Desk Notes | Obama Warned Us About Authoritarianism. Did He Look in a Mirror First?
Executive overreach, selective outrage, and the empathy trap
Another Friday rolls around, and honestly? This week has been aggressively normal, which, after the chaos of the last few months, I’m not mad about.
Quick life updates: My husband spent today doing a long drive to pick up over 200 pounds of pig for the freezer. While he was gone, I got to sleep in, which was glorious. I remembered that someone (me) needed to completely rearrange our freezers to actually fit 200 pounds of pork. So I spent my morning playing Tetris with frozen food, moving things around, and coming to the stark realization that before any of this pig fits anywhere, I’m going to have to can about 50 pounds of peaches and another 50 pounds of tomatoes this weekend.
So that’s my weekend. No property visit. No exciting adventures. Just me, a mountain of produce, and way too many Mason jars. The glamorous homesteading life, right?
Sometimes life isn’t interesting. Sometimes it’s just... practical. Mundane. And honestly? That’s okay.
But here’s what I’m actually proud of this week: I’ve been waking up early every morning for the last 16 days to do my Bible study. Not a devotional. Not a quick “verse of the day” scroll. Actual study, reading, commentary, Bible dictionary, the whole deal. For a long time, I was just squeezing it in whenever I found time, which basically meant it was getting the leftover scraps of my attention. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been purposeful about dedicating time to it, and it’s been genuinely rewarding. I’m learning details I either never knew or conveniently forgot, and it’s been encouraging in ways I didn’t expect. Turns out, prioritizing the habit of setting your day with something substantial actually matters.
Quick plug: If you’re looking for a pocket tool for Bible study that has commentary, concordance, cross-references, different translations, and dictionaries all in one place, may I suggest the Blue Letter Bible app (BLB). It’s been a game-changer for me.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
In Desk Notes
Feature: Was The “Hope Guy” The Authoritarian Nobody Talked About When It Mattered? - A deep dive into Obama’s authoritarian track record that the media conveniently forgot about while he lectures us about democratic norms.
Also Featuring:
When Empathy Becomes a Weapon: Why asking “but is it true?” isn’t cruel—it’s necessary.
Can Bari Weiss Save CBS News? Spoiler: Probably not, but I love that she’s trying.
AOC’s CNN Coronation: Was the “shutdown town hall” actually a campaign soft launch?
Ok let’s get into it!
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Was The “Hope Guy” The Authoritarian Nobody Talked About When It Mattered?
I make it a point to watch stuff from people I disagree with. It’s annoying, sometimes infuriating, but necessary if I’m going to understand what’s actually happening rather than just what my feed wants me to think is happening. So this week, I sat through Barack Obama’s appearance on Marc Maron’s final WTF podcast episode.
And honestly? It was as annoying as I expected it to be.
Obama closed out Maron’s 16-year run, the same podcast he helped legitimize a decade ago when he sat in Maron’s garage as a sitting president. Maron told the New York Times he wanted to end by talking to the “hope guy” about how to navigate “the world we’re living in, as frightening as it is.”
And that’s what’s been gnawing at me all week.