TLDR: I have a lot of anxious energy and feel powerless. Any suggestions for what to do about the election?
(also this is a bit of a rant, so I’m sorry. I know a lot of you guys are probably very tired of it.)
So I live in Utah, and I’m… gonna be honest I’ve had a massive pit in the bottom of my stomach since the election. It’s a bit long cause I’ve been very stressed and also just wanna put out my thoughts.
I am a cis, white, male, home owner, who looks like the perfect Mormon boy who never swears and never even got a parking ticket . I will be fine (For awhile at least depending on things. )
But there are people I care about very very much that will not be okay very fast, on top of how much I worry about the poor people of Ukraine because I can’t imagine what a nightmare it is to live in Ukraine where Russia is allowed to do whatever they want and your allies are following some weird set of rules that no one can clarify.
I did what I could prior to election I think.
I voted and got all my friends and family that I could to vote
Donated to Kamala campaign
Did a bit of phone banking where I called people in swing states (Sorry swing state people, I know you probably got overwhelmed.) Maybe I should have just taken a bus to Nevada and put in work on the ground. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do it differently in 2 years.
Since the election I’ve sent emails to DNC/white house asking that they do the recount and investigate, since Trump tried to cheat last election it feels insane not to investigate.
I have sent (many) emails to my (very conservative) senators with a variety of concerns including:
Please just stop this mad man criminal rapist who said he’ll use the army on US states and refuse to certify the election
Tariffs will bankrupt us here in Utah please don’t allow it
Please don’t allow insane people to be given high ranking government stations. I didn’t think Trump could find people crazier than him, but he now has a televangelist scam artist and Alex Jones saddling up. So I was wrong.
Trump sent fake electors, and is on recording begging people to “find” votes in 2020. Please support a thorough investigation to dismiss all doubt about the validity of the elections.
Main thought being only a handful of senators need to help the Democrats and we suddenly have “something” to slow things down.
But I honestly, don’t know what else to do at the moment. It seems very minor what I can do.
The current thought is wait and see if anything crazy happens on the day it’s time to certify the election while still pestering my senators as much as possible. But the amount of pressure my senators are getting is probably very small given the state, so I’m no more than an email/phone call that an underpaid intern can dismiss (I’ve received many copy and pastes from those interns that start with “Hi I’m x replying on behalf of Mitt Romney.”) I could go protest outside their houses, but they aren’t there I don’t think. Their phones are pretty much locked up as well.
Then assuming Trump is put in, reach out to my local DNC and get to work trying to help influence good candidate choice to try and take the house and senate away from Trump in 2022. Which will most likely be lots of phone banking to a state with a snowball chance in hell of electing a non republican and being a source of encouragement to whoever runs.
But of course there is non 0% chance we don’t get another even close to fair election. So we’ll see!
Other idea is maybe just donate to causes that help people relocate that need to get out of the state they are currently in very quickly?
But yeah I’m just stressed.
So with all that useless context, here is the question:
“Hey guys I’m really stressed out about Trump winning the election. Any suggestions on what actions I can take to help make the situation better and feel less powerless?”
Set up a recurring donation to ProPublica. They have been a thorn in the side of those shitheads at the supreme court and we need their investigations in a Trump presidency now more than ever. https://give.propublica.org/give/346423/#!/donation/checkout?c_src=UpRed
You could also try to get in contact with a more left-wing group like Democratic socialists or something and get involved in letter writing campaigns.
Finally, get involved in a local issue - think city or county. Those meetings are filled with 1)people who have something to gain - developers, 2) retired people who mostly miss the point, and a few outgunned non-profits. You can make a really big difference.
The Majority Report with Sam Seder just had a guest on today for an interview about this very topic. The guy’s name was Daniel Hunter and I found it solid.
The gist of the interview was that you can block boats that are carrying arms shipments with smaller boats and that might work for a while but the coast guard will probably fuck with you. So your best course of action is to get the dockworkers on your side and get them to not load the weapons onto the boats. I don’t know how much shipping is done in Utah as I’ve only been once.
I mean, unless they are ferrying weapons across the great salt lake, I don’t think it applies to me XD
But if Californians wanna disrupt all trade on the west coast I wish them all the luck.
my anxiety about the future got a lot better once i started looking into how we got into this mess and the whole thing started by watching democracy now before watching pbs, or cbs, or abc, etc.
I’ll repeat here some of the things I’ve come up with, and add others.
- Get healthy, be physically active. You will be more effective resisting if you have health and stamina.
- Learn some basic bushcraft/camping skills. Be capable of sleeping rough for a few days. Learn how to tie knots.
- Grow herbs and vegetables.
- Make a place in your home where an unexpected short or long term guest could stay.
- Pay attention, be observant, and be patient.
- Own and carry pepper spray. You may also choose to add a knife or a firearm, but pepper spray is the bare minimum.
- There is likely to be some overlap of “people who want to actively resist” and “people who want to be active politically or in their community.” Join a local group that seems to suit you, and make connections (slowly and carefully).
- This one is unfortunate, but you may need to close ranks and focus your efforts on those who are close to you. Yes, Ukraine’s situation sucks. Yes, Gaza is fucked. But you need to focus on what you need to do, right where you are.
Owning a gun scares me since it’s been decided that if a cop sees you touch a gun they can kill you and it’ll almost certainly be ruled fine. Maybe I’ll get something for home that stays here and just keep taking my pepper spray around.
2A so important right?
But, good points… I ahh, may or may not already be housing some friends that were kicked out of their houses for life style differences. Such as you know, not being Mormon.
But wonderful points!
With regard to firearms - I get that that’s not for everyone. And I get that carrying might not be the right thing for someone.
However. The right time to acquire a gun is not “when you need it.” It’s well before that. It will take time to find something that works for what you want, and you should also practice with it at a range. In Utah, the only time you would need to have a permit would be to conceal carry a handgun. You would need to pass a background check at a dealer.
Think about situations where you would need to have a firearm. How likely is such a situation? How far off into the future is such a situation?
It’s absolutely your choice, but it should be a considered choice.
That is very reasonable take. I mean I don’t have kids so a rifle in a gun safe probably is harmless. If it never gets used, it’ll just be a funny story of that time Ericbomb got paranoid and bought a gun because of encouragement from some weirdos off fake Reddit.
Shotgun is the best home defense firearm. If you do get a handgun, a revolver is the way to go (less shit to break)
It sounds a lot like what many conservative people have been doing for a while. See the YT channel Dirty Civilian. They might not align with you politically but the info they present is free
If you don’t own a gun yet, buy one ASAP because it’s going to get a lot harder for people like you in the coming years
I’m fucking old and getting older, and I’m getting more pissed off by the day. I don’t want to spend the remaining life I do have fighting or being a refugee, but it seems like I’m surrounded by suckers who are making sure I do. I don’t know what to do either.
Maybe it will be some consolation to remember that the Biden-Harris administration didn’t do much to reverse the things done by the first Trump administration and kept on going with a bunch of them. Things didn’t change much when he left and they probably won’t change much now that he’s coming back.
I feel you. We have to come to terms with the fact that we are the minority in this country and that most of our fellow citizens value their own self interest more than the promise of a better system for all Americans.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow. You’re going to resent your fellow Americans. I know I do.
The fact is all we can do now is try to survive and protect those we care about. I think spending energy on contesting the results is a waste of time. If they cheated on a scale that gave them millions of extra votes somebody would have found evidence by now. Truth is we lost. And enough Americans are ok with a convict rapist pedophile narcissistic serial liar being in charge of the worlds most powerful military that we actually are powerless. So that energy should instead be spent on anything we can do to protect those the administration is going to target. Keep your head down. But don’t give up.
You know what? That does help, thank you. This feeling you get when something goes terribly wrong that says “do something” can be good, but also very stressful because WTF are we supposed to do about an election like this?
I mean I hope they investigate, considering you know, the whole attempting to over throw the government thing. For all we know there already is evidence and they just are collecting. But yeah, not holding my breath for that one. I always knew we were bad at punishing criminal billionaires, but I would have never guessed “Rich man attempts to over throw government, is found guilty of various crimes and rape. Is handed government for his trouble.”
But sounds like we do have to wait and watch for at least the moment. I do hope maybe a few republican senators will want to slow things down, or at least want to pretend to be the sane ones.
Look into getting into local government, or supporting very left individuals who want to be. Changes of this scale has to start locally.
Start CRIMP, the Committee to Re-IMpeach the President?
Whenever i face difficult circumstances or uncomfortable feelings, meditation seems to help.
Community with like minded folks
