People are Waiting

The US is in a full blown crisis, what are they waiting for?

The Seeds of Victory, 1918 James Montgomery Flagg (with edits) PUBLIC DOMAIN WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hello, Friend,

Something weird is happening in the US.

People are waiting.

Waiting for a sign…waiting for an answer…waiting for an explanation…waiting for a plan…waiting for permission or guidance or instruction or clarity…waiting to stop feeling unmoored and adrift…waiting for the very bad thing to end so they can get back to their regularly scheduled programming…stuck in a collective freeze response being exacerbated by the relentless chaos and the fear based messaging amplified daily by our media and anti-social media.

Some are living in a state of denial, pretending it will all be fine if we just wait it out. Some are hiding in the perceived safety of their bubbles, pretending they’ll be okay if they just keep their heads down. Some are cowering in fear of imagined future reprisal. Some who sounded the early warning and made other people feel brave enough to disobey in advance are abandoning ship.

Most people are waiting.

The time for waiting has passed. This is the time to do or accept that things will not be fine or okay or the same as they were before if we do nothing. Things will never be the same, but they could be better if we’re willing to do something. It takes a lot of people willing to work together to fight the good fight when oppressors take control. Collective action is the only way to win.

We can’t keep looking to the stars or the cards or the pundits or the Democrats for answers. We can’t keep waiting for an imaginary leader everyone will love who will take us to the promised land. We can’t keep waiting for the courts or our elected officials or our neighbors or somebody somewhere to save us. There are no super heroes in capes flying in to fight the bad guys for us. We can’t keep wishing big wishes and hoping they come true and putting them on our vision boards while we sit on the couch and wait.

Change may come, but not without effort. Change requires action.

Voting rights, civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights…all of these things were hard fought and hard won. People risked and some lost their lives to fight for these rights knowing that change is incremental and progress is never guaranteed. Where would we be if those people waited for someone else to fight the good fight?

You know who isn’t waiting? The people who wrote Project 2025, the accelerationists, the oligarchs, the Tech Bros, the opportunists, the Big Orange Grifter and his grift-y spawn, the MAGA contingency, the hostile foreign actors. They’re moving fast and breaking things and creating chaos. They’re flooding the zone. They’re plucking the meat from the bones. Hard won progress is being clawed back, history is being erased, research is being destroyed, guardrails are being removed, people are being disappeared, the vulnerable are being abandoned, dreams are being crushed.

Silence is complicity. Inaction is acceptance. It doesn’t matter how much you may have done before, no one is handing out merit badges. This is the moment when the rubber meets the road.

The house is on fire.

The shit has hit the fan.

The institutions are crumbling.

We’ve crossed the Rubicon.

Our republic is hanging from a cliff.

If you’re not trying to pull it back up, you’re helping push.

If you’re one of the people waiting, what are you waiting for?

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