I’m pretty anxious.

Fascism is advancing very rapidly in my country and is dismantling everything from science funding to the basic rule of law to basic public health and disease prevention while being openly corrupt and literally just stealing tax money.

My country is helping to perpetrate a genocide and has launched a completely voluntary war against Iran for no reason. It also did something that “was totally not war” to Venezuela and is threatening both Cuba and Mexico now.

I work minimum 45 hours/week, usually closer to 55 hours/week. This is nice because I was working 70-80 hour weeks last year, but things have slowed down for me a bit. Idk who in the US is working 35 hours, but it’s not me…

Trying to plan for the future is very difficult because my government is running pump and dump schemes on the market literally constantly while also effectively destroying the bond market, threatening the dollar’s status as world reserve currency, etc. There’s no safe place to put money away for retirement and it is very unlikely the Social Security program will exist by the time I retire. I am lucky to have begun saving for retirement early and live well below my means in a low cost of living area, but even though I have saved like half my income for my entire working life that may not be enough.

Speaking of the future, it is very dangerous for women to get pregnant in my state because if they have an ectopic pregnancy or the fetus dies, the doctors will basically make the woman get sepsis before treating her because of the anti-abortion laws here. Many women have died. So even though we’re lucky enough to be in a position to afford to have kids, we’ve had to put our lives on hold & consider fleeing our home state where our families live.

My relationship with my family is strained - my parents, older relatives, and one of my sisters are all completely brainwashed by fascist propaganda. It is getting better, but during Trump 1 and Biden, they became more hateful and crazy than they ever had been prior. My other sister is trans but hasn’t come out to them yet. I expect that to be very difficult because they’re bigots and have been spewing hate about trans people for years at this point. My sister is doing a very good job of prepping them, and I’m helping how I can, but I’m worried for her. Our government has labeled trans right organizations as domestic terrorist organizations. Trans people are constantly under attack.

My younger siblings and older family members are also hurt by the economic state of affairs, either struggling to get a start in life or having a hard time making ends meet in retirement, paying for health-related expenses, etc. That causes me some anxiety.

I have a good standard of living because my wife and I are highly educated professionals. We are lucky to have had a lot of advantages. So really, we don’t have a lot of financial stress many others do. But even still, prices have risen on most goods like 30-50% or more over the past 6 years or so. If this continues, it may or may not threaten us right now, but it does call into question if we can afford kids, retirement, etc.

The environment & ecology is rapidly getting worse and the government is doing worse than nothing to help. We have flesh eating parasites coming back after having been eradicated since the 60s. Our government is attempting to destroy the national parks and wildlife system and allow.strip mining and drilling. Temperatures are rising and rainfall is decreasing, fires are becoming much more widespread, tornadoes have been hitting our area much more than in the past, etc. New Orleans, a city my wife, I, and our families have a connection to is projected to literally sink into the sea within our lifetimes.