What Are The Alternatives?

Part 4 of how to resist the threats of democratic destruction

The way things are is not necessarily the most natural or right way.

A few years ago, I asked my geographically-inclined brother to gift me a world map for Christmas. I needed some wall decor for my dorm room, and wanted a visual cue to help me practice my own geography knowledge. When I unfurled the glossy map from its cylindrical package, I noticed something funny. At first I thought it was just a quirk, a misprint. All the words were upside-down. That’s silly, I thought. My curiosity led me to look up the title imprinted on the map, Hobo-Dyer Equal Area World Map. I found that this decision was, in fact, intentional:

“The Hobo-Dyer equal area global map, designed to reshape worldwide perspectives, reveals accurate size comparisons while challenging the conventional North-South orientations…It was created with the intention of providing a more equitable representation of the world, challenging traditional maps that often exaggerate the size of wealthy, northern countries at the expense of poorer, southern countries.”

No, the words were not “upside down” - the map is meant to be oriented this way. The earth is a sphere. There is no obvious right-side-up. And yet, a conventional norm took hold to the point where my initial assumption upon seeing an alternative view, was that it was a misprint. My immediate reaction was to not take it seriously.

Once an idea becomes so widely accepted as truth, it’s hard to imagine that there are plenty of other alternative realities that are just as valid and viable.

This is the fourth and final essay in my series on how to resist the current threats of democratic destruction in the US. We’ve explored the steps of facing our current reality, finding appropriate ways to take action, and acting publicly so others can join you. The last and crucial step of these four requires zooming out. What are you fighting for?

The way you successfully fight against something is by fighting for an alternative.

As writer Brady Brickner-Wood put it, “Resistance is implicitly reactive. It does not construct or generate, but instead, exists in opposition to a constructive or generative force.”

The current administration seeks to keep us in a perpetual state of reactivity because it’s very difficult to achieve, or even conceive of, a new reality if you’re always on the defense.

If my brain immediately discounted the possibility of an alternate map orientation, it’s not surprising that conceiving of an alternative political or economic reality is not as easy as one might think.

As humans living in society, there are certain status-quo ‘truths’ we are all susceptible to taking for granted. In order to bring about a different, better world, it’s imperative that we challenge our assumed limitations about the world and what is possible.

Understand what you’re fighting FOR, not just against

What we’re fighting against

It’s clear what people want to fight against right now: this administration’s attempts to dismantle democratic institutions, and sow hatred, fear, and distrust among the masses, in order to centralize power and wealth even more in the hands of the few that already have nearly all of it. But what should we be fighting for?

Threats of fascism do not become viable threats unless there are pre-existing problems. Unless the erosion is already there. Only then can fascist moves look appealing to some, because it purports to solve those present problems. So instead of trying to fight fascism in a vacuum, we need to do it with an alternative vision in mind. We need to be fighting for a new reality that correctly addresses the pre-existing conditions that fascist attempts claim to fix.

The goal is not to avert full-blown fascism so we can get Democrats back in the White House. The goal is to build a better society that actually allows everyone to thrive, in the process of averting full-blown fascism.

‘Fixing’ our democracy

One potential alternative to fight for is a vision of US democracy that actually works like democracy. This would be a reformed political system (notably, these reforms would not change the capitalist economy).

Public trust in federal government has not surpassed 50% since 1972. It has been below 30% since 2003. Most recently, in May 2024, only 22% of Americans trust the federal government to do what is right even ‘most of the time’ (Pew Research). That’s an abysmal trend, a trend that’s been present before and after this administration’s first tenure back in 2016.

In 2019, the organization RepresentUs released this video, a searing reality check on US politics’ corruption-driven state of disrepair. The mass disillusionment of the American populace with our political system makes a lot of sense when faced with the following facts. A 2014 Princeton University study determined that the ‘preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy.’ Politicians spend up to 70% of their time fundraising for reelection once in office. Winning a Senate seat in some races requires 6 years of raising $45,000 every single day, an impossible feat without the help of billionaires and special-interest groups. Of course that money comes with strings attached, which is how billionaires and special-interest groups end up writing our laws, rather than laws emerging from the priorities of the American people.

RepresentUs advocates for anti-corruption reforms to get corruption out of our politics and make politics actually work for us. The gamut of anti-corruption reforms include: ending gerrymandering with independent redistricting commissions, creating ranked choice voting so third parties and independents can win, implementing automatic voter registration and vote from home, overhauling lobbying and ethics laws, mandating full transparency on political spending, and giving voters a tax voucher so politicians fundraise from their constituents. Their proposed strategy includes passing enough anti-corruption state laws that eventually federal victory of an anti-corruption law becomes inevitable, a course proven effective throughout American history by Bloomberg News.

It’s reasonable that the widespread corruption in our federal politics had a lot to do with getting us to where we are now, in this administration. Surely it helped lend credibility to 47’s anti-establishment appeal among a large group of Americans. Especially after the DNC spent years crushing Americans’ ability to elect the other beloved anti-establishment leader (the principled one): Bernie Sanders.

Democratic socialism

Bernie Sander’s flavor of democratic socialism is another alternative vision to fight for. Though he also adamantly advocates the removal of corruption from politics, his vision for the US goes beyond those reforms. To Bernie Sanders, democratic socialism means an Economic Bill of Rights, that establishes these rights for all Americans, regardless of income: rights to a decent job that pays a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement.

Democratic socialism is an alternative to unfettered capitalism in the sense that it prioritizes the redistribution of wealth in our currently beyond-absurdly-unequal capitalistic system. It seeks to shift the wealth and ownership to the workers (the 99%), and away from than the ruling class, aka billionaires and corporate elite (the 1%).

But Sanders’ democratic socialism doesn’t necessarily contend with the natural world. It allows some form of capitalism continue, while moving towards a version that is egalitarian and provides a floor on quality of human life.

Yet the reality is that capitalism itself is unsustainable and has led us to cross 6 out of 9 planetary ecosystem boundaries. It is literally killing us.

“Capitalism has a single, completely amoral value: profit maximization. It is incapable of caring about anything else, and it does not pause even if the consequences of capitalist growth threaten capitalism itself, such as in the case of climate collapse” (TheLastFarm).

How to build on the ideals of democratic socialism, but also account for this? Enter ‘degrowth eco-socialism.’

Degrowth eco-socialism

Despite its somewhat misleading and arcane name, degrowth eco-socialism simply answers for both the gross human injustices of capitalism and acknowledges its effect on the livability of the planet.

It is simply not possible for GDP to grow exponentially - as capitalism demands - without destroying humanity’s ability to survive. Thus, some sectors are going to have to ‘degrow’(TheLastFarm). It’s like cutting off the dead weight that’s harming us greatly. It looks like stopping or reducing investment in the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, prisons - all areas that are extremely inflated and detrimental to society. If we divest from enough of this toxicity, there is still plenty of room to grow (without overshoot) in the sectors that actually contribute to public good: medicine, science, recreation, nature, art, and anything else that actually enriches us (in the human sense, not the profit sense).

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is also aligned with these previous visions, but with added pizzazz and imagination. Solarpunk emerged in the Internet zeitgeist in 2008. A foil to cyberpunk, a science fiction genre which imagines dystopian worlds ravaged by capitalism and climate catastrophe, solarpunk dares to imagine utopian worlds in which humans once again live in harmony with nature, and each other. It is all at once an artistic genre, aesthetic, and a politics. Key principles of a solarpunk society include only renewable energy powering the world; circular economies as the norm; the absence of colonialism, imperialism and racism; celebration of Indigenous knowledge and practices; and even the absence of money (or any kind of market economy), and no hierarchies. Knowledge and resources are open-source, and decision structures are decentralized.

Democratic reforms, social democracy, degrowth eco-socialism are all exciting visions worth fighting for, but none of those concepts alone incite a visceral excitement in me like Solarpunk does.

You have to know what you’re fighting for to successfully overcome what you’re fighting against. But you also have to be excited about it and able to genuinely visualize the world of possibilities and the beautiful future we could create.

The role of art

That’s why art is so important. Solarpunk, though young, is a movement teeming with energy and art and stories. It’s easy to get fired up about solarpunk narratives. Solarpunk gives us permission to leave the confines of our current reality and imagine an attainable heaven on earth. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t possibly work towards it. Art helps engage the imagination and articulate a vision of what could be.

“Creativity and imagination are muscles that must be strengthened. The powers that be would rather see them atrophy.” - Re-Seeding Imaginations

The power of stories

It is far too easy to get stuck in the stories we’ve been told about what is normal, natural, and possible. It’s always a mistake to do so.

Thankfully, other stories exist and new stories can be written at any time. The story of capitalism is so potent that it’s made an entire society forget it has only existed for a few hundred years. Humans have been on earth for 300,000 years…there are clearly other ways of organizing society.

Stories show us what other options exist apart from the water we’re swimming in now. Stories are also fun and make us feel alive. Instead of just fighting against this administration, it’s a lot more gratifying to contextualize your fight as an opportunity to move closer to your vision of an ideal world. As Toni Cade Bambara says, “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible,” and good stories do just that.

I’ll be reading these climate fiction stories to better visualize the world I’m fighting for.