Fuckin' A Bubba

Please, don’t drown me in the horror--give me work to do!

During the election and after political strategist Simon Rosenberg repeated to us the mantra of Hopium Chronicles—Do more; Worry less. As an organizer I welcome this thought because I always found action is the best antidote to aggravation and what we called “agita” when I was in high school. During the election it was very helpful given how much we had to worry about. But campaigns bring with them clear tasks for rank-and-file folks to carry out—phone calls, postcards, precinct walks, and if you have it, checks to write.

This past weekend I was suffering from a major shortage of “do more”. As a consequence, instead of “worrying less,” I was worrying more. I tried to compose a post but Lordy, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how some folks get the distance to write about this nightmare every day or so. I can do short notes on social media and often start out writing longer form pieces about one outrage or another but within seconds some other crime pops up and my brain becomes overwhelmed, demoralized, and then paralyzed. Words fail me, in more ways than one.

In fact, the past couple of weeks has felt like being trapped in a popcorn popper. There have been kernels are coming at us 24/7 from every direction making it hard to focus and figure out the most effective things we can do in response. While some issues like the confirmation hearings provide obvious things we can DO—make calls to our Senators and Congress people urging them to fight—the right re-ACTION to others (except for rage-screaming) like giving the unelected South African free access to our tax dollars *(not his since he does not seem to pay any) are more are more elusive. We KNOW most of this stuff is illegal but from out here what do we do? (*since writing this someone has done something—sometimes shit moves so fast. See https://spoutible.com/thread/40488865)

Moreover, it’s hard to suss out which of the popcorn kernels coming at us pose the greatest danger and which are just performative BS. For example, stuff like FFOTUS’s (First Felon of the United States) notion of buying Greenland and annexing Canada, at first seemed just silly and an attempt to distract from other crap like the Cabinet picks or zeroing out the budget. Mercifully writers like historian Heather Cox Richardson provided some assessment of the real dangers by pointing out that, “Central to the rules-based international order constructed in the decades after World War II is that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty.” December 26, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson FFOTUS (First Felon Of The United States) is openly threatening that international order. So not so silly after all. Still, what do we DO to make it stop?

I think that to control the popcorn popper we have to build Surround Sound Campaigns that come after the administration fast and furious—from all the directions. Think of confining the popcorn in a big bag.

Each part of the campaign has a focus, uses non-violent tactics that are logical to the issue (action logic**) and goes after the administration with everything they have. All are after the same goal, to save the nation. The beauty is that the very process of organizing the campaign amplifies education of everyday people on the issues. The major requirement is that each part of the campaign MUST BE VISIBLE AND LOUD. There is no time for quiet now. Elbows out! Make some noise.

** Action logic means that someone who doesn’t know anything about the issue can quickly understand why the action is done. It doesn’t require a lot of background knowledge and it doesn’t even require people to immediately agree with you—in fact, what makes action logic so powerful is that it creates the most persuasive action. Action logic flows from the details of the situation in powerful symbolic actions. Creating Powerful Actions with Strong “Action Logic”. Imma come back to this in another post but think Ghandi’s salt marches.

We all have to think of what we can DO. Please, I’m begging all of you weighing in on the sh*t show that just posting a litany of horror is demoralizing and paralyses the mind and spirit unless you also suggest things we can be doing. Most of us are desperate to #DoSomething and will happily share the word with others.