TODAY! Bette’s Happy Hour: ‘How We’re Doing’ with Greg Olear — Tuesday, July 8, 1 pm Pacific
BETTE MEMBERS: Please join us today, Tuesday, July 8, 1 pm Pacific for our Happy Hour with writer/raconteur Greg Olear on managing self-care during troubling times
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***This event begins in six hours, today, Tuesday, July 8, 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern.***
Here are the details: I saw a clip from my friend Greg Olear that I shared with you earlier this week:
His gentle assessment that even the courtesy question of “How are you?” has been stolen from us during this time is poignant.
“We can’t even ask someone ‘how are you’ because things are so bad in this country, that it’s impossible to not be affected by it emotionally, right… unless you’re actively evil or not paying attention… it’s another in the long list of things Trump has taken away from us… our greeting: ‘How are you?’ The world’s on fire man, how can I possibly be…”—Greg Olear, July 4th, 2025
After seeing the video, I asked Greg to return to Bette and be our guest for today’s Happy Hour. He’s an author, ranconteur, podcaster — a Renaissance man of the Resistance.
Greg is not only a brilliant writer but a great friend of the Bette community, and I figured we’d spend some time just exhaling — discussing self-care and whatever Greg wishes to chat about. His humor has gotten me through some rough days. For new members, I began the Happy Hour two years ago when I saw so many of us in despair. The title was meant to be ironic, but I do feel better when we come together as a community, and I hope you do, as well.
Let’s plan to reserve some time to discuss Greg’s most recent book, Rough Beast, which predicted what we are currently enduring.
As he wrote in his recent Prevail substack post:
In “Slouching Towards Dictatorship,” the introduction to my 2024 book Rough Beast: Who Donald Trump Really Is, What He’ll Do If Re-elected, and Why Democracy Must Prevail, I warned that if, God forbid, Trump won a second term “a rabid battalion of religious zealots, Christian nationalists, and reactionary monarchists [are] poised to make so many drastic changes to the country so quickly that the United States won’t be recognizable by the Fourth of July 2025.”
Full disclosure: When I wrote that, I never really believed that Trump would win. I had faith in the wisdom of the American electorate and the essential goodness of humanity. I was accurately reporting all the horrible things Donald had done and the even more horrible things he planned to do, sure, but even I was naïve enough to think that it would never happen here.
Those of you who have been reading Bette all these years know I follow the reporters of history closely who cautioned that it can happen anywhere:
“There are men everywhere who would sell out humanity for their own personal profit. There are stupid and emotional masses everywhere who can be found to follow them, given a few slogans and some nice uniforms.”—Bella Fromm, Blood & Banquets, A Berlin Social Diary, 1943
What we do about those ‘slogans’ and ‘nice uniforms’ is an entirely different matter, which we will discuss with Greg.
More about Greg here:
Greg Olear is the L.A. Times-bestselling author of "Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia," which Salon called “essential reading for all Americans.” He has published three novels and a memoir. Both of his novels have been translated into other languages and have been optioned for screen. His column, PREVAIL, is updated three times a week. He is the co-host of the YouTube live show "The Five 8," and the host of an interview podcast, "PREVAIL with Greg Olear." His work has appeared at Slate, Salon, Dame Magazine, Medium, the Huffington Post, Newsweek, and Hudson Valley Magazine, among other places. A graduate of Georgetown University, he lives in New York with his family.
Here is the link to Rough Beast:
To support Greg’s substack, please check it out here:
You can find all the links to Greg’s work here:
To join Bette’s Happy Hour please consider becoming a member here:
Keep scrolling to the very bottom of this post for the registration link, and I look forward to seeing many of you in the squares today!
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