Has it ever not been weird, or are people just too young to remember. Like people lost their shit when obama wore a tan suit, or like dijon mustard. He got a nobel peace price while drone striking schools and being in 2 active wars. Bush was maybe a bit smarter than trump, but he was still an idiot son of an asshole. And just overall buffoon, that gor elected twice. I was too young to really care for clinton, but we all know how this went down. But every president you read up is either just a straight up criminal, or a spiteful asshole or both. And the ones who weren't comically evil just got fucked.
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I agree with your assessment: I find it both fascinating (who would have thought each new thing was actually possible, what insane bad idea will be launched today?) and horrifying.
Still working out the coping aspect, as what’s going on directly affects me and some of my family, but mostly switch between paying very close attention and trying to game out what the agenda is, and then taking a day to not pay attention and live in calm denial.
Every once in a while a group of mean spirited bullies would get elected to student government. But that didn’t really matter and was only a few months. This is real life and will have consequences for generations. Regan and W bush were both known for defUnding things like science, health, and education. We’re still dealing with ramifications from those defundings today. What we’re currently dealing with wants to make that look like nothing. I have my gripes with Clinton. But he managed to get the budget balanced without this kind of drama and malace. I refused to get sucked into watching this. Watching it only feeds it. I am trying to check on the situation periodically and complain to my representatives at intervals. It isn’t enough. But I’m doing what I can
And doing what you can is still better than doing nothing!
Shit’s pretty fucked right now, and yeah, it’s scary, distressing, and absolutely disturbing.
I live in a small, rural ex-urb. Plenty of people here definitely voted for this. I don’t interact with my neighbors and keep to myself. I live below my means and am financially sound, at least.
I can’t do much about any of this. I donate to my local food bank monthly because hungry people are angry people, and folks gotta eat, regardless is political leanings. And I donate to Wikipedia because I value information.
None of this helps with the insanity and the politics, but hopefully it helps somebody.
As Americans, we're really good at airing out our political dirty laundry on the world stage, as well as taking every item in the news to its most extreme conclusion (especially in online circles that are too homogeneous in their political leanings).
I just try to cut through all the noise and keep perspective.
This is the most positive take I've read on this topic so far. I hope it's true and it's all more circus than it seems, but it's scary tho
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of decisions being made that I strongly disapprove of, but I just want to caution that we have a tendency to overwhelm online conversations and completely lose perspective.
Real life in the US is very different than it is presented online.
We live in a blue bubble so I'm just ignoring everything the next four years and saving money.
My biggest dream is my state along with the other western states just decides to leave the US and we create our own thing.