What do we do now?
Cheap advice for Ontarians from people who should know better
Hello. Is it too soon to talk about life in Doug’s third term?
It’s a weird time. The bum rush of the snap election came and went in a whirling dervish of nonsense, lies and freezing rain, and now we’re in the middle of a “trade war.” Every time you turn on the TV, there’s Doug “Captain Canada” Ford on CNN or Fox, with his new Republican dentures. This rapid-fire chaos and confusion is intentional, but I think you know that now.
Our offerings are research and reporting. We’re not really keen on giving advice. We’re in the “telling you what’s going on” game, rather than the “telling you what to do” game, but we get asked fairly frequently. The questions are usually some variation on “What can we do now?!”
In that spirit, and as a brief departure from our usual content, here are a few thoughts on surviving and resisting the coming weeks and months.
First, take care of you and yours. Sleep, eat, take joy wherever you can find it. Take care of your mental health, and take care of your physical health. No one is coming to save us, and healthcare is going to get harder to come by and very expensive. If you stopped masking, you will never regret picking it up again. It will offer you protection from COVID, the flu, measles, tuberculosis, and all the diseases from the dark ages we’ve decided to bring back. Get respirators and wear them inside wherever you share air with other people. Future you will be very thankful.
Second, clean up your news diet. If you aren’t going to give up mainstream news altogether, begin treating it for what it is - a means of manipulating you and manufacturing your consent. Be a critical thinker of what you read, hear and see. Know and notice the difference between opinion and news, and look up the names (and jobs) of the people whose opinions you are consuming. Ask yourself about the framing of the ideas, and who benefits from them. Most importantly, find independent journalists and news platforms in your region and support them. Often you don’t realize how deeply you are being manipulated or misled by mainstream news until you read some independent reporting on the same topic.
Third, get off Meta. That’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg was in the front row at Trump’s inauguration for good reason - Meta is a friend of fascists, and they own your attention, not to mention your photos, networks, likes, purchases, and on and on. Meta is your enemy, and we wrote about that if you want to read more. (There are some communities for whom getting off Facebook would be a huge blow, I’m thinking specifically of the disability community, but I know even those communities are starting to move elsewhere.)
Fourth - and you really aren’t going to like this one, especially if you, like us, don’t really like people - is to get involved where you live.
If you work in healthcare, look into who is on the board of the hospitals and healthcare non-profits in your area, and follow them on LinkedIn. Same with your local school board, or your local school - join the Parent/Teacher Council and research your trustees. Look up your municipal councillors - ask questions about them, and research them. If you’re unionized, get involved in your union - find out more about your leaders and run for a position yourself. Look into who is on the board of directors where you work, and think about why they are on the board.
Basically, be as nosy as you can be. The status quo depends on your ignorance of the issues, the players, and the game. When you get involved yourself, you’re tougher to fool.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, find and/or build your community of like-minded people. Surrounding yourself with minimizers and gaslighters will drag you down, mentally and physically. Collect emails and phone numbers, create your communities away from the prying eyes and narcs of social media. As governments continue to abandon us and undermine our rights, we’ll need community care and support more than ever before. Things are going to happen that you never thought would happen, and you will be required to respond in ways you never imagined. Seek out and nurture solidarity.
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