And no, that's not exclusive to Trump and what ICE has been up to, vanishing people into deportation camps. Climate change, the increasing frequency of pandemics, PFAS/forever chemicals, the list of stuff being swept under the rug instead of being acted against grows longer by the day.
It's like when you watch an ad for an insect repellent: if they show you all those disgusting insects, the ad disgusts you so much that you avoid the product. It's a phenomenon known in psychology.
Now the trend is the same with news and media.
They will destroy their own lives if all they worry about is the bigger stuff. There is no clear path from what an individual can practically do, to addressing those bigger things either.
For example, politically - anyone trying to do the actual effective thing in this situation is going to be thrown in jail, often with praise and finger wagging by the nominal folks in charge of those who it would be benefitting.
And since everyone would rather yell and scream back and forth at each other rather than actually do anything that matters, what else is going to happen?
That goes for pretty much every one of these hot button topics. People can only control what they can actually control, and at some point, those things are in bad enough shape that they require 100% of a persons attention. Or more.
This is 'California politics' by the way - and it's spread everywhere. Nothing is good, everything is bad, no one can do anything that actually benefits them, etc, etc.
Perhaps fewer and fewer people believe let alone like to have your patter as their internal monologue.
Which amounts to an agreement to have your extremist / alarmist voice forever in their heads lest climate change leads to the H word. I think that I have that about right, if your post is to be believed.
I have met quite a large number of people who seem to think living in a state of constant outrage is somehow making a difference. I give the money I can to the charities and causes I care about, and I’m entirely unclear on how being perpetually hyper-fixated on the latest horrors would add to that. Either do something, or don’t, but obsessively reading the news doesn’t cause any change to occur.
That was a thing. One of my family members had to round up an entire town of German citizens and march them through the death camps as none of them believed it was a real thing. They got to see and smell it for themselves. Some were still in disbelief that their own soldiers committed such horrific acts.
In the US the closest thing to keep an eye on would be the FEMA camps. Most are in very remote locations. If Russian and Chinese start to vanish those are the first places I would look and there are many such camps. By that point the internet would likely be entirely censored and people would have to authenticate with a centralized service to use the internet at all. I would expect those implementing such services to be members here so one can only hope they chime in when the planning starts. I would expect this to eventually be a MitM agent that runs on phones and computers to monitor pre-encrypted content to report on suspicious words and phrases. It might be silently deployed to all cell phones much like the past CarrierIQ but as a helpful AI this time. The PC versions would probably get inserted quietly in OS updates under the guise of a helpful AI as well. Those working on it may not even realize it's intended purposes. I would be curious to see how they sneak it into Linux and BSD.
At the very least, vote for politicians actually taking the myriad of issues seriously. Millions of Americans couldn't be bothered to do even that bare minimum in 2024, despite knowing what shitshow the first Trump term was. And no, voter suppression isn't an excuse, the Democrats lost more votes from 2020-2024 than Trump gained.
And it's not just the federal elections where votes and engagement can and do make a difference. The book bans? Passed by school boards (crazy enough these are a thing in the first place, most other countries run that through regular civilian administration). That nutjob sheriff Arpaio? Voted and confirmed by locals. You get the point - the far-right has done local legwork and voting for decades.
And finally: stay informed about what is going on, so when Uncle John goes off on his usual tirades at family gatherings after a few beers, you can recognize what the lies are and call the lies out.
And notably, they also couldn't defend the constitution when it came time.
So it's a choice between 'delusional-we're-doing-good-everything-is-fine' and 'delusional-lets-not-look-up-and-blame-everyone-else'. The first group continuing to apply pressure in this non-working direction just made the second group inevitable.
Pretending people aren't people, and don't have their own reasons why they voted the way they did is exactly what led to the current situation. It's the pendulum swinging. Now we'll get 'people can only be their worst (except me), punish them, regardless of the evidence'.
Or as the old quote goes - "Democracy is the idea that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it - good and hard."
Or do you think those straw bans actually helped, or just let people think they were helping by doing actually nothing?
And how do you think all those people feel who spent decades faithfully sorting recycling who finally figured out it was all a scam and 90% of it just went into the same hole in the ground shortly after?
I’m not saying I have some better master alternative - rather there is a reason the pendulum swings.