Seeking Input on Writing

Greetings Hive Mind. 

I’m cross-posting this to my Blog, Facebook, and a couple of other locations in hopes of getting maximum coverage. Does anyone have advice or go to sources regarding tone (voice) and scoping in writing? I’ve reached this question after several hours of staring at a blank screen and trying to figure out how to even begin with what I want to say. 

Here’s my dilemma. I feel like I need to add my voice to those who are trying to shine a light on just how serious things are at this point in history but I can't figure out where to start. 

You: 

“Things? What things? Can you be more specific?” 

Me: 

Sure, absolutely. The thing that I started out trying to write about today is the erosion of democracy in the United States and the ongoing efforts of the Republican party to keep changing the rules until they can lock in minority rule. Everything we are hearing from the Congressional January 6th committee indicates that the attempt to overturn the presidential election last year was more serious and more coordinated than anyone wanted to believe at the time, and that a large number of sitting lawmakers at the state and federal level are actively trying to downplay the severity and continuing to change the rules. 

Heather Cox Richardson continues to do an admirable job of tracking and summarizing reports from the committee and various news outlets.

Letters from an American January 2, 2022

Among the things that she cited today was a piece from the New York Times Editorial Board emphasizing that January 6th last year was the beginning, not the end, of the efforts to subvert the election process.

Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now (Paywall)

You:
“Ok, it looks like you just wrote a whole paragraph about how fragile our democratic process feels right now. So what’s the issue from a writing perspective?”

Me:
Let’s start with tone. What I just wrote is a fairly dry statement that I think the United States is in imminent danger of dropping below the minimum threshold of a functioning democracy. I included a couple of references to sources who are more credible and better writers than me. That's all well and good except that this is not something about which I can be, or want to be, dispassionate. I feel like this needs to be screamed from the rooftops. I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is getting less media coverage right now than tributes to John Madden. So how does one convey via the tone of writing “HEY!!!! Pay Attention!!! This is SERIOUS!!!” without actually resorting to overuse of caps and exclamation points? I suppose this goes to the larger question of how one can argue against the lunatic fringe without becoming (or sounding like) another lunatic fringe.

Then there is the issue of scope. Let’s suppose for a moment that I was successful in conveying my sense of urgency about the future of democracy and the rule of law. If you are still with me you have now spent several minutes reading about that issue and my struggles expressing it.

This means that for that same period of time you have probably not been thinking about the state of the pandemic; variants, boosters, vax deniers, super spreader events, and what is going to happen as more and more people decide that they are bored with Covid and want it to magically disappear. Of course, these topics are not unrelated since the entire response to Covid has been politicized from the outbreak. Our ability to respond rationally has been drastically hampered by politicians who are more concerned about making sure their opponents fail than making sure their constituents live. 

The same could be said of climate and environmental issues. We are seeing increasing numbers of extreme environmental events 
2021 Western Kentucky tornado - Wikipedia, 
Colorado Wildfires: What We Know - The New York Times (Paywall),
Cold, heat, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes: The year in weather disasters (Paywall)
but any discussion of what it would take to move the needle dies before it even gets going. The people, companies, and governments that are in a position to do anything meaningful seem to be unwilling to begin the discussion until someone can demonstrate how to make saving the world profitable.

And least we forget, right here in the good old USA (the richest country in the world) we have a huge and rapidly growing portion of our population living at or below the poverty level and cut off from goods and services that the “mainstream” (read top 25%) consider basic necessities. We have a wealth gap the like of which has not been seen since the 1920s (the runup to the Great Depression)
Wealth concentration returning to ‘levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,’ according to new research (Paywall).
We have a policing, court, and incarceration system that is driven by profit margins and occupancy percentages. We have people who have every reason to fear the very agencies that are supposed to protect them. We have a history of deeply rooted racism and racial inequality that we can’t even talk about for fear of offending some old white guys.

So, Yeah… Scope. All of the topics above, Climate Change, Pandemic, Democracy Hanging by a Thread, Social and Economic Inequity/Injustice, are vital and need immediate attention. And yet somehow this gets less airtime than Antonio Brown taking off his pads and walking out in the middle of a football game.

Which sort of brings me back around to my original question. Does anyone have any good resources on how to scope important topics so that they are manageable and how to set a tone that will get people to take serious matters seriously?