I can honestly say I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as a federal worker.
Right now I’m working on my resume. I’m open to work, preferably in finance as I have my accounting degree. If you know of anyone hiring please let me know.
As I have mentioned before, please do not post your political beliefs as I am not interested in debates or opinions. During this time, please remember that government employees are workers at risk of losing their job. It’s scary as most of us have dedicated our careers to government and government operations is all that most of us know and now will be forced to look outside for other options and start over. No matter which side everyone is one, no one wants to lose their job so please be mindful of this. Remember that government employees are humans too and it is a very scary time for most of us and our families.
There is a reason every time FOX News brings Bernie Sanders in to debate socialism or some such tripe, he ends up converting the entire panel to his ideas and it turns into the hosts asking him questions about things they weren’t even aware of in terms of class divide.
Seriously, this is LITERALLY THE REASON WHY THEY ARE TRYING TO DIVIDE US WITH RACE. If we don’t realize that the very same deluded idiots who believe these lies are also our best bet for kicking the assholes out of government, we’re JUST as bad as they are. Yes, they are doing atrocious things and they are reprehensible.
But even if a magic genie appeared and gave us a new, amazing, socialist president who wanted to bring our country to the 24th century and beyond, we would STILL have to live next to the millions and millions of dumbfounded fools who will always believe the simpler story. Education may help, but not for generations. We have to work with the hand we’ve been dealt.
Start spreading the story that it’s rich versus poor, that it’s wealthy elites crushing us all, left or right, that we’re all being fooled and played against each other. Read up on economic distribution in the US and listen to some of Bernie’s speeches and take fucking notes. We CAN change this, but we have to make a better story for the morons to follow.
You cannot extend solidarity to people unwilling to recognize or engage with it. It’s the ratchet effect/overton window. We stand up for their rights, they don’t stand up when we exercise those same rights. Medication gets more expensive? Everyone is incensed. Viagra is taken off the expensive list, but HIV/birth control meds stay on it, where’d the outcry go? VA benefits slashed? Huge mobilization. Benefits for women’s shelters slashed? Crickets from them. We end up in a situation where only white men have rights because that’s the only time we’re all standing together. Until I see more white men fighting for women and minorities, I’m gonna have to ask why you think this strategy is working. (Obviously, #notAllMen or whatever)
I literally just described that it’s an effective strategy to change the narrative to class-consciousness over whatever the blazing fuck the left has been trying to do for the last several decades. My evidence is the fact that it works, that people like Sanders make waves, that people cheer when someone kills a wealthy CEO, that people engage with the narrative.
What are you expecting? Some tactic with 100% conversion rates? Delusions. Of fucking COURSE you can’t extend solidarity through a population that easily, what you do is change it enough. Narratives have momentum, people are a liquid in large numbers, you are not trying to contain all the liquid, you cannot possibly. What you do is divert the course. You don’t blow up a meteor heading towards Earth, you will just get shotgunned. What you do is alter the course ever so slightly over long periods of time. Russia has been doing this to us for decades and we ignored it.
It’s a simple tactic that people can do without government support, and without even political alignment. We have been finger-wagging at the right for a century trying to tell them to be better, they can’t be better, they’re just our population’s dumb, there will always be a dumb segment of the population. Nations who give a flying fuck about their future make sure that the dumb are both provided for and they provide a narrative that they can engage with and get behind.
Since we’ve never done either of those things, others have and have made the problem worse. But it can be turned around and it will be, the question is who is who we divert them into hating, and who is going to be holding the leash at the end.
The left HAS been doing class consciousness for decades. I’m not sure where you are or what’s going on in your area, but it’s been happening. Compromising and shaking hands and smiling. The left does it and even the dems have been doing it (less so than the left, but more so than republicans).
Obama’s main thing was healthcare for everyone which was sorely needed in a lot of trump country. People who benefited from the program actively fought against it and are voting for people who want to repeal it. They got healthcare under a Democrat. Where’s the goodwill from that? Obama was as close to populism as we were going to get at the time (he came after BUSH - people forget that). To date, republicans think he’s this terrible guy who ruined America. Republicans openly complain about free school lunches. Free food and clinics were staples of the rainbow coalition, and we can’t get people to accept them from democrats. Sure, Bernie and Luigi get people excited, but democrats are indeed trying to help working class people. Bidens build back better plan was lambasted despite zero mention of dei or trans people (to my knowledge). Just honest to god help for working class people.
Should pride shut down for however many decades it’s going to take for everyone to get on board? Should trans people just shut up about their rights? Is that the finger wagging you’re referring to? Because I’ve been there fighting for federal minimum wage increases and women’s rights, which help deep red states more than blue states because THEY KEEP VOTING AGAINST THESE THINGS. I live in a blue state and I make above minimum wage. Me and all my friends got sex ed and have access to the women’s healthcare we need. I’m not marching for US. I’m marching for solidarity. I’m not chastising people about their dehumanizing usage of the term “hobo” because I know it’ll just derail the conversation about if the homeless should HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE. I’m there, telling them that if homeless people can’t vote then what about renters, then what about spouses or adults living at home. There was a proposal letting businesses owners vote in local elections if they owned a business in that area (in addition to voting in their home area), and I was gladly explaining to people how it gives people with money and no interest in the local area the power and takes away power from the community. And yet, here we are. Things are not getting better. No hearts and minds campaign is going to fix this.
Tell me, what do you think the left has been doing? Nothing? If so, you’re not paying attention or actually engaging in organizing. If you’re upset at the finger wagging then please explain what trans people are supposed to do in the meantime while republicans work out their feelings. Just die?
I’m not saying the tactic doesn’t work at all, but it’s not enough. It’s too little too late (though it would never have been enough). Revolution is the only way anyone in this country has gotten rights and peaceful chats over whether or not black people should be lynched in the streets again are not gonna cut it. I’d love to have a president like Bernie, but the fact is they had an opportunity to vote for someone who supported school lunches and expanding healthcare, and instead voted for someone who openly talked about closing the department of education. They don’t care. They just don’t want a dem. 2020 polling of Trump v Sanders had sanders at 48 vs trumps 44. Biden won with 51 to 46. The numbers just aren’t there to support that enough people will change.
I have no real idea what you’re arguing against, but let me know when the revolution starts. (Bonus points if everyone in it actually knows what they’re uprising against, if only there was some kind of narrative or thing we could do that will help make everyone align against a common enemy. Oh well, guess we can skip right past that after all.)
I’m arguing against the idea that the left hasn’t been preaching working class solidarity for decades. You’re acting like it’s a novel concept to tell them rich people are the enemy. It’s not. It hasn’t worked because they are more interested in identity politics than actually helping themselves. Do you think those rather be Russian than a democrat shirts were a joke? It’s not about their actual interests, it’s about not being woke. They are willing to get covid or measles or bird flu and die to prove they’re anti-woke. They aren’t interested in hearing about how the wealthy hate them, because they’re too interested in hating minorities. If you wanna chat with them, enjoy, but the only way society deals with this kind of thing is by ensuring their bs never gets acceptable. We spent too much time talking to nazis and not enough time punching them and now they have the government.
I mean, I have literally turned more people than I can count, family members, friends, strangers, simply by making the fucking effort to talk to them without being an entitled dick just because I’m smarter. Things like quietly discussing the state of politics and how the economy works, the scale of deep-time and how it makes biblical stories more fantastic, not less, how biology and sexuality work and how many people are different than they’ve been led to believe, and just talking about their own personal insecurities. I have had people who identify as incels and nazis follow up with me years later thanking me for saving their lives because they were dumb and not thinking clearly. You don’t have to believe any of this, but I know you can change people one-on-one, and our challenge is to do this larger-scale WHILE still trying to make more effective political actions.
As individuals most of these people are NOT “more interested in hating minorities” that’s what they do, not what they are, we are giving many of them way too much intellectual credit, the racism has always been just the wallpaper that’s been plastered over their simple insecurities and fears, and providing a better story and giving people a chance to feel heard and express their insecurity and addressing it, that does far, far more to change the world than thinking that some magical revolution is going to purge the nation of everyone who clings to stories that are appalling to you because you know better. A lot of people don’t know better.
Granted, we cannot treat individuals the same way we treat populations, but you and many other people seem to be forgetting that WE STILL WILL HAVE TO SHARE OUR COUNTRY WITH THEM so we need to be better about our feelings of resentment and desires for atonement and “justice.” Our goal should be finding a way to do this, otherwise we start getting talk about “rounding people up” and “reeducation camps” and “revolutions” and I kinda don’t want to see America’s left become the next Israel. (Not that we could ever organize a large enough movement without it breaking down into seven hundred different forms of infighting progressive groups.)
hell yeah, great message, thanks for writing it up!
you should copy and paste it somewhere else so more people see it
Unfortunately, it’s not a message that everyone wants to get behind just yet. There are still countless neoliberals and the like who make up the bulk of the population, and they’re just apathetic and nihilistic on some level because they’ve never known community and security and don’t want things to change.
The only way people are going to start aligning together is when they start feeling the discomfort, so to this end, I have done a 180-pivot in my own agendas and desires for the future and now I’m an accelerationist, I cheer every time Trump signs some heartless piece of burning shit bill or order, because I know the faster he breaks the system, the faster the countless dumbfounded dipshits will get off their ass and start to try to make things better.
The game the republicans have been playing is to stretch out the actions so that people forget. We have a population with a memory span no greater than 5 years or so, this is why people seemed to forget the chaos of Trump’s first term and shrugged and voted for him again. (Among many other reasons.) What we want more than anything right now is for people to NOT forget this pain, we want the hardships to start stacking on top of each other so people don’t get a breather, only then will enough people be ready to turn to a new story to explain their pain.