Snakes on a Cruise!

Snakes on a Cruise!

Who’s on this ship? A lot of nice, intelligent people, a few 9/11 conspiracists, a self-righteous blowhard or two and an undercover reporter for the New York Times.

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Just as the debate on global warming was drawing to a close a man rose from the audience and started to scream. “We don’t have time,” he shouted. “You need to motivate people by fear. We are not afraid enough…”

There are snakes on the cruise!

Mostly they come in the form of journalists. At the dinner table I was hosting on the first night conversation about Israel ended with a septuagenarian telling four other guests, “Fuck you.” (They’d just called her “self-hating Jew”–you know how it goes.) The only other person not involved in the fracas was Henry Alford, who it turned out was an undercover reporter for the New York Times. While I’d rather he’d declared himself, Henry, who I’ve gotten to know and quite like over the week, had every right to be there.

The trouble is I’ve seen what a journalist can do with these cruises. Hell, I’m a journalist and I know what I’d do. Johann Hari did a great job on the National Review cruise a couple of weeks ago in The New Republic. He exposed them as a bunch of kooks, whackjobs, fruitcakes and bigots.

Well, he wouldn’t have found any bigots here. But the rest are reasonably well represented. A tiny minority–a 9/11 conspiracist here, a self-righteous blowhard there. Most of those here are wonderful, great, interesting people. You couldn’t hope to be trapped on the Pacific with a more well-meaning, decent crowd.

But there are enough nutty types for an article, certainly. If you wanted to lampoon the left it would be no more difficult than the right. The Heritage Foundation is on a cruise right behind us. A really great article would be just to stay in the ports–Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan, Victoria–and see if any of the locals notice!

We can not back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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