Depends on what you can realistically influence.
Might be worth it to tune to protest news, and also changes in your local area, if there are any.
Doomscrolling the feed will just make you continuously more obsessed with what ultimately screws your mental health to no benefit.
If you ain’t doing politics, politics is gonna do you.
Our political situation is currently quite extreme, read up on fascism specifically the “legal stage” of fascism
Politics is life.
You might as well ask to avoid gravity.
Life is political. Don’t bury your head in the sand.
If you haven’t noticed that a lot of things in your life are political, I feel sorry for your lack of grasp on reality. The taxes you pay are political. The laws you have to follow are political. Decisions on how your kids go to school are political. How you work (you payment, your job- and personal safety) - guess what, it’s political. If the CDC will protect you against the next pandemic, if the FDA will protect you against being poisoned - it is all political.
Tune out reality at your own risk. You should have paid attention to this ages ago.
Plenty of good responses. I assume you are foreigner and I will give you one suggestion. Make sure your passport is valid just in case you need to flee the incoming disaster.
You get used to a specific tone, and if you hear that tone, based on previous experience, you recognize it is probably bullshit. Then you start to tune out the bullshit, sometimes you might still miss something important, but that happens anyways. Check out what people are saying, if it’s actually true, you can decide if it actually should be a concern to you as an individual. Don’t believe “immigrants are destroying the country” without working with some as equals at a job. Same with other rage bait.
the answer heavily depends.
Do you want to be politically informed and able to make accurate statements about things that are actively happening? Great, better cut some hours at your job and take up a research position for politics in your spare time.
Do you want to be politically uninformed and yet still say shit about things you aren’t familiar with, haven’t researched and do not understand? Great, take more hours at your job, make shit up, listen to what weird internet people who are totally trust worthy and not running a grift at all (trust me bro) are saying online because it makes you feel better about yourself.
Do you want neither of these? Being uninformed is perfectly ok and reasonable, if you approach it with the correct attitude, you cannot hold an opinion on something you are not familiar with, it’s as simple as that. Refer to science and the establishment for most things, because, after all, they haven’t fucking exploded and killed everyone yet, so they must be doing something right.
TL;DR this is my personal opinion, informed by years of consuming political content, and my general interest in sociology and psychology so take this with the correct amount of concern. I would ignore pretty much anything and everything coming from the political right, it’s either bullshit, a lie, or AI generated these days. Very, very rarely do they actually manage to tell the whole truth.
I would also advise distantly observing the far left, as they tend to do nothing more than yelling, screaming, and bemoaning inconveniences. The general left is a bit better about this. But they also have the “we dont really do anything” problem also
Otherwise, be very careful, be extremely critical of the content/media you consume, and be sure to establish your own independent worldview and political beliefs, you don’t have to have identical beliefs to me, or anybody else here, and that’s the beauty of modern western politics. Or maybe find some organizations around you that you can get directly involved in, to make a difference in the lives of people around you.
Yelling at people about things on the internet is one of the least effective ways of doing anything. It’s a great platform for satire, since that’s what satire thrives on, but otherwise, do something else, it’s more productive that way. You need a truly incredible reach to be able to make a difference online.
Excellent response.
I’m trying to limit myself to watching for actual threats to my family. Basically a couple of things. Watching for the same stuff that tipped us off on COVID and watching for camps actually being setup on US soil.
Trying to ignore all the ragebait and most of the news. I think I see manipulation similar to what I saw on the first trump election now targeted left. So, pants on head crazy.
Heads down and try to only pay attention to the important stuff.
I imagine you’ve seen the articles about the federal government buying land in NJ and TX for camps? That was happening before 1/20. Almost immediately after the election that shit started.
I have heard about land being volunteered for use in Texas as a political stunt, have not seen anything about land being purchased for that purpose.
Deportations have happened under other presidents as well, so from what I can tell this is all being covered in great detail as part of some media campaign.
https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective
The anti-DEI motivation seems thoughtless at first, but then when you look at it really it seems the politicians don’t like the CRT and Neo-Marxist ideology associated with DEI. Makes sense, America has never been about Marxism or Communism.
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/04/marxist-roots-of-dei-workshop-all-sessions/
I mean, people should have some resource for legal immigration, but a nation is allowed sovereign control over their immigration policies.
So, the whole reaction on the left seems a tad alarmist maybe, but as others have said keep paying attn but don’t let it consume your life or senses.
Edit meant to use a different term
You assume the actors in the system act in good faith and that the system’s incentives are well designed. It is not.
What kinds of people want to join the organization responsible for keeping foreigners out? How many of those groups are racists that don’t actually care about the citizenship part? How do you measure the success of this organization?
When you start asking these kinds of questions, you start to see the cracks. Additionally, when you look at US immigration policies compared to other developed countries, they’re quite harsh. I emigrated to Korea. It’s quite easy if I have a college education and some work experience. I benefit Korea’s economy. My Korean friends who want to go to the US have a totally different experience.
Additionally, you need to look at the US’s history with regards to race. See the Japanese internment camps of WW2 or the fire bombing of Tulsa, OK. We don’t necessarily distinguish between actual citizens and foreigners.
You can also look at how illegal immigration is managed in the US. Look at Ron DeSantis in Florida. He spooked illegal immigrants in Florida with his crackdown on immigration. The orange farmers started panicking because there were no workers. The oranges were rotting. Did DeSantis prop up the orange industry and encourage them to hire Americans? The good faith act? Fuck no! He rolled back the crackdown, and the illegal immigrants continued to be used for basically slave labor. America doesn’t want legal immigration. They just want a group with no rights to beat the shit out of when they’re feeling bad and to use for labor that citizens don’t want to do.
Your argument of people behaving in good faith with regards to immigration doesn’t have a lot of evidence to support it when looking at history.
The right thing to do would be to pursue immigration reform first, give time for current illegal immigrants to become legal, crackdown on the employers of illegal immigrants, and then start enforcing immigration law more strongly. But surprise! It ain’t happening.
Of course, my comment assumes you’re trying to argue in good faith, which also may be naive. Let’s see
Please, how many non-Korean politicians are in their congress? Korea is also so ethnically homogeneous, so it’s not even fair to ask that question. I care about civil rights and liberties of minorities, my problem is that America is constantly getting fucked by one type of propaganda or another because it has an actual democracy (in at least the blue and purple states).
Yes, some American southern states actually do systemic racism type things, that’s undeniable if you objectively look at their policies. America, however, is not a monolith.
Oh, hey, look, a misinformed idiot/Nazi supporter!
lol how? Anti-immigration is not inherently racism. All countries have some sort of immigration control.
Edit forget it, i don’t want to want to seem oblivious to the obvious human rights issues here. People deserve legal recourse to immigration, enough said.
The very situation we are in now was greatly enabled because lots of people did what you are doing. Dont lose sleep and sacrifice your health (edit not help), but if you were ever an undecided candidate while Trump was running, or you don’t know what an oligarchy or nepotism is or why they’re relevant, or can’t recount what happened on Jan 6 2021, you NEED to pay more attention.
Honest question, in the pre-Trump days people rightly pointed out that the "ruling class " (Koch brothers, Adelsons, Soros, Bloomberg, etc. etc.) would try to buy influence in their preferred party but also donated to the “other side”.
Those people were called oligarchs.
Now that Trump has taken the reins, the term has turned toward him. If you look at the donors in 2024, the top six or so donated to the Republican party (Elon tops that list) but it’s not THAT far off from previous years.
Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold, or is the increased use of “oligarchy” more of a tactic to try and mitigate the damage that Trump can do by calling it out as loudly as possible?
I’m Canadian, and I’ve heard the term oligarchy thrown around in reference to American politics for many years, but never do often nor so forcefully as in the past two months.
On top of what everyone else has said, I’m gonna be that person and bring up capitalism, which I’m defining as private ownership of business (as opposed to state ownership, or ownership by the workers, etc). Capitalism concentrates money, and by extension power, which is never good for people without it. I’ll admit I’m biased as a socialist, but at this point the biggest indictment of capitalism for me is that most of what we’re seeing these days isn’t new: rampant wealth inequality which leads to institutions decaying, followed by liberal and conservative elites being either unable or unwilling to fix problems that are plain for everyone to see, followed by people being radicalized.
The new thing is global warming, which can’t be attributed solely to capitalism but is being exacerbated by it. A handful of people who get their money and power from fossil fuels would rather burn the world to ashes than give up that money and power (yes, they’re probably investing in renewables, but if they treated global warming like the existential threat it is, they wouldn’t be bankrolling climate deniers.
(this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the Soviet Union or the current Chinese government, they are/were both also results of capitalism failing but neither of those is relevant to democracy failing in the West™ also I’m not a tankie, authoritarianism of every stripe is bad)
Under trump yes it’s both overt and flagrant. Any of his friends, people he owes, people he likes, or those in his orbit get things like cabinet positions, or government contracts, or ambassadorships. This is new under trump. There have always been better or worse candidates for positions and questionable angling, but the “my kid gets this position, her father in law gets that one, this fox news guy gets this” undeniable.
This is in addition to the fact that the connections are now in the open as well. Trump just calls up a supreme Court justice when he’s got a case before them and they answer. Senators, governors, and of course house reps are the same and increasingly industry CEOs are playing the game.
To wrap a brief oligarchy/plutocracy comment, you can even go find a soundbite by trump that says basically “Elon gave us a lot of money, so I guess I’m a fan of electric cars now”. There is no more quiet part, or quiet part loud, it’s just all loud.
They’re now completely shameless, out in the open, and know that nobody is gonna stop them.
Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold
The world’s richest man did a nazi salute on stage, in front of at least 3 of the other richest men in the world who all showed up to support the incoming administration.
The owners of Twitter, Meta, Amazon, and most recently Tiktok with the “thanks Trump!” obvious power play have all quite openly kissed the ring and bent the knee.
This is very far off from previous years. The wealthiest of the wealthy are making public displays of loyalty to a man who has flagrantly profitted off of the office for four years straight while actively making life worse for everyone except the rich.
Now he flagrantly profitted off of the office again before he was even inaugurated by launching a cryptocurrency, and his first actions in office are all directly and obviously against the best interests of the people but custom-designed for the well-known interests of wealthy conservative idealogues.
Yes, this is new. And yes, this is very, very, bad. Was America an oligarchy playing dress-up as a democratic republic? Yes. Were there massive donors pulling strings behind the scenes? Absolutely. Were politicians and lobbyists enjoying a revolving door of public and private sector benefits and making bank on book deals? All true.
But now the masks are off, and the worst and wealthiest have taken control with a smile and a laugh. They aren’t playing the world’s biggest and stupidest game of Monopoly. They have the Commander in Chief of the Military with all the checks and balances intentionally removed, so at the very least they’re playing the world’s worst game of Risk.
They aren’t going to make money off of book deals. They will make money off of wholesale looting and dismantling the government, and they’ll blame the inevitable economic and societal problems on us, on immigrants, on un-American citizens, and they’ll do it in broad daylight on 5th avenue.
That’s bad.
Sacrificing your servants is the worst thing you could do. Who’s going to butter your toast?
That’s a funny typo, but I gotta fix it.
Ignore it! Especially when a Disaster hits your Area and FEMA doesnt Exist!
Join your local DSA and tend to local issues. The things that the national level are indeed serious, but spend your time and efforts where you can make the biggest difference.
Donate a few dollars to your local land trust to keep land out of the hands of big business.
Join local housing boards or City Hall meetings, wherever decisions on zoning and housing are decided. Anytime someone tries to blame something on bigger buildings designed for more people, and better public transportation, fight them tooth and nail. Single residence zoning, parking minimums, etc. are one of the reasons homelessness exists.
Show up to protests
Make friends with your neighbors
Please do anything but just vegetate. You are important. But only if you help.
That is not a stupid question. It’s no good to cause yourself crippling anxiety, you are less useful to yourself and to others then. And yes the news will always be presented in a way designed to cause outrage and fear, to keep you coming back.
That is not to say there is no reason to worry. But good to put a "budget " for news consumption and work on what you can personally change, rather than worrying about all the stuff you can’t. Being happy and helpful and not a bigot is a form of resistance too, and is a general thing you can do regardless of your current event knowledge.
A lot of what this administration will do is going to be illegal and nonsensical and dumb, but they will do so much of it that it will be impossible to effectively push back against it all. If you hear something that you care about, pick that and keep up with it. Don’t get overwhelmed by the torrent of stuff happening over the next four years.
This is especially true in the current media environment, where there’s so much noise that it’s really difficult to break in and sort through what’s true and what’s false and what’s missing context and what’s misleading and what’s technically true but there are other factors that change how it plays out in reality, etc.
It takes a lot of energy to keep up with it all, so pick something you care about and pay attention to developments about that. Maybe that’s trans rights, immigrant rights, democratic institutions, economics, geopolitics, military industrial complex, whatever. You won’t be able to effectively care about it all, so pick one and focus on that.
