Important clarification about me – I’m not anti-outrage porn because I am fucking yoda over here with mental wellness and sage advice or whatever. My little “Do Something” exercises aren’t because I’m ignoring the world.
I was just raised by these nutballs and all of this **gestures broadly to the United States** was my elementary school world. I simply do not have a capacity to be outraged by something that is so familiar to me.
These fuckers taught us how to push the right buttons and sneak in and out of news narratives and reframe issues with folks 1:1 to build sustainable momentum **regardless of what the law says**
They taught us that our voices and actions matter, and that we should act as individuals to create a change in nationwide belief systems.
They taught us to organize in person and to find hope and action in collaborating and educating each other.
And unfortunately the not unhinged lunatic majority part of the population kinda just… let ’em build power with those tactics for a few decades. The normies have been *right* but they have not been *effective* because they didn’t want to be weird doing what the crazies do.
Well the crazies didn’t feel *weird* about being their authentic selves or participating in politics. So now they’re in charge. And they’re TRYING to get you to feel outraged about their shitty behavior. Because they know its outrageous, and that’s been their tried and true method to keep people tired and caught up in nonsense forever.
Which ya know. Sucks right now. But it makes it pretty clear what we do with this.
We just do what they do, and we do it better. 🤷🏼♀️
Talk deeply to our neighbors. Feed people with no freaky deaky jesus strings attached. Practice reframing exercises that step out of news cycle binaries. Revel in individual action as a community endeavor not a bootstraps one. Laugh. Make art. Amplify marginalized voices who have been surviving and thriving long before this moment. Be outrageously loving and fun and share your outrageous knowledge about whatever it is YOU are passionate about. Start a garden. Get chickens. Find an org supporting trans folks in your community. Write a blog. Start journaling. Get into indie board gaming.
Just be an authentic person in whatever flavor of goblin you are. Get loud in your space. And find new spaces to absorb others who have been effectively being loud in theirs for a time already.
It’s not toxic positivity to disengage from the outrage-driven news cycle and do stuff. It’s literally how we take our power back.
OMG ADDITIONAL EDIT:
Ok but… here’s actually an excellent example of this. I just saw this nutball was speaking words from his facehole again –
Obviously JD Vance is the perfect example of a gross person who is twisting the narrative about hyperlocal organizing tactics to spread really gross beliefs for really gross reasons but that’s exactly my point – starting with your family and neighbors works. It isn’t foundationally a bad thing to do or a bad way to organize, and they simply don’t want you to do it. They want you to think that’s for right wing Christian whackos only.
So just… don’t give them that.
Start small. In your neighborhood. With your actions. And use those spaces to help develop a broader understanding of larger systems and larger and larger..
Because it will grow! We can build sustainable movements that take back power too. Arguably we can do it a lot faster because… lets be real, we’re a lot smarter.
So don’t let JD Vance’s fekking outrageous whackadoo mis-labeling of this as a “Christian Concept” distract or demoralize you into inaction.
Please don’t let any of them do that to you.
Do what they do. Just do it better.