Possibly a Dog<p>Chuck Schumer seems to have briefly paused the ongoing stock market crash by announcing he plans to capitulate and allow the Republicans to continue shredding the social safety net. It won't work, either economically or politically. I don't think most people have quite absorbed what is happening. Trump is aggressively sending us into a recession, while simultaneously removing the *counter-cyclical* government assistance programs that are meant to *cushion* us from the worst during recessions.</p><p>Mass layoffs + inflation + tariffs + recession + housing crisis + runaway ACA insurance premiums + gutting Medicare + cutting SNAP & SSI &c => poverty and starvation and crime and homelessness and sickness and death at a level not seen since the 1930s.</p><p>And I have no idea how to fight it. The Democratic Party leaders are feckless and toothless and gormless and are an opposition in name only. Labor unions are weak and many are already capitulating too. Protests build morale but aren't an end in themselves. Mutual Aid is a poor substitute for UBI or MFA or SNAP. </p><p>And I'm noticing that most people on the side of good are either in denial ("it'll work out, stay positive"), or imagining a Star Wars Episode 4 fantasy where they bravely help blow up the Death Star, rather than the more likely authoritarian grind of <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Andor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Andor</span></a>, where the rich few collaborate with the emperor to oppress the unfortunate many, for decades or centuries of arbitrary cruelty and waste and crime and gangs and fear and inequity and iniquity and death.</p><p>(Meanwhile I'm personally still jobless, and burning through my savings faster than ever, and emotionally ragged and avoidant and unconfident and unproductive and lonely. I'm helping out a few local friends in need, as I can, but small acts of compassion will not solve the larger crisis, either my own or the nation's.)</p><p><a href="https://beige.party/tags/uspol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>uspol</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/doom" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>doom</span></a></p>