What is There to be Stoic About?

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

I’ll start today with an answer to the what can I do question that we are all asking. I found this ACLU piece a good use of an hour. Click on the link to watch it and get some tips on what you can do about the actions of the traitor-in-chief.

And here are answers to that question from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (from his Substack):

Friends,

In light of Trump II’s first 18 days of mayhem — including his and Musk’s coup against our system of government — many are asking: “What can I do now?” Here’s a revised and expanded list, in rough order of importance.

1. Protect vulnerable members of your communities who are undocumented or whose parents are undocumented.

This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE begins roundups and deportations, many good people and their families are endangered and understandably frightened.

One of Trump’s executive orders allows ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, health care sites, shelters, and relief centers — thereby deterring families from sending their kids to school or getting help they need, and threatening the health and well-being of entire communities.

Urge your governor and state legislature, and your mayor or city manager, to block ICE. Get your local and state lawmakers to seek federal court injunctions. Check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, and shelters.

Meanwhile, you should order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resources Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.

2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community.

Trump is trying to make life far more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, or changes in how such laws are enforced.

His election and his rhetoric might also unleash hatefulness by bigoted people in your community.

Work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.

3. Help protect public officials whom Trump and his administration are targeting for vengeance.

Some may be low-level officials, such as election workers. If they do not have the means to defend themselves legally, you might help them or consider a GoFundMe campaign. If you hear of anyone who seeks to harm them, immediately alert local law-enforcement officials.

Other endangered people are Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago classified papers cases. You can help protect them by making sure you know what Trump’s Justice Department is trying to do to them (here’s one good source), and spreading the word. Urge your senators and House members (assuming they’re with you on this) to intervene on their behalf, hold hearings, and spread the alarm.

4. Contact your Democratic senators and urge them to block all Trump nominations.

This week, several Senate Democrats helped confirm Trump’s energy secretary. Bad move.

There’s simply no excuse for Senate Democrats to confirm any of Trump’s nominees for any agency while Trump’s power grab continues. These nominees have repeatedly stated their loyalty to Trump and his agenda — it’s the No. 1 thing he looks for in a Cabinet official.

Democrats should place “blanket holds” on all Trump’s nominees until his power grab is ended. [The phone number of the Capitol switchboard operator is (202) 224-3121.]

5. Urge your Democratic senators to continuously demand quorum calls and object to unanimous consent, to deny Senate Republicans the ability to enact Trump initiatives.

The Senate may not conduct official business unless a majority of senators (51 if all seats are filled) are present. This is called a quorum, and it’s the foundation of Senate procedure. If a quorum isn’t present, the Senate grinds to a halt.

Senate Democrats should use their power in the minority to call for a quorum and constantly demand quorum calls on any and all Trump initiatives.

Blocking unanimous consent forces roll-call votes, debates, and delays on even the most basic motions, and it will consume hours (or days) of floor time. It would also kill Trump’s fast-track confirmations.

Many of Trump’s judicial nominees sailed through last time because Democrats didn’t force votes on each one. This must end. No more rubber-stamping. [Again, the phone number of the Capitol switchboard operator is (202) 224-3121.]

6. Urge Democratic House members to vote against all Republican initiatives.

Republicans maintain control over the House by the smallest margin in almost a century. If Elise Stefanik is confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as expected, Republicans’ House majority will drop from 218 to 217 (compared to 215 Democrats).

This tiny margin gives Democrats enormous power, if they stick together. Make sure your Democratic representatives know you’re counting on them to do so.

Another thing you can do: Push governors to delay special elections to fill seats of representatives Trump has picked for his regime. For example, lawmakers in New York are readying a bill to give Gov. Kathy Hochul until the summer to fill Stefanik’s seat.

7. Write to your senators and members of Congress about the constitutional crisis we are in, urging them to stop all confirmation votes, stop hearings, and reclaim their appropriations authority.

Senator or Congressman (or Congresswoman) [XXX]

Re: Constitutional Crisis

Dear Senator or Congressman (or Congresswoman) [XXX]:

We are in a constitutional crisis. The president has usurped Congress’s authority, including freezing the use of appropriated funds. It is time to act now.

Stop all confirmations. Put holds on every Trump nominee. No more hearings or confirmation votes.

Get back your appropriations authority, whether through litigation or investigations. Allowing Musk’s DOGE access to all payments information enables them to decide who gets money Congress appropriated and designated.

Sincerely,

xxx

8. Contact your state’s attorney general and urge them to file complaints, injunctions, and restraining orders against Elon Musk and his tech goons for committing identify theft, violating the Privacy Act, and riding roughshod over Congress’s spending power in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

You can find your state attorney general here.

9. Join with others in your community to take on other initiatives in your locale and state.

Local and state governments retain significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level. Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders. You can find your nearest Indivisible group here.

10. Organize or participate in boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla and any companies that advertise on X or Fox News.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock.

11. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Trump.

Much of the action over the next months and years will be in the federal courts. The groups initiating legislation that I know and trust include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Public Citizen, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Common Cause.

You can track the federal cases against the Trump regime here.

12. Spread the truth.

Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Trump propaganda, including local media, contradict them with facts and their sources.

Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic,Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.

13. Urge friends, relatives, and acquaintances to avoid Trump propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, X, and, increasingly, Facebook and Instagram.

They are filled with hateful bigotry and toxic and dangerous lies. For some people, these propaganda sources can also be addictive; help the people you know wean themselves off them.

14. Encourage worker action.

Most labor unions are on the right side — seeking to build worker power and resist repression. You can support them by joining picket lines and boycotts and encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize.

Encourage union pension funds to divest stock in Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla shares have been held by funds such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which serve public employees and some unionized workers. As of June 2024, CalPERS owned nearly 9.2 million Tesla shares, valued at over $2 billion.

Private-sector union pension funds, such as those managed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or the United Auto Workers (UAW) Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, may have Tesla stock through index funds or direct investments.

15. Take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Please do not become so obsessed by what Trump and Musk are doing that you neglect your own well-being. It’s important that you take time for yourself, read a good book or watch an absorbing TV series. See friends. Find something to laugh at every day. Get enough exercise.

And hold your loved ones tight.

We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity. We need to stay healthy for this fight. We need to be fortified by those we care about. And we need to be there for those we love.

16. Finally, and not the least, keep the faith.

Do not give up on America. Do not fall into the traps of cynicism and defeatism. Remember, Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker. In the House, the Republicans’ lead is the smallest in almost a century. In the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive races, including in four states Trump won.

America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it — or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.

The forces of Trumpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. We cannot allow them to.

We will never give up.

Robert Reich
Substack

I am acting on Reich’s item #1. have had training in how to respond to and report ICE activity in my home area. I’m not sure how much ICE activity that there will be within 20 minutes of my quiet suburban neighborhood, but I’ve been trained and have signed up to be a part of th rapid response network for Santa Clara County. I have an understanding now of what immigrants are facing and how to help in my own small way.

Now, you might be asking what do have to be so Stoic about? I say “might be asking” because maybe you’ve been on a remote island in the South Pacific with no access to news sources of any kind and have a Rip Van Winkle excuse for not knowing what the latest American president is doing to purposely (fuck) up his own country and hand it over to Fascists, right wing billionaires and religious zealots bent on turning the United States into the world Canadian Margaret Atwood imagined in her 1985 book “a Handmaid’s Tale.” There is also a film based on the book. You can see the Trailer here. There was a time when this story was wacked out fiction. Not so much right now.

I’m not stoic by nature, but current events have pushed into exploring stoicism and beginning to apply it to myself. If I were to continue on my non-stoic path, I think that I would go stark-raving , luney tunes mad!

How did we get to this point? I’m not even going to begin to try to answer that question. The big question in the moment is how do we respond to the coup that is happening in the United States right now? We don’t have the luxury of time or waiting for someone else to do something. That someone is us. You and me.

For whatever reason more Americans voted for these governmental morons is not something I can control (I’m practicing Stoicism here) so I’m letting that go.

What I can do is be a resource to immigrant families facing illegal and immoral detention and deportation, What I can do is to encourage you to spread the word about disinformation and maybe even apply your creativity in how to get real information, real facts to the people who aren’t getting it.

I see the best way to get around the disinformation is through direct action like that taken by Russian musician and Pacifist Sasha Skocilenko who put anti war messages over price tags in a St. Petersburg supermarket to protest Russias’s invasion of Ukraine. Her courageous and vitally important resistance to Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral war on Ukraine netted her a seven year prison sentence. Sasha’s resistance and courage are a model for us all.

The Episcopal archbishop of Washington spoke truth to power (the president) during the Innauguration Prayer Service. Listen to Maryann Budde’s sermon ata the link adjacent.

I view that the key to getting our country back is get information into the heads of people who are not getting factual information, who are being purposefully mis-informed or dis-informed or not informed at all about what the current president is doing right now. This is going to require creativity, moxy and courage like that demonstrated by Skochilenko and Budde.

In the meantime, breath deeply and practice love wherever you are.

A very wise Buddhist friend taught me to say these words to myself when I'm starting to get very angry at someone's actions or words:

"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be happy.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be healthy and strong.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be at ease.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be at peace.

Sometimes I blowup and then remember to use this mantra, but more and more I’m finding that I use it when I want to merely calm myself. I find it difficult at times, but when I apply it, it works.