By Anne Trominski:
In case you were unaware, things are a bit crazy in the United States right now. In an era of shocking news stories, unheard of court cases, and generally unprecedented political events, discourse has gotten a tad tense . . . some might even say divisive.
Can we still discuss the events of the day over the dinner table? Can we realistically look to the past to deal with the problems of today? Is there an appropriate cocktail to serve for the end of times?
Three friends tackle these topics and distract themselves with other tangents in their podcast Civics on the Rocks. Steve’s an engineer, Mack’s a history teacher, and Anne’s just trying to get the mics to work correctly (with varying amounts of success). The long-form episodes are released at the beginning of each month. Living in Texas, they have plenty of political fodder to chew on, but topics cover all types of history and government. The hosts are unrepentant geeks, so they are just as likely to drop movie references as knowledge bombs but, ultimately, their goal is to try and figure out how to be engaged citizens in modern America. They’re also drinking and making cheesy jokes while doing it.
Full episodes with citations (geeks, I say) are available on their website, CivicsOnTheRocks.podbean.com, as well as all the major podcast carriers and socials.
In this episode, the trio discuss coping with the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
Read the edited transcript or listen to the entire episode linked below. And click here for references to the facts and topics discussed throughout.
Anne: Okay, let's get started. The question of the day: Now What? Before we get rolling, we should point out to our listening audience that we do record the month prior to releasing our podcasts. So as of right now, in our time, we are the Friday after the election results. So this is very fresh for us. It's possible that you have since gathered yourself and moved forward, so, if so feel free to just skip this episode, but we're going to do our best to react thoughtfully.
Mack: That's important.
Anne: Yes. Because when we chose this topic for the podcast, we actually chose it before the election results, we were always going to do: if you weren't happy with this election, what can you do about it? And honestly, that's true for any election because democracy is more than just a once in a four year voting date. You're supposed to do it more regularly than that.
Mack: Yeah.
Anne: If you want it to work properly.
Mack: Yeah. Otherwise it'll shit the bed.
Anne: Oh, yeah. Too late. So what advice do we have? Let's pretend this is normal times. What advice would you give to people post election?
Mack: So instead of the actual question being “What the actual fuck?”
Anne: Yeah. We're going to start slow.
Mack: Yeah. Okay.
Steve: Well, let me point out some wins from this election, if you will, from the presidential election specifically. I'm not going to delve into the various House and local things.
Anne: Okay, man, if you think you can.
Steve: The elections were free and fair and safe. There were some minor issues that popped up. There are minor issues every presidential cycle. There's not evidence that there were significantly more minor issues than usual. There's always a little bit of tumult, but putting aside some crazy ass people burning ballots in Washington.
Mack: Washington state.
Steve: Washington state, thank you.
Mack: Well, there was also the Russia calling in bomb threats in predominantly Black districts.
Steve: Correct.
Mack: Although judges kept the polls open --
Steve: Apparently every year some bomb threats are called in --
Anne: That, usually, they can't trace it back to Russia --
Steve: Particular, foreign adversary.
Mack: Russia doesn't actually care if we know it’s them.
Steve: And I'd like to point out, it's kind of sad for Russia that all they can do is 14-year-old pranks. But no, I mean, taking a moment, there's a lot of stress going to the election that there was going to be all kind of interference with people and violence and people, and actually it went off pretty smoothly, as smoothly as almost any presidential election, which I think is a good thing. Yes, that's one good thing. I have another one, but maybe I'll save that for later.
Anne: The candidate who lost, I thought very graciously, all things considered, accepted --
Mack: The defeat.
Anne: The defeat.
Mack: And conceded the next day.
Anne: And conceded.
Steve: Yes.
Which is how it's supposed to go. It's been a while since that happened. Just to remind everyone that's what’s supposed to happen.
Mack: So there's a few things that stood out to me because… So I'm a school teacher, I had students before the election asking me, “Who'd you vote for?” And I'm like, “I'm not telling you who I voted for. I can't tell you who I voted for.” It's at the very least unprofessional. Then they said, “who do you think is going to win?” And I said, lemme put it this way: If I was going to bet money on it, which I wouldn't, but if I was going to bet money on it, I would bet Harris would win. But I'd only to bet a dollar because the polls, the nationwide polls, polls in a lot of the swing states, they were very close. You had polls that had Trump up plus one, plus two. You had polls that had Harris up plus one plus two. But the other thing, and this is the main thing, and I even told this to my students in the last week in the run up to the election, the Trump campaign was behaving like they had internal polling that showed that he was in trouble, especially with women, because that's when you had him come out and say like, “I'm going to protect women whether they like it or not,” which is a little okay… but very on brand for Trump. But then you also had some of the Trump surrogates.
Anne: That's when you slowly slide your drink away from the man at the bar.
Mack: Or leave that bar…
Anne: No, because then he can follow you to your car.
Mack: But you also have the Trump mouthpieces like Charlie Kirk and Jesse Waters on Fox. Jesse Waters saying something that's just really, who said, if my wife voted for, if my wife voted differently than me, that would be like she was cheating on me. And I mean, go ahead and look up the clip, but that was so what the fuck? And then Charlie Kirk and others, and there were people that posted on Twitter that is like, a woman should consult with her and vote the way her husband tells her to. And so there was a lot of that. And so it's like, okay, number one, clearly they think that he's not doing well with women voters and that's a concern. So their response is to try to browbeat women into --
Anne: Yes, because that's always their response to everything having to do with women.
Mack: Yes. But again, that just shows the consistency of how they regard women and that even at that point in the election with one of his two campaign managers being a woman, that is still what the coordinated response was. And at the same time, the Harris campaign was acting like they had internal polling that showed that she was doing pretty well because they finished strong. I mean, the way that they finished, you can tell they were keeping their eye on the ball and they finished strong, they wrapped it up, we left it all in the field, and then we had the results we had, which the results… I mean, I've seen early exit polling and sort of a breakdown of things. And some of the trends continue where you have whites who do not have a college education are voting… well, I don't want to say overwhelmingly for Trump, it's more than 50%, but it's not like 60 or 70%. And all told, if you look at the breakdown by race or ethnicity, at least some of the exit polling, gender or level of education, there were some that were sort of out there that were big differences between the two, but a lot of them were within 55, 45.
Steve: And that was one of the, and I haven't seen all the exit polling, I haven't double checked this, but a person that I trust, they've been reliable in the past, made the point that it's interesting how you look at the exit poll data because apparently while minorities broke strongly for Harris, Trump actually picked up more than he had last time.
Mack: Yes. Especially among Latino men.
Steve: More Latinos and Black men, but voted for him, which they took—this is my second bright side—they took as a sign of a healthy democracy because when democracies have run into trouble, it's usually because there is some sort of break along religious or racial or religious lines. And that is not what is happening here, as racist as the campaign may have been, when you pick up minority votes, even if you're still in the minority, it's clearly there's some sort of appeal there.
Mack: Well, and I think it's largely about the economy or rather perceptions of the economy.
Steve: Yes. Not the economy, the perceptions thereof. If you want to use the economic excuse, personally, given the statements and behavior of Trump over the last four years, I don't think the economic argument is real. I think it's a fig leaf. I don't think it has anything to do with anything.
Mack: No. I think we get closer to what his real point is when he talks about immigrants to the United States, about the kind of country that he envisions.
Steve: And the way that he acts. I think a lot of people like it. I think that's swell. And they've watched him over the last four years, and they think apparently a president who mimics giving a blowjob to a mic is the kind of leader they want.
Mack: Yeah. I mean, among other things.
Steve: Which I don't understand. I literally just cannot understand. And this is my big hang up, is I had until Wednesday morning figured that okay, there's some crazies out there and some people who are crazy and the Americans go off on weird tangents sometimes, but by and large, we're a sensible people and that's just... distasteful. We're tired of that, right? We're all going to move away from that. Right? That's enough. Sure. You enjoyed him for the first eight years. Do you really want four more? Apparently most of them said yes. And I'm kind of reassessing the American people at this point.
Anne: Well, and you guys aren't mentioning another big issue --
Mack: Or we haven't gotten to it yet.
Anne: The gender difference.
Mack: Yeah. Oh, big time. I mean, obviously.
Anne: You mentioned the racial difference, but then there's the gender difference. And if you compare the numbers that came out to vote for Biden, just the numbers of how many people went to vote, showed up at the voting polls…
Mack: And this time it was like 20 million less, fewer.
Anne: And how many of that were people who just don't think a woman can do the job.
Steve: Yeah. Especially a Black woman.
Mack: Yeah. And so here's the thing that's happened in the days after, speaking specifically about the numbers, because the turnout in this election was like 2016 numbers and 2020, at least right now, it looks like it's about 20 million more turned out. And so right now you have Trump supporters saying, looking at that difference and saying, oh, and we're expected to believe that it wasn't rigged, that you had 20 million more voters. Like Trump gets about the same number of votes this time as he did in 2020, and you expect us to believe that there were 20 million more, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But then at the same time, you have some people on the left who are like, why is it 20 million fewer? Citing things like concerns about voter suppression and other stuff, which are legit concerns because of some of the laws and policies that some states, and specifically governors, have attempted to enact. But I mean, yeah, we are left with, at the end of the day, both times you had a woman candidate for the Democratic Party for president. That's not who people voted for.
Steve: I would love to get an explanation from the 20 million people who voted for Biden who didn't show up. Just flat out didn’t show up.
Mack: And I do want to see the turnout for specifically younger men, let's say not the 18-25 and then the 26 to 30 or whatever. Because I wonder, I don't even want to say I suspect, but I wonder if Elon Musk jumping into the race got a lot of those guys, got some of them on the Trump side.
Steve: I've heard anecdotes that that group broke that way. But at this point, as far as I'm concerned, it's anecdotes. Nobody really has good info. And many people are desperately looking for an explanation.
Anne: Yeah. I mean they're going to be analyzing this data for years.
Steve: Not to totally pivot back to the original question of what’s next?
Anne: I was going to actually bring that up that we have not yet discussed any of that. We’ve speculated…
Steve: I would argue, as is always the case in democracy, the way to make it work is to participate and to participate locally. It's to be engaged in, and I don't just mean government, I don't just mean politics, I also mean local charitable organizations, local things that support causes you care about, get engaged.
Anne: I would like to take a moment though on the down ballot races, because especially here in San Antonio, we are one of the blue islands in Texas. And that it means something because we were a sanctuary city while our so-called governor was shipping off immigrants to other states, our mayor was working with groups to help immigrants. And during the pandemic, we saw again the Texas Republican Party trying to murder people through COVID with some of their decisions.
Mack: Trying to act like nothing was wrong, Just need to go to work and die.
Anne: Yeah. I mean, really taking attitudes that blatantly went against CDC recommendations. And we had a local judge, Judge Wolff, who…
Steve: Who's a county judge. And that's slightly different, which you have to understand in Texas the way counties work is the mayor of the county, if you will, is the county judge. So sorry.
Anne: But he basically kept certain rules in place in Bexar County, like masking and whatnot, that --
Steve: Saved lives.
Anne: Saved lives. I believe that. And so it's things like that, the local elections matter because they can have an impact on your immediate area in a meaningful way, even if you live in a red state, even if you didn't get who you wanted for president. And that will have impact on a day-today basis sometimes, definitely a yearly basis, whereas you're only showing up once every four years, that's a problem.
Steve: Yeah. Right. And it's a good point. It's like you said, the local elections, the down ballot results matter in many ways matter more to you day to day. And in between elections, it's getting engaged with your government and with the organizations that are in your community.
Mack: And speaking of local, so in 2026, 2026 is going to be known as an off-year election because it's not a presidential election year. Now every House seat is up for election every two years and one third of the Senate every two years. But in Texas, in our quote/unquote off-year elections, we vote for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney fucking general—because we know who I'm talking about—railroad commissioner, and other seats. It's like, this is important. And if we are continuing for the next two years with this podcast, as we get closer and closer, we're going to be louder and louder about get out to vote in this election for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and so on.
Steve: And even, at least in Texas, the May elections, which are often local --
Mack: City elections.
Steve: All of them. Get out there and vote.
Mack: Okay. And one thing also about elections in Texas, there is a, I don't know if this is a state law or if it's in the constitution of Texas, but for municipal seats, for city council, for Mayor, you cannot declare a political party. You cannot run as a member of a political party. Now, so what happens in municipal elections in Texas is you'll have people running as the real conservative voice for whatever, and everybody knows what party you're running for, but you cannot actually run as a Republican or a Democrat. Now if you're running for judge in Texas, because yes, in Texas, we elect all of our judges.
Anne: Seriously, every time you go to vote, there's at least 25 judges on the ballot.
Mack: Most of the positions on the ballot to vote for are judicial positions for district judge, appellate judge, for whatever circuit within Texas that you live in. And then actually, in this election, there were three seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the highest court in Texas for criminal appeals, which is not the Texas Supreme Court --
Steve: Well, it was interesting also going to your blue island thing, what’s funny is once you got to the county level, I think 90% of the positions there was a Democrat running and no Republican even running. I mean, that's how ridiculous it is.
Mack: So depending upon what precinct, because you have your ballot, which ballot you're doing depends on what precinct you're in. And so there were a number of, I'm not going to say 90%, but there were a lot of positions on my ballot where the only candidate running was a Democrat. I'm going to say that's kind of interesting because right now, as we speak, there are rumors and behind, whatever, that the chair of the Texas Democratic Party is going to be resigning or stepping down. But at the same time, in some places in Texas, there are some positions where [a] Democrat’s the only person on the ballot. Now having said that, got to be fair. The last time a Democrat won a statewide office in Texas was in the mid-nineties, which by the way brings up another thing is when you have Republicans in Texas running on this, we got to fight, we got to fix this, whatever. And it's like, well, you're the assholes that fucked it up…
Steve: If it's a bad, it's you. It's your fault. You did it.
Mack: You have had governor's mansion for the last, since 2003. The legislature has been controlled by Republicans since the mid-nineties. The governor's mansion has been Republican, but they're saying, we've got to fix all this shit. And it's like you are the people. If anything has been fucked up, that's on you.
Anne: That's why [Ted] Cruz ran anti-trans. That's all he had. That was the only thing he could talk about that he wasn't personally responsible for.
Steve: Going back to what you can do, I would also say that I think one of the, and this isn't based on rational analysis, it's just a gut thing. I think one of the best ways to lend support to groups is to do it through legal entities, I dunno what the right term is, because I think for the next four years, the best hope anybody has of protecting any rights at all is through lawyers. And so finding legal groups you can support with your time or your money or whatever you can provide is probably the best holding action that we have available.
Anne: The ACLU is an excellent organization to support.
Mack: And there's the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Anne: Yes, that's an excellent one.
Mack: And yeah, there's a number of civil rights organizations out there. Well, NAACP, because the Trump administration, the incoming Trump administration has made clear, and again, Trump said he absolutely disavows, he doesn't know what Project 2025 is, whatever bullshit. Okay, we will see what happens. Right? Yeah. There were a bunch of people that worked for him that worked on this thing, and so we'll see. But the people that are going to get affected by this, that are going to get affected directly by the policies of the Trump administration are not going to have money for high-powered attorneys. But you're going to have organizations that are going to go to bat for them. And so you want to do something, donate money to those organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, ACLU.
Anne: There are also environmental organizations that are specifically law groups that their whole purpose is to take action in court. And I know what you're thinking because we did an episode about Supreme Court is basically in Trump's pocket. I mean, they declared him a king. So it's like, oh, well he's got the Supreme Court, what does it matter. Do you know how fucking long it takes for a court case to move all the way up the chain to get to the Supreme Court?
Mack: It is usually a couple years at least.
Anne: The longer you fight for it at the local and state levels, the longer it's going to take to get to the Supreme Court. And right now, he only has four years. Now he's going to work really hard to fix that, but right now he only has four years. And so the delaying actions that we can take legally are hugely important.
Steve: Yes, they are.
Anne: And they should not be underestimated.
Mack: And just even not just with those legal actions, but everything… fight. Now, I don't mean physically, I mean unless you're attacked or something. But there are many avenues that we can be more active than just being a responsible citizen, being informed on the issues and making sure you get out and vote and do jury duty. But you can be aggressive in advocacy.
Steve: And advocacy can take many forms. And it might be reaching out, writing a letter, visiting your local representatives. It might be volunteering for an organization. It might be simply participating in things put on by minority groups. I mean, frankly, showing them that you're there for them, showing them that you support and you're not hiding from them, that people care and give a damn is no small thing. And I'm going to be honest, with the four years we have coming, I honestly think that what we're looking for is, we'd love to get some wins; what we're fighting for is to reduce the number of losses. This is a holding action.
Mack: Literal survival.
Steve: Yes. I mean, we're trying to make things less bad. I don't think we're going to change it from bad.
Mack: And to be clear, I mean a lot of people who are here, who are undocumented, who are working their butts off, and I mean they are now going to have to be pretty worried about what's going to happen to them. But more than that, there were at least some instances here and there during Trump's first term where you had different county sheriffs and things arresting somebody who could even show who didn't look like us when they got pulled over, but they could show, and they had a driver's license, they had whatever. And the sheriff's like, well, I'm still going to detain you anyway and I'll refer you to ICE and let ICE handle it.
Steve: You look foreign.
Mack: And it's like, God damn. And there's going to be more of that. And I hate to say this, but there's, during Trump's four years in office, there were record numbers of hate crimes and…
Anne: Well, they've already started.
Mack: Yes. And that's going to be a thing.
Steve: Well, and that's one of my concerns. As much as I fear and dread the things that the federal government can do under Trump, I'm more worried about his emboldened supporters.
Mack: Yes.
Steve: They're going to be the ones who are going to cause maybe even more mayhem.
Mack: I mean, that's going to be a concern of what is going to happen to people just from other people doing it. It doesn't have to be federal agents banging down your door, murdering you… I mean, there's other people that think now they have the green light and that's going to be a real danger.
Steve: Yeah, it is. Which goes to my other point of actions you can take, which is protect you and yours, take care of yourself. Take some thought here about how to be safe. And if it requires caution and discretion, so be it. If it requires, whatever it requires, take care of yourself and the people close to you, because it's battening down the hatches time. I mean, that's all it is.
Anne: So basically live your life as a woman. Don't wear short skirts in public.
Mack: The metaphorical equivalent for all of that, yes.
Steve: I take your point on a couple of different levels. One of which being that I'm now having to confront the way most of the other Americans have lived for a long time.
Anne: Oh, I came to that conclusion. I woke up, I saw the news, I cried, and I felt like there were millions of people in this country who do not respect me fully as a human being. And I realize that I am a middle-class white woman who's cisgender and heterosexual, and there are people who live with that feeling every fucking day of their life and have for every fucking day of their life. And that's horrifying. And I hate that it took me feeling that way to realize what they must go through on a daily basis. And you're right, we need to protect ourselves. We need to protect our community. We need to show up for other people because those people who feel emboldened right now are going to get really fucking scared when the light has shined on them and they realize, oh, hey, not everybody feels this way. There are millions of people who don't.
Mack: Yeah. Well, and at their core --
Anne: They're cowards.
Mack: Yes. That's exactly what I’m saying.
Anne: They're cowards.
Mack: At their core. They're fucking cowards.
Anne: And they think they got power through this win. What they don't realize is the person who got the power doesn't plan on sharing it.
Mack: No. And also when it comes down to it --
Anne: Much like his economic plan, this will not trickle down.
Mack: No. And he doesn't give a shit about them. Which is something they don't get.
Anne: No.
Mack: And I want to address this because there are a lot of people who are reacting very strongly to this and who are very fearful about what's going to happen in the next four years. But there are also people who say this and they think they're being reasonable in saying that you're overreacting, you're being too political, it's not going to be that bad. And it's like they're coming from a position where for whatever reason, they don't see the reasons, the rational reasons, for fear that people have. And you know what? Let's talk about trans people for a minute. Among trans people, a disproportionate number get murdered. They're not threatening anyone, they're not harming anyone. They're just getting murdered for who they are.
Anne: Especially Black trans women.
Mack: Yes.
Anne: The numbers prove beyond a doubt that they're targeted.
Mack: And this is before this election. And so during this election with President Trump saying repeatedly that schools are turning your kids trans, they're grooming your kids, and they are performing surgery. They can decide they're performing surgeries or whatever, which by the way, I mean, everybody knows is bullshit. You're an asshole for repeating that if you're one of those people that do that, because these people's lives are at stake daily already and now… Yeah. So you want to know, that's an example of one group of people of why they're dreading, absolutely, these next four years.
Steve: To clarify my point, when I said batten down the hatches, I don't mean hide. I mean, just to be clear.
Mack: No, you do have to circle the wagons.
Steve: Yes. It's time to gather with people whom you care for and trust and stand together.
Mack: Absolutely.
Anne: I have gay friends, one of them posted on how to clear your browser history and what sites to use if you do not want to be tracked.
Steve: VPNs are very good.
Anne: VPNs are very good. DuckDuckGo.
Mack: Yes. Which, by the way, just works better than Google at this point.
Steve: And also general safety. This is not even like a government paranoia thing. This is just, it's good internet habit.
Anne: I had another conversation with one of my best friends, and she said, thank God our kids are grown, so if they dissolve our adoption records, they'll still be our kids. And people shouldn't be having those conversations.
Mack: No.
Steve: No.
Anne: I don't know where I saw the quote, but it was there are lots of times in elections where you don't like who was elected and you're unhappy about it…
Mack: But you can still live your life.
Anne: This is one of the few elections, in fact, it might be the first in American history for some people, where they are afraid based on who was elected. And if you're not afraid, I'm so happy for you, but maybe you should stop and look around why people are afraid, why there is so much outcry, why there are so many people who are unhappy about this.
Mack: Because they're not overreacting.
Steve: No, it's based on what he said he's going to do and what he has already done. This is not hyperbole. This is what did he do and what did he say? And the people around him.
Mack: And reporters say they're going to do, and what the rank and file wanna-be brown shirts want to do.
Anne: And you can point to that rally where they talked about Puerto Rico and go, oh, well, that was a comedian talking. He was spewing hate. He was spewing hate to a specific group of people.
Mack: And it's not actually funny.
Steve: No. And he was invited and his bit was vetted by the campaign, and that wasn't the only offensive thing. He said.
Anne: Oh no. He said it about multiple groups.
Steve: This is their thing.
Anne: And everything out of JD Vance's mouth is hatred towards women. And it's just, you can't look at what they're saying and go, oh, they're just joking about everything they're saying.
Mack: And I mean, I know this is true. It's not like I've gone through life thinking, oh, it's not like this anymore. It's like I know that there's assholes out there.
Steve: Yeah. I thought the assholes were on the, this is one of the things I'm having to, I still haven't, I recognize I'm having to get my head around and I haven't gotten there yet, which is the fact that no, really, actually, they're still mostly assholes out there.
Anne: Yeah. I am not going to lie. This has shattered a lot of my personal views of humanity.
Mack: One of the wisest things I did when I was younger, maybe the one, is I knew when I was a young adult that as an adult through my life I didn't want to be motivated by guilt or rage. Well, now look, because pretty much that's what it is for me and the Republican Party. And I say this as somebody who before, let's call it before 2012, who would vote split ticket—actually before 2016—would vote split ticket and tended to vote Republican more often than Democrat for a lot of races. But now the people who are the Republican Party were people who were okay with overthrowing the government of the United States, and 73 million people just voted for it. I'll always have a fucking problem with that.
And so one of the things that I'm going to do, and we've been talking about this, about things we can do about be more active other than just voting and going to jury duty is, for one thing, online, first rule of the internet, don't engage. I'm going to engage. I'm not going to be an asshole, but I'm going to question things. And when somebody posts something, a friend of mine posts something, and actually I'm probably going to do it off of my posts. I don't want to randomly go into other people's posts and ruin their day, but off of my posts, if somebody posts something that they just think this should just be accepted, I'm going to question it, and I'm going to stick to facts and I'm going to press them on it. And if they don't like it, tough shit. And I'm just going to keep doing that for starters. And then whatever productive and legal and constitutional—because that's the fucking point—way to fight to get people back in office at a national level that have some regard for rule of law, I will do that.
Steve: Yeah. Rule of law is, it's funny, it's an abstracted concept in some ways, but I think it was last night, our 20-year-old asked me like, well, America can't become a dictatorship, right? And I was kind of like, just stared at him, didn't really answer it. I kind of mumbled something. And then he was like, but we wrote it down. We have these rules. And I'm like, yeah, we do have all these laws in the Constitution, but those only work when the people follow them. You can just not.
Mack: And it's bad when it's the Supreme Court that decides to just not.
Anne: I'm still processing. I am not going to lie. I do find it interesting, there are different ways to react to stress and trauma. They are famously fight or flight. Well, obviously that's an oversimplification of a very exaggerated hormonal process that happens in your body when you confronted with fear. There's fight, there's flight, there's freeze, which if you're in freeze, that's perfectly normal because you don’t know what to do.
Mack: Because you have to process.
Anne: Yeah. There is another documented and well studied way to respond, which is the care response and that's why people run towards the burning car to pull somebody out of it when they would be safer running away. It's why when everybody's stressed at work, somebody brings in donuts, we have this instinctual response to take care of members of our tribe. And if you want to fight, that's awesome, like Mack. If you want to move to another country because you think you'll be safer there, I hear Portugal has fairly lax immigration laws. And I understand because that’s why most of us immigrated here was because we had family members that had to get away from political problems. But what I have found is working for me to get through this is to care, and it's to reach out to members of my community and show them that they're not alone. And it's to donate to groups that can do something when I feel like I can't. And it's to show up and keep trying to do this, even though it's really fucking hard right now and all I want to do is watch reruns of Charmed and eat Halloween candy.
Mack: That was a good show.
Anne: It was. I enjoyed it. So that's all I got. As far as what can you do right now? Keep fighting when you can't fight. Maybe just care for somebody.
Mack: I was going to say we're really close to a quote from Serenity. I was going there. I was letting your fly. One of the last steps…
Anne: If you can't…
Mack: Walk, you crawl. Can't crawl…
Anne: Get somebody to carry you.
Anne: Last call.
Steve: Whiskey without even bothering with the bitters.
Anne: Yeah. I had a couple martinis. I don't know where I'm at now.
Mack: Yeah. I had a whiskey. I had two martinis. You have had two martinis.
Anne: I've had two martinis.
Steve: Yeah. I think I've had three whiskeys. But the last one was kind of a baby whiskey. It was tiny.
Anne: This is a splish or a splash.
Mack: And we're drinking water.
Anne: Yes we are. We're all drinking water right now.
Mack: So drink your fucking water. Maybe be coffee later. I don't know.
Anne: Go ahead and take care of yourself, because you need it.
Mack: Because now more than ever.
Anne: It's easier to get up and face whatever you need to face…
Mack: The day.
Anne: You're healthy and taking care of yourself.
Steve: The most important thing is to be present for people and don't give in. The only way to do that is to take care of yourself.
Mack: Yes. Whatever you need to do to be as strong as you can be to take care of yourself and to stand up for yourself and others.
Anne: I would like to take a moment to say, you are not, as a human being, personally responsible for saving the world. It's impossible for you to do it, so let's all take a deep breath in and out and let that shit go because you can't do it.
Mack: That is technically true.
Anne: So now that you've absolved yourself of saving the world all on your own, you can only be responsible for the part of the world that you have the most influence on, and that is yourself. And you get to decide who you are as a person and what you represent and what you care about and what you're going to do about it. So decide whether you're going to become angry and bitter or whether you're going to still go out there as a believer in hope and justice and goodwill and then act accordingly.
Mack: Yes. And that actually reminds me of something my other grandmother said about all you can do is hold up your little corner of the world.
Anne: That's true.
Mack: Do what you can.
Anne: I do believe, I don't know if either of you have ever read Good Omens. The book's better than the show, though the show is very entertaining. But one of the things the demon Crowley does to spread evil in the world is he starts a call center. Because if somebody robocalls you and tries to sell you something, you get angry and then you stomp around and you're angry at the people you work with, and then they're angry and they stomp around and then they go home and everybody yells at their kids because they're impatient and tired and cranky, and it just ripples outward from there. Well, the same thing is true for goodwill and happiness and joy is that if you go around in the world being a positive person and spreading light and being nice to people and being kind, it has a ripple effect because the person you're kind to is then a little happier, and then they might opt to be kind to somebody. And I believe that that is a philosophy of life I've lived by and it has not been broken yet. So I'm going to choose to continue to live that way. I'm also going to fight where I can, when I can, how I can. I hope you do the same. And that's all I got.
Mack: So I'm going to say that I believe the same thing about helping people, but even if doing good for someone, doing the good thing, hypothetically speaking, even if there wasn't a ripple effect, and I believe there is, like Anne, you should do it anyway because it's the right thing to do and you have to live with yourself. You have to sleep with yourself at night, and you have to decide ultimately what kind of human being you want to be. And we are entering a time, and we know this from things that happened during his first administration, that there are going to be people that are going to be hurting, cuz they're going to be in danger, they're going to need help, support, do what you can. You can't save the world, but you can uphold your corner of it.
Steve: Yeah. I can't add much to my other participants here, but other than to say if it feels overwhelming, find one good thing that you can do. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to shake the world. Just put one foot in front of the other and find a good deed and some way you can make a positive contribution to the world around you.
Mack: One thing can make a difference.
Anne: And if there are days where you can't even do that, it's okay to rest.
Mack: Yes. Because rest is actually rest. Don't feel like, oh my God, I'm being lazy.
Anne: Yeah, you don't have to earn rest. Rest is necessary.
Mack: I mean, for gosh sakes. I mean, God even said one day out of the week, you need to rest. Okay. Do it.
Anne: Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.
Anne: Yep. That's it.
Mack: Yeah. Alright. God saved the Republic.
Anne: Yes, sir.
You have been listening to Civics on the Rocks, a once a month podcast featuring a real engineer going by the fake name of Steve, a real history teacher going by the fake name of Mack and a fake producer going by the real name of Anne Trominski. That's me. The guys drop a lot of references while they talk. We've tried to document them all. In order of appearance on our website at https://civicsontherocks.podbean.com. We're also Civics on the Rocks on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
If you want to suggest a question of the day or cocktail recipes or different types of media you think we should check out, whatever, please drop by. If you didn't like our podcast, well, I doubt you're still listening, but if you are, thanks for giving it a go. We know we're not everybody's glass of iced tea. If you did like our show, please follow, review, and share and stay tuned for our next episode next month. Until then, cheers, y'all.
Anne Trominski was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, but now resides in San Antonio. She graduated from Trinity University after majoring in English and Communication. She spends her dull working hours as an editor for a major publishing company and her personal time as an oft-frustrated writer and amateur podcast producer. She has written two yet-to-be published novels, countless reams of heartfelt poetry, and has tried her hand at blogging a few times. Anne is also a gastronomist, amateur chef, and student of health science. She is a constant learner and explorer and likes to drop knowledge on others like it’s hot. Most recently, she helps disseminate social science info through the podcast Civics on the Rocks.
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