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Pessimism is indeed a cancer.
But so is false hope. Because countless people will just say "See, there is push back. It isn't that bad". We saw exactly that happen last week (and the week before (and the week before (...))) with the tariffs. trump did something stupid to destroy the economy and livelihood of the country, he backed off a bit, and everyone praised him while ignoring that he still made things worse.
And same here. Yes, it is great that any judges are willing to throw their careers away and make themselves a target of the fascists. But nothing will change if those rulings aren't enforced and all signs are that they won't be.
But it still gives people a way to just keep ignoring it because "I am valuing my mental health"
How does one judge what is false hope in a struggle that never ends?
There have been countless people through history that have been way more brutal, violent, and irrational than probably anyone alive now. But we as humans have survived as a whole. Some tyrannical rules have carried on for multiple generations of victims, but they all end. People will never get over being oppressed. A lot of successful control is done by people who learn to balance exploiting people with giving them enough to make it not feel worth it.
In America, 2016-2020 was tempered by enough rational people, but I don't think people on either side would say 2025 feels the same as the previous term did. This is pure recklessness and disregard for order, and that is going to be harder and harder to justify to the masses. Actions already bring taken haven't had enough time for the repercussions to be felt yet for most people they will affect. Red voters in blue states will suffer. Farmers will suffer. The unskilled and uneducated will suffer. They won't be any happier being played for fools than anyone else would be. You can already see pretty hardcore Repubs asking if giving complete control of tariffs to this guy was a bad idea. Hardly any have even gone into effect as scheduled and people have seen there is no logic to it and it will hurt every group of people.
Having 1% of the population be satisfied with the current status quo is unsustainable. That doesn't mean life may not suck for the next 4 or longer. If you were a modern Repub, you may have thought life sucked since Reagan, Nixon, or Lincoln. But they persisted. And now that the tide has turned, now we have to keep doing our thing until our vision of order is achieved. And we won't even always know what that even is.
Would you be happy now if we went back to how things were under Biden? We probably would have been if the last 3 months hadn't happened. But we still had everything in place to allow an administration like this to happen. And now who know what hasn't been compromised by Musk now at this point. So I don't think we can "just go back" even if every MAGA person vanished into the ether. But we can make tomorrow a little bit better than today. And when you set realistic goals, you can find hope, and sometimes an opportunity will present itself to take a bigger slice back than you expected, and you will be ready for it because you aren't mired in nihilism.
You're allowed to feel beaten, tired, and depressed, and you can and should discuss that with people, but seeing every comment on all the threads be marked by comments of hopelessness is just not great for anything. You guys all have good things to say, and I like when that feels like the overall vibe of the threads.
When people are celebrating an action that will accomplish absolutely nothing so that they can continue to "get on with their lives"?
And that applies to the rest of your rant. If an action doesn't move the needle in the slightest and just highlights how little hope there is then it is pointless. Unless you somehow believe that enough court orders will pile up that the guy who engaged in a little violent insurrection last time is going to say "You know what? I get that I am not wanted. I'll abdicate power peacefully". Especially when he only failed last time because he acted "too soon" and has been speed running making sure that he controls every gun in the government for this time.
We literally did exactly this last week. People were terrified of what would happen with the tariffs. trump "backed down" and... still bumped up the percentage against basically every country and is still doing everything he can to make xi jinping notice him. But people have "false hope" and are now happy and going back to their days.
So what would move the needle in your view?