This post is going to come off somewhat rambling. It’s currently around 145 in the morning the day after the election and I am typing this via voice to text so apologies in advance for this but I have to just get the thoughts out of my head and explain them in the only way I know how.
Obviously i’m disappointed may dismayed disheartened apoplectic and depressed about the results of the 2022 midterms. Every indication was that Republicans were going to ride this deep Tide of unrest and discontent among the populace to absurd wins in Congress and state and local races but that didn’t materialize. There are many reasons for this and I’m sure in the coming weeks you’ll have more than your share of postmortems to go through and I won’t offer any of mine here because frankly they’re pretty much the same as everyone else’s at this point. I will however make two observances: first the leader ship of the republican party is wholly unfit to govern. They offered no real tangible plans to solve any of the problems facing the country and did nothing to advance legitimate plans for fixing our problems that were proposed by some of our more interesting talented fresh candidates. Indeed, Republican leader ship, Kevin McCarthy in the house and Mitch McConnell in the Senate Actively sabotage good candidates with fresh ideas and innovative policy solutions to our problems. Because leader ship would rather have a marginal manageable majority detect good candidates who offered a positive vision for the country and instead hand-picked puppets who would be subservient to them and them alone. They also did not offer a message of their own at all; they offered only platitudes and pledges to do nothing.
Second there are some people whose opinions I respect who have put forward the notion that the American people really just want political moderation with authentic personality and projection. If that is so then we will never climb out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. The current political moment requires audacity boldness courage innovation and daring. Indeed in this current moment we find ourselves in, moderation and cowardice are synonyms. Moderation is how we started to slide down the slippery slope to where we are now and if the American voter will not stand for his own rights or vote for representatives who will be decisive and acting to protect their own interests because of some in ordinate prioritization of mediocrity, then they too are wholly unfit for the present moment.
The disappointment I feel over the result of this election is overshadowed by an even deeper problem that gets to the heart of this message. Cicero and Adams has been and will continue to be the most important creative outlet in my life right now. However the results of the election called into question Much of the current composition of this website. Recently there’s been more of an error of optimism in my essays because I genuinely believed we were on the brink of solving some of our nations problems. But does anyone really believe that these minimal Republican majority‘s even if they hold will do anything to stop The excess of the left? No. Does anyone really think that PayPal will stop banning users or finding users hundreds of dollars for violating their terms of service around misinformation? No. PayPal will continue to censor its users unabated. Does anyone think that the culture wars will be halted in any way shape or form? No. The culture wars will proceed at double the pace and leftists will stop at nothing to drive us further into the well of depravity they’ve set before us. Which calls into question much of the work that I’ve been doing in the last year or so. What’s the point of pinning long winded essays about pragmatic political issues that have no chance of being solved right away? This is a question I find myself asking as I freeze myself to death walking around outside my home writing this essay.
And so Cicero and Adams will need to change for the foreseeable future. Political essays about every day issues will be shelved. Instead, my goal for the site is to become a catalog of sorts for the American spirit. I believe in the American spirit. I believe in what America once was, still is deep down, and can one day reclaim if only we dream and fight hard enough. no matter what happens, there are always going to be patriots who value the American nation state and what she stands for. To that end, my goal for future essays will be to instill much of that spirit. Those of you who know me personally know that I am stubbornly optimistic, sometimes annoyingly so, even when reality looks incomprehensibly dark. My goal in future essays is to have a clear view of what lies before us but firm in my conviction that America will survive and indeed triumph over the evils that have come over her. This I think was always the Telos of Cicero and Adams: to reinvigorate the American spirit by talking about the things that matter the big ideas. My new goal for the site is to tell the story of America in a way that will preserve her spirit in case something bad happens.
In trying to tell the American story a critical piece must be concentrating on the stories we tell and I plan to do just that. Culture will take a much larger focus on the site for the time being and much of the contact that I produce myself at least will be centered on Telling stories and considering stories already told. So culture corner will likely become just the stuff that gets posted on the site more often. But more importantly original content will be front and center in my mind and hopefully on the site. My co-author and I have been mulling a cornucopia of ideas but haven’t really flushed them out. That will change. Fiction is my passion and my calling, and the best way I can be effective in fighting the battle for the soul of the nation to borrow a phrase.
To those of you who regularly read our content, thank you as always from the bottom of my heart. Your viewership means the world to me and I hope that you will accompany me as we journey together in this new direction. To any of you just discovering our content for the first time, welcome, and I hope that the new mission I’ve laid down in this rant on hyperlink will inspire you to pursue the American spirit yourself, and I hope you will join us become a part of the community that we can build together.
Sincerely,
John Adams