"America is a mess," he said. "A beautiful mess."

Some thoughts on dark times—and change. [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, It has been a tough couple of months. A year ago, it felt like we were taking a much-needed respite. I wrote then about how [slow news can be good news]( after five years of crisis mode, and how paying less attention to the news and traffic being down across the industry made perfect sense given the abeyance of the "batshit bonkers" headlines we had grown used to. This year, bonkers is back: Putin's invasion of Ukraine; a racially driven mass shooting in Buffalo and one targeting children in Uvalde days later; the Roe leak and last Friday's far-reaching and frightening repeal; more chilling revelations adding to what we already knew about Trump's ongoing coup attempt while too many in his party look the other way. But I'm not sure if the heightened attention to the news is back, and our end-of-fiscal-year fundraising campaign is struggling as a result. [Even if we see a big surge in donations ahead of Thursday's deadline](, the $190,000 gap in our online budget is looking to be quite a bit larger than we can easily manage. But instead of doom and gloom and just harping on that big number and, gulp, Thursday's deadline, I wanted to try taking a step back this afternoon as I make [an urgent request for the donations that fuel]([Mother Jones.]( Back in February, I asked a Mother Jones reader what felt different now compared to 2020. She did not miss a beat. "In 2020, I knew that Trump would lose and that things would be okay again. Now…" She didn't have to finish the last sentence. The truth is, we all knew that things were not going to be magically okay. We knew Trump dramatized, but did not create, the hate, racism, division, and fear that plague America. Still, it has been hard to process how very not okay things have been. At times like this, one of my personal respites is history. Mother Jones co-founder Adam Hochschild has written (including in a feature in the next issue of our print magazine) about the repressive, censorious decade that followed World War I. Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act was positively Putinesque in its threat to anyone who "shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation of the military or naval forces of the United States." White mobs rampaged through American cities [assaulting and murdering]( Black people and [destroying entire neighborhoods](. America did make it out of that dark time, and powerful changes followed: The New Deal, the Voting Rights Act, the end of Jim Crow. And there were backward lurches too—the McCarthy era, the government lying to America about war in Vietnam and in Iraq, the rise of mass incarceration and a more subtle Jim Crow. I asked an historian recently what they thought of a line that Dr. Martin Luther King coined and President Obama invoked, about the [arc of the moral universe bending toward justice](. "It does bend toward justice," they said after some thought. "But like anything you bend, it also snaps back. Sometimes violently." Maybe this is one way to think about this moment: A snapback. Progress sparks backlash, and never more than when it comes to democracy. America, founded on minority rule, has moved toward democracy in fits and starts: It's only been a century since the 19th Amendment, a little over half that since the Voting Rights Act. That is a lot of change in a short time, by historical standards, and it's come alongside massive shifts in technology, the economy, and the way we get and process information. Change like that can be terrifying, and there have always been those who seek to weaponize that fear. Broad majorities agree that abortion should be legal, that people should be able to marry whom they love, and that we should act on climate change and gun violence—but the backlash is growing more fierce. "The defeat of Roe was made possible by cutting corners and seizing every advantage in an undemocratic system," my colleague Tim Murphy [wrote]( the day of the decision. "It was a redistribution of power bordering on theft." The day before Roe fell, I was on a show with Jim Hightower, the former Texas commissioner of agriculture, and Baratunde Thurston, a comedian and journalist who hosts the podcast [How To Citizen](. We talked about the despair that grips so many right now—the feeling that everything is getting worse, that freedoms we took for granted are disappearing, that the worst is yet to come. It's easy, Thurston said, to be tempted, at times like this, to want to counter fear and rage with more of the same. "But what if there were other emotions available to us?" He talked about community, affinity, even love. He talked about how America has always been about the tension between what it has been, and what it could be. "America is a mess," he said. "A beautiful mess." I couldn't help but think of his new nature show, in which he explores that beauty with a lot of people who don't usually show up in nature shows: A group of Black surfers, an indigenous fisherman, a guy "who looks like the picture of the MAGA voter in a New York Times profile" and turns out to be a sustainable kelp farmer. There are so many ways of being an American, Baratunde was saying—let's not limit ourselves to the two or three options that traditional politics (and traditional media) seems to offer up. I happened to be typing out this paragraph on a train as it took on Pride paradegoers. There were teens in fishnet stockings and grown men in tuxes, middle aged couples with crucifixes at their necks and rainbow armbands on their wrists, grandmothers and grandkids, all of them a little (or a lot) high from being together and being themselves. I had started the weekend at a Mother Jones board meeting where we discussed the Roe decision and the tough budget realities ahead for Mother Jones, and it was inspiring to be among that joyful crowd returning home. Sometimes, change is just about seeing more than what's directly in front of us. We might be in one of those moments when the arc of the moral universe is snapping back. But that doesn't mean it will never bend again. And as we work toward bending it, we can celebrate all the good work that happens along the way even when the odds seem long. That includes, in my personal book, the countless people who are working right now to make sure women can access abortions—donating to funds, setting up travel, shoring up clinics. (Kitty, a Texas woman who has been an "abortion navigator" for 50 years [told us her story]( recently, and it's a powerful read.) There are very concrete, specific ways to help, and if they don't fix everything all at once, they nonetheless are incredibly meaningful. The gun reform bill the Senate passed? So flawed, so limited—and yet, there will be people who would have lost loved ones, but will get to hug them instead as a result. In the face of a lot of change, one constant can be core values. Like courage and truth. Kitty and the women she has helped stuck with courage and truth in a scary situation. The people who testified before the January 6 committee did the same. And at Mother Jones, I watch our reporters go into scary situations every day—whether it's standing up to online harassment or stepping onto a sidewalk full of angry people in front of an abortion clinic. They do it to keep bringing out the truth, because they believe in its power. At the end of the show I was on, Jim Hightower told a story of a small hardware store in South Austin—one of those places where you can borrow a tool, or buy a single screw, if that's what you need. The store's motto, he said, was "Together, We Can Do It Yourself." It's going to take years—probably decades—to do it yourself, together. But that's what has what powered Mother Jones for 46 years now, togetherness, and even if this fundraising campaign comes up shorter than we need, I hope it's a temporary snapback because I know determined people will ultimately rally around the truth. And no matter which of the pressing social issues we report on, when I talk to readers about what they can do, I'm always encouraged to hear them say that progress will not happen without journalism like ours that helps create an informed ecosystem so that change can ultimately be made. If you can right now, I very much hope you'll [help us give this bonkers moment everything we can and pitch in with a donation today]( so we can close as much of that big $190,000 gap as we can by Thursday's deadline. Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is. [Monika] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones [Donate]( P.S. If you recently made a donation, thank you! And please accept our apologies for sending you this reminder—our systems take a little while to catch up. [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755