Remember What You Love
A Bette member sends us sage words from feminist author Rebecca Solnit + writer Tess Rafferty sends us her election response video
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is.—Rebecca Solnit
It is more important than ever to support independent investigative reporters. Media failed us, and in fact, is likely the biggest villain in this story, which is a story far from over. So please take out a membership if you can as I will do everything in my power to keep this community informed, inspired, and aware of their own power.
I do not sell hopium, and I am seeing a lot of it going around. This is America’s darkest hour. And I encourage each of you to reflect on what that means for your family and to take appropriate action. It will be different for everyone. Have conversations with trusted allies. This is a new beginning, even though it’s not the beginning we had hoped for. There are opportunities in new beginnings.
As I wrote in my Defeating Nuclear Beasts report, we must remember to have a happy life.
Governments exercise information control, and the people need truth. So it is often up to small groups of citizens to work together to fend off threats. In addition, once defeated, the threats can regenerate unless the defeat is definitive. We allowed the beast to regenerate after defeat, despite the efforts of many good people.
I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished together. I see you out there organizing, heroically. Here is Bette member Julie DeLaurier’s latest profile picture:
She is my hero.
I will keep bringing you the best guests I can find to keep us informed, because knowledge is our super power.
As I wrote in my elegy yesterday, people don’t read books anymore, but we do.
Mark your calendars for Sunday, November 10, as we bring back author and J6 witness, Jason Van Tatenhove, a former Oath Keeper propagandist who wrote Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should Be Concerned About a New Civil War. Registration link coming tonight.
As disinformation analyst Dietmar Pichler told us, there are no civilians in nations targeted with information warfare. We are soldiers, and we carry on.
So here I offer some words from some brilliant women.
The first is from feminist author Rebecca Solnit:
“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.
You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is.
You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who's upset and check your equipment for going onward.
A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.
People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry.
There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it's sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.”
Our community member who sent us that also reminds us to read Timothy Snyder's books On Tyranny and On Freedom, which I do often.
He also wrote:
After Trump's Electoral College "selection" in 2016 I saw this message on a Post-It inside an elevator: "I won't give up and neither should you." Buy some Post-Its and post them. Stickers were posted all over in Germany during the Nazi era.
During the 2017 Muslim ban some of us wore a safety pin on our clothes to designate that we were friendly.
We are far from alone.
We are far from alone.
My hero Tess Rafferty — who created an epic video two days after the 2016 election, offers our community this:
We are not alone.
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Related:
Rebecca Solnit socials:
Twitter: RebeccaSolnit
http://rebeccasolnit.net/
Tess Rafferty socials:
Substack: tessrafferty.substack.com
TikTik, IG and X: TheTuringTess
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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