December 6 Friday roundup

Episode 4 of Next Comes What is live! You can watch “A Tiny Revolution” on YouTube or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. (A reminder: the Friday podcast is a multimedia version of the written post on politics and history that comes out in the newsletter each Tuesday, so don’t be surprised if you notice overlap.)

This week, we saw more pushback to Trump’s most ridiculous cabinet nominees, with Pete Hegseth promising to quit drinking if only the Senate will let him run the Department of Defense. So it was fitting that this week’s theme for the podcast is the uses and limits of jokes in the fight against those all too willing to shred democracy.

Here are just a few of the people mentioned in the Tuesday essay and on the podcast this week (not counting all the comedians): civil-rights-era activist Bruce Hartford, social scientist Sonia Noderer, sociologist Majken Jul Sørensen, director Rudolph Herzog, activist Srđa Popović, and Frederick Douglass (!).

I had planned for the Thursday and Friday posts to go behind a paywall this week, but wound up doing something fun on the road for next week’s posts and podcast. So the arrival of the paywall will be delayed for a bit longer.

As mentioned before, the podcast and the main political post of the week will continue to be free. But it does take time to do this work. So if you like what you read here but aren’t yet a subscriber, I encourage you to subscribe!

And if you’re already a subscriber but not a paid one, I encourage you to upgrade and become one. You’ll guarantee access to all Degenerate Art posts going forward. And you’ll also be helping others who might not be able to afford a subscription to see the material on politics and history here or on the podcast (which Jason Sattler and I launched to try to reach those who may not be big readers but are nonetheless trying to stay informed).

As always, thank you for being part of this community! It’s a honor to write for you.