So, I’ve been relatively quiet about current sociopolitical events in the US (at least, more than usual); mostly because I don’t have a lot of great insights on what to do to fix things.
My shtick for years has been ‘authoritarian fundamentalists have specific goals and have been working consistently towards them on multiple fronts for multiple generations; they should be taken seriously as a meaningful threat to human freedom.’ And, well, yup.
It’s a difficult moment, emotionally and psychologically. I was raised in authoritarian fundamentalism, and transitioned smoothly into right-wing politics. I participated willingly and enthusiastically in grass-roots efforts to advance their goals.
In time — through the process of evangelizing the movement’s ideals and mission — I cam to realize those goals were actually pretty monstrous. I spent the next decade or two extracting myself from it, building a life outside its reach, and trying to undo what harm I could.
The hardest thing to discover about the world “outside” was that it is not engaged in a concerted campaign to stop fundamentalists. The world outside barely even believes that fundamentalist authoritarians actually exist, and when confronted with them insists they’re anomolies.
Control of the Supreme Court was not their goal, just a tactic they prioritized after realizing its importance in the cultural conflicts of the 60s and 70s. They identified it as one of many angles to attack in order to affect cultural change, and kept at it for half a century.
That tactic is now delivering, and will continue to deliver for some time. Teacher-led prayer is back in schools; government agencies no longer have the power to regulate; abortion is no longer protected; simply not being straight is explicitly next on the list.
There is no One Simple Trick or protest or vote that will alter that fact. Even if the Democratic Party was willing to oppose them in any meaningful way, it is irrelevant to the movement’s plans for the time being: they were created specifically to end-run around voting.
That isn’t to say that voting is irrelevant; just that it is not going to change what is happening right now. More Democrats will not change it. More protests will not change it. Appealing to a restoration of norms will not change it; those norms are dead history now.
I’m trying not to be a doomer, here: I hope that what I’m saying isn’t a trigger for despair.
Listen to, and read people who have worked and walked through similar times. Black abolitionists, reproductive health and AIDS activists, labor organizers…
Figure out the world and the society you need and want and work iteratively towards it, whether that is how you treat yourself, what you do for others around you, who you vote for, what you say publicly, what you dedicate your time to.