The Doom Thread: Gloom, Despair, Agony

And many of us have family who can’t or won’t leave.

 

It's not arrogance. It's awareness that "pack up and leave right now" isn't an option. That doesn't mean I'm not making contingency plans; my wife is an EU citizen and we own a property in an EU country we can move to whenever we want. I'm looking into ways to get the ball rolling on getting my citizenship process started now rather than wait until I'm over there (may not happen but worth a try). We are looking into ways to minimize the hit that a weakened dollar will inflict on our retirement savings if we do end up in the EU.

And on the topic of being an upper-middle-class (straight) white man--YES, as a matter of fact, that is true. That means I, currently, have some sociopolitical privilege that many of the people I work with and supervise--and many of the patrons my library system serves--don't have. That gives me a bit of leverage with civic and local political leaders to defend things like access to LGBT+ materials in our collection (which I'm currently doing), or push for a more robust and wide-ranging collection of non-English materials to serve one of the most diverse populations of any county in the USA (something I'm also currently doing), or mentor some of the younger queer, female, non-white, and non-binary staff members who are nervous that library administration or county government will be willing to sell at least some of them out if the political climate in Virginia gets even worse (yet again--something I'm currently doing).

I try to do this stuff low-key and not make it about me, and it kinda pisses me off that I'm feeling pressured from a stranger on a message board to justify the ways in which I'm choosing to stand my ground as a librarian and defend both the values of my profession and the integrity of the organization I work for, but being accused of cowardice because I haven't ran my plan for resistance by you for your approval really rubs me the wrong way.

If my decision to stick around with my fellow public librarians to try to defend one of the last great civic institutions still standing in this failed republic ends up leaving me stranded, so be it.

 

He ignored that part of my post, and that's fine. I'm not going to go into more detail because I'm not going to give Moms for Liberty more ways to ID me.

 

Also, one piece of advice activists share on BlueSky is "Don't talk about everything you're doing on social media" which seems like better advice than "Be sure to check in to BigSoccer everytime you attend a rally or join a march."

FFS.

 

The Virginia elections this Fall are going to be a test run for the regime. Don't know if they'll succeed, but at the very least they're going to force at least a few people on the fence to see what's actually happening.

The problem with right now is that most Americans are still seeing what's happening as a bunch of discrete events, not a single authoritarian plan. That's one problem with being a continent-spanning nation with multiple large & influential metropolitan areas rather than a capital city where all the action is.

 

Ask yourself "What would Merrick Garland do?" and then do the opposite.

 

If you think working to fix civil society from the ground up is a distraction from resisting authoritarianism, I can't help you. If you think planting the seeds for future resistance is a waste of time, I can't help you. If you think finding ways to build solidarity with marginalized people in the here and now is not central to the whole project of building an opposition that can go the distance--again, I can't help you.

 

One thing I am grappling with--I recently withdrew from being an active committee member of the local Democratic party, because the state leadership seems hopelessly not up to the challenge. FFS, our candidate for Governor (my previous Congressional rep who, to be clear, I like a lot in many ways) is still putting out ads bragging about how 'bipartisan' she is. Senators Kaine and Warner have voted for as many Trump appointees as any Democrats in the Senate, and Warner has been flirting with "anti-woke" rhetoric. There was the Gerry Connelly debacle. And so on.

So I told my colleagues, "Sorry guys, I'm not interested in playing the role of 'Loyal Opposition' in a fascist regime--once you start acting like the stakes are as high as they are, I'll come back". But...I still believe we need the Democrats to win the Old Dominion this Fall. I am cautiously optimistic that's going to happen, but if Winsome-Sears closes the gap, or the Democrats hold on either the House of Delegates or the State Senate looks under threat--do I swallow my pride, start answering my email again, and suck it up to canvas and campaign again for a cadre of lukewarm milquetoast centrists who will at least keep the GOP's hands off the levers of power in the Commonwealth? Would that be a real victory, or just style points for Face the Nation to hem and haw about?

I don't know. I'm unconvinced electoral politics are our way out of this.