I'm tired of the world being on fire
Feb. 26th, 2025 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI haven't been talking all that much about *gestures broadly* the world at large, mostly because I am tired and frightened and overwhelmed, which of course is exactly what they want. The shock and awe tactics the current US government are using are specifically designed to create feelings of helplessness in the populace so that no one resists what they're doing, and it's unfortunately been working, including on me, and I don't even live there.
I've lost track of all the horrible things they've done. The latest appears to be a vote to slash Medicaid funding, which means a lot of vulnerable people are going to simply die. There's continuing chaos in all the departments affected by DOGE's interference, and there are anecdotal reports coming from all quarters about people whose support cheques of various kinds are either entirely missing or else have been brutally slashed. People are losing their homes because they can't afford to pay their rent for their houses or apartments or the residential facilities where they've lived for years.
I refuse to despair, but I am angry and a little at a loss as to what I can do from over here in another country. I know that I am ready to help any and all of my US friends if they tell me they just need to get away. I'm also ready to fight however I can if the US makes good on its threat to take over Canada. I don't know how they're planning to do that, whether it be through more "normal" channels of economic pressure (tariffs, sanctions, whatever) or just outright military invasion, but either way I don't plan on sitting idly by when that happens.
KK and I are already working hard to divest ourselves from as many US products as possible. Our economies are so intertwined that it's next to impossible to do this completely, but wherever we can, we're trying to buy local, or at least Canadian, and where it's not possible to buy Canadian we are looking for products from Mexico, Europe, and whatever other country is willing to sell to us instead. I am hopeful that Canada on the whole will perform a similar pivot in the coming months. It won't be easy, and in fact it will likely be incredibly messy both politically and economically, but it's long past time we loosened our ties to the US. We're far too dependent on them, and they are no longer a dependable all, but an unstable, volatile country that is rapidly descending into fascism and collapse. And at the rate they're going, they are going to drag us down with them.
I'm a little disappointed in myself, actually. There's a saying that turned into a meme over the past few years which says something to the effect of: "If you've ever wondered what you would do if you were in Germany during the rise of Nazism, congrats, you're doing it now." And although I never answered that question to my own satisfaction because I understood that you can't know for sure what you'll do in a situation until you're actually in it, I'm not sure that sitting impotently behind my keyboard was high on my list of possibilities.
It feels analogous to "I didn't think that, when the apocalypse came, I'd still have to commute to work and pay rent."
*sigh*
The movies all make it look so much more glamorous and heroic, don't they? And of course, intellectually I understand that movies are not real life, not even a little bit, but I think that somewhere in my heart I kind of hoped that it would be more like the movies, because simple narratives with a beginning, middle, and end and a clear villain are so much easier for my mind to grasp. Right now there are horrible people in charge, but apart from that handful of people all I see is a vast ocean of victims, and the only difference between them is how complicit they are in their own victimhood. There's a huge difference between the people who are selling out their friends, their neighbours, their family in the hopes that it will keep them safe or even afford them a little bit of privilege, and all the people who are being sold, but in the end they're all mostly victims regardless.
For what it's worth, I do think that this is temporary. I do think that eventually democracy or some more just form of government will be restored. I just don't know how long it will take, and I do know that in the meantime tens of millions of people are going to suffer, and far too many people are going to die. We will not be able to turn back the clock and restore those people to life, or undo the harm that has been done. At best there will be a fuckton more generational trauma to deal with.
And all this because the US is being run by men whose daddies didn't love them enough. Like, I wish I was joking, but honestly it does seem to me as though both Musk and Trump are the products of awful fathers who didn't know how to love their children (and likely themselves had fathers who were awful and didn't love them), and now they in turn have passed on this toxic sludge to their children. It's so frustrating to think that a few years of therapy might have averted all of this.
I've lost track of all the horrible things they've done. The latest appears to be a vote to slash Medicaid funding, which means a lot of vulnerable people are going to simply die. There's continuing chaos in all the departments affected by DOGE's interference, and there are anecdotal reports coming from all quarters about people whose support cheques of various kinds are either entirely missing or else have been brutally slashed. People are losing their homes because they can't afford to pay their rent for their houses or apartments or the residential facilities where they've lived for years.
I refuse to despair, but I am angry and a little at a loss as to what I can do from over here in another country. I know that I am ready to help any and all of my US friends if they tell me they just need to get away. I'm also ready to fight however I can if the US makes good on its threat to take over Canada. I don't know how they're planning to do that, whether it be through more "normal" channels of economic pressure (tariffs, sanctions, whatever) or just outright military invasion, but either way I don't plan on sitting idly by when that happens.
KK and I are already working hard to divest ourselves from as many US products as possible. Our economies are so intertwined that it's next to impossible to do this completely, but wherever we can, we're trying to buy local, or at least Canadian, and where it's not possible to buy Canadian we are looking for products from Mexico, Europe, and whatever other country is willing to sell to us instead. I am hopeful that Canada on the whole will perform a similar pivot in the coming months. It won't be easy, and in fact it will likely be incredibly messy both politically and economically, but it's long past time we loosened our ties to the US. We're far too dependent on them, and they are no longer a dependable all, but an unstable, volatile country that is rapidly descending into fascism and collapse. And at the rate they're going, they are going to drag us down with them.
I'm a little disappointed in myself, actually. There's a saying that turned into a meme over the past few years which says something to the effect of: "If you've ever wondered what you would do if you were in Germany during the rise of Nazism, congrats, you're doing it now." And although I never answered that question to my own satisfaction because I understood that you can't know for sure what you'll do in a situation until you're actually in it, I'm not sure that sitting impotently behind my keyboard was high on my list of possibilities.
It feels analogous to "I didn't think that, when the apocalypse came, I'd still have to commute to work and pay rent."
*sigh*
The movies all make it look so much more glamorous and heroic, don't they? And of course, intellectually I understand that movies are not real life, not even a little bit, but I think that somewhere in my heart I kind of hoped that it would be more like the movies, because simple narratives with a beginning, middle, and end and a clear villain are so much easier for my mind to grasp. Right now there are horrible people in charge, but apart from that handful of people all I see is a vast ocean of victims, and the only difference between them is how complicit they are in their own victimhood. There's a huge difference between the people who are selling out their friends, their neighbours, their family in the hopes that it will keep them safe or even afford them a little bit of privilege, and all the people who are being sold, but in the end they're all mostly victims regardless.
For what it's worth, I do think that this is temporary. I do think that eventually democracy or some more just form of government will be restored. I just don't know how long it will take, and I do know that in the meantime tens of millions of people are going to suffer, and far too many people are going to die. We will not be able to turn back the clock and restore those people to life, or undo the harm that has been done. At best there will be a fuckton more generational trauma to deal with.
And all this because the US is being run by men whose daddies didn't love them enough. Like, I wish I was joking, but honestly it does seem to me as though both Musk and Trump are the products of awful fathers who didn't know how to love their children (and likely themselves had fathers who were awful and didn't love them), and now they in turn have passed on this toxic sludge to their children. It's so frustrating to think that a few years of therapy might have averted all of this.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 02:31 pm (UTC)For ideas on how to help, I recommend this page:
https://www.prideandpagesbookclub.com/resisting-fascism-in-2025-and-beyond
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 08:24 pm (UTC)Thank you for the link!
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 05:55 pm (UTC)Be kind to yourself. For one thing - we aren't in 'Germany'. Our ability to react is limited by that - we don't have a voice to raise with representatives, and our protests can't really materially affect things that are happening in the US. You are doing what you can to take care of your own house. Vote, pay attention to our own politics and try and at least keep things from getting worse here, look out for your community - you are doing these things. If you are in online communities with other US folks, share information and resources and try to keep folks from spiraling or burning out. Life isn't the movies, there is no one heroic person who can fix things. Just a lot of individuals looking after each other as best they can.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 08:28 pm (UTC)It feels like a drop in the bucket, but I also know that my maternal grandfather helped hide some Jewish families during WWII, and my mother still has the letter they sent to him years later to thank him. Every action counts, no matter how small, and I want to live up to that legacy.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 06:35 pm (UTC)The real problem, of course, is that the cultural systems we have are vehemently patriarchal, domineering, might-makes-right systems, and have no room for kindness or vulnerability. So I doubt therapy would have fixed these men. They wouldn't accept it because it would mean "looking weak." And culturally, well... weakness is not acceptable.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 08:30 pm (UTC)