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Cake day: August 5th, 2023

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  • I honestly thought I was safe, that the GOP’s threats were bluster, that they could act on them but they’d fail, because the American people had spoken and weren’t going to buy that the “threat was already in their locker room.”<<

    So many people keep thinking this. It’s every marginalized group. In every single one of them there are people who get complacent and assume they are safe. And then for reasons I don’t understand, they vote against their own best interest or don’t vote at all. Because some singular issues matters more to them than the issues that are actively hurting their fellow men and women.

    I don’t mean to blame you when I say this. I mean to explain that it’s not you. I have felt this way. I felt like this when Trump got elected back in 2016. I didn’t understand how people could vote for him. I talked to several people who were marginalized like me who didn’t seem to think he was a threat. Who thought he might even be good for the country.

    Trump is an inventive liar, and his charisma appeals to a certain subset of the population who are single issue voters. The message that “only I can help” appeals to some people because it’s what people who are overwhelmed want to hear. Because they don’t want to have to figure things out. They are already overstressed and they want to pass off responsibility to others.

    When you add in the war on education for the last 80 or more years, you can start to recognize that a lot of people just don’t have critical thinking skills or they’re in such a state of overwhelmed worry that they can’t use them.

    It’s not just one thing. And the vast majority probably didn’t intend to “betray” anyone. The system is designed to keep the population desperate so that they don’t organize against it.

    And people like to assume they’re immune from propaganda. They aren’t. It’s insidious. It’s the type of thing you have to actively be on guard for.

    As for “friends or family”, this may seem harsh, but if they would hurt you in this way they were never your people. Let them go. Build meaningful relationships with other people who you can count on for love and support.

    Things are hard and they’re going to get harder. We gotta work to get things changed. That’s all we can do. The fight is never over.