How Terrified Are You? January 2017

my russian and chilean coworkers who lived through the '70s in their countries of origin (and are old enough to remember) both agreed that this feels worse, and more unpredictably surreal than their prior experiences with repression :( :( :(

also betsy devos could (might?) destroy my workplace, which provides valuable life-changing education to an underserved community :( :( :(

on the upside, ilm is still a place i can comfortably talk about music and chat about the most powerful jaki jams, which is definitely relaxing and enjoyable

hey ∞, when did you begin the process? i'd be interested in knowing how long it takes between applying and getting an interview.

sept!

i've heard in california, where i'm at, everything takes longer though because of the huge number of applicants/population

Re: Googoosh - http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/31/googoosh-donald-trump-muslim-ban-london

Aw no no no... :( That bums me out. This fucking world.

i'm back at 11 today. if I had a normal brain, I could maybe get by. with OCD, every possible worst case scenario keeps flashing in my head and I can't stop it, not helped at all by me surrounding myself with material that confirms my own fears.

i've vowed today to just go on living my life and take 1-2 hours out of the day to review current affairs, then move on, but i'm having difficulty. stifling panic attacks all day is just suffocating, I can't go through this for four years....the last three have been bad enough.

FUCK.

the idea of emigrating and fighting it from abroad is something I never thought I'd legit consider and yet now it's all I think of.

so that's what it's like to post during a panic attack! i'm ok now

i spike up to 8 but I'm doing my darnedest to maintain a 4 or 5. I know if I stay at 8 every waking hour of every day I'll be 10 in no time and a blibbering mess by march.

marathon not a sprint, etc. need to save my energy for the inevitable actual hunger games j/k not really but kinda

, I want people to feel like they have a real personal stake in this to create genuine solidarity

Finally catching up on this thread and what the fuck

listening to the latest Hardcore History is making me shoot right up to 10 tbh

preferring for now to take the Brian Eno line of "this is the end of something, not the beginning of it," which helps. (not that living through such things is ever desirable...)

i spent much of last summer reading things like "the rise and fall of the third reich" and timothy snyder's books, watching Shoah and other WW2 docs--i realize now i was unconsciously girding myself for something like this.

I will say that in no way is our situation as precarious as that, but one thing you learn from that kind of immersion is that resolving to fight, to go down fighting if need be, is far less anxiety inducing than imagining yourself a victim. you have to believe you have agency and self-determination and some control over the situation even if you dont. i dont know how this cashes out in reality, but just as a psychological stance to take--aggressive not passive--it is calming. and probably more productive too.

The Decline and Fall of the US Empire?
Wouldn't be so scary if it was self contained to Washington or at least the political element therein. Draining the swamp by imploding and sucking out the bad with you?
Better than swamping the drain anyway.
Wonder how long things will sit stagnant and festering.

I'm still optimistically hoping for a deus ex-machina of some kind or a united public getting rid of the administration. But from what I've heard there isn't a complete overturn of what is a group of disgusting individuals, it would all be the one individual.

Not sure if the next in line being absolutely unfitting would have less opportunity to be replaced but it would drag things out.

2. but i live in england. if i lived in the US probably be a 6 or 7.

can't say i'm any more worried about nuclear war than i was in the late 70's early 80's when i was a kid ie i was worried for about an hour after watching 'threads' then forgot all about it.

Holy balls, I almost never FP a poster but it was necessary, if not necessarily cathartic.

I'm on a pretty solid 6, rising to 8 when there are specific policy announcements/EOs or I'm on the phone with my mother, who voted for 45 and yesterday said 'I think he's a workaholic' (this was a positive) combined with a bunch of gaslighty shit - I finally told her to stop talking about it because we are not going to agree. Marching makes me feel less alone, especially in London.

Who did you FP?

there was one particular rotten apple on this thread yesterday that must be the prime candidate.

Oh, I'd forgotten that bizarre episode.

Something shifted in me between last night and this morning and I'm absolutely terrified.

The craziness that is a riot at Berkeley taking over right-wing news outlets-- while the Texas mosque burning was barely a blip, "violence is never the answer" assholes coming out of the woodwork, confirmation after confirmation, executive order after executive order. I read the antifa reddit this morning and saw it was polluted with clearly-fake information designed to disrupt and confuse any possible organization. I feel as if my perception of the world is crumbling very fast.

The interesting feeling I had last night was that I began to respect the alt-right movement for how successful it has been at shaping the internet into a gaslighting race-warmongering hellhole, and simultaneous with that feeling of respect was a desire to absolutely commit myself to the destruction of that movement.

I feel conflicted about using my public voice for any sort of political means.. last night when I was reading the news about Berkeley I almost rage-tweeted "Make America Declare War On Fascism Again" with images of Mussolini's corpse. Probably not a good thing. I don't know what to do any more except to turn off the news, attend marches, and make work

Yeah, I'm thinking more and more that the internet needs to become a secondary tool wrt organization and resistance.

fgti are you a dual citizen?

Absolutely turn off the news, a state of constant alarm will kill you

No Morbs, Canadian. I have an renewable O1 visa, and had been living and working in L.A. this past year-- I'm not sure if it was legal or not that I was doing so, as the O1 visa is for soloists/athletes who come to the states for gigs or games and then go home. I just moved back to Canada for a job and think I'm gonna stay here. As a non-US citizen I didn't feel safe about participating in activist activities the same way I have in the past in Canada.

sitting in a bathtub twitching so I'm once again trying the "break from news/social media" thing that I've failed two days in a row now. i think the general principles are good to follow:

1) take a break from the news periodically and dont keep refreshing it every 5 minutes - it'll be waiting for you when you come back to it
2) worrying is nowhere near as productive as strategizing and acting
3) our ability to predict outcomes in situations like these is middling at best
4) giving in to despair makes any action less effective
5) react to what has happened, and stop assuming Machiavellian strategizing behind every bit of news
6) don't forget to keep living in the process

I've decided that once I've had my inevitable brain or cardiac event, I'll ease up on the current events and maybe just stick to like SVU marathons.

neanderthal, that's all excellent advice. wishing you the best. i'm still up and down but am more up today. i'm finding that getting out a lot, getting involved on the ground with blm, etc., is really helping, though i'm constantly emotionally exhausted.

i expect the 2017 Baseball Prospectus annual delivered today

so that'll hold me til next Schumer protest on Tuesday

I had a much better day - walked five miles, met a friend for lunch, devised a truly banging chilli paneer to boot the last of a head cold, and managed to process most of the twin shitstorms (Brexit is not helping either) without wanting to scream.

been unfollowing people on instagram that post too much Trump content. which for me is more than 2 a day. i signed up to see your art or your kid or your house party, not to see a retweet of a tweet with a comment complaining about how much that person tweets. this morning at 730am while waiting for the bus i read one of these, it was a picture of Trump's tweet and the comment was this long rant about why is this guy tweeting at 6am. who the fuck cares? i figure if he orders a missile strike on Mexico i'm not going to rely on an instagram meme to find out.

I'm down to a 4. stopping refreshing the news endlessly was huge to me.

we might be headed for the end times, we might be headed for merely 'bad but repairable times', but ultimately, if shit happens that I can't control, well, w/e. will fight it where I can but the illusion of control hurts more than it helps where you can't make a difference.

I am so hella glad that I have so much saved in the bank now tho. I'll say that much

"if only I saw the instagram with the pic of the nuclear warhead, I could have stopped it in time"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

11 posters cool as cucumbers

mean is 6.01, median is 6

compare to 2009, mean was 4.83, median of 4

so it appears the 133 of us voting this year are somewhat more terrified than the 155 of us voting in 2009, but not that much more terrified?

i'm not feeling up to the challenge of STDEV but

http://i.imgur.com/JYncmiW.png

http://i.imgur.com/s4wHHV2.png

clearly it went down

lol, i went to make a chart as well

http://i.imgur.com/fxHmVCL.png

actually the standard deviation is not that different!

it did go down but not as mucb as i expected from just looking at the graph

I really think my terror going from like 8 to 4 came about due to the court pwning Trump and him reacting predictably as well as just deciding I'm not gonna let the daily news cycle ruin my life.

i am a lil nervous about tomorrow tho, to see what butthurt he continues to bring about the judges. merely bitching and moaning is poor taste, not 'illegal' obv, but I don't like when a rabblerouser President attempts to turn his base against the institutions created by the Constitution as a check and balance.

terrified of retribution IRL against judges and shit.

The problem with letting judges "handle" Trump is obviously that there are plenty of terrible, destructive things he and Congress can do that are perfectly legal.

literally shitting my pants but i don't think it's because i'm terrified, someone plz help

here take these alpine static. they may not fit as well but they are nice clean pants

i would buy a brand of incontinence pants called "alpine static"

soiling yourself can be the ultimate expression of contentment

For sale: shit pants, worn once

Despite whether it's proportionate to reality, every single morning I wake up irrationally listening for a large explosion (I live across the river from NYC).

Other than that I'm generally not feeling a ton of dread, but that's mostly due to a defensive numbness I've always had switched on my entire life.

terrified of retribution IRL against judges and shit.

― Neanderthal, Sunday, February 5, 2017 11:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can be sure all these judges ruling against him have received death threats im sure