Giving The Gift of Civil Discourse

Let me get straight to the point. If you’re enjoying Civil Discourse, I hope you’ll consider giving it as a gift to others you think will like and benefit from it too. I appreciate everyone who is here, and I truly believe we have important work ahead of us. I’m extremely worried about where our country is headed. My priority is to make sure as many of our fellow citizens as possible are engaged ahead of the 2024 election.

My experience writing Civil Discourse has been learning that people who are armed with the arguments, the evidence, and a sense of righteous indignation are able to find a place to get involved in our elections and our politics. You have become poll workers, written postcards to voters in close election, and even run for office. But you have also had conversations with acquaintances, random people in grocery stores and family members that have planted seeds of thoughtfulness. On our forum, subscribers engage in the sort of respectful conversations that are too absent from our public square these days. As a group, we understand that we can each play a role, even if it’s a small one, doing whatever work is in front of us. Many of you, like me, have had the experience of seeing people return from the Svengali-like hold Trump seems to have over his followers in the face of patient common sense. All of that is Civil Discourse.

I also want to thank you for being here. I didn’t really understand what writing a newsletter would look like a year and a half in and what I didn’t expect was how much I would look forward to writing this newsletter. I wake up in the morning trying to decide which topics are most important for us to take up, only to have my plans completely upended by breaking news some days. It’s a real crush, some days a deluge, of critically important news stories. No wonder so many people feel overwhelmed by it all. It’s a real gift for me to get to review it all, to read the pleadings in cases firsthand, listen to court arguments, talk directly with the people involved and try to distill it into information for you all. Some days I regret that I can’t take a week or at least a few days to review and polish my writing and catch any errors. But I’ve come to accept the importance of writing in a timely fashion while issues are on the radar screen and accurate information is of paramount importance.

When I began Civil Discourse, I planned on writing two to three times a week. Rapidly, that became closer to five or six, and sometimes seven times a week. The times we live in demand it. I’m really grateful to all of you for reading, writing to me, leaving your ideas in comments in the forum, and generally restoring my faith in people. I’m also reminded frequently that people who don’t have technical backgrounds or professional experience with them can easily understand our legal and our political systems if the people who have worked in them take the time to explain—in plain English—how their institutions and procedures work. I appreciate it when you thank me for getting it right as well as the gentle reminders I receive when I lapse into too much legalize. You are truly the best readers, the most wonderful community, I could have ever envisioned being with to do this work. You make the late nights and the inevitable effort to read a lengthy court opinion on my tiny cell phone screen worth it!

Today, as most days lately, there was new reporting about what Donald Trump has in mind for his next administration if he’s elected in 2024. Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei at Axios wrote that the people around Trump “don’t mince words. Their plans include targeting and jailing critics, including government officials and journalists; deporting undocumented immigrants or putting them in detainment camps, and unleashing the military to target drug cartels in Mexico, or possibly crack down on criminals or protesters at home. They also want to scrap rules that limit their ability to purge government workers deemed disloyal. 

Preventing the end of the rule of law and the Republic is our most important job for the next eleven months.

I hope you’ll consider sharing Civil Discourse with a member of your family, a friend, a colleague, a neighbor. The next election is going to be the most important one of our lives. Politicians say that in every election cycle, but for 2024, I know we all feel how deeply true it is. This election will be everything.

Wishing you a happy holiday season, however you celebrate.

With much love, we’re in this together,

Joyce