Introducing: Kinetics

And Some Housekeeping

John Chard’s field sketch from the Battle of Roarkes Drift. Under the command of Chard and Gonville Bromhead, just over 150 British and colonial troops defended the mission station against attacks by 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors

Dear Reader,

If you are reading this on the Substack app or website, you should see two sections at the top of my newsletter. They are Topics and Kinetics.

Topics refers to what you already know.

• These are long, meandering essays. With word counts running deep into the thousands, these take me a long time to write and you a long time to read.

• Each essay handles a few issues at once. For example:

  • This one touches on artificial intelligence, virtual reality, aging, addiction, dreams, the paintings of Picasso, and the poetry of Aeschylus.

  • This one handles Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Odyssey, school shootings, and urban life in the third decade of the twenty-first century.

• These essays are as universal as I can stand. They’re about everyone and for everyone, or so I like to think.

• These essays are as eternal as I can manage. I try to keep them on the long side of now. I try to give them some staying power.

When I write these essays, I do my best to respect the truth, my craft, and your time — in that order, I must admit. My aim is to practice in public, and I’m very, very grateful for my small but engaged audience. These essays take me about a week to write and a week to edit, so I try to publish them twice a month.

Kinetics refers to what you will soon know.

• These will be short, direct essays. I will try to keep them to 650 words — even if you read as slowly as I do, that’s just five minutes.

• Each essay will handle exactly one issue. They will focus primarily on strategy and messaging in contemporary American politics.

• These will be as specific as possible. I will write these as if you are someone with some influence in the liberal political machine. If have that influence — great! If you don’t have that influence — that’s okay, I don’t either.

• These will be as timely as possible. I will try to relate them to some sort of news hook, where appropriate. This section will be much closer to a traditional newsletter.

Since moving to Washington, I’ve had a front-row seat for the delamination of the Democratic Party. It goes without saying that I have some thoughts. I understand that the best way to explain this would be to give you an example, and I’ll try to have one to you very soon. I’m going to try to publish at least two of these a month to start. We’ll see what sort of cadence I end up falling into. They’ll probably come at a fairly irregular clip, just as the news does.

Topics covers about one half of what I think about. My hope is that Kinetics will cover the other.

In the meantime, here are some things that might prime you for what I have on the way:

• This week’s series on the political strengths of Trump and Trumpism in the twenty-first century.

  • Part I

  • Part II

  • Part III

  • Part IV

• The U.S. Marine Corps’ Warfighting manual. People love to call the Marines jarheads and crayon eaters, but in my experience they’re far and away the most erudite branch. Warfighting is a taut and thorough book of doctrine, theory, and practice. It’s easily the best thing I’ve read this year. Plus, it’s free to download.

And last, but certainly not least, here are some things you can do for me:

• Let me know what you and don’t like to read. My audience is small enough that I can easily tailor my work to your interests. What worries you? What angers you? Please leave a comment or get in touch.

• Share this newsletter with someone. If you know someone who would enjoy a particular essay or the newsletter overall, please share it with them. If you know someone who would enjoy the upcoming Kinetics section, let them know about it. Again, my audience is small enough that just one additional reader is significant growth.

Well, that about sums it up.

Thanks so much,

John