Overcoming my Political Avoidance

09 Feb, 2025

Content warning: US politics, mild doomerism

I don't know how to engage with US politics in a healthy or productive way right now. In his first weeks in office, Donald Trump is wildly overstepping the jurisdiction of the executive branch, he's invited Elon Musk (along with the techbro lapdogs Elon drags around with him) to root around our nation's institutions with the express goal of destroying them, he's trying to stop the US from providing any international medical aid, he's trying to legislate trans people out of existence, and the list goes on and on¹. I'm sure there are a dozen other things I could list here, each of which would make my blood fucking boil. Shouldn't we all be doing something about this?!

The Rubicon

A couple weeks ago, Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios released a video: The South Bank of the Rubicon. It's less than ten minutes, and I'd recommend you watch the whole thing, but the crux of it is:

I want you to decide, at this moment, what the Rubicon is for you. What is that undeniable instant where, if something drastic does not happen immediately, your rights and freedoms are forfeit? ... When would be the time to act? Write it down. Put it on your phone or your dry-erase board or a post-it on your bathroom mirror, so that when that moment comes, you will remember that this was your Rubicon. ... And ask yourself, when that moment comes, what is the right thing to do? You don't have to have an answer yet, but think on it. Because we haven't been doing it.

I'd encourage you to do this too. What specific action could the current administration take, after which you would feel morally obligated to do something in response?

My Answer

When I try to engage with this question, I struggle to come up with a "Rubicon" that feels like it could plausibly happen, but that hasn't already been crossed. I can't help but conclude that I should have acted already, and haven't. And the next logical step in that thought is that I should be acting now, but I'm not². I should be doing something. But I don't know what I could do to help. It feels like anything I would do at an individual level would have no impact against the slight majority of voting Americans who seem committed to making things worse for everyone³.

And thinking about any of this makes me feel awful. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I see anything about the Trump administration. At my job, there are some TVs that are always tuned to CNBC, and often in the past weeks, they're discussing the implications of "Trump 2.0". I see headlines about his tariffs, the TikTok ban, the fact that he wants to meddle in the decisions of the federal bank. All this being reported as if it's business-as-usual, as if our country isn't on a knife's edge right now. And all of it makes me want to crawl in a hole.

Avoidance

I've been reading a bunch of tech blogs lately. Reading about topics like "how to write good code", or "what makes a good team" are pleasant and productive-feeling to think about. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm also keeping myself knee-deep in this stuff because I don't want to engage with anything political⁴. I've even been reading a bunch of posts from the early 00's recently (specifically Jeff Atwood's blog Coding Horror). It's calming to immerse myself on these topics, with articles written at a time when few considered the deep social and political impacts that technology can (and will!) have. This part of me wants to keep my head down, focus on my craft, and carry on with my life.

I tend to be an avoidant person. If something is stressing me out, my gut reaction will be to distract myself with some other bright shiny thing. At times, this leads me to procrastinate on tackling important things in my life. I want to get better at this (this is my current yearly theme, and probably the topic of a future post). I fear I am doing this with politics right now. I don't want to.

Next Steps

I need to eat my vegetables and engage more meaningfully with this, as long as I focus on doing so in a way that both:

• is productive. By this I mean it should actually have some impact on the world, beyond me feeling informed.
• doesn't make me feel awful all the time. If it makes me feel awful, I will eventually stop engaging again

So if my answer were to start reading more political news (and no other changes), this would fail both tests. I would be significantly more miserable and I wouldn't be making the world any better.

So what should I do?

Drill Down

I strongly believe that the way people improve the world is by focusing on one specific problem, going deep instead of broad. Then, as long as different people choose different problems, together we will make meaningful progress on each of these fronts. This is something that John Green has discussed regarding his new book Everything is Tuberculosis (hint: he's gone deep on Tuberculosis). So one next step for me is to try to pin down a more narrow scope than "US Politics", and focus my energy on understanding the problems in that area and what we should do about them.

I will likely still feel somewhat guilty for continuing to avoid some other areas (since Trump and the Republican party will presumably continue to do shitty things that demand attention), but I think this is the way I need to approach this.

I'm not entirely sure what front I should choose. I've already done a decent bit of reading on social media and its impacts on our minds and social habits, so something in this realm seems potentially relevant. Unfortunately, with my reading, I don't have any silver-bullet answers, but I suppose that makes sense. These meaningful issues require deep, intentional, ongoing engagement.

How do I Activism?

I also have no real experience with political activism. I vote, and I've attended a protest or two, but the goal of enacting any real change through my actions feels infinitely far away. I think this is something I should do some more studying on.

Right now, this feels very open-ended to me. Do I try learning in a leftist, grassroots activism kind of lens? Or do I take try to learn more about the existing systems in place in the US, and how to work within them to effect change? I'll probably look into a variety of things and go from there.

Donations

I also plan to look into charitable organizations that can help with the current situation. I can't promise I will end up donating to these, since I have to weigh whether charities focused on these US issues will have a comparable impact to charities focused on things like climate change, or the health and wellbeing of people in developing nations (which are the areas where the bulk of my charitable donations currently land).

Conclusion

I guess I'd recommend you also think about this. Under what conditions would you feel obligated to engage in political action? Have these conditions already been met? If so, what are you going to do?