Glyph

To restate something I already posted, because I need to read it again, and maybe some of you do too:

The *reason* that the upcoming administration is bad is not because the blue team lost, but because the red team is going to use power to disrupt our lives and cause pain.

Therefore *all* resistance is, at its root, "living and helping others live un-disrupted lives". Fighting for blue-team wins is a tactic, not a goal.

Nov 9, 2024 at 9:01pmWeb
Show threadGlyphNov 9, 2024

Therefore, in addition to adversarial activities devoted to thwarting the fascists' goals of chaos and suffering—and don't get me wrong, we will need tons of adversarial activities—you will have to have and help others have joy and prosperity and productivity and agency.

That is the *point* of it all.

Show threadGlyphNov 9, 2024
It feels weird to be in a liminal place of privilege and uncertainty, like a preemptive survivors guilt. Certainly, I will not suffer the worst of what is to come. Will I suffer? Probably, but it's impossible to know how much. But I will not help anyone by putting on a hair shirt and pretending at being more marginalized than I am. Far from it; every moment I spend in despair is a moment that I *can't* be engaged in resistance. At least joy might recharge me for more resistance, later.
Show threadGlyphNov 9, 2024

Relatedly, it's relatively easy to post that self-care is praxis but annoyingly more difficult to actually deploy the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to _do_ the self-care. It turns out all forms of praxis are actually pretty challenging, who knew!

Maybe if I intellectualize this just a *little* bit harder…

Show threadJeff ForcierNov 9, 2024
@glyph THINK HARDER, GLYPH!!!
Show threadJames 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺Nov 10, 2024
@glyph Yeah that's really nicely said.
Show threadGlyphNov 10, 2024
@freequaybuoy thanks for saying so.
Show threadevacideNov 10, 2024
@glyph The leopard will eat our faces soon enough. Let's go help some people in the meantime.
Show threadJoël FranušićNov 10, 2024
@glyph I’ve come to a similar conclusion though I’ve been calling it resilience. Not for reasons of semantics because at some level resistance is a tacit admission of inferiority
Show threadFeohNov 10, 2024
@glyph This is actually an area where I see getting people the reproductive health care they need is in furtherance of that goal.
Show threadJeremy ListNov 10, 2024
@glyph I've actually been frustrated by the apparent lack of adversarial activities under the outgoing administration: sure the old guy is vastly preferable to the new one but he still did a lot of things that should have been met with much more opposition!
Show threadEvan LightNov 9, 2024

@glyph The sad irony is that this is the same argument the red team has been using, but about the blue team. The reds have been making this same argument for even longer. And both sides fervently believe their argument. Those who are disrupted, and how they are disrupted, is quantitatively and qualitatively different. And yet those stories of disruption are similarly fearful and therefore motivating to both red and blue.

I don't see how civil war is avoidable. It sadly just seems like a matter of when not if.

Show threadGlyphNov 9, 2024
@elight Yes, a tremendous amount of the work before us is to find ways to undermine and disempower their propaganda apparatus, that enables them to convince tens of millions of people that they are experiencing imagined hardships, or blame the real hardships that they are experiencing exclusively on democrats. It's a big uphill battle but it's not impossible.
Show threadlonely extrovertNov 9, 2024
@elight @glyph civil war only happens if the blue side learns to actually fight back instead of just inching closer to the center and deploying the usual appeasement tactics.