I’ve come around to the somewhat fatalistic opinion that Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court isn’t the life-or-death deal that many think it is. Yes, she’s almost certainly an arch-conservative on par with Scalia, Alito and Thomas. And yes, she’ll probably be around for a loooong time. This will hurt.

But I think this is a case where short-term issues outweigh long-term. Right now we have some near-term, existential actions that must be taken.

• Get rid of the Trump crime family.
• Get rid of McConnell’s stranglehold on lawmaking in the US. He is the disease that has infected Congress, and needs to be excised.
• Repair the damage to our country’s image, to democracy in general, to environmental regulations.
• Get the US economy back on track with intelligent subsidies to save jobs until normal capitalism can kick in.
• Re-educate people and their understanding of how we can dampen COVID until vaccines are widely available.
• Do something intelligent in terms of police reforms and address the growing mistrust/hate of law enforcement. That just can’t go on in a healthy society.

These are all things that can and must be done in the short term, where I’m defining short term as 1-3 years. So while Barrett may do some damage to the progressive agenda during that time, dealing effectively with any/all of these items is more important, IMHO.

And in the spirit of keeping things in perspective, here’s my new favorite picture.