Michael Winship, Moyers & Company

In 1814, First Lady Dolley Madison helped hide the White House’s famous portrait of George Washington from the British when they burned and sacked the capital. But if the current pack of brigands raiding DC has its way, by the time they’re done, that painting and every other piece of government property that isn’t nailed down will be stolen and put up for sale on eBay.

The Moyers team has been in the fight for net neutrality from the very beginning. Our documentary Net at Risk was perhaps the first on television to alert the nation to the danger of a corporate takeover of the internet. When the mainstream media largely ignored the story, we gave advocates for net neutrality a national hearing. We followed former FCC commissioner Michael Copps and others to unofficial town meetings when the George W. Bush FCC refused to sanction such events. And we celebrated in the public interest when the Obama FCC voted in 2015 to protect and enforce net neutrality.

Amid all the craziness surrounding Roy Moore’s race for the US Senate and the seeming willingness of Alabama’s likely voters to send a man of such dubious merit and morality to Capitol Hill (where, admittedly, the bar already is pretty damned low), I keep thinking of a line from the Randy Newman song “Rednecks.”

Looking back at the last tumultuous year, to me, one of the saddest aspects of the Trump candidacy and presidency is that both in part were built from one of the basest of human impulses: revenge.

Looking back at the last tumultuous year, to me, one of the saddest aspects of the Trump candidacy and presidency is that both in part were built from one of the basest of human impulses: revenge.