I don’t know what’s going to happen under the Fourth Reich any more than you do. The election hit me like the Acme Safe hit Wile E. Coyote, and I disappeared beneath the weight of it for a while. I needed to think, to process the horror that just happened. Although it was less a present horror than a realization of the nastiness to come.
My preference at this point is frankly to say fuck it and leave this country. I honestly have no hope for us. A citizenry that would elect a career criminal, a rapist, a profoundly stupid and uneducated man, and an obvious traitor does not seem to me like a good place to live, and I think Trump and his cronies are all too eager to prove that.
Unfortunately, my preferences are not the guiding factor here. I have a large, close, and loving family. I cannot leave them, and they are at this point unwilling to go. They point out that we don’t know what is going to happen. This is true, but I think I’m on solid ground by saying it will be bad. “Stay and fight!” say some. My issue with that is “How?” I have been fighting for liberal causes my entire adult life, only to find my efforts wasted in the face of a galactically stupid and uninformed electorate. Remember? You can’t fix stupid. You can thank the Republicans for dumbing down our educational system for the past 45 years or so.
After several weeks of mourning for a country that I guess never existed, I came to a few conclusions about how to get through this if I can’t leave. I don’t mean get through this intact—just survive the coming tide of chaotic evil. I would like to share my conclusions with you, and I invite you to share yours with me. This is a time when people who have a conscience, integrity, empathy, decency, and love need to stand together against those who do not.
For me, it comes down to protecting oneself and one’s family. I do not see that there is anything I can do to affect what will be happening on a national scale, or even a state level. I believe that ordinary families—not billionaire families, perish the thought!—will be facing certain threats in these areas:
- Food safety and continuity of the food supply chain
- Healthcare
- Finances/cost of living
- Disinformation/biased reporting
The country is now an oligarchy, fronted by a kakistocracy. An oligarchy is a government run by corporations. A kakistocracy is a government run by the worst of society. We have been living in an oligarchy for quite some time, thanks to the Republicans—remember Citizens United? Now the corporations will have even fewer boundaries, regulations, or limits on what they do. We already know what they do when the restraints are off:
- Profiteer, raising prices unreasonably and unnecessarily in pursuit of ever-higher profits
- Create shoddy products for higher prices—or sell you less for more
- Create harmful products for which they will never be held accountable
- Slash customer service
- Cheat (remember Enron?)
That means that the rest of us will have more trouble making ends meet—and in some cases, even getting our basic needs met. If Trump does what he did the last time, he will endanger food safety by firing USDA agricultural inspectors, opening the gate to listeria, e. coli, salmonella, and a host of other food-borne diseases, most of them extremely dangerous. This in turn endangers the food supply chain. There will also apparently be tariffs on certain foreign goods, which means that the healthy and nutritious food we get from Mexico, for example—like avocados and mangos—will become exorbitantly expensive. Because tariffs don’t hurt the foreign seller—they hurt the U.S. buyer. Trump just can’t get that through his stupid pumpkin head.
Avoid Giving Huge Corporations Your Money
There’s only one way to resist: break your ties to the corporations to the extent you can. If you don’t buy their stuff, they can’t hurt you. Amazon would be a great place to start. My husband thinks that is ridiculous—Amazon does things right. They have great customer service. They have rapid delivery. They have good prices (sometimes). They have great variety. They keep track of everything for you. They are incredibly convenient.
And Amazon is a ginormous corporation that threatens every small business on the planet. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s owner, owns the Washington Post, which served us poorly over the past nine years and capitulated in advance of Trump’s victory by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate after the staff had prepared to announce Kamala Harris. He’s busy cozying up to the new regime as we speak. Do you really want to give him more money?
So I decided to cut Amazon out of my life unless there was really no other way to get what I wanted or needed. This has not been easy, but I am doing it in stages. I get ebooks and audiobooks now through an app called Chirp or through the free library app called Libby. I order other products directly from the manufacturers or non-Amazon suppliers. Is it more work? A bit, but worth it to be free of Amazon. It’s tough to get to 100%. I try to purchase products online directly from the manufacturer or other suppliers, but sometimes I can’t do this. Amazon is like a metastasized cancer. I recently ordered Christmas candles from the Petalura catalog. They arrived with my latest order from Amazon. They are listed in my Amazon purchases. More and more, we really don’t know with whom we are doing business.
Take the same approach to other things you buy. Shop at locally owned businesses as much as possible. Question your choices. I used to buy a lot of personal care items from the drug store or wherever without really thinking about it. I became allergic to a lot of random things and began to scrutinize the ingredients very carefully. A hand lotion from the drug store can have 25 ingredients or more, most of which are unpronounceable chemicals. I started making my own dry skin salve with just three ingredients. (It’s easy. It’s also cheap.) I make some of my own condiments instead of buying bottles at the grocery store. We cook whole foods from scratch (purchased at a locally owned market), and avoid processed foods, which are bad for you anyway. All the garbage that corporations pour into their products, or feed their agricultural animals, or include in their packaged foods is just plain bad for human beings. And the more of this stuff we consume, the sicker we get, and the healthier the corporations’ profit margins. This will not improve under the Fourth Reich, because this government will be about making the wealthy oligarchs even more wealthy. It’s definitely not about YOU.
The old refrain of “make do, re-use, repair, recycle” further protects us from corporate control. Making something last longer is good for your wallet. Get over the idea that everything has to be new and stylish—who told you it had to be new and stylish? Right—the corporations who thrive on our lust for the latest thing. Consider bartering things you don’t need for things you do. There are specialty barter groups aimed at moms, for instance, where mothers can trade clothes, baby equipment, and toys. You can find barter groups online—I can’t recommend any because I have just started looking into this myself. Also, consider passing along unused and unwanted possessions to others who want or need them. There are “freecycle” groups in every community.
“New to me” is just as much fun as “new.” I buy most of my clothes on eBay because I don’t care if the clothing is new as long as it is in good condition and looks good. I can get designer clothing inexpensively and support individual entrepreneurs instead of corporations.
When I suggested some of this on FaceBook, many thought I was saying “Hurt the corporations by not buying their products.” That is not what I am saying. I do not think the corporations will be harmed if you cut your spending, although I wish I could say otherwise. No, this is about protecting you and your family, not about going after the billionaires and their companies. The less you rely on giant, impersonal, and soon-to-be-unregulated corporations, the better.
Obviously, you can’t get to 100% on this. There are too many obstacles, obfuscations, and dependencies—unless you decide to go off-grid and live off the land.
Protect Yourself Against Disruptions to the Food Supply
If Trump again fires USDA inspectors or in some other way disrupts the safety of the food supply, we all need to make some choices. Consumption of meat, fowl, and fish may become more hazardous. It is possible to contaminate vegetables and fruits as well, but less likely, and vegetables and fruit can be washed. In the event of a serious threat to food safety, I intend to eat vegetarian food. I like it, it can be prepared in a million versatile ways, and it is generally speaking better for you.
There is another way to detach yourself from huge corporations—eat less processed food. Some processed food is fine—frozen vegetables, for instance. Freezing is just a good way to preserve food. But a lot of processed food has ridiculous amounts of added sodium, nitrates, sugar, preservatives, artificial dyes and chemicals, etc. As an examples, in a single-size package of Yoplait yogurt (6 ounces), there are 19 grams of sugar (nearly two-thirds of an ounce) and 90 ml of sodium. Yoplait, despite yogurt’s reputation as health food, is just junk. Say no to processed food to resist the oligarchy (and be healthier, too).
I am also in the process of collecting and storing staples for long-term storage such as flour, sugar, salt, pasta, canned goods, dry beans, water, etc. I’m not going nuts and gathering years’ worth of food—just enough to get by in the event of an emergency. It could be a waste of time and money. Or it might get this family through a bad patch—there’s no way of knowing right now.
Producing some of your own food gives you a bit of distance from the corporate control of what goes in your mouth. Apartment living makes this hard to do, but if you have a small amount of land available, you can at least produce some vegetables. We have a small vegetable garden, some fruit trees, and backyard chickens. That isn’t going to provide enough food to sustain a family for long, but it’s at least something we can do to be more independent.
Threats to Health Care
It’s impossible to say at this time what the specific threats are to our access to health care. Judging by Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d better hope there isn’t another pandemic because we know he doesn’t care if we live or die. Also of concern is his pick for head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK Jr. does not believe in vaccines. He has a history of making false statements and believes in debunked conspiracy theories on subjects like HIV and AIDS, antidepressants, and autism. If there were another pandemic would we have a militarized response to vaccine development—or would RFK block this? I don’t know. I doubt if RFK Jr. knows, frankly, and it makes me nervous.
The Kakistocrats want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Also the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, or “Obamacare”). I guess I don’t have to say much more to indicate how this would devastate our population, especially seniors, the disabled, and the poor. Again, I have no idea how this will play out, nor do I have any bright ideas about how to protect yourself against this particular brand of idiocy. The best I have to offer, for those that can manage it, is seek medical and dental care in Mexico if our healthcare system goes south. The national healthcare system in Mexico is modern, well-developed, and affordable. Any town in Mexico with an American expat population will also have dentists and physicians that are competent and speak English. There are lists of towns with American expat populations online.
Misinformation/Biased Reporting
Misinformation is why we are in this position to begin with. The world has been flooded with lies, conspiracy theories, and fear-mongering, and apparently a fair number of people have lost their minds because of it.
Making the situation worse is that the mainstream media (MSM) in this country has abandoned its responsibility to report the truth and rolled over to appease its new master. Here are a few examples:
- Trump sued ABC because George Stephanolpoulos stated that a jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll. To lose this case, Trump would have had to prove actual malice, whereas Stephanopoulos had merely been reporting the facts. But ABC caved to placate Trump.
- Time Magazine named Trump Person of the Year. I know they once named Hitler Person of the Year, but I guarantee you Trump saw this as homage to his greatness, not a burn.
- Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of MSNBC’s flagship AM program “Morning Joe,” went down to Mooch-a-Lago to kiss the ring. I guess they forgot all about Trump’s attacks on them some years ago, when he accused Mika of “bleeding all over the place” from plastic surgery when she visited the Golden Palace.
- And then there’s Bezos, showing his underbelly to the dictator and hoping that he won’t be kicked to the curb.
I can’t take the space to document all the MSM mentions of “he was joking” or downplaying some atrocity that Trump committed or intends to commit. Bottom line, our former bastion of free speech, the media, is suspect and can’t be trusted.
We certainly can’t trust social media, either. Anything we see on social media should be vetted and verified before it is passed along—but how do you verify it? Are there media out there that are unbiased and reporting the truth? I don’t know. National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast System (NPR and PBS) appear to still be providing actual news—although I have caught even them making statements that soften the reality of what Trump and the Republicans are doing. The MAGATs want to destroy these organizations by defunding them. What they don’t realize—because they know nothing about how this government works—is that NPR and PBS don’t have much government funding. So donate to these organizations to make up for the small amount of funding they will inevitably lose. And let’s hope they don’t join the MSM in pandering to the new regime.
Let me know if you have discovered more reliable, independent news sources by leaving a comment. Also, are any of the major newspapers in this country trustworthy? Boston Globe? Chicago Times? Christian Science Monitor? Anything? We may end up looking to English-language media from other countries to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.
What Do YOU Say?
I would be interested in your ideas for surviving the coming years under the oligarchic kakistocratic Fourth Reich. As I said, we must stick together and help one another out. As Ben Franklin once said, we hang together or we hang separately.
Please leave comments. I welcome your ideas.
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