Keep Strength by Helping One Another
and saving yourself and the world by disengaging with disgust
This will not be like the last time. We had warning of what they said they would do, and they are doing it.
I have removed myself from all social media (except Substack’s clumsy facsimile, which I don’t really use) and I’m being careful what news I consume. The same old grifters are out in force today, to make us despair and flail in useless fury. Focus your energy in a useful manner: Join Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope; instead of screaming into the void of social media, write your representatives and ask what actions they are taking to protect their constituents. Voting against things that will certainly pass is not enough. Are they protesting? Are they organizing? Or are they just posing for soundbites and collecting their paycheck? Ask them what John Lewis would be doing. And ask them why they are not.
Do not despair. Keep strength by helping one another. There are plenty of people in need in California right now, and Speaker Johnson is already using them as bargaining chips. He can’t stop you from giving to Habitat for Humanity Greater Los Angeles’ ReBUILD LA foundation.
Wisdom from Robin Wall Kimmerer, via
of :Your hands itch to pull out invasive species and replant the native flowers. Your finger trembles with a wish to detonate the explosion of an obsolete dam that would restore a salmon run. These are antidotes to the poison of despair.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass”
When President Carter died, I said to myself, “the last adult has left the room.” I had a long piece ready about Jimmy Carter, and how everyone since has been a showman, like the actor-clown who defeated him by putting everything on a credit card that we still have not paid off.
does it better, so I will share hers instead.
The most important thing you will read this week is an interview between Sam Matey and Jason Pargin that will explain what the entertainment we now refer to as news is doing to your brain to keep you from thinking clearly. Matey’s Substack is all about the good news that is ignored in favor of “if it bleeds it leads” reporting. Pargin wrote John Dies at the End and like me, watched the Internet become what it is today from its virulent birth in the Something Awful forums in the ‘90s. He knows what he’s talking about, and he even got me to kick my Reddit addiction by framing it as “getting angry about how somebody parked in Texas 8 years ago.”
From the interview:
What you have absolute power over is what you expose yourself to […]
Because here's the thing, there are some arguments or debates that by participating, you're already making things worse. Because the form of the argument is already taking you to a dark place. You've already agreed to their terms and are now just going back and forth saying “Okay, well, but which group should we find disgusting?” Now you're just yelling playground insults back and forth at each other.
And you think you're striking a blow against them, but no. Don't you understand that as long as the exchange takes place on that level, they win no matter what?
At some point, you have to extract yourself from that situation and say:
I have to manage my own mental health.
I have to manage how this makes me feel about other people.
I have to manage how afraid this is making me of my neighbors and of my fellow citizens.
Only you can do that. These platforms are not ever going to come in and help you be a better person. They make more money if you are just obsessively online yelling at people and looking at people yelling at you and engaging in that.
They only care that you remain glued to the screen. [emphasis mine]
Only you can do this. It's the same thing as with diet or anything else. Only you can manage what you eat. Only you can manage what you buy. Well, information is the same way.
There is information that is a form of junk food that has been specifically crafted to, you know, to light up certain things in your brain. And in general, as a rule, if politics has become entertaining, then it has become useless. [emphasis mine]
[…]
My argument would be that if you want to become really informed about politics, you would delete the Twitter app off your phone altogether.
Maybe then you tell yourself, “But then I'm just blocking out the information, I will be ignorant.” No, there's other places to get information. There are other places to get news. There are books you can read to actually become informed about things. If you're letting a platform distill an issue down to one sentence or down to 15 seconds of a video, you are actively becoming less informed. [emphasis mine]
Disengaging with the Billionaire Rage Machine and returning to reading, texting, and talking with your friends and neighbors will help you, and us all. It’s not easy. But hey, I finally have time to watch all three seasons of Twin Peaks now.
Sunday I’ll be back with a hawk!
Thanks for sharing. Be well-