What you can do about bad politics. Part one.
Adopt your friends and family.... politically
When the world is on fire… try adopting a friend at risk.
The fancy term for it is “Relational Organizing”
Video Transcript:
Welcome to the first track on my playlist of politics bangers called what you can do about bad stuff like this.
So I've done a lot of political things over the last 10 years, including snagging this photo of when I absolutely peaked.
But from everything I've seen, there's only one thing that really stands out that you can do right now that costs nothing is easy enough and is very, very powerful.
And that is to politically adopt a single friend or family member that is at risk of getting sucked down the far-right time warp. Adopt a friend.
Fancy political people call this relational organizing, and you can read all about that in my newsletter at the link in my bio (you’re here), but it's just talking to people that know and trust you about things they need to hear but would reject if it came from anybody else.
Especially the Democratic Party, because talking to rando in the party is like that Steve Buscemi with the skateboard meme. Highly sus.
So do you mail your uncle a pussy hat? There's no wrong answer here. But start with an exchange of feelings and values. That's it, rebuild a conversation that takes place over months. Let them know why you hold the opinions you do, why you're concerned about how things are going. You don't have to argue or rebut or debunk their garbage because it only pushes them further, just let the garbage roll off of you.
You're going for an exchange of broadly-held values that are not shared by the people trying to suck them in. This is a classic pick and roll on Fox News.
You got to step in there and make them decide who's lying to them. Their family member that seems reasonable, or the people trying to sell them mail supplements and hate? Step up in there and make them think.
The right-wing media network that is sucking people in took 50 years and billions of dollars to build. It’s 24/7, on every device, and it's replaced the community that used to be in every little nameless town across the country and was killed off by full-throttle no rules capitalism.
And now, that media machine is laser-focused on blaming leftists brown people and anybody but billionaires for the fallout. And it works and it's why we have stuff like this.
But the key to fighting back is using the trust that we already have with people at risk to stop their slide into the far-right suck hole. And you can start today for the low-low price of nothing.
For more reading on this and what you can do as well as the community sign up for my free newsletter The Holler at the link in my bio (Hi. Thanks for being here).
Here’s a little dance I did in support of health care that doesn’t absolutely suck.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned next week for some mid-week bonus content and a story about political media that’s in the works.
JR