backalleycoyote

There’s a reason they quit teaching “John Brown’s Guide to Protest Etiquette” in schools and told us peacefully standing on the side of the road for an hour (after securing all the necessary permits) and cooperating with all directives from law enforcement is how Americans “make themselves heard”. They hear us, and they know they don’t have to listen.

There are, and like any social/political group it’s not a monolith but has plenty of various subsections that would broadly be called “anarchist” but aren’t themselves all in agreement (and at times accuse others of not being “real” anarchists). This watered down meme is just [insert political group here] Utopianism jingoism. Of course people tend to help each other that are like them, leftists tend to be more likely to help outside their tribal communities, but the extent to how much they help and under what circumstances is not blind enabling. If I see a person drowning I’m not going to ask who they voted for before helping. If I see some Trumper with a flat tire… fix it yourself, asshole.

They’ll pass any loss on to the American people, whether that’s jacking up prices or the government bailing them out with our tax dollars. What remains to be seen is just how much his average supporters will tolerate and justify until the cost to them becomes unbearable. I hope more nations follow this lead; cut us off or get him to cut your nation off, strangle us economically and make us a pariah on the global stage. His loyalists and bots and foreign bad actors may be a loud minority on the internet, but they’re still a minority and getting a free pass to be a western male chauvinist isn’t going to keep party-line voters content when their businesses fail, their mortgages default, and their kids start dying in Iran.

My evangelical parents got wrapped up in this line of thinking in the 90s right around the time teenage me was becoming disillusioned with the indoctrination I’d been raised in. Classic “end of the Millennium” fears and the hope they could jumpstart Armageddon convinced them to send money to Christian charities who supposedly then paid to move poor Jewish people in former Soviet states to Israel. Sure God was going to destroy the Earth in 10000 years, but oops, guess y’all forced his hand!

Ready enough. Plan and prep for self-reliance but never forget we are social creatures and history has shown that in hard times most of us unite for survival rather than turn into post-apocalyptic war bands and cannibal biker gangs. Most people aren’t going to care that they had opposing views on Facebook a year prior when they’re sheltering from drones under the same husk of Walmart. And for the minority that are so truly, deeply, totally immersed in their bigotry that co-survival in the face of annihilation is not an option? That’s why I’m glad I stockpile in a state with incredibly lax gun laws.

There’s enough distrust and conspiracy theorist in me to question if the whole thing isn’t a good cop/bad cop publicity stunt to attract “conscientious” consumers.

“Hey all you anti-authoritarian, anti-AI, anti-surveillance types, we’re your friend; we’re the un-AI. Now be good idiots and plot your dissent on our service.”