We're one year into Trump's second term, and you know, a lot of the media class is ever so slowly coming to their senses. What took them so long?

Last April, David Brooks published a long essay in The Atlantic titled “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” in which he acknowledged that he’d underestimated how much conservatism had become pure anti-liberal reaction. Jon Stewart, who spent the early weeks of the second Trump administration chiding liberals for being too quick to use the word “fascism,” eventually conceded on air: “I did not think we would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Who could’ve known? Maybe if somebody out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

Political scientist Corey Robin, who had spent years dismissing those who called MAGA fascist, admitted on an October podcast: “I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong.”And then there are the journalists who covered the 2024 campaign, who are now looking back at their own work with what might charitably be called discomfort. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after listening to a recent podcast that crystallized something for me.

[...] But it wasn’t unknowable. It is literally the job of political journalists to know what politicians are planning to do. It is the job to read policy documents, to track personnel, to notice when a candidate praises an organization on video and then claims to know nothing about it. This is the work. And yet, when advocates and experts did that work and tried to warn people about what was coming, they were dismissed as partisan or alarmist. When Trump lied about his involvement with Project 2025, that lie was treated as a fact that needed to be carefully weighed.

So, did dirty hippie bloggers get the big picture wrong? Nope. Hardly ever. Because we're people who read, deep and wide. Because we believe in institutional knowledge, and pattern recognition. Because we examine information and evaluate it. And speaking of some of those voices have been crying in the wilderness for a very long time: Heather Digby Parton. Atrios. Marcy Wheeler. Roy Edroso. Marcos. Media Matters. And far too many for this old broad to list off the top of her head. (You may berate me in the comments.)

My point being, we spoke out when no one else would. We all agreed PUBLICLY that the new Department of Homeland Security was a fascist name, with what sounded like fashy intentions. We said the entire pretext for the Iraq invasion was fabricated when your network anchors were too fucking terrified to be seen without a flag pin. We told you the NYT swallowed garbage to set Hillary Clinton up, or that your "dementia" attacks on Joe Biden were bullshit. WE TOLD YOU.

And so on. This is why we expect you to support the blogs you read. Because we're the smoke detectors. We make it possible for you to breathe a little bit, because you know we'll sound the alarm when you need to hear it.