Somehow that advice slowly morphed into risk = reward, and right there you have the seeds of disaster. The Great Recession was the first version. Then a sufficient number of voters took an elephantine risk in 2016 to give us a political disaster. And you are here.

And 2017, the whirlwind we reaped is spinning to an abominable close this week, with the probable passage of the worst tax bill in anyone’s memory and the end of net neutrality. Hope you enjoy your little temporary tax cut. The rich and their entitled offspring are making plans to enjoy their giant windfall forever.

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And net neutrality? Who cares? You might. What could go wrong? Why not run a risk of handing a small group of powerful people the keys to what you thought was everybody’s Internet? Might freedom of information possibly be at stake? Hey, no risk, no reward!

Yup, President Trump and his Republican Party are unattended at the trough right now, and their operative agenda is “eat as much as you can as fast as you can.” The squealing, grunting and slobbering sounds you hear are the crazed frenzy of insatiable porkers finally indulging their unhindered access to the slop.

The year 2018 may be our last chance to stop and begin cleaning up this mess. And in an important sense, 2018 began on Tuesday, when Roy Moore got sent home rather than to Congress. There has been a lot of raking through the results to see whether his defeat was merely a fluke without portent. But Trump, for once, was right when he said “A win is a win.” And this was quite a win. A Democratic senator from Alabama. More importantly, it was, and will be taken as, an unmistakable sign that Republicans can be beaten in 2018. And in politics, perception can be reality. People will work harder if they perceive they can win.

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Trump isn’t on the ballot in 2018. But a Trump without a GOP Congress is like a GOP Congress without Trump. Not the same kind of threat. The horrifying reality we discovered after the 2016 election was that Republicans controlled everything and had clear-field running ahead of them. They have tripped themselves up this year, but already their thumbprints are all over the throats of the climate, the courts and a public Internet. And they are closing in on the tax code, health care and the social safety net.