There have been continuous attempts at a soft coup in the USA since the 2020 November election. On 2021-01-06, this turned into an attempt at a hard coup. Insurrectionists stormed the capitol, waiving flags of failed regimes from days gone by including both Confederate battle flag (which they flew in place of the US flag) and US flags with white nationalist slogans written on them. A gallows was also erected while armed men wandered the halls of congress carrying ziptie handcuffs.

A friend of mine who is a doctor posted that they’d had a patient who had come in both denying the existence of COVID-19 and declaring that masks kill you faster. Unfortunately, I see this kind of post frequently from friends (and friends of friends) in the medical community. Including, all the way to denying that COVID-19 is real even as they die of it. The general advice for dealing with people who have a wildly different world view is:

Overview and Research This guide is ordered from most general to most specific. I’ll start with Federal and work my way down to County so you can stop reading once it’s no longer relevant to you. For those who have read my summaries before and were expecting California, I’m now living in Washington State. Yes, I’ve read most of the details of the propositions and would recommend that you do too as the summaries often hide the important aspects of any given proposition.

US Voters: This year, in King County WA, I have 36 choices to make an educated choice on. Most of you will have similarly broad choices to make, from endless propositions to various seats of government. I typically spend in the order of 40 hours working out how I’m going to vote on my ballot. That’s not to say that you have to spend that much time, but that it does take time and it’s time worth investing.