The indoctrination never stops.

Conservatives need a minority target to keep their followers focused/unified on hate. As the followers obsess on hate, their lives/emotions are much easier to manipulate.

Conservatives always vow to restore the country to some distant past that never existed.

It's an endless loop of failure.

— The Most Pernicious Anticipatory Obedience Hides in Plain Sight

I am so very, very tired, but bracing myself for the next four years. Looking to get some gloves with metal knuckles because brass knuckles are illegal in Texas, home of unregulated guns, and that's probably different enough to not get caught by that law.

going insane hearing talk about whether harris did enough to "earn" votes. no candidate has ever or can ever earn my vote because a vote is not a payment i send to a politician and it's stupid to think about it like it is. exact same thinking error that leads to people talking about not voting like it's a boycott. if anyone earned my vote it's the people i tried to use that vote to protect

you never owed kamala harris anything. you owed it to your fellow citizens of the world to vote for harris.

kamala harris is not even close to being the person who would have benefited most from her winning the election, and she's even farther from being the person who will be hurt the most by her loss, which makes thinking about it in terms of "but did she deserve my vote?" disastrously stupid. she simply is not the person whose deserving matters at all here

Exactly tbh

I don't go to the gym because it motivates me. I don't arrive to work on time because of how my job earned it. I don't eat fruits and vegetables because they inspire me.

Our job now, our entire fucking job, is to STAY THE FUCK ALIVE. Despair is an ally of fascism. Do not do their work for them.

When people want you dead, every day you live is pissing in their coffee. Do it. Stay alive out of spite if for no other reason.

Our second job? Take care of each other. That's each other here, our other friends and family, our communities, and also random strangers.

Our third job is to resist. This will take many forms. Please remember that any group needs Tanks, DPS, Healers, and Support. Find the role you can play and put your efforts where they are most suitable.

What we do not need is martyrs. See item 1, above. But if you are, for whatever reason, going to die, then, well:

... make it count.

We tried to warn you, and you wouldn’t listen to us over the sound of your own self-righteousness. You must be so proud of yourselves.

Project 2025 ain't gonna roll out all at once. So what we're gonna wanna do is make passing each individual part of it as difficult as possible, so there's less to undo once we finally get this country back on the rails.

Resist every step and do not get distracted by stupid bullshit. Distracting people with stupid bullshit is one of Trump's favorite political techniques. We saw it all over the place in the first term.

Trump will say something like "You know the Hispanics actually punch kittens, it's what they do."

And the news will be like "TRUMP SAID HISPANIC PEOPLE PUNCH KITTENS" for three weeks.

And while they're doing that the Republicans in Congress have quietly deleted healthcare.

Do not get distracted by stupid bullshit. Trump is a dancing monkey whose greatest asset is the ability to yank the spotlight off of everyone else. Keep your eyes on Congress.

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

FINALLY SOMEONE TALKS ABOUT THIS

A 2nd trump presidency will basically be one of the last nails in our coffins, as the US, one of the biggest polluters, is going to be no longer have no qualms over fucking over the entire planet.

I get people's immediate priority isn't this, so they aren't talking about it, it's their rights and livelyhoods, it is totally understandable.

But talking to one of my professors today really showed me that the scientific community really is panicking and the planet is on its knees.

HOWEVER,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, we cannot lose hope, bc climate doomrism is as bad as climate denial

Take this time, while these issues are fresh on our minds, to educate yourself. Get involved. Share news with others. Call out misinformation. Do everything you can, while we still can.

After the 2016 election I was frustrated and exhausted and deeply, deeply sad. I literally cried. The four years that followed were extremely stressful. But, notably, I didn’t hate the people who chose not to vote for Clinton. I’d been in their shoes in 2004, after all. And Trump was technically an unknown - we didn’t know for SURE how bad his presidency would be.

We know now.

Now, if you are a leftist who intentionally didn’t vote for Harris, I genuinely hate you. I hate you as a person who was willing to throw my safety under a fucking bus. I hate you for being sexist, homophobic, ableist, transphobic, xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, etc.

You chose fascism. You knew what was at stake, and you intentionally let the fascist win.

I hate you more than I hate the people who voted for Trump. At least they’re honest. At least they admit to themselves they hate women, and Mexicans, and queer people. But you, the lazy leftist, you can’t admit you’re a bigot.

Any action or non-action that you took that resulted in Trump being elected means you consented to that outcome.

There are MULTIPLE news articles and political analysis talking about the fact that the Democratic Party will move right as a result of this loss. Of course they will. The people who bothered to vote chose Trump. He’s as far right as you can get. The people who didn’t vote obviously didn’t care about the outcome, and thus do not matter. The Democrats will not try to win back your vote - they will just move right. They will try to win the votes of right-wing “moderates”. Leftism is clearly not what this country wanted.

So fuck you. Fuck you. I hate you. You are worse than Trump and his voters. You’re a lazy, entitled bigot, and I hope the next four years destroy your fucking life. Maybe you’ll fucking listen four years from now - if we’re allowed to vote in a free election ever again in this country. To quote Trump, your hero:

“You’ll never have to vote again”.

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To be clear, if Trump has won this election it is because of misinformation, electoral interference, corruption and mostly bigotry.

However, if you knew what was at stake and decided that you were willing to accept the possibility of a Trump victory rather than vote for Harris, you do not get to walk back an inch of that choice. You accepted responsibility at the ballot box, and now you get to own it.

Thinking about this tweet every time I see/hear about the Harris vs. Trump polls being close.

Waking up the morning after the election

Leopards Eating People's Faces

Today is going to be rough for so many people. It's going to be rough for you. There are things you can't change today.

But you can take care of yourself. Eat breakfast, drink water, take a long shower, put on clean clothes/favorite clothes. Checking in on the politics as needed, rather than wallowing in them all day. Put on a comfort movie or show, and watch that for a while. Focus on your job if you have to be there today. Reach out if you need help.

You can also check in on your friends- making sure they have eaten and had water and showered and have something comforting. Reach out if they might need help. The only way out of this is through, and we need each other to get there.

We will have a long fight ahead of us for the next 4 years. We would have had a long fight ahead of us regardless of who won; only the kind of fight would have been different. This is the fight we have: survival and damage control. Not the fight we wanted, but it is what it is, and we're still going to use tooth and nail.

Today is Day 1.

Today is checking with your clerk's office, if you mailed your ballot, to ensure your ballot got counted. Today is weathering the despair. Today is taking care of yourself and checking on your loved ones to make sure they have what they need to weather Day 1 with you.

Tomorrow is resolving to vote in the next local elections to aid in damage control, and planning the next steps.

Survival and damage control.

Hope is not a fragile flower, easily crushed beneath a fascist boot. Hope is a fighter with blood on her knuckles and dirt on her knees, and we are going to help her get back on her feet every time.