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Hope is a Verb: No More Waiting for Change [1]

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Date: 2022-07-01  

It is time for our very own Velvet Revolution.

I think the most useful diary here at Daily Kos is the Good News Round-Up. It is not that the other diarists are bad writers, or don’t do a service by putting forward critical issues of the day, to the contrary, but I want to elaborate on this question of defeatism, and what I have seen as a trend among liberal commentators ( especially at this site) for a long time. I took some heat for being snarky about “doom-scrolling” for the reflexive tendency towards despair among certain folks here-- a feeling mind you, I certainly get, believe me.

It’s not that we aren’t in an eleven-dimensional pickle, but it is how we handle that information, and what we do with it, that is perhaps more important than the information itself. Nor am not suggesting ignorance is bliss, I am suggesting that getting bogged down in what absolutely sucks, and what we can’t do collectively to fight it, is precisely what the bastards thrive on— they want the wind knocked out of us before we even get started. They are sadists and bastards— it is part of their M.O. --- literally profiting off our dread and misery. They also would be pleased if we just continued to fight on the very ground that we are expected to fight on. Hence the absurdity of doing little before the next election to counter the fascist bullshit flying at us from every angle. Good News Round Up actually focuses on the fact that their is a countervailing force in the world, in the same way that there used to be a robust Labor Press in this country interpreting events from the point-of-view of class struggle and solidarity.

I don’t mean to include the workaday activists in the Kos community in this characterization ( I can tell there are some very committed people here at Kos), but I certainly would include those diarists who focus purely on the bastards to the exclusion of all else. In my humble opinion, that is merely a slightly more nuanced and comprehensive iteration of corporate journalism— the kind of self-punishment one is in for when you read the newspapers. It is news from the point-of-view of apocalypse, because very often, it offers no countervailing alternative or information to plug people into political action to correct it— it is a cul de sac where the victims of a horror movie are trapped and can only wait to be dismembered. As I suggested elsewhere, most activists who are trying to change the world necessarily believe it can in fact be changed, otherwise they would not get up in the morning. Peace

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/1/2107760/-Hope-is-a-Verb-No-More-Waiting-for-Change

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