Like we all knew it was going to happen, but legitimately I’m pretty concerned about the next step here from the US.
Most of the poors, myself included, are poorer and more mentally fatigued than ever before in recent memory. It has vibes of '08 but mixed with a literal murderer living in your fellow people’s airways the whole situation is absolutely horrifying.
Obviously senate is deadlocked while they’re butthurt about the elections, that was always going to happen. Hopefully the GA runoff is a democrat win? I guess? Will they be able to push a stimulus bill through if that happens? Will they want to?
I don’t really understand what is happening anymore, I’m pretty terrified in my day to day like I was back at the beginning of this. The city I’m in is getting more cases than ever before. Nothing has changed and has, in fact, gotten worse.
The complacency that this election has created in the liberals feels malicious and borderline sadistic.
I guess I’m just posting wondering what you all have to say about the next coming months. I’m pretty worried.
Edit: I want to add that, at this point, I can barely remember who I was before this agoraphobia that was forced onto me was in place.
I remember going to bars and hanging out with friends. I remember casually going to the store and just walking around. I remember being excited to visit friends and family whenever i had the chance.
Fuck. I remember being creative. Making music and writing. That’s gone too and replaced by alternating panic and a deep, unrelenting sadness.
Why am I just sitting in this apartment, scared and confused, with the weeks passing by in instants? What the fuck are we waiting for? How much of our lives will continue to be stolen?
A common denominator I’ve noticed between the covid crisis and the climate crisis: the denialism from the more openly reactionary liberals and the soft denialism from the center-right libs (acknowledging the problem exists but only adopting insufficient token solutions). The covid response in the US is like a time-condensed version of what we’ve seen so far in terms of climate policy, and what’s still to come.
Through this lens, covid has given us a preview of what the liberal response to further ecological collapse might look like: continuing to browbeat people into pretending everything is “normal” while the death count keeps piling up and the situation gets increasingly exponentially out of control.
Side note: I credit the use of the term “soft denialism” in this sense to Howie Hawkins, he’s used that to characterize the lib approach and it’s just too good not to use.
Citations Needed had a good episode about soft climate change denialism from Democrats , it’s worth a listen.
You should also check out Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life by Kari Norgaard. Great academic account of this phenomenon and how it proliferates into your psyche.
Going to listen. I’d love to hear someone make some sort of “sense” of these stances.
Sense meaning sum it up, not actually making it reasonable of course.
