That is exactly how I feel. This will be forwarded for online folks, and snail mailed to others. Thank you Jessica for taking the time to write this, and to share your ‘how to…’
That's why I can't talk with hubby about any of this stuff anymore. He works 10 hour days, and just wants to come home and build his Minecraft thing - right now it's a mountaintop castle. He doesn't want to figure out decentralized communications, off-grid water systems, food preservation and storage, gardening, or how to fight Flock cameras and AI data centers.
I've gone through a phase or two like this myself. "I've met my responsibilities for the day. Leave me alone. I'm making spaceships in Blender!" He might even be aware of the coming collapse and wants to get his minecraft in while he can. At times, my spouse was like this while I wanted to prep. Eventually, we came to an understanding: He knew it was important, but I would be the one doing it for now and we would have a budget set aside. He just didn't need the daily updates, or I only came to him when I wanted to make sure he was okay with me putting something somewhere. Now he's on board and we troubleshoot together.
This is how my husband and I are. I'm building the garden. A big garden. My goal is to feed people in my community. My husband is setting the budget since he works all the time and after work he needs to decompress for a couple hours. I'm like the Energizer bunny bc I cut back on my hours as a nurse. If I was still working full time, there is no way in hell I could do any of this.
My wife has made it clear she does not have the mental bandwidth to participate. I respect that.
Where we have friction is that she isn’t willing to hand me the reins. She hasn’t the wherewithal to confirm or deny what I’m telling her about, but is unwilling to let me make the difficult and costly decisions that will admittedly upend our current lifestyle.
She’s on board with the idea of the plan, but not the timetable. I can’t help but imagine a future where we’re unprepared and pay the ultimate price. The number of people on Earth who truly appreciate what’s coming is vanishingly small. Being one of them and dying along with everybody else because I couldn’t convince my wife? Dwelling too long on that prospect will literally drive me insane.
What's the scope of your plan? I'll admit, it can be frustrating when one person doesn't want to participate and also doesn't want to delegate. For us, we definitely compromised. I'm reasonably satisfied with where we are. In the end, I think there's some sense in not going full apocalypse. A few years ago, we were financially secure but we lived in a death trap. Moving was expensive...
But her parents are older and she won’t want to leave while they’re still alive. She’s doing great in her career and the opportunities in the places I want to go will be few and far between. The kids are doing well in school, etc etc etc. They all feel like important things because deep down she doesn’t really believe anything bad can happen. Certainly not to us.
I have pretty strong feelings about planning for slow collapse vs fast collapse and while the place I am currently isn’t a 100% guaranteed death trap, I’m not confident about it. Pushing the HoA limit on how big of a garden I can have, got solar and electric everything, etc.
There’s more I could do here, but it feels like a bad investment to me.
As time goes by, the ability to pursue the goal incrementally is slipping away (I.e., buy property. Clear land while camping. Plan earth sheltered home. Build it. Work towards self sufficiency, etc). We still have plenty of assets and for that I’m thankful, but there are many scenarios where they’ll be stranded or lose all value if we’re late to the party. And even if they don’t, the pressure increases as the nebulous deadline looms.
I feel it. I would've liked to go a different way when we moved. It sounds like you have compelling reasons to stay and just do the best you can where you are. You could plan everything perfectly, and a random climate disaster could still undo everything. I don't say that to be discouraging. I say it because it means there's some logic to still giving yourself some time to do it in a way that keeps your family together.
Good work Jessica. I like both your article and the follow-up remarks made in the comments with this article. I have followed you for some time and I like how your approach has changed over time. You have demonstrated empathy here, and greater acceptance. Has the grief lessened?
The assumption that silence equals indifference is one of the most corrosive misreadings of this moment. The person who isn't marching or calling their senator isn't necessarily uninformed or complicit. They may be working two jobs, managing chronic pain, holding a family together with whatever is left after the rent clears. The political system that produced this crisis is the same system that made sure most people have no margin left for anything except survival.
What struck me most is the word you use: exhaustion. Not apathy. Not ignorance. Exhaustion. Those are not the same thing and the difference matters enormously for how we understand what resistance is even possible right now and who gets to do it.
The people with the most at stake are often the ones with the least capacity to fight. That's not a coincidence. It's a design.
A wise individual made the comment that American capitalism does not need to solve misery, it just needs to stop misery from becoming solidarity. That has relevance to people whose daily lives consist of remaining human and trying to get by. Also though, the intent has been to overwhelm us and it is working.
100% correct. I'm doing all I can, and I am under no illusions that it will be enough. Everyone can only do what they can do. There will be a mighty steep learning curve coming in the not-to-distant future, I'm afraid. And I'm afraid.
You and the rest of us have every right to be worried, if not afraid. The best any of us can do is prepare and not to waste time and energy on what we can't control.
I’ve never been more afraid of the future than I am every day. AND yet we keep getting up every day and trying to prepare for this unknowable shitshow. It sucks.
I get this. And I also don’t. I am not American and should not say anything and yet here I am saying something: if people want change, they need to make it. Poor and powerless people have stood up for what js right. That is how dictatorships have fallen. That is how change happens. Even in America black people fought for civil rights. They were poor and oppressed. And yet they marched. America seems to be falling apart now. It is ruled by a mad king who does not want to take down only his own country but an entire world. It is only Americans who can do something about it.
The civil rights era was the 1960s, and those movements drew heavily on strong communities and family networks that took generations to build. As I say at the end of the essay, we have to rebuild those kinds of networks before we can attempt a revolution. And honestly, speaking to issues you aren't experiencing is a big part of the reason why we keep getting stuck in these messes.
I am reading Sarah Wilson’s book I Eat The Stars. She has spent her adult life to fight against climate change. Now she has given up. The hope has died. Our civilization is collapsing and there is nothing we can do about it except take care of each other and love. Trump seems to really be the Antichrist I always suspected he was. His appearance is a sign we lost the battle. I am trying to make peace with this, like Sarah. Take care. God bless you 🙏
Unfortunately, things are not so good here either. We have been kidnapped by a right-wing government, where a party called Finns (!) is represented. They are ethno-nationalists and very anti-inmigration and also downright racists. We don’t have an immigration problem, we have a racism problem. It can partly be explained by our isolation and small population. We are not used to seeing ”strangers” here. But most Finns, over 80%, are not racists. Its just that we have a very loud minority that makes a lot of noise. It is maddening. But hopefully next spring when we have parliament elections they won’t be in the government. Racism is in the rise pretty much everywhere in Europe. It is heartbreaking and infuriaring.
Many people are afraid, worried , sick and exhausted about what’s happening and, as you and the followers who have commented, yet it seems enough people are wholly aware of what’s going on. Republicans are systematically destroying the country and stealing everything in sight. I have a 14 year old daughter who is dreaming about a future and is stressed about this chaos.
May I suggest: there is no need to figure anything more out. No need to solve anything.
There is one thing you and others can do: vote and vote to remove republicans from power. Vote early. Vote on election day if that works.
The country needs every single voter it can get to stop this insanity on November 3rd.
I agree that those who are not able to do anything else must at least vote, but they are working night and day to make sure your vote won’t count, to rig the election, so how do we make sure that our vote counts? And others are done voting blue no matter who, so how do you tell them that harm reduction is not the same?
A single individual vote is often seen as not counting. Recall that in Bush v Gore, Bush won the presidency by barely 500 votes.
Votes really matter when there is a movement. It’s my view that at least 50 million independents must vote given the level of suppression efforts by republicans. Voters have to know and appreciate the damage being done to the country and what is coming if republicans retain control. I can’t add any more emphasis to the actual events and actions by Trump and republicans or the harm caused just since Jan 2025. At this point, voters belief and understand the country will be dead by Christmas or they don’t. Vote while you still can.
The problem with this all-we-need-to-do-is-vote refrain is that it is pointless if there is nothing to vote for. Vote while we still can for the parties who got us here in the first place is not a winning solution.
Exactly. There were dozens of things the Biden administration promised to do to remove Trump as a factor in 2024. They did almost none of them and spent four years normalizing many of Trump's policies. This is documented. I still voted, as many do, as an exercise in harm reduction. But to spend the time between elections simply villainizing Republicans and defending "the lesser evil" is exactly how we wound up here. Geoff is correct.
Heather cox Richardson “ it’s past the time when VOTERS can say they did not know.
50 years past the time. You might want to check out Ruth Ben Ghiats book from “2020. She explicitly warned voters about Trump and was wildly ignored. New Yorkers explicitly warned voters were s about Trump in 2015. 108 MILLION voters did not vote in 2016 - had absolutely nothing to do with Biden. Trump issued his first multi trillion dollar trickle down lie in 2017. Votes coukd have rallied in the 2018 midterms and put a permanent, or at least long term stop to him but did not. Voters put republicans in control of all of Congress in 2024.
This disaster has very little to do with Biden given that 40% of all possible voters repeatedly stay home - decade after decade.
Voters hated Hillary. She lost by 77,000 votes over 3 states. 108 million voters stayed home. Do the math.
Voters hated Kamala’s laugh and because, as some have written to me have said - she was a lunatic black woman. Kamala lost by less than 2 million - ignoring all the Elon crap - and 109 million voters stayed home. Again, the math is clear.
It’s stunning to me that voters don’t accept what actually happened and why.
I receive comments from independents most every day that “they” decide elections and “they” will not be swayed. They know what the lay of the land is and they knowingly put Trump in office - twice.
It’s three months until midterms and millions of votes still debate whether to vote
You have spent more energy over the last 24 hours arguing with us than you have doing anything to bring about the change you want to see. This is not a place to spout political platitudes and dump your treatises. It is a place for respectful dialogue. Grice's Maxims apply here. Flout them and get banned.
The lesser if two evils simply ignores the gravity of the harm caused by republicans.
Geoff has purposely and (oh how) conveniently ignored the crucial part of voting - getting involved and staying involved. Geoff is absolutely not correct - just like the 90 MILLION independents who have not voted for 50 years.
Voters must communicate to their local members and even any and all members of the democrats/independents and tell them what changes are needed.
This bullshit about something to vote “for” and its all “pointless” is passive and explicitly ignores the catastrophe occurring
40% of voters haven’t voted annually for 50 years. 90 million voters.
This has nothing to do with something to vote “for”. This is apathy.
Beyond that, it’s disturbing to see you write that there is nothing to vote “for” when republicans are systematically destroying the country and threatening the entire works.
What else are you looking for? What more incentive do you need?
Voters have been communicating. The problem is that Democratic leaders haven’t been listening.
So what exactly are you asking me to do? Reward them with my vote anyway? Tell them what my line is, watch them cross it, and then dutifully show up and vote for them again because the other side is worse?
No. That is not political engagement. That is submission.
Withholding a vote after making clear what you require is not passive. Voting every four years for the lesser of two very evil evils, no matter what they do, no matter who they kill, no matter how many times they ignore you — that is passive.
Calling me apathetic because I refuse to vote for genocide in Gaza, where I have friends, is offensive.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is not fighting. To advocate for a lesser oppression is still to oppress.
And frankly, it is attitudes like this that helped get us here. You blame voters for having moral limits, but you do not seem nearly as interested in holding politicians responsible for crossing them.
You say it is “disturbing” that I wrote there was nothing to vote for. But what you actually mean is that you believe it was imperative for me to vote against Trump. I understand the argument of voting against something. I voted against genocide.
That means I voted for neither Trump nor Kamala, and I did so deliberately, passionately, and with a clear conscience, as did millions of others. We told the Democratic Party what we needed: no more aid to Israel, no more participation in the genocide of Palestinians, real pressure to end the genocide, and accountability for Israeli war crimes through the United Nations.
They said no.
They would not even allow a Palestinian to speak.
So no, the problem is not that voters failed to communicate. The problem is that Democratic leaders heard us, understood us, and chose genocide anyway. If they want votes, they can earn them. If they refuse, the responsibility is theirs.
The Minnesotans who bravely drove out ICE from their community were the very people you write about. Sure, they're exhausted and can't repel every such fascistic takeover at a whim. But they showed up when it counted and theyll do it again when necessary. The laptop class of which you write are sometimes opportunists and/or sometimes the trolls stoking the feeling of helplessness you expose. But not all. And it's not an either/or situation nor purely a zero sum game. The enemy is flooding the zone with shit and some are throwing the shit back and some are throwing life preservers. There is a line, and the exhausted still know where that line is for the most part. Give them the credit they are due and a nod to the dignity they deserve and we'll get through this. The fascistic agenda isn't popular; the fascists are simply gas lighting us that it is.
Minneapolis would be an example of a city with deep social networks and community support that made such resistance possible. If anything, I'm saying we have to build those networks nationwide if we want sustained change.
Thank you Jessica. You just described my life. I use the spare time I do have to advocate here on Substack with the occasional cross post to Facebook. I have to do something! But it’s not and never will be enough. I have a little more spare time right now because I’ve messed up both my knees from a lifetime of work and so I’m missing between 10-12 hours a week. It’s devastating my finances. I either go to work and make my physical pain worse, or stay home due to the pain and worry myself sick over how the hell my wife and I are going to make it. And knowing that things are going to get a lot worse before it gets better scares me to death. Somehow we have to all pull together
Jessica, you have described real life for probably 75 to 85% of the people living in our country. Try to share more and more with neighbors family friends. We don’t share our suffering here in the US, or our selves. Americans are trained to be way too independent and we hurt ourselves in the process Buy as little as possible. Use the library. Befriend the store clerk, the postman, some Guy at work, everyone you meet, say hello. Learn to ask for help and offer it. Love your kids with all your heart. Be kind to your partner. Do with less. Ultimately love and kindness and trust holds us upright no matter what comes. At least your heart will always be rich. None of us are gonna be able to fix this. But love and share with all those around you and you will lack nothing. I know this because I have seen people from other countries who have done this, who swam through rivers, lost everything, and have survived, because they held together and shared.
Well said. I'm glad some people got the point. So often, our side winds up repeating the exact same ridiculous "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rhetoric from the right, ridiculing and shaming people for not rebelling the way they want. Resistance can take a lot of forms, and as the end of the essay says, we can't expect movements to take shape if we're always engaged in shaming and infighting with each other.
I’m an almost militant socialist democrat. My 3 adult sons grew up listening to me rant and rave and write and call and scream. My oldest son has asked me, repeatedly, to not discuss politics around him. It’s not that he doesn’t agree, it’s that he says that nothing he can do could possibly matter. He has to get up, go to work and try to pay his bills no matter who is in office. My husband is a pretty progressive independent, but he feels the same way. Tomorrow will come and tomorrow we will have the same problems as we had yesterday. It is defeatist thinking but we are conditioned to think that way. When nothing changes, nothing changes. Same shit, different day.
Maybe your son would feel empowered if you stopped calling his attitude defeatist and listened to him instead of ranting and raving. That was the point of the essay. When all you do is rant and rave and demand things from people, they shut down. I've lived this at both ends. This is the best I can offer you. After all, what did years of ranting and raving accomplish?
While this is so true for many, there are those, some close to me, who are able to fight but are apathetic and don’t see the point. They remain silent and are part of the problem and while the majority of people you describe are not in this category, are just struggling to keep their heads above water, I believe everyone can do something, no matter how small the resistance is. They just need to be shown how. Fighting these fascists gives me hope, gives me energy.
My 44yr old single neighbor bought her first home 2 years ago. She said to accomplish this, she has to work 3 jobs. Sadly, I never see her enjoying the outdoors, cooking out, or visiting neighbors.
My single 46yr old nephew lives with me, works 2 full time jobs, and can’t afford to buy a home.
This is America in 2026 and you are absolutely spot on. So sad.😢
Interesting perspective. Privileged people have plenty of time to resist but they wont. All you have to do is donate to the ACLU or Southern Poverty Law to fight back. Or call your state reps and complain. But the privileged ones will not do it. They believe only their skin will save them. Well it didn't save Ukrainians or Russians. It didn't save Alba nians from the rich taking their land. It didn't stop killing and rounding up US citizens and putting them in detention centers for months. White people are just as vulnerable as all other races. The white people with time dont care until it's too late. And that is the sad truth. I hope it is not too late tho.
This is a great example of the world and how most see it. It’s the scary truth a lot a living with ever day. I wish I could say it will be better, but I seriously don’t see a change in enough people to make this happen. It reminds me of the time before the 30”s. And it’s just not America the whole world wants change! The truth be told until the rich feel threatened this will not change. Climate will probably do more damage to the planet than they tell us. We have no bunkers. Maybe that’s a good thing. For the Lord says the meek and the humble shall inherit the earth. I have almost given up on government and most parties. They make rules and lie to fill their pockets. They change rules to satisfy them them and expect us to agree! All the demonstrations have done nothing! Congress has done nothing! I seriously think the problems are now too big for the world to solve. They are not capable of fixing it so they do not try. What other explanation is there? The people deserve the truth instead of working and barely surviving! I wish just one man or woman would stand up and say we are drilling oil as it’s all we have, we can not fix the air, we can not stop what coming so we can not help you. But they and their greedy friends will be in bunkers. All of them will go to Hell! Well the public whos worked their life watch the planet get hotter and burn, as storms we can not control ravage us. Just one person in lease say the truth! God help us please!
Probably the best Substack post I’ve ever read.
That means a lot to me, thank you. :)
And I read a LOT of Substack posts!
Yes this is outstanding. A general strike would probably help but is just not feasible since the vast majority are too beleaguered to participate.
That is exactly how I feel. This will be forwarded for online folks, and snail mailed to others. Thank you Jessica for taking the time to write this, and to share your ‘how to…’
Completely agree!
That's why I can't talk with hubby about any of this stuff anymore. He works 10 hour days, and just wants to come home and build his Minecraft thing - right now it's a mountaintop castle. He doesn't want to figure out decentralized communications, off-grid water systems, food preservation and storage, gardening, or how to fight Flock cameras and AI data centers.
I've gone through a phase or two like this myself. "I've met my responsibilities for the day. Leave me alone. I'm making spaceships in Blender!" He might even be aware of the coming collapse and wants to get his minecraft in while he can. At times, my spouse was like this while I wanted to prep. Eventually, we came to an understanding: He knew it was important, but I would be the one doing it for now and we would have a budget set aside. He just didn't need the daily updates, or I only came to him when I wanted to make sure he was okay with me putting something somewhere. Now he's on board and we troubleshoot together.
This is how my husband and I are. I'm building the garden. A big garden. My goal is to feed people in my community. My husband is setting the budget since he works all the time and after work he needs to decompress for a couple hours. I'm like the Energizer bunny bc I cut back on my hours as a nurse. If I was still working full time, there is no way in hell I could do any of this.
My wife has made it clear she does not have the mental bandwidth to participate. I respect that.
Where we have friction is that she isn’t willing to hand me the reins. She hasn’t the wherewithal to confirm or deny what I’m telling her about, but is unwilling to let me make the difficult and costly decisions that will admittedly upend our current lifestyle.
She’s on board with the idea of the plan, but not the timetable. I can’t help but imagine a future where we’re unprepared and pay the ultimate price. The number of people on Earth who truly appreciate what’s coming is vanishingly small. Being one of them and dying along with everybody else because I couldn’t convince my wife? Dwelling too long on that prospect will literally drive me insane.
What's the scope of your plan? I'll admit, it can be frustrating when one person doesn't want to participate and also doesn't want to delegate. For us, we definitely compromised. I'm reasonably satisfied with where we are. In the end, I think there's some sense in not going full apocalypse. A few years ago, we were financially secure but we lived in a death trap. Moving was expensive...
Long story short, it’s moving.
But her parents are older and she won’t want to leave while they’re still alive. She’s doing great in her career and the opportunities in the places I want to go will be few and far between. The kids are doing well in school, etc etc etc. They all feel like important things because deep down she doesn’t really believe anything bad can happen. Certainly not to us.
I have pretty strong feelings about planning for slow collapse vs fast collapse and while the place I am currently isn’t a 100% guaranteed death trap, I’m not confident about it. Pushing the HoA limit on how big of a garden I can have, got solar and electric everything, etc.
There’s more I could do here, but it feels like a bad investment to me.
As time goes by, the ability to pursue the goal incrementally is slipping away (I.e., buy property. Clear land while camping. Plan earth sheltered home. Build it. Work towards self sufficiency, etc). We still have plenty of assets and for that I’m thankful, but there are many scenarios where they’ll be stranded or lose all value if we’re late to the party. And even if they don’t, the pressure increases as the nebulous deadline looms.
It’s all quite stressful, as you know well.
I feel it. I would've liked to go a different way when we moved. It sounds like you have compelling reasons to stay and just do the best you can where you are. You could plan everything perfectly, and a random climate disaster could still undo everything. I don't say that to be discouraging. I say it because it means there's some logic to still giving yourself some time to do it in a way that keeps your family together.
Good work Jessica. I like both your article and the follow-up remarks made in the comments with this article. I have followed you for some time and I like how your approach has changed over time. You have demonstrated empathy here, and greater acceptance. Has the grief lessened?
This is the piece I needed to read today.
The assumption that silence equals indifference is one of the most corrosive misreadings of this moment. The person who isn't marching or calling their senator isn't necessarily uninformed or complicit. They may be working two jobs, managing chronic pain, holding a family together with whatever is left after the rent clears. The political system that produced this crisis is the same system that made sure most people have no margin left for anything except survival.
What struck me most is the word you use: exhaustion. Not apathy. Not ignorance. Exhaustion. Those are not the same thing and the difference matters enormously for how we understand what resistance is even possible right now and who gets to do it.
The people with the most at stake are often the ones with the least capacity to fight. That's not a coincidence. It's a design.
A wise individual made the comment that American capitalism does not need to solve misery, it just needs to stop misery from becoming solidarity. That has relevance to people whose daily lives consist of remaining human and trying to get by. Also though, the intent has been to overwhelm us and it is working.
100% correct. I'm doing all I can, and I am under no illusions that it will be enough. Everyone can only do what they can do. There will be a mighty steep learning curve coming in the not-to-distant future, I'm afraid. And I'm afraid.
You and the rest of us have every right to be worried, if not afraid. The best any of us can do is prepare and not to waste time and energy on what we can't control.
I’ve never been more afraid of the future than I am every day. AND yet we keep getting up every day and trying to prepare for this unknowable shitshow. It sucks.
I get this. And I also don’t. I am not American and should not say anything and yet here I am saying something: if people want change, they need to make it. Poor and powerless people have stood up for what js right. That is how dictatorships have fallen. That is how change happens. Even in America black people fought for civil rights. They were poor and oppressed. And yet they marched. America seems to be falling apart now. It is ruled by a mad king who does not want to take down only his own country but an entire world. It is only Americans who can do something about it.
Please do something about it.
The civil rights era was the 1960s, and those movements drew heavily on strong communities and family networks that took generations to build. As I say at the end of the essay, we have to rebuild those kinds of networks before we can attempt a revolution. And honestly, speaking to issues you aren't experiencing is a big part of the reason why we keep getting stuck in these messes.
I am reading Sarah Wilson’s book I Eat The Stars. She has spent her adult life to fight against climate change. Now she has given up. The hope has died. Our civilization is collapsing and there is nothing we can do about it except take care of each other and love. Trump seems to really be the Antichrist I always suspected he was. His appearance is a sign we lost the battle. I am trying to make peace with this, like Sarah. Take care. God bless you 🙏
And you Nordics have given us a great selection of political, cultural, and social working options.
But I am watching what you all do with your own immigration issue. Any answers?
I have about 8 percent “Viking” DNA of which I am incredibly proud because whatever the Viking world’s legend is, it contains an openness to others.
Unfortunately, things are not so good here either. We have been kidnapped by a right-wing government, where a party called Finns (!) is represented. They are ethno-nationalists and very anti-inmigration and also downright racists. We don’t have an immigration problem, we have a racism problem. It can partly be explained by our isolation and small population. We are not used to seeing ”strangers” here. But most Finns, over 80%, are not racists. Its just that we have a very loud minority that makes a lot of noise. It is maddening. But hopefully next spring when we have parliament elections they won’t be in the government. Racism is in the rise pretty much everywhere in Europe. It is heartbreaking and infuriaring.
Many people are afraid, worried , sick and exhausted about what’s happening and, as you and the followers who have commented, yet it seems enough people are wholly aware of what’s going on. Republicans are systematically destroying the country and stealing everything in sight. I have a 14 year old daughter who is dreaming about a future and is stressed about this chaos.
May I suggest: there is no need to figure anything more out. No need to solve anything.
There is one thing you and others can do: vote and vote to remove republicans from power. Vote early. Vote on election day if that works.
The country needs every single voter it can get to stop this insanity on November 3rd.
Vote. That will make a difference.
I agree that those who are not able to do anything else must at least vote, but they are working night and day to make sure your vote won’t count, to rig the election, so how do we make sure that our vote counts? And others are done voting blue no matter who, so how do you tell them that harm reduction is not the same?
A single individual vote is often seen as not counting. Recall that in Bush v Gore, Bush won the presidency by barely 500 votes.
Votes really matter when there is a movement. It’s my view that at least 50 million independents must vote given the level of suppression efforts by republicans. Voters have to know and appreciate the damage being done to the country and what is coming if republicans retain control. I can’t add any more emphasis to the actual events and actions by Trump and republicans or the harm caused just since Jan 2025. At this point, voters belief and understand the country will be dead by Christmas or they don’t. Vote while you still can.
The problem with this all-we-need-to-do-is-vote refrain is that it is pointless if there is nothing to vote for. Vote while we still can for the parties who got us here in the first place is not a winning solution.
Exactly. There were dozens of things the Biden administration promised to do to remove Trump as a factor in 2024. They did almost none of them and spent four years normalizing many of Trump's policies. This is documented. I still voted, as many do, as an exercise in harm reduction. But to spend the time between elections simply villainizing Republicans and defending "the lesser evil" is exactly how we wound up here. Geoff is correct.
Heather cox Richardson “ it’s past the time when VOTERS can say they did not know.
50 years past the time. You might want to check out Ruth Ben Ghiats book from “2020. She explicitly warned voters about Trump and was wildly ignored. New Yorkers explicitly warned voters were s about Trump in 2015. 108 MILLION voters did not vote in 2016 - had absolutely nothing to do with Biden. Trump issued his first multi trillion dollar trickle down lie in 2017. Votes coukd have rallied in the 2018 midterms and put a permanent, or at least long term stop to him but did not. Voters put republicans in control of all of Congress in 2024.
This disaster has very little to do with Biden given that 40% of all possible voters repeatedly stay home - decade after decade.
Voters hated Hillary. She lost by 77,000 votes over 3 states. 108 million voters stayed home. Do the math.
Voters hated Kamala’s laugh and because, as some have written to me have said - she was a lunatic black woman. Kamala lost by less than 2 million - ignoring all the Elon crap - and 109 million voters stayed home. Again, the math is clear.
It’s stunning to me that voters don’t accept what actually happened and why.
I receive comments from independents most every day that “they” decide elections and “they” will not be swayed. They know what the lay of the land is and they knowingly put Trump in office - twice.
It’s three months until midterms and millions of votes still debate whether to vote
It’s insane
You have spent more energy over the last 24 hours arguing with us than you have doing anything to bring about the change you want to see. This is not a place to spout political platitudes and dump your treatises. It is a place for respectful dialogue. Grice's Maxims apply here. Flout them and get banned.
Villainizing autocrats? You can’t be serious.
The lesser if two evils simply ignores the gravity of the harm caused by republicans.
Geoff has purposely and (oh how) conveniently ignored the crucial part of voting - getting involved and staying involved. Geoff is absolutely not correct - just like the 90 MILLION independents who have not voted for 50 years.
You’re missing the other part of the message:
Voters must communicate to their local members and even any and all members of the democrats/independents and tell them what changes are needed.
This bullshit about something to vote “for” and its all “pointless” is passive and explicitly ignores the catastrophe occurring
40% of voters haven’t voted annually for 50 years. 90 million voters.
This has nothing to do with something to vote “for”. This is apathy.
Beyond that, it’s disturbing to see you write that there is nothing to vote “for” when republicans are systematically destroying the country and threatening the entire works.
What else are you looking for? What more incentive do you need?
Voters have been communicating. The problem is that Democratic leaders haven’t been listening.
So what exactly are you asking me to do? Reward them with my vote anyway? Tell them what my line is, watch them cross it, and then dutifully show up and vote for them again because the other side is worse?
No. That is not political engagement. That is submission.
Withholding a vote after making clear what you require is not passive. Voting every four years for the lesser of two very evil evils, no matter what they do, no matter who they kill, no matter how many times they ignore you — that is passive.
Calling me apathetic because I refuse to vote for genocide in Gaza, where I have friends, is offensive.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is not fighting. To advocate for a lesser oppression is still to oppress.
And frankly, it is attitudes like this that helped get us here. You blame voters for having moral limits, but you do not seem nearly as interested in holding politicians responsible for crossing them.
You say it is “disturbing” that I wrote there was nothing to vote for. But what you actually mean is that you believe it was imperative for me to vote against Trump. I understand the argument of voting against something. I voted against genocide.
That means I voted for neither Trump nor Kamala, and I did so deliberately, passionately, and with a clear conscience, as did millions of others. We told the Democratic Party what we needed: no more aid to Israel, no more participation in the genocide of Palestinians, real pressure to end the genocide, and accountability for Israeli war crimes through the United Nations.
They said no.
They would not even allow a Palestinian to speak.
So no, the problem is not that voters failed to communicate. The problem is that Democratic leaders heard us, understood us, and chose genocide anyway. If they want votes, they can earn them. If they refuse, the responsibility is theirs.
Responsibility rests fully with independents. 50 years of not voting. That’s generational apathy.
You have all the excuses I the world but you fully admit that you not voting put Trump in the White House
How’s that working for you now?
45% of voters don’t vote in presidential elections. 55% don’t vote in midterms. Presidents win with just 25% of possible voters.
You are a huge reason for that.
The ultimate 100 IQ take. “Just vote millionaires in a blue tie rather than a red tie, that will fix everything”
Whatever. Your voter suppression sucks too
Get involved and stop waiting
The Minnesotans who bravely drove out ICE from their community were the very people you write about. Sure, they're exhausted and can't repel every such fascistic takeover at a whim. But they showed up when it counted and theyll do it again when necessary. The laptop class of which you write are sometimes opportunists and/or sometimes the trolls stoking the feeling of helplessness you expose. But not all. And it's not an either/or situation nor purely a zero sum game. The enemy is flooding the zone with shit and some are throwing the shit back and some are throwing life preservers. There is a line, and the exhausted still know where that line is for the most part. Give them the credit they are due and a nod to the dignity they deserve and we'll get through this. The fascistic agenda isn't popular; the fascists are simply gas lighting us that it is.
Minneapolis would be an example of a city with deep social networks and community support that made such resistance possible. If anything, I'm saying we have to build those networks nationwide if we want sustained change.
Thank you Jessica. You just described my life. I use the spare time I do have to advocate here on Substack with the occasional cross post to Facebook. I have to do something! But it’s not and never will be enough. I have a little more spare time right now because I’ve messed up both my knees from a lifetime of work and so I’m missing between 10-12 hours a week. It’s devastating my finances. I either go to work and make my physical pain worse, or stay home due to the pain and worry myself sick over how the hell my wife and I are going to make it. And knowing that things are going to get a lot worse before it gets better scares me to death. Somehow we have to all pull together
Big love to you and your wife, Laurie. I make wishes for your knees to feel much better.
Jessica, you have described real life for probably 75 to 85% of the people living in our country. Try to share more and more with neighbors family friends. We don’t share our suffering here in the US, or our selves. Americans are trained to be way too independent and we hurt ourselves in the process Buy as little as possible. Use the library. Befriend the store clerk, the postman, some Guy at work, everyone you meet, say hello. Learn to ask for help and offer it. Love your kids with all your heart. Be kind to your partner. Do with less. Ultimately love and kindness and trust holds us upright no matter what comes. At least your heart will always be rich. None of us are gonna be able to fix this. But love and share with all those around you and you will lack nothing. I know this because I have seen people from other countries who have done this, who swam through rivers, lost everything, and have survived, because they held together and shared.
Well said. I'm glad some people got the point. So often, our side winds up repeating the exact same ridiculous "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rhetoric from the right, ridiculing and shaming people for not rebelling the way they want. Resistance can take a lot of forms, and as the end of the essay says, we can't expect movements to take shape if we're always engaged in shaming and infighting with each other.
I’m an almost militant socialist democrat. My 3 adult sons grew up listening to me rant and rave and write and call and scream. My oldest son has asked me, repeatedly, to not discuss politics around him. It’s not that he doesn’t agree, it’s that he says that nothing he can do could possibly matter. He has to get up, go to work and try to pay his bills no matter who is in office. My husband is a pretty progressive independent, but he feels the same way. Tomorrow will come and tomorrow we will have the same problems as we had yesterday. It is defeatist thinking but we are conditioned to think that way. When nothing changes, nothing changes. Same shit, different day.
Maybe your son would feel empowered if you stopped calling his attitude defeatist and listened to him instead of ranting and raving. That was the point of the essay. When all you do is rant and rave and demand things from people, they shut down. I've lived this at both ends. This is the best I can offer you. After all, what did years of ranting and raving accomplish?
Thank you.
While this is so true for many, there are those, some close to me, who are able to fight but are apathetic and don’t see the point. They remain silent and are part of the problem and while the majority of people you describe are not in this category, are just struggling to keep their heads above water, I believe everyone can do something, no matter how small the resistance is. They just need to be shown how. Fighting these fascists gives me hope, gives me energy.
My 44yr old single neighbor bought her first home 2 years ago. She said to accomplish this, she has to work 3 jobs. Sadly, I never see her enjoying the outdoors, cooking out, or visiting neighbors.
My single 46yr old nephew lives with me, works 2 full time jobs, and can’t afford to buy a home.
This is America in 2026 and you are absolutely spot on. So sad.😢
Interesting perspective. Privileged people have plenty of time to resist but they wont. All you have to do is donate to the ACLU or Southern Poverty Law to fight back. Or call your state reps and complain. But the privileged ones will not do it. They believe only their skin will save them. Well it didn't save Ukrainians or Russians. It didn't save Alba nians from the rich taking their land. It didn't stop killing and rounding up US citizens and putting them in detention centers for months. White people are just as vulnerable as all other races. The white people with time dont care until it's too late. And that is the sad truth. I hope it is not too late tho.
This is a great example of the world and how most see it. It’s the scary truth a lot a living with ever day. I wish I could say it will be better, but I seriously don’t see a change in enough people to make this happen. It reminds me of the time before the 30”s. And it’s just not America the whole world wants change! The truth be told until the rich feel threatened this will not change. Climate will probably do more damage to the planet than they tell us. We have no bunkers. Maybe that’s a good thing. For the Lord says the meek and the humble shall inherit the earth. I have almost given up on government and most parties. They make rules and lie to fill their pockets. They change rules to satisfy them them and expect us to agree! All the demonstrations have done nothing! Congress has done nothing! I seriously think the problems are now too big for the world to solve. They are not capable of fixing it so they do not try. What other explanation is there? The people deserve the truth instead of working and barely surviving! I wish just one man or woman would stand up and say we are drilling oil as it’s all we have, we can not fix the air, we can not stop what coming so we can not help you. But they and their greedy friends will be in bunkers. All of them will go to Hell! Well the public whos worked their life watch the planet get hotter and burn, as storms we can not control ravage us. Just one person in lease say the truth! God help us please!