What were you doing from early 2017 to early 2021? I suggest you do approximately that, unless you’ve grown out of things you were doing at the time of course.
This is the conclusion I came to and what has kept me positive. Remembering that, while there was a ton of shit happening, I had plenty of happy memories from that time too. I finally made new friends after moving out of my hometown and I’m still friends with them to this day. I remembered all the great moments and memories I made during that time.
If you think this is just for the next 4 years, you’re fooling yourself.
You just gotta fight back and live your life. Sounds simple, but in my country, we lived through “the perfect dictatorship”. We know this shit.
Go fishing.
For real. Take some time to focus on something new and “pointless”. Soak in some gorgeous views and learn about your local waterways. Reconnect with the land around you.
Life’s easier with a clearer head.
Although I agree with the rest of the comment, I would suggest a less brutal activity, such as a hiking or bird watching.
These also require less equipment.
Catch and release fishing is fine for the fish. If you gut hook them and they won’t survive, well, you eat that one, but it’s also easier to avoid that if you know what sort of fish you’re looking for and change your hook/lure accordingly.
I don’t really get how hurting an animal and then NOT eating it, just for fun, is better than killing for food
Well you don’t want to eat every fish you catch, that’s not good for the fish population. You want to ensure you’re only taking fish that have had a chance to spawn, determined by size.
The point is that torturing animals is something that we probably shouldn’t recommend.
It is yanking a water animal by their mouth into an environment they cannot breathe. And if memory serves, fish have a lot of nerves in their mouths so that hurts a LOT, and even released ones have a reduced survival rate.
That “fun and wholesome” activity causes a lot of pain and stress to the victims, so it’s kinder to recommend something less cruel. Like birdwatching and photography.
Y’all, I’m very very vegetarian, but knocking this dude for recommending fishing is silly. “Fishing or another outside activity that seems relaxing to you” is implicit. People have different morals regarding animals and consumption. I get where you’re coming from, but “birdwatching is also a great activity!” is a better and more positive response imo.
@tamal3 is right.
Fucking hell, people, go touch some grass, go meet real human beings. Not everybody adheres to the moral code you construct in your head, and that is FINE!!
That’s implying that fishing is a great activity. That is about as okay as saying it’s okay that people chose not to vote.
I did not state it in a mean way, I simply said it in a way that says please do not encourage animal abuse.
I do not think it’s a good thing to encourage animal abuse, and I don’t think good people should be encouraged to continue normalizing it.
Please don’t ask people to stay silent about cruelty. That’s helps keep it normalized.
Soak in some gorgeous views and learn about your local waterways. Reconnect with the land around you.
Good advice while those things last I guess.
A republican majority lead by an authoritarian effectively ends any possibility that climate change can be slowed or reversed within any of our lifetimes. Don’t think of it as the hottest summer on record… think of it as the coolest summer of the rest of your life.
feeling stressed? go harm animals for fun.
As long as you are not overfishing and destroy the ecosystem, those fish are going to die to some natural predators anyways imo
Is now a good time to think about a third party? Actual left one. Not 1995 Republicans left.
It’s time to push for ranked choice voting, which will in turn enable third parties.
Absolutely. It always has been, to be clear, but it is always a good time to start. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there’s an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.
To be clear, electoralism cannot and will not save us, Revolution is necessary. Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Lenin’s The State and Revolution have remained correct to this day, and are only further proven correct with the passage of time and the accumulation of confirming evidence.
A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds.
I meant even just a bit left of center, just something sane not totally sold to corporate.
Why? The Greens haven’t seen widespread success, to me it seems like we need to look more critically at the failures of electoralism.
Disclosure, an not American. I don’t know much about the greens , I got distributed to get a few weeks ago just for mentioning that whether Stein was legit or not, some of her supporters made good points. USA seems to be locked into a mindset that everything is black or white. If you can’t win the presidency is not worth it. Have Sanders quit the Democrats tomorrow, and recruit a few star player to go with. That would be a real kick in the ass for the Establishment to care about peopl. Think Tea party for the left.
That’s a bit of a misanalysis of the electoral situation. The Greens are that party, and failed to get a dent. PSL is a revolutionary party, but they are still picking up steam. Electoralism will not destabilize the Democrat/Republican duopoly.
4 years? Don’t bother with the hope of 4 years. This shit is over.
Form an in person community. Focus on fun, then slowly start integrating shared political activism. Use the experience from this to enter local government.
It will be strikingly similar to the last 4 years but the partisan narratives will simply flip in various ways, as will those of allied media. The bad things that the Trump admin did in his first term that became suddenly tolerable, ir even “good” under Biden? They will be back to being good again. Dem politicians will be back to calling themselves “the resistance” despite losing another layup because they could not do more than campaign on “at least we aren’t them” while presiding over a genocide and economic decline for the average person, both with intentional policies. Remember that they are all PR and cynicism and are lying to you about what they will do, as they are not beholden to a disorganized public in any way.
To be clear, bad things will be happening. It is only reasonable to feel some despair for them, but if you can allow that to motivate you to substantive action you can escape merely being a witness to suffering and can begin to work materially against it. Much of that suffering was going to happen anyways or a different form of suffering may have happened under a Harris regime. It’s not like Democrats did much with their power, they tend to pretend they have no party discipline or power even when thry have the presidency and Congress, so they allowed the major shifts at state levels to occur largely unheeded and served a right wing agenda at the national level. So it is important yo ask the question of what action you can take that does not depend on expecting Democrats to save you. They won’t. What we need are other organizations, ones that organize independently of ans often in opposition to the Democrats, Dems who otherwise suck up all political energy demanding improvements to people’s lives and turn it into more cops and wars.
So, the two ingredients to effective organizations are political education and organization building. The former is just an organized form of reading and teaching, and it is essential because we have all internalized false ideas of how politics functions. They are taught to us by the ruling interests that keep us disempowered *because * this keep them in power. The latter is about growing and improving an organization so that it can have greater and greater leverage and develop strategies for gaining and wielding power (and power is not things like letter writing campaigns to already-elected ghouls, it is making demands that must be met or else).
You can enjoin this kind of project in many ways. You don’t need to jump deeply into a hardcore organization straightaway; it can be useful to join one that is only oushing yourself moderately at first. Maybe a mutual aid organization or a single issue or single community group. The important thing is that it is of the left and therefore not of thr Democratic party. You can also engage in your own political education independently if you’d like, which can keep the pressure down when you are first starting out with irl left work.
And of course please do rely on whatever community you already may have, including here. I am happy to chat here or via DMs if you’d like and can answer basically any question you might have. I’m also happy to recommend readings that you may find useful or helpful.
Realize that things wouldn’t have magically gotten better if the other right wing candidate won and either way you have to keep going if you ever want to actually have things be better.
Imagine it like cleaning your room as a kid. You thought your mom was gonna come and ask you to do it, instead your dad barged in and yelled at you to.
Does one feel worse? Yes, does that change the reality of the situation? No, either way you must clean your room.
Republicans also control senate and might control the house in addition to majority conservative judges in supreme court. I so hope its going to be “just 4 years”
I’m not saying I understand the magnitude, but ICYMI: the populist right is also winning left and right in Europe. In my country, it’s mostly just kind of funny since these blowhards are only now realising governing a country is kind of difficult and lots of government employees are just fighting against everything that’s idiotic or destructive.
Thing is, one man can only do so much. If there are still people on the inside who have a feel for wrong and right, democracy is pretty rigid. People are desperate, but nowhere near as desperate as Germans were in the 30s after the huge sanctions and fines after The Great War.
In any event: my take on it all is to see what happens. If you voted, you did all you can do other than organising and taking to the streets. That’s essentially what your second amendment is for. To put a positive spin on it: maybe he will actually improve your admittedly declining country. I just hope the means won’t be catastrophic for anyone.
Unfortunately Trump’s stated plan is to boot out everyone who won’t kiss his ass, shut down “non-essential” services like the education department or national weather service, put someone in control of healthcare who believes all vaccinations need to be immediately banned, and pass national laws against women’s reproductive health care despite his claims of letting each State handle their own business. And yes, on his own he could only do so much, but the Republican party also gained more seats in both houses of representatives which means it will be easier to steamroll through anything he wants. So yeah, we have many many good reasons to be worried.
I’m not saying ‘don’t be worried’, I’m saying ‘have a little bit of faith in the system and see how far he gets’. I take it some of the stuff he yells at easily influenced voters will be unconstitutional and I hope your checks abs balances will be strong enough to withstand the fall of your democracy.
If it’s not, well, I’ll also be fucked. So whichever way you slice it, the only thing to do is to wait and see.
I mean technically you could storm the Capitol but I think we know that doesn’t really do shit except make you a meme or a prisoner or both.
I agree with the wait-and-see approach, but I also know how much damage he did the first time around even without a lot of support. And the amazing thing is that people still think the economy was better under Trump (who barely managed to coast on Obama’s success) than it has been under Biden (who managed to turn around a global economic disaster after COVID). This time it’s all going to be on Trump, and we’re all going to suffer from it.
You’re probably better off with some combination of gold, bitcoin, and low-tech durable goods than cash.
Half the peoppe live pay check to paycheck…
I think starting with USD is the proper advice.
If you got enough cash though, you should be buying tbills on treasury direct or at least a moneymarket.
Advising gen pop to buy gold and crypto is not understanding who are you providing advice too
“Ignore the problem, hope you get rich enough to keep ignoring the symptoms”
They are going to spend those 4 years doing everything they can to fix the next election as well. Gerrymandering, voter intimidation, you name it. By all means hide in bed to get over the shock but, if you stay there, you’ll need to stay there more than 4 years.
in the short term: do something that helps you cope with our reality.
in the long term: reach out the people who both love and respect you and tell them how you feel. mutual aid is how we survived every time there’s been a hostile government and it’ll work again. we’ve been here before, we’ve survived, and we will do it again.
Learn a new language and get the fuck out. Visit family during elections.
