November 8, 2024

Civics

'The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.'

Daniel Hunter has been getting ready for this day. He's been writing scenarios about what might happen. He's been developing trainings for a Trump win. And he's been working alongside colleagues living under autocratic regimes. "One of the things they keep reminding me," he says,  "is that good psychology is good social change. Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it."

He says that for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation. This is a helpful primer that I'd hoped we would never need.

"3. Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there’s going to be a lot of loss. The human thing to do is grieve. ...If you aren’t a feelings person, let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw colleagues who never grieved. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. For years they kept saying, 'I can’t believe he’s doing that…"

"...Believe it. Believe it now. Grief is a pathway to acceptance. "

ARTICLE: 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won

Civics

Start where you live: Learning to see local power

BOOK: Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World

Civics

The places that hold us together

ARTICLE: Want to Support a Healthy Democracy? Start Here.

Civics

A pattern‑based approach to public problem‑solving

PDF: Pattern Languages for Public Problem‑Solving: Cultivating New Seeds for Social Change

Civics

America Unfinished: A plain-sight inventory of the state of the nation