Every conversation I have with friends including Republicans about how to start create a more representative, less corrupt system of government always comes back to the fact that we basically can’t do anything until we abolish the filibuster.
If you want people to lose faith in our republic- letting a rule that’s not even in our constitution stop us from passing laws the vast majority of Americans agree on is a great way of going about it.
Universal Background checks have 97% support but has a snowballs chance in hell at passing because the filibuster.
If 97% of us agree on something and we still can’t pass it- I think that’s a pretty good sign something needs to change.
This decade will determine the course of the next century.
If we don’t do anything about global warming now billions will be displaced and millions will die from climate driven war, famine and disease.
If we don’t rebuild the crumbling pillars of our republic we will fall.
The worst part is it won’t be us that deals with the leathal impact of our generations inaction, it will be those who aren’t even alive yet. What world are we leaving them? It’s still up to us to decide.
There are enormous dangers but if we are strategic, steadfast and collaborative in our effort to leave the world better than we found it- there are unprecedented opportunities to reduce poverty, disease, war and leave a better world for the next generation.
It’s deeply disturbing how romanticized armed conflict is here.
I don’t understand how people can immediately go to “well we always just start killing each other” -which is what you’re saying when talking about taking up arms- as your go to answer. War is horrible and is probably the closest thing to actual hell on earth.
You don’t need to be in war to know it’s bad- you can read any book from those who’ve been in it or talk to them. The real losers are the civilians that get caught in the middle and become millions of refugees. War has horrific human costs.
The hate used to keep us engaged, outraged and consuming advertisements has become one of- if not the most profitable commodities ever.
If we want our Republic to survive- we need to regulate the outrage industrial complex of social media companies that has developed.
We now live in a completely different communications landscape than ever before in human history.
Instead of mainly relying on experts and journalists locally as we have for centuries we now rely on a democratized, global, system of retributive justice to inform our citizens.
If we want to give future generations a fighting chance we must do everything we can to combat adversarial disinformation on social media and the algorithms that make trillions of our hate and division as a country.
Update on this:
I found a cool writer to work with and the first essay will be on some of the lessons I’ve learned about sustainability from my experience in organizing + dealing with PTSD + not letting organzing take over my life and kill the things l love.
I’m really focused on doing this right instead of quick- so I would hope to have this out in a month or so but it could take longer because I’ll be sharing it with a lot of other organizers and friends to help edit/suggest.
I don’t want to just write for the sake of writing I want to actually say something and if that take a month or two or three so be it