I feel helpless and hopeless.

This is a post about politics, by the way.

I have the privilege of not needing to have a conventional job right now, and I’m doing volunteer work instead that means a lot to me and also doesn’t take much of my time. I think people are generally healthier if they’re working less than full-time — I’m certainly healthier than I was in my last full-time job, working for a purely profit-driven and fairly dysfunctional tech company.

I value the work I do, and it does really help people at a very local, individual level. I talk about it as being meaningful to me, and making a difference. It is, and it does. But I still feel like we’re in a bad place, collectively. I don’t feel like I’m doing enough, I feel guilty, and I feel hopeless. I don’t see a way through it.

We’re all aware that our political system is a train wreck right now. I see bad things happening to vulnerable people and to institutions that support them, and I don’t see much to be done about that. I do know that most of what I read online is the worst, most inflammatory, generally skewed and biased version of the state of the country / world. I know that we are generally eager to oversimplify and vilify. I see inflammatory material posted over and over by people who share my political views, and when I painstakingly research it, it’s often dramatically exaggerated or unfounded. So I know, honestly, that it’s not as bad as it looks.

But even critically analyzing the situation, being thoughtful, using the low-bias news sources I’ve painstakingly collected… it looks pretty bad. And our political polarization, the power of money and corporate interests, the ease with which powerful agencies can mislead the public, the willingness of the public to be misled… I don’t see ways to move the needle on those. They did not improve in 2016, or 2020, or 2024. I see how individual fights about individual laws or decisions might be won here and there, but I don’t see a way to change the core problem, even incrementally.

I know people are working hard at improving our political situation, devoting their lives to it. I see them working on those individual fights, mostly. I feel guilty for not helping more than I do, in bits and pieces of donations and other support. I know that such work can make a difference, can improve people’s lives. Yet we have collectively chosen leadership for the country that is making decisions that seem to be causing a great deal of damage to it, and we seem to be losing more and more of our institutional integrity as time goes on. To have the majority of the country make that choice — and for so many of us on my “side” to see that majority as the enemy, to be crushed — makes me feel like at some deep, fundamental level, we have consented to failure. Even when we win with 51%, while that can preserve the lives and well-being of many people, it feels like we’re failing.

Granted, our institutions have eroded under liberal leadership as well; such administrations have made decisions I respect, but it feels like the core problems of national politics and discourse in our country have marched inexorably forward nevertheless.

I don’t have a tidy way to wrap this up. I’m going to go read some “how we win” sorts of posts and essays — much as I regret the framing — and keep muddling my way forward.

Here’s your SMBC for today: