If you think this is just for the next 4 years, you’re fooling yourself.
my dad always taught me not to let the workings of the world affect my personal mood
even if the world is going to shit, you can carve out a little slice of life for yourself and the people you love. take care of those people, take care of what you own, do the things you’re passionate about and let God worry about the rest
and I say that as an atheist. it’s a metaphor
A dad point of view, while precious in delivery, doesn’t really translate very well in this scenario if you’re anything but a cis white male. The cis white men will be fine like they have been fine for thousands of years.
i grew up an illegal immigrant in the US. we were poor and struggled but ultimately I had a good upbringing and I have a good life now.
the world is uncaring and unjust. you have to stick up for yourself and build something for you and the ones you love. nobody else will do it for you.
unless you are a silver spoon trust fund baby of course. but most of us don’t get that privilege
The Senate does not have a filibuster-proof majority. They could potentially end the filibuster, but given that it’s the Republicans’ favorite tactic, there’s a decent chance they might not. Especially since the less extreme Republicans can use it as an excuse to let bills they don’t like die without having to vote against the.
The House margin is likely to be thin enough that the moderate Republicans will vote down the crazies. So even if the Senate ends the filibuster, the most egregiously stupid laws should still be stoppable.
Trump still has the ability to do a lot of damage, and he probably will. But if the Republicans piss off people too quickly, they’re likely to tank in 2026, with there being a decent chance to turn both the House and Senate blue and lame duck Trump for the rest of his presidency.
It’s going to be rough, but do not abandon hope.
One thing I know I’m going to be doing is reading “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)” by Dean Spade. From the first two paragraphs of the first chapter:
Mutual aid projects expose the reality that people do not have what they need and propose that we can address this injustice together. The most famous example in the United States is the Black Panther Party’s survival programs, which ran throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including a free breakfast program, free ambulance program, free medical clinics, a service offering rides to elderly people doing errands, and a school aimed at providing a rigorous liberation curriculum to children. The Black Panther programs welcomed people into the liberation struggle by creating spaces where they could meet basic needs and build a shared analysis about the conditions they were facing. Instead of feeling ashamed about not being able to feed their kids in a culture that blames poor people, especially poor Black people, for their poverty, people attending the Panthers’ free breakfast program got food and a chance to build shared analysis about Black poverty. It broke stigma and isolation, met material needs, and got people fired up to work together for change.
Recognizing the program’s success, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover famously wrote in a 1969 memo sent to all field offices that “the BCP [Breakfast for Children Program] represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP [Black Panther Party] and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.” The night before the Chicago program was supposed to open, police broke into the church that was hosting it and urinated on all of the food. The government’s attacks on the Black Panther Party are evidence of mutual aid’s power, as is the government’s co-optation of the program: in the early 1970s the US Department of Agriculture expanded its federal free breakfast program—built on a charity, not a liberation, model—that still feeds millions of children today. The Black Panthers provided a striking vision of liberation, asserting that Black people had to defend themselves against a violent and racist government, and that they could organize to give each other what a racist society withheld.
People in your community already need help. You and your friends can start building a mutual aid network today, one that can help queer people, black people, and women in need. You can decide what kind of aid you can provide. Maybe you’re offering rides to airports to women who need to travel out of state for medical care. Perhaps you’re providing safe places and spaces for the Trans population in your area. Whatever it is, you’ll feel more connected and more in control of your community, and put out a positive influence within it.
Along the way, you should also try and educate yourself so that you can educate others.
Plenty of great advice here, but one more thing to think about is how such a large win for Republicans can be used against them a bit in the future. They won the Presidency and have majorities in the Senate, likely the House, the Supreme Court, and governorships. They have free reign to do what they want, which is scary, but it also means that they can’t blame the Democrats for any bad things that may happen in the next 2 years until the midterms.
Any law that passes with bad outcomes is solely their fault. If the economy gets worse, it’s all on them. If the deficit increases, they are the only ones to blame. If they don’t fulfill their campaign promises, it’s because they chose not to. If there is a government shutdown, it’s because they couldn’t agree on a budget. If bills aren’t being passed, they are arguing too much. They can’t even fall back on blaming the Democrats in the Senate because they have enough votes that they could cancel the filibuster while they are in office and reinstate it before they leave.
This means that you, and everyone else, can point out anything the government does that has a negative impact and say definitively that it is entirely the fault of the Republicans. If this is done frequently enough and loud enough, there may be enough frustrated voters to change the outcome the next time around. They will definitely do things that annoy almost every voter, whether they are going too far or not far enough in their agenda, and they can’t hide that it was only them that made those decisions.
The next time around. Sure, Jan. it’s over.
I hate this reality, but remember that in 1950, Black Americans were literally being lynched. I don’t think a trump presidency is worse than that or even nearly as bad, at least not this soon. If dems dont win the midterms and get a 2028 trifecta we might have a problem.
Remember, the US has federalism. Power is shared between the states and the federal government. The federal government dont have the manpower to literally put people in concentration camps, not yet.
If you live in a red state or red city, move, now. Move to a Blue State and Blue City.
Federalism is our last defence against fascism. Democracy might be dying, but it aint dead yet. The Climate however, thats another story :(
Only thing an average person can do is try to get people to vote, midterms, presidential, local. Every election Primary or General. Low turnout in Primary could lead to disasterous candidates.
The American concentration camps will be much worse than the Jim Crow era.
The only way out of this situation is through.
Treat it like nuclear fallout. Everything sucks right now. So much life is going to be oppressed. But eventually it will end, and we can begin rebuilding.
No point in hiding for 4 years, shits not going to be the same when you come out. The only thing we can do is get the fuck out or stay and fight. Shit’s gone get real bad if we all just hide. Pretty much what caused the issue since I feel like we all have been since Covid.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Take a beat of you need it. Take it one hour at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time. You can do this.
I think we overrate the ability of the government to change the living conditions in a country. The government is only one factor among others, such as technology, geography, ecnomics, history, climate, and the accumulation of small choices made over decades.
Get active. The absolute worst thing you can do is “nothing”. You will feel so much better getting out there and doing good work with your neighbors. Looking for local mutual aid orgs in your area is a good start. If you can’t find any, start one yourself! Another commenter here goes into greater detail, but you can start very small! Or arrange some meetups around skill-sharing. You probably have a useful skill or knowledge that others could benefit from, and I’m sure there’s things you’d like to learn as well. Doing things like this builds community bonds, and strengthens us all. Don’t wallow, get involved!
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Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to the Workers to protect themselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there’s an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.
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Read theory. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. It will help contextualize what fascism is, what causes it, and how to stop it. I can offer more advanced reading lists regarding Marxism if you’d like, but this is a good starting point.
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Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground.
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Be more industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well. Theory guides practice, which sharpens theory to be reapplied to better practice.
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Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. The Democrats will not save us, we must do so.
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Be persistent. If you feel like a single water driplet against a mountain, think of the Grand Canyon. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
I think an underrated piece of theory that the right-wing seems to understand and utilize more than the left is Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. They seem to be very good at recuperating our theory and twisting it to their own ends, while we on the left struggle to détourne their words and ideas in a way that promotes leftist thought.
I think media theory in general is a big aspect where the left is losing.
EDIT:
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others.
Also, one of the best ways to survive a fight is to escape it. If getting armed isn’t practical, a high-powered flashlight that can temporarily prevent an assailant from seeing you clearly enough to attack and approach is a good move. A group with laser pointers can work, too. Can be quicker and more accurate than pepper spray, but more effective at long range than close.
That’s an interesting point! I agree that Capital does a great job of subverting, de-fanging Leftist theory, co-opting it and churning out opportunism. “Hollywood Resistance,” if you will. I think Lenin said it best in The State and Revolution, at least with respect to Marxism specifically but applicable broadly:
What is now happening to Marx’s teaching has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this “doctoring” of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, but yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they aver, educated the workers’ unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of conducting a predatory war!
Also good point with respect to Self-Defense!
Also, I wonder if we should be considering the move to organizing on secure channels instead of in the open in places like here on Lemmy? Like Matrix has end-to-end encryption out of the box and its at least similar to Discord.
Depends on the purpose. For organizing? Yes, I agree. For agit-prop? Lemmy instances vary in security. Some instances have Matrix rooms as well.
In this critical time, I do think it is important for well-read leftists to channel the defeat liberals are feeling right now and try to push them to read more and take a more active role in politics. That becomes harder in Matrix rooms vs open federated servers.
The left inherently recuperates through political education, but cannot do much about the society of the spectacle without winning revolution, as it does not have cultural hegemony. Debordists would traditionally go on mindfulness field trips and such, which is fun, but not really building power.
The left needs to build: it needs more and members. This means political education and doing organizing work, with everyone levelling up skills, planning and executing actions, recruiting, studying, and running education programs for the recruited. And all of this means nothing without the context of an organization, so join one that looks good and revisit your decision every few years as you develop politically yourself.
I very much agree. The key part at this moment in time is to craft an appealing narrative that’s at least as palatable as what the right is peddling. What’s happening is that people in the mainstream are increasingly becoming disillusioned with the system, and they’re starting to become open to new ideas as a result. They’re going to start shopping around and settle on a narrative that makes sense to them as an explanation of what’s going on and what needs to be done to make their lives better.
The right has been doing a really good job convincing people of their narrative because a lot of it builds on the existing tropes, small government, more personal freedoms, etc.
The really challenging part for the left at this time is to come up with a narrative that’s easy to digest, that inspires people, and gives them a long term vision for the future. It has to be a long term vision, something people feel that’s worth fighting for, even if there’s no quick reward on the table.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about things in those terms before. I am wondering whether part of why the right seem to be so good at recuperation is that the right (in particular, fascists) benefit from capitalist support. Money and media have a lot of power; I weep for the people who were indoctrinated to hatred to the extent that they voted against their own interests. The scales are tipped in the right’s favour in that regard. What do you think?
(I haven’t read Society of the Spectacle yet, in case that addresses some of what I’m saying)
Tangentially related, but I’m reminded of this quote from Disco Elysium:
“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.”
The scales are heavily tipped in Capital’s favor, not necessarily the Republicans alone.
Spontaneous revolution/organisation for revolution has been promised for a long time, and is no closer to happening.
I am not advocating “spontaneous” organization or random revolution. I am arguing for joining orgs and building Dual Power. As for revolution, the US is a pot of an unknown liquid constantly heating up as Capitalism decays. The boiling point is unknown, but the fact that conditions are worsening and contradictions are sharpening at increased rates means it still is likely to come.
I just like, don’t believe it. Capitalism is hundreds of years old, and it’s only gotten stronger.
After ww1 there was one socialist country.
After ww2 one third of humans lived in a socialist country.
That number has risen since. Capitalism is slowly making its way off the stage of history.
No, no it hasn’t risen since - unless your definition of socialism has expanded far more than I agree with. Meanwhile, economies elsewhere have gotten more and more market-oriented and financialised.
Why do you believe it is stronger? The fact that Capitalism’s decentralized markets result in centralized monopolist syndicates is exactly why Marx predicted Socialism to be the next stage in Mode of Production. Marx said it best in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Lenin further analyzed these monopolist syndicates and described why we are seeing dying, decaying Capitalism in his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Once competition begins to die out, the Rate of Profit sinks and these Monopolist Syndicates strangle each other. The only way to fight this rate of falling, other than further automation which further lowers the rate of profit, is joining each other in ever larger syndicates, which is not infinitely replicatable. Capitalism is in its death throes.
A good, quick read if you don’t want to dive into books is the article Why Public Property?
I mean, the idea of socialism has certainly seen setbacks since the end of the last century, hasn’t it? While gross inequality is still a huge problem, and I hope it will be solved somehow, the Lenin/Stalin version of socialism feels like it has basically lost.
A good, quick read if you don’t want to dive into books is the article Why Public Property?
I hadn’t seen this one before, thanks for that. There’s some great examples in here, on the subject of monopolies.
This phenomenon only continues to be proven true over a century later. The United States today has a far greater concentration of industry than it did during Lenin’s analysis. The small business sector has also consistently been on the decline. This is an observable reality. [Accompanied by a graph]
Monopolies and particularly oligopolies are having a moment, but the chart only goes back to the 70’s, and implicitly shows total company number going up (why is hard to say, it’s a paywalled article, and they mixed data from two other sources). If you go back further, I think it would look pretty different - the old gilded age ended, Standard Oil was broken up, and some of the giants of the postwar era got knocked down a peg or more. Further, the trend is pretty uneven by sector. Mom and pop shops are dead now, but independently owned franchises and publicly traded whatevers are hella dominant, and contractors (or “contractors”) are everywhere.
A clear modern example of this would be the smartphone industry. Competition has made cellphone manufacturing more and more complex over time. A cellphone these days is far too complex to be created by a small business. One requires access to enormous factories, machines, and supply chains. According to The Wealth Record, “the net worth of Samsung is pegged at $295 billion.” This is roughly the amount of capital one would need to acquire to even begin to be a serious competitor to Samsung.
I actually know quite a bit about semiconductor manufacturing. It may be the most capital intensive endeavor of all, but you don’t quite need to be Samsung to do it. If you want to build your own at scale, a fab might be “only” a billion dollars. That’s a lot, but many startups have raised it (for other things), so it’s a different story from being Samsung on day 1.
If you just want your chip design made, it’s way easier. TSMC exists to build other people’s designs. Companies like Sam Zeloof’s new enterprise exist for small scale printing of your prototypes. Most of the basic design tools can be found open source.
The network effect has made some genuine monopolies and definitely many oligopolies, but other things are less affected. Individual rich people get rich by chance (if you don’t mind me introducing my own source, which happens to be my favourite one).
All this to say, I don’t think concentration is going to kill capitalism in the near future, or even come close.
It is easy to look backwards at prior systems, such as the feudal economic system or the slave economic system, and then figure out how that system developed into the system afterwards. Adam Smith, for example, already explained in detail in his book Wealth of Nations how capitalism developed out of feudalism long before Marx.
It’s a tangent, so I’ve separated this out, but this is also an interesting claim. The end of feudal economics is an actively researched bit of history, and was far from neat and tidy. IIRC some of those old fealty-type agreements lasted into Marx’s time, if being mere formalities by their end. And I’m not sure why we (correctly) decided slavery was bad after doing it since before recorded history, either.
Socialism hasn’t been perfect, the only people that think leftists are arguing for perfection are right-wingers. Marxism-Leninism is still correct analysis, and the USSR was still a massive improvement on existing conditions. It has not “lost,” it is continued by Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, and more. Blackshirts and Reds debunks a lot of common anti-communist myths.
One thing you seem to be misunderstanding is the idea that because there are mom and pop shops, that there aren’t fewer and fewer, with decreasing portions of the overall share of Capital. The barriers to legitimately compete with these megacorporations like Samsung are getting higher, you can’t legitimately compete with their resources and design work.
Finally, your mark on the presence of new modes of production emerging from the old is a misconception of the Marxist argument. What is Socialism? explains that in further detail, and Productive Forces explains societal progression. Slavery resurging was an aspect of settler-colonialism, a notion that remains to this day, this was not a resurgence of old pre-feudal economics.
Feudalism was status quo in most of the world since the dawn of civilization and it was replaced in many parts of the world.
Yeah, and I’m still not sure how that happened or if democracy is here to stay, honestly.
I can’t really see things going back there economically, though - modern technology is just too good, and isolated illiterate peasants can’t make it.
Edit: Unless we really fuck up and cause nuclear winter or something. I suppose if we’re starting from scratch being agrarian again is on the table.
Lack of hope is a benefit, but not for you. People thought that a revolution was impossible even before the 20th century, and still, 1917 happened.
For a while, and then it failed. Meanwhile, the Western world got more and more free market.
Yeah, and we need to make it last next time.
Well, to go back to my OP, good luck with that.
Infinite growth is impossible on a planet with finite resources
That’s not the problem with Capitalism, the problem with Capitalism is that decentralized markets through competition result in monopolist syndicates. The endpoint is one single, centrally planned monopoly, at which point public ownership and central planning along democratic lines is critical. We don’t have to wait for that point, but Capitalism cannot last beyond it.
Correct. In the long run every sector is going to end up like agriculture in the Midwest - all the land is in use, it’s just a matter of planting and harvesting the same way each year.
Pretty sure most of that is just him advocating for mutual aid/defense networks at the local level should the rule of law (lol) break down
Nah, I am directly advocating building Dual Power along Marxist lines. I am a Marxist-Leninist.
This is the real answer. When we are stressed, depressed, anxious, and feeling hopeless, we can either turn inwards and retreat from society, or we can lean into our friends, family, and community.
If you have no community, now is the time to build it. A lot of liberals will be desperate, and that means it’s a great time to shake off the lies of individualism (we are all individuals part of a community) and develop the truth of community. Otherwise this cycle will continue the way it always has.
I agree 100%. This is a painful day for liberals, and an important opportunity to analyze what went wrong and how to fix it going forward. Voting blue and going to brunch is not enough.
Also, a reminder that community can start with just one other person, you don’t need to personally create a large organization overnight.
- Joker laugh HAHAHAHAHAHA
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Your fear is understandable and valid, this is a dark timeline and a really bad outcome.
But being afraid and panicking cannot possibly help anybody, least of all yourself.
Take a few days if you can to reset mentally as much as possible.
Then, get to work building resistance, it’s more critical now than ever. Find a leftist org near you and get involved. DSA, a local anarchist group, a worker co-op that needs volunteers, a democratic socialist org, anything leftist that is doing real work locally.
If you can’t donate your time, donate your money. If you can’t donate either of those, then help them spread the word on your social media. Post all their links and use your social media to advertise their events and meetups, help make people aware.
On the personal side, protect your health. The conservatives largely want to demolish healthcare, especially for underprivileged folks. Your health is so critical, especially now.
Quit your vices or at least, reduce them:
- Quit smoking/vaping.
- Stop drinking, at least heavily if you do.
- Stop eating junk food/candy.
- Get in shape, hike, calisthenics, walk, bike, etc.
It will not only help protect you from an administration that wants you to have less coverage if you’re sick/injured, it will help your mental health and save you money, sometimes tons of money.
Final advice for money, save it as much as you can. Practice frugality, get together with friends to cook and share meals. Get involved socially with people, learn about your community, build solidarity.
We will get through this, I believe in you, and I believe in the human drive for true freedom, equality, and community. Don’t let that flame burn out, we’re in this together, and only together can we come out victorious. ✊
Republicans also control senate and might control the house in addition to majority conservative judges in supreme court. I so hope its going to be “just 4 years”
