Things are pretty fucked up and the future is uncertain — probably the worst in my lifetime (perhaps excepting 1969 before I can remember). When it’s like that, I like to think about my grandparents and what they faced and got through with the Great Depression and WWII.
/1
/2 There were absolutely no guarantees that everything would be all right. Terrible things were happening and more terrible things were a distinct possibility. But they got through it, relying on the fundamental things they cared about.
/3 I think about Grandma taking a taxi to the hospital to have my mom, forbidding my grandpa’s parents from calling him to let him know — he was on base studying for the supply officer test the next day, and doing well would determine where he was assigned, and maybe whether he’d live or die.
/4 (Grandpa’s parents had a car, but grandma had a flair for drama, I think.)
He did well and went off to be the supply officer on a ship in the Pacific. Went with absolutely no guarantee of coming back. That’s what people did.
/5 So, in terrible circumstances, think what people before you have endured. Think about how you can support and defend folks less able than you to endure. And fight the bastards.
/6 My grandparents didn’t whine about it. Nor, for that matter, did my college classmate who survived as a child in 1970s Cambodia by hiding in a pile of his neighbor’s bodies. So, keep calm and fight.
Whilst I like this optimistic take; the level of existential threat from Climate Change and impending collapse of biodiversity, just somehow feels even more doom laden than yet another war.
If we get Trump in power; it won’t be one period of strife; it will be generations suffering this collapse.
100% agree that Dump in power sets in motion a chain of events that Fs not only American democracy but likely the entire future of our planet. Irreversible, accelerating climate change and all that implies for sea levels, biodiversity, climate, crops, conflict.
Let's stay real about the stakes...
to maximize turnout. Numbers are on our side.
There's a potential positive spin here, not just the negative doom & gloom -- vote dem to preserve and restore our democracy and our planet.
Imho both the negative and positive messages are intellectually honest and valid and should be amplified.
Isn’t it optimistic to assume whatever the outcome of the election that Trump will not seize the presidency?
Biden and the Democrats have failed to act already and Trump is emboldened by that.
You have to hope that there are enough good people in the right place to do the right thing. Ultimate power rests with the military & all that. That said, historically, it's around now that the military start to think about that power....
I agree.
There are enough good people with loyalty to the Constitution in the right places to check a Trump coup attempt.
But we need a victory with a margin large enough (landslide) that SCOTUS doesn't feel empowered to throw the election to Trump. The military will follow SCOTUS orders I believe.
Why worry about that when one day someone could get stressed and just end human life in a couple of hours? Our last great period of strife ended with the detonation of 2 very tiny nuclear bombs. Imagine if it had begun with everyone having thousands of big ones.
Unfortunately not. Unless you find the idea of the earth's biosphere not being affected by humans anymore reassuring. I'm sorry, my current efforts to be positive about the future aren't going well.
No entirely understand it was sort of my point.
Our year of changing governments is offering very little hope right now.
Even more frustrating when you see the fandoms of Elon Musk or Taylor Swift defending private jet usage etc.
Humanity idolising the very people who are killing the planet 😞
One day someone could see a post in Xitter that they didn't like, and decide that nuking a foreign country was the only way to make themselves like a Big Man again, justification be damned.
yep. whether or not the US becomes a christofascist hellhole or not is missing the point, which is that the planet is going to become uninhabitable in my lifetime. There’s no “getting through it”
