Interview:
The Cameron Journal Newshour:
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