Support the Reckoner
The short version:
Yes, you can support the Reckoner.
Contributions are needed and appreciated.
This isn’t a charity; there’s no 501c3 non-profit org.
It’s just a few people determined to make a difference.
Basic expenses, like web server and legal and other admin stuff — comes out of our pockets.
So your non-deductible donation will be a real help.
If you read the About page and you get it, please give.
Questions? Don’t hesitate to make noise.
Donate by clicking here, or use this button:
Or scan this:
Or write a check to Reckoner Press and snail-mail it to Box 44, Ipswich MA 01938.
If you’d trust me with your mailing address, I’ll thank you for your donation by sending you our exclusive DEFY TYRANNY sticker. Just email me here.
Thank you!
The long version:
Yes, you can donate to Reckoner Press.
Not a charity, not 501c3, not tax-deductible. But worth it.
Because it’s important to talk to and about Trump and the Trumpies the way Trump talks to and about the rest of us.
This is a key way to get through to Trumpy people who harbor secret doubts about Trumpism.
I told myself this crisis will blow over, I’m being an alarmist, who do I think I am, believing I can make any kind of a difference?
I’ll just keep my head down, stay out of it, let this work itself out.
My name is Doug Brendel; I’m the editor of Reckoner Press.
I confess, in the current crisis, I initially hesitated.
By nature, I’m an approval-monger. I avoid controversy. I like to smooth over any differences of opinion. Finesse relationships.
I was born to a Republican family. My parents, 93 and 92 years old, are lifelong Republicans. I love them. I don’t want to hurt them.
I remember watching the Republican National Convention on TV with them when I was 8 years old; we cheered for Barry Goldwater.
I was a Republican most of my life. I voted for Reagan twice. George Bush Sr. twice. George W. Bush twice.
But I always harbored secret doubts about whether this way was the right way, the best way.
Ridicule chipped away at my lifelong assumptions.
Eventually, I realized there was another way to look at our nation and our world … and our relationships with each other.
My goal with Reckoner Press is to talk to people with the same kind of secret doubts that I once had.
And talk to them in a way that’s so outrageous, they can’t stop looking at it.
And chip away.
Some of my very best friends to this day are Republicans. I don’t want to damage those relationships.
Yes, it was Republicans who chose Donald Trump, and then excused him, and stuck with him, and who continue to defend him, whatever he does.
But because of my natural inclination, which is to make friends and keep friends, I haven’t wanted to publicly call out Republicans.
So I rationalized.
I told myself this crisis will blow over, I’m being an alarmist, who do I think I am, believing I can make any kind of a difference?
I’ll just keep my head down, stay out of it, let this work itself out.
But when the Trump administration started abducting people, and packing them off without due process, to prisons overseas, and claiming there was no way to get them back, in defiance of court orders, and chortling online, They’re not coming back!—
When Trump told the president of El Salvador to build more prisons because he intended to seize and deliver more of us — and yes, I mean us: Trump said (and I quote) “Homegrowns are next”!—
When the Washington Post reported that after the El Salvador imprisonment, Venezuela began accepting at least two deportation flights a week—
It finally occurred to me that keeping your head down, and staying out of it, and letting it work itself out, is how lots of people have responded down through history in other countries, when other totalitarian regimes took power. (Do I need to name the countries?)
I feel a certain risk, speaking out like this. The danger of backlash. Retribution.
Retribution, after all, is verbatim what Donald Trump promised.
• Will I lose friends? Will I be disowned by members of my family?
• Will clients fire me, so my family and I suffer financially?
• Will I suddenly find myself being audited?
• Will my Social Security checks stop coming because my name has been moved to a list of dead people?
• Will my passport be revoked?
• Will my home be targeted? Will my family be targeted?
• Will I be detained? Will I be deported?
• Will I suffer violence? Will I survive it?
But finally, inspired by the truth-telling of Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and others, I couldn’t sit silent any longer.
If I don’t have the courage to risk retribution, the perpetrators have their way.
And I perpetuate the problem. I’m complicit.
My only choices are courage, or complicity.
I have to speak out. I have to fight back. I have no choice.
Because America has already become too Nazi Germany for me.
So here I am, doing what I can. At the very least, exercising the constitutional right to free speech, and speaking the truth.
If I can’t exercise free speech without retribution, then our country is even further down the road than I thought.
But I hope this isn’t just me taking a risk by speaking the truth.
I hope you’ll take a chance too.
Risk retribution. Demonstrate. March. Barricade buildings.
Whatever you’re able to do to stop the collapse of democracy and decency in this country.
Meanwhile, please share Reckoner posts, especially with non-progressive people. To chip away at their secret doubts about how they’ve become involved, even tacitly, in something terrible. The collapse of democracy and decency in this country.
And another thing you can do is donate: here, now.
Whatever you do, don’t sit silent.
We can’t sit silent. Because before we know it, it will be too late.
No surrender. No apologies. Defy tyranny.
If you’d trust me with your mailing address, I’ll thank you for your donation by sending you our exclusive DEFY TYRANNY sticker. Just email me here.
Questions, comments, complaints about the Reckoner? Make noise. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Editor: Doug Brendel
Founding Publisher: John Wolforth