MR. WINCHESTER GOES TO WASHINGTON

I am going to Washington, D.C. because fascism has stopped whispering and started shouting through a megaphone it bought with taxpayer money. The regime isn’t “testing boundaries” anymore — it’s cutting the wires to democracy in broad daylight and mocking anyone who notices. I refuse to sit behind a screen and politely narrate a five-alarm fire. If I’m going to write about a government that salivates over obedience, then I’m going to stand in the capital where that hunger lives and breathe the smoke myself.

I am going because propaganda has replaced policy, vengeance has replaced governance, and loyalty tests have replaced law. We are living under a movement that worships one man like a sun god with a spray tan, and it points the machinery of the state at whatever “enemy” polls best that week. That isn’t politics. That’s authoritarian dinner theater with real casualties, and I’m done pretending it’s just another “chapter in American discourse.”

I am going because this country is being rewritten as a stage play where the leader preens as king and the people are reduced to clapping extras. America is not a throne. It is not a backdrop. And it sure as hell is not a trophy for men who confuse volume with virtue and cruelty with strength.

I am going because truth must be gathered in person, not discerned from afar. I want to see how ideologues behave when the cameras switch off. I want to document how propaganda warps the vulnerable. I want to record the smirks, the slips, the panic, the cracks, the humanity and inhumanity hiding beneath the marble and microphones. I want to watch power up close — not as a spectator, but as a witness.

I am going because this moment demands witnesses — not stenographers, not court jesters, and not cowards praying history won’t quote them. When a government targets communities, erodes rights, punishes dissent, and toys openly with violence, journalists either stand in the blast zone or they stand for nothing.

I am going because our readers carried this work across continents — from Austria to the Everglades and now into the belly of D.C. They fueled the investigations. They sustained the reporting. They proved, dollar by dollar and share by share, that independent journalism can still terrify dishonest power. I am not going to Washington alone. I am going on the shoulders of the people who put me on the plane.

I am going because silence is complicity, neutrality is cowardice with stationery, and “both-sides” journalism is the propaganda wing of the powerful. If I’m going to write about fascism, then I will stand in front of it, stare it in the eye, and publish what I see — even if the truth is ugly, inconvenient, or dangerous to say out loud.

I am going because history handed us an assignment, not a lullaby. The job is to document the truth before censors, liars, and revisionists bleach it into fiction. The job is to write the record in ink the regime can’t erase. The job is to witness — not whimper.

And I am going for one final reason: because you deserve a witness, not a commentator. You kept this platform alive. You gave it teeth. You gave it reach. You gave it purpose. Now I go to Washington to finish what you empowered me to start — not to play nice, not to soften the edges, but to expose what must be exposed and tell the truth without flinching.

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If you want journalism that bites, claws, mocks tyrants, names names, files receipts, and never kisses the ring — then subscribe and help fuel this work. We answer to readers, not regimes. And with your support, we will never shut up, never sit down, and never bow.