If you get overwhelmed with stimulus in general headphones - maybe just in one ear - that don’t block outside noise but can play something familiar might help.

Just gives you something to focus on that IS comfortable when other aspects might not be. Music or meditation or podcast or whatever is familiar reassuring. Also battery backup.

I am interested in protest but not in violence so made a cloth sash that says “peaceful protest” on one side and “nonviolence” on the other. Just to help keep myself identifiable as someone who is not looking for a fight.

Do you have a free email (gmail alternative) suggestion?

I’m sorry. I also feel anger and fear. I am desperately looking for ways to take action that are at least potentially effective, even if there is risk and personal cost to myself. I do not feel like a “moderate”.

I also do not want to lose sight of my own value system. Trump is full of vengeful hate. I would rather be a good person who got killed trying to make things better than be still alive but consumed with vengeful hate / hurting other people.

I am not religious - but I am a pacifist at heart. The people I admire most are folks who brought about massive change through non violent means - not people who won wars.

And honestly even if the political stuff all suddenly became ok (it won’t) the billions of people who will die from climate change is inevitable- so that gives me some perspective. Like we are ALL going to die. What is the best I can do with the time I have?

I do not have answers. Maybe - as you suggest - everything I do will be ineffective. I share your fear and dread, but if I can’t continue to value love over hate then I have already lost.

So why would someone lack empathy?

Like if there is a 4 year old whose parents hit them - then they go to school and hit other kids. Is the 4 year old evil? Or were they taught that behavior?

I’m not saying that adults are 4 years old and aren’t responsible for their actions, I’m just saying that some people have VERY different opportunities than you and I have had.

People are complicated, but my (liberal) values are exactly what one would expect me to have if you look at my upbringing and education. If I had a different education and upbringing I almost certainly would have different values.

Not fun to admit, but true.

I prefer to call actions bad rather than people. People are pretty complicated, and it’s not a level playing field.

You sound really angry.

Action taken based on anger and hatred is different than action motivated by compassion and morality.

So you are all in with “us vs them” politics.

Yay my team and fuck the other guys they suck.

Definitely this was Trumps takeaway. He broke the law his first term many times with little or no consequence so of course he is doubling down.

This is SUPER helpful and thoughtful and I thank you.

Like when we start doing research in a nuanced and scientific way then the folks who aren’t part of the scientific community can very easily “wildly gesture” racism and say “it’s science”.

So it is not that there aren’t differences, it’s that if we aren’t very careful then valid research can get inaccurately used to support racism/sexism.

I don’t remember the details but I feel like way back the president of Harvard said something about sex differences and got fired and what he said didn’t seem incorrect to me. It really bothered me. But maybe it was more “in a leadership position you need to be aware of how people will twist your words” than “what you said was true but we want to pretend it’s not”.

Do you feel like calling a whole group “these people” is a helpful approach?

So why are they idiots do you think? Like are you just naturally and inherently superior to all of them?

Or maybe they were raised differently than you were and taught different things than you were. Exposed to different ideas. Maybe they lack knowledge because they went to a shitty school rather than because they are inferior.

Or that is just an excuse because I don’t want to admit that they are idiots. Idiots who strangely enough don’t want to vote for people who are convinced they are idiots.

Sincere question- I am a girl. I program/work in tech.
I can say that on average women are shorter than me and nobody has issues. But if I say that on average women aren’t as good at spacial relations then somehow I’m sexist.

The fact that on average women are shorter does NOT mean anything about a particular woman. The woman in front of you may tower over most men. She may be one of the tallest people ever. But men have more testosterone in their system and it makes them physically develop differently and ON AVERAGE they are taller.

So testosterone doesn’t only affect height, it affects brains as well. Same with estrogen. Ask anyone who takes those drugs for medical reasons or because they are transitioning. I’m a woman who is way better at spacial relations thinking than most women. Other than that I’m petite, soft spoken and love babies. Not masculine at all. Not on drugs. But - kind of like a very tall woman - I’m a bit of an outlier in how my brain works compared to other women.

I get it that some folks have used science to do “superior race” “superior sex” oppression and that is horrifying. The current administration in the US = facist nightmare 100%, and incompetent to boot.

But it still is objectively true that there are generalizations / averages that can be made based on race and sex. Why is someone sexist for saying things that are objectively true?

So many democrats don’t understand how someone could possibly be stupid/blind enough to vote for Trump.

If those same people were switched at birth with the Republicans they look down on them they would probably be voting Republican.

It is always worth trying to understand where other people are coming from. If you didn’t have the education that you got, if you were raised in the environment they were raised in and heard the messages they heard and suffered through whatever types of challenges they suffered (instead of the ones you did) then you would have a different world view. You would. That is a fact.

I am surrounded by democrats and they all think republican voters are low class idiots. If I were a republican then why would I want to vote for a party of people who obviously think I’m a low class idiot?