Draft Four: The context diet
Scroll for a book discount.
I was walking through the Bucharest spring earlier today, sun flooding the weekend morning streets, birds chirping, and, for a minute, almost forgot the world.
But then the podcast I was listening to brought me back: less than two months till the presidential elections in Romania, and by the time you are reading this we might have a scandal on our hands if Călin Georgescu is not allowed to run.
A lot has happened since the last latter, but “a lot happening” is the house special of 2025.
Here’s what I’ll do instead of recapping the insanity: what I wrote about where I think the current insanity is going still stands. So does the need for all of us to keep doing life, all while everything is happening. That’s why today’s letter is a buffet-style serving of side dishes of context, with a sprinkle of solace.
Remember the lesson of the pandemic, which became truly real around this time five years ago: don’t get exhausted too fast, as it might be intense for a while.
Pick what you’re in the mood for, and don’t consume more than you need.
For the recovering news junkie
Try and skipping the feeds. Refreshing for dopamine dumps an endless stream of information and takes that you can’t digest the way you’re supposed to. If you feel like you can’t live disconnected from the now, at least lower the exposure. Pick a daily news podcast that does a 15-20 minute recap. In Romania my choice is Recorder’s Știrile Zilei, available both in podcast feeds and on YouTube.
For the geopolitical nerd looking for our regional perspective
That means also taking in the world from Central and Eastern Europe or the Caucuses, countries that are legitimately scared of Russia, but also disenchanted with the idea of the West as a moral leader of the world. Natalia Antelava of Coda Story brilliantly explains why Putin’s worldview is currently winning:
It would be too simple to blame Donald Trump or any single political leader for finally giving Putin his seat at the table. This failure belongs to the entire Western establishment – including media organizations, think tanks, universities, corporations, and civil society institutions.
The values the West claimed for itself – defense of individual rights, rule of law, democratic values – were worth fighting for. But having “won” the Cold War, Western establishments grew complacent. They assumed the moral high ground was unassailable, dismissing those who warned it could be lost. (…)
While Western governments spent billions setting up fact-checking initiatives and disinformation monitoring centers – always reacting, always one step behind – Putin was methodically building loose, agile networks that tapped into genuine popular anger about Western hypocrisy and double standards.
For those trying to figure out “the Georgescu doctrine”
What disenchantment with the West has done in Romania is fuel reactionary elements that blame real social ills on foreign influence, help fringe neo-fascist groups resurface with an ultranationalist message, and embolden the electoral-process friendly far right. This has accelerated to the point that some actively question the need for Romania to be part of NATO and the EU, which have been the country’s foreign policy pillars for decades.
Political scientist Marius Ghincea explained “the Georgescu doctrine” in Contributors, reprinted here in English by The Bridge of Friendship:
[The Georgescu doctrine] has several defining elements. First, it implies a significant distancing from the West, including NATO and the EU, which are seen as sources of unacceptable constraints. Georgescu, like the radical right-wing counter-elite, believes that Romania has surrendered its political and economic sovereignty by joining these structures, and that the result is subordination to Western capitals.
By comparison, the Eastern partners, Russia, China, are presented in a more benign light, being praised either for their cultural conservatism or for their ability to provide rapid investment without political strings attached. But this romanticization of potential authoritarian partners ignores the long-term costs of dependence on capital from these regions, as well as the deep differences in values and interests. More than anything, it would create the conditions for state capture by patron-client networks that would no longer have the restraints imposed by the liberal conditions and rules coming from Brussels. In other words, free to steal without consequences, much like what is happening these days in Georgia or the countries of Central Asia.
For those trying to figure WTF is up with the US
This is a great (if worrisome) conversation between Ezra Klein and Fareed Zakaria. They go through ideas about Trump’s foreign policy, and land on something that I believe is part of what is confusing to many people in Europe these days: America was an ally, an ideological one. What just happened? Is it just turning into a bully and a despot who just wants a better deal, screw the others? (See the recent treatment of Ukraine, the statements about Gaza etc.). Or is there something deeper and darker at heart – that Trump and Vance would want their America to be more like an “illiberal democracy” than anything else. Here’s Zakaria tackling this:
Part of what’s going on here, this new dynamic in international relations we’re watching, is that it’s not all about power. It’s about ideology.
If you think about what Putin is reacting to in the rise and hegemony of the West after the collapse of Communism, some of it is Western power and the expansion of NATO. But a lot of what Putin has been obsessed with has been the expansion of Western liberal ideas and ideology.
The things that he talks so much about are the rise of multiculturalism in the West, the rise of a kind of libertine gender ideology, the idea of gender fluidity — he even weighed in on the J.K. Rowling controversy. These issues are central to the way that Putin thinks about Russian power and the power of his regime. So he’s viewed the rising tide and the spreading of Western liberal ideas as much of a threat as the expansion of NATO. (…)
If you listen to Xi Jinping, a lot of the things he’s talked about are the dangers of too much Westernization, too much liberalism. The Chinese have not just cracked down on the private sector, they’ve cracked down on what they called the effeminacy of men. Xi has talked about the virtues of motherhood, and women going back to raising families. So again, he views this rising tide of Western liberalism as much a threat as Western hard power.
And the irony is Trump and Vance agree with Xi and Putin. So for the first time now, you have in America a party or an ideology that says: Yes, that’s right.
For those worrying about the media biz model
In a world like the one above, no wonder the public believes journalists are just as corrupt as people in power. Which is why in such dire circumstances we need to be more pragmatic. Media funding guru Peter Erdely does a great job of warning that our quest for funding purity at a time when revenues are taking serious hits on all fronts might be distracting from what we need to do to keep providing a service.
What's particularly frustrating about our industry's funding fixation is how it’s evolved into a sort of moral purity test. Just over this past month, as our sector is disrupted yet again, I’ve heard smart people struggling to run newsrooms tell me that:
· advertising revenues are unacceptable and compromise the work
· audience revenues are a dead end, create bad incentives and restrict access
· institutional funding is awful and undermines independence
We've developed an elaborate hierarchy of “cleanliness” in funding sources that often bears little relationship to actual editorial independence or journalistic quality. People are engaged in some weird competition trying to prove their chosen funding model is the only pure one, while everyone else is making unethical compromises.
Having struggled to build and maintain an independent nonprofit media organization, I always believed we should spend less time being sanctimonious about what others do, and more intentional about our own work: have a strategy for a revenue mix, set your appropriate ethical boundaries, be transparent about them, raise the money, deliver the work, resist envy and gossip.
For those needing a reminder of humanity
Mircea Drăgoi is one of my favorite (visual) storytellers. The image above is from a recent newsletter he sent. To my great joy, Mircea started to collect his thoughts and drawings on a Substack you should check out for a dose and a reminder of our common humanity. Start with the story of Ioan, a 100-year-old former factory worker, carpenter and family man from a village in Transylvania.
For those in need of AI guidance
I have been getting better at AI prompt writing, and have found numerous useful ways to use ChatGPT – from organizing notes and thoughts, to sorting through information, brainstorming and getting feedback. Jeremy Caplan writes the eternally useful newsletter Wonder Tools and recently picked 9 Useful AI prompts to share. The one I use the most is what Jeremy calls “organize my rambling”, and it sounds something like this:
Please organize the following information into a clear, structured format: [paste or upload notes/ thoughts/ transcript]. Identify the main themes or categories, group related points together, and create a logical flow…
Goal: Structure messy materials
Use this when…
· You have disjointed thoughts needing structure;
· Your meeting notes lack organization;
· You've brainstormed ideas and need help categorizing them.
For some solace (and a book discount)
I told you earlier this year that my guide through January was a wonderful little book called Meditations for Mortals by the British journalist and writer Oliver Burkeman. It’s meant to be read one chapter at a day, for a month, as a reminder of our imperfection. Here are three of the ideas that Oliver touches on that stayed with me
You can’t care about everything.
You can do anything for 15 minutes.
Allow other people their problems.
The book just came out in Romanian, and I’m happy to be sharing a discount code with all of you who want to purchase it directly from the publisher. It’ll be active from Monday to Sunday, March 10-16, and it’ll give you a 20% discount. Just input the code draftfour at checkout. If you get it and read it, please let me know if it helped at all in the craziness.
A note: Two weeks from now is The Power of Storytelling, so I won’t be able to write a letter. Which means you’ll most likely hear from me next on the last weekend of March, with a recap and some tools on how to use stories for connection. Thank you!