Couldn’t be clearer: we just voted to reelect a convicted felon to the most powerful job in the world.

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— Waylon & Elephant Journal (@elephantjournal.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 9:40 AM

Unhappy Insurrection Inauguration Day, America!

We’re in the homestretch, people. President Biden is in the White House for a few more nights then—President Trump. Melania “I don’t really care, do you,” might even join him this time.

Will our democracy survive a guy who talks about no more need to vote, who looks up to Putin and admires Hungary? Who is putting incompetent loyalists in serious positions of power? Who is fine with undermining free and fair elections, who doesn’t care about planet, people, or economy—but rather only himself?

As they said of Hitler’s Reich, a democracy’s fatal flaw is that it allows the means of its own destruction. However imperfect, a working democracy is a beautiful thing—the privileges it extends to all people are the right to free expression, the right to, through activism and voting and being a good citizen, leave their country a little better off to their children.

And now, with floods and fires and draught ravaging our world, with China emerging as a greener power, with huge trucks and aggression Great Again, we enter a dark four years. Maybe longer.

I am, as editor-in-chief of Elephant, often told by my readers not to say such things. I’m close to leaving, I’m close to unfollowing, I don’t come here for negativity, they cry! Our comment sections flooded with anger.

But in this society divided by social media…which shows us a seductive stew of facts, lies, what others want us to believe, and what we want to believe…too many of us have left decency and facts behind and elevated opinion and invective.⁠

That doesn’t make Elephant less relephant—it makes our mission, and your community…you…more vital. We are, today, one of the last great independent sites that hasn’t been crushed by Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok.

Anyone, including the diverse community that is Elephant, who speaks up over the next four years will be doing so at risk of censure.

So support this truth. Use us or lose us. If we survive the next five years, it will be because our mission of service to you, others, and our planet, is still relephant.

Please subscribe and get our free newsletter. Please keep us alive and thriving—we need our mindful and indie communities.

As the sole owner, I could have sold out years ago, for…a lot. I didn’t want to. I actually want to have a platform out there for those who care. For diverse voices to connect around values of truth, compassion, learning, environmentalism.

Let us invest in timeless wisdom, in awakening, in caring for our world.

Please make sure you get our newsletter, and stay connected this year. Keep Elephant’s “the mindful life,” the voices of thousands of caring writers and humans, in your life. We’ll share our best, and most helpful, in our newsletter and our iphone app.⁠ After 22 years, we will not make it through the next five without your giving a care. Subscribe. Write. Read. Share. Comment.

May we be of benefit, and good luck to us all!