2. To "stay in the light", here is some sage advice written by Melanie.  You can find Melanie on BlueSky @Melonballll.bsky.social (yes, four "L's"!)

"Unpopular but Important Opinion: Now, more than ever, we MUST lead with empathy & curiosity, not with insulting intelligence, lack of education, or morality. The longer we fight amongst ourselves and focus on left vs right, the more they oppress us and get away with it. CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS NOW!

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...We need to concentrate our efforts on talking to people and engaging in person, with real life people. Social media is absolutely inundated with rage bait, rage farms, and trolls who say the most vile shit to get us riled up, and concentrating our efforts and engaging with every comment or post we see just to argue and insult is wasted effort and unhelpful. Talk to the ones who didn't vote or voted third party. Talk to the apathetic ones or the ones who think it doesn't matter and we can't change things. Educate people.

...I didn't mean "take the high road with MAGAs". I meant focus on harm reduction, community, sharing resources and plans, sharing how to recognize propaganda, and focus on what commonalities we have when talking to people who are rational and open minded. We do need more unity if we're to win this. I'm sorry, but there's no way to accomplish defeating fascism if we don't all collectively put our anger to good use.

Lastly, I'm sorry if it came across as tone deaf. This collective anger and devastation we are feeling is so valid and so important and I was not trying to placate or pull any of that "both sides" or "take the high road" nonsense.

Something I've been thinking about and I'm interested to hear other thoughts:

We KNOW MAGAs are, by and large, woefully uneducated, misinformed, and in some cases, downright clueless. It's infuriating, and some seem to really love their own ignorance. However, this is a large failing from our country and although adults are responsible for themselves, they don't know what they don't know and are also victims. And no one likes being called or made to feel like they're stupid, that's a recipe for closed minds and shutting down conversation. There are a lot more moderate people out there than we've been led to believe, our internet bubbles and the constant sowing of division make us think that they're all far right and horrible people, when there are many more middle of the road fence sitters. We do hold a certain amount or privilege in our education and being informed. Part of the message on the left asks people to recognize their privilege and understand marginalized people don't have that. But we become hypocrites if we don't take our own advice and recognize that unfortunately in this country, education is a privilege because of how much it's been gutted and literacy is low. What's common sense to us is a foreign concept to a lot of people and we undermine our own message by making them feel alienated and stupid when really they just don't have the facts or education.

I think if we're to change the hearts and minds of these people (or at least try to get through to SOME) in order to fight this, we unfortunately NEED to reach across the aisle. The condescension, insulting people's intelligence, attacking their morals (or lack thereof) and righteous anger just makes them shut down and dismiss us [emphasis added by Jan6PW], and we've defeated our own message because now there's no chance of hearing us out. It guarantees they won't listen.

I know we're tired of Dems being pushovers and favoring decorum over all, but I'm not advocating for that. We need to stand on business of course and be adamant about what matters. But I truly think we just need to talk to people differently. Don't talk down to them or insult them in social media comments or in person. Approach it with curiosity, ask questions, and get to know what rights they care about and their perspective of what freedom is, and try to build on what we have in common and appeal to what matters to them [emphasis added by J6PW]. Focus on how the 1% is screwing us all and that eroding at ANY rights for anyone gives permission for the government to take rights from EVERYONE. Ignore the obvious trolls or hopelessly far right extremists and focus on those who are just misinformed or apathetic.

The rich have successfully divided us all so bitterly, but our focus needs to be on class consciousness and what we have in common, and point ALL anger and vitriol toward the government that is not serving any of us, left or right. So don't make it a contest to sound off about who is the worst. It. Doesn't. Matter. There's no winning that and it's honestly a waste. We need to point all of our fingers at the 1% and not each other. As long as we continue to fight amongst ourselves we will never defeat them.

We're too focused on identity politics and social issues they try to distract us with (which of COURSE are so important to protect marginalized groups and of course we're emotionally driven about these topics, that won't ever change), but if people don't care about others you cannot force them to [emphasis added by J6PW].  You need to instead focus on what matters to THEM and explain how the direction of the country under this administration is going to harm them and their children, not just some people whose lifestyles or cultures they disagree with or don't care about.

Focus on educating without sounding judgemental. Spread the word and share sources about how to recognize propaganda and about how dictatorships in history have played out and all the parallels to current day occurrences. We will never change every mind, but we sure as hell won't change any with pure vitriol, anger, condescension, and a superiority complex (unfortunately). We need class consciousness, to be willing to LISTEN and educate, and to build community, and that requires a different approach than what we've been doing [emphasis added by J6PW].

All of this comes after a week of doomscrolling and angrily sounding off on people. I realized while I felt better in the moment, I didn't actually do anything valuable to change minds and might have guaranteed the people I responded to won't listen to what I had to say, because I didn't approach it well. So I'm not pretending to be someone who is inherently good at this and does this already. But I'm going to strive to, moving forward. I truly think that is one of our only hopes to turn the tide (aside from community and mutual aid amongst ourselves).

Thoughts?"