Your Substack complaining about the problem is part of the problem.

It feels like the moment for action is upon us, but everyone seems too busy writing and reading about it to get moving.

I hit a milestone today: I read the one-millionth piece that eloquently and convincingly makes the case that Trump is a corrupt despot and the American Republic is in trouble. The winning piece was Jamelle Bouie's column in the Times describing just how contemptuous Trump is of the rule of law, but it really could have been any one of about ten similar pieces I read every day. The individual authors and articles don't matter because they all have the same thing in common: they won’t change anything.

Substack is an amazing place and I'm glad for it -- any platform that facilitates free expression is a good thing. It’s the nature of how the algo perceives my interests of course, but my Substack is an endless raging river of pieces like Bouie’s: smart, engaging and often dispiriting analyses of this dark era of creeping authoritarianism we're in. That steady deluge, plus all the articles I read in any number of other established publications, have now got me wondering if all this spilled ink isn't a part of the problem rather than a spur to a solution.

Writing takes time, it takes work. Anyone can fire off a post in a few minutes on Facebook or Twitter decrying this or that, but the kind of meaningful and convincing arguments that we enjoy reading on Substack or in our other feeds do not come without a lot of effort on the part of the author. It takes me hours to draft and craft the pieces I write to a standard I think is acceptable, and I'm only writing a few hundred words at a time of amateur drivel-y whatever for a subscriber base of about 150 indulgent friends. (God bless you guys!) For the pros writing more substantive, evidence-supported pieces for much larger, paying audiences the process is presumably more rigorous and exhaustive.

That's as it should be. Quality takes time. Rhetoric is an art. But our creative and intellectual energies are not inexhaustible and that fuel is a complicated mix of things. It might include a concoction of emotions like ideals, anger, outrage, passion, persuasion and hope, but whatever it is a writer is expressing, that's the variety of energy they're burning. While it's a productive and positive combustion, it's depletive. Whatever we vent we have less of.

I think the other side of the equation might be equally demotivating. While it's easier to read than write, it does take energy to consume and digest ideas. We read and wallow in all the analyses and takes -- doomscrolling the crap out of our downtime and bedtimes -- and in theory knowledge is power so all of this should be keeping us informed, fortified and motivated. So why does it feel stupefying instead? The more I read, no matter how smart, funny or spot-on it is, the more I start to feel depressed and broken: the skipping record repeating the same song over and over is maddening not inspiring. Especially when the song is This is All So Clearly Wrong, Why oh Why Won't Somebody Do Something?!

Is it possible that this glut of impassioned commentary on the abuses of the Trump administration and its Republican enablers is draining our society of energies it could be using to resist? Is the real reason that nothing seems to be happening in any real way to countermand or curb these abuses born of the fact we have no mental bandwidth left to motivate us? Does engaging in the conversation make us feel like we're doing something when in fact all we're achieving is screaming ourselves into exhaustion?

Even those quick and casual social posts everybody is guilty of may be to blame. When we post online we have our friend counts in mind, and by this point in Internet time many of us have built up hundreds or thousands of "friends". Since most people's posts are public and shareable, we also imagine our potential audience extends infinitely. Our egos let us subconciously assume that when we release something into the world that we think is witty or smart or insightful or simply true that it's like a booming firework launched into the night sky. We don't know who heard it or saw it, other than the nine close-by friends we heard ooh and ahh, but we feel like it must have been a lot. I mean, look how colorful and loud that was! The whole damn state must have seen it!

But no, the whole damn state was asleep or watching The Pitt far out of eye- and earshot. Even most of our friends or neighbors were unaware. But we fired off that rocket and thought, "I did my part."

The Jamelle Bouie piece I read today was in the New York Times, so it's a pretty big firework. A lot of people will hear and see it. And it will do nothing. Neither will the latest satisfyingly excoriating monologue by John Stewart on the Daily Show. Or some trending meme roasting Trump's acceptance of a $400 million Qatari jet.

The conversation is a cacophony that includes a lot of noise but also a lot of music you can tap your feet to, but the net result is the proverbial sound and fury and what that usually signifies. If there's a movement being launched it feels like it's only the synchronized nodding of millions of people agreeing that things are pretty shitty right now.

My favorite illustration of this faux proactivity was the recent column by David Brooks in which he grandiosely pronounced that we are now in an extraordinary bleak time that requires an extraordinary response. It was a full-throated call for a "comprehensive national civic uprising," a forceful rousing of the rabble to get off their duffs and go do something. And it concluded, deliciously, with the author stating candidly, "I'm really not a movement guy." What could be a more inspiring call to action than the eloquent battle cry of a guy who won't take action?

I don't mean to pick on Brooks -- frankly I'm throwing stones in the same glass house. I'm 53 and have yet to march for a single thing in my life. Sad but true. My only defense is that I believe I'm not the answer to this problem any more than Brooks is, and in fact we're both part of the problem (albeit with far different subscriber counts).

What's the answer? There's only ever one answer to a problem like this, which isn't a new problem. It's not more yelling, or more eloquent writing. It's people. Leadership. It's a someone who rises up and declares they've had enough and starts doing things and getting others to do things. It’s not a politician. Not a celebrity. It's someone who right now most of us probably don't know about, someone who is cut from a different cloth, someone who drives their friends and family a bit nutty with their single-minded drive to do something. Think John Lewis or Greta Thunberg, someone who just goes out and takes action consistently enough that it attracts attention, inspires others and starts to move a needle.

And yes, like Lewis and Thunberg, that someone probably needs to be young. Because the biggest virtue of youth is that it hasn't yet learned the cynical lesson of how crushingly effective the world is at suppressing or eliminating the people and forces that resist its status quo. When you learn those lessons and get busy with work and family you stop wanting to take action and start launching Substacks to complain and feel like you're doing something.

So where are the youthful leaders of resistance we need to see rising up right now? I hear plenty of noise, read plenty of writing, but I'm not seeing the leaders. Maybe I'm ignorant and/or looking in the wrong places or simply not seeing what's there, but if that's true that's also instructive: the leaders we need in this moment will be so ubiquitous that even the ignorant or blind will know who they are.

I hope they turn up soon because I believe we're running out of time. We need this young hero or heroes to make themselves loudly known, soon.

Me and David Brooks are waiting