Intro
Welcome to The Cameron Journal Newsletter. Each week, Cameron Lee Cowan wraps up the headlines with commentary, helping you navigate today’s media narratives. Today we’re talking about the fallout from the Charlie Kirk shooting, falling interest rates and my new book!
The World is Hard, This is Not
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 M.A. MFA, 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.
Update from Cameron
It has been a week, hasn’t it? I will talk more about this below, but we are having one hell of a political moment in this country. I am eager for this storm to pass and things to settle down for a bit, but I have a suspicion that things will be riled up for quite some time.
Meanwhile, my new book has been out for a week, and I’m excitedly promoting it. I’m so happy that after 5 years, the story of Millennials is finally out and someone has told the story of what happened to millions of Millennial after the Great Financial Crisis. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you should!
It has been another tough week for me. I’m eagerly awaiting a day when we don’t have as many tough days and I can sit down to write this with joy and happiness. As I get older, my own joy and happiness become a greater priority than they were in my 20s (or most of my 30s quite honestly) and it is time for me to start feeling good about things. I am enjoying the little chill in the air in the evenings, though. Fall is coming!
Lastly, this is your last chance to join me at the Unleashed for AI Business Summit. It starts this week and the tickets are priced right: free.
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The Headlines
Don’t forget to join me on Monday for The Cameron Journal Newshour to catch on everything happening in the world!
Jimmy Kimmel and A Crucial Moment
As it turns out, the shooting of Charlie Kirk is a seminal moment for the country. After the dialogue of what happened online and the ending of Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel, this shooting has gone beyond mere gun violence. It is a national moment. As someone on X (formerly known as Twitter) remarked, the Right, after complaining about cancel culture for years as reinvented it from first principles in less than a week. One can certainly complain that Jimmy Kimmel was a ratings’ loser (he was) and that ABC probably needed to cut him off a long time ago. However, in this moment, it was not done for economics, it was done to curry favor with the Trump administration. Even Michael Eisner, former Disney CEO publicly criticized Bob Iger for taking this decision.
And the dumb part is, there’s no proof, at least so far, that Tyler Robinson (the shooter) was even a leftist. Today the Justice Department revealed to reporters at NBC news that there’s no ties between Tyler Robinson and leftist groups. That has not stopped Trump from branding ANTIFA and all trans people as “domestic terrorists.”
I will say that I’ve learned more about Charlie Kirk and watched more of his stuff in the last week than I ever have before. I knew of him and I knew his schtick, and I was quite content to let him continue. I had no ill-will toward him. But to hear the Right tell it, the Left had it out for him.
Kirk has transcended into a martyr, a god, a symbol, and a “Joan of Arc” figure all in one. He has become a god, and he has become a battle cry for those who seemingly hold power but still think that they are oppressed. I think it is time to be honest, much of the actions of the Trump administration towards Higher Education and other groups has been about revenge. It is a campaign against those who never included him, and it is a campaign against people who pushed back against the regressive views that many in his administration hold (or claim to hold).
The worst part is that we all know what happens next. It won’t stop with Kimmel. It’s already included journalists like Matthew Dowd. Anyone who speaks out too loud against the administration will be silenced. The funny part is that the Right will say that it is our “just desserts” for what happened to them by social media companies before 2022 (or so). Various Twitter accounts have blamed Obama for getting Roseanne fired in 2018 (when Trump was President) and other examples of conservative voices being “silenced.” I will say that I’m not a fan of vilifying people or getting them fired. This has happened all across the country for years. I wrote in 2018 that we should not vilify racists or get them fired. I was never a big fan of cancel culture and criticized mostly because I anticipated this moment.
Trump is definitely taking this in a more authoritarian direction using government power, a power that the Left never really held. The Left has always had more cultural power than government power. Ultimately, this is the latest front in a culture war that has been going on since the 1960s.
I could write more about standards, practices, how media works and even recall Father Coughlin in the 1930s who was put off the air for anti-semitism (controversial at the time). But I don’t think there is a point. What the government doing is unconstitutional and dangerous, but I’m afraid we are past the point of no return on this.
Falling Interest Rates and H-1Bs
This week the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates by a quarter point to the delight of the stock market. Fed Chairman Powell said that the weakness in the labor market was the primary cause of the interest rate falling. The jobs reports all summer have been dire at best. We lost 100,000 jobs in August alone. President Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates to lower borrowing costs for the government and to encourage home sales. He has gotten a quarter percentage point of his wish.
Ask any jobseeker right now, and they will tell you how bad it is out there to find a job. It seems like the entire job market has simply ground to a halt, especially with people writing resumes with AI only for them to also be read by AI. It is a difficult thing to change. There are so many factors that go into the current labor market. To hear more about the labor market changes, you should check the interview with Ron Hetrick (it’s below!).
In related news, last night, President Trump announced that the government would now charge a 100,000 fee for H-1B visas. H-1B visas are a program that companies use to bring in skilled labor when no American can be found to do the job. However, there has been issues with that program for years. Big Tech has used it to use cheaper, immigrant developers rather than paying American developers more money. H-1B visa holders are also beholden to the companies they work for in this country. One slip up, and they can be fired, and they have 30 days to find a job or return to their country of origin. This creates a situation that can only be described as indentured servitude. I’ve always assumed that was why they didn’t want to hire Americans. Americans are pricier and will tell employers to get stuffed. I will say that I am very much in favor of this policy. I’ve said that the only way to solve immigration is to get corporations off their addiction to cheap labor. This policy (which may not survive the courts) is a start to actually making America great again.
Telling the Story of Millennials: America’s Lost Generation is OUT NOW!
I’m excited to announce that America’s Lost Generation is out now! It’s available everywhere books are sold or through The Cameron Journal directly. You’ve been hearing me talk about this book for a long time, and you’ve read the Millennials collection on The Cameron Journal. Looking to Japan for guidance (and a cautionary tale), I told the story of Millennials through their voices.
I want to highlight some of the early buzz for this book from Sean St. Heart from Coup Save America:
America’s Lost Generation is a powerful and necessary examination of one of the most misunderstood generations in American history. Cameron Lee Cowan delivers a deeply engaging and thoroughly researched narrative that peels back the layers of Millennial life with nuance, empathy, and intellectual rigor. Drawing from the voices of everyday people through the r/lostgeneration subreddit, Cowan weaves personal testimonies with global economic analysis, offering readers a haunting yet relatable chronicle of a generation that came of age in the shadow of economic collapse, systemic failure, and social upheaval.
What sets this book apart is its ability to merge emotional resonance with academic precision. The parallels Cowan draws between American Millennials and Japan’s lost generation are particularly striking and underscore how globalization and neoliberal policy have shaped generational prospects across borders. Through these comparisons, Cowan highlights how young people in advanced economies are often scapegoated for failures they inherited, not created.
More than a collection of statistics or policy critiques, America’s Lost Generation is a humanizing work that amplifies voices too typically ignored or caricatured. It challenges prevailing narratives about laziness and entitlement by illustrating the structural barriers Millennials face—crushing student debt, unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, and a shredded social contract. Cowan’s thoughtful prose and meticulous storytelling make this book essential reading for policymakers, educators, social scientists, and anyone who wants to understand the lived realities of a generation trying to make its way in a system designed to fail them.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to better grasp the forces shaping our current moment—and what it will take to build a more equitable future.
Watch my interview with Sean on Coup Save America:
Interesting Video of the Week
Anyone who has been shopping for a new car in the last decade knows how expensive cars have become. New cars are expensive with some newer models reaching $100,000 or more. There’s almost no cars under $30,000 these days. Auto loans are getting longer and longer (at which point you may as well just lease). In this video, we’re going to learn how cars got so expensive and how to bring car prices down.
Articles of Interest
Keep up with The Cameron Journal Podcast and The Living Joke
The Interview:
The Cameron Journal Newshour:
We did not have the Newshour this week due to a personal matter.
The Living Joke:
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