Don't have a Patreon, don't use Substack, don't have a paid job in journalism, discuss on Twitter for free the content of my books, spend thousands of hours a year on research, get called a grifter anyway and if I post a donation link from my website once a year people go nuclear
PS/ An odd musing, I know, but at decade's end I find myself thinking of how much time I've spent researching, writing about, and analyzing Trump pro bono since 2015 using legal/investigative skills I paid $200,000 and years of my life to acquire just to be called a grifter daily
PS2/ Obviously my bio confirms I've spent my life in some form or another of public service, so my values are entirely public-facing and it'd take a troll not to see that, but I still think the day's approaching when I burn out and have to return to being a largely private person
PS3/ All that said, I'm so thankful for the readers this feed and my books have had; I've given readings to both packed rooms and empty rooms, and written books that were bestsellers and sold less than 100 copies, so like any author I know what it means to appreciate a readership
PS4/ I think some day an interesting book will be written about how Americans changed their lives to accommodate the dangers and degradations of this period in American history, and there will be hundreds of thousands of stories of private people who briefly became public people
