The Weekly Sift

So here we are, living in the Chinese curse of interesting times, the kinds of times we used to scare the 18-year-olds with. “If you don’t vote, we could wind up …”.

Here we are.

Like most people I know, I’ve been suffering occasional attacks of rage or depression. But it’s also oddly energizing sometimes. If you ever had fantasies of being a hero, well, gear up; the villains are taking the field. It feels like we’re in a trilogy, somewhere around the end of Book Two. Ancient evils have jumped out of history books and grainy newsreels, and are appearing on live TV. Their words and ideas are coming out of the mouths of our neighbors.

Who thought we’d have to deal with this in our lifetimes?

For some while now, everything that you can think to do about the situation is going to seem hopelessly inadequate. But it’s important that you do it anyway. That’s how it is at the end of Book Two. You’re a Hobbit with all of Mordor in front of you, or an Ewok facing a galactic empire. The idea that you’re going to turn things around is laughable. And a lot of the stuff that people think to do will come to nothing, just like it seems. But some of it won’t, and if anybody can say for sure which is which, I haven’t met them yet.

So anyway, today I plan to type a bunch of words onto a screen. It’s what I can think to do. You think that seems hopelessly inadequate? Tell me about it.

The featured post will be a list of the things I’m watching for out of the Trump administration. As bad stuff starts to happen, it’s important that we spot it quickly and see it for what it is. My list starts with mundane stuff (like taking credit for Obama’s accomplishments) and progresses through to scarier things (like winking at right-wing paramilitary groups and paying Putin back for his help in the campaign). I don’t think we should be jumping at shadows by reacting to things Trump hasn’t done yet, but we definitely need to be watching those shadows and preparing ourselves to respond quickly if something comes out of them.

That should come out sometime between 9 and 10 EST.

The weekly summary has a lot to cover, particularly the appointments Trump has been making. (To quote the Sundance Kid, “Who are those guys?”) But also, settling the Trump U lawsuit, the Hamilton flap, whether Democrats should support Trump’s infrastructure plan, that alarming graph about sea ice, and a few other things. And I’ll close by letting They Might Be Giants sing us out.