🥲👈💞😏💞🕶️😏😣🕶️ 😝

A+ bait, totally got me

This is what tonglen feels like when you’re able to really get going

Context FROM THE FUTURE :O

I hate you for posting this (please marry me)

Fair enough. You can probably tell that I mostly wrote that reply to work through my own despair and apathy.

I’m just personally done with Orwellian imagery. As a faraway threat, the fear it inspires used to motivate me. Now it’s no longer a faraway threat - it’s right here. Now, after learning about ever-worsening mass surveillance, after seeing popular movements crushed, after years of burnout and despair, I find it only makes me want to curl up and die.

In general, I see a lot of people react this way to what’s happening right now. So I try to share what little hope and strength I can muster. Maybe it’ll help someone.

I think the assumption is that WW3 will involve nukes, and the collapse of civilization as a result.

While I’m still raining on your parade:

https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too

Fun fact: the doctor in question was opposed to the death penalty, and proposed the guillotine thinking he could at least make it more humane. He deeply regretted this action and spent the rest of his life campaigning against it. His family was so ashamed that they changed their surname.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Ignace_Guillotin

I don’t think we’re so far gone that we must lose hope.

First: maybe you’re right, and this is the end of everything we’ve ever held dear, the end of all hope forever. But if that’s true, then everything is futile, which gets you nowhere. Plus, nobody can predict the future, so however compelling this idea is, it’s still ultimately a theory. What’s the point of believing a theory that only makes you feel like shit?

Remember that despair only serves the enemy. Moreover, despair is a coping mechanism, an escape - if it’s all hopeless, you don’t have to fight back, so you don’t have to face the possibility of loss and defeat. Whatever happens to you, is this how you want to live?

Lemmy sure loves doomerism, but I’m going to post the facts that currently give me hope anyway:

The Nazis stayed popular because they actually fixed Germany’s economy, at least in the short term. Trump and his cabal of idiots have conclusively shown that they are neither capable of nor interested in this.

They are already massively unpopular. Even in the kinds of business circles that supported Hitler then and would support him today - the fucking Wall Street Journal is criticizing Trump. Bezos’ mouthpiece. Also, y’know, there’s massive rallies and grassroots organizing. Republicans chanting “tax the rich” at their representatives.

We’ve seen stronger, worse governments fall. Argentina’s military junta waged a Dirty War for nearly a decade, using horrific mass torture to totally destroy their political opponents. They succeeded in wiping out all opposition. They even had majority support in the beginning (neither the Nazis nor Trump did). But the junta fell anyway - because they utterly destroyed their economy. Trump probably won’t take a decade to do that.

In summary: hold on to hope, and fight back. You get to choose what that looks like for you. For me, it looks like: stopping my current doomscrolling, doing some chores so I can feel less shitty about how little I’ve done today, then doing some tonglen to deal with my own fear and grief and despair. It won’t end fascism, but maybe it’ll help me become functional enough to organize and build one day.

Good luck, and I hope that if I’m ever strong enough to join those who resist, I’ll meet you among them.

This is so wholesome!

If this man were to voice any sentiments short of full-throated Trump endorsement, would it make him more likely to see his wife again?

He could be terminally stupid, or this could just be the MAGA version of respectability politics. Pretending you’re still one of the good ones so the leopards stay away from your face long enough for you and your loved ones to escape.

steal your food, then toss you table scraps

consider: train🚆
train: go zoom 🚄
train: fit many catgirls 😽 n all my transmasc homies too 🤠 don’t forget the enbies dummy 💁
train: run on electricity ⚡ give a hoot! 📣

🚆tra(i)ns 🏳️‍⚧️

I wonder - what is the actual audience for approval rating polls?

The folks most affected by high prices or mass layoffs are probably struggling too much to have the time or inclination. Around 30% of the country didn’t even show up for the election, they probably won’t show up for these.

Who does that leave us with? Can we really assume that ‘47% approval’ translates to ‘47% of all Americans approve’?

✨ watching my life pass me by 💫

Underrated AF.

You know, I spent a lot of time today obsessing over how bad the world is getting, and wondering what the point of it all is.

This. It’s this. I stick around for the weird motherfuckers who’ll do shit like this, and share it on the internet.

If I must live through yet another apocaplyse, I want to do it with you.

god dammit, yall are making me feel peer pressured into unblocking her

Just like my history with my mental illness affects a small populace. Why should the world have to bend to my problems?

Because you matter, and your problems matter >:3

I know it can be hard to feel that way, but the way I see it is - after everything they’ve taken from us, we can’t let them take our self-worth! Most cis people and most abled people I know aren’t ashamed to expect the world to work for them; we don’t get points for expecting nothing for ourselves.

I would never expect the intolerable, ignorant, racist, or cruel people to bend their beliefs for me. Its a waste of my energy to want that.

I don’t expect them to do that. I don’t need them to do that either. I need them to shut up and fuck off. You know, the exact same thing they want the people they oppress to do >:3

As for it being a waste of your energy… that’s your call, but personally, I wouldn’t be able to keep going if I couldn’t imagine a world where the bigots consistently lose. I haven’t yet “found my tribe” with people who understand and accept me, and it’s not likely to happen in the near future; so the hope that a better world is possible, and that I could help build it, is basically all I have left - and yet, it’s been enough to get me this far. Who knows, maybe it’ll do something for you.