Vyshyvanka Daily
Sometimes, dog shirts must yield
Good Evening
In his last diary entry, on March 29, 1912, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, wrote a “Message to the Public,” having made it to the South Pole but unable to get back. With his team, he was now facing death.
“We are weak, writing is difficult,” he wrote, “but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.”
I do not regret this journey. We took risks. We knew we took them. We had no choice. Things have come out against us. And therefore we have no cause for complaint. Unlike Capt. Scott and his men, we do not face death. We face the need merely to bow to the will of the electorate, until the midterm elections, act as a loyal opposition, and continue to argue our case.
I refuse to catastrophize. I repent nothing. And I apologize to nobody.
Nor, importantly, will I engage in recriminations against anyone who tried—from whatever perspective—to do the right thing. Did we make mistakes? Of course we did. But I am proud of the work that we did. And I am determined still to do my best to the last.
Another thing: Trump didn’t win to prove my priors correct—or yours. He didn’t win to establish my virtue—or yours—relative to anyone else. So let’s spare each other the, “I’ve been saying for years” speeches. Let’s avoid pointing out piously that the demographic groups that some of us are members of voted more virtuously than the groups that others are members of. None of this helps.
What helps is to hold our heads high and set our eyes on doing right by those we can help.
It’s very simple: I recommit myself to the fight.
Do you?
I have several immediate concerns. One of them is Ukraine. Fortunately, there’s a shirt for that—but it’s not a dog shirt.
The vyshyvanka is a traditional Ukrainian embroidery. Until I am confident that the advent of the second Trump administration will not mean the abandonment of Ukraine, I will be wearing vyshyvankas instead of dog shirts. Here’s a picture of me in a very special one on Election Day. It was sent to me by
recently:
I have some others as well. Dog shirts will, of course, return.
The title of the site will not change.
In a fashion unbecoming for an author but, I hope, becoming for a patriot, I had been hoping not to have to reintroduce the book I wrote a few years ago with the estimable Susan Hennessey. Alas, with the Late Unpleasantness™, our book on Trump and the nature of the presidency should probably enjoy a second life too.
Entitled “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office,” the book was Susan and my effort to examine the mismatch between the personality of the man and nature of the office.
I often think it is the only truly important thing I have ever written. And with a heavy heart, I commend it to you.
An important (re)programming note.
With the start of the Late Unpleasantness™, I am by necessity shifting a lot of my daily substantive writing on the Trump presidency to Lawfare. I will be writing a very regular column there, currently entitled “The Situation.” Three of these columns have appeared so far:
More are coming this week.
I will be using #DogShirtDaily, therefore, more for non-legal writings and material outside of Lawfare’s juridiction—thinks like my activism and mischief, and things like #DogShirtTV.
Toward this end, I have decided to change the format of #DogShirtTV somewhat in an effort to be able to do it near-daily. Instead of taking place at irregular times, it will—for the time being anyway—run consistently at 8:00 am Eastern time for an hour, during which time I will drink my morning coffee and we will talk about the news. Guests will not be announced in advance—and sometimes will not be there at all. The format will be a little more like talk radio, with guests popping in and out, and the audience very much involved in the conversation. The studio will, of course, be open to paid subscribers, and the conversations will be posted immediately to both YouTube and the podcast feed.
The advantage to this format is that it will allow me to do the show very regularly and will allow it to be super-responsive to events. The hope is that a regular cadre of guests will show up and that people will make it part of their morning routines.
This programming will begin on Wednesday, November 13. It would begin tomorrow morning, except that my internet is out right now, and I don’t want to schedule a first show that might have to be canceled for technical reasons!
Information about accessing the studio is available, as always, beneath the paywall.
While #DogShirtTV was not especially active last week, #LawfareLive was very active. We had three livestream shows in the wake of the Late Unpleasantness™. They are available here:
And here:
And here:
For those who missed it, #DogShirtTV did have one show, this one on America’s last undecided voter. It’s less funny after the election results than it was before they came in:
Finally, I want to make a plea to you all, if you are not already doing so, to become financial supporters of Lawfare. We are going to be doing a lot during the second Trump administration. And that starts now.
We need to cultivate important voices coming out of the current administration.
We want to make sure good people with important things to say have appropriate places to land when they leave.
We need to be following every day’s official actions, both during the transition and in the administration, and figuring out what’s going on.
We will need to be filing Freedom of Information Act requests and litigating them.
And we will need to travel the country to track civil litigation challenging administration actions.
All of this costs real money. We are a small organization that punches way above its weight. That’s because we have reader support from people who actually appreciate what we do.
There are 13,000 subscribers to this newsletter. If every one of you signed up as a monthly supporter of the site, at whatever level, that would make an astonishing difference in our annual budget.
Let me put it bluntly: if you value the role Lawfare is going to play over the next few years, please consider investing in that role. And please consider urging others to as well.
You can become a monthly supporter here.
You can make a one-time donation here.
Thank you for considering it.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is bears with pumpkins:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dog Shirt Daily to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.