#polaitiocht

[an-ruraiocht]

genuinely feels like this sums up so many online interactions

(for the record, madeline is a dual citizen who has lived a lot of time in both the US and the UK, she speaks knowledgeably)

[an-ruraiocht]

actually I think if you tell (non-climate-denying) people who complain about the heat that it's just gonna get worse forever now that you ARE being an arsehole and that's not helpful at all. cos they fucking know. we fucking know. what does that help. if you want to redirect conversations about extreme weather into climate action have you considered something like "god I know right? that's why I'm doing XYZ* to see if I can improve things locally so it doesn't get worse, want to join me?"

*local action, campaigning, planting trees, targeted politician lobbying, whatever: something CONCRETE and achievable with measurable results

otherwise all you're doing is making powerless and despairing people feel more powerless and despairing and that isn't helping shit

[an-ruraiocht]

like did you know that trees lower the surface temperature by up to 19° and grass by up to 24°... access to green space is access to safety in a climate crisis and it is a massive site of inequality because poorer areas tend to have less green space and thus get hotter. urban trees are an equality issue as well as a climate issue. sorry it's not a magic bullet that solves everything but sometimes you need to pick an issue that helps a bit and focus on that. this might not be yours. it's likely going to be mine in the future when my health issues allow me to take it on. if we each pick a thing we can make a difference

[an-ruraiocht]

sometimes it's not your circus and they're not your monkeys but you ARE friends with the clowns. you know?

[an-ruraiocht]

have we considered that there's a common factor here and it's larry. maybe he's the problem? maybe he's a destabilising influence?

[an-ruraiocht]

"nothing you do as an individual will make a difference" gee it's almost like i was suggesting getting involved in larger actions and becoming part of a community movement so that individual involvement could actually add up to something bigger and empower people to take on the biggest problems

i don't care if you think you're agreeing with me, you're being a doomer and encouraging people to do nothing and to just despair because they can't personally eliminate fossil fuel corporations from existence in the space of a day, that's NOT USEFUL

no the small things don't fix everything! yes the small things do fix something! the small things are therefore worth doing! joining up with other people doing the small things will make them into bigger things! doing the small things is how you learn how to do the bigger things!

[an-ruraiocht]

a book that has been so fundamental to my political thinking is judith butler's the force of nonviolence -- highly recommend, it really engages with violence beyond purely physical force, the violence of bureaucracy and inequality and injustice and climate crisis, separate from the physical force or aggression that can come with resisting and dismantling that violence. but one thing that is particularly important to me is this sentence:

how might we begin to formulate an egalitarian imaginary that would become part of our practice of nonviolence -- a practice of resistance, both vigilant and hopeful?

both vigilant and hopeful.

i feel like a lot of people's politics are vigilant -- hypervigilant, often, born of trauma and hurt -- without being hopeful; we cannot imagine a better world, we can only rail at the one we've got; we cannot, even as a thought experiment, imagine a scenario where we might triumph in our goals towards improvement. and that is killing us

we should not be blindly hopeful. but we should not be hopelessly vigilant. we can't build a better world if we neither imagine nor believe in it

[an-ruraiocht]

the news sure likes to talk about "anti-immigration protestors" and not "racist rioters" or "complete twats out for violence"