Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thank YOU

Hello everyone,

Posting will be light to variable (mostly light) up through the end of the year as I go home to family for the holidays. My first stop will be at Kevin’s house in upstate New York, which is always a treat. We’ll be cooking up a lighter Christmas episode for you.

For those of you who don’t know, Disaffected is not just this Substack, but also a weekly hour-long talk show on Youtube and Rumble. It’s joint production between me and Kevin, and he’s responsible for making the show look and sound as it does. Thank goodness for actual media professionals, right?

To everyone who reads and subscribes to this Substack and/or to our show on other platforms, Kevin and I are so grateful to you. Thank you. Special thanks to all of you who are paid subscribers—it sounds like a canned public radio phrase, but you really do make it possible for us to produce the show and the writing here. We don’t yet have sponsors or advertisers, so without you, we wouldn’t have a show (yes, literally).

When we first started the show in January of 2021, we didn’t know what it would become. We knew we were compelled to talk about the abuse dynamics that now shape our modern public and political life in the West, and we knew we wanted to tell the world that what began in dysfunctional homes jumped the shark and went feral and public.

What we didn’t know was whether anyone would be interested. But you are, and you have been. So many of you have left thoughtful comments here and under our videos, and some of you have joined as supporting members and made our private Discord chat server a lively and interesting place.

People you don’t even know are glad for your generosity, too. Countless supporting members who’ve joined our Discord have said something like, “This is one of the only places I can talk about the insanity of our society, and the psychological dysfunction all around us with other people who get it.” That’s largely down to you, subscribers.

On a personal note, many of you were unbelievably generous to me, a stranger, earlier this year when my house was devastated by the worst flooding in New England in a century. Because of your gifts, I was able to start reclaiming this heavily damaged house so that I had a place to live, and the family who lives in the upper floor could avoid being displaced. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for what you did. It wasn’t just the money, but the kindness you showed to someone most of you have never met; it chokes me up.

It’s hard times right now. It’s been hard times for several years, and I suspect that’s going to get worse for all of us in the West. Who knows how much you and I can help right this ship in our small way. But damn it, we’re going to keep trying.

Thank you so much for being a part of our project. Whatever your religion or lack of it, however your family and friend circle is constituted, my wish for every one of you is to spend the holidays sharing love with people who care about you. Do your best to make it joyful, even if it’s only small. And it isn’t small, really, is it? In the end, all any of us have are the people who love us, and whom we love right back.

Hold onto this. It’s the only thing that matters in a world that’s been turned upside down.

With affection and my best wishes,

—Josh Slocum