• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, January 26, 2017

So what are you going to do when you are trying to punish one of your kids for lying to you when they counter that they are not lying, they are presenting "alternative facts”? And "if the White House uses them, why can't we?"

Welcome to a new world where disinformation and lying have become acceptable thanks to that idiot that half of you out there put in office.

That "give him a chance" argument has been totally compromised by his actions in the first week in office. (He should be impeached for allowing Kellyanne Conway to wear that outfit to the Inauguration, if for no other reason). How do you ignore somewhere between 3.33 million and 4.63 million protesters in more than 500 U.S. cities (and more around the globe) in what is being called the largest protest in United States history?

With a tweet. That's it.

His cabinet nominations, his disdain for environmental concerns, for immigrant civil rights, for woman's and LGBT rights, and for international relations protocol are all symptomatic not of someone who is "going to drain the swamp,” but who is going to claw back 50 years of social progress and alienate every trading and defense partner we have in the world. This not a quietly crafty man, this is a fool without a clue who made promises he can't keep and could bring ruin to this nation.

While the women (mostly) who marched work to coalesce their protest into a political movement and the press ramps up to push back on his lies, we should all think of ways to send a signal that what he does and the way he does it is not acceptable. Here's mine.

Don't pay your federal income taxes any year he is in office.  I suspect that the IRS would have a pretty hard time trying to collect on 60 or 70 million returns that never arrive in Washington. There is not enough jail space in the world to hold that many tax dodgers (since most of it is filled with minor drug offenders — and, according to the documentary “13th,” 21st-century slaves).

Hard to build the Wall or round up millions of immigrants without any money in your pocket.

Alternatively, you can do what activist Julia Butterfly Hill did in 2003. She resisted payment of about $150,000 in federal taxes, donating that money instead to after-school programs, arts and cultural programs, community gardens, programs for Native Americans, alternatives to incarceration, and environmental protection programs. She said: "I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: ‘I'm not refusing to pay my taxes. I'm actually paying them but I'm paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.’”

As Arlo Guthrie said about the draft in the Vietnam era, in a spoken part of his song "Alice's Restaurant": And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do -- and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are. Just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant."

And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both (gay) and they won't take either of them.

And three people do it, three -- can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant "and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day walking in singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walking out. And friends, they may think it's a movement.

Let me be the first: "You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant..."