2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I have examined where my loyalties lie, you judge, I'll explain my position. [View all]Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)They think we're just 'playing politics', accuse us of 'being childish', 'taking our ball home'. But our 'ball' is all we have left. It's our only real power to try and make the desperately needed changes we need to make to save many many many lives over the long term. Every time we simply support them, we teach them to ignore our needs, that we are unimportant and will 'fall in line' when the time comes, rather than take short term pain. Humans aren't hardwired to work in the long term. Back when your problems revolved around getting eaten by something bigger, it was more of a survival tactic to ignore the long term and focus on 'now'. But we've got seriously big problems, and they can't be solved by tiny changes and 'tweaks' to 'what is'. We've done too much, too long, without thinking about the long term consequences, and now we need drastic action to survive. It's fight or flight, and there's nowhere left to fly to.
We have to win to survive. And if we can't win this cycle, we can't keep just shoving it off endlessly 4 or 8 years at a time. We have to break the cycle and make it plain that our problems have to be addressed or else we won't simply keep electing people who ignore the problems that are causing our current extinction event.