I avoided Twitter for a very long time. You can definitely say I was a late-adopter.
I couldn’t imagine how you could keep up with millions of people spitting out 140-character limited messages all day long. It seemed from afar a perverse means of driving someone batty with information.
Because of the brevity of the messages and because I had heard rumors there was a movement to make the internet more ‘elegant’, I tried to express my views by using a mongrelized version of haikus. I practiced my haiku craft on another social media site. They were a fun, expressive, intoxicatingly short means of getting my message out into the wilds of the internet. They were not always “elegant” but their 17 syllable limit made them “accessible”. Readily digested. Gone like the dew on grass as soon as the sun rises.
By the time I reached Twitter, I’d abandoned haikus and Twitter added 140 additional characters. Other changes had been made to accommodate video, photos and long, thoughtful threads. I also discovered the medium to be a useful tool for curating your daily news feed. It was not as unmanageable as I had imagined it would be.
Of course, as a Twitter entity, I am a microbe swimming in the Sargasso Sea. I see the toxicity, but I am too insignificant to have any of it directed at me. (I felt it once when I made an ambiguous, not-meant-to-be-inflammatory comment on one of the sort of popular Twitter feeds - maybe a couple hundred thousand followers? - and I was immediately zeroed in on as an interloper. Someone there just to cause trouble, they seemed to believe.)
In any event, the medium has been more valuable than a hassle to me. I use it to keep apprised of what’s happening in the here and now, and I use it to link up to entities who are fighting the good fight. Like every social media platform, it has its pitfalls. And, like every social media platform you use, you need to turn your crap detector dial to extremely high. And stay on your toes.
(For instance, I got caught in the ‘baby platypus’ caper a week or so ago. Someone posted a palm-sized, adorable “photo” of a ‘baby platypus’ in the palm of their hand but, as it turns out, it was made of clay or something and a few iterations more adorable than an actual baby platypus.)
But I started writing this because I wanted to reiterate - yet another time - what you can do to make sure the most vile human being to ever sit behind the Oval Office desk does not get a second term.
First of all. . .
Make sure you are registered to vote. Make sure people you know and love are registered to vote. Make sure your fellow workers, union members, bowling team, acquaintances are registered to vote.
It is my opinion that, if you are not registered to vote, you have - absolutely - no RIGHT to complain about anything related to politics in your life. Which is a lot of important things, in case you have not noticed.
Once registered and, by the way, you should check on whether you are registered just to be sure, take the next obvious step and exercise your right to vote. Jennifer Cohn is doing lonely, gritty, wonderful work trying to keep the integrity of our elections secure reporting about the fallibility of our machines, laws and systems. Find her on Twitter under the handle @jennycohn1 or follow my link to her Medium site.
I found the link for where you can check on your registration - in any state, mind you - on Teri Kanefield’s blog page. She is someone I follow on Twitter. Her blog page is loaded with useful information and, I would say, she is a glass-half-full resource. In fact, from what I can discern, she and another of my valuable resources are at odds philosophically, though they are both bound and determined to sweep this administration into the dustbin of history.
Listen to Crooked Media’s Pod Save America, Jon Favreau’s The Wilderness or Tommy Vietor’s Pod Save the World to keep yourself in political shape to keep fighting. These guys all worked in the Obama Administration and know of what they speak. Their insights are both enlightening and - at times - tempered with good-natured humor.
GaslitNation’s action guide will give you plenty of ideas of where to go whether it is within a state or district, running for public office yourself or organizing to raise the minimum wage. As it says at the top of the page, “Democracy is a lifestyle: (The current occupant of the White House) is a symptom of the corruption, institutional failure, and indifference that we can no longer tolerate.
And, of course, I continue to use Resistbot to advocate every day for the America I hope to see emerge from the ashes. The country needs every advocate it can get, because it’s on life support. Pretend the United States of America is a patient at any hospital in the land. Without an advocate to make sure care is taken with the patient, the potential outcome could be the bleakest option possible.
With Resistbot, you can easily communicate daily or weekly or periodically with ALL of your representatives whether they are in state or federal government. Even though my state is blue and my representatives fall on the liberal side of the divide, I continually remind them of MY point-of-view.
Frankly, I don’t think they can hear it enough.
Resource Links:
Head Count https://www.headcount.org/
Vote Save America https://votesaveamerica.com/
GaslitNation Action Guide https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/action-guide
Fight For 15 https://fightfor15.org/
Future Now https://www.futurenow.org/
Run For Something https://runforsomething.net/
350.org https://350.org/
Resistbot https://resist.bot/
Resistance Labs Resist. Recruit. Elect. Win. We leverage technology and our army of passionate, remote volunteers to help progressives run and win everywhere.
###
I’ve never hankered for Hawaii until I saw this video posted by Gary Renspurger. Enjoy!
Also, alert reader Charley McCabe suggested I list some of my favorite resources, and so I have. Because I know he is a huge fan of John Craigie, I’m going to have to share one of his songs in Charley’s honor. If you like THIS Craigie song, I guarantee you will find a dozen more you’ll love.
Just got around to this one, James. Hard to keep up with you! Thanks for the resource list; I guarantee it will be put to good use.