I know not everyone wants to read about this, so I thought I’d make a thread devoted to it that people can avoid if they want to. I’m going to be discussing US politics, but feel free to despair about whichever country you’d like here. You don’t have to respond to me; you can write about your own stuff. I need a space to put this.
I woke up today to news that ICE had detained 600 undocumented immigrants in Mississippi while these people’s children were at their first day of school. The kids had to spend the night in the gym, crying and not knowing where their families were. It seems that it isn’t uncommon for companies to call ICE on their own workers when the workers start to stand up for their own rights – this company had just gotten hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit. No employers were arrested.
Last week there were two mass shootings.
I just feel so overwhelmingly like I can’t do anything to change this country. Can that be right? I don’t know. I don’t have much money to throw at the non-profits working on these issues. Will $25-100 do anything? In a world where this president is not being impeached and the Supreme Court is being filled with unfeeling conservative judges? Where climate change is not being addressed nearly quickly enough?
Frankly, I don’t have much hope in our political officials, even the “good” ones. I don’t feel like anything is changing or there’s any movement forward. I don’t have faith in donating to or rallying around these people. So, what… I’m just supposed to watch the world burn?
This is why I am looking to get into politics. I realize I personally need to toughen up and then hire a team of brutal lawyers to fend of false accusations, but I honestly don’t see another way. We’ve pushed out way into a kind of polarized madness that isn’t going to go away without drastic action being taken.
I don’t like the way we’re handling things. My own personal feelings about illegal immigration have been shaped by my time working in national security and intelligence. I believe we need to know who is here and why. I’d love to see a proper overhaul of the system when we could process requests quickly enough to make legal immigration attractive. (Note I’m not a “deport 'em all” kind of person. I just want some order to the whole thing)
Conceptually, I like the idea of conservative justices on the supreme court. In practice, its a tragedy. Things aren’t working the way they were meant to. Short of installing myself as benevolent dictator for life, I don’t know how to force things into making sense. And… I have yet to meet a good elected official. They don’t want much to change, otherwise they’d have to do some work and lose some power.
One thing I’ve started to do this year as a pressure-release valve kind of thing is having a set budget every month to give to a charity of the month in addition to my monthly recurring donations. The charity of the month donation actually gives me more good feelings than the recurring one even though the recurring ones get more money over the course of the year. It’s nice to think about “Hmm, what might I give to this month?” but it also means that sometimes when I’m just like “What the everloving fuck!?!” I have an action I can take to feel like I’m doing something. Usually I try to give locally too. Last month I donated through my work to a school supply drive and they also used one of the meeting rooms to divide up the supplies into backpacks so I was able to physically handle the items and donate my time for once (usually I’m very time poor so this was a nice change for me).
I also have my reps’ phone numbers programmed into my phone, multiple offices although that’s less of an issue than it was in 2016/2017, can’t think of the last time they had busy signals when I called. All my reps all Republicans at the moment (federal level and state level), which, ugh. Definitely makes it harder to call sometimes because I feel like I might as well go talk to a wall, I used to have one Dem in there. I am occasionally surprised by “So-and-so has already been taking xyz actions on this” if the intern I’m talking to is really on the ball and feels like going off the basic script.
I don’t have anything constructive to add, but I feel exactly like you. And there must be plenty more of us, so I continue to hope for the day when we reach critical mass and things get better.
I am currently going through a miscarriage and one thing that hit me horribly afterwards was that I am getting such good care and there are women out there who are not getting even a small modicum of humanity while going through everything and anything related to their own health, reproductive or otherwise. And then I read the thing about the deportations and it was a slap in the face.
We’ve started doing the “charity of the month” thing, more haphazardly than @meerkat (thanks for that idea a while ago by the way) and it’s a good way of learning what we can do towards changing the shitshow.
Every piece of guidance for stopping populist Conservative racist misogynist idiots suggests having the left show their human face. Our current liberal party is so old boys’ club that it’s a farce. Our further left party was riding high and then literally disappeared.