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@lupus_blackfur I ask that question, too, but because I grew up in the US South during the Civil Rights period and saw first-hand the bitter determination of many of my fellow white Southerners to resist rights for people of color and to believe all kinds of nonsense to justify that resistance, I have long seen how factors like racism get many of us to vote, over and over, against our self-interest. Racism (and other -isms) is a powerful drug, and a powerfully stupefying one.

@wdlindsy

Yes.

My circumstances very similar.

Was as stupefied by it then as I am now.

As a young-un, I remember the juxtaposition between "who I think I am" and "is what they are what they want me to be... What I'm supposed to be"...

Very confusing until I was old enough that "who I think I am" took over.

@lupus_blackfur I hear you. Your journey sounds much like mine. Glad to meet a kindred soul.

@Godfrey642 I keep reading about that and am sorry it's happening.

@wdlindsy
In our homeland (UK) friends and relatives are hugely worried by #nigelfarage - last seen at the Trump election party instead of working, as hes paid to do, in Clacton (his electorate).

He's being groomed by US RWing to pull off a similar stunt in our next election. There will be backing from #tommyrobinson (our own particularly nasty version of #andrewtate X #stevebannon)

Who knows where this will all end?
The #UKToriesUnfitForOffice have run our #NHS so far into the ground it makes cheap pickings for #USinsurance companies and billionaire pharma types to snap up as a bargain.

EVERYWHERE will suffer bc of what #maga_morons have done.

@Godfrey642 Yes, it's been clear to me for some time now that the odious Farage and the odious Bannon are joined at the hip, both joined to Trump, too. If anyone thinks that the horrific situation now about to unfold in the US will be confined to that nation, they don't understand how interconnected the world is, and how active a global right-wing network is in engineering what's unfolding now.

@wdlindsy
Spot on.
Im finding atm EVERYTHING is making me anxious.

I empathise with your feelings of being exhausted and depleted. I feel duty bound to keep up to date and informed bc that's what my husb + I do.

But then again what a Dark Time we are living through. It feels like the early days of a war in everything except arms and ammunition.

Today my worry is the raft of Trumps appointments. Not least of all Kennedy who will stop all vax research in USA (and therefore abroad).

So what will happen when a pathogen mutates again as it will one day and there are no labs conducting research. Does Trump ever care.

These appointments are all about fawning to him.

@Godfrey642 Like you, though I feel exhausted and anxious, I find it difficult to avoid the news. I keep telling myself that all too soon, we may find total blackout of news. Trump's appointments are clearly shock-and-awe appointments designed to troll the "libs," but also to show utter contempt for government and the rule of law — to break those precious things, in fact.

@wdlindsy
The thing that concerns me now would be if Trump sets up a MAGA Youth Movement like the 1930s Hitler-esque Hitlerjugend (for boys) or Bund Deutscher Mädl (for girls) to indoctrinate the next generation and provide spies inside the home.

@Godfrey642 A good question. In a way, that's already in existence with different clothes and symbols now, isn't it?

@wdlindsy
Im not sure I know what you mean ?
Are there groups in USA already?
Are they compulsory as Hitlerjugend was?

@Godfrey642 I don't mean organized groups akin to the Brownshirts or Hitler Youth. Just that the MAGA cult now extends to younger men who are behaving in cultic ways — often, including dressing in ways that identify them as Trump supporters when they gather together — which puts some folks in mind of what happened in Germany.