I keep hoping that everything is exaggerated and it won’t be that bad. That he’ll be out in 4 years and not become a dictator with no more term limits.

I deleted all my social media the day after the election, except for my lemmy account. Mostly because I forgot about it. Now I just read a few news headlines and solve a crossword every day. And WHOA - talk about having bountiful free time now. It’s kinda scary.

Am I less stressed? Meh, maybe a bit. But I’ve decided I’m going to find beauty and amusement in the utter self destruction we are about to witness. I’m going to stand over here and watch the fire while I drink my beer in peace.

Touching grass. It’s important to remember that the entire world isn’t online and the world isn’t as dire as all of us chronically online doomers would have you believe. Things are chaotic-shift-in-the-status-quo bad, not civilization-ending bad.

The wheel turns, right now it’s in a muddy rut and the people on the bottom (sexually active women, people of colors, and the queer community) are drowning, but all the little people on the outer edge are eventually in the dirt. Fuck the world, fuck the country, the people you have personal relationships with are the only thing that matters because all we have is each other.

Personally I have been trying to be more proactive, which has helped me have a sense of agency amidst the chaos. Everything I own fits in my car in case I need to leave quickly because of a climate disaster or the legalization of hunting trans people. I haven’t bought a new thing (used, diy, or do without only) since lockdown because it’s significantly cheaper and makes me feel like I’m doing my part to fight final form capitalism. I’ve also been exploring alternate ways to support myself and live that are more sustainable.

TL;DR focus on the things you can control and do literally anything to try to improve things

The thing that causes trauma isn’t the bad event but the helplessness that accompanies it.

The main (and sometimes only) tactic that we are taught for dealing with problems is to find an intermediary who can do things on our behalf; seek the nearest authority who will take up your cause. Viewed that way, the fact that institutions and authorities are failing is disempowering; the problem is impossible because the schools/cops/companies/non-profits/politicians/media/etc aren’t helping. The only option that perspective leaves you is to take the blows and hope you’re strong enough to last until a better intermediary arrives. That shit will wear you down real fast.

We need to unlearn the dependence on intermediaries. We can’t stop the bad events from happening (and boy are they happening) but we can combat the helplessness. The antidote to helplessness is exercising agency and feeling control over our actions and their consequences. Find a way you can make things a little bit better and then show up and do it. Anything is fine, if there’s a cause you’re passionate about then do that, but if there’s not then pick something you’re kinda sort of good at. Write, draw, make phone calls, create memes, cook, drive, listen, etc. Any skill, no matter how small, can be leveraged to improve the world around you if you’re clever about it.

The fight is the point.

Taking action to control what you can is powerful. Maybe you’ll succeed and maybe you won’t but taking action is where you’ll find resilience. If what you do doesn’t work then learn from the experience and deepen your understanding. You’re not failing to solve the problem you are building up your capacity to tackle it and that shit takes time. Pursue this as vigorously and as passionately as you are able but also know that it’s okay to take breaks and step away sometimes.

Also, humans are social creatures so if what you do involves other people that’s even better.

Find a small corner of the world you can improve and focus on that. Can only effect what you can. Not worth worrying about the other stuff.

As hokey as it sounds 🤷‍♂️

Personally, I turn to activism. I realized that regardless of how horrible the future will be, there’s good to do in this world.

The world is full of people who are as scared as you and I are. I can make their lives a tad more positive.

The environment is collapsing? Educate and organise, think about how to build mutual aid systems and how to sustain yourself small scale.

The economy will crash? Help others, people who got thrown to the curb by the social system, homeless people, orphans,…

Civil rights are ending? I’m trans and scared. And there’s so many other trans children that are counting on me to be the representation that I wish would have had when I was their age. I’m not going down without a fight.

Democracy is ending? Let’s focus on preserving what we can and try to rebuild. It won’t be over forever.

People being nice to and helping me often makes my day in an otherwise miserable time.I want to be that person for others.

Honestly? I have no idea. Probably spite. Why should I kill myself? It’s the world that sucks.

Curiosity, so I observe. I believe we have control over nothing and that free will is an illusion. Consciousness is a mystery, as much my own as the one I suppose others have. In the middle of the chaos, I sometimes see glimpses of beauty, in many forms: music, images, people’s behaviour, fiction, maths, nature… So I observe , I try to find patterns, to understand how things work, why others do what they do. I have found beauty in the very little things, what used to be chores I now enjoy, they were chores because “I thought I had better more important things to do”, I wanted to be “later” but now I know what matters is to live in the moment, and I’ll be living the next moment later.

Social media, the news, they are trying to grab your attention and project you to the future, what is the next threat, when are you likely to die or suffer. The truth is: we are all going to be dead eventually, it can be for many reasons, it can be in the next hour, or in thousands of years, we cannot know when, but we all know it will happen, doesn’t really help to worry too much about it.

Don’t waste your life trying to prevent your inevitable death. Enjoy it while you can. The rest is mostly out of your control anyway.

By avoiding social media and living my life through memes and video games.

Donald Trump will die (don’t care if from natural causes or not) at some point in the near future. Just want to be alive to celebrate.

Most of the stuff you read doesn’t matter. What matters is how you treat people. Eat good food and smile, enjoy the rays of the sun which burn us all equally. Bask in a hot shower. Go outside, where you can’t see any other people for a few hours, and listen to the sounds.

I work in disability support. Some of the kids I am working with have gone over the last year from non speaking to using sign and are making real meaningful progress in their self care skills. They can keep going in the face of difficult times, so my problems don’t seem so hard.

Also, in Australia we have the NDIS, a system for funding disability supports in a socialised manner without restricting what options someone uses too much. While all governmental systems (or any systems with money) are susceptible to grift progress is being made on catching fraudsters and prosecuting them while also closing the loopholes they exploit. The NDIS will be around for a long time to come and will help Australians with disabilities determine their own futures and make them a reality. There are problems with it but honestly it has been a game changer and I think it is a model for the rest of the world to aspire to.

What else are we supposed to do?

Edit: that’s a rhetorical question, don’t come at me enumerating the alternatives

I have to provide for my family. they must survive because without them, I am nothing.

And nothing is more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose.

I think I may still be riding the hype of things like the JWST, and fusion energy breakthroughs. Our societies may be back sliding at the moment, but our species is still doing some amazing things.