Thread by @HeerJeet

1. So. Substack.

2. I wish I had a cool origin story, like "I did my famous Chico Marx imitation at the Nation Christmas party & was reprimanded for anti-Italian bigotry! Cancel Culture is out of control! I'm moving to Substack for free speech" etc. etc. Not true, alas.

3. To the degree that substack has a reputation (unfair, I think) as a haven for cancel culture obsessives, I'm a bad fit. My position is that censoriousness is bad & should be challenged but a most of the cancel culture discourse is hyperbole & wounded amour propre.

4. I mean @mattyglesias has talked about the blowback he got from Vox colleagues for signing the Harper's Letter. But I signed the letter &worked for a place substantially to the left of Vox (the Nation) & got no blow back. So I tend to think this is a localized issue.

5. The reasons to do substack is you are a m̶a̶l̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶&d ̶c̶r̶a̶c̶k̶p̶o̶t̶ free independent spirit who h̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶g̶e̶n̶c̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶t̶s̶ ̶& ̶a̶r̶g̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ resists editing

6. As I've said before, resistance to editing is more a personality type than an ideology. But that ain't me either. I love my editors and colleagues! I've always benefitted from editors (I'll acknowledge that is not everyone's experience).

7. More to the point, I'm at heart a socialist rather than an individualist, so I like belonging to group enterprises like magazines. I was enormously happy at both the New Republic & The Nation to be part of shared enterprise, with others of roughly similar outlook.

8. Given my love love of magazines & what they stand for, it was hard for me to leave The New Republic and hard now to partially leave the Nation (where I'm giving up my 3-times a week column but keeping my monthly print column). Which raises the question: why Substack?

9. The shortest answer I can give is: I miss blogging and Substack seems the best path for a return to a viable blogging culture (not just for me but in general).

10. A lot of you are too young to remember but there really was a efflorescence of blogging circa 2000-2010 or so. Like any supposed golden age it had plenty of dross (lots of warmongers especially 2001-2003) but also lots of positive developments (the current left revival).

11. If you look at the 21st century revival of feminism, anti-racism & social democracy, a lot of the seeds of the current moment -- really the start of a cultural and intellectual infrastructure -- were planted in the early blogs.

12. It wasn't just that the blogs opened up venues for new voices, but they also allowed like-minded people to find & influence each other. Moreover for many mid-tier bloggers , it was even economically viable until Google came along & ate all the ad revenue.

13. Blogging encouraged a kind of provisional, open-ended thinking -- along with engagement with other bloggers -- which I think was good for people and really helped move conversation forward. Also created a bridge between experts & wider community.

14. Twitter of course is a kind of blogging and god knows I've made use of it in that way. It's especially good for engagement & thinking out loud. But the 240 character limit -- even with threads -- prevents some arguments from being developed as they should.

15. As with blogging, substack of course has its share of dingbats -- the caliper enthusiasts etc. -- but I've been impressed by the way @HC_Richardson & @lionel_trolling have used it as a vehicle for bringing in substantial historical knowledge to a wider audience.

16. All of which is a round-about way of saying I'll now be found on Substack, where I'll continue (as I do here) to try and think about the world we share. I hope you join me: jeetheer.substack.com/p/welcome-to-t…