The Lurch
A Call To Action
This idea grew out of an off the cuff thread I wrote on bluesky. Read the original.
Think about that viral post you’ve seen—a video of a mom who meticulously deep cleans her kitchen and stocks every cabinet. For a few days, everything is flawless because she’s the one keeping it all together. Then, suddenly, when she stops for even just a day or two, the chaos is undeniable. That’s the fight against cascading failure we ignore every day. It’s the same with our society: the invisible work of civil servants holds our lives in a delicate balance, and when that work stops, things fall apart. And make no mistake—the collapse is coming. But maybe just not right away.
Cascading Failure
Every day, dedicated people work behind the scenes to keep our world running. They’re like the mom who cleans up so diligently that no one notices how much her work matters—until one day, when the mess piles up. When these crucial figures are purged or sidelined, we might at first only see isolated incidents—a delayed train, a poorly maintained bridge, a service outage or mid air collision here or there. But these are not random glitches. They are warning signs that the system is slowly unraveling. The everyday miracles we take for granted are built on a delicate balance, one that can collapse when the unsung heroes stop doing their job.
The Momentum of Decay
I learned a tough lesson about this the hard way. Thanks to my old Pontiac Bonneville. I was young, I didn’t think much of maintenance and couldn’t afford it anyway. One day, while driving, I noticed a tire rolling away on its own. Amusingly, I half-watched it—thinking nothing of it. Then, without warning, the side of my car suddenly dropped—sparks, metal screeching, and a violent lurch that sent everything spiraling out of control. I’d heard a faint squeal earlier, but I didn’t make it a priority to get it checked. I thought that maybe it was brake pads? That moment is a brutal metaphor for this moment we are currently in: a car can ride on momentum for a while, but when if the tires come off while in motion, you’re in for a catastrophic crash.
The Inevitable Lurch
The stories of the tidy kitchen and my wrecked Pontiac come together to form one stark truth. Our society runs on both the visible and invisible work of people who keep the gears turning. When those gears are stripped away—through budget cuts, political purges, neglect or malice—the system does not immediately turn onto it’s back like a Delta plane and die. It continues under its own behemoth momentum for awhile until it lurches suddenly into chaos. Look at history: Weimar Germany, the Soviet collapse—systems dismantled, living on borrowed time that eventually snap, unleashing devastation one drip, drip, drip at a time. Then ALL AT ONCE in a lurch that no one can stop.
The main issue is that while the inevitable decline of these background services and protections is obvious to some of us, it is not relatable at all to those that do not intuitively understand or think that they “only interact with the government when they pay taxes.” If you try to describe to them how the flow of government works from federal to local and how it all is a bunch of people tying up loose ends all. the. time. Their eyes just glaze over. If you try to write a profile on a specific issue that happens and then tie it into the larger picture.. Krispy Kreme eyeballs. So this campaign is attempting to side-step all of that and take a more ‘swarming’ strategy relying on many individual call outs with a consistent format which act as pinholes into the larger issues.
What You Can Do Today
The signs are all around us. Every delayed service, unexpected failure or minor inconvenience that is out of the ordinary is a canary in the coal mine. It may look like isolated incidents, but they’re all part of a larger, inevitable collapse. And while you might not be able to stop the Lurch from coming, you can shine a light on these cracks. Use the phrase, “It may look like…” whenever you spot a failure that hides a deeper problem. Share your stories and tag them with #TheLurch. Each post exposes a missing link, a warning that the system is weakening.
This is in the same spirit as The Other Butterflies action campaign. I am trying to provide frameworks for individual micro actions that actually contribute to a larger cohesive picture. The plight that our civil service workers are undergoing is traumatic and catastrophic. And we want to support them and highlight what they do, but this is really difficult to do with any continuity, consistency or perspective. I hope that this provides some of that.
Template & Guidelines:
Post a link to the story which caught your attention. It can be as minor or major as you wish as long as it represents a type of failure or degradation due to the DOGE civil servants purge.
Simply Comment “It may look like [insert a short summary of what happened]”
Add the Hashtag #TheLurch
That’s it! We are aiming for continuity. By having the same format as each other we can achieve a kind of mass ‘branding’ that will help the awareness.
BONUS POINTS: Include (as a seperate and linked comment reply) a link to this article explaining the campaign.
EXAMPLE:
Future Plans
I’ve been looking into how to build custom feeds for bluesky and it’s.. well it’s not easy. For me, anyway. But I believe I can figure it out with a little patience. The goal is to set up a custom feed that will grab this hashtag and allow for all of them to be seen in one place as a linkable resource as well.
🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞
There’s no stopping the Lurch once all the critical components give out. But by documenting these small failures, by exposing the hidden decay, we force the conversation. We remind everyone that the invisible work—like the mom’s care and the car’s momentum even while missing tire—is what holds our society together.