Recently several people have asked me, regarding the Trump regime's shock and awe campaign currently under way, what can I do? How do I get through this? Although it's somewhat of a mystery to me why I should be treated as having any unusual wisdom about such things, since some
people are doing so I might as well share what I can, in the hope that it may be of benefit.
Trigger warning: we have been forced into an abusive relationship. First, he smacks us around, to establish who's boss. That's the shitstorm we are presently undergoing. What comes next, once he's beaten us down enough, will be analogous to rape.
But in the present phase, the shitstorm phase, the blows come thick and fast and from every direction. It is impossible for a person to predict where the next hit will come from, or to react to every one, or to process one before the next one lands, let alone to understand and respond effectively to them all at once.
So, my first bit of advice is, take care of yourself. Curl into a ball, if you have to. You can't pay attention to everything, right now. It will just make you crazy. It will sap all your energy. It will lead to apathy and despair.
Protect your sanity and your energy and your health. Life is full of moments of joy, small and large. Savor them. Don't give away your capacity for joy; don'tgive them that power. Avoid the news, if you need to do so in order to preserve some sense of equilibrium. Even if the legacy media could be relied upon to tell you what you need to know, even if social media were something more than a machine for monetizing outrage and falsehood, you don't need to know everything that's happening, right now. You need to preserve your ability to fight back, when the time comes to do so. As it will. That time may come earlier or later, depending on your personal situation and your readiness. You can't know when it will be.
In airplanes, they tell you that if you are traveling with children and the oxygen masks descend from the ceiling, put on your own mask before helping your child put theirs on. You will not be able to help others effectively if your judgement is impaired and your energy is crushed by outrage, grief, and anger.
Another model for behavior: Mohammed Ali used a tactic he called "rope-a-dope." He'd assume a defensive position, leaning back against the boxing ring's ropes, preserving his own strength while his opponent used up energy trying to punch through Ali's defenses. Occasionally, Ali jabbed back at the opponent, sometimes just to show he could, but mostly he waited for the moment when the balance of forces shifted in his favor. He watched carefully for that moment. Then he would come out of his crouch and win the fight.
This is a moment for focus and reflection. Use it to decide what is important to you. You cannot fight Them on all fronts. You can't save everyone. Part of the way we will beat them - the most important part, I think - is through community. In a true community, different people contribute different things. You should trust that there will be members of the pro-democracy, human decency community who will be attentive to and active upon the myriad issues you can't spare the time and effort for, who will
be engaged in the myriad ways other than those most appropriate to your personal skill set, temperament, interests, and situation. Probably, the issue or cause you will focus upon will be something you already had some feeling for. Maybe you'll also discover a passion for something new. Maybe that passion will be forced upon you.
Think about who you are, and what you can contribute. I don't have the patience for canvassing door to door - wish I did, because I think that is just about the most effective thing a person can do, but it's just not me. I'm a writer. So, I write. Nowadays, I'm putting a lot more time and energy into this blog than I had been, prior to the election of a fascistically inclined felon for president. The world may be deprived of a number of poems, instead of which I've turned out blog posts, but that seems to be what the times demand. It's a good way to burn the extra energy generated by outrage. You will find other ways, appropriate to yourself. You don't have to make big or heroic efforts. There are millions of us. Community, remember? If enough of us increase our levels of activity from what they were before, even if only incrementally, the aggregate surge will be enormous.
Will you demonstrate? Demonstrations are a nice tactic for creating and maintaining a sense of community, and for making the very important statement that we are not cowed and we are not broken.
Will you contribute money? It doesn't have to be much. Millions of us, all giving what we can: it adds up. A lot of organizations will be seeking donations. Pretty nearly everything decent about our society is under attack. Pick something close to your heart, and give it whatever feels right to you. Every such donation, no matter the size, is an act of resistance.
Will you write letters to elected representatives? To other officials? To media outlets? By the way, we hear a lot of cheap cynicism about this kind of activity - "it doesn't work, they don't listen." To which I say, "That's nonsense. The Fraudster-in-Chief's Office of Management and Budget rescinded its freeze on federal grants and assistance after two days of the firestorm of protest it caused in the form of letters, emails, and phone calls from Americans to their servants in Congress." To name only one of many examples. Of course we don't always get what we ask for. But as the saying goes, you cannot win if you do not play.
Will you talk about your knowledge and opinions with friends? With family? With members ofthe community where you live, door to door?
Will you attend meetings?
Wil you participate in litigation? There's bound to be a lot of it! There's a good chance some of it may relate to you. For example, those of you over age 65 may want to visit the web site of the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and inform them of your concern that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a government agency, violated your medical privacy rights in the past few days when it obtained access to your (and everybody else's) Medicare payment records without your authorization, as widely reported in the press over the past few days.
Will you take time to educate yourself about the things you feel are important? (Remember, you can't trust the media - any media - to do that for you.)
Will you express yourself by choosing where to shop and what to buy? For example, nobody ever has to buy anything from Jeff Bezos and Amazon. You can always find an online vendor for whatever it is you're seeking; usually you can buy direct from whoever makes it; often there's free shipping. Likewise, there's no need for anyone ever to buy a car from Elon Musk's Tesla. (Unless you want to buy the stupidest lookingpickup truck in the world.) There areplenty of other electric vehicle makers. These guys have enough money already. Give yours to somebody else, who's not bending the knee to King Donald.
Will you be kind to yourself, and those around you, and(most important) the strangers among us? MAGA is all about hatred, fear, and cruelty. We fight MAGA by being better than that. Every act of kindness is a blow against MAGA's vision of America.
You can do any or all of these things. Just do more than you were doing before the inauguration, even if it's only a little bit more. The little bits will add up.
Preparing for some circumstances will require more thought and preparation. The example that comes to my mind right now is, what shall I do if I become witness to an I.C.E. roundup? Will I stand by and watch? Will I write about it? Will I record it on my camera? Will I yell at the agents as they abduct their captives, thus risking arrest for obstruction? Will I get in the way? If I do that, I almost certainly will be arrested. Am I ready to put myself that much on the line? That's a question which can only be answered in the moment; but it's a question I feel I must be prepared to ask myself, if the time comes for it. Being prepared to ask myself that question is, in itself, the kind of activism I hope we all engage in. As I said before, it's impossible to know in advance what we're going to be confronted with. But in advance we can develop some sense of who we are, and what our limits might be, in confronting evils.
Here's a thing NOT to do: spend time on social media. You're not changing anybody's mind or position about anything. You're not truly engaging with anyone on any level. You're feeding your own negativity, anger, and outrage, without transforming that energy into anything useful. All you're really doing is creating data forthe billionaires who own the apps to monetize. If you use social media as a source of information about the world, don't. Nothing you read there can be relied upon to be true, without corroboration. So, skip the social media and just go straight to the sources you actually can rely upon for factual accuracy, context, and thoroughness.
The Fraudster-in-Chief's project of cruelty, revenge, and greed relies for its success on our despair, confusion, and fear. The good news is, those things are in our power to control, not his. Donald Pussygrabber is in charge neither of my feelings, nor of yours. So long as we don't give in to what he wants for us, it will be harder for him to consummate the chief goals of his incumbency, what I have likened to the rape phase of the relationship, that is, using the presidency's powers and privileges to make as much money as possible; crushing the opposition; escaping prison; and retiring from politics in maximum safety and comfort.
Some day he will be a receding stench from the past, a bad dream, and dead. And most of the time, in that time, we will have forgotten all about him; and he will threaten no longer to stand between us and those joys of daily living that are there for us, always.
