What I'm Thankful for in 2023
Thank you, readers!
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World will not be working so hard over the Thanksgiving break. In light of some epic acts of CEO-inspired malfeasance in recent weeks days, I thought it was a good idea to give the staff a longer break in the hopes of setting a good example. Hopefully, this means they will: a) achieve better work/life balance; and b) neither aid nor abet crimes at the workplace.
Before I take a small break, however, I wanted to express a note of thanks to everyone who reads/subscribes to Drezner’s World. I am grateful that after more than 20 years (?!) of blogging, some folks are still interested in what I have to say about the events of the day. I launched this Substack last year right around the time that many were reporting that the Substack subscription fatigue was real. Drezner’s World, however, has been growing at a steady clip since September 2022.
The relationship between writers and readers is a tricky one. Ostensibly the best writers speak truth to power and ignore everything else as background noise. The rest of us mortals, however, crave feedback of some sort to what they write. Part of the fun of this for me is the unpredictability of what lands and what does not. After opining for more than a generation, maybe I have gotten a bit better at sensing if one of my columns registers in the public sphere.
Only a bit however — I can still be surprised by which ideas land and which ones disappear into the ether!
When I wrote earlier this month about columnists having only a half-life of five years or so, some readers asked in the comments about how I felt about my own run as a commentator for two-plus decades. My response is that I normally do not think of what I’m writing here to be in the same category as a Jamelle Bouie or Gideon Rachman. Their primary occupation is to distill their reporting and thinking into 700-word columns. For me this remains, as always, an intellectual sketchpad. Most of the ideas I propose here are contingent and subject to change. The freedom to propose something and later be proven wrong about it is liberating.
Even more liberating is knowing that there are readers out there who are fine with this style. Again, my deepest thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving!
And thank you. I couldn’t comment on Monday’s post, obviously, but it captured a great deal of what I have been thinking and feeling.
And thank you Dan for continuing to write so presciently and take seriously things that should be taken seriously. Happy Thanksgiving.