Worth noting that iirc the lorax doesn’t actually do anything except speak up for those who needed help and protection. He didn’t win immediately but his efforts weren’t in vain. The lorax (or at least the movie?) shows you many ways you can be a part of changing the world. You dont have to be Ted, you don’t have to be the Lorax, you don’t have to be granny norma, or Ted’s love interest, or the people who spoke up first when Ted planted the tree. All of these people made the world better with their own contribution. You should consider it, though.
The Lorax failed as every single Truffula tree was felled. Then the person who destroyed everything passed the work of rebuilding off to someone else.
It is a great story as a warning, but a terrible example of avoiding destruction.
The movie?
. . . Get out.
The very situation we are in now was greatly enabled because lots of people did what you are doing. Dont lose sleep and sacrifice your health (edit not help), but if you were ever an undecided candidate while Trump was running, or you don’t know what an oligarchy or nepotism is or why they’re relevant, or can’t recount what happened on Jan 6 2021, you NEED to pay more attention.
Honest question, in the pre-Trump days people rightly pointed out that the "ruling class " (Koch brothers, Adelsons, Soros, Bloomberg, etc. etc.) would try to buy influence in their preferred party but also donated to the “other side”.
Those people were called oligarchs.
Now that Trump has taken the reins, the term has turned toward him. If you look at the donors in 2024, the top six or so donated to the Republican party (Elon tops that list) but it’s not THAT far off from previous years.
Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold, or is the increased use of “oligarchy” more of a tactic to try and mitigate the damage that Trump can do by calling it out as loudly as possible?
I’m Canadian, and I’ve heard the term oligarchy thrown around in reference to American politics for many years, but never do often nor so forcefully as in the past two months.
On top of what everyone else has said, I’m gonna be that person and bring up capitalism, which I’m defining as private ownership of business (as opposed to state ownership, or ownership by the workers, etc). Capitalism concentrates money, and by extension power, which is never good for people without it. I’ll admit I’m biased as a socialist, but at this point the biggest indictment of capitalism for me is that most of what we’re seeing these days isn’t new: rampant wealth inequality which leads to institutions decaying, followed by liberal and conservative elites being either unable or unwilling to fix problems that are plain for everyone to see, followed by people being radicalized.
The new thing is global warming, which can’t be attributed solely to capitalism but is being exacerbated by it. A handful of people who get their money and power from fossil fuels would rather burn the world to ashes than give up that money and power (yes, they’re probably investing in renewables, but if they treated global warming like the existential threat it is, they wouldn’t be bankrolling climate deniers.
(this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the Soviet Union or the current Chinese government, they are/were both also results of capitalism failing but neither of those is relevant to democracy failing in the West™ also I’m not a tankie, authoritarianism of every stripe is bad)
They’re now completely shameless, out in the open, and know that nobody is gonna stop them.
Under trump yes it’s both overt and flagrant. Any of his friends, people he owes, people he likes, or those in his orbit get things like cabinet positions, or government contracts, or ambassadorships. This is new under trump. There have always been better or worse candidates for positions and questionable angling, but the “my kid gets this position, her father in law gets that one, this fox news guy gets this” undeniable.
This is in addition to the fact that the connections are now in the open as well. Trump just calls up a supreme Court justice when he’s got a case before them and they answer. Senators, governors, and of course house reps are the same and increasingly industry CEOs are playing the game.
To wrap a brief oligarchy/plutocracy comment, you can even go find a soundbite by trump that says basically “Elon gave us a lot of money, so I guess I’m a fan of electric cars now”. There is no more quiet part, or quiet part loud, it’s just all loud.
Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold
The world’s richest man did a nazi salute on stage, in front of at least 3 of the other richest men in the world who all showed up to support the incoming administration.
The owners of Twitter, Meta, Amazon, and most recently Tiktok with the “thanks Trump!” obvious power play have all quite openly kissed the ring and bent the knee.
This is very far off from previous years. The wealthiest of the wealthy are making public displays of loyalty to a man who has flagrantly profitted off of the office for four years straight while actively making life worse for everyone except the rich.
Now he flagrantly profitted off of the office again before he was even inaugurated by launching a cryptocurrency, and his first actions in office are all directly and obviously against the best interests of the people but custom-designed for the well-known interests of wealthy conservative idealogues.
Yes, this is new. And yes, this is very, very, bad. Was America an oligarchy playing dress-up as a democratic republic? Yes. Were there massive donors pulling strings behind the scenes? Absolutely. Were politicians and lobbyists enjoying a revolving door of public and private sector benefits and making bank on book deals? All true.
But now the masks are off, and the worst and wealthiest have taken control with a smile and a laugh. They aren’t playing the world’s biggest and stupidest game of Monopoly. They have the Commander in Chief of the Military with all the checks and balances intentionally removed, so at the very least they’re playing the world’s worst game of Risk.
They aren’t going to make money off of book deals. They will make money off of wholesale looting and dismantling the government, and they’ll blame the inevitable economic and societal problems on us, on immigrants, on un-American citizens, and they’ll do it in broad daylight on 5th avenue.
That’s bad.
Sacrificing your servants is the worst thing you could do. Who’s going to butter your toast?
That’s a funny typo, but I gotta fix it.
Removing news from your regular feeds or taking a break from them for a week is chill, everyone should do that here and there. But don’t bury your head in the sand, you should keep an eye on it even if that is only browsing a dedicated news feed every week or two. Ignorance and complacency is how we got Trump 2024 with people actively voting against themselves.
Join your local DSA and tend to local issues. The things that the national level are indeed serious, but spend your time and efforts where you can make the biggest difference.
Donate a few dollars to your local land trust to keep land out of the hands of big business.
Join local housing boards or City Hall meetings, wherever decisions on zoning and housing are decided. Anytime someone tries to blame something on bigger buildings designed for more people, and better public transportation, fight them tooth and nail. Single residence zoning, parking minimums, etc. are one of the reasons homelessness exists.
Show up to protests
Make friends with your neighbors
Please do anything but just vegetate. You are important. But only if you help.
You get used to a specific tone, and if you hear that tone, based on previous experience, you recognize it is probably bullshit. Then you start to tune out the bullshit, sometimes you might still miss something important, but that happens anyways. Check out what people are saying, if it’s actually true, you can decide if it actually should be a concern to you as an individual. Don’t believe “immigrants are destroying the country” without working with some as equals at a job. Same with other rage bait.
“it’s gotten very political” says someone who had to be sentient through the covid pandemic. i just can’t anymore y’all.
If you ain’t doing politics, politics is gonna do you.
Pay attention to “events that actually happen” and “things that people in power say.” Pay far less attention to “kvetching and predicting.”
If you stop paying attention entirely, you’re going to end up with a whole lot of Shocked Pikachu Face in your future.
I read something long ago that I can’t find anymore that said something to the extent of, pay attention to the movement of money, troops and people. I struggle to understand what stuff that the news reports on means, so I like the deeper stories that report on an expert’s opinion of what somebody said means or shows like 60 minutes over the Nightly News. I avoid the bloggers and vloggers since they are not experts on the important topics.
If you stop paying attention entirely
This is the part which normalization works to accelerate. Every message is crafted to rally supporters and repulse opponents; enough to get one to tune out and stop paying attention. Do it long enough and whatever they want to do will be done without any scrutiny.
This is one of the reasons the consolidation of mainstream independent media is a serious problem.
Not sure how you mean “I am in the US” but based on a bunch of assumptions, my advice would be to tune it out as much as possible and focus on being a good person making your friends and famliy happy.
This trump administration will very likely follow the last in that it will be a storm of incompetence and reversing-of-decisions such that whatever actual evil they are able to implement will show up somewhere you’d likely see it in your day-to-day life.
You’ll get a lot of stress and anxiety watching the news / social media about it because those things will include all the “might happens” and "said they would"s and so on. Forget that stuff. Just make some good food you like and make someone close to you smile today and that’s the best you can do. (And it’s not bad!)
Tune it out. I went all in last time. It’s not worth it for your mental health
Same. The mental health damage isn’t worth paying attention
It’s okay. We can take turns being vigilant, as each of our mental health allows.
Our billionaire overlords are incredibly powerful, but there’s a shit ton more of the rest of us, than there are of them, even counting their many paid cronies.
The billionaires are also the ones pushing the around the clock burn out news cycle, to wear us down.
Take time for your mental health, and trust random folks like me to be vigilant while you rest.
They want us to forget that we’re in this together.
Also a great YouTube channel to keep up with the news but is short and puts things in context and if needed what you can do to help is belle of the fifth column.
Also good rule of thumb if the article starts off with X said this vs X did this skip the article. Focus on what people in power do vs what they say as shitty journalists will write an article about a tweet that 9 times out of 10 is a distraction vs real journalism talking about the actions. Propublica is one of the few journalistic outfits that do that.
Propublica is one of the few journalistic outfits that do that.
Correct one of the few news outlets that won’t do fake news and act as a bad faith actor.
Following their journalists on mastodon is really all I uae it for.
Solid use case. I need to figure how to access mastodon on mbin. Old server it was just part of the feed.
I think that you can and should tune it out when it feels overwhelming. You terrifying yourself about things you can’t change isn’t helpful. What’s helpful is that, whether you’ve watched the news today or not, possessing a willingness to do small bits of good in your immediate neighborhood.
Be willing to hold a door open for someone, or push a car out of an icy parking space, or shovel someone’s sidewalk for free, etc. etc. etc.
Be connected to your local society. Join a group. Do things. Meet people.
Some people in the near future will start to suffer a lot. They’re going to need caring neighbors they can trust.
I think you pretty much summed up why I am a nurse. Well a traveling nurse
While we are all on the same ride to hell, your ride to hell is your’s, and your’s alone. Do what you feel like doing and try not to worry overly much.
The peons will be some of the most impacted, so it is good to stay in the loop. I wouldn’t obsess over what is going on, but a weekly digest of news is helpful.
