This is not a time to be distracted, to turn away from politics, to eschew activism. In fact, if you are an American Citizen, you have to look back at your life and recognize that you screwed up, in two ways. First, whatever time you spent agitating and activating and acting out, turns out, was not enough. You needed to spend something like 10% more time on that. Second, whatever decisions you made as to exactly what sort of activism you would do on a given day were likely flawed. Instead of yammering about Bernie after the primary you should have been going after Trump. At the beginning of the primary process, you should have gone with the insurgent, Bernie, instead of the tried and true, Hillary. Whatever. I'm not here to tell you what you did wrong exactly, because I'll be damned if I know. But I know, and you know, that you did something wrong.

How do I know that? Because of this:

Donald Trump Inauguration

Schedule of Inaugural Events (Eastern Time)

January 20th, 2017

8:30 a.m. ET: Trumps attend service at St. John's Church

9:40 a.m. ET: President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcome Trumps to White House

9:45 a.m. ET: Obamas host a coffee and tea reception for the Trumps.

10:30 a.m. ET: Trumps, Obamas leave White House for U.S. Capitol

11:30 a.m. ET: Swearing-in ceremony

12:30 p.m. ET: The Obamas depart by helicopter

12:54 p.m. ET: President's Room signing ceremony

1:08 p.m. ET: Luncheon

2:35 p.m. ET: Review of the troops

3 p.m. ET: Inaugural Parade

7 p.m. ET and thereafter for four years: Inaugural Bawl

See? If this election had been a landslide, then our collective yammering, protesting, messaging, teaching, communication, etc. would be part of an insurgency, a hopeful revolution, a determined evolution, or something. But what actually happened is this: We were making progress, we were turning many things around, changing things for the better, then suddenly along came this big log tied to a rope suspended from on high and it plowed right through us. An enormous, ugly, political pendulum that we thought was going in one direction had turned, and plowed through us like a bowling ball through nine pins.

But only just barely.

A while back I had been conversing for weeks with a bunch of activists, serious activists, people with their hands on the activism levers of power, serious serious people. They had been so thrown off by the outcome of the Democratic Primary that they spent huge amounts of effort making sure that a totally insignificant document, the DNC Platform, included their pet projects, and thereafter following through on that, that they simply put nearly zero effort into working against Trump. Had these remarkable and important individuals not walked away from the process at he crucial moment, they would have been the deciding factor in this election and Trump would not have been elected president. That's my story, and it is one of dozens around the country, many of you will identify them in your own lives if you look. People were distracted, misled, or simply wrong, about this or that aspect of the election. Collectively, all of this added up to a slim victory. But it matters not how slim that victory was, because the Republican Party is 100% in charge in the White House, in both houses of Congress, and in many state chambers and state houses around the country.

Climate scientists model future climate change using a number of different model configurations, but the initial input to those models are based on various scenarios of how quickly we change our energy policies and related behaviors. With a Trump presidency and a GOP Congress, that process just got easier, because the two or three more optimistic staring assumptions can be ignored for several years. Think of the computing time that will save!

That was a very long way of saying that you can not distract yourself from the task of saving civilization over the next few years.

How to survive a Trump presidency starting now

But, during that time, you can spend a bit of time doing something that will make you feel better, maybe energized, maybe even self educated in an area that gives perspective or some other help to your psyche.

I've been asking around, to see what people are doing, and here, I'll put some of the book suggestions and other ideas people have made. I expect more suggestions to come in soon, and I'll add them to the lists.

Watch the West Wing

One idea, often mentioned, is to watch The West Wing , as an example of a better time and place. If you do that (and I suspect for many this would be a re-watch) I suggest you consider listening to The West Wing Weekly Podcast , co-hosed by Joshua Malina ahd Hrishikesh Hirway. Josh is Will Bailey from the West Wing (he currently stars in Scandal, another excellently distracting White House related show!). The podcast tracks the West Wing episode by episode, with occasional variations in that pattern. One of the best things about it are the interviews with various individuals involved with the show. Also, over time, Malina and Hirway develop a working methodology of the West Wing, including terminology, morphological and categorial functions, etc. This gives the weekly review and discussion an interesting and evolving texture. Since they are currently well into Season Two, you can start now and listen to the podcasts on your own schedule. If you catch up to them, you'll have to start waiting for Wednesdays, when the podcast is released.

Read interesting history

One thing I've decided to do is to read some interesting history. It turns out that a lot of other people are doing something similar. Here is a list of what people have suggested so far:

History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-2008, Fourth Edition, 3-Volume Set (Facts on File Library of American History) . This link is to a fairly expensive product, but note that it is several books. I'll bet you can get the various volumes cheap and used, if you get them one at a time, or just go to the library.

Read interesting fiction

Watch or listen to something interesting

Read current non fiction about how messed up everything is

Drinking suggestions

Talisker Storm