Making Time to Resist

To best resist the horrors we’re now experiencing from the new administration, carve out a bit of time each day to stay informed and take action.

Well, here we are. Our country is now sadly being led by a man who clearly wants to install himself as a supreme leader and destroy our democratic foundations. It’s understandable that you’d want to throw up your hands in disgust and dismay and check out of involvement entirely.

That’s what they want us to do. We can’t.

I know. It’s difficult to remain engaged right now. Their entire strategy is to overwhelm us with so much awfulness that we stare at it all like a deer into headlights and freeze so we do nothing. We can’t let them do that or our country’s democracy and freedoms will indeed be lost.

Historian and scholar on fascism and authoritarianism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, wrote this in “Autocrats Want to Traumatize Us, But We Know Their Playbook and We Know Our Value” about the administration’s attempt to overwhelm us.

The purpose of the Blitzkrieg of executive orders and other actions by the Trump administration is to overwhelm you, make it difficult to prioritize, and demoralize and terrify you.

So, how does one approach this going forward? My suggestion is to carve out a bit of time each day to (1) scan the news to remain informed, and (2) engage in some action that will advance the cause of our democracy and civil rights.

By parsing out just a bit of time each day, you’ll avoid overwhelm and have the energy and resolve to remain informed and take appropriate action.

On my own list of things to do in a day, I now have a task section called “Civic Engagement.” You can call it whatever you want, but the idea is that for a certain amount of time each day, dedicate yourself to remaining informed and taking action.

Right now, I’m dedicating a full hour a day to this pursuit. However, I know that’s a lot for most Americans to do. Even 10–15 minutes of news gathering and then taking an action can be plenty for some people to do. The important thing is to do it no matter how much time each day you dedicate to it.

Do it every day. Sure, take breaks now and then to rest and reenergize. But keep it up and do it as often as your own mental situation allows.

How do you stay informed? I don’t recommend you watch any cable news. Apart from them capitulating and normalizing what’s going on right now, their entire business model is to foster 24/7 contentious churn to keep eyeballs on their station which is how they make money from advertisers. They encourage churn by utilizing false equivalencies and bothsidesism so you end up thinking the immoral and unethical side of the issue equation has equal weight with the moral and ethical side. Don’t fall for it. The two sides are not the same. Especially right now.

Read your news from respected publications and sites. Investigate their level of trustworthiness, which can be done with a few online searches. Cross check your search results and don’t take any single result’s suggestion that a news source is reliable, trustworthy, and engages in responsible investigative journalism. Find the few sources you trust and get your news from those sources.

I’ll recommend one news sources I rely on, WTF Just Happened Today. Sign up for their newsletter. Every day they’ll send you a concise, one-paragraph summary of the day’s important political stories along with associated links should you want to dive deeper in other publications.

Whatever news sources you use, make sure they’re reliable and abide by ethical journalistic standards.

As for what actions to take, there is so much you can do. I outline some of it in “Citizen Power: Turning Advocacy Into Impact,” but you can find an abundance of things you can do by poking around on the web or engaging in conversation with someone you trust who you know is heavily engaged politically on the anti-fascist and pro-democracy side.

Again, I know how easy it is to just give up and walk away from all this, but that’s what they want us to do. They want us to yield. They want us to simply do nothing and let it all happen. They want us to accept that our democracy is lost and we’ll just have to get used to that. No, we don’t have to get used to that. Resist and fight back in whatever manner best resonates with you.

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