last post<\/a>, you\u2019re preaching to the choir. Your friends on social media are on the same page you are so why inflict your pompous fuckery on us? Who the hell are you? Hmmm?<\/p>\nThis second stage, though, is a natural extension of the rationalizing aspect that ends the first stage. Okay\u2026the bad thing happened, so now I\u2019m going to tell all my friends how I plan to stand tall and be a good American. Well, great. Quit hogging my feed.<\/p>\n
The third stage is the most frustrating. It\u2019s the call to action. It\u2019s been a bit more on the surface this time around with people taking protests to the streets, which is actually nice to see. The more passive call to action \u2013 \u201cWe need to be more aware and responsible,\u201d \u201cWe need to pay attention to the world around us,\u201d etc. \u2013 is an interesting moment of self-awareness. How many people (myself included) have adopted the \u201cnews blackout\u201d approach to the last\u2026um\u2026er\u202615 years? We\u2019re all so very busy and we\u2019re all so undereducated and overmedicated that we can\u2019t focus on one thing for more than a few seconds. We\u2019re like a nation of kittens. And, collectively, we have roughly the same IQ as a room full of kittens. It\u2019s good to blame yourself as a victim of ignorance because you probably are an ignorant fuck.<\/p>\n
But taking action requires a bit more than a peaceful protest and a vow to your like-minded friends on Facebook. But, then, if you take it to the streets, you\u2019re kind of just following a peaceful herd that\u2019ll dissipate as soon as the police start to walk towards you. The third stage is tough for everyone.<\/p>\n
The fourth and final stage is: Giving up and going back to being a whining fucking armchair liberal. Just like you always have done. I saw this in 2000 and in 2004. I promise you that, a month from now, all these fucking people are going to be right back at it in their fucking stupid routines. Tra-la-la. Sheep in the field. You\u2019re all a bunch of hot air. You did nothing to prevent this from happening and you\u2019ll do nothing in reaction to it.<\/p>\n
You losers are just so damned boring. You ruin my feeds, you tie up traffic, you fucking jabber jabber jabber about nothing but this horrible shit, and then, a month later, you\u2019re back to spinning around in your office chairs and eating junk food and talking about cool car commercials and football. And two years later you don\u2019t fucking vote in the midterm elections for some mysterious reason.<\/p>\n
You fucking people need to learn to put your heart and soul where your stupid idiot mouth is.<\/p>\n
So, okay\u2026 What should I do, Nacho?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my guide!<\/p>\n
1) Become involved in local politics. Run for city or county council maybe. At the very least, pay attention to your local politics. It’s the local politicians who decide whether or not to build a highway through your home. They decide how to educate your children. They tack on taxes that seem to go nowhere. They influence the county cop who may or may not save you one night. They make sure your house is safe and your sidewalk is clean. And if the local politicians are assholes… You need to hound the fuck out of them. Half of these fucking people rule like village potentates. The judges and the board of education folks on my ballot all ran virtually unopposed. What? Are we in 1970s Argentina? Our County Council spent an enormous amount of time and money opposing a question that called for them to have term limits. This was our big local shake-up. We said yes, so now council members only get three terms instead of, you know, ruling like motherfucking lunatic dictators for decades. These are the important things, really. We need to hold our local reps to the fucking fire every single chance we get. They are our spokespoeple. So, be active. Either run and oppose the unopposed, or watch them carefully and hold them accountable at every turn.<\/p>\n
2) Stop it with the news blackouts. That\u2019s just willful ignorance. You\u2019ll reap what you sow there as, I hope, you\u2019ve just learned. Now, I know, it\u2019s hard in these days of Fox News and comedians who pretend to speak for the people and the smirking face of Rachel Maddow. What you need to do is curate your news. It\u2019s very easy. Once again, think local. Your news absorption needs to begin from the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. Find your local news outlets and follow them. Learn to be responsible and knowledgeable about your own backyard before you decide to change the universe.<\/p>\n
Curating is easy these days. I use Google News, which acts as a powerful news aggregator. You can personalize it to focus on specific topics and locales and tell it to filter out all the garbage.<\/p>\n
You also want to look at the international news at least once a week. I spend Friday mornings cruising through the non-US versions of The Guardian, Der Spiegel, World News (wn.com), Al Jazeera, and the Times of India. That may sound like a lot of work but, really, you can skim this stuff. You\u2019re really just looking for an alternative view. (And you can, again, create nice Google News filters that\u2019ll do the skimming for you.)<\/p>\n
3) Quitting social media may just be a good idea. Under my real name, I solely use social media for marketing purposes. I have close to 4000 friends… And I don’t follow a single one of their feeds. I don’t care. Everything I post is fueled by the ulterior motive of selling a brand. And, here\u2019s a secret \u2013 that\u2019s really what social media is in 2016. If you\u2019re on social media just because everyone else is and you don’t plan to use it for business (or actively starting a revolution), then you’re insane. That shit will shorten your life. There’s nothing there but agitation, angst, and misinformation. Social media\u2019s purpose, these days, is just to sell you something. It\u2019s propaganda, pure and simple. And you know this.<\/p>\n
4) Become involved in the Southern Poverty Law Center<\/a>. Pay attention to what they\u2019re doing and fighting for. I\u2019ve been seeing calls for donations to all the places that may or may not be disenfranchised during a Trump presidency. But nobody ever pays attention to the little SPLC. Click the link, explore, educate yourself. When the war comes, it\u2019ll come from the groups that the SPLC are monitoring and fighting against right now.<\/p>\n5) Protests are fun. Hard to organize, though. Hard to keep that head of steam going. And probably dangerous in this day and age. I wouldn\u2019t know what to do in a revolution. I do a million little anti-corporate protest things \u2013 I buy and shop local and small, I\u2019m an unreformed torrenting pirate, I pay off my debts and avoid new debts, I make my neighbors think their attic is haunted by a violent poltergeist. The usual stuff. So if you\u2019re the protesting sort and you have some sort of skills that can make it worthwhile \u2013 hacktivism or, you know, bomb making \u2013 hey, go ahead. Let no talent be wasted. But, otherwise, we\u2019re kind of trapped folks. I\u2019m probably being watched by my laptop camera right now as I type this with every keystroke being recorded. The days of true protest are over. If a real riot or revolution starts, cool, we can go out there and firebomb a police car or two. But we actually kind of don\u2019t need that in our lives. That\u2019s the sort of \u201cno choice left\u201d scenario. Be ready for it but, in general, all we can really do is be more responsible and awake and aware. And if you want to truly be involved and throw donations or volunteer hours around, then focus on the education of the poor and disenfranchised. And for your set-in-their-ways conservative neighbors, the attic poltergeist routine really works. Plus you can film it and post them having heart attacks or accidentally shooting each other. Very rewarding.<\/p>\n
Not to encourage you to kill your neighbors. Just floating out the idea that you might want to ask yourself if the world would actually miss them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s been no escaping the post-election freakout. I\u2019ve tried. But everyone\u2019s talking about it\u2026seemingly more than usual. The four stages of jilted liberal grief are just so predictable though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[41,397],"class_list":["post-4046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-politics","tag-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4047,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions\/4047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}