This is going to be a short addition; now that Trump is officially President I think it’s important to note a few things we should either increase or get in the habit of doing:

• Watch/ read the news more
• Avoid and call out fake news
• Don’t be afraid to debate someone online

Overall we need to be more politically vigilant, and the best way to do this is to read and watch more news, especially read. Some of my all-time favorite newsletters are The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, TIME, and The Economist. Some other less known online newsletters I would suggest are AlterNet, AP, and FiveThirtyEight (they frequently have great articles). YouTube can be a great source of news as well. One YouTube channel dedicated to commenting on news is The Majority Report with Sam Sedar. Now we all know of the horrors that accompany online news sources and fake news.

Starting today, a message was made clear in America: that fake news is just as credible, if not more than, actual news. With this in mind, we need to work very hard over the next four years calling out fake news as well as educating others on how to differentiate a fake news website from a real one. I have written another article that details how to identify a fake news source over a real news source. These are skills I picked up in my research course, and I find them topical, as well as important. Please educate others on how to discern fake news, it can make or break 2020.

One thing many people dread is seeing a particularly bigoted or uneducated comment on their profile or video. It’s tiring to have to engage with people; on top of that it you don’t even know if it’s a troll or not. Here’s the thing, you should still try to engage, why? Simple, even if you don’t convince the other person to change their mind you may convince people reading your arguments. This is the beauty of debate, especially on the web; even if you don’t convince the person you’re debating with, you may change the mind of someone in the audience.

This is going to be a long four years, it won’t be easy debating with people who have just been validated by our president of the “false” nature of mainstream media, polls, and science, but! We must still keep fighting! We must have, in the words of our new president, high energy!