Last week I wrote “Don’t Blame Me I Vote for Harris” which was a reference to all the “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Trump” stickers we saw for four years. Will Dems put those stickers on our cars? We’ve never been the dozen-flags boat flying party, spending money on soon-to-be tariffed Made-in-China merch cult loyalist types—that’s a right wing rah-rah thing.
We’re more subtle; the silently-judging you intellectual types, though there hasn’t been much silence if you turn to liberal news over the last 10 days and its endless Wednesday-morning quarterbacking blame game. It’s easy to get sucked into an endless scroll of social media. How and where we expose ourselves to these feeds has become crucial.
Bluesky added a million users as the X-odus from Twitter that began in 2022 intensified. In 2020, there were 350 million users, now there are 100 million, and user numbers have dropped 30% in a year, with more percentage posts to come inevitably as Musk grabbed the new nickname “Elonia” due to his reported “first-lady” status at Mar-a-Lago.
People will seek alternatives to bad news when it’s overwhelming and social media wars ensue. "The reality is, whenever we get on social media, we have an agenda," says George Atkins, a licensed counselor with New Directions Mental Health to KDKA-TV. “Take a couple of moments and step back. We don't want to do anything that's going to cause irreparable damage to some relationships.”
But that MAGA train has already left the station, with bulk unfriending going on as people try to recalibrate their surrounding environment in a new era. One Harris voter saw her husband post gleefully about the Trump victory on Facebook and decided to cancel both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
After being plugged in relentlessly for months leading up to the election, when it was over I began to get weary of the “coulda shoulda woulda” coverage, realizing I’d spenttoo much time in regular therapy appointments talking about “election anxiety.” I needed to make some changes. I spent one decidedly “news-free day,” thinking of both the cliché advice to “touch grass” and a favorite Anne Lamott quote: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
I love dramatic Les Misérables flag-waving resistance rhetoric as much as the next disgruntled liberal Rachel Maddow-consumer, but she and Jon Stewart are only really on once a week. Do I need copious doses of Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Jordon Klepper, Desi Lydic and others for fixes? I do. But I don’t need to leave the news on all day, every day.
Moderation is going to be key in the next four years. The circus and the carnival are constantly traveling from town to town around the country, but that doesn’t mean you buy tickets and follow them week after week. In fact, often you don’t follow them at all because of the inhumanity and stink, where meth heads operate rides with children on them. That may accurately describe the state of our nation at the moment.
To get through it, we’ll need to choose small things that bring joy. Art, music, family, laughter, film, nature, theatre, hobbies, friendships... these shouldn’t be taken for granted, and hopefully can’t be taken away (like your reproductive rights) by the Republican house/Senate majority and Supreme Court rubber-stampers.
Martin Luther King’s quote “Only in darkness can you see the stars” becomes poignant as we seek to appreciate the light in these dark times for our democracy. America’s founding was a rebellion against a tyrant, and apparently on our 250th birthday we need a reminder of that foundational value as we may need to revolt, even from idyllic picnic blankets in a more peaceful way than the soon-to-be freed insurrectionists of our nation’s not-too-distant past.
Follow Mary McCarthy on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.