What Do We Do Now?

[Nevilledog]

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Melissa Ryan
@MelissaRyan
New from me: my assessment of the gaps that currently prevent us from mounting an effective counter-offensive against Trump and Greater MAGA. A long but hopefully useful read.

What Do We Do Now?
This week marked one year since the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill. If you’re burned out on all the retrospectives, commemorations, and…
medium.com
4:24 PM · Jan 9, 2022

https://medium.com/ctrlaltrightdelete/what-do-we-do-now-43e69240cc8d

*snip*

Here are the challenges and gaps as I see them, and some ideas about what we can do to fill those gaps.

The Right is tearing society apart piece by piece, and we’re all living under a constant threat of political violence. Breaking American democracy was always the goal but American life feels tenuous generally. And those of us not rooting for the coup or civil war are really feeling it.

Most of us try to go about our daily lives not thinking about this reality too much, but it’s true. From airplanes to school board meetings, to hospitals, to mass shootings, politically motivated violence is all around us. Daily Kos’ David Neiwert recently wrote about how for “mainstream liberals living in rural areas daily life involves dealing with far-right intimidation.” But rural areas are hardly the only communities under threat.

Living under constant threat of political violence, on top of a pandemic, has done a number on all of us. I know from reader emails over the past year that it’s true for many of you in your own communities. The Right’s pivot to state and local organizing and power grabs post-January 6 means that more of us see violence firsthand or face threats in our communities, perpetrated by our own neighbors. Speaking of which…

They’ve refocused their efforts locally. Much of this week’s expert analysis on the current state of the Right emphasized that they’re decentralizing, localizing, and inserting themselves into local and community governments and debates. Again, I know from your emails that many readers are living through this and unsure what can be done to fight back. No one wants their town to become a flashpoint in the Right’s endless culture war, or have their community go viral and nationalize what should be a local civic debate. But it now happens to communities routinely.

*snip*

[bottomofthehill]

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