This just makes me feel utterly defeated, despite doing EVERYTHING I can. I have been boycotting corporations with regard to my own spending for a year. Minus an occasional vacation required for my own sanity and always examining carefully where my dollars are spent. The only place I can find people as engaged in day-to-day politics as I am is online, where it feels like an unreal, impersonal echo chamber that stresses me out daily. I want a better world for my 4 grown kids and their families, but it feels like screaming in a closet. I know I am not alone in this and I agree with you. But it takes a village...
I think I made it clear, the democracy activists are the only ones that can defeat this tyranny. You hit the nail on the head. You are doing everything you can, the problem is America needs millions like you.
Please don’t get disheartened. I mage the very important point that Trump WILL LOSE in November and in 2028. Democrats would have to do something even stupid for them for that not to happen.
For me this is about the day after. You are one of the heroes, carry on what you’re doing. Sending a hug - Martin
What about introducing many more mechanisms for sharing the load? For examples
* an organised industrial relations system to improve worker pay, conditions and entitlements
* policy for the democrats - the concept of a living wage and make it enforceable by law and industrial law enforcement.
One thing that strikes me about american capitalism is businesses belief in their entitlement to the under paid and even unpaid labor of the american workers whi work fie them. Lets recgnise this is a way of offloading the costs and risks on to the work force by systemically underpaying and over working them.
The living wage idea includes legalising compensation / wage levels so every individual can live on their pay for providing say 37 to 40 hours work to the employer per week. Goverment should not subsidise employment with food stamps etc if their low wage was set at a living wage... that is if the worker was being paid enough for them and their family to live on!
Nationalise the health system! It may be the best in the world for the small proportion of the US population who can affordit but it is certainly the most expensive and outrageously so. It is commonplace for people to have to mortgage their homes to afford a major medical event.And ordinary working families avoid visiting the doctor to adress illness early because it costs too much thereby also increasing the burden of disease as much of it can worsen and then cost more and make people unable to work and earn for longer periods.
Good ideas both —if we as a nation and a resistance movement can uncouple from the endless energy snd focus sapping knee jerk reactions created by the firehose of this administration. One tactic championed by certain folks in the resistance is to claim your area of personal action and not try to do everything—if people can designate X persons or organizations to work against one pillar that supports the status quo, others can choose different areas of action and all will make better progress. ie gather X orgs/people to concentrate on living wage issue state by state and Y orgs/people to concentrate on health care and Z orgs/ people to concentrate on crafting a strong and articulated vision for the Dem party in the coming elections, we may see more progress than when every org fractionates to try to address several issues.
Okay....I'm here and I'm willing to sacrifice. Nothing but essentials until as long as it takes. Martin, I don't know how large your readership is - but whatever percentage is ready and willing to do this, contact me if you want to coordinate a start date. Bullshit walks and action talks.
Thanks my friend I’m reaching one and half million a month on here and three times that on X. I’ll keep you posted. The aim is to get the site up on 14th April.
There must be more of us out here. I have been waging my own boycott and self sufficiency campaign for over 20 years. So far I have weathered the ups and downs of our corporate catastrophe. Most people are just lazy and politically incompetent. Until we change that as a country, we will continue to have a tyrant of one kind or another. I wish I knew how to motivate folks to do the things necessary to keep their freedoms and humanity.
Which Bush was it that told Americans to go shopping and spend? Republicans are conservatives? When? Democrat Jimmy Carter was the last president who dared suggest conservation. He lasted one term.
We’re just as frustrated as you because many of us are actually participating in economic disengagement. No travel, no home improvements, minimal Christmas and holiday spending with handmade gifts, no corporate restaurants, no extras. 😩Then we talk about it everywhere we go. We’re trying!
Lamenting that we don't already have a flourishing general strike while being non-plussed about Indivisible's push for a one day general strike brings to mind the phrase "We're in a marathon, not a sprint." The one day general strike isn't the end goal, it's the first day of training, an effort to introduce the concept of a general strike to the public and making the stakes of moving from mass protests to mass action less daunting so we can prepare for larger actions in the future.
Similarly, Indivisible has it's 2026 Project primarying the "donkeys leading lions" to put leaders who can articulate and implement a progressive vision in charge. It can impact 2026, but the real goal is to use 2026 as a stepping stone to for 2028 when we can primary Schumer and others like him, and hopefully get a strong progressive as the Dem nominee.
If you want to use your position and agency to assist that, an area progressives are weak is on colleges. No Kings has been a big success, but youth participation is low, and instead of college campuses being hotbeds of activism, they are checked out.
Can you help revive student and college protests? It would be incredibly valuable if you worked towards that
I’ve written at length about why a general strike will not work in today’s America. It is unfortunately a relic of times when union membership was at 30% not the 9% it is today.
I had not seen those and having read them now, I like your assessments.
It's almost a shame Elon Musk was the only oligarch to be visibly attached to the horrors of the Trump admin. That visibility made it easy to get "Take Down Tesla" boycotts going.
If other CEO's had the same visibility in their working with Trump it would make targeted boycotts so much easier.
This just makes me feel utterly defeated, despite doing EVERYTHING I can. I have been boycotting corporations with regard to my own spending for a year. Minus an occasional vacation required for my own sanity and always examining carefully where my dollars are spent. The only place I can find people as engaged in day-to-day politics as I am is online, where it feels like an unreal, impersonal echo chamber that stresses me out daily. I want a better world for my 4 grown kids and their families, but it feels like screaming in a closet. I know I am not alone in this and I agree with you. But it takes a village...
The following excerpt is from a Washington Post Op-ed from 2020 regarding the Pandemic, but the lessons apply perfectly to opposing the current fascist takeover.
“Sacrifice is not easy and natural, but it can happen. And yet, the language of sacrifice faded in the aftermath of a more popular, more total and more demanding conflict for Americans. Following World War II, the “good war,” politicians, business leaders, unions and many Americans embraced the idea that mass consumption would drive economic prosperity. Even in the midst of the burgeoning Cold War, such a notion supplanted more collectivist notions of community and sacrifice, in part because those were increasingly stigmatized as “socialist” or “communist.” This offered an individualist reaffirmation of the nation’s democratic values and became central to American identity. Mass consumption and participation in the economy, not sacrifice, increasingly came to signal one’s patriotism.
The last military draft in the United States ended in 1973, and since then, service and sacrifice have been voluntary and borne unevenly. The fractures of national unity that came at the end of the Vietnam War and the distrust of government in the wake of Watergate helped to propel these changes. In their wake, collective sacrifice has been extolled by politicians but never urged, much less required. Instead, market logics and consumer-citizenship has been the default setting for how to practice engaged models of citizenship.
Shopping, traveling and showing confidence in the economy have come to define American citizenship and even responses to collective existential threats such as terrorism and emergencies, including deadly viral outbreaks.
The challenges the nation now faces are dire and require sacrifice, not consumption. The problem is that Americans have been actively discouraged by their leaders from making sacrifices in support of larger efforts — including wars, fossil fuel consumption, global warming, the Great Recession and the current pandemic. Confronting the looming public health, economic and climate challenges today requires a wholesale change in how citizens and the state conceive and construct a rhetoric as well as a practice of collective sacrifice.”
Christopher McKnight Nichols is professor of history and Woody Hayes Chair in national security studies at The Ohio State University. He is author of "Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age" and editor and author of "Rethinking American Grand Strategy" and "Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories” (Columbia UP, 2022).
Shouting into the void … yes . I feel your frustration. I’m afraid that “ others pain “ will be largely ignored by the masses . It’s only when it strikes your home , your family , impacts your personal lifestyle that you feel that the “pain of others” is now YOURS to carry . Pain will eventually become so pervasive that everyone will awaken to the reality that we are on a self destructive path. I saw an IG story where someone said , the grift, the bullying of a handicapped man, the blatant profiteering , the pedophilia , the destruction of the East wing , the destruction of the department of Education , Snap , the wiping out of our history …. All these …. warranted a mere shrug by the MAGA base . An “oh well “ reaction . But as gas went above $4.00 a gallon …. WOW …. Wake up call . Personal pain at the pump !!!
So now that we are awake , maybe we can take back our power ? Trump said “ we can’t afford child care, Medicare …. We have a war to fight “ . 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼… I like when he says these genius statements …. Like putting a nail in his own coffin . But change happens slowly , the court challenges on Executive power overreach are being heard and Trump is largely being reigned in by the courts. But change must come from the ground up … the people . Economic power is effective when it is a mass movement. Will the level of pain be sufficient motivation for a sustained uprising ? I hope gas prices go even higher …. Because it’s the only thing that will make people mad as hell and start a fire in the belly of the beast . Suffering and pain will bring change . Unfortunately it will impact the bottom 75 % .
We need a wealth tax . We need a fairer tax code , we need to end Citizens United … state by state is the fastest means ala “ Montana plan “, we need age restrictions on our congress , we need term limits , we need immigration reform, we need comprehensive universal health legislation ….. but mostly we need people to WAKE UP.
Firstly, take a breather and a long walk. Drink your favorite drink and try to do some meditation if you can.
We need you to continue encouraging us and telling us like it is, but if you exert yourself too hard, it might put you out of commission for a while.
Secondly, my friend, thank you for your passionate discourse and for caring about this country and its health in the whole sense of the word. Like I told you on a previous comment, this is a society much used to the power of acquiring goods, and we have not had a war on our soil since 1861. People don’t know what it really means to be hungry and have to eat rats or use cannibalism as a last resort because there is nothing else. People have become arrogant and sometimes to spoiled to believe that it will not happen to them. Everything we hear in many cases, we hear and see from afar, even if it’s within the same country. Perhaps, what will have to happen will have to happen for Americans to understand that this is serious business; for Americans to really understand what sacrifice means. Our military knows better because they have been in countries where war is the everyday menu, but again, we look at that from afar. And yet, one would think that our military would know better and, by that rational, should be disobeying crazy orders.
I am sure that several of us agree with you and hear you, so keep pushing us and making sense because, fear not, Trump will continue to cause one debacle after another and finally enough people will wake up to the truth, and will have to face the harsh reality. At least I hope so.
And, if after all that, we don’t listen to you and all the others who are sending the alerts, if we don’t heed your advice, it will not be on your conscience that you did not try to warn everybody, regardless of whether or not we would listen.
Thank you for your valuable contribution to the conversation. If I wasn’t frustrated then the whole premise of my argument would be as performative as much of the politics in America has become. That’s not who I am, hence the frustration. It seems bizarre to me that if things continue to develop the way they are that economic disengagement won’t be a choice, it will be mandatory I’m afraid — Martin
Agreed. And I totally get it. This is not my country of birth, but I have been a citizen for a very, very long time, and the country has actually given me the opportunity to raise my children and grow. I come from a place where things are not easy and know what tightening the belt means. Also, I have raised my children to believe that nothing should be taken for granted and that we should be grateful for what we have. That arrogance is not a virtue, and though they are first generation Americans, they’re very much aware of the choices they make and their consequences.
We need a central location like Substack where we can see how many people are onboard with or already doing economic disengagement and watch that number grow. It has to be centralized and run by an organization (like Indivisible, they have 8 million people or a highly visible individual). Having a start date and specific company to start for those newly onboard.
This just makes me feel utterly defeated, despite doing EVERYTHING I can. I have been boycotting corporations with regard to my own spending for a year. Minus an occasional vacation required for my own sanity and always examining carefully where my dollars are spent. The only place I can find people as engaged in day-to-day politics as I am is online, where it feels like an unreal, impersonal echo chamber that stresses me out daily. I want a better world for my 4 grown kids and their families, but it feels like screaming in a closet. I know I am not alone in this and I agree with you. But it takes a village...
I think I made it clear, the democracy activists are the only ones that can defeat this tyranny. You hit the nail on the head. You are doing everything you can, the problem is America needs millions like you.
Please don’t get disheartened. I mage the very important point that Trump WILL LOSE in November and in 2028. Democrats would have to do something even stupid for them for that not to happen.
For me this is about the day after. You are one of the heroes, carry on what you’re doing. Sending a hug - Martin
What about introducing many more mechanisms for sharing the load? For examples
* an organised industrial relations system to improve worker pay, conditions and entitlements
* policy for the democrats - the concept of a living wage and make it enforceable by law and industrial law enforcement.
One thing that strikes me about american capitalism is businesses belief in their entitlement to the under paid and even unpaid labor of the american workers whi work fie them. Lets recgnise this is a way of offloading the costs and risks on to the work force by systemically underpaying and over working them.
The living wage idea includes legalising compensation / wage levels so every individual can live on their pay for providing say 37 to 40 hours work to the employer per week. Goverment should not subsidise employment with food stamps etc if their low wage was set at a living wage... that is if the worker was being paid enough for them and their family to live on!
Nationalise the health system! It may be the best in the world for the small proportion of the US population who can affordit but it is certainly the most expensive and outrageously so. It is commonplace for people to have to mortgage their homes to afford a major medical event.And ordinary working families avoid visiting the doctor to adress illness early because it costs too much thereby also increasing the burden of disease as much of it can worsen and then cost more and make people unable to work and earn for longer periods.
Thank you for your contribution to the conversation. I think they would call that a trade union, but you are not wrong. - Martin
Good ideas both —if we as a nation and a resistance movement can uncouple from the endless energy snd focus sapping knee jerk reactions created by the firehose of this administration. One tactic championed by certain folks in the resistance is to claim your area of personal action and not try to do everything—if people can designate X persons or organizations to work against one pillar that supports the status quo, others can choose different areas of action and all will make better progress. ie gather X orgs/people to concentrate on living wage issue state by state and Y orgs/people to concentrate on health care and Z orgs/ people to concentrate on crafting a strong and articulated vision for the Dem party in the coming elections, we may see more progress than when every org fractionates to try to address several issues.
Okay....I'm here and I'm willing to sacrifice. Nothing but essentials until as long as it takes. Martin, I don't know how large your readership is - but whatever percentage is ready and willing to do this, contact me if you want to coordinate a start date. Bullshit walks and action talks.
Thanks my friend I’m reaching one and half million a month on here and three times that on X. I’ll keep you posted. The aim is to get the site up on 14th April.
There must be more of us out here. I have been waging my own boycott and self sufficiency campaign for over 20 years. So far I have weathered the ups and downs of our corporate catastrophe. Most people are just lazy and politically incompetent. Until we change that as a country, we will continue to have a tyrant of one kind or another. I wish I knew how to motivate folks to do the things necessary to keep their freedoms and humanity.
Keep up the good work Mary. You and I are on the same page.
I replied to the other copy of your comment.
Which Bush was it that told Americans to go shopping and spend? Republicans are conservatives? When? Democrat Jimmy Carter was the last president who dared suggest conservation. He lasted one term.
I get it, all one can do is provide a roadmap. It’s not in question if it would work. What’s in question is the level of participation required.
We’re just as frustrated as you because many of us are actually participating in economic disengagement. No travel, no home improvements, minimal Christmas and holiday spending with handmade gifts, no corporate restaurants, no extras. 😩Then we talk about it everywhere we go. We’re trying!
Thank you for everything you are doing Lisa, I appreciate you.
I agree with you 100% "it needs an army of warriors willing to spend on nothing but the essentials until the goals are met"
Lamenting that we don't already have a flourishing general strike while being non-plussed about Indivisible's push for a one day general strike brings to mind the phrase "We're in a marathon, not a sprint." The one day general strike isn't the end goal, it's the first day of training, an effort to introduce the concept of a general strike to the public and making the stakes of moving from mass protests to mass action less daunting so we can prepare for larger actions in the future.
Similarly, Indivisible has it's 2026 Project primarying the "donkeys leading lions" to put leaders who can articulate and implement a progressive vision in charge. It can impact 2026, but the real goal is to use 2026 as a stepping stone to for 2028 when we can primary Schumer and others like him, and hopefully get a strong progressive as the Dem nominee.
If you want to use your position and agency to assist that, an area progressives are weak is on colleges. No Kings has been a big success, but youth participation is low, and instead of college campuses being hotbeds of activism, they are checked out.
Can you help revive student and college protests? It would be incredibly valuable if you worked towards that
I’ve written at length about why a general strike will not work in today’s America. It is unfortunately a relic of times when union membership was at 30% not the 9% it is today.
I had not seen those and having read them now, I like your assessments.
It's almost a shame Elon Musk was the only oligarch to be visibly attached to the horrors of the Trump admin. That visibility made it easy to get "Take Down Tesla" boycotts going.
If other CEO's had the same visibility in their working with Trump it would make targeted boycotts so much easier.
This just makes me feel utterly defeated, despite doing EVERYTHING I can. I have been boycotting corporations with regard to my own spending for a year. Minus an occasional vacation required for my own sanity and always examining carefully where my dollars are spent. The only place I can find people as engaged in day-to-day politics as I am is online, where it feels like an unreal, impersonal echo chamber that stresses me out daily. I want a better world for my 4 grown kids and their families, but it feels like screaming in a closet. I know I am not alone in this and I agree with you. But it takes a village...
Sacrifice is not easy
The following excerpt is from a Washington Post Op-ed from 2020 regarding the Pandemic, but the lessons apply perfectly to opposing the current fascist takeover.
“Sacrifice is not easy and natural, but it can happen. And yet, the language of sacrifice faded in the aftermath of a more popular, more total and more demanding conflict for Americans. Following World War II, the “good war,” politicians, business leaders, unions and many Americans embraced the idea that mass consumption would drive economic prosperity. Even in the midst of the burgeoning Cold War, such a notion supplanted more collectivist notions of community and sacrifice, in part because those were increasingly stigmatized as “socialist” or “communist.” This offered an individualist reaffirmation of the nation’s democratic values and became central to American identity. Mass consumption and participation in the economy, not sacrifice, increasingly came to signal one’s patriotism.
The last military draft in the United States ended in 1973, and since then, service and sacrifice have been voluntary and borne unevenly. The fractures of national unity that came at the end of the Vietnam War and the distrust of government in the wake of Watergate helped to propel these changes. In their wake, collective sacrifice has been extolled by politicians but never urged, much less required. Instead, market logics and consumer-citizenship has been the default setting for how to practice engaged models of citizenship.
Shopping, traveling and showing confidence in the economy have come to define American citizenship and even responses to collective existential threats such as terrorism and emergencies, including deadly viral outbreaks.
The challenges the nation now faces are dire and require sacrifice, not consumption. The problem is that Americans have been actively discouraged by their leaders from making sacrifices in support of larger efforts — including wars, fossil fuel consumption, global warming, the Great Recession and the current pandemic. Confronting the looming public health, economic and climate challenges today requires a wholesale change in how citizens and the state conceive and construct a rhetoric as well as a practice of collective sacrifice.”
Christopher McKnight Nichols is professor of history and Woody Hayes Chair in national security studies at The Ohio State University. He is author of "Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age" and editor and author of "Rethinking American Grand Strategy" and "Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories” (Columbia UP, 2022).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/12/07/americans-used-sacrifice-public-good-what-happened/
Shouting into the void … yes . I feel your frustration. I’m afraid that “ others pain “ will be largely ignored by the masses . It’s only when it strikes your home , your family , impacts your personal lifestyle that you feel that the “pain of others” is now YOURS to carry . Pain will eventually become so pervasive that everyone will awaken to the reality that we are on a self destructive path. I saw an IG story where someone said , the grift, the bullying of a handicapped man, the blatant profiteering , the pedophilia , the destruction of the East wing , the destruction of the department of Education , Snap , the wiping out of our history …. All these …. warranted a mere shrug by the MAGA base . An “oh well “ reaction . But as gas went above $4.00 a gallon …. WOW …. Wake up call . Personal pain at the pump !!!
So now that we are awake , maybe we can take back our power ? Trump said “ we can’t afford child care, Medicare …. We have a war to fight “ . 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼… I like when he says these genius statements …. Like putting a nail in his own coffin . But change happens slowly , the court challenges on Executive power overreach are being heard and Trump is largely being reigned in by the courts. But change must come from the ground up … the people . Economic power is effective when it is a mass movement. Will the level of pain be sufficient motivation for a sustained uprising ? I hope gas prices go even higher …. Because it’s the only thing that will make people mad as hell and start a fire in the belly of the beast . Suffering and pain will bring change . Unfortunately it will impact the bottom 75 % .
We need a wealth tax . We need a fairer tax code , we need to end Citizens United … state by state is the fastest means ala “ Montana plan “, we need age restrictions on our congress , we need term limits , we need immigration reform, we need comprehensive universal health legislation ….. but mostly we need people to WAKE UP.
Bonnie, you never cease to make sense my friend. Thank you 🙏
Firstly, take a breather and a long walk. Drink your favorite drink and try to do some meditation if you can.
We need you to continue encouraging us and telling us like it is, but if you exert yourself too hard, it might put you out of commission for a while.
Secondly, my friend, thank you for your passionate discourse and for caring about this country and its health in the whole sense of the word. Like I told you on a previous comment, this is a society much used to the power of acquiring goods, and we have not had a war on our soil since 1861. People don’t know what it really means to be hungry and have to eat rats or use cannibalism as a last resort because there is nothing else. People have become arrogant and sometimes to spoiled to believe that it will not happen to them. Everything we hear in many cases, we hear and see from afar, even if it’s within the same country. Perhaps, what will have to happen will have to happen for Americans to understand that this is serious business; for Americans to really understand what sacrifice means. Our military knows better because they have been in countries where war is the everyday menu, but again, we look at that from afar. And yet, one would think that our military would know better and, by that rational, should be disobeying crazy orders.
I am sure that several of us agree with you and hear you, so keep pushing us and making sense because, fear not, Trump will continue to cause one debacle after another and finally enough people will wake up to the truth, and will have to face the harsh reality. At least I hope so.
And, if after all that, we don’t listen to you and all the others who are sending the alerts, if we don’t heed your advice, it will not be on your conscience that you did not try to warn everybody, regardless of whether or not we would listen.
Thank you for your valuable contribution to the conversation. If I wasn’t frustrated then the whole premise of my argument would be as performative as much of the politics in America has become. That’s not who I am, hence the frustration. It seems bizarre to me that if things continue to develop the way they are that economic disengagement won’t be a choice, it will be mandatory I’m afraid — Martin
Agreed. And I totally get it. This is not my country of birth, but I have been a citizen for a very, very long time, and the country has actually given me the opportunity to raise my children and grow. I come from a place where things are not easy and know what tightening the belt means. Also, I have raised my children to believe that nothing should be taken for granted and that we should be grateful for what we have. That arrogance is not a virtue, and though they are first generation Americans, they’re very much aware of the choices they make and their consequences.
Thanks for responding to me.
We need a central location like Substack where we can see how many people are onboard with or already doing economic disengagement and watch that number grow. It has to be centralized and run by an organization (like Indivisible, they have 8 million people or a highly visible individual). Having a start date and specific company to start for those newly onboard.
Thank you for being consistent on this topic. I am fairly certain that you are correct that this may be the only way forward.
Sadly I believe it’s the ONLY way forward. Not because I advocate for it, but because the model holds up under simulation.
GREAT TITLE 👍 JUST SAYING