Lesley Carhart Oct 29

Hey, so as a veteran and incident responder I need to warn you to pay attention to something in America.

The human brain is resilient. While you’re watching kids get dragged away from the parents and people being beaten in the streets, you’re accumulating trauma but also being desensitized.

Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29

This is a natural reaction of your brain to repeatedly seeing horrific things. It will pay less and less attention to those images and have less of a visceral reaction. You can accept horrors.

This is what the fascists want. They want you to accept things continually getting worse and more violent.

Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29
I know it’s overwhelming right now, but kick in your rational brain and risk measures and then evaluate if things are the same or as good as they were a year ago, ten years ago, etc. Is this something you would have considered normal or noteworthy? Is this what you’d expect from the gov or media?
Show threadJJOct 29
@hacks4pancakes First off, you left Chicago at precisely the right time. Second, people know this isn't ok. The issue seems to be that there are no good options to make this go away. The courts are slow, stepping in physically to protect people leads directly to the Insurrection Act being invoked and further dominoes falling, and while people are doing what they can, masked men are still crashing cars, tossing teargas, and throwing people into unmarked vans. It's insane.
Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29
@guitarfosec people on Mastodon know. My dad doesn’t know. My colleagues don’t know. The people who organize Chicago events don’t know. We are in a bubble.
Show threadKim ScheinbergOct 29

@hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec
I have been thinking about going to Chicago to protest and wondering, if I get beaten or arrested, will that finally be the wakeup call for some people in my circles

My fear is not of being beaten or arrested. My fear is that even *that* won't be a wakeup call

Show threadBen RamseyOct 29
@kims @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec My in-laws think we’ve been radicalized. If we went to a protest and were arrested and/or beaten, they would assume we are too far gone and deserved it.
Show threadKim Scheinberg

@ramsey @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec
I am often told how much happier I would be if I just stopped reading the news

"It's not like you can do anything about it!"

In the last week I've asked those people to match my donations to food banks because, well, I read the fucking news

Oct 29 at 11:25pmWeb
Show threadDraken BlackKnightOct 29
@kims @ramsey @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec
My brother thinks I've been radicalized just because I voted for Mamdani when early voting opened up on Saturday.
Show threadCollette's BrainOct 30
@draken thank you for that