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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

I've chatted with a couple of people who feel that their country (USA) is descending into chaos, and they don't feel like investing in a doomed future. I agree with the general feeling, but I'm trying to use it to motivate myself to have more fun.

As to why people feel doomed: Republicans are putting the most faithful trump zealots in places to most influence the next elections. Remember that the Republicans believe the previous election was stolen.

This gives them motivation and means to throw out results where Democrats win.

If they do that, I'm not sure if the country will split or fall into civil war.

The utter insidious evil of the election theft lie from trump is going to destroy the USA by removing any trust in elections.

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This belief appears to be an artifact of people spending way too much time on social media, where suppositions are amplified into emotional Armageddons with little basis in reality.

The United States' status of "doomed" isn't supported by any metric.

> The utter insidious evil of the election theft lie from trump is going to destroy the USA by removing any trust in elections.

This kind of invective is just utterly counterproductive. If you want to see a brighter future, start building.

The world is not that presented by the distorting effects of the shrill voices of the doomsayers.

>The world is not that presented by the distorting effects of the shrill voices of the doomsayers.

I completely agree. These doomsayers are powerful because we give them our attention, so if we ignore them they are impotent. We've collectively decided as a society that our attention is valuable so when we give it to people who want to do us harm by enraging us so we follow their political ideology, terrifying us so we doomscroll through the news all day, or showing us a highlight reel of the lives of our peers to make us feel like failures we're pretty much stealing from the pockets of our own futures.

Each of our realities is a canvas and we let some of the most ruthlessly calculating human beings of our generation scrawl all over them every day, but we as individuals can choose for this not to be the case. You don't build a brighter future by hoping someone at the top notices you, the people at the top are there because they benefit from the status quo so of course they're not going to help. You build a better world by starting small, and one small change is kicking the doomsayers out of your precious attention span.

If people actually think their country has a chance of upcoming civil war (or many other crises like ecological collapse), they should expand their in-person social network -- mutual aid is an important resiliency strategy.

Which is made all the more difficult when people react violently to your attempts to connect with them, because they perceive your political stance as a threat (usually through misunderstanding). No wonder we clam up and brace for war.

To be clear -- my comment is more about finding likeminded people who you can depend on if shit actually hits the fan. People who "react violently to your attempt to connect with them" are not great candidates for shit-hit-the-fan buddies.

Crossing the aisle is another commendable but unrelated thing.

People have always thought the world is ending. It's more likely things will just change somewhat, as they always have. Some things will get better, some things will get worse. As they always have

> Republicans are

It's not just the Republicans though. There are also quite a lot of maliciously incompetent Democrats too.

>The utter insidious evil of the election theft lie from trump is going to destroy the USA by removing any trust in elections.

I have the unenviable position of being against trust in elections and also against Trump.

There are dozens of us.

We held the majority in 2016, but are nearly extinct now.

Why do you think the Republicans also feel doomed?

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