this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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I'm a secret third thing: a self-described leftist (is there another kind? do I apply somewhere?) who thinks electoral politics will never save us, and armed revolution doesn't have the critical mass to save us any time soon.
I think America is the only thing that can kill America, and that that outcome is inevitable, and the duty of any person of conscience is to organize and bond their community together so the fewest possible number of people die during that collapse. This means different things for everyone, but it should include growing food if you're fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, then freely giving it away to neighbors.
That's not doomerism. I think the world that comes after will be better, but the turbulence leading there will be horrific.
With that said, I do admire your revolutionary optimism and I'd prefer you be correct than me. Feel free to block me anyway though, I don't really mind that either.
electoral politics isn't going to save us, but we can use it. shit, why don't a few of us run?
I actively promote community, I have said over and over here that community IS the thing that will save us, I don't even care what you define yourself as, if you're promoting forming community for any reason, you're helping the country. I would only add that the community organization shouldn't ignore active political engagement, specifically towards local representation in whatever shape that takes.
The people I take issue with are the leftists who don't want to plant trees they won't sit in the shade of, and reject all forms of helpful engagement unless it makes them feel a civil war is about to start for their personal amusement. As much as I take issue with right-wing preppers praying for a race war and thinking that their box garden of tomatoes and 80,937,383,800 rounds of ammo are going to save them if society collapses the way they want it to.
The dissolution of active community-building is what sank progressivism in the US, the right kept power because they still unite and connect through gun culture and mindless stupidity and waving the flag, while the left retreated to the far reaches of the internet sulking in their atomized spaces that the other leftist group wasn't inclusive enough or had a "bad tone."
If we can restore communities, of almost any kind, from small groups of outdoors gardeners to apartment blocks looking out for their neighbors, AND use that momentum to actually elect real representation, we can repeat what's been repeated over and over again recently in progressive politics.
I know it might not work, I'm not delusional, we may be in for a long, slow decline into becoming the world's next big 3rd World Country, but I don't think we're past the point of no return yet. I think a lot of people who think "it's so over" are really underestimating how big and complex the states are.
Yeah, I learned what that's called recently lol. Putschism. I have a good friend who thinks that way. I think they're just frustrated and desperate, which I can totally understand, but I agree it's not the way forward. I think they also tend to be white (and I mean, same lol), and I saw a quote that said, "White men are the most socialized to glorify violence and the least likely to be impacted by the consequences of it." I think that reality lends itself to putchism too. The intentions fundamentally are good, I absolutely disagree with you framing it as being "for their own personal amusement", but the thought pattern is not particularly realistic imo.
Absolutely, completely agreed. I saw it said that a lot of these leftists come from evangelical backgrounds, and just replaced the term "sinful" in their vernacular with "problematic". Though of course I think some discourse and strife is healthy, we have to 'keep our eyes on the prize' so to speak.
Also totally agree with this. I went to WalMart once recently - it was literally the only place that sold the item I needed except Amazon - and I had to ask where to find an item. I approached the worker and said, "If I'm not interrupting you too much, could you show me where to find (item)?" He was actually taken aback by this incredibly basic level of humanity. He said something like, "Oh I don't mind being interrupted", and as we were walking over to the section with the items, he told me that people just didn't treat him like a human anymore. He said "it's like, like slave labor" and that he remembers the 70's, when things weren't as bad. I'm like 99% sure he was a Filipino immigrant, so I would've thought the 70's would be more racist and all that, but I got the impression that whatever shit he had to deal with back then was less hurtful than the way people treat him now.
I posted that story on Pixelfed, and someone asked, "Okay, well what do we do about it?" And my answer was, "Start growing food." Unless you have a lot of money, or maybe a connection to get him into a better job, then you can't help that man today. You have to help the children who will grow up into that man, or someone in even worse circumstances. (Though I'd like to go back and at least talk to him again some day, it's a big WalMart and it might be unlikely I'd see him again.)
That was a longer tangent than I intended, but my point mostly being, we are each others' only way through this, whatever "this" turns out to be. That approach is the only reason we survived humanity's near-extinction during an ice age (I think it was a mini-ice age rather than "THE" ice age).
I would build community with you and we would learn from each others differences. That's the kind of world I want and think we can still have.
I use a similar line a lot trying to explain to people why we're hardwired to reach out to each other and build communities, and why it's being stifled by modern culture of algorithm-fed isolation and part of why everyone is so, so miserable.
I am worried about a lot of things we're not looking at that are going to bite us soon though. The lack of relationships, falling rates of sex, the falling birthrates are massively worrying, not because I think we need to "retvrn to tradition" or anything with white families cranking out white babies like so many on the right have co-opted the issue about, but rather... we're not loving each other anymore. We are all scared of each to the degree that we're even resisting our desires to connect and have emotions and intimacy, and that's a huge red flag for our society that isn't getting enough attention.
A protestor in Minnesota said it and I repeat it: Democrats won't save you. Republicans won't save you. Nobody is coming. Only your neighbor can save you.
I just add the fact that we're all neighbors, and I want people to learn to be social and confident in themselves and their values again, but it's getting very hard with these exploitative tools in the digital age feeding people's worst insecurities.
Well thank you stranger-friend, that's a kind thing to say, and I feel the same way.
I agree, and I think the issue is very complex, but could be significantly reduced by just teaching boys what healthy masculinity is. Buut as with all things, capitalism gets in the way - who will teach these boys anything if their parents (and other relatives) are working all the time? Who will be their role models when the worst, most misogynistic behavior is so often rewarded and glorified?
I focus on masculinity specifically because, while it's largely true that everyone is afraid of each other, the fears of feminine people are generally more founded in the actual danger presented by men, while the fears of men are often artificial. (Not always though, like the whole parental custody controversy, but often.) Reduce those artificial fears, and hopefully men would behave in less of a manner which culminates in actual danger, ie no incel rage if you realize you really don't need to be an incel if you're just... a decent person.
Birth rates, I am not sure what to think, in all honesty. Aging populations are bad for the obvious reason of, there won't be enough young people to take care of all the elderly, at least not to the extent which they deserve. But the resulting lower global resource use isn't a terrible thing, maybe even a vital thing as we transition to more sustainable systems capable of supporting more life. Maybe it's just humanity returning to levels of population which the earth is actually capable of sustaining, which we deviated from only as a result of the aberration that is the industrial revolution? I genuinely don't know though, I'm not saying I believe that, I'm just thinking out loud here.
Bringing people back to love and connectivity is one reason why I'm a major advocate for psychedelic drugs. They dissolve social norms and make you question your conditioning - at least, I would say, if you're listening to them. They still need to be reinforced by a strong, loving, human culture; they're not a silver bullet. They had LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin available for purchase on Epstein's island ffs, and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have both tripped. So psychedelics alone aren't THE ANSWER, but I do think they can be a major aid in the fight to return humanity to western cultures. ~~But microdosing doesn't count lol~~
About birth rates, I just know my perspective, logistics is my thing, so I have a finger on the pulse of what makes the world function the way it is.
We could absolutely do with less resource consumption, but we didn't get to this level overnight, so if we fell suddenly back to pre-industrial population levels any faster than rates are going now, it will be catastrophic, and then we have all the same issues over again. When there aren't enough young people to man the services and production sectors, people go to the grocery store and don't have eggs and bread suddenly, or they become prohibitively expensive, and then we have worried populations doing the same thing they did when the 2024 elections rolled around and the price of eggs was $15 bucks for a dozen, and people clenched up and voted for the loud mouth promising "radical change" over the status quo.
We will likely have a preview of how bad it can get with South Korea, they've passed a point of no return and to recover population levels to a functional level they would have to have every capable woman in the country have something like five kids, and all those kids would have to have five kids. And they're currently overrun with the same social strain we have here between genders, again mostly manufactured by toxic media influencers as you touched on.
I have some hope for the US as we seem to be broadly finally rejecting some of the male insecurity grifters finally, and the up-and-coming generation seems to be more critical of these entities and their followings.
But that's just one of many issues that seem to be intersecting in the medium-term future that we will have to navigate. Climate change, migrations, water access, economic strain on supply chains, surveillance states and the coming age of techno-feudalism that it doesn't look like we're going to avoid.