‘Complying In Advance’: My Latest ‘Hot Type’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement documents our failure to cherish and defend America’s cultural gains, as well as each other
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In Saturday’s Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, I wrote a reflection on how complying in advance is accelerating the fall of America.
Everywhere we look, colleges are complying in advance — shuttering entire departments dedicated to cultural enrichment and equity, the things that truly made America great.
As I travel around the European countryside, staring out at great expanses of lush green-grey winter landscapes, I have the distance I need to find the words for this moment. MAGA gave up OUR American dream so they could be openly mean to people again.
Putin is a late entry into America’s self-sabotage, an exploiter of people’s preference to forgo decency for enmity.
As always, thank you to everyone who supports my work here and at Byline. I believe the work of independent investigative reporters exposing the transnational crime wave has revealed the failing of corporate media in stark contrast.
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Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: Complying in Advance to the Fall of America
American political columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda reflects on the tragedy of a country that willingly relinquished to its own cultural destruction
Three decades ago in America, we were richer, safer, more powerful, better defended, better fed, more entertained than any civilization had ever been in the history of the world. And we were willing to burn it all down so we could be mean to people again.
Instead of protecting our sacred achievements and keeping up our efforts at dealing with the sins of our past, we marched ourselves into our own cultural death.
White Grievance Media took over the airwaves. The debut of Fox News on Putin’s birthday in 1996 aligned with the thriving cruelty of Rush Limbaugh on the radio.
A significant portion of Americans became infected with a mean-spirited bloodlust.
So by the time the Russians began directing a constant flow of active measures our way, we were already ripe for destruction.
The willingness of people to walk into something that was utterly preventable — the destruction of a once thriving democracy — occurred because too few took a moment to really study the battlefield.
MAGA marched all of us off to our own destruction…
Now, millions who voted for the right to be mean to people can look forward to poverty in their old age, as safety nets are severed.
It would have only taken 15 minutes to study the real battlefield. The information was there all the time.
Old hatreds were ginned up and personal honor was replaced by that elixir of supremacy — just one more taste…
So now, the things that truly made America culturally great — our willingness to course correct, our belief in personal responsibility, our celebration of Black music, our cherishing of women’s rights, our celebration of gender fluidity, our belated preservation of Native American culture, even our patriotism, have been canceled because of sick bullies who wear their personal inadequacies on their ‘Sieg Heil’ sleeves.
And tragically, the people comply.
As Democratic activist David Pepper reported this week, Ohio University put a ‘Celebrate Women’ event on pause. It also postponed a Black alumni event amid ‘compliance concerns’ from Trump’s Washington.
The state that launched massive protests around the country after the 1970 shootings of unarmed college students at Kent State University, where four were killed by the Ohio National Guard, is now obeying in advance.
"People who are in leadership roles of arts organizations need to show some backbone and resist these attempts to silence arts and artists,” Dr Dan Shore, an Assistant Professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, told Byline Supplement. “The United States Marine Band, ‘The President's Own,’ just canceled a concert they were going to have with Equity Arc, because it was an educational program for high school musicians of color, and they were afraid that encouraging young people to play classical music would conflict with recent Executive Orders.”
Dr Shore continued: “Where are we as a country if the United States Marines are too cowardly to play a band concert?"
Other colleges are falling in line, as departments that celebrate America’s rich cultural diversity are shuttered permanently.
America is living under the tyranny of the minority, and Europeans instinctively know this.
At a pen supply shop in Rive Gauche, where I went to get a fresh stock of highlighters for the history books I’m devouring, a Parisian tells me that the French are with the Americans. I start to weep, and he says, ‘Don’t. Life is beautiful.’
Seeing his words in print here makes me cry again. Life doesn’t feel beautiful. It feels tattered and torn, bruised and fractured. The pain is punctuated by the fact that every café in Paris, it seems, is playing the greats from America. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Nina Simone. Another visceral reminder of our failure to cherish what was ours.
No one tells you in advance when the last free and fair election occurs and watching democracy slip away is wildly traumatic.
The fall of America because not enough people resisted a party that was openly malignant is the greatest tragedy the world has known.
Democracies, at their core, mean there are sources of truth in the world that can challenge the carefully crafted lies of autocracies. Autocracies can’t have neighboring countries with free and fair elections — by the people, for the people — because their own oppressed citizens may get some ideas. So the modern fascists slash and burn through other nations, with too few leaders taking 15 minutes to study the battlefield.
I’ve given up trying to make anyone understand what happened. I now simply go to sacred spaces to pray.
One such sacred space was the American Cathedral in Paris, where I went to hear a recent performance by Gospel Dream — a choir of gospel singers from America, Africa, and the West Indies — performing songs that remain vital gifts to the world.
By the time they sang ‘We Shall Overcome’, I thought, well yes, maybe, if given enough time to heal.
Apologies in advance for the misty eyes this column may cause, but I’m feeling the feels.
I was buoyed this morning by reports from America of growing Resistance efforts, particularly those that hit the bottom line of Musk, but I do not underestimate the cruelty of these miserable men.
I can’t tell you how many people I’m meeting in Europe who are with us, who want their old ally back. As a first generation German American, my eyes are continually blurred by both tears and the painful lessons from history.
And so it goes…
The above excerpt from my Hot Type column is part of a weekly special edition post for Bette members. I am a columnist for Byline, not a publisher, so while I can’t remove the paywall from the Byline Supplement site, I am able to send the full column to anyone who requests it. As always, I ask those who can afford to support a small global team of investigative reporters to please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement — we are among the last of the truly independent, reader-funded newspapers.
I also understand that if you are not able to do so at this moment, the good chaps at Byline do allow me to send the column to Bette members, as I noted above. Just zip a request to bettedangerous/gmail. New members will also find they are invited to unlock one report at the Byline site.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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Thanks for sharing your experience in the Paris store. My eyes are pretty misty right now. Life is beautiful, indeed.
Thank you for your work.
I believe boycotts/protests are good to keep doing!