I have read some firsthand stuff from French resistance folks and artists in more similar situations to my own from this time period. I find their accounts easy to commiserate with and it is a very frustrating time to be alive. Foresight and historical knowledge have been so unhelpful to me.

Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

Hey, wow. Been there.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked[…]

If you were seriously activated at a recent-ish point in America, ‘Occupy’ era until today, you’ve experienced situations where you field at a critical protest point only to find:

• most people actually don’t support anything progressive
• most people who claim to support you are committed to inaction under even very dire circumstances, they will always draw a new line in the sand
• representatives like politicians and nonprofits for causes are mostly there to diffuse energy and frustrate efforts, and at the very least tie action to money
• there actually are many people who are openly against things like feeding kids, racial equality, preventing climate change and they have more money than you
• there are serious, life altering costs to real activism

I guess a more positive way to look at it would be “wow, so stuff also sucked for this dude…” like hey another time comrade

PS: Most people don’t get which historical point in time we’re at because the camps started at the borders and most people don’t look there

The hard nationalist name is a great giveaway

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Oh okay I think we just disagree then.

I can see why you might read my post that way because what other context do you have. I don’t belong to the “us” group you mentioned. I spent 2015-2022ish doing direct service activism and it cost me a great deal. Part of the reason I sound disillusioned is because the fascists directly attacked and destroyed much of my work as I was performing it (especially in 2018 2019 when they were a little better organized). I did literacy and library access work for the incarcerated, primarily. My work was primarily volunteer so it seriously hurt my family’s economy, in addition to being undone in real time as paper bans and mail bans were put in place. People at the universities I “worked” for would provide verbal support, but that was all it ever amounted to.

Part of the reason I like Doctorow is because he gave a pretty accurate description of how literacy access within the prison system works in The Bezzle except for the part where he was using it to distribute LSD. That sounds cool but its largely based on a myth made up to protect prison employees who trade drugs inside.

You don’t even have to do anything and there are thousands of people out there trying to protect you from getting more fucked[…]

Don’t go around telling them they don’t have to “do anything” plz 😅

Not trying to call you out otherwise, how are you supposed to know

Heyyyy you’re right

fantastic post, I wouldn’t have considered that fan setting issue on Bazz…

wonder if one of the linux fans speed apps can replace that functionality to some extent

Since all my local newspaper websites went pay-to-read, I walk two blocks to my local library and read the hard copies maybe once a week. There’s only about one or three articles per week that aren’t just USA Today internet drivel, so it’s not like I’m sitting there for hours pouring through papers like a maniac, and how dare you picture me that way.

If you are a traveler, it is a good trick to pick up as many library cards as you can get your hands on. So many libraries are traveler friendly from old COVID policies and if you aren’t working touristy towns, even pretty flimsy community connections can get you a card. “Oh I work for this practice in the community, can I-” and when your contract in that community ends, what, are you going to go turn in your library card? And let your community’s ebook DRM go to waste? No 😜

You know I think he actually uses the music producer example in his 2nd novel (The Bezzle).

Doctorow can write a great detective novel but he lives in absolute La La land. I’m glad he’s open about the fact he’s just distracting himself with this post, but the idea that these webs of laws or these models of “how things should work” mean anything tho the people with power are complete nonsense.

He has some understanding of that, I think? But like, buddy, your country just went full Nazi. You’ve been living in a total fantasy. You’re not going to rethink the concept of fixers, get a grip.

The people who tell you to be civil aren’t going to help you on the line, generally. Unless its one of those fake protests like The March for Science.

Don’t let people who aren’t going to help you tell you how to behave.

There are some things you can do that hurt America.

1. Leave. You won’t be welcome elsewhere unless you have roughly 125k saved, liquid cash. That may not matter based on where you are at on the ladder but it really wrecks my family. For example, if you’re broke and unwelcome in the USA, maybe roll the dice? This is not legal advice. We’re stuck by family and fake middle class assets. “Not welcome” means you cannot legally work elsewhere, you are subject to the USA. We live under feudalism internationally.
2. Stop spending money. All USD money is Nazi money. The less you spend, the less the machine goes.
3. Don’t work for cops. As in outright refuse to do anything to help cops, ever.
4. Donate to causes that actually erode US sovereignty like Indigenous legal defense funds, and leave your assets to the people your land was stolen from.

edit* This is all assuming you won’t fight, because I was there in 22 and there wasn’t a fight. That’s when we lost our rights. So don’t pretend like fighting is an option please, this isn’t that kind of forum anyway.

Don’t let propagandists tell you that you have to survive a nazi regime

Seeing as the US is a transcontinental slave empire, it does make sense that they wouldn’t emphasize literacy among their populace.

lmao, the article is about the UK

if you would like to criticize American education anyway, perhaps we could find a nice article about that subject together

*edit: here you are

**edit 2, i still don’t want to talk about your teacher @[email protected] 😜

in about 201X I was having a terrible time trying to get through the thesis period of a master’s program

picked up some bundle of the OG 2DS (black & blue variant) and Pokemon X and loved it

a world where I could pick my friends, people were pleasant, my next career moves were obvious, and my work was rewarded? To this day, this is my escapist fantasy.