Down Time

MAGA is one gigantic downgrade.

🤬

Calling the U.S.-Canada border “artificial” is what Putin says about Russia and Ukraine.

"In the news conference, Trump proposed getting rid of the 'artificially drawn line' between Canada and the United States. Of course, that is precisely what President Vladimir Putin says about the line between Russia and Ukraine. Or President Xi Jinping about the division between China and Taiwan. This is a world that makes Russia and China great again." --Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post (01.10.25)

Facebook/Meta's just-announced change in its fact-checking and moderation policies (which would, among other things, allow users to refer to LGBTQ+ people as "mentally ill"), and its sudden vanishing of trans- and nonbinary-friendly themes, has made it plain to me that some of the book-series-oriented spaces I've maintained over there for years are no longer safe places for users, especially younger ones, to be.

I have therefore begun deleting them.

The Middle Kingdoms page (being both the smallest and the one now potentially most dangerous to keep) was the first to go: I nuked it about ten minutes ago. (Naturally I checked it first to make sure nothing of any note was going on in there, and also naturally, I took a backup.)

The Young Wizards page will be the next to be deleted, probably tomorrow. The Ebooks Direct page there will also be deleted over the weekend. Neither of them was all that busy, ever: but that's not the point here. Meta is no longer a safe or appropriate place for them to be. (It doesn't hurt that many of FB's employees are furious about this too... but their boss, I firmly believe, doesn't give a shit about that.)

The DD Facebook page may suffer the same fate. My personal "main" account...? I have a lot of older friends over there for whom FB is their lifeline and main digital platform. I'm going to have to think about how best to handle that. It may be that there will be no more public posting from me there: just DM'ing. ...And I'm still working out what makes the most sense to do about the Middle Kingdoms Instagram account, and my own personal one. Neither of them has been heavily trafficked, and I may nuke them too.

(sigh) All this comes as something of a wrench. But at the very least, as regards the part of my creative work that contains LGBTQ+ themes and characters, I refuse to leave any of it there. To do so would risk having its continued presence seen as support for the platform's boss (and, as @petermorwood remarks in passing, "would-be capo"), who's already busy genuflecting to the US government's incoming (mob-)boss's agenda.

So, as the man says,

This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.

I’ve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.

It’s the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. It’s downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.

The rest of the world is not like this.

I’m in the exam room, post diagnosis and with pill bottles in hand, and in walks the one nurse I’ve been able to speak to the entire time. She pats my hand and tells me (and this is verbatim—I will never forget this conversation as long as I live), “I’m so sorry. We had to run those tests, and they are expensive. You don’t have insurance so you will have to cover the full cost.”

I start crying.

She continues, softly, as if telling me someone has died, “It’s going to be three hundred.”

I start sobbing, certain I’ve misheard, certain that I would be absolutely fucked, broke and going into debt in a foreign country. “Thousand?” I clarify.

Her entire demeanor changed, and she looked at me as if I had sprouted four extra heads. “No,” she says, “euros.”

We have the worst health care system. It is a Frankenstein monster of waste and suffering.

Killing 68,000 people was United's choice.

Truly despairing. The lack of empathy. The self-interest of patriarchy.

They just found out what tariffs are

They just found out what denaturalization is

They (particularly black and Hispanic trump voters) just found out that other trump voters are racist

Leftists and liberals don't want to be their friends (they are furious about this)

The Google search for “what are tariffs” on the DAY AFTER the election was one of the top results. As were “abortion bans” and “will Social Security be cut.”

Things they refused to believe before the election, things they scoffed at, said “the libs”were delusional about, suddenly became important only after it was too late to make a difference.

I can’t remember the reddit forum, but someone pointed out an interesting view: that the base needs a target to bully, and now that Democrats are done with their nonsense, it’s cutting off the supply of endorphins they get from bullying.

Which tracks, from what I’ve witnessed in my own experience, with family and friends alike.

They’re angry that their actions have consequences. They’re angry that people are refusing to be victimized and told they’re less than for believing everyone deserves basic human rights. They’re angry that some of the women in their families have refused to host Thanksgiving, that they’re “breaking up families over something as silly as politics.”

They’re angry that they won. They’re the angriest bunch of winners I’ve ever seen.

TikTok and X are full of Trump voters who are furious that everyone else won’t listen to them anymore, and still trying to convince people (themselves? Democrats? honestly, it’s unclear) that the GOP won’t do what it has plainly stated it’s going to do.

Leftists have reached their limit. They refuse to make excuses for even close family members. Fathers who were willing to sacrifice their wives’ and daughters’ rights to healthcare and bodily autonomy are finding themselves served with divorce papers and being blocked from all contact. Friends who’ve heard racist, sexist, misogynistic and xenophobic spew, but didn’t push back, are ending those relationships. The base doesn’t care to explore the truth of this, that it was not about politics, but about morality. They refuse to believe that, too.

“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.

The Wobblies used to say don't mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don't have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning. You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who's upset and check your equipment for going onward.

A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.