No Stupid Questions

Disengage.

The amount of doomer shit you intake is directly proportional to time spent online listening to the opinions of imbeciles.

So basically walk away.

Perhaps a nice egg would help

A piece of American optimism:

America has been awful since the start, in one way or another. It was never going to change because the majority population was either comfortable enough, or scared enough of the minorities that they would accept a certain discomfort as long as their fellow man had it somehow worse.

Right now nobody is having a good time over there. We're approaching a breaking point. And that's scary, but it's also an opportunity to build a better world on the ashes of the old. We are on the verge of huge changes.

Change is no guarantee for improvement. Americans should not only protest the regime, but start preparing to rebuild. Get smart. Read your own history, especially the parts you're not proud of. If you don't know or fully understand those parts you will never manage to build wide alliances. Read postwar history, read about the French revolution and it's messy aftermath. Read Arendt, read Rawls, read Steinbeck and Locke. Prepare yourself to grasp this historic moment. You have an opportunity unlike anything since the 18th century to change America for the better. Don't waste it doomscrolling. Don't think you know enough already. Prepare yourself to be the kind of person who is needed once the regime falls.

You're not powerless—on the contrary, it's an historic opportunity. And in power there is hope.

European optimism:

After the events of the last few weeks I think a lot more people are fed up with this fascist bullshit, and it seems even Eurosceptics now believe we need to stand together in solidarity across the continent. It's a new European moment, and the American hegemony has been broken. I'm feeling genuinely optimistic.

The protests in Minnesota also fill me with joy.* I sincerely believe things are beginning to crack. Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu are all in extremely fragile positions, and dictators have famously poor life expectancy. Change is gradual, then sudden, and the destinies of these despots are intertwined. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

* I wrote this before they ended in more killings. It's hard to see joy in it now, but I see equal amounts of hope.

Live in Europe

There are plenty of great news in this world we live in. Modern science, medicine, and technology has never been better!

We have giant telescopes, humongous particle accelerators, all sorts of different satellites, and so much more that is helping to further the collective human knowledge of the world around us! We know so many different unique and beautiful forms of life large and small, so many interstellar objects captured on telescopes with stunning clarity (see JWST, Vera Rubin Observatory, Hubble...), we can predict everything from the weather tomorrow to when will that star will go supernova to when you will be able to see a solar eclipse to when the earth will shake and when the waves will tower over cities (and we promptly evacuate/prepare civilians before that happens, which would have never been possible before without modern science!)

Less people are dying every day, less people are suffering every day. Antibiotics, vaccinations, X-rays, MRI machines, and a far better understanding of how the human body function all contribute to a healthier, happier life. In the middle ages, dense populations had no proper plumbing, no modern medicine, water contamination was rampant, garbage and human shit covered the streets, farmers had animals that shit and pissed everywhere, a complete hygiene nightmare. In the modern age, we've got regular health checkups, treating illnesses before they get out of hand, proper good medicine to fight against the microscopic invaders, we have garbage disposal, it has been widely accepted that shitting in the streets isn't something that is very hygienic, mental health is getting recognised more and more, showers, washing your hands, and brushing your teeth is now common practice in most countries, we are getting closer than ever to defeating the tyrannical monsters that plagued human civilisations for millennia, life expectancy is at at an all-time high (many are living to over 100 due to improved medicine, good diets, and good exercise!), and the dangers of alcohol, drugs, smoking, and all that is now general knowledge.

Moore's law has been followed since it was first suggested, everyone knows has a supercomputer that can run trillions of operations per second with magical scratch resistance glass, a method of storing charge that can store power for said supercomputer for an entire day or more (especially with silicon carbon, phones are now reaching multi day battery which is insane!), digital media lets people create content, enjoy content, and modify content at rates never before seen. Displays can display images near-retina clarity with fantastic colours and impressive brightness, speakers can get LOUD and surround sound is one of the most amazing forms of media humanity has ever produced, VR lets you experience digital worlds and creations like never before, 3D printing lets people create functional items at home, online retailers make it ridiculously easy to get food, aforementioned supercomputers and other super technologies, healthcare, tools, clothing, and everything else!

The world is great, it is amazing!

Find a supportive and fulfilling community that is trying to make things better locally. I've found this at my Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. UU's don't believe in a shared religious text, instead they have a core set of shared values. My church has people who identify as atheist, Christian, several types of pagan, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, etc. We celebrate religious holidays from all of them as well as secular holidays like Trans Day of Visibility and Earth day. The focus is on being together and trying to make the world a better place. There's active volunteer groups for hunger relief, housing support, the environment, and LGBTQ support. I also really like the music program. There's a handy website to find a congregation near you, many stream services on Zoom so you can test them out before going in person. They can vary a lot based on the members of each congregation.

One can only fight this pessimism for themselves. For some people there is no urge to fight it. They want to be part of the hardest times. Perhaps it works as a coping mechanism and in the end the problems most relatable to you are those that you are facing.

But if someone truly wants to feel less pessimism, all you have to do is to look back and reflect on history. A lot of people miss how long some "modern" problems have truly existed, long before it became relevant to them, from decades to millenniums. Some are totally aware of it, but it may be difficult to look at the past of a problem where you didn't care about it or may even have been part of the problem. Or the history was so long ago that you only look at is as stories and nothing you can relate to.

We also underestimate our ability to live through the hell and normalize it. We were doomed multiple times and here we are. Vice versa, we underestimate the quality of life (especially in the western world) we have today. It's not only hygiene, health and entertainment. We have progressed in our thoughts so much. Again, a lot of problems have only changed in how we recognize them as such. I'm not saying you shouldn't fight fascism, because a lot of modern fascism used to be normalized not too long. I'm saying that we should be aware that we live in a time where we don't ignore these problems in the first place.

Take a historical perspective. Even with the muppets currently in power in some countries in the world, this is still the best time to be alive in the history of mankind. 100 years from now, 47 will be two paragraphs in a history book.

How many people know about the life and times of James Buchanan? How many people care? What about Herbert Hoover? Or Andrew Jackson?

And at least you get to talk about it. Imagine life under Stalin in the USSR, when a neighbour could report you for sedition and you would disappear into a gulag the next week. Or Pol Pot's Cambodia, where wearing glasses was a death sentence (yes, really).

I'm in Europe, and from where I'm standing, Trump looks like a giant unflattering mirror. If America doesn't like what it sees in it, maybe work and fix it. On our side is the same: this mirror shows decades of complacent bureaucracy and infighting. So here's the other silver lining: now we know what needs fixing.

Find things that you are grateful for. Remember them daily, and find new ones daily.

Praise other people for their qualities and for things that they have done well. Daily.

Touch the corners of your mouth with 2 fingers and push them upwards. Then try it without fingers :-)

Significantly less time on the internet more time in your community.

By knowing that time is long, and these things always happen in cycles.

50 years from now this will be viewed as a dark time in history. Hopefully one that created a new greatest generation.

Sex mostly.

I'm trying to enjoy the last of the abundance of good things, and have been educating myself mercilessly on how bad things are likely to get.

When I have the spoons and relevant opportunity, I try to spread some of the knowledge I've accumulated too.

Good things wise, I'm mainly leaning into my hobbies and interests of perfume, food and gaming.

• so trying and collecting scents that comfort and interest me, eating and cooking with lots of fruits and vegetables that will be hard to come by once fresh water and arable land stop being so readily available, and recently I've also been collecting and playing all the pixel dungeon games.

Education and escaspism are two sides of the same coin imo.

I have moved on to the acceptance stage of grief.

Allow yourself escapism and breaks where you get lost in the things you enjoy even if you feel guilty. It will keep you from burning out

Organizing for the things you can change, which isn't much in this "democracy", exercise for the things you can't. Doomerism and anxiety tend to go away if you spend 30 minutes a day running instead of doom scrolling.

I find that finding solutions to the problems that generate the feelings of doom is a good way to fight those feelings. Have a plan or several plans. You don't have to solve the issue just find ways to get through it easier with less stress.

Example: Where I live, the power grid is garbage. Too much money has been diverted to the stockholders instead of grid maintenance. We've lost power three times since Christmas. There is a storm coming on Monday and the odds favor the power is going off. I have a checklist of what to do before and during the outage which makes it easier to get through.

With apathy, cynicism, and caritas.

The "no elections" thing is a psyop designed to make you fearful and hopeless. Fraud is possible, but at the rate it's going, it will probably be super obvious if they try it, which carries risks.

The assholes are fucking stupid, they're bad at this, and I think the Kremlin is intentionally giving them shit advice because they want us to collapse more than they want the regime change. We will prevail if we work towards it, and I see a labor revival in our longer future.