We Have Never Been So Back

Elon restored my Twitter.

One hour before Joe Biden was forced out of his candidacy for President by his own party Elon Musk unbanned my account on Twitter. Auspicious!

I was banned on December 18th, 2021 and have only had spasmodic smaller accounts which have been almost immediately suppressed over the last 2 and a half years. It has been a substantial blow to my own writing that I lack the means to promote my work on the nation’s largest social media platform. The bans were so extensive and potent that at one point I could not create an account using my own home IP address without being immediately suspended.

On July 13th, however, in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt I decided to try creating a new account under my own name in order to meme for my President. It was from that account that I implored Elon, on a whim, to unban me. I guess he listened because here I am, back in action.

Thanks, Elon!

You can follow me here.

Even though I have my account back (for now) I lost out on years of growth. That stings. It is hard to be a writer if no one reads your stuff. But the years in the wilderness weren’t all bad. I began this Substack in March of 2022 because I needed a place for my writing somewhere on social media. Substack has been good to me. In June, I hit 2,000 readers. It took me 18 months to get to 1,000 readers but only 8 in order to double that number.

The rate of growth increasing is a good sign. I hope to get to 10,000 readers by the end of next year and 20,000 the year after that. At that point, this Substack might well be able to sustain my income through reader subscriptions. That kind of freedom as a writer is the dream.

We will see.

For those who enjoy my work and want to see it grow and expand I suggest making a pledge to support Regime Critic. These pledges are an important metric of success. A pledge of support in and of itself shows me that readers are interested in what I have to say and would be willing to not only read but to help support the future growth of this project. Right now about 1% of readers have pledged to support this writing on its own accord. I am deeply grateful for that support. It is a heartening sign.

I do not have plans, in the short term, to activate those pledges. Still, it is good to know they are there. Even if the pledged amounts never amount to enough to allow me to write full time, they would still provide a significant budget that I could use to pay for FOIA requests, travel for stories, and updated audio-visual equipment that I could use to increase the quality and reach of this publication.

Right now, I have over $2,000 a year pledged to Regime Critic. I’ve been mulling over how best that might be used when the time comes. As it stands, the best way you can support Regime Critic besides making a pledge is to share pieces that you like. If you enjoy something you’ve read here, don’t just hit the “like” button—send it to friends.

It is hard to censor ideas when they are allowed to spread. I have noticed that the more people are exposed to my work the more readers I get. This means that there are a ton of people out there who would like our work here but simply don’t know about it. You can help change that.

For now, though, my dissertation is my primary focus. I have 3 of 5 chapters drafted and am currently in the process of submitting edits to my committee.

Pietas magazine, the official publication of the Ciceronian Society, graciously published my essay Folly in the Pacific: How America’s Interventionist Policy in China Provoked the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor.

This essay is a good overview of the argument of my dissertation. I hold that Pearl Harbor and therefore the wider Pacific War against Japan was not inevitable. Rather American involvement in WWII was the product of a new view of justice articulated by FDR and the other Progressives. Their liberal internationalism embraced an interventionist foreign policy alien to the principles of the American Founding.

Indeed, when one digs deeper into the causes of American involvement in WWII it becomes clear that a desire among Progressives to preserve Chinese sovereignty, more than concerns about national defense, drove antagonism with the Japanese.

Here is the abstract:

World War II decisively altered the world order. This essay explores the roots of America’s involvement in that conflict. Describing itself in clear opposition to the American Founders’ views of neutrality and diplomacy, the late nineteenth-century progressive view of foreign policy directly led to America’s involvement in the Philippines, China, and the Far East. Those interventions ultimately led to Pearl Harbor by placing American projects for global uplift on a collision course with Imperial Japanese geopolitical interests in their near abroad. In what is meant to be a provocative and original argument, this article makes the case that by following the Founders’ foreign policy the United States could have avoided the War in the Pacific altogether.

To understand the full argument, I suggest you read the whole thing at the link above.

To close, this has been the most insane weak and a half in American politics that I have ever experienced. The chaos of the assassination attempt, Biden’s departure from the presidential race amidst his disappearance from public life, and the sudden elevation of Kamala Harris all warrant a longer treatment which I hope to provide here in these pages.

For now, it is enough to say that I am inspired. I still think Trump is going to win. There is real hope. That bullet didn’t hit Trump for a reason.