In the two weeks since I’ve hit the road southwest, I’ve attended a rally of armed white supremacists, interviewed Black militia, and hung out with a Mormon fundamentalist with two wives and 20 children on his farm. I’ve had a license plate stolen, woken up on a trampoline, and bet on the winning horse of the Kentucky Derby, Authentic. I’ve lost my health insurance, a flip-flop, headphones, and a career as a foreign correspondent that I wasn’t ready to give up. But I’ve found exactly what I need to be doing right now: writing about America.
Welcome to Contra Post, a bi-weekly-ish newsletter by me, Casey Quackenbush, an American writer, trying to figure out this cult called America and my place in it.
For the last three years, I’ve been a reporter based in Hong Kong, first with Time magazine, then freelance for The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Nieman Reports, Aperture, and The New York Times. From the Hong Kong protests to Australia’s bushfires, tear gas and smoke have dominated my life for over a year.
Join me as I road trip through the next crisis: America and me.
For the next few months, I will be living out of a pick-up truck as I report on the recalibration of American identity in the run up to this pivotal election. The pandemic has exposed so many fractures in this country. The one I’m most interested in: the cultural clash over what it means to be American.
Covid brought me home to a place that frankly terrifies me. Seven months into a global pandemic and we still can’t figure out how to wear masks. I can’t get a job in a convulsing media industry and the seasons are about to change. But in a time of dizzying uncertainty, all I had was a gut instinct to get in the car. It’s something I had to do, for myself, for my writing. In understanding America’s truth, maybe I’ll get a little closer to mine, too.
Contra Post? You may wonder whether I’ve joined a left-wing guerrilla force. No, sadly not.
Contra Post will be my public diary, a behind-the-scenes look at the stories I publish as I travel through Appalachia, west through Texas, into Arizona—then who knows from there. My posts will serve as letters home capturing my journey in all its ups and downs: Baptist sermons, gun shows, secret cities, the story behind the headlines, and my quarter life crisis.
So follow along. If you like what you read, consider keeping me caffeinated with a paid-subscription. This newsletter is 100% self-funded, so your support will go a long way in fueling the car, and, more importantly, my inquiry into identity crisis. Subscribe, and I promise you’ll get truth, fearlessness, adventure, and, above all: authentic.