Place the Mask over your own nose and mouth . . .

For those who have never traveled by air,

just before the plane taxies off to the runway, a designated flight attendant stands before the passengers, with instructions about what to do if there is a pressure loss in the cabin.  Oxygen masks will automatically drop down from the ceiling (triggered by the lower pressure), and you're expected to place the mask over your nose and mouth.  But if you have a child (or even an elderly person, or a handicapped person) near you, put on your own mask first, and then proceed to help the other person with theirs.

The idea behind this instruction is that you're not going to be any use to anyone around you if you succumb to the loss of air first.  (Falling air pressure is, fortunately, not usually instantaneously fatal.)

Drawing a (very tenuous) analogy with this state of affairs, I believe that one of the most important things we can do in this --what I see as-- very stressful and worrisome combination of political circumstances is to keep ourselves thinking positively, and feeling positive.

Obviously, we're not going to feel super positive; that's impossible.  But there are ways to combat this steady onslaught of sheer nonsense that emanates from the White House and Trump Tower.

We did not join the marches in Washington, but we saw them on TV.  (At the time, we were thinking that there would be a march beginning at noon.  What apparently happened was that the crowd was so enormous that it filled the entire route of the march.  So they stayed put in front of the speakers' platform, and listened to scores of future leaders, some of them seasoned orators, and others just practicing their oratory in front of an audience, probably for the first time.)

Most of the speeches were amazing.  (I was thinking that Scarlett Johansson's speech would have been a better article; it was long and considered, and was cut off before she was finished, but I look forward to seeing it in its entirely on the Web.)  Other speeches, too numerous to mention individually, were awe-inspiring, and incredibly articulate.  Some of those ladies had the knack of speaking about unmentionables in amazing euphemisms that make us laugh and become angry at the same time.  But the wonderful thing about these speeches was how they kept to the high ground, regardless of the depravity of the facts that they were recounting.  Now that's class.  One felt furious, but one felt positive.

Another tool for remaining sane in these times is to seek out the humor in the furiously inconsistent statements coming out of the White House.  (Hah.)  Steve Colbert and Trevor Noah can be relied upon to see the funny side of these pomposities, but I do wish that Noah would put his gloves back on; on one hand, he rarely completely crushes his targets, but I do remember a time when he wasn't quite as harsh.  Still, I am sure the viciousness level of his observations is lower than those of comparable commentators on the Alt Right, and much more intelligent.  Seth Meyers is another reliably funny commentator, and, for those with much greater tolerance, Bill Maher.

Some of the legislation in place --enacted by the Democrats, with the help of Independents and progressive Republicans-- was not in order to help their voter base, or even to annoy the GOP, or to deplete the coffers of the government.  They were the rational things to do to serve the population, especially its weakest members.  For instance, there are shelters for abused women.  There are shelters for recovering drug addicts.  There are shelters for ex-convicts, whose families do not want them back.  At one time, Republicans in Washington could safely assume that all these "losers" were probably either Democrats, or apolitical.  But those in the know are aware that many of these victims are from staunchly Republican backgrounds.  Democrats helped these people not in order to gain votes, but because it was the right thing to do.  But it is quite possible that when the Republicans take away the little support that the government extends to these people, that the former recipients of this help will turn their backs on the Republicans.  Of course, allowing money in politics enables the enormously rich stratum of the population (i.e. the 1%) to partially offset the desertion of this group of people by increased money from the Koch Brothers and other such wealthy jokers.  If moving into an underground barter economy is what it takes to keep money out of the hands of the wealthy, that's something we should certainly look at.

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