Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

This is a sample of our recent bonus episode, usually only available to members.

These episodes are comprised of our crew of researchers, Amanda and myself, all getting together for a roundtable discussion on topics that we find interesting.

So here's a few minutes for free

so you can know what all the fuss is about. Today we're doing our articles a little bit

differently because they're all very similar. We're pulling from the authoritarian regime

survival guide. And this is a bunch of pieces of advice that were actually originally posted

on Twitter in 2017. And they've started just been collected on this blog. But for more recent

publications, here's what you can do to keep democracy alive during Trump's second term.

That one was written by George Lakoff. And then finally, Politico wrote Trump's second term. That one was written by George Lakeoff. And then finally,

Politico wrote, Trump will overplay his hand. Here's how to be ready. And since there was a lot

of overlap in these articles, we're just kind of going to go through the list in an organized way

and mix and match from all of these articles.

So the first is, I would argue, to point out that staying engaged is not just effective

politically, but is actually good for your personal, emotional health and resilience.

It feels like retreating would be better.

It feels safer.

It feels like it would be comforting.

But it actually just allows this sense of dread to hang over you at all times and reinforces the sense of helplessness that you may

have, whereas taking action may not alleviate the sense of dread, but it will alleviate

to some degree the sense of helplessness, because you begin to recognize, okay, it's not just me.

There are other people involved.

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