So, I haven’t been publishing many Substack columns lately, because I’ve been busy writing the USA road trip book, Strangers in a Strange Homeland: A Manic Odyssey in Search of the American Spirit. I’ll tell you more about it and promote it below.
First, though, I want to promote an interview I did with my partner in thoughtcrime, Anthony Freda. For those who don’t know him, Anthony is an artist, illustrator, and educator, based in New York City. He has designed the cover art for several of my books, including the book that has gotten me indicted in Germany, twice, and that prompted the police raid of my home last November.
Anthony has launched a podcast. He’s calling it The Tony Freda Show. It is “dedicated to exposing the lies of prevailing official narratives and helping to set captured minds and bodies free.” That sounds like a pretty good tagline to me.
I haven’t been doing any podcasts lately, mainly because I’ve been busy writing the new book, but also, honestly, because I’m tired of podcasts. I made an exception for Anthony, and I’m glad I did. We talked about my latest indictment, and my earlier indictment, and the book, and art, and the power of symbols, and global capitalism, and the new totalitarianism, and other aspects of the increasingly dark times we live in, and I was reminded of this epigram by Bertolt Brecht …
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
— Bertolt Brecht, 1939
Anyway, I hope you enjoy our conversation, and if you’re not familiar with Anthony Freda’s artwork, you can check it out at anthonyfreda.com.
Whoops … I almost forgot to promote the new book. It will be released in March by Arcade Publishing. You can go ahead and preorder it now if you like.
Okay, I need to get back to work on it. My submission deadline is looming, and I’m not quite done yet. I don’t have time to ramble on about it, so here’s the description from the booksellers’ websites …
In the autumn of 2025, with Donald Trump’s second first year in office drawing to a close and the country seemingly on the brink of civil war, American expatriate award-winning author C.J. Hopkins returns to his homeland after twenty years abroad to embark on a quixotic road trip throughout the USA, searching for what remains of the American spirit.
Hopkins, accompanied by photographer Hugo Fernandez, drives headlong into the maelstrom of forces tearing at the fabric of society, encountering Americans from all walks of life and of all political persuasions. COVID dissidents, conspiracy theorists, democratic socialists, venture capitalists, sovereign citizens, Christian fundamentalists, “woke” totalitarians, liberals, conservatives, transgender Trump supporters, and just everyday garden variety citizens trying to make sense of the country’s shifting-and-widening-political landscape. Equal parts travelogue, memoir, and cultural study, Strangers in a Strange Homeland is a wild odyssey of the American expanse through an outsider’s lens.
