Taking LGM’s temperature
By 
I’m throwing this up for people to give people a chance to register their current state of mind, which I realize from personal experience can shift quite a bit from day to day if not hour to hour, about the State of Things. I encourage people to elaborate on the number they choose.
Scale of Current Political Optimism or Pessimism
10 to Negative 10
10: Donald Trump won’t be president in three and a half years at most, and when he’s gone the Republican party is going to revert quickly to its pre-Trumpian state. In other words things will be a lot more like they were in 2012, when it would have been hysterical nonsense to describe the party’s presidential candidate as an ethno-nationalist authoritarian, let alone a full-blown fascist. Trumpism is a cult of personality that won’t survive Trump, and won’t produce a viable successor.
-10: The US is now in a state of semi-permanent authoritarianism and managed democracy, from which it probably won’t emerge for decades. If you think the next couple of election cycles are going to change this you are painfully naive.
Have at it.