Tiresia
People have survived “deadly” wet bulb temperatures long before electric refrigeration. Air conditioning is a patch for colonial societies and those that emulate them that have stupidly built western European style (Cfb climate optimized) housing in tropical climates.
Universal solidarity doesn’t just mean solidarity with the poorest US citizens, it means solidarity with the billions of people who don’t have AC or a car. Giving US citizens who already have AC and a car free electricity will probably be less effective and less equitable than a more egalitarian degrowth-based distribution of resources.The OOP mentions electric cars, which are simply a luxury when public transit and utility vehicles (kei trucks, vans) exist. Air conditioning likewise can be a luxury when passive design exists. Cisterns, shade, plant respiration, air flow management, high roofs, large communal spaces that reduce outer surface area, etc.
People have a right to live a cool and comfortable life, but that does not mean the right to live in a nuclear family suburban home with paper-thin walls and not a tree in sight, basking in full sunlight, with AC on full blast, using your electric SUV to drive half an hour to the grocery store or school. A tropical longhouse shared with your community, a natural or artificial cave system, or living somewhere that isn’t trying to kill you (as badly) can serve that purpose just as well.
So instead of pushing for free electricity for American citizens, I would much rather push for degrowth of the American economy, with smarter designs that simply need less electricity.
Hope and positivity are two different things. Hope dissociates from the present and the future, externalizing your care into an imagined future you can not affect. Empirically, people with hope fare worse psychologically than those without hope, because those with hope have no coping mechanisms when their hopes get dashed.
What we need is not positive news, but a positive life. Sit in a meadow, share meals with friends, be kind and generous, work at things that mean something to you, make art with passion, and rage during political protests.
When so much of the world’s news and media are pushing a narrative of unending consumerism and growth, it is good to keep reminding ourselves with factual news that this world will collapse sooner rather than later.
If it helps, all life ends in misery, be it decreptitude, disease, ecosystems collapse, or all of the above. Life has never been about how it ends, it is about what we do while delaying the end. Everything we do for the future, we do for the future that will actually be, not for the future that gives us comfort to imagine.
Which revolutions were inaccessible to the poor?
And honestly, yeah, revolutions like the American one where a bunch of rich people used propaganda, money, and threats to secede so they and an oligarchic “democracy” of white male land owners could pay lower taxes and privatize public land weren’t as radical or revolutionary as subsequent propaganda made them out to be.
So that’s a no? If Trump is people breaking from mainstream 2000s Republicanism, and Harris is mainstream 2000s Republicanism, then Trump and Harris must be different, right?
Anyway, more on the content: You seem to seriously underestimate how bad the USA can get. There are limits to how much you can brutalize people politely, so “brutalizing politely” also means brutalizing less.
The difference between Harris and Trump is whether or not being transgender in public carries the death penalty (project 2025 says trans = pedo and pedo = death).
The difference between Harris and Trump is whether or not people with an ectopic pregnancy will bleed to death.
The difference between Harris and Trump is whether the library has books written by feminists and Marxists or not.
The difference between Harris and Trump is whether the internet lets you access lemmy and wikipedia or whether it only gives you access to a ChatGPT-generated world of lies engineered to drive people towards fascism.
Harris means oppression, Trump means a suicidally fascist doomspiral.