Hey by the way the most important thing that everyone everywhere needs to goddamn internalize from the US 2024 election is that symbolic victories mean fucking nothing
Yes in Europe, yes in Asia, yes in Australia, yes in Africa, yes EVERYWHERE
(And especially Canada I’m looking at you fuckers ours is up next and I will eat you)
Racism is not over, sexism is not over, bigotry is not over and pretending it was is how this happened and how the goddamn right wing is exploding globally
Smugly declaring “Love Wins” and acting like one big moment fixed the problem is how it happened again
You need to actively rout out bigots and haters and their ideology, you need to educate people in how to spot it themselves, you need to accept that everyone everywhere is going to make mistakes and we must all always be ready to learn and improve and grow
Learning that you used to believe something that was wrong can be shameful, but if that makes you defensive and less likely to let go, that is the moment of ultimate failure
When you had the chance to do better and learn and stop, and didn’t
Because yeah. People internalize the dominant attitudes they grow up with, often without introspection when they’re little. And introspecting later as an adult can be hard and uncomfortable. And it’s still fucking necessary
You can’t just declare “well I’m a good person so I have no unconscious bias”
Accept that you probably still have some, even if you’ve been doing the work - because you don’t know what you don’t know, and the dividing line between a good and bad person is when you learn you were wrong and either accept that and do better, or dig in and declare you couldn’t possibly have been because you’re “a good person”
It’s not enough to try and dictate right and wrong to people, or declare that clearly “no reasonable person” would do something
People need the tools to be able to spot the bullshit themselves, to think about what they’re told, to feel safe addressing their unchallenged ideas so that even if it’s uncomfortable and upsetting, they don’t immediately shy away and dig in
Getting complacent and not stamping down hateful voices every time they rise is what let them gain so much quiet power, because people believed the lie
That it was over, that society was “fixed” now, that all that old bigotry was a thing of the past that “good people” these days would never consider
Does it still look over to anyone?
Cheering and declaring victory and that “this time, it will never happen again! It can’t happen here!” for grand symbolic gestures allow the bigots to move underground, hide, and grow
They do not stop pushing and fighting to destroy everyone they believe is inferior, and perfectly normal and reasonable people are much more vulnerable to that if they believe that bigotry was already “solved”
It’s not a sudden large explosion from nowhere - the current state of affairs has been a gas leak for decades, unnoticed and ignored until the spark caught
Clean house, starting with yours. Look for your unconscious biases, and take a step back to think clearly if someone else points one out
Thoughts and beliefs don’t make you a good person if your actions are still harmful
Intent is not more important than impact
And to move on and grow as a person, you need to accept that you were wrong before and that you can’t erase that history - but you can make sure it ends there
In the US, that means no more “not my president”. That is your president. Whether you voted for him or not, your majority did, and the first step to fixing that is accepting that it happened
In Canada, that means we do not fucking sell our election to Doug fucking Ford in Ontario, or to fucking Polievre everywhere else just because Musk wants to buy the prime minister.
Their “common sense” plans are easily refutable bullshit, they’re meeting with the fucking Christian fundies who think interracial marriage was a step too far, and they’re trying to privatize our health care
There can be no palatable excuse to just “not bother”, or to say “well I don’t agree with that but this other thing sounds fine”
It’s a fucking sovereignty issue at this point - US Conservatives don’t want us cuz we’ll elect liberals, and if Elon can buy the right wing a win they’ll have less reason to discourage the asshole in chief
If you hate the liberals, vote NDP. We have a multi-party system and only one party is openly planning to sell us and the environment and fundamental human rights to the highest bidder (but the Greens are on thin ice cuz supporting the environment is good but not enough if you don’t support the goddamn human rights)
Everywhere else, I dunno. I’m not there, but the news doesn’t look good, and the mindset still applies
No complacency. No “it couldn’t happen here”. It could and it will if we are not all careful
2024 was a cautionary tale and we all need to learn from it because Elon fucking Musk specifically thinks he can just buy every government on Earth and make them do what he wants
And I will be a goddamn nightmare if he’s right
