Twitter: The Essential Battleground for The Resistance

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Last week, after Donald Trump, the purported President of the United States, learned the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives would, in fact, begin impeachment inquiries, he took to Twitter to tweet more than 100 times in a single day.  He went from whining, to bragging, to threatening a whistle-blower, to predicting civil war if we didn't stop messing with him.

Trump has latched onto Twitter like a leech on the jugular and uses it as an unseemly venue for official policy, as his own personal PR firm, and as the delivery system for threats and intimidation against anyone or any organization threatening to expose or topple him.

It's because he understands the power of Twitter better than almost anybody.

Almost anybody.

There are Trump acolytes, there are trolls, there are bots, there are masters of disinformation everywhere, but I'm here to talk about those of us working against Trump, using Twitter to do it.

We are the #Resistance and we never sleep. We're out there and our numbers are growing. For us, Twitter is a battleground, it's a staging area, it's headquarters for those leading the charge against the tyranny that is Trumpism.

We're the witnesses, the couriers, the voices of the opposition. We follow the good guys and shed light on the disinformation coming from the bad guys, and, if nothing else comes of it, we take satisfaction where we can get it: We know we're getting to Trump when he has to tweet more than 100 times in a single day.

Through Twitter, we get real-time updates on the battles raging on every front, and we send them on, like smoke signals, to the resistance pods all around the country.

Is there a protest coming up? We know about it. Is there a March in the works? We pass along the info, right down to where to catch the buses.

When this rogue administration abuses citizens or foreigners or refugees, we've read the first hand accounts from the victims or their families and we send out tweets to lawyers or scholars or social justice warriors who are known to us now and are ready to help.

When someone fights the system and is in danger of being harmed, we expose the abuses. We know who to tweet to give them a hand. Millions of us retweet the information to give it more visibility.

Twitter is a morass of bad information but it's also a funnel for good journalism.  When the press and/or the pundits get it right, we send their stories into the viralsphere. When they get it wrong, we show them the error of their ways--and we often win. We win because they can't ignore the Twitter warriors coming down on them, forcing them to look again.

Because the other side Tweets, too, we know their thoughts and see right through them. In mere minutes we can counter and dilute their lies. In mere minutes.

As with any war zone, there is a dark side. You may have noticed. There are forces working against the resistance, and they're experts at obfuscating and gaslighting. They're ruthless and formidable and sometimes terrifying. They come from every corner of the planet. Sometimes they're real and sometimes they're not.  It's easy to get caught up in a whirlwind attack meant to intimidate and shut the resister down, but the Twitter Resistance community knows the difference and spreads the word.

That's where courage comes in, and we're bravest when we're not alone. The list below is my own personal list of people to follow on Twitter. I look to them for expertise, for analysis, for inspiration. I trust them. I know they've done their homework, and I know if they make a mistake they'll own up to it.

If you're new to Twitter, don't be intimidated by its uniqueness. Embrace it. When you follow any of these people, be sure to retweet their tweets. Retweeting begets retweeting and, if it begets often enough, it sends a viral message to the opposition. There are more of us than there are of them, and we're real. Don't buy into the lie that retweeting does no good. Getting our message out is part of being a community. This is how we do it.  Commenting helps, too, even if you disagree. This is a dialogue, a conversation, a convention. Be a part of it.

These are our people and they're preaching to the choir, they're using their bullhorns to yell it loud, they're showing us by their light that ethics and decency are not dead. (Some of them are hilariously entertaining, but we need that, too.)

If Trump wants a digital civil war, we're way ahead of him. We're already at the battlements. New recruits are coming in every day. We're an all-volunteer army and we won't stop until we've stopped the madness.

Some of our Twitter buddies, in first name alphabetical order. (Because it just looks better.)
Check them out. This isn't a complete list, by any means, and I've left off politicians and publications (because they're easy to find and I needed to save space), but it's a start. I'll be adding to the list so come back often. Let me know if I've missed someone you think should be here:


Adam Parkhomenko
Alyssa Milano
Amy Siskind
Andrea Chalupa
Andy Lassner
Ana Navarro-Cardenas
Asha Rangappa
Aunt Crabby Calls Bullshit

Barbara Malmet
Barb McQuade
Bob Cesca
Brian Beutler
Brian J. Karem 
Bryce Tache

Charles Blow
Charles P. Pierce
Charlotte Clymer
Connie Schultz
Chris Savage - Eclectablog

Dan Froomkin
Dan Rather
Daniel Dale
David Corn
David Rothkopf
David Weissman
Dean Obeidallah
Debra Messing
Dr. Dena Grayson
digby
Driftglass

Elie Mystal
Eric Boehlert 
Eugene Robinson

Glenn Kirschner
GottaLaff 
Greg Sargent

Heidi N. Moore
HoarseWhisperer 
Howard Dean

Ian Millhiser

Jacob Soboroff
Jason Johnson
Jason Karsh
Jay Rosen
Jed Shugerman
Jennifer Rubin
Jill Wine Banks
Jim Acosta
Joan Walsh
John Fugelsang
John Pavlovitz
Josh Marshall
Joshua Holland
Joy Reid
Joyce Alene (Joyce White Vance)
Judd Legum

Karoli
Kurt Eichenwald 
Kyle Griffin

Larry Sabato
Laurence Tribe
Lawrence O'Donnell

Malcolm Nance
Margaret Sullivan
Mark Hamill
Maya Wiley
Michael McFaul
Mimi Rocah 
Molly Jong-Fast

Natasha Bertrand
Neal Katyal
Neera Tanden
Nicolle Wallace
Norman Goldman

Patton Oswalt
Preet Bharara
Prof Helen
Paul Krugman

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman
Rachel Maddow
RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS)
Renato Mariotti
Rob Reiner
Roland Scahill

Rosa Brooks

Sarah Kendzior
Scott Dworkin
Seth Abramson 
Shannon Watts
Simon Rosenberg
Soledad O'Brien
Steven Beschloss
Susie Madrak

Tim O'Brien
Tony Schwartz

Uncle Blazer 

Walter Shaub
Will Bunch

Yamiche Alcindor

 Susan Elizabeth (my daughter)
And me: Ramona Grigg. Because, as you can see, I know people.

Curtain Down On The Trump Show Already. Please.

I've got that thing again where my heart races and my belly hurts and I don't know whether those tears are from laughing or crying.  I'm craving chocolate, any kind will do, and I can't stop thinking the end of civilization as we know it is right around the corner or up the street or somewhere in Iowa.

I go to sleep stressing and I wake up stressing.  Terrible things are going on in the world.  I should be stressing over them, and it could be that that's what's going on, but it feels like it's Donald Trump.

He's doing this to me. I should stop listening to him. I should pretend I'm not living in a country where Donald Trump, of all people, could be a front-runner in a bid for the presidency.  I should stop waiting for him to mess up so badly there's no going back.  I should do that, but if I had that kind of self-control I wouldn't be a full-time self-unemployed political blogger on the liberal circuit.  Now would I?

I'm a mess and it's all his fault.  I have succumbed to the slump I call Trump.  Donald Trump has entered my brain and if I don't get this down fast, my words will start sounding like a three-bean salad on a bed of spinach.  (I have no idea!  It just came out.  I'm telling you. . .)

Just this week Donald Trump, the man who would be president (or Tony Soprano, depending on how he strikes you--not literally, of course, though that's not out of the question), told a Black Lives Matter activist/heckler at a public meeting to "get the hell outta here".  This was after the man had been pummeled to the ground and then kicked by one of Trump's goons supporters.  Trump then took to Fox News, and, in his best considered presidential tone, said the man was obnoxious and loud, so, "Yeah, maybe he shoulda been roughed up.  Because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."

On Sunday he told George Stephanopoulos he has no problem with waterboarding because "it's peanuts compared to what 'they' do".  (Almost every Republican could be heard groaning.  Cheers, though, from Dick Cheney, who, until that moment, hadn't even considered pushing for the job of choosing Trump's vice president.)

Then, with cameras still rolling, Trump assured Stephanopoulos that what he'd said the night before about seeing thousands and thousands of Arab people in New Jersey cheering as the World Trade Center came down was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

George suggested in an adorably nice way that there are some--or maybe all--who can't find a single solitary bit of footage or eye-witness account that would make what Donald said even slightly true.  Donald chalked it up to reporters wanting to be politically correct, and George, not ever wanting to be branded a politically correct reporter (oh gawd no!), thanked him ever so kindly for his time.

I watched that and breathed such a grateful sigh you wouldn't believe.  At last!  Caught in his own terrible lie!  Hoist[ed] with his own petard!  Stick a fork in him! He's done!

But you know what happened, don't you?  Come on, admit it.  You know.

Trump's poll numbers went up.  The crowds loved him even more.  Fifty five percent of likely Republican voters now say they would trust him over all other candidates to do the right thing about terrorism.  (What would he do about terrorists? Namely ISIS?  He would "bomb the shit out of them!" and take the oil. Yay!)

He is a serial liar and is the number one choice among Republicans for the next president of the United States.  (These same people, so deathly afraid of refugee families fleeing for their lives, have no fear of a Donald Trump presidency.  No fear!  None at all!  But there I go again.)

You know by now--because I keep telling you--I tend to take these things personally.   My America is not a plaything.  It's not a joke.  Turning my country over to a non-politician with no government experience would be punking of the worst kind.  But even thinking for one second of turning it over to a lying billionaire braggart who has a history of taking but not giving, who calls people ugly names and shuts up anyone who disputes him, who is such an embarrassment even countries with their own embarrassing characters can't believe we've topped them--that's insanity undisguised.

There are horrifying things going on in the world.  Donald Trump's ascendancy into the heights of American politics isn't one of them.  I know and you know that he'll never become president,  (We know that, right?) but the people egging him on will still be out there, still wishing it had been Trump, and I will still have to live among them.  Festering.

Once Trump is gone, the press, never ones to let an exploit pass, will be egging on Trump's people, pushing them to find someone equally entertaining. Because when it comes to American politics, there's no business like show business and, above all else, the show must go on.

Well, curtain down already.  Footlights off.  Come out into the daylight.  It's a whole different world out here.