Making a Difference in Trump’s America: Ten Simple Ways You Can Affect Change
Folks are not likely to forget where they were on November 8th when we elected the nightmare that is Donald Trump into the highest office of the land. I was working an overnight in Louisville, Kentucky. Even in that deep red state the brutal gloom of whatever the fuck was to come swept over the crew. Was half the nation indeed racist, sexist, and xenophobic?
The following days and weeks have been equal parts depression and frustration for many of us. What felt like paralysis, however, quickly exploded into a surge of organizing, activism, and engagement. People are hungry for action!
Here are ten easy ways you and I can make a difference in Trump’s America:
1) Take your action to the streets… of another community that doesn’t share all of your views and morals. Move your life from your liberal bubble blue city, county, or state into a battleground state!
2) Get engaged within your community. Your new home is bound to be full of allies ready to “show you around”. Avoid these people. You are looking for a new bubble. Find a circle of folks with whom you mostly disagree.
3) Earn your community’s trust with ACTION. Go to parties, fundraisers, charity events, Sunday school, bake sales, book clubs. Move your money from big banks to local credit unions. Start a canned food drive. Meet area person of status Morgan; get invited to their upcoming block party.
4) While at the Inauguration Block Party, chat up Morgan’s significant other. Regale them with tales of your Ugandan Safari. Learn they are an amateur photographer and speak vaguely of the beauty of following your passion in life.
5) Take Morgan’s SO on a coffee date to talk more about Uganda. See their photography and be actually impressed; encourage them to follow their dreams. Use their emotional state to convince them of the values and ideals you hold true. IF IN TEXAS, take them to the border wall to tear a down small piece in unironic protest of Trump’s racist ideology. As you share a kiss of political ecstasy, the border patrol arrives and sends you both running. Deepen your bond by holding hands as you lay hiding in the low brush.
6) Spend the next few weeks seducing Morgan’s SO slowly. Gain the trust of their friend circle. Use Morgan’s SO as a mouthpiece for spreading your evolved ideals. Make Morgan your FOIL. Morgan represents those misguided and manipulated by Trump’s rhetoric. Move into Morgan’s neighborhood. Use jealousy and carefully placed social manipulation to entrap Morgan into making a public outburst. Finally usurp Morgan’s place with both their SO and community.
7) Use Morgan’s outburst as a teaching moment for the community at large. Teach them something meaningful and moral (to you), but only tangentially political. Be known as a local big thinker. Transition your work life into community organizing. Insert your liberal propaganda lightly at first, using proxies. Slowly win the hearts and minds of those even outside Morgan’s circle. Become openly socialist.
8) Marry Morgan’s SO and breed viscerally. Raise children according to your world-view; be sure to instill your superior moral compass. Send them to public school and make a big deal of it, but pay for outside tutoring as well. Your progenitors will be your torch, spreading your message, long past your death, to future generations of Trump-like supporters and casual racists.
9) When your children have graduated high school, run for local office starting with Unified School District Board President. Lose your first race, but win people’s hearts and return the next election with a landslide victory. Become State Senator. Introduce and pass legislation with pure motives, unsullied by The Reptilian Ideals that dominate the political landscape of 2054. Become internet-famous for a few weeks for your anti-oppression legislative victories. Serve ten years of relatively inconsequential legislating, overshadowing your former fame, for you at least. Live for the 500k twitter followers you still enjoy.
10) Become embroiled in a local scandal that you don’t think has legs but ends up becoming national news somehow. Deny allegations you supported the Pacific Secession Pact at a May 2057 fundraiser for that kid from Stranger Things’ first Senate run. Lose trust of your local community, constituents, circles, and most importantly Morgan’s SO, regardless of your acquittal and innocence. Never recover. Move out on your own for last 3 months of term. Do not seek re-election. Begin writing book, scheduling speaking tour. Die in your new condo’s Jacuzzi bathtub while skyping your grandchildren. With your last thought, hope they’ll spread the ideals you learned when Trump’s ascendency inspired you to take REAL action back in 2016.
