It keeps us resilient to fight on.

those threads are depressing and demoralizing
and I'm way more fucked than most people on this board seem to be
but I'm not doom and glooming about it

so you will submit to their authority more easily. A good way to counter that is to meet your neighbors, and join or form a group, such as Indivisible, SURJ, or the ACLU. Just having a network of real-life contacts is a hedge against authoritarian overreach.

All the things you mentioned are important too. Take care of yourself.

I DO NOT want to sit around and talk about this. I have friends that only want to talk about what HE is doing. I think that is the way to a dark place. I know millions of Americans are not on board with his agenda. But to immerse yourself in this fiasco is a way to feel depressed and lost. I don't want to live in a permanent state of dread.

You can actually do something about it. Forming or joining groups is doing something about the authoritarian's tool of isolationism.

You said we as individuals cannot fight this, and that is true. But collectively we can. Look at the Solidarity movement in Poland.

I engage in things that have nothing to do with TSF.

going to do. This is generally my plan too. I'm not setting hard and fast rules yet; it's been remarkably easy to jettison CNN and MSNBC. DU and SiriusXM's Progress channel are providing me a lot of comfort right now. Take good care of yourself.

The rare time I find it and turn it on (for football games), it's jarring the way it imposes itself on you. And the football sucks, but that's another matter.

I scan DU for helpful and fun items, with about 4 phone screens of filter/trash keywords. Going to the home page, where nothing is filtered, is well, jarring.

The other news source is Hacker News, but that's mostly for techies. I have been using The "Trump Trump" safari extension and it works well. But I have to use one of those fake "Trunp" search terms to do web search,

Needless to say, I do heavy ad-blocking.

With all these, I really get to choose what to read, without something driving a nail into my brain. And I am extremely well-informed. It's not burying my head in the sand; it's picking my head up from the mud puddle.

I just read today an article I saw in Hacker News (it has all kinds of posts, so I get a bit challenged to expand my scope) from some ad agency. Talk about understanding your enemy! Well, it said

(and of course, give us money to exploit it)

That's "IT," folks. There is a war going on for your attention.
That's why "they" flood the zone.
Time spent on them is time you don't spend helping friends and family, and organizing. Worst of all, in doomposting.

Do ya see how well that worked just this month?

DU is the best social networking tool we have so far.
A launchpoint for focused and united efforts for social justice.
Working on it.
I got some great insights. Stay tuned.

Which is very likely to happen regardless of what takes place in the political world here in the US.

I may not make it but if I do go down, I'll go knowing I gave it my best shot.