You should read this:
You Are Still Crying Wolf by Scott Alexander
If I had unlimited amounts of time, it’s something I might have written. It does the thing that is almost always missing from every Internet article and news story: It puts numbers into context.
“Post-truth” was named the Oxford international word of the year.
The runner-up should definitely be “normalize.”
*ducks*
I kid, but I have seen the word “normalize” used so often in the past week that it’s normalized itself beyond any significant meaning. Warning people not to normalize is the new normal.
In case anyone forgot, after Obama was re-elected in 2012, there was a petition in every single state to secede from the Union. So yes, poor sportsmanship after an election loss is a bi-partisan phenomenon. It just manifests differently. Liberals march in the streets, conservatives try to secede.
In Trump’s interview for 60 Minutes [I can’t find a legitimate source for the actual video], which I’m pretty sure was recorded several days before it was aired, we heard that Trump plans to immediately deport 2 to 3 million criminal illegal aliens. Or undocumented workers. Or whatever you’re supposed to call them.
But what does that mean? What is he actually planning to do?
The sinister view is that he will do what he says: Round up 2-3 million Latinos and drive them out of the country in trucks. One can imagine scenes of terror as jack-booted thugs kick down doors and drag fathers away from their crying wives and screaming children. It’s possible that a small percentage of Republican voters may also be imagining exactly that, but I’m going to give them the overall benefit of the doubt.
Because that’s not going to happen. Personally I imagine that he will simply locate any undocumented workers in jail and initiate a deportation using the existing deportation system. I would think he’d focus on the ones who have commited violent crimes. I don’t know how many that is, but I doubt it would add up to 2-3 million. To me, that doesn’t sound much different from what might have happened anyway.
Anyway I predict this is going to end up being his Guantanamo Bay. By which I mean it might be a great idea in theory but carrying it out will get bogged down in details. I can already think of a lot of problems with it and I know nothing about this subject. For example, isn’t it a bad idea to turn violent criminals loose? You can’t just drive them to the border, drop them off, and tell them to have a nice day. The infamous wall isn’t there yet. They’re just going to come back and, you know, commit more violent crimes.
So instead of dropping them off at the border, you’d need to arrange a transfer from a U.S. prison to a Mexican prison. I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine that would be a legal nightmare. Mexico probably doesn’t want an influx of prisoners into their system. They’re going to be all like, “Violent criminals? No thanks. You keep them.”
So there’s probably going to be a big difference between what he says is going to happen and what actually happens, and a lot of spinning after the fact to try to convince people that what he did was actually what he said he was going to do. In other words, there’s going to be a lot of the same thing that always happens when a new president is elected.
Richmond’s election protests seem to have stopped on Saturday the 12th. At least they haven’t been big enough since then to warrant a news story. I didn’t think they would last long here. They didn’t seem to be fueled by any specific election outrage, just the general anarchy most people feel in college.
Trump named Reince Priebus as his Chief of Staff and Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist.
Priebus seems like an uncontroversial, safe pick and I have nothing to say about it.
Bannon, on the other hand, has made the left lose their minds, since he’s the man behind Breitbart “News.” They call him a racist, anti-Semite, a “white nationalist” (whatever that is–I guess it’s a new political code phrase I need to learn). Twitter is urging people to call their representatives and tell them to oppose Bannon, providing scripts and everything.
If anyone of you are having trouble thinking of what to say re: Ba*non, here's a quick script for you. pic.twitter.com/wjHgW6mCIU
— Celeste P. (@Celeste_pewter) November 14, 2016
I don’t know anything about Bannon, except he looks a bit like an alcoholic*.
My sense is that Priebus will be Trump’s liaison with the Washington insiders, while Bannon will be Trump’s liaison with the people who elected him. Bannon will probably try to keep Trump in a position to be re-elected in four years. That’s just a guess, though.
Incidentally, Obama’s pick for Chief of Staff–Rahm Emanuel–was pretty controversial at the time, too, if anyone remembers.
* I know Trump’s folks are a litigious bunch, so let me clarify that that was a joke, and I am sure Bannon isn’t an alcoholic.
If whatever Trump does to Obamacare turns out to be called Trumpcare, I’m gonna start throwing bricks through windows. Because then we’ll be right back here again in eight years, with the Democrats having spent eight years blocking progress on it and promising to “repeal and replace” it, when in fact all they’re going to do is tweak it and change the name.
The point is, don’t put a president’s name in the law, even in jest.
What am I saying? Of course they’re going to call it Trumpcare. Of course they will.
Given the culture of trolling the Internet has created, is it really surprising to see people spray-painting churches with swastikas and the like?
I thought it would be funny to point out what I wrote after the third debate:
Anyway, at this point I would say the election’s a lock for Hillary, unless something really, really strange happens in the next few weeks. Or, you know, nobody shows up at the polls except Trump supporters. Or if there’s a secret conspiracy by Trump supporters to answer poll questions incorrectly. (I think that would be cool actually. I think it would be fun to teach kids in school to always answer poll questions with a blatant lie.)
Oh how naive we were.
A really, really strange thing did happen: James Comey started talking about those emails again.
And nobody but Trump supporters showed up at the polls.
And there was a secret conspiracy by Trump supporters to answer poll questions incorrectly.
So I guess I nailed that one, not even remotely thinking I would. I should make blind, random guesses more often.
This blog contains all of my “controversial” writings. I was inspired to start writing about politics and current events again, as you might guess, by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. There was such an incredible explosion of fear, outrage, and yes, gloating, that I just had to say something. I try very hard not to deliberately offend people but of necessity these are going to be the “hot button” topics that make people mad. Please note that I have disabled comments for most of these posts because I simply don’t have the time or energy to debate this stuff.