Shards, Threads, and Nails

Every morning, we wake up to a fresh Trumpian outrage, as the orange one's fat little thumbs have tapped out the latest vitriol via Twitter before we lift our weary heads off of the keyboards we fell asleep on because we were up past midnight planning how to block his Cabinet, or save ACA, or get to Burr and Tillis, or, respond to Russian hacking. Is it any wonder that some of us are experiencing outrage fatigue? As the Day of His Ascendence (formerly known as Inauguration Day) approaches, the more the sense of impending doom and inevitability grows. After the election, outrage and disbelief propelled many into passionate, but ultimately quixotic pursuits. Flipping the electors. The Jill Stein recount. As those prospects faded away, and the names and hideous bios of Trump's Cabinet appointees came out, many geared up to protest and block that odious pack of cronies, capitalists, and cranks from running the country. Lists of committees were drawn up, scripts written, acti...

I have been working on advocacy and action items for RISE Together NC, and this has been a singular week, as Congress came into session, Trump went to war with the intelligence community, and the fights to save Obamacare and to block Cabinet appointees heated up. I often see posts and comments on line that wonder, "isn't the ACLU going to do something about this?" Or, "where have the Democrats been?" My answer is always: if you are asking out loud about who should take action, look in the mirror and answer your own question. Yes, there are any number of advocacy groups that are working hard on all the issues you care about. But they don't have the resources or speed to respond the way ordinary, fed-up citizens can. They don't have you. As word broke early in the week that the House GOP had secretly met to scrap independent ethics oversight, a small team got to work crafting a call script, a meme, and a few tweets. Armed with these tools, and a ha...