"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich."

March 27 update: Fuck it I'm splitting out the "Dealing with the Police" section and adding secret police.
Feb 1 update: Added a new video to What Just Happened
Jan 30 update: Added TB outbreak to Wear a Mask.
Jan 29 update: Added VPN to Entertainment, new section (Holy Shit) to What Just Happened
Jan 24 update: Added a section about dealing with Police and Alt-right tacitcs to Staying Sane.

This is going to be a long post (3300 words/11 pages at time of writing). If you're interested in the theory, dive in. If you want to get straight to the actually help stuff, Ctrl+F for "Resource Guide". This is intended to be a living post, meaning I will update it as I get new information.

What just happened?

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So we're in an Oligarchy now. A small group of rich assholes have bought the country. Things are about to get really bad. How did we let this happen?

How we got here:

In the 1980s, Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent, defected to the west. He gave an interview (video/transcript) where he described the Soviet plan for taking down the west, in four steps. He provides a little more detail in the interview, but essentially the plan was:

1) Demoralization - Overwhelm the population with too much information until they stop trying to learn. (15-20 year timeframe)
2) Destabilization - Disrupt the essentials. Economy, military, foreign relations (2-5 years)
3) Crisis - The event breaks everything. (6 weeks)
4) Normalization - The new normal, once the new regime has taken over after the crisis.

Look familiar? This is also the playbook for a coup. I'm not saying all of this was Russia's plan (although they certainly helped), but the coup won. We're in Destabilization. The billionaires are in charge.

I want to take a moment to highlight this video by Blonde Politics. She called a lot of this stuff two months ago (such as Peter Theil's involvement in picking JD Vance, the retirement of all government workers and replace them with loyalists, and the the guaranteed upcoming martial law police state). She sites Curtis Yarvin a lot, the guy who wants to burn the poor for biofuel. Because he's one of the authors of the plan. This is who they really are.

What happens next:

The rich get richer. Let's run through a hypothetical. I own Lorecorp, a fairly successful potion making company. My annual expenses are $6 billion, and my annual revenue is $8 billion, meaning I am making $2 billion in annual profit. Valuation on companies that make profit is higher than companies that don't, generally proportionally to the profit margin. Let's say the expected value is 10x the annual profit, so $20 billion.

Suddenly, a recession! My revenue takes a big hit, down to $4 billion a year. My costs remain the same (I still have to pay employees/rent office space/buy newt legs and frog milk), so I went from +$2 billion in profit to -$2 billion in lost revenue every year I keep the factory open. The recession lasts longer than I thought, two years later I'm still losing money and now I'm in debt up to my eyeballs from keeping the company open. A venture capital firm offers to buy my company (and my debt) for $2 billion. I might sell because I'm looking at $4 billion in loans, and it's better to write it off than continue taking a loss.

But then the economy recovers. Now that company is worth $20 billion again, and the billionaires got to buy my company for pennies on the dollar. That's how recessions make the rich richer. Everyone's money loses value, but the billionaires have unlimited money, so they can take advantage of those market crashes and make a huge profit when the economy recovers.

Now, imagine you are a billionaire. You have unlimited money, and you want to spend it on more money. You could buy Y, the almost everything app, for $40 billion dollars, OR you could collapse the economy, wait for Y to go bankrupt, and buy them for $2 billion. Sure, the value of your money went down, but less, proportionally, than for company Y. Once the economy turns around, your paltry $2 billion investment suddenly balloons back up to $20 billion, and you made a 10x return. Wouldn't that be great? If you could just do that on command?

This is probably what the Crisis will be. I think the oligarchy now in charge of our country is going to trigger a financial collapse on purpose. Those tariffs Orange Julius keeps talking about raises the price for Americans. You pay that price, not the other country. That makes your prices go up. If we get into a tariff war with China, and have a 25% markup on everything coming from there, you're going to see that increase in your shopping cart. And let's be honest, corporations are going to use those tariffs as cover for additional greed, jacking up the prices even higher and blaming supply chain once again. You’re going to miss paying $4 per dozen for eggs.

Holy Shit!

Holy shit! This is happening way faster than I expected. I thought we'd have a year of gradually boiling the pot, breaking systems one by one. NOPE. They're doing it all at once, in the first fucking week. And that was the plan all along. Like many people, I'd heard about Project 2025, but I admit, I hadn't read it. I should have. They're writing Trump's executive orders for him. We all knew it was always the plan. He's running through the playbook. Read up on Project 2025, because that's what our next 4+ years are going to look like.

If you're a Federal employee reading this, please don't take the buyout. You know Trump never pays. Besides, payouts for severance are capped at $25k so him saying he's going to pay you 8 months of salary is absolutely a lie. We need competent people instead of MAGA loyalists whose only qualification is a willingness to break the law, and you can bet your ass whoever replaces you will have to sign a loyalty pledge to Trump instead of the country.

Pride (the sin, not the LGBT thing):

I want to talk about Pride for a moment, because I think that is going to be many peoples’ biggest struggle. Pride has been corrupted into a weapon of internalized oppression. Propaganda has told you that it is weak to ask for help, that you must grin and bear it alone. Are you a welfare queen, living off government handouts, or a fine upstanding individual, who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

Fuck those guys. It is the bravest thing in the world to ask for help. You're fighting against societal indoctrination and your own internalized shame to solve a problem many others are too scared to confront. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” used to be a phrase that meant “Being asked to do the impossible.” It still does, we just pretend that if you just work hard enough, maybe you will be the one to defy the odds and defeat gravity. A delicious lie to swallow, and one the oligarchs will gladly feed you. Keep grinding hard, and maybe one day I’ll be able to buy another Ferrari.

The economy is stacked against you. The purchasing power of our wages has stayed flat since 1973 while billionaires are richer than ever. There’s no shame in recognizing that the class mobility is dead, and that the average American needs support to survive. Conquer your pride, ask for help, and make it through the crisis so we can be there to make the world after a slightly better place.

Resource Guide

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Things are going to get worse. I would expect higher unemployment, lower benefits/support networks, and rising cost of living. Save all the money that you can, because we are going to need it. Here's some tips for ways to cut down on costs. If you have other ideas, suggestions, or corrections, please leave them in the comments!

Furniture/Consumer Goods:

Look for local Freecycle/Buy Nothing/Trash Nothing groups. There are plenty of people that would rather give an office chair to a stranger rather than put it in a landfill. Between that and checking your local craigslist, you should be able to find furniture and some consumer goods for free.

Borrowing Things:

I feel like not enough people are talking about the Library of Things! It's time to head down to your local library and find out what else they let you borrow besides books! A metal detector? A lawn mower? A power saw? Board games? There's all kinds of stuff available right now, for free, at your local library. If you're looking to do a weekend project, chances are, you can borrow the tools there rather than having to buy something that will sit in your closet forever.

Food:

Look up your local food bank/pantry. Here's the more important part: Use it. Go wait in line, get some groceries, and have food tonight. Yes, it is for you. I don't care how much money you make; if you are even remotely concerned about food security, it is for you. Don't believe me? Ask someone there. Just because someone else may have it worse than you doesn't invalidate your struggles. Get the free food. Yes, it is fine to get food from a church even if you aren't Christian. Let them give back to the community through you.

Things to bring: Some kind of ID and a utility bill/piece of mail with your address on it (for signing up)

Entertainment:

Cancel as many subscription services as you can. Do you really need all those streaming sites simultaneously? I subscribe to Netflix one month a year to catch up on everything that came out in the last 12 months. But after I have? There’s really nothing to watch, right? How often do you browse through Netflix menus and find something you actually want to watch?

I am not a tech wiz, so I can't speak to how much protection a VPN will give you from surveillance. I use one (surfshark, although I gather they're all relatively similar), because they're simple to set up. Just set it up to boot on startup and you're good to go. In addition to unlocking additional shows by checking streaming services in other countries, if you connect to Albania, you can dodge ads on Youtube. I know this isn't technically saving you money but it's at least denying it to oligarchs.

I’m with Gabe Newell on this one, “piracy is a service problem”. Back when Netflix first came out, it had all the shows, a single (affordable) price tag, and it was legal. It was easier than pirating, so people used it. Now, you don’t even own the media you buy. If purchasing isn’t ownership, is stealing theft?

Relocation:

If you are on this site, and you live in a red state, I suggest you make moving to a blue state your medium-term goal. I know that moving is the fucking worst. It's draining, it's expensive, and it's scary. But the stakes could be higher than the inconvenience. What if, eventually, you lose the right to leave? If they are already planning on overturning the constitution (with removing birthright citizenship), what safeguard is there for any current law?

Moving companies are a ton of money, and almost always are farming your stuff out to multiple subcontractors who won't take responsibility for your belongings. I have found the cheapest way to move is to rent a truck yourself. I like Penske, but go to a couple of rental truck shops at least a month in advance and ask for a quote. Getting a quote in advance saved me 2/3 off the cost a same-day rental would have. I recommend hiring movers to pack the truck (usually in the $300 range) because they have experience wrapping and packing your furniture to make sure the load doesn't move during the drive, but you can always load it yourself. I always check Craigslist for people giving away moving boxes (and don't forget to pass along the favor after you move!) but you can also usually get free boxes at grocery stores or Costco. Just be nice to the manager.

I would highly suggest finding someone local in the city you want to move to to help vet out rental properties. Post a journal asking for help, or if you want to offer, perhaps put it on your profile? We're not going to fix the unaffordability crisis but at least we might make it easier for someone else to move to a safer place.

Places to move: Input for this was Erin's Map, climate impact, and personal opinion.

Cities are organized by Cost of Living, cheapest on top:

Minneapolis - Food Bank, LGBT Support
I am afraid I have not been to Minneapolis, but it is the cheapest major city (by far) on this list, and close to Canada. I've heard good things about the place, if you don't mind 9 months of winter.

Portland - Food Bank, LGBT Support
Keep Portland Weird! Portland has all kinds of interesting venues, events, and people, from the Soapbox Derby to the Unipiper. I have found it very accepting, and the food is great.

Denver - Food Bank, LGBT Support
It's high in the mountains, it is right in the middle of the country (so it has easy access everywhere), and it has a decent queer scene. Just stay out of Colorado Springs, that place is an oasis of hate.

Sacramento - Food Bank, LGBT Support
I'm sorry Sac fans: It's flat, it's hot, and it's boring. It's also still in California, and more affordable than San Francisco/San Jose. Visit before you move, but California is the safest place to be in my opinion. If you do visit, stop by the Anheuser Busch brewery. The brewing room is chillingly cold and smells of yeast, and it's lovely.

Chicago - Food Bank, LGBT Support
I haven't been here, so I can't comment, but it's a hub city (great for air travel).

Seattle - Food Bank, LGBT Support (! Self-signed Security Cert !)
Seattle has cool stuff like Archie McPhee's and Uwajimaya. Love the area, it's just very expensive.

Boston - Food Bank, LGBT Support
I haven't been to Boston either, sorry.

San Francisco/San Jose - I'm not listing any resources for San Francisco. You can't afford to move here, and if you can, you probably aren't worried about food banks. I used to live here, and I loved it, until I couldn't afford it anymore. Great place to move if you can get a high tech job.

The Police

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I'm writing this in March, and we've already seen the regime weaponizing justice. In what world would vandalism against a nazi's product be considered terrorism? Capitalists side with fascists because money matters more than people, more than right and wrong, more than anything. Law Enforcement are rapidly shifting into a private military owned by the rich as the rich choose which laws get enforced.

Dealing with the police:

Don't talk to the police. The police are not your friends. As they become increasingly militarized, and weaponized by the fascists, it's important for everyone to know about Qualified Immunity. Essentially, if a police officer violates your rights, they are immune to prosecution unless another police officer was successfully tried under near-identical circumstances. It's an insanely high bar to clear, and why most officers can get away with paid leave instead of a jail sentence. I am not saying that all police officers are bad, but enough of them are that you should treat the whole group as suspect. Do not talk to the police, do not let them into your house unless they slide a warrant under the door, and remember that the police ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO LIE TO YOU.

Dealing with the Secret police:

We're now at the phase with Secret Police. This isn't the first example. These are people legally in the US, disappeared for protesting against genocide after having committed no crime. This should scare fucking everyone. If you think you're safe because you're a US citizen, guess what, that's not going to matter for long, because these people should have been safe too.

There are guides on your rights and what to do in an ICE encounter. Do not let them in the door, validate their warrant is complete. But what if you are approached by people in plain clothes claiming to be officers?

• Do not physically resist. Resisting arrest is enough of a charge for an arrest, in case they are actually officers.
• Scream for help. Get bystanders watching you, filming you, stepping in to question why people in plain clothes are trying to take you off the street. We only know about the ICE detentions that got filmed. How many more people have disappeared without evidence?
• Do not let them transport you. Kidnapping victims are advised to fight back as much as possible, as being transported to another location drastically cuts down on your likelihood of rescue.
• Call the police. There is no way to verify that the people trying to kidnap you are legitimate officers of the law. If the police come, at least you will be able to verify that the ICE officers are legitimate, and get official records of your disappearance. I know I just said "Don't trust the police" but even that bad option is better than no option.

I really hope none of you ever need this information, but this is more important than shame. Choking victims instinctually head to the bathroom because they don't want to be seen choking, or causing a scene. Don't be the person that dies alone in a bathroom, get help while you still can.

Staying Sane

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If you're anything like me, dealing with the impending doom is pretty exhausting. Demoralization is complete, and our media no longer operates on fact. We can't change how the world operates, but we can change how we can react to it. Here's a few suggestions for improving mental health as we enter Amerika's fascist phase:

Delete social media:

Let's tackle the hardest one first. You need to get out of social media. ALL social media. Facebook, Reddit, Tik Tok, Instagram, everything. I'm a reddit addict, and it's going to be hard. That dopamine hit is instantaneous, and you can press that button as much as you want. But you know it's fake. An increasing number of those posts are from bots, and what's posted is increasingly being generated by AI. You can set up or buy AI agents that will scrape reddit and post for you, and bot accounts can be worth upwards of $50 a piece with good karma to advertisers. But why does that matter?

Let's talk about the theory of Cognitive Load. Essentially, this says that making decisions requires energy. The more decisions you make, the more complicated those decisions are, the more cognitive load you need to process. And that processing wears you out! Why do you feel tired after making a big decision? Your brain has been on overdrive deciding on an answer. Now, let's look back at my previous assertion that social media is fake. You open a picture of a guy biting into a McDonalds chicken sandwich but it's raw in the middle. Ewww! There's dozens of comments about how gross that is, about how the restaurant should be ashamed. But- Is that real? Was it a real picture, or a staged one? If it's real, was the sandwich actually from McDonalds? Was the raw chicken in the middle created by AI infill? What if the account posting it was just a bot farming karma, so it can be sold?

How much cognitive load do those questions take up for you? Do you want to have to research every single picture you find before sharing it with friends? This example is harmless, but what if the post is talking about a vandalized church, or a police officer assaulted by "leftists"? The misinformation is spread on a spectrum, from blatant lies to almost truths, so even if you are vigilant for the bigger lies you can still be caught off guard by the smaller ones. And that's by design! Once you've "found the threat", you stop being as watchful for the more insidious ones.

It's easy to see the dumber people falling for the blatant lies and think you're smart enough to spot them. It's not going to catch you! But no one is immune to disinformation, especially when it is something they already agree with. Remember, the goal is to divide America, to make us fight a culture war instead of a class war, so there's going to be misinformation on your side, too. It's still fed by the same people, and the goal is to make us turn on each other.

How do you get past this? You could be vigilant every time you're on social media. You could take every post with a grain of salt, do extensive research into every claim. Or you could quit. Do you have the energy to be that vigilant? I don't. And if you aren't that vigilant, you know the saying: If you can't find the product, you are the product.

Exercise:

"Oh yeah, I'll just replace doomscrolling on the couch with running, no problem!" you say. Trust me, as an out of shape potato person, I get it. I hate exercise. It's so boring. And it doesn't do anything! But: How long have you ever stuck with an exercise routine? Last summer, I got into the habit of riding my bike to work. I would arrive at work gross and tired, and it'd take me half an hour to cool down. I felt worse than when I wasn't riding! WTF!

And then it started to get easier. After a couple of weeks, my travel time was going down, I was less gross when I got there, and I even started to feel invigorated by it! I'm not going to claim a magical transformation, but it was noticeable. I started biking in to work even on days I was allowed to work from home, just because I enjoyed the ride.

In my opinion, the shitty part about exercise is that the gains are invisible. You don't notice yourself getting stronger, you don't notice your increase in stamina, until you stop. When you do, and your new fitness starts disappearing, that is when you will realize what the exercise has been doing for you. That's my promise: Exercise 3 times a week, for 30 minutes at a time, for 3 weeks in a row. If you're not feeling better by the 10th session, please feel free to come into the comments and blast me. But only if you're also willing to admit that it worked for you.

Diet:

Is anything fun allowed?!? I'm going to keep this section short, because many of us don't have the money and spoons to eat better. I ate trash for too long and got myself Diabetes. I'm managing it well, but I'm just going to chime in and say: Cutting sugar from my life has improved it. I sleep better, I eat less, and most importantly, don't have nearly as many digestion issues as I used to. Might be worth a shot, right?

Friends:

This is it! This is what friends are for! Hug your friends and let them know you love them. When they have the energy to let you vent, share with them. When they are overwhelmed, let them vent to you. It's a relationship, it goes both ways, and we are all going to need all the friends we can get these days. Be gentle, be kind, both with them and yourself. It's going to be a hard 4+ years, and friend circles are some of the best support you can have.

Wear a mask:

If you thought our last pandemic response was terrible, wait until the next one! The person now in charge of our health care regulations had his brain eaten by worms. We currently have a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas city, but you don't see the CDC talking about it. Why? Twitler banned the CDC from making any public communications, including about public health risks. Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok are active disinformation outlets, so they aren't going to share any accurate public health information. People are gross, wear a mask, and hopefully you can avoid catching whatever the next one is. Bonus points for making it harder for AI facial recognition!

Get real news:

I did some review of major news sources. Here's what I found:

CNN: Owned by Warner Bros, market cap $25 billion
MSNBC: Owned by Comcast, market cap $143 billion
Fox: Owned by Rupert Murdoch, net worth $22 billion
Washington Post: Owned by Jeff Bezos, net worth $240 billion Democracy Dies in Darkness "Riveting storytelling for all of America"
New York Times: Publicly traded, market cap $8 billion

None of it is great, right? New York Times is certainly the closest to "not owned by billionaires" but I, personally, have lost faith in it over time. Here's where I get my information:

Associated Press: A co-op of journalists. Not owned, not publicly traded. Systematically getting starved as the big guys try and strangle legitimate journalism.
Reuters: Owned by Thomas Reuters, net worth $18 billion. This is a Canadian company, I have heard it is still pretty legitimate, even if it is owned by a billionaire. Provides journalism, similar to the Associated Press.
BBC/Al Jazeera: I am inclined to believe international news about the US more than US news about the US, because the international news is less likely to be biased. In my opinion. I admit I haven't listened to Al Jazeera in years but when I did regularly I found their reporting fair.

Learn Alt-right tactics

You've seen alt-right tactics in your daily life, even if you didn't recognize them. Innuendo Studios has a great series explaining the tactics of the alt-right, and I think it's worth a watch to help identify when they are used against you. In particular, Radicalizing a Normie explains how they infiltrate and take over, by degrees, unrelated special interest groups. Like furries! If you have the stomach to take a more active stance against the alt-right in your local community, learning these techniques will help.

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Hang in there, folks. Things are going to get worse before they get better. But the leopards are going to be feasting, and eventually even the most die hard conservative is going to have to realize that we are not, in fact, great anymore. Things will turn around, and I hope all of you are still here to make the world a better place when it happens. Even if it involves 4+ years of suffering to get there.