Duck and Cover

Friday evening, Rachel Maddow pretty much rolled out the MSNBC playbook for the coming year.
  • Trump is unstable, incompetent and dangerous.
  • He was helped into office by enemy agents who are poised to meddle with us again.
  • Republicans in Congress are so hell-bent on their extremist agenda that they're protecting him so he'll sign their bills into law.
  • The only hope we have to stave off disaster is a massive Democratic victory in the 2018 elections.
I can't really argue with any of those points, although I think they're being presented in a way that's too alarmist. But I don't need to be beaten over the head with them day after day for the next ten months. I'm also wary of pinning all our hopes for the future of civilization on a single election. Weren't we all doing that in 2016? How did that work out?



Rather than sitting around obsessing over every fraction of a point in the latest opinion polls or whether every little tweet puts us one step closer to dictatorship, I'd like to know more about people who are doing something. For example:
  • Suppose Trump does try to shut down the Russia investigation. What can be done to block the attempt? If he succeeds, who can pick up the baton and carry on? State governments? News media? Someone else?
  • Trump isn't interested in protecting the election against more Russian interference. What are the rest of us going to do? What can state and local governments do? What can the internet companies do? And what about "Anonymous" and other hacker groups? Let's get some ideas going.
  • I've heard several reports about the amazing number of women who are running for office. Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they stand for? Inquiring minds want to know.
If anyone knows who might be covering topics like those, I'd love to hear about it. Meanwhile, in my ongoing effort to find stuff to follow online that doesn't make me crazy, I've signed up for Instagram and intend to spend more time there than at some other websites I've frequented before. Drop by sometime and say hello.

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