#FirstCoffeeThoughts

Are people “performing” protests against the U.S. empire?

Yes and also no.

Peaceful demonstrations are not “performances”. They are demonstrations of ideas, beliefs, collective ideas, moods, and provides clear messaging for both other people and those in power (whether they care or not).

Anger isn’t the only language that can communicate messaging. Mundanes only think it is because it’s the only emotion they feel in abundance because they are dysregulated.

When people say “People aren’t angry enough …” what they mean is … they want violence.

People are killed EVERY DAY in the U.S. empire for no reason at all … for just existing … but no one really cares about THOSE deaths. Every death at the hands of corrupt, racist, mentally ill enforcers or police officers is a death that technically is in protest of the regime we live under, but no one sees them as such.

Primarily because those deaths are mostly Black people and therefore those people are expendable and not worth as much.

People dying in anger isn’t any more meaningful.

As a 40+ year Stoic anger isn’t an emotion that comes up for me.

Everything I do is about logic and reason … and protesting isn’t logical in an empire that doesn’t care about it’s citizens and simply ignores their demands. Protesting peacefully just becomes entertainment for those that find it amusing that people with no real power are out in the streets on the weekends.

It has no effect on the empire but it DOES have a collective effect on other PEOPLE who feel helpless and powerless.

The goal in peaceful protesting is to solidify the PEOPLE.

No Kings and related protests have LITTLE to do with changing the minds of anyone in power … their minds are twisted, broken, mentally deranged, and incapable of feeling anything.

No Kings and related protests are actually CELEBRATIONS of SOLIDARITY …

Surviving … living … finding JOY in others … is sometimes the greatest revenge upon people who WANT you to die and be angry and miserable and feel helpless.

The U.S. empire wants to rule by inflicting FEAR and feelings of helplessness and, even worse, ANGER upon the people. Anger makes people act irrationally, makes them lash out at others, makes them easier to control and easier to manipulate.

Why would you want to give your oppressors more wins?
Why would you succumb to EXACTLY what they want you to feel?

Live. Celebrate. Gather. Support others.

That is how you get into THEIR minds … by NOT becoming what they want you to become.

I think this concept is LOST on people who didn’t grow up in abusive households, who don’t have trauma from oppressive parents or partners, who don’t know what abuse really looks like, and who don’t understand the mind of an abuser.

I understand all of that well and I know that celebrating, living, thriving, and never showing anger drives abusers crazy … it doesn’t give them the feedback and dopamine that they need to thrive and feel powerful.

It makes them small. It makes them weak.

All of these angry, frightened, dysregulated neurotypicals out in the world who think violence, anger, bloodshed, and misery are the way forward are partly the reason we are where we are in the first place.

These people are so easily manipulated and controlled and pushed and pulled by outside forces that literally have them driven into states of anger, stress, fear, and misery 99% of the time.

That isn’t winning.
That is a trauma response and is a slow death from stress.

Peaceful protesting.
Passive resistance.
Living.
Surviving.
Celebrating.
Supporting.

All of these take power from abusers.

All of these allow survivors to actually survive and retain strength for a long road ahead.

I didn’t survive an abusive household and childhood surrounded by people with more power than me and people who held all the cards when it came to my life and future by succumbing to anger and violence.

My miserable, broken, negative, selfish abusers are both DEAD.
Both of the people who tried to control me, break me, destroy me are GONE.

I am alive.
I am thriving.
I live my life trying to help, support, educate, and inspire others.

My abusers DIDN’T WIN. They never could. Not even when I was younger.

Wake the fuck up, y’all. You are being ABUSED.

Your OPPRESSORS are WINNING because you are too stupid to recognize that anger, violence, bullying, negativity, trolling, hating others, pessimism, and everything else I see mundanes doing all day long is EXACTLY what they WANT you to be doing instead of doing ANYTHING positive.

The longer you stay stupid, selfish, and unable to see the larger picture, the more you shorten your own life with emotions and actions that ONLY SERVE YOUR OPPRESSORS.

Wake up.
Do better.

Survive this and be part of a greater future.
Death helps no one. You are needed.

My social media feeds are still full of people telling white people that how they are protesting is wrong.

White reality and Global Majority reality is very different.

White people need solidarity WITHOUT HARDSHIP in order to motivate them to really do anything. They want CHANGE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES and without losing privileges.

Members of the Global Majority know there can be no change without struggle, sacrifices, and constant death.

Two VERY different realities.

I meant what I said earlier …

These No Kings protests are not about trying to change anyone’s minds. These protests are not truly about changing the mind of a psychotic empire that has us on the verge of a nuclear war …

If you believe that even a violent protest would sway the minds of psychopaths with no humanity and who abuse and eat children then you’re absolutely living in a state of delusion and have no grounded sense of the situation you are truly in.

Be real.

It is true that a collective shutdown would cause an economic rupture in the capitalist oligarchy, but the collective shutdown of labor would have to last way longer than a year … and in that time every single person below a certain income line would be destroyed. We would have record levels of death, homelessness, unemployment, suicides and more.

There wouldn’t be enough people left to continue the economic pressure for it to be effective enough to hurt the pockets of billionaires.

Billionaires can absorb YEARS of reduced income because they have tangible assets of value. A regular person or worker will get hit after ONE DAY of missing a paycheck.

The number of people calling for strikes obviously cannot do any math and are too angry to look at the actual logic. This was exactly my point in my previous essay … all of these completely mentally and emotionally dysregulated neurotypicals don’t know how to THINK or use logic and reason.

Anger blurs reality.

The system is specifically structured so that the people who produce all the value are the ones who can least afford to withhold it. That’s not an accident … IT IS THE DESIGN.

That is the thing NO ONE has been understanding for GENERATIONS but the 1% have been manipulating you for MULTIPLE GENERATIONS to work and work and slave and slave and die to make money FOR THEM … and the whole time you’ve been doing it and not realizing that you are slaves to a system designed to kill you.

And now some are waking up and they are mad and they want to strike until they realize they can’t afford to do ANYTHING and are HELPLESS so they do what they can to feel LESS HELPLESS even if it isn’t going to move the needle on a psychotic empire.

When you look at protests or marches or any organized resistance, you’re asking if it changed a policy, did it show any tangible result … and when the answer is “not yet” or “not directly” then you dismiss it as useless and a waste of time.

But that is NOT how things work. CHANGE is not that transactional.

The violent, angry, sacrificing, delusional approach doesn’t SUSTAIN resistance over a long period.

THIS IS A LONG ROAD.

And what I described yesterday is the way to SURVIVE it.

Demanding that the most vulnerable sacrifice themselves to inconvenience the most insulated and powerful is not strategy … it’s madness … it’s completely illogical and based on uncontrollable anger and delusion.

This is why I don’t bother with people. People make NO SENSE and they CAN’T and DON’T think. They let anger and emotions RULE everything they do … which is again … HOW WE GOT HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

What is it going to take for people to LEARN HOW TO THINK?

You don’t beat an abuser by destroying yourself. You don’t beat an abuser by dying. The abuser will ALWAYS find someone else to replace you because you ARE REPLACEABLE, because you have NO VALUE beyond what you give to them in the moments they are abusing, controlling, and manipulating you for their own sick needs.

Like I said yesterday … you beat them by still being here, still functioning, still connected, still whole … LIVING and THRIVING and keeping your heart and soul in tact.

Passive resistance IS resistance.

SURVIVAL is the WIN.
Death serves NO ONE.

So … one more time for people who don’t seem to be capable of logic and reason …

My LIVED EXPERIENCE taught me how to survive in environments where I had NO POWER and no ability to change my circumstances until I turned a certain age and could escape. I had to bide my time. I had to survive. I had to grow. I had to have patience, determination, and WILLPOWER … AS A CHILD.

As with any BULLY, you don’t win by matching their energy.
You win by refusing to acknowledge or operate on their terms AT ALL.
You win by STARVING THEM and SURVIVING despite them.

Enduring, staying quiet when it was strategic, preserving and protecting myself, not giving them the satisfaction of breaking me etc NONE OF THAT was passive. It took energy, regulation, patience, will.

It was 17+ years of resistance. (Even longer if you count managing their bullshit while I was still an adult.)

It requires managing your own nervous system, making calculated decisions about when to be visible, when to be small, when to be loud, when to be quiet etc.

It doesn’t look dramatic from the outside but its EFFECTIVE work for the LONG ROAD against abusers.

The most dangerous thing to an abusive system isn’t people burning themselves out in anger, sacrificing themselves, making flippant decisions, or otherwise destroying themselves to make a futile point.

The most dangerous thing is people who are still standing, still connected to each other, still thriving, still building community, still finding joy, still resilient, still VOTING, still protesting, still WHOLE.

Stop FEEDING YOUR ABUSERS.
Stop giving them wins.

Wake the fuck up.

Let go of anger and embrace emotions that can feed YOU and SUSTAIN YOU beyond this Hell.