Since the election, you have probably heard a lot about FAFO (“f--- around and find out”). It’s the idea that voting is a choice and voters must face the consequences of their choices. If you are, say, a poor person, you shouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump or any Republican, because in the end, th...
To expand on this a bit:
Reasonable people have been civil for decades, and the state of affairs has only declined. That decline has accelerated to the point where the unreasonable people are being ushered in now to control all of the US federal government, not by accident, but by the will (or apathy) of the citizens.
There are no more legal levers to pull. The time for civility has passed. In the short term, there’s nothing we can do to effect positive change, but we can take steps to !resist@fedia.io the negative, slow it down, make it cost more (in dollars and effort). And we don’t have a bunch of foreign allies willing to put themselves in harm’s way to come to our rescue. It’s going to be a long slog.
US citizens are going to need to learn to be very fucking resourceful, like Cuban citizens learned to be starting sixty years ago.
We need to accept that nobody and no institution is coming to save us.
I want to see community gardens. I want to see non-internet-connected community mesh networks. I want to see community medical clinics. Community 3D printing and basic fabrication, so we can actually fix things. Community mechanics and construction.
Take the ethos of Habitat for Humanity and expand it. Have communities tearing up old dwellings but preserve and fix the wood, metal and wiring to be re-used.
I don’t know how to organize any of it, but change and help isn’t going to come from the top down, it’s up to us to organize it from the bottom up. That can be pretty daunting in especially conservative areas, trying to wake people up to needing each other.
I get the appeal of self sufficiency and zero-waste, but the cost of labor will have to be startlingly low or resources devastatingly scarce for this to be worth it. As in, way below poverty wages or post-WWII Germany after it had be bombed relentlessly.
It’s not just waking any random people up either, but the crowd of ‘fuck you I got mine’.
Those people cannot be helped and do not need material assistance. Much better to focus on the poor and build solidarity independent of political beliefs.
There are more poor Trump voters every day that are realizing they fucked up, as they learn about project 2025, see Trump’s disgraceful proposed cabinet, and learn that food stamps and other assistance could be on the chopping block.
I don’t see why I should help the people who caused this