Passivity is key to a "managed democracy" (credit to On The Media for introducing me to the term). Protests and calls to legislators about moves to undermine good governance, legal protections and the United States' moral leadership are entirely appropriate forms of resistance to any move in that direction.
But there is another front where resistance will be key to the survival of the American experiment: polarization. If we cannot agree on basic facts and assign deep moral opprobrium to others viewing their own interests differently than our own, then we may reach a point where we could not even sit down to eat pie together.
As satisfying as the language of combat and pugilism can be, they are ultimately counter productive. To paraphrase David Brooks, the punchiest thing you can do to a Nazi may be to offer them pie.
Our political and entertainment professions are well aware of the progress made on these fronts and shamelessly exploit them to sell ads and ensure safe districts. The current administration's efforts to "flood the zone" with outrageous tweets, mendacious public statements, and a flurry of executive orders reflects a desire to completely own the cable news cycle, a commercial enterprise which depends on a passively watching audience that it must keep both affirmed and outraged. Social media works along largely the same lines, but without the need to protect any reputation for objective credibility.
Long term, the greatest enemy of pie making is thus not any particular politician or party, but the increasingly thick bubbles in which they want us to live. What follows are some thoughts about how to weaken our own bubbles and maintain or build the tools to pierce others'.
(1) PAY FOR YOUR NEWS. If you're not the customer, you're the product. Subscribe to a newspaper, join your local public radio station and donate to any current events or investigative organization/podcast that delivers relevant and verifiable information. If their standards fall, angry emails from customers get attention.
(2) GET INVOLVED LOCALLY. National elections and national offices get big audiences, but (a) they focus on somewhat abstract arguments about size/role of government and taxes or regulations that have at best an indirect impact on most people's lives, keeping discussions abstract and often emotional. However, the operable levers of power are largely in the hands of state and local authorities. Note that the big story of last week was about a state Attorney General's actions to derail the new administration's agenda. Your state senator might not be as cool as mine, he has a blog named The Dixie Pig, but state houses are where most of the action happens that really affects your life.
(3) ASSUME GOOD FAITH: The most polarizing statements make the blanket assumption that voting for the other party renders that voter unfit for further conversation and possibly worthy of violence. Lesser versions assume that the voter endorses, or even excuses, the worst qualities of their preference. However, each voter's path to their decision is often interesting, and a considerable amount of nose-holding is likely to be involved. Common ground, if it exists, will be found along that path if you can keep the conversation moving along it.
(4) THICKEN YOUR SKIN: Protective bubbles keep out ideas that challenge the beliefs that define our identities and leave us vulnerable to the idea that our bubbles themselves have merit. This is not to say that there is no room for safe spaces in which to retreat, indeed the world's major religions explicitly require communal affirmations of belief at least weekly, but that's not a good place to live full time. Most of us missed how bad things had become outside of metropolitan areas because we never went there, in no small part because it's much easier to just avoid people who will do and say things that are, to cosmopolitan city types, deplorable. From the other side, who would speak to someone who's patriotically incorrect?
A good start would be to read and try to dissect the arguments in editorials on both the Huffington Post and Fox News. If you can keep your heart rate under control and identify cases of valid inference, logical fallacies and base assumptions of each, that's a good start.
It's not easy, tho, and I don't recommend doing it alone or unfed. Good thing you know someone who makes pies.
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