I’m Done Waiting for Someone Else to Say It
A letter to the average American — and why I built something for them
There’s a moment a lot of people have had in the last few years that nobody really talks about.
You’re watching the news. Or scrolling. Or sitting at a dinner table while someone goes on about the other side. And somewhere in the middle of it, a thought crosses your mind that you almost feel guilty for having:
I don’t fully trust any of these people.
Not the anchors. Not the politicians. Not the think tanks or the fact-checkers or the pundits who show up on every channel with the same five talking points recycled into slightly different sentences. You don’t trust them — and more quietly, more uncomfortably, you’re not even sure you fully trust the side you’re supposed to be on.
You keep that thought to yourself, mostly. Because saying it out loud puts you at risk of being called a centrist, which in today’s climate is basically a slur from both directions. The Left hears it as “you don’t care enough.” The Right hears it as “you’re soft.” So most people swallow it, pick a lane, and keep going.
I did that for a long time. And then I stopped.
That’s why Average American exists.
The media is not broken. It’s working exactly as designed.
This is the part that took me a while to actually accept, because it’s a more uncomfortable truth than just saying “the media is biased.”
Bias implies a mistake. Bias implies someone set out to do journalism and fell short. What’s actually happening is more deliberate than that, and it starts with understanding one thing: every major media outlet — Left, Right, and everything in between — is a business. And the business model, without exception, is your emotional state.
Outrage keeps you watching. Fear keeps you scrolling. The certainty that the other side is not just wrong but dangerous, stupid, evil — that’s the product. That’s what gets sold to advertisers. That’s what drives subscriptions and clicks and share counts.
So when Fox tells you the border is an invasion and MSNBC tells you that anyone who thinks so is a racist — they’re not having a disagreement. They’re dividing a market. You are the consumer, and your anger is the revenue stream.
The news isn’t making you informed. It’s making you useful to someone else’s bottom line.
Once you see that, you can’t unsee it. And once you can’t unsee it, you have two choices: check out entirely, or build something different.
I chose the second one.
What the average American actually looks like.
Here’s what I know about the person I’m making this for, because I’ve been that person, and I’ve talked to enough of them to know I’m not alone.
You’re not an ideologue. You have conservative instincts about some things and more liberal instincts about others, and you’ve never found a party that fully represents you — because no party is actually trying to. Parties are trying to mobilize you, not represent you. Those are different things.
You believe in personal responsibility and think the system is genuinely rigged in ways that make personal responsibility harder. You think illegal immigration is a real problem and think the way it gets talked about on cable news is dehumanizing. You think police do a necessary and difficult job and that there are real accountability problems that need to be fixed. You hold these things at the same time, and you’ve been told by both sides that you can’t — that you have to choose.
You’re tired of choosing.
You work. You pay taxes. You watch prices go up and services go down and politicians get richer while telling you it’s the other party’s fault. You’ve watched the same problems — healthcare, the border, housing, the debt — get campaigned on by both parties for decades without resolution, and somewhere along the way you started wondering if maybe the resolution isn’t actually the goal.
That suspicion is not cynicism. It’s pattern recognition. And it deserves to be taken seriously.
What I’m actually doing here.
Average American is a podcast and a platform built on one premise: honesty without a permission slip.
Every week, I’m going to cover the stories that matter — the ones dominating the news cycle and the ones that should be but aren’t — and I’m going to tell you what I actually think. Not what I’m supposed to think. Not what’s safe to say in the current media environment. What I actually think, after looking at the facts, the context, and the incentives of everyone involved.
That means I’m going to be wrong sometimes. I’m fine with that. Being wrong and correcting course is more honest than being strategically vague so you never have to.
It also means I’m going to say things that frustrate you if you have strong partisan commitments. I’ll criticize Republicans when Republicans deserve it. I’ll give credit to Democrats when Democrats deserve it. I’ll call out the things both sides do that they’d never tolerate from the other — because the double standard is one of the most corrosive forces in American political life right now, and pretending it doesn’t exist is its own form of dishonesty.
I’m not going to do the “both sides” thing where I split every issue down the middle and refuse to land anywhere. That kind of false balance is its own bias — it prioritizes my comfort over your understanding. I’ll give you the full picture and then tell you where I actually stand. You’re an adult. You can handle a perspective you disagree with.
What I will do — every single time — is show my work. Here’s what was said. Here’s what it actually means. Here’s what it costs you. Here’s the question nobody in the room is asking. That’s the job.
The question I keep coming back to.
There’s something I’ve been sitting with for a long time that I think is worth saying out loud, because I haven’t heard anyone say it clearly.
If Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House at multiple points over the last twenty years — why is the border still broken?
If Democrats had the same — why is healthcare still unaffordable?
I’m not asking this rhetorically. I’m asking it literally. Because the honest answer — the one that fits the evidence — isn’t incompetence. Incompetence this consistent, across this many administrations, from this many supposedly brilliant people, stops being incompetence at some point.
What it starts to look like is a product.
A broken border is worth more to certain politicians in donations, in turnout, in identity, than a fixed one ever would be. A healthcare crisis that never gets resolved keeps pharmaceutical lobbyists writing checks and keeps voters afraid. The problem, in a very real and very ugly sense, is the point.
I’m not telling you it’s a conspiracy. I’m telling you to follow the incentives. Because the incentives, when you actually follow them, explain a lot more than incompetence does.
That’s the kind of thing Average American is going to say. Not to make you despair — but because you deserve to understand the game being played, so you can stop being a piece on someone else’s board.
Why I almost didn’t do this.
I want to be honest about this part, because I think it’s important.
It’s easier not to. It is genuinely, significantly easier to scroll past the thing that bothers you, to complain to your friends, to share a meme and feel like you said something. Starting something — putting your name on a perspective and publishing it where anyone can read it — is uncomfortable in a specific way that I underestimated.
You open yourself up. People who disagree with you will be loud about it. People on your own side will occasionally feel betrayed when you won’t go along with something they think is obvious. There’s a cost to intellectual honesty that doesn’t exist when you stay quiet.
I decided the cost of staying quiet was higher.
Because here’s what I kept coming back to: the media — all of it — is counting on the average American to be too tired, too busy, and too beaten down to push back. They’re counting on you to stay in your lane, consume what you’re given, and be grateful for the outrage. The entire business model depends on your passivity.
I don’t think you’re passive. I think you’re exhausted. There’s a difference. And exhausted people, when someone hands them something real, will wake up.
That’s what I’m trying to hand you.
What I’m asking from you.
Not much. Listen to an episode. Read the next piece. If something lands — if it says the thing you’ve been thinking but haven’t heard anyone say out loud — share it with one person. Not because I need the numbers, but because the person you share it with probably needs to hear it too.
This doesn’t grow if people who agree with its purpose keep it to themselves. The whole point is that there are more of us than the current media landscape makes it seem. More people who are tired of the noise. More people who want the actual story. More people who are capable of holding complicated truths without needing them simplified into a team jersey.
Average American is for those people. It’s for you.
I’m glad you’re here.
— Kameron
Host, Average American
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