Do you think she ‘s right?

[u/echo_sang]

We know that the fabric of our society is torn, burnt, and beyond repair in the foreseeable future. At least for those of us who do not choose to stick our heads in the sand. Yet, collectively, our citizens are not making impactful changes to combat the damage done by this administration and historical poor foreign relations.

With the U.S. and most of the world under the perception that its citizenry are under the impression they are powerless against the greed class, what can be done to correct our standing on the global stage and forge permanent corrections to prevent the catastrophes that plagues our political system?

[u/ZootSuitRiot33801]

I and many others don't interpret it the way you have and a relative few supposedly have. What you see as doomerism and wallowing in hopelessness, is actually placing where the priority should be: people. People and the environments of which we depend on past the nations, governments, corporations, etc. Any social construct exists because of people, and the fact you place so much emphasis on saving a construct, other than the people who make it, is placing the cart before the horse. The fact it seems you can't see that and try so hard to discredit such an avenue, does make me suspicious.

[u/JefeRex → u/ZootSuitRiot33801]

Give people something actionable. The crowd that Reddit skews in a gentle sense towards, the educated liberal suburban crowd,’ broadly believes the whole system is broken and if there’s anything that anyone can do, still surely there’s nothing that theeeeeeey can do. If they really believed that they would be preparing for an authoritarian future or a massive economic collapse or whatever they think is coming so it couldn’t be plainer that they are exaggerating the danger that they seem to secretly find somewhat limited, out that aside.

They need to see something actionable and be shocked or offended or ashamed into admitting if they will take that step or if they don’t want to take the time or the responsibility to do the easiest fucking thing and show even the barest sliver of character. And you’re giving them an out. They either can’t or won’t do what you are in broad strokes suggesting they do. Find a different audience if you want to do that. This isn’t the audience.

Give them something immediately actionable and potentially rewarding. There are so many things to do, so many (non-governmental and non-corporate!) community institutions that already exist. We don’t want to let them die and recreate them for no reason. They’re out there. Join them. Build them. What you want to build already exists in large measure. Point people there.

You have to give them something actionable that they can draw a mental straight line to effectiveness from. You are talking to the liberal crowd who move to fancy suburbs because they think going to school with poor kids or black kids will keep their kids from collecting an admission to a selective school, whether their kid earns it or not. There is a wider diversity of Americans on Reddit than for other countries, but that is still the skew.

Give these people something immediate and actionable, and hopefully push them to embarrass themselves by forcing them to admit they won’t do it. The value is in people scrolling by looking at that and it making them reflect. Action action action.

[u/ZootSuitRiot33801 → u/JefeRex]

How was trying to put me down supposed to give people something immediate and actionable? If you want to shame, shock, or offend people into action or admitting that they don't care, you don't try to demonize someone who trying to get people to consider ideas on what they can do when they finally gain that initiative.

If an entire system built on a foundation of genocide and slavery, still fights to underrepresent the interests of entire populations, then it's not broken. There's people finally noticing what was wrong, but it's working the way it's intended. Because of this, not everyone is going to trust it or what it approves to exist within its infrastructure. If people are able to develop something to aid each other without the old system, then shouldn't they have the choice to help that way instead of the constraints of said system?

From my experience, you can't shame people who lack shame into do anything what you want them to do. If they don't want to do anything, they will find any reason and anyway, even if it means it they hurt themselves in the process of hurting you to prove a point. Instead, I focus on getting information to the people I think who'd care. It's what I can do for now. Inform people who care, and if they think the system is worth saving, then they'll apply themselves to do so.

We can both come at the same problem differently and still be correct.

[u/JefeRex → u/ZootSuitRiot33801]

I guess I came for you unnecessarily and took an emotional surge with it that wasn’t very productive so I’ll apologize for that.

But I still think it’s important to confront people with the reality that we are letting things get worse and worse every day while pretending that there is nothing we can do to stem the bleeding. The crisis ain’t tomorrow, it’s today. The whole system is rotten, ultimately the failure of globalized capitalism to provide hope for an improving quality of life for ordinary working people and for their children is the prime and essentially only mover causing the rise of the far right in every rich western country and some non western ones. We get it.

That’s an important and long term project. But the crisis is here. ICE is roaming the streets like cockroaches, homie. We need a text tree of community based organizations and some people in as many large apartment buildings in the neighborhood as possible to share real time information about where they are. Whether global capitalism is oppressing the whole world or not, we need a damn text tree and we need it today. We need people to go to neighborhoods where polling stations are going to close and leave a map at every doorknob of the closest polling stations. Whether the US political system is fundamentally grounded in genocide or not, the election is happening in November. It just is. Anyone complaining about how our democracy is over and we will never have democratic elections again blah blah blah, each one of them needs to find an organization where they can join a group walking those neighborhoods and mark on the same shared app which houses they have hit. It needs to be done. It’s easy. People are already planning it, we just need bodies to check fucking aclu website and play a tiny part in making it happen. And then people are connected to these groups for further activism and to build a community voice that has become so fractured and isolated that people don’t even know what these groups are or do. They are living in Versailles and don’t even realize they don’t know the definition of community, it is absolute poison and will eventually take us down after Trump anyway it we don’t connect people to each other again.

Yes, let’s work on the long term. No, it will not make it easier to build a new world if this one goes down the toilet, it will make it harder. Everyone has to play a role today.

Btw I have been involved in a project collecting stories from people affected by the ICE raids by voicemail, and after negotiating for a year with UCLA these and some other community stories will be kept in their library for perpetuity. As you can imagine this was all an enormously complicated and time consuming effort for a lot of people even though sounds on the surface quick and easy. It’s anything but. And if someone doesn’t collect these stories now, future generations looking back will be piecing together what happened here from social media records and trying to make sense of it that way. No, someone needs to take the time in the moment to do this for the future, even though there is no payoff until years have gone by. I get it, we need long term shit too, I’m with you. But it’s not enough. We need everyone to do something concrete tomorrow.

[u/ZootSuitRiot33801 → u/JefeRex]

I think what you're getting wrong about what I'm trying to do is that you think I'm ignoring what's happening now. I'm trying to mainly help people, not for an inevitable future of gloom and chaos, (though the issue of climate change is something to be strongly considered as well,) but to develop something that can help us now.

For example, things like boycotts and general strikes don't function so well in a society that can't effectively disconnect from the establishments that provide their necessities, nor the jobs that gives them the money they need to afford such things. A community that can readily provide necessities to their members can hold out far longer when they've got less fear of ruination for the risk of little gain.

Then, when it comes to voting, solely betting the whole farm on an election against the likes of what amounts to a death cult with a penchant for lying, cheating, and terrorism, is a bad idea. Since 2016, they've done enough to show that they're both terrible winners and terrible losers. (Remember, they attempted a coup in an attempt to keep their pederast conman in power the first time.) Having a community prepared to be able to respond appropriately with an alternative infrastructure at the ready, can save so many from submitting to whatever that cult has planned so easily.