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I want you to be happy about this, because I am happy about this… but I think I have to start by reassuring you about what’s not changing:

• This blog will remain online.
• Everything I have ever published on this blog will remain online.
• Everything I write in the future—with two exceptions—will be freely available on Substack.
• I intend to back up all my future writing here on the blog, because I am not crazy enough to trust a corporation to guard anything precious.

In short, I’m not locking myself behind a paywall and demanding you throw money over a fence for peeks of me. I don’t think that would even work; this blog needs to be pretty public to do the kind of work it does. Those of you who are used to this blog and like coming here (which is, almost by definition… all of you?) can continue doing so. You’ll find very little that changes.

So why am I bothering to change at all? I have six reasons, but four of them are WordPress:

1. WordPress Comments

2. The New WordPress Editor

3. WordPress Maintenance

4. WordPress Email List Management

All of these have caused problems for De Civ, most especially comments. (Oh, man, the travails of the De Civ comment sections…) WordPress is a great, incredibly admirable system, a hacker’s paradise, and I’m so grateful to it for being free and open source. But I just don’t have time to hack away at my site anymore. I’m married with two kids now, and my other responsibilities have gotten larger. Substack seems to do all of these things somewhere between slightly better to much better (they have a footnote tool! I’m saved!)… and they maintain it all without my having to oversee it. These improvements will be largely invisible to you, but they’re a big deal to me.

5. Everyone’s On Substack

It’s realllllly hard to get discovered as an independent blogger in 2021.

Or maybe I’m just bad at it. I don’t know.

Point is, people don’t organically bump into De Civ very often. No one types “eclectic politics blog” into Google and finds my blog — much less clicks through! Right now, in 2021, everyone’s on Substack, and I think I have a better chance of just plain being noticed by a few people if I’m there, too. So I’m moving to Substack in hopes of a few more readers stumbling into this blog and joining the crew.

6. Money

Yeah, not gonna lie to you, I did think about the dollah signs.

I have wanted to be a writer since I was thirteen. I’ve even had some opportunities (generously provided by you-know-who-you-are; I am forever grateful), but I have passed them up so I can make a livable income for my family. Blogging has been an outlet for the writing I want to do.

But there’s an old saying among writers: you’re not a writer unless you’re being paid for your words.

I never expected (or even wanted) blogging to be big income. But I did have some modest goals. In 2011, I built a new computer. It cost about $1,200 and I expected it to last 7-10 years. A short time later, I started this blog (on that computer). I remember telling myself, “If this new blog pays for my next computer, then I am a success.”

By many measures, I have been a success. I have written many thousands of words, which have been read many thousands of times. I’ve gone a little viral. I’ve interviewed a federal judge and a sitting FCC commissioner. I’ve been right a whole lot. And I was so wrong once that I had to watch Gods of Egypt. (“Should I Watch?” NO!)

In all that time, I have earned exactly… zero dollars and zero cents. I’m still typing on that computer from 2011. (Don’t worry, it’s going strong.) I have a Google AdSense account, and a classy number of advertisements on this blog, but every time I get close to the minimum payout threshold, they raise it. They theoretically owe me $50.56 (my total earnings after a decade of blogging), but I’ve never seen a dime of that, and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I never will. I could do the Google Ad Voodoo and entrend the tracker updates to reticulate the SEO splines… but, man, I don’t even have time for WordPress upgrades. I just wanna write!

Substack offers a different pricing model. In their model, there are no ads. In fact, ads are banned. Instead, if people like your writing, they give you money so you will write more things. This is much easier for my tiny brain to understand. It is also more personally validating. It is also much more lucrative. If I can persuade a single person to become a paid Substack subscriber, I will have made infinity times more money in that single moment than I have in ten full years of blogging. If I can persuade two people to become paid Substack subscribers, then, in another ten years, I can finally buy that computer.

I don’t know whether I’ll actually get two subscribers, but I feel like it’s a whole lot more attainable than getting money from my AdSense account.

***

Okay, that all sounds good for me, but what about you, the discerning blog-reader? Why would you want to follow me to Substack?

First and foremost, all De Civ readers can get my newest articles quickly and reliably by subscribing to my Substack’s free list. I do intend to back up articles to WordPress… but not necessarily right away. So if you want the latest and greatest, joining the Substack is the way to go.

Second, all future comment threads are moving over to Substack, permanently. If you want to join the comments there, the easiest way is to subscribe to the free list.

Third, those of you who decide to go the extra mile and become paid subscribers will get exclusive access to two regular features (the only features I’m taking behind a paywall):

• Playing PredictIt, a brand new feature. Last year, I invested $10 in PredictIt’s political betting markets. My modest goal: to turn that $10 into $1000 and buy my next computer with it. (Hey, this blog isn’t buying me any computers!) If you join my Substack paid list, you can follow along with my strategy and political reasoning as I write about my attempts try to climb the ranks! (I’m currently at $9.88, so, uh, there’s a ways to go.)

• Worthy Reads, the series I’ve been running for a few months, where I post all the best things I’ve been reading online and offer some commentary about them. This series has been a huge hit among my Facebook friends and has generated tons of discussion… but it’s not the main meat of De Civ, so I feel okay saying it costs money now.

Those two features will not be published on my WordPress for at least a year (maybe more) after their Substack publication (since publishing them earlier would rather defeat the purpose of the paywall).

Substack told me I really shouldn’t try to sell paid subscriptions to my writing for less than $7/month and $70/year. So my paid subscriptions cost $5/month and $50/year. Sorry, Substack, but thank you for believing in me more than I believe in me!

Substack also strongly encouraged me to have a premium tier and find some cool reward for it. I don’t expect anyone to actually subscribe to it, but I didn’t want to disappoint Substack again, so I’ve created a $150/year tier called “We’re Friends Now.” Anyone who does such a surprising thing gets to be my friend. (And, really, if you think that highly of me, aren’t you already?) I’ll add you on Facebook and you can join the scorching political discussions I get into on the social meda network for old people.

I’m very excited to ride the Substack train, and I hope you’ll join me there, whether on the free list or the paid subscription. As part of this launch, I am going to be publishing more my usual amount over the next couple weeks.

One of the pieces I’ll be posting is a long article about gender that I have been revising and rewriting for over six years (more than half the life of this blog!), and I think it’s finally ready to share. How long is it? Longer than Civil Marriage Is Dead (& It Deserved To Die) but still much shorter than And The War Came.

Another will be the first paid Worthy Links article (Antitrust + Culture Edition). I’m also hoping to get Playing PredictIt off the ground pretty quick here. I’ve got a draft on my desk called “How An RBMK Reactor Explodes” (this one will be a free article, like most articles) which I’m really hoping I can hammer out before Christmas gets into high gear.

And of course we should have a Dashed-Off Daily Dobbs upDate coming… within the next twelve hours! ORAL ARGUMENTS, BAY-BEE? (Are you prayerfully fasting for a good outcome? Cuz I am.)

If you don’t want to ride the Substack train, not to worry. Even if I do successfully make this transition (and here’s hoping) I’m sure we’ll all tumble back to WordPress in five years when the Substack train inevitably crashes into the side of a mountain. This is the Internet, after all. Nothing lasts forever except personal websites, the Internet Archive, and SpaceJam.com.

Thanks for being part of De Civitate lo these many years.

EDIT, like 5 minutes later: I couldn’t wait. I published my first original Substack piece (about Dobbs) immediately. You can view it here:

https://decivitate.substack.com/p/dashed-off-daily-dobbs-update-oral

I do, of course, welcome your feedback on all this, either by email or in the (hallelujah!) apparently functional comment section over at Substack. You are the audience, and there’s no De Civ without an audience.

Well, it’s the first Monday in October, and that can mean only one thing: a new season of Fantasy Supreme Court! Once again, the folks at LexPredict are giving us the opportunity to bet on how the justices will vote in each case before the Court and score meaningless Internet points if we get them right!

This year, I’ve decided to start a league. If you’d like to go up against other readers of De Civitate and see who can predict the Supreme Court’s decisions best, you can sign up here:

1. Go to http://fantasyscotus.net/league/list/
2. Create an account, if you don’t already have one.
3. Find “De Civ League”. We are currently on page 33 20 of that table. Click the JOIN link and I’ll approve your request!
4. Our league page is here, but, incredibly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to join the league from the league page. You have to find the league in the list.
5. Invite anyone else you like!
6. Start predicting cases!

How can you win at Fantasy SCOTUS? Well, I’d like to recommend two resources to you:

• SCOTUSBlog, the essential source for all court-related news, briefs, and analysis. In particular, their oral argument recaps give you big insights into which way the justices are leaning, without forcing you to actually read the oral argument transcripts. I’m not predicting any cases this term until I’ve read oral argument recaps… and maybe even the transcripts, on big issues like the abortion and gun cases.
• Empirical SCOTUS, which analyzes the judicial branch through an unusual quantitative lens, can provide helpful insights on vote patterns. For example, did you realize that, last year, despite having a 5-4 majority on the Court, conservatives won only 43% of the 5-4 split decisions? In the past, Justice Kennedy often defected to vote with the progressives; last term, Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Roberts each defected in just one or two high-profile cases, but it added up to a similar result, and progressives did quite well last term. Will that hold true this term, with its much heftier cases? We’ll find out soon!

Good luck!

(I figure there’s about a 50/50 chance that anyone takes me up on this and joins my league, but I’m gonna have a bunch of fun with this regardless.)

I’m trying to develop a better picture of the American electorate, as we work to build a New Party.  I’ve developed a short (three-question) survey about your view of politics.  Should take you no more than 5 minutes, and it would be a big help to me personally.

==TAKE THE SURVEY==

It’s not a scientific poll, but rather an attempt to get a better sense of the many different viewpoints that come together to form the Red and Blue monoliths that dominate our politics.

==TAKE THE SURVEY==

Thanks for your time.

If you represent a pro-life organization*, I want to help you.

My schedule makes it difficult for me to volunteer for pro-life service in the conventional way.  Nearly all of my free hours are after 10 PM, and most pro-life organizations need volunteers during the day.

However, by day, I am a web developer. I create and maintain websites for my employer, and I also create the occasional website in my spare time. (For a recent example of my work, see here.) I’m no genius, nor have I ever freelanced before, but I’ve been doing Web design for a few years. I know HTML5, I can build responsive websites, and I can tell you which Internet buzzwords you need to worry about (“mobile experience”) and which ones you probably don’t (“mobile app”).

I would be grateful for the opportunity to build, update, maintain, or otherwise help out with your pro-life organization’s website. I will work with you to define your vision for the website, I will implement your vision as best I can, and I will leave you with the tools you need to keep things running smoothly afterward. I will do this free of charge, working for a few hours a week, on what I expect will be a first-come first-serve basis.

So, if you represent a pro-life organization with an outdated website, write to me at james.j.heaney@gmail.com.  If you know a pro-life organization that could benefit from this, mention this to them.  I just want to help in the best way that I can.

* By “pro-life organizations,” I mean organizations that are expressly, primarily dedicated to creating legal protections for unborn humans, or to assisting needy mothers and their children (born and unborn) so that both moms and kids are able to live the happy lives they deserve. There are plenty of worthy causes out there that fall under the broader umbrella of the “consistent ethic of life,” but abortion is the particular area where I feel compelled to help out right now.

I’ve been hesitant to post any of my regular blog fare (discussion of social issues, horse race updates, TV reviews) until I’ve fleshed out the New Party proposal a little more. Many of you put your faith in that proposal and I want to show that I remain serious about it.

However, the next piece in my series about the New Party (and the need for it) was submitted to a conservative magazine last month. They’ve agreed to publish it, but, as sometimes happens in the publishing world, they got a little delayed, especially with the conventions.  We’ll see what happens there.

In the meantime, I’ve been in a holding pattern.  One way or another, we’ll be back soon. Whether it’ll be with a new post about the New Party or my review of Mr. Robot, I don’t know yet.

Cheers, all.

But now a blog I enjoy — full disclosure, run by a friend of mine — has survived and stayed active for a year (yay), so I have an excuse to bring back the blogroll.  It’s in the right sidebar.  I’m even adding pictures this time.

That’s a very lonely little blogroll.  Just one item.  It needs more.  So: if you have a blog, and it’s a reasonably interesting blog, and it’s not about to roll over and die, and you’re willing to link back to De Civitate from your blog, then get in touch with me (james.j.heaney@gmail.com) and we’ll talk about getting you onto my blogroll.