FROM THE HEART: I'm worried as hell.

My confidence at defending democracy feels shaken... and I don't know what to do.

Of all things that set me off today… a call with my accountant.

I’m new to running my own business. So far, so good… I think? I’m getting a decent amount of paid subscribers for a new venture. And the feedback I’m getting is pretty positive.

But that’s not what’s messing with me.

When I launched this program I described it as a show about democracy. It’s about the connections we form when we interact in this society: the ones that frustrate us, and the ones that can solve our shared problems. Reconnecting to one another — or in some cases, connecting for the first time — is vital to American democracy. And that’s not in a partisan or ideological sense. Some things are truly meant for the common good, for everyone to benefit together whether they like each other or not.

But look around: the signs of this system unraveling seem to be everywhere.

Today I read about an extensive playbook developed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The idea: dismantle and remake the federal government, starting on Day One, if former President Donald Trump wins a second term in 2024. The idea is to get thousands of people ready to tear down much of what we know in Washington, including firing tens of thousands of non-political civil servants en masse. Many of them are subject to rules that control the pace of firings — rules meant to prevent the sweetheart political patronage jobs of the past — but the plan includes reclassifying them so they can be fired like at-will employees.

Not in service to the country overall. Just in service to the Trump agenda. (Granted, I’m sure supporters of this plan would argue that it would be in the country’s best interest to do this.)

But win or lose, I fear we will see more of what we’ve seen in the past: American politics getting increasingly vicious and violent. I firmly believe that the first job of democracy is to prevent political violence. And no one is as violent as a sore loser. In 1861 sore losers fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina and started the Civil War. Germany’s sore losers of the 1930s built the Nazi party. And on January 6th, 2021, sore losers killed cops and attacked their own government at the US Capitol. (By the way, the Nazis also staged a failed insurrection, the Beer Hall Putsch, before rebuilding their movement and winning elections.)

Even if Trump wins, that may also embolden people to more violence. After all, who’s gonna stop them? Who in the federal government will stand against them, when the president and his administration are either supporting or ignoring them? Mr. Trump had to be urged into denouncing the neo-Nazis who marched through Charlottesville, and into denouncing white supremacists & QAnon followers. Why would he be any different this time around?

The hatefulness unleashed in the last few years remains with us. It seems to pop up more often (thanks, iPhone notifications - thought I blocked you while I was on vacation, but apparently not). We recently saw the man who shot up a Walmart in El Paso, TX sentenced on hate crime charges. A teenager is facing murder charges for stabbing a gay man through the chest at a gas station in Brooklyn. O’Shae Sibley was just dancing, and the suspect allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs at him, demanding that he stop dancing… then making him stop by killing him.

We just marked the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. On the same day that the nation marked that anniversary, a white 21-year-old shot three Black people dead at a convenience store in Jacksonville, FL. The sheriff says the shooter then killed himself. It happened near Edward Waters College, one of Florida’s four HBCUs. I highly doubt the timing was a coincidence. This comes after my native state of Florida has not only watered down its African-American History curricula in public schools, but also blocked school districts from offering the corresponding Advanced Placement course. AP courses can be taken for college credit, saving students both time and money as undergraduates.

…sigh.

Just needed to catch my breath there…

Most of my days are spent figuring out what to do next. What segment to book for the podcast, what essay to write, what project to start, what aspect of charting the next chapter of my career to focus on. This stage of my life feels like a chance to start new things, to do the kind of work I want to do the way I want to do it. It’s an opportunity to offer you a unique service, something that will have meaning and get results, something that will bring hope and confidence through the darkness of these times.

And then… I spoke to my accountant. I looked at the pile of work I need to do to get things in order, to just be a good administrator of this enterprise. And my heart sank. In that instant, I fell backwards into burnout. I thought, What’s the point of all this? Is this working? Is this even going to work? …and what would “working” look like anyway? I spent 20 years building a career in broadcasting, busting my ass, grinding and grinding, for… what? What results do I have to show for it? What results is this new thing gonna get? And if it doesn’t make an impact, then… why bother?

Burnout is real. Today, I felt the fizzle.

Let me be clear: I’m not giving up on The Night Light. Nor am I giving up on democracy, or on the need to foster human connection. But I feel like I have to give up something to make room for what needs to happen next. If only I knew what that was, or what needed to be next, or how to articulate what I’m looking for. If only I felt like there were more people doing this work: trying to create civic spaces, physical and digital, where all kinds of people could connect and form the social bonds that democracy depends on. Yes, I know the most hardcore people probably wouldn’t show up for that. Forget about them. What about those that would? In a nation of ideological silos, is no one tending the fields? Is no one cultivating the spaces where great things can grow?

Democracy cannot happen in your comfort zone. And grain won’t grow in a silo. I fear more viciousness, more violence, if we cannot find better release valves for our political tensions and build more open spaces for people to connect. Yes, those connections will be messy and loud and sometimes rude, but I will gladly take that over the alternative. Believe it or not, connection works extremely well. When I hosted 1A on NPR we traveled the country quite a bit doing live audience events. The topics were touchy, but we talked about everything: about oil & gas, about voting, about politics on college campuses, about connecting liberals & conservatives and more. Of all the events we did, not one of them devolved into chaos or shouting. Not one. You’d be amazed how amazing people can be.

I wish it wasn’t so amazing, though! I wish you could just turn on the TV or go on social media and see these interactions all the time. Are you old enough to remember talk shows? I mean, real talk shows? Ricki and Jenny and Montel and Donahue and Sally Jessy and, of course, Oprah (post-”Color Purple”, pre-OWN)? It used to be that people sat next to each other all the time, on live television, and talked about the most controversial (sometimes sleazy) things imaginable. All that stuff you don’t dare say around the Thanksgiving table? We used to talk about it on national television! Five days a week!

It worked because it felt ordinary — because people just like you did it all the time. They were unpolished, and sometimes inarticulate, and they didn’t always ask brilliant questions, and they were perfect. Because they reflected America back to itself. They were in spaces that didn’t ask us to be shiny or clever… just to be real. Being real was more than enough, with the right host to moderate. And because you were constantly shown how good a talker (and more importantly, a listener) anyone could be, it didn’t seem that shocking. Until Jerry Springer ruined everything. But I digress.

Now we live in a society where the thought of people voicing their differences face-to-face seems curious, risky or worse: dangerous. We’ve lost a skill that democracies have had since Ancient Greece: civic dialogue. Not just civil — courteous and polite — but also civic — focused on the affairs of the community. Without that skill or places to use it, we stay in our corners, talk to people who echo our views back to us and deride those who try to stay out of the fray. Cable news and social media make this all too easy to do, and too hard to find anything else. Having worked for MSNBC, I see the problem even more acutely now. Don’t get me wrong: those kinds of ideological spaces can be okay in and of themselves. People have the liberty to hear their own views expressed in cogent, insightful ways. That’s a good thing.

The real problem is the absence of connection. It’s not that people like Jesse Waters on Fox News and Joy Reid on MSNBC target each other’s perspectives from opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s that they never say it to each other’s faces. To me, that kind of television is boring as hell. It’s stale. And in a way — I’m gonna lose some friends for saying this — some cable news commentators are actually playing the exact same game, regardless of their differences of opinion. They never risk defeat, and they always come off looking their best, so they have a mutual interest in avoiding true engagement. We stay mad, they stay rich, and nothing gets better.

Don’t just tell me your strong point of view. Show me. Get in there with a worthy opponent and then, when the clock hits zero, we’ll see who has the most points. Get some W’s, get some L’s, but please get in the game. Today’s politics has very few winners, and only at election times, but that’s not enough to vent the constant tension between voting cycles.

To do that, we need more chances to connect, and more places to compete. We don’t just need more unity — we need more opportunity. Americans deserve every opportunity to know, question, befriend, confront and collaborate with people from different walks of life and points of view. We are way past the days of taboo topics and polite conversation. Everything must be on the table: not every table all the time, granted! But you deserve to be able to look your fellow Americans in the eye (those who are willing to look back, of course) and have meaningful, transformative connections. They should not be rare, and they should not be rationed. They should be everywhere, for everyone.

…and I wish I knew how to do it.

That’s what’s got me frustrated. The Night Light feels like a great vehicle for inspiration, insight and community. I believe it can do a lot of good. If only it was enough. Our vicious, vitriolic political culture is not getting better on its own. Media outlets, including some that I once worked for, are not helping. I doubt they even see this problem, or if they do, they don’t know what to do about it so they keep on doing what they’ve always done. I tried to make positive change inside those organizations — maybe I succeeded? A little? Now we have a new chance to make something that gets results, that has staying power, that actually affects our politics and our people in positive ways. Something that empowers you, whoever you are, to be an even greater force for the common good. The alternative is much worse, and the cavalry is apparently not coming. I guess that means we’re it.

…damn, this is depressing as hell. I’m sorry! Normally I like to be much more upbeat, but if I was only positive then I’d feel like a fake. I don’t have all the answers. No one does. We need each other, and I need you. If only to know that you hear me and you care, that would mean the world to me.

And maybe this is where you walk away. Perhaps you’re looking for someone a bit more bulletproof and a bit less vulnerable. If that’s the case, then I get it: hopefully you find what you’re looking for, and maybe you’ll circle back someday.

For those that stick around, we have a chance to define something meaningful and powerful for the good of our nation and the world. Maybe my burnout will ease and the answers will reveal themselves with clarity and passion. I hope so. In the meantime, I’m going to make myself some tea, take a breath, maybe play some video games for a bit and then get to the gym. I’m going to do what I can now until I know what to do next. For now, that will have to be enough.