The next four years
The United States is in deep peril. With the help of relentless gerrymandering, land size weighing votes, unexpectedly low turnout from the opposing side, propaganda, and thus-far unproven accusations of hacking and ballot interference, the Republican Party has come out on top in the federal elections, and in many state elections they have gained power. This dangerous group consists entirely of liars, gun nuts, grifting Evangelicals, bigots, racists, and abusers of every kind (every single Republican politician nationwide is at least one of these). Their followers and voters are much the same, but that group also includes people who believe their lies -- and, you know, the occasional woman, Black person, or queer person, the exact type of people they pose the biggest threat to.
Make no mistake: the next four years are going to be rough, especially for already marginalized people. They already controlled the courts thanks to Trump's first presidency; now, they also control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and Donald Trump has been elected back into the White House. The modern Nazi party gains full control of the US federal government on the 20th of January: there's no way to soften that blow. There just isn't.
Welcome back to Futurism. We need solarpunk now more than ever. (If you want to skip the "problem" bits, use your client's Outline feature to jump to "Radical resistance.")
Sweeping changes
Donald Trump is in control of assignments for the leaders of his executive branch. This primarily includes members of his Cabinet, his advising committee: secretaries of various Departments. Notable assignments include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the fabled anti-vaxxer who has no support from his family (yes, this is the same Kennedy family), who has been appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (he was going to be appointed Administrator of the FDA), Fox News¹ host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, TV personality and false doctor Mehmet Oz for Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, dog-killer Kristi Noem for Secretary of Homeland Security, and Science of Identity member Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence.
Several of these prospective Cabinet members, and many of the Republicans elected to Congress, are affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, which created the infamous Project 2025, a detailed plan which strips away innumerable rights, puts Americans in physical danger from their own government for no fault of their own, is set to cripple our already-declining economy, and, to make it all happen, maximizes the powers of the President.
That's before the plans Trump Himself has for the United States of America: mass deportations, potentially carried out by the military, and massive tariffs: taxes on imported goods, which Americans, not foreigners or their governments, will pay for. Anything solar, electric, or battery-powered is going to be a lot more difficult without those foreign resources: minerals or completed products.
They're all mostly buddy-buddy over there, and the Democrats are folding under zero pressure, so they'll probably have all the votes they need to do all of the horrible, horrible shit they have planned.
He's also toying with the idea of throwing out birthright citizenship, which is Constitutionally guaranteed, but they already threw out the Constitution in letting him run for President in the first place.
Threats of violence
He and his allies are also talking about annexing Canada and Greenland (and I think maybe Mexico). They don't seem to be taking him seriously, or else they'd be preparing to fight for their freedom. Maybe they are and it's just not public? Hell if I know.
The bigger threat, I'm afraid, is going to be of civil war. Unfortunately, it's not a class war that would finally put an end to the billionaires, no. I expect it to be blue-state National Guards and far-left militias against the US military, and maybe red-state National Guards and far-right militias.
We're in definitive extraconstitutional territory -- the likes of which we haven't seen since 1789, when the Articles of Confederation were no longer in effect -- as soon as the Supreme Court rules against the Constitution and decides that, in fact, it does not guarantee birthright citizenship. We're already marching towards it after they decided, along party lines, that Donald Trump was allowed to run for President after January 6, 2021. The day SCOTUS makes that decision is the day the Constitution dies. Unless, of course, they surprise everyone and rule against President Trump instead, or the states unanimously reject the decision and then everybody acts like it never happened (quite unlikely).
That decision could lead to civil war. More likely though, it'll be in response to the US military executing mass deportations.
I don't think we have any opposition forces ready to fight a civil war, especially against the US Army. The state National Guards are probably our best bet.
Radical resistance
In our current age of denialism of truth and science, acknowledging and proclaiming provable fact and well-tested best-understandings (scientific theory) is radical and revolutionary. It's necessary, too, to acknowledge, warn about, and account for climate change and our health. Wearing a mask, among its plethora of other benefits, is a show of radical acceptance: that people with immune system issues are welcome and safe with you.
Something else you can do to help: join or start a mutual aid group. In your neighborhood, at your workplace, at your school. Hand out Signal group chat links to people who are interested. Use it to coordinate, invite people to ask there for things they need, offer things you think people might need. Someone who's actually in a mutual aid group can tell you more about what is involved than I can. (I really need to take my own advice on this one.)
Side note: why Signal? It's currently the best overall option for E2EE chat, with state of the art encryption schemes, including, notably, hiding all your metadata, so even Signal doesn't have it: they don't even know who you sent the message to! There are options with potentially higher security, like Briar or Threema, mostly because they don't collect your phone number (which Signal uses for spam-fighting purposes), but they do come at a cost: Briar has basically no features and locks itself, and Threema requires a $5 payment (which is not bad, but it's an insane turnoff for so many people, myself included).
Though it may face its own troubles, I'd recommend getting involved with a union. A union is your fighting chance for better wages, better working conditions, control in your company to change the things you care about (like, say, divesting from Israel!), and a bunch of other things. We also need to grow all our unions by 2028 for the general strike that's being planned. (I also need to take my own advice for this one, too.)
If you can, NOW is the time to get solar, or get an EV, or both. Batteries and solar panels are almost entirely Chinese and East Asian imports here, so they're going to get a lot more expensive as soon as the tariffs kick in.
Further advice:
- If you know a trans person, no you don't.
- If you know a gay person, no you don't.
- If you know an undocumented immigrant, no you don't.
- Don't talk to cops. Don't EVER talk to cops. Demand your attorney, even if you don't have one (yet). They'll also tell you not to talk to cops.
Individually, we definitely won't have enough money or resources to make it through. We're going to need our neighbors and our communities to support us, and they're going to need our help as well. Mutual aid has always been a key tenet of solarpunk. We're going into the Smog Age, we're going to be stepping through all kinds of slop, and we're going to need each other to make it through the next four years.
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