On Surviving An Impossible Age Together
I'm making this post as a sort of pre-announcement as well a check-in. I've been working for these past few weeks on a sort of framework for a new project to carry The Erin Endeavor through the rest of the election year and beyond. The focus is on helping us find, keep, and/or recover a sense of equilibrium, stability, and self in the face of the seemingly impossible challenges in front of us.
To put it bluntly, I'm finding it demoralizing to point out what's happening again and again without offering solutions or actions. As I said to my friend Sunny Moraine (@dynamicsymmetry), it's a particular type of nightmare to know what is happening and watch it unfolding and not be able to do anything about it.
I can't offer easy fixes for giant systemic problems that don't have them, but I can help with the smaller problems that get in the way of addressing the big ones. I can help take care of the people who might be part of the solution to a larger problem.
This is not about disconnecting from politics to focus on the self. It's about staying connected while staying grounded. I'll still offer news analysis and political commentary but there also be wellness check-ins, structured discussion threads, and some general cheerleading. Sometimes we'll share articles that offer helpful advice or calls for specific actions that we can do right now to help.
The ultimate goal is to defeat Trump, ideally with the most progressive candidate possible and ideally with a blue wave that sweeps both houses and even more ideally with so much force that the whole corrupt Republican Party is mortally wounded in the process. The key to that is voter turnout. But there are more than eight months between now and the election, and a lot of us are hanging by a thread.
My goal here is to put solid ground under our feet so that we can hit the ground running, so that we make it through the primary season and come out of it ready to fight in the general election, so we're ready for election day, and ready for what comes next.
I have my plans for this project, and they are fairly loose and open-ended because I think it will work best if we can be responsive to each other and events instead of following a pre-planned curriculum. So, as I said up top, this post is partly a check in. If anybody is feeling tired, demoralized, crushed, etc., or is having a hard time seeing the point, please feel free to weigh in in the comments. What is it you feel like is missing that would make things easier? What do you lack?
As a ground rule, this is not a place for arguing with people or debating them about their feelings and experiences. We're not here in this thread to find out facts but to feel out feelings. I'll take the answers into consideration as I move forward with my plans.
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