Look who owns the Google result for “Hillary Clinton” as of tonight at 10:00 pm.

If you’ve read my Twitter stream this summer you’ve seen various levels of disdain for Donald Trump. Sometimes it’s important to push back when someone peddles bs. Sometimes it’s necessary to beat back loud, noxious, memorable exclamations with something just as loud and just as memorable.

But sometimes sensationalism is a trick to control the conversation. I fell for that trick today, Tweeting too much when the GOP candidate “walk[ed] up to the line of treason” and stole attention from the country’s history-making nomination of the first female presidential candidate from a major party.

Will you help me fix my mistake? This historic week, in this historic election, where the system has pit none-more-capable against none-more-terrible, can you do some extra posting—on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you do—to keep the attention on the right conversation?

And if you have friends, colleagues, networks, organizations you can influence to do the same, would you ask them to do that too?

Our broken public conversation has done enough damage to education and justice and politics. Small acts of public expression can do more now than ever before. It may not change the skin-hungry, blood-lusty headlines, but it could shift the balance a little.

So help me help you help me. Push the other way when trolls try to steal the headlines.

hobbit-trolls

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