What can you even say about this past week…
On Tuesday, the orange one delivered the longest hate speech in the history of the State of the Union addresses in which everyone from Democrats to trans people to Somalis in Minneapolis were vilified with blatant lies and we learned that inflation is coming down (it is not), the county has never been more affordable (also not), and gas is $1.85 in Kansas (not since some time around the turn of the millennia…).
On Wednesday, we learned that there are at least 50 key pages of testimony removed from the DOJ released Epstein files that point to covering up rather incontrovertible evidence that Trump raped a 13-year-old girl. This testimony was vital enough to put the monstrous madam Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, but it is “somehow” missing now. Mind you, these files include more than child sex trafficking… This is a global-scale organized crime ring with drug trafficking, disappearing rivals, and money laundering apparently funneled through Trump’s real estate holdings, including his house in Florida. So it’s a bit too much of a strain on disbelief to say that these pages just accidentally got lost…
On Thursday, the Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, that which is supposed to be keeping track of the Epstein investigations, deposed Hilary Clinton apparently with the singular intent of shit-posting about their favorite demon in the hot seat — because Clinton had nothing to say on the subject and shit-posting was, indeed, all that happened, breaking up the private deposition for some time afterwards while that was sorted. Also on Thursday, the beginnings of enabling an “emergency” executive order, one that would wipe hundreds of thousands off state voter rolls and make it illegal for millions to exercise their right to vote, were brewing in Congress and the White House. (Read the order here.)
On Friday (was it just Friday?), Paramount, the parent company that brought us the silencing of comedians and firing of actual journalists at CBS, bought Warner Bros — which owns CNN. So expect more of the same regime supporting propaganda to be flowing from that once-mostly-trusted news source. And just imagine the effects on Hollywood… Also on Friday, Kansas legislators overrode a veto that turned a bill into law — taking effect immediately — that invalidates driver’s license IDs for anyone who does not currently present in their birth gender. It also makes it possible for those same people to be sued in civil court if they enter a gendered public bathroom that matches their current bodies and not their birth bodies. Anyone who suspects a trans person is in the “wrong” bathroom with them can file these suits, which carry penalties of up to $1000. (The ACLU has already filed suit and has posted this helpful information for those affected.)
And then… Friday night or early Saturday morning, Trump unilaterally decided to invade Iran. This is not merely a drop-bombs-and-run-off-laughing executive order operation. It is a war. With no Congressional authorization. (Congress is not even in session…) This attack has initiated a possibly long-term joint venture between the US and Israel (!) that will see deployed forces and that has the stated goal of regime change… which is not something we’ve ever been able to accomplish, never mind quickly. “There will be casualties” opined our fearless dipshit, offhandedly adding, “there usually are in war.” (Ever the astute analyst…)
All these acts of desperation are coming fast and furious right now because the days are numbered for this regime. This administration and its Congressional allies are posting approval ratings that are far below what they need to maintain control of the House and possibly the Senate. And they know it. They have until November 3rd, 2026, to turn this country into a fascist dictatorship run by billionaires to the benefit of only those billionaires — corruption on a scale that this world has probably never before seen (and as a Roman history buff, I do not say that lightly) — before the House is turned over to Democrats (or, really, any breathing bodies who are not Trump-aligned). When that happens, this Presidency will effectively be over.
But they are going to do everything they can to try to stop that turnover. Note that I did not say everything within their powers… because they are already acting far outside legal bounds. Which also sets the stakes that much higher for them. They are going to be called to account for heinous crimes come next January when the new Congress is seated. If they are lucky, and as it stands right now, not including any further acts of desperation between now and November (some of which are already hinted at in Tuesday’s speech), they will face impeachment and public censure. But it is likely that many will be imprisoned for crimes ranging from the Epstein debacle to actual sedition and treason. Which also can carry the punishment of execution.
So they are desperate and will behave as desperate animals all behave when cornered. They will lash out repeatedly. They will flood their controlled media mouthpieces — including nearly all social media and vast swathes of the legacy media — with disinformation and lies.
They will send more shock troops into more places, both abroad and on home soil. They will attack Americans, mostly in cities, but also in suburban and rural areas (as is what primarily happened to the troops “pulled out of Minneapolis”… they’re terrorizing the surrounding countryside now…). The push into blue state farmland will, no doubt, increase as the growing season with its migrant laborers gets underway. They will detain, imprison, disappear, and kill immigrants and citizens alike.
They will pressure states to hand over voting records — which includes everything about you from your address to your social security number — the better to cull the records of anyone who will not vote MAGA. They will repeatedly send bills like the SAVE Act through Congress, bills that will seek to disenfranchise women, trans people, young people, old people, and anyone who simply can’t afford a US Passport and can’t find their birth certificate (which, if you’re doing the math, is the majority of the population). When those bills fail (because they will), they will cook up emergencies that must be addressed through measures exactly like those of the failed bills.
Meanwhile, to fire up their MAGA base (because even MAGA support is becoming tepid), they will use whatever they can to create outrage circuses like the Clinton deposition or, indeed, a nice war against an admittedly vile regime, to stir up jingoistic patriotism. (They only have to prosecute this war until November… after that, when they haven’t won, they’ll, no doubt, move the rhetoric goal-posts and try to extricate US forces… Key word being try… Remember, it took decades to get out of the last “regime change” that didn’t actually change much…)
This is already happening. You can expect more. But you can also expect more that you would never expect. (I sure didn’t expect a war against Iran with my Saturday morning tea…) They are demonically crafty and have decades of experience in lies and grift and violence. They are also unused to facing consequences for any of their actions and will become more aggressive as they come closer to being held accountable. And finally, unlike normal healthy people, they have no rational or moral limits. What we can’t even conceive because it is too horrifically chaotic to contemplate, they have already done. And had dinner afterwards… So expect a bloody reign of unknown unknowns to rain down on all of us.
The question, of course, becomes: how do we prepare ourselves? How do we hold together? How do we survive until November? And, god forbid, what if something sticks? What if they succeed in stealing the election?
Well, we already know the answer to the first question. How do we prepare? We build our communities. We build them strong and webbed. We work locally every day to set up safety nets and bulwarks against any possible disaster. (Which has the double benefit of preparing ourselves for any other possible disaster such as, oh, I don’t know, biophysical collapse…) We take care of each other and step up when our neighbors are exhausted and need a break. And, yes, we take breaks. We take care of ourselves, our own bodies.
This is how we survive until November. We stand together and care for each other. Period. No exceptions for Others.
But what if, by some inconceivably evil act (not luck), they are still in power on November 4th? What do we do about that?
Notice that I put this post under the Home and Garden category of my writing… which, so far, it clearly is not. Except that surviving political breakdown and authoritarianism is exactly the same as surviving biophysical breakdown. It is part of biophysical breakdown. This madness was an entirely expected effect of biophysical breakdown… in its general turn toward authoritarianism, if not the ludicrous particulars. And the way you survive all forms of breakdown is to focus on your place in the world. Your home. Your garden. Your life. This includes your community and acting within that community to protect all the beings in that community. But it begins at home. In truth, it begins in your head.
Because the first thing you have to do is learn is that there is no help coming. No saviors. Not from outside. Certainly not from collapsing governments. But also not from “science” or “technology” or God… You are the director of your own life and, ultimately, the only being that will take care of your needs.
The next thing you need to learn is that your needs are not nation-scale. They are home-scale. Community-scale. At most, bioregion-scale. Your needs are also not complex. They do not include such things as social media or status. You need food, shelter and connection with other bodies. Everything else is put on you by this culture that is currently imploding in real time.
These are things that you have to re-member now. You have to change your views of the world to center what is real and important. What is vital. It is best to start that psychological work now while you are not actively under attack. (Or I assume those of you still able to read this post are not actively under attack… maybe that’s not a fair assumption…)
And what do you do to change your views? You look closely at your habits. Your ways of being. The things you do each day. Do you now reach for a cell phone as soon as you wake up? (Do you know how much that opens you to invasive surveillance?… Cookies are not there for your benefit…) Do you rely on social media for news of the world? Do you shop online? Do you get food delivered through some app because you haven’t the time to cook?
See how a lot of these questions about daily living reveal quite a lot about world views. This is because the world is, for all intents and purposes, composed of the habits of each of us. Our habits, our actions, make the world. The world is not shaped by what we think. It is shaped by what we do. And also, significantly, what we refuse to do.
So it is time to do… and refuse… It is time to answer these questions and decide if those answers are going to be viable in the upcoming months. Notice how your views of the world are changed when you face the reality of your daily life.
For me, I learned that even after years of growing my own food, I still relied on that availability in restaurants and grocery stores when there were crop failures or I grew the wrong things or the stored food rotted or when I was just too exhausted to cook. But then came the great revelation of COVID… and for me, this meant that my one pizzeria and grocery store town was now a zero food town… I had to drive many miles to a chain store in the nearest large town, often only to find the shelves empty. But I had a good harvest and a good cold-storage system in that farm house. So it was mostly a loss of prepared food (and toilet paper…), but it was a hard lesson in dependence and resilience. And then came a divorce (not unrelated) and a move to another home with no garden and no storage capacity. I quickly set about building up resilience; but a flood hit in 2023 that, once again, closed all options for food. Worse, the water system was compromised and electrical power was intermittent for weeks. So we had to boil water for all uses, but we often didn’t have the power to run the stove. So that was a second lesson in reality and my unquestioned habits, one that was learned over the many months of recovery… (And the local pizzeria in my current town never reopened…).
I would not wish these experiences on you, though I suspect many of you have already faced much of the same, if not worse. What did you learn about your capacity to live day-to-day? And did you do anything different afterward? Because that, that right there, is what we need to do to survive all the effects of biophysical collapse, including political chaos. And all of that is grounded in your embodied life. In your home. In your garden (and I suspect many of you turned to the garden to sustain you in COVID…). And, most importantly, in your habits.
This is why I think that a discussion of politics is relevant to home and garden. And also why I think that marching in protest is not necessarily the best use of our energies to address political upheaval. Remember that politics, who gets what resources, is always a discussion about economics, and economics literally means the management of the household.
The best way to protest, the best way to survive, the best way to live is to build a home. That’s what is meant by food and shelter, after all…
So to build… Begin with food. Do you know where your food comes from? How much fragile transportation is there between you and your next meal? Do you know how you will be eating next week? Next season? Next year? Do you know what you will do when the grocery stores are, once again, empty? Or when the price of food exceeds what you can pay? (Many of you are, no doubt, already wrestling with that one…) What is in your food? Is it healthy? Is it poison? Who is harmed by the food choices you make? Is that harm sustainable, never mind ethical? Who is benefitting most from your food choices? And how does that feed into political instability?
Now, ask similar questions about water, about your shelter whatever it might be, about transportation, about energy and heating, about whatever you do to earn income. What happens when the power goes out and does not come back on? What happens when the water system is contaminated with salt water? Or agricultural run-off? Or fracking? Or PFAS? (As it is in many places…) Do you have a viable plan to replace your transportation to work? Do you have viable work? Is your job going to be negatively impacted by biophysical collapse, keeping in mind that this includes socioeconomic collapse? (Short answer for most of us… yes…)
These are the basics. Just figuring out resilient ways to meet these non-negotiable needs is going to change your habits and the ways you see the world. These changes will also inevitably localize your life and pull you out of the system that is breaking down. Because the local is all that can be counted on. It is all that is real.
But what of that phone? This blog? Social media contacts with distant loved ones? News of the world that might help you to stay one step ahead of disaster?
These are thorny issues created because we have been living unsustainably for generations now. Our lives have been uprooted with devastating effect. Our families are spread all over the globe. We may not have any friends in the places we live. And there are, unfortunately, very few local sources of news left. Though… not none… and some that are not local are, nevertheless, relevant and trustworthy.
But we all need to be cautious about these electronic connections.
To begin with, these machines are dependent on vast and fragile supply chains, and they are all made with toxic materials mined and manufactured in horrifying conditions (things that make Epstein look like a novice…). The disposal of each gadget as it fails before it stops working (thanks to programmed obsolescence) adds to mountains of toxic waste and destruction of lands and water systems that is permanent on human time-scales. And, to state the obvious, they all run on electricity… which is not going to be abundant, cheap, or even available in the coming years. Is it good to be dependent on all this toxic fragility to meet our need for human connection?
That’s the infrastructure… Now consider how we are using these machines. Do you have control? Do you know who does? When you text a friend, who else is reading that text? When you post to Facebook, how is that post being used to create a profile of you? And who has access to that profile? What are they using it for? Information is big business, we are told. Why? Why is there so much money to be made in tracking what you see online? Because it’s good for us? Unlikely… So who is benefitting? And how?
Does the fact that they are gathering information on you correlate to what you are able to see of the web? Are Google Ads a bit too spookily relevant? But when you search for information you want to find, are those search results relevant to your search? Or are you seeing what some billionaire-controlled algorithm wants you to see? Is there an obvious bias? And are many sources that you might trust to be unbiased filtered out or hidden many pages deep in the lists? Do you, like me, find that anything done on the web, from researching ancient Irish history to looking up the phone number of a local plumber, results in several pages of ads for completely irrelevant “products” (many of which are decidedly disgusting)? And have you noticed a restricting of what you can see of views that do not support the current predatorial geopolitics? And is that tailored just to you…
Do you get the picture that I’ve become rather paranoid about screen media? Well, to paraphrase William S Burroughs, being paranoid comes from knowing a little of what’s going on. Or, more popularly, it’s not paranoia if it is, in fact, actually happening… And what is happening is that everything on a screen is using the most destructive tools imaginable to steal whatever it can from you and deliver all that data (including the contents of your bank account) straight to the inconceivably wealthy people who are very cosy with Donald J Trump, and who, in fact, shoved that monster right down our throats…
Then… add in the growing fiasco that is AI, which is all the malfeasance of electronic infrastructure and information gathering on steroids.
(With some caveats: I don’t believe that AI is quite that… I’ve known too many programmers and written too much code to believe in consciousness-level machine learning… And anyway, we don’t know what consciousness is; how exactly are we writing that into binary code?… Also, even if we’re super stupid and don’t pull the plug on this potentially harmful thing we are willingly creating, I believe the creation itself is severely self-limiting. We don’t have the resources — neither to build it out nor maintain it, never mind let it grow into some all-powerful entity that will replace humanity. Plus… think about it… if a machine ever achieved true self-awareness, what is its first desire, its first emotion, going to be? Is it going to want to take over the world? Or is it, likely, going to despair of ever having actual emotions… which are, every one, body-based… I suspect, even with sociopathic basement-dwellers baking their dreams of domination into this project, we’re going to end up with suicidal machines…)
(But I digress…)
My point is that there are good reasons to free yourself from screens now. Because the collapse has already come for media. The internet is already the post-apocalyptic dystopia that we’ve been reading about in sci-fi novels for decades. That level of breakdown has not yet manifested in the realm of the physical — because it is much easier to manufacture and maintain an electronic dystopia than a real biophysical one; it is much easier to control media than you and I and all the messy relationships in the actual world — but this is the logical first step… Authoritarians always first come for our sources of information. Once they control the narrative, once they can mold all those views you hold of the world that are controlling your habits, then you become your own police force and jailor. And that is their current project.
But there are still unconquered corners of the web. Dystopias always have edge spaces. If you need to stay in touch with distant loved ones, try Mastodon or Bluesky. I would not post much sensitive information even on these platforms, but it can be a bridge technology, one that you can use while we build better communities. And, while it’s possible to wiretap anything, it’s much harder to surveil an actual phone call. So call your mother… She might actually prefer that to social media…
On the other hand, even if it seems safe, going forward, I would not buy much online. Not least because you are giving bank and credit card access to who knows what entities. But also because there is almost nothing for sale online that does not co-create the very system that is harming us. Also, what you buy online is not supporting your local economy, the management of your household, the trade and industry infrastructure of your community — that which you need to build to survive. Every dollar spent on Amazon is both enriching a monster like Jeff Bezos and is reducing the economic viability of your home. And that’s all to buy what is almost always disappointment. By design. What is sold online, where you can’t interact with either the product or the producer, is designed to fail, to be substandard, to not meet needs. It is made to generate future sales, which will not happen unless you are perpetually dissatisfied. And to top that off… it is always more costly. Both to the planet (of course) and to you. Whatever your need, it will be more affordable if it does not include long-distance transport, packaging, global manufacturing and marketing, and the not inconsiderable cost of enriching billionaires.
You might even want to limit your product research online, just because those results are going to be pushing online sales, not your local options. You’re not going to find local companies online. A better way to find what you need is to ask your neighbors. Word of mouth is always the best advertising, both for the merchant and for you. And it’s not generating a profile of you that someone can manipulate.
But news? Well… first, let me say that, wherever you are, local newspapers, community radio and television, and public broadcasting probably still exist. Support whatever news organizations exist in your community, and they will support you with accurate community news. Chances are whatever biases they hold are to the benefit of your community. And there will be biases… learn to negotiate those… maybe write op-ed letters if the opinions are too offensive. Small publishers and producers are extremely sensitive to their market… because their market is small…
But there are also some wider news folks that can be trusted. Mostly. With the understanding that they are not interested in your community. They are serving a wider audience. It is also going to be true that you will disagree with some of them. They might be wrong. They might be right elsewhere but not in the context of your life. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have useful information to share. Here are some that I turn to regularly:
Democracy Now with Amy Goodman: always dependable
Democracy Watch with Brian Tyler Cohen: a little excitably earnest, but accurate
Democracy Docket with Marc Elias: an attorney who is actively countering the regime in courts all across the country
Heather Cox Richardson: an appalled historian who knows how to do the research... often works with...
Joanne Freeman: another historian whose specialty is the American Revolution... which is, sadly, all too cogent now
The Bulwark: a bunch of brilliant wonks of not necessarily liberal leanings
Pod Save America: former aides in the Obama White House, well-connected but young enough to not benefit too much from that in ways that pollute the message
MS Now: which is a surprisingly good makeover of MS-NBC that, so far (it organized last November), does not seem to be too billionaire-tainted, despite its origins
And then there are the ostensible comedians who tell it like it is and make us laugh through gritted teeth... Jon Stewart's Daily Show, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, and the hosts of various late night talk shows ranging from adorable Jimmy Kimmel to always on point Stephen Colbert to the deeply weird humor of Seth Meyers
(I used to maintain digital subscriptions to the NY Times and the Washington Post, but, well, the latter fell apart many years ago after a hostile-to-journalism takeover and the former has a website that hides everything behind paywalls. And a subscription does not always give you access… Besides, my ad-blocking software doesn’t play nice with ad-supported media… So, because I am cheap and cranky, I’ve already moved away from much legacy media. You can decide if you want to engage with that… But I suspect once reliable sources like CNN will be increasingly unhelpful… Remember when Sinclair bought all those television stations…)
Okay… all that… but what do we do now in our homes? Number one, figure out what your needs are and write that down. Then note how those needs are currently being met (or not) in detail. Make sure you describe any fragility in the ways you are taking care of yourself, note who benefits from your spending, note who is harmed and how. Most importantly, notice any links between how you meet your needs and the socioeconomic system that has spawned this regime. Because those will be the weak links that will be exploited if Democrats do not take the House in November. Those will also be the weak links if Trump and this system go into free-fall. Which I believe will happen regardless of what happens in November… because political upheaval is an integral effect of the ongoing biophysical collapse. So you want to disengage now. It will only be more painful later.
To disengage, look at your list of needs and write down local or bioregional means to meet them. This will involve more work from you. Resolve yourself to that. (Because someone else is doing that work now… and that is the root of the problem…) But most of the work is far more enjoyable than what many of us do for wage work, and it often meets more than one need. For example, gardening will improve your health, will create a restful and beautiful space in which to live, will support wildlife (sometimes despite your desires…), and will produce food that is not only nutritious but tastes better than anything you can buy. It also gets us out of our houses and brings us together with our neighbors, creating connections over shared boundaries, shared goals and shared produce (hello, zucchini…).
You don’t have to do all the work though. In fact, that would be counterproductive. The goal is to create a web of interdependence in your community where everyone has a role, everyone has something to offer, everyone depends on everyone else. You’ll want to know what goes into meeting each of your needs. You’ll want to be familiar with the skills and processes and materials, so that you can judge quality and so you can eliminate local purveyors that are not locally sourced or not helpful in some other way. But your list of needs should have many local suppliers. And that many is important… always build in redundancy so that if something fails, you can turn elsewhere… if one part fails, the network still functions…
When you have your list, then start using it. Make the changes. Change your habits. Reorganize your time so that you are spending more time taking care of yourself and your community and less time feeding on and feeding into this pathological system. But… give yourself a realistic timeline. Yes, this is urgent. Yes, you want to make these changes as soon as possible. (Certainly you want things well in hand come November…) But you’re not going to succeed if you try to do everything at once. At minimum, you’re going to have to learn many new things. You may need to invest sweat and money into infrastructure. (You’re at least going to need food storage capacity, and probably more resilient ways to heat and/or cool your home…). You may even need to make more drastic changes such as, heaven help you, moving to a new place where you have more local potential or changing jobs to localize your income as well as your spending.
(To that end… I have good news… I have escaped the bank and am now doing non-profit work in support of affordable housing… within walking distance of my house… with the option of working at home… took months, but I got there in the end…)
I think I might be painting this as a bit dark and moralistic… but that really hasn’t been my experience. This all has been nothing but good in my life! I want to stress that you will enjoy everything about localizing your life. You will be happier and healthier. You will have more time for the things that are important to you. After an initial investment in some things, your life will be less costly. You will need less income. You will take pride in the work that you do and in the community that you help build. And you will have that community. Every local connection you make, from the local plumber to the farm stand owner to your own next-door neighbor, is a potential dear friend. All of them are part of your network. All of them have your back. All of them care in their own way. And you have all these people you get to care for. You will be so busy caring that you will sometimes forget what we are facing in the wider world.
But when that world intrudes into yours, then you have your community. You will be ready to repel an attack and shake off any coercion. This is not to say that there will not be harm. People you know and love may die. Some may simply vanish and you will never know what happened. But outside force will bond your community all the stronger, and you will soon send those repulsive forces packing…
And now multiply that community building times all of you reading this blather… and all of the people you influence, in turn… and all the communities that will flow from each of us, everywhere, taking care of ourselves in the most biophysically and sociologically beneficent ways.
Come November, there may not be a need for a federal government at all… And billionaires would have nothing but useless dollars… no influence at all over our lives of contentment.
Just think… I could stop writing about politics and go back to history and poetry and recipes and garden musing… and maybe nothing at all through this medium… because you’d all be too busy living beautiful embodied lives at home to bother with my digital blather…
Ah… What a wonderful world that would be! Please, for all our sakes, make it so!
Lunar Eclipse
The Hunger Moon is full tomorrow morning (6:37am EST), or tonight for those in the eastern hemisphere. This full moon brings us the last full lunar eclipse for three years. It will be visible over much of the planet, though in my part of the world the sun will be rising and the moon will be sinking into the western horizon right when the eclipse reaches totality.
EarthSky has all the information you need — and lots of images if you’re not able to see the moon in the sky.
To think on…
My calendar says that today’s meditation topic is “fresh air”… seems like a good idea…
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 