As most of my readers probably know, I recently joined Substack
and began distributing my articles from The Memory Cache blog via
Substack emails as well.
In the past year, as media consolidation under the control of
billionaires has accelerated, and those wealthy corporations and owners have
bent the knee to the current regime in Washington, many talented and well-known
writers and thinkers have fled to Substack from mainstream media platforms.
That has made Substack a great place to find good writing and opinion on
current events.
I subscribe to a number of popular Substack writers, and would
recommend any and all of them. My list includes Heather Cox Richardson, the
noted American historian; Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who
resigned from the New York Times; Timothy Snyder, famed historian of
authoritarianism who wrote On Tyranny and On Freedom; and several
others. Most of the people on my list would be familiar as regular guest
commentators to anyone who’s spent time in the past few years watching CNN or
MSNBC. I’m sure there are many other good ones too, if only I had time to keep
up with the ones I’m already reading.
Interestingly, though, the writer who has most caught my
attention in recent weeks is someone I’ve never seen on TV, or heard of before.
I’m not even sure how I first had one of his emails show up in my inbox, but
after I’d read a few of them, I quickly subscribed. And having followed him now
for a couple of months, I am recommending him to everyone who is concerned
about the ongoing political, economic and moral calamity of the Trump 2.o
administration and our current moment.
His name is Christopher Armitage, and he writes under the
publication name of “The Existentialist Republic”. I don’t know him, or that
much about his life story, and because of that, in recommending him I assume
the risk that there may be negative things about him and his background I don’t
know. I have no reason to think so, but I can’t be certain. It’s just a caveat.
What I do know based on what I found online (and what he has
written) is that he lives in Spokane, Washington. He is a veteran of the U.S.
Air Force, with multiple deployments overseas. He also has experience as a
security consultant, and a background in law enforcement and prison
administration. He has written several books and peer-reviewed research
articles, including one book on police reform and another on the psychological
roots of American conservatism. He ran as a Democrat for Congress in 2020, but
lost in the primary. He also claims to live alone with three cats.
That’s what I know about him so far. I’ve never seen him on TV,
but he has 37,000 subscribers on Substack. Apparently I’m not the only person
taking him and his writing seriously. So what does he have to say?
In his almost daily email articles, he has focused on a few
recurring ideas and themes, which he bolsters with well-footnoted research from
a wide range of credible sources, including legal decisions and court opinions,
news stories, histories, studies and position papers. The major themes include:
· American democracy at the federal level is already
in a death spiral due to corporate and right-wing ideological capture of
Congress, the Supreme Court, and mass media, along with gerrymandering and the
undemocratic elements of the Constitution itself. He explains and provides extensive
examples and reasoning to support this assessment.
· The crisis posed by Trump’s
authoritarianism and his regime’s lawlessness and corruption can best be
opposed by using the same kinds of state power, aggressive tactics and local prerogatives
that the right has used for generations to resist federal authority.
· He advocates for “soft secession” by blue
states. This is not a call for an “armed civil war” type of secession, but
rather for developing alliances between blue states, and building new
state-based institutions to resist the worst policies of the current federal regime,
and to provide citizens in blue states with the social goods and safety net
that the federal government seems so determined not to provide to the nation’s
people.
His daily articles are full of specific, detailed plans and legal
tactics that could plausibly be carried out, and would almost surely be popular
in at least the half of the country that wants to live in a democratic society
of equal rights, the rule of law, prosperity, fairness and generosity, along with
a strong social safety net.
One idea of his I have heard elsewhere advocates states
withholding or delaying tax payments to the federal government, based on several
possible legal theories. Because the larger blue states in general are
wealthier and more populous, and pay more tax than they get back from the
federal government, shutting off the flow of tax money to the feds and needy
red states would be a powerful means of exerting financial and political pressure.
I have read elsewhere that several large Democratic-controlled states are already considering
this option.
In another recent article, Armitage pointed out a clause in the
Affordable Care Act that allows states to band together to provide access to
healthcare plans across multiple states. He writes that this was written into
the law as a concession to Republicans, to let red states join together to
offer cheaper, less generous policies than offered by the federal government
through Obamacare. But ironically, he argues, blue states could band together to
develop multi-state healthcare plans where they could leverage their combined
economic clout and population power to create major, unified multi-state single payer
systems, all without any federal means of stopping them (since it's allowed
under the existing ACA law).
He has also advocated for the idea that blue state attorney
generals could and should bring the full force of state law against federal
officials who commit state crimes and corruption under supposed federal
authority. Even if these cases (civil and criminal) don’t always succeed, he
contends, they can make the individual cost and personal risk to federal officials much
higher, and slow things down. He provides examples of how and when this has
been done. And as he points out, this is just flipping the script on MAGA
Republicans: it’s showing that Democratic-controlled states too can assert
their rights boldly, and use state legal systems to frustrate overreaching and unpopular
actions by federal officials from the opposing political camp.
He has so many good and novel ideas and observations, many of
which I’ve heard from no one else, that it’s hard to keep track of them all.
But what I also really like is that after proposing these creative ways to fight back
effectively against the Trump regime at the state level, protect the people
and institutions in our states under assault, and build the sort of just and compassionate society we want to live in, he gives his readers the
information to advocate for these ideas, by providing the contact information
for the state officials in our own states to whom the ideas should be
addressed.
Of course, no one has all the right ideas, and after the 2025 electoral
results on Tuesday, many people might say that now those who want to save democracy and the rule of law should focus on winning the
2026 mid-term elections as the best means for resisting Trump and his
followers. But in the meantime, if you are looking for positive, constructive,
realistic and original ideas for how to defend democracy and a free,
prosperous American society, you’ll find them in Christopher Armitage’s Substack
writing at The Existentialist Republic. Highly recommended.