MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Well, we’re getting close to the end now. And it’s looking likely that Hillary is going to win this by an electoral landslide, if not a pop-vote one.

Which is good news for Hillary fans, certainly. And it’s arguably good news for America in the sense that the White House will be occupied by someone who is not an egotistical vindictive blowhard / dream candidate for every racist sexist xenophobe organization in the country.

There’s just one catch: it won't be the end of all the ugly savage batshit animosity we’ve endured in this election. Whether Trump wins or loses, his influence is going to continue long after November 8.

Consider:

On average, just over 43% of the voting public is still supporting Trump, regardless of every outrageous thing he’s said so far, let alone the fact that he has offered no real concrete plan to execute any of his ideas.

To an extent, that’s because they either think the media is making up or exaggerating his statements, or they hate Hillary so much that the only thing Trump could do to put them off at this stage is be caught on tape actually having sex with Hillary backstage at one of the debates. (And they’d still probably assume it was fake.) But I think it’s also because many Trump supporters see him as a champion of glorious political incorrectness who is vindicating every non-PC thought that crosses their minds. They have similar worldviews regarding Muslims, immigrants, black people and fat chix, and they wish they could get away with saying stuff like that at work without being shouted down by the office gay feminazi agenda task force or whoever.

I would also add that this is happening in the broader context of America devolving into a cynical “fuck everyone and everything” outlook that is pervasive in American pop culture today. It’s not ubiquitous, but I encounter it all the time in TV shows and Facebook memes – this worldview that everything is generally terrible and stupid except for “my” clique of people, who are “normal” and okay – everyone else can get fucked, fuck those motherfuckers, get the fuck away from me.

The parameters can be defined many different ways – maybe that ire is targeted at fat people, or handicapped people, or stupid people, or religious people, or poor people, or rich people, or hipsters, or people who shop at Wal-mart, or guys with man-buns, or whatever. But it basically comes down to dividing everyone into people you like or don’t like, and then saying it’s okay to pick on and make fun of the latter group because fuck ‘em, really.

This isn’t defined strictly by where you sit on the political spectrum – some liberals do this too, they just have different targets. It’s a human nature thing, really, not a political thing.

That said, it’s fair to say that the GOP has made it a point to exploit that worldview for political purposes and incorporate it into its platform (albeit more nicely worded). Trump has taken that basic strategy and dialed it up to 11, and the results speak for themselves. Many Trump supporters love his anti-PC schtick because they find it empowering and liberating. They want to be able to establish their superiority by expressing their hatred and disdain for people they look down on – fat girls and retards and foreigners and people who Don’t Belong, etc. They want a society where they can mock and bully the undesirables and have social mores back them up – just like the old days when America was "great".

Put simply, they want the right to act like a dick. (Or am I being divisive here?)

To be clear, I’m not saying this is why they’re voting for Trump. I’m saying it’s why his politically incorrect schtick isn't costing him the support he already has. Intentionally or not, Trump has successfully tapped into that mentality.

And here's the thing: that mentality won’t magically vanish if he loses. Those divisions will remain, in no small part because those divisions already existed. I would argue that Trump hasn’t divided America so much as amplified those divisions by ripping off the mask of civility we’ve used to either ignore them or at least keep them from becoming insurmountable barriers to moving forward as a country and a civilization. (And to be fair, Trump didn’t set this garbage fire all by himself – the GOP wrote the instruction manual and Fox News. Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh etc supplied the fuel.)

So with all that in mind, it’s easy to understand why some people are worried that Trump has been talking about this massive global conspiracy to keep him from winning, that the election is totally rigged and he will not accept a loss under those conditions, however imaginary.

Personally, I’m not sure Trump is really serious about that. I think he’s just salving his ego and creating a pre-emptive excuse if he does lose so he can say, “Hey, not my fault.” For all his talk about “I’ll decide at the time”, I think when the results are in he’ll shift the blame, make his excuses and go on to start his new TV channel or whatever. According to some people that’s been his exit strategy for awhile now. Maybe that was his plan all along. Who knows for sure?

The question is whether his base is going to leave it at that. If they’ve really bought into The Donald’s Grand Global Conspiracy meme that the Gawdamn World Liberal Media Crime League has rigged the system and the media against “real” Americans, how likely are they to simply accept a Hillary presidency?

Not likely at all.

Mind you, I doubt we will see full-scale pitchforks-and-torches riots across the country (to say nothing of muskets). We’re more likely see some outbreaks of personalized, opportunistic vandalism and violence directed at Trump’s enemies list, or another one of the Bundy Boys’ armed-standoff stunts (because hey, it’s not like you can go to jail for that).

All of which will be awful and wrong, but it’ll be nothing even close to a full-scale revolution or general breakdown of law and order that some people imagine.

But we will see extremely loud, hysterical resistance to an Imaginary Hillary Dictatorship. Hillary’s reward for winning the election will be the chance to govern a country where 43% of the population is convinced she’s an evil criminal mastermind backed by a global conspiracy who stole the election and should be in jail for crimes only they know for a fact she has committed.

And it’s a fair bet that the GOP opposition in Congress (whether they hold control of the House and Senate or not) will milk that sentiment for everything it’s worth because why wouldn't they? They’ve been milking the Evil Hillary meme for 30-odd years – why stop now when most of their base is doing the same thing?

That’s what we have to look forward to for the next eight years. That’s the best case scenario. Even if Hillary wins, Donald Trump will continue to encourage America to rip itself apart in a fury of paranoia of distrust and impeachment hearings and racist sexist bullying – he’ll just do it from the studios of Trump TV instead of the White House. We can only hope that the marks don't take it so seriously that a few of them decide to do a McVeigh. 

BONUS TRACK: See this interesting BBC take on Trump’s rigged election meme. One takeaway: it wouldn’t be the first time a POTUS has been declared an illegitimate winner. But every POTUS since at least Bill Clinton has been accused by the opposition of being a fraudulent POTUS. Makes me wonder if we will ever return to a point where the losing party will gracefully accept the results and move on.

Things fall apart,

This is dF

One thing Donald Trump and Bernie Bros have in common is their unshakable belief that the election is rigged against them. This is one of the great unsung traditions of democracy, of course – when yr candidate loses, accuse the other side of cheating because WHAT OTHER EXPLANATION COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE?

However, it’s one thing when voters do it. It’s another when the candidate does it. The former has the luxury of being sore losers. The latter doesn’t. And it’s another thing again when a candidate does it well ahead of the actual election, effectively warning his supporters, “If I lose, it’ll be because the election was rigged against me.”

Which D. Trump did.

And it’s comments like this – as well as the adamant belief of some Bernie Sanders fans that Hillary literally stole the nomination and thus is not a legitimate candidate – that get me to wonder if we’re not seeing the end of democracy as we know it.

To explain:

American democracy has always generally been a model for a peaceful transition of power. That’s actually kind of the point. You may hate that the opposition won, but yr not going to try and change the result with a coup de tat like they do in other parts of the world. Even in 2000 when George W Bush was effectively handed the election by the Supreme Court, as angry as liberals were about that, they weren’t furious enough to resort to violence as a remedy.

Occasionally some idiot resorts to assassination to eliminate a specific POTUS or candidate, but that doesn’t result in a handover of power from one party to another. (Put simply, assassinating President Obama results in President Biden, not President Romney.)

So generally, we accept the results of a given election, as much as we may hate them. The question is how much longer we will continue to do so.

Consider the following:

• Trump’s campaign hinges on milking anger and frustration and providing scapegoats in the form of foreigners, Muslims and – notably – the liberal opposition
• Some of his supporters have a tendency to express that anger and frustration in the form of opportunistic violence (a tendency that Trump hasn't exactly gone out of his way to discourage)
• Others who stick to verbal expressions have expressed their feelings about Hillary Clinton in the form of chants such as “hang the bitch” and “kill the bitch” – to include his own advisors (albeit without using the “B” word)
• Many Republicans – even ones that don’t support Trump specifically – are already convinced that voter fraud is a widespread problem that favors Democrats, which is why they’ve been pushing voter ID laws in as many states as possible
• A number of those laws were recently weakened or overturned in court decisions.

So with all of those factors currently in play, it’s only natural to wonder how the Trump Mob is going to react if Hillary wins – especially given Trump’s recent Second Amendment crack.

A couple of quick points:

1. I feel obligated to point out at this stage that lots of people assumed the Republican convention would be a bloodbath thanks to the Trump Mob. It wasn’t.

2. I also think the 2A “joke” has been blown out of proportion in the sense that I don’t believe Trump was actively or intentionally calling for someone to shoot his opponent.

Similarly, on the rigged-election meme, I don’t think Trump is intentionally calling for revolution, assassination or any kind of violent remedy should he lose. I think he’s more interested in making sure everyone understands the only possible way he can lose is if Hillary cheats, because DONALD TRUMP NEVER LOSES.

However, as this article at The Atlantic points out, it’s not about what Trump meant, it’s about what his fans thought he meant – especially in the context described above – how much they take it to heart, and how far they’re prepared to run with it.

(I'll also add that while I doubt Trump gives a second thought about how his rhetoric is being processed, I do think whatever violence breaks out will be on him, no matter what his intentions were. He may have no control over the mob he’s created, but that doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for its actions.) 

That’s just the Trump camp. Elsewhere, we are seeing that a growing number of voters are becoming polarized to the point where they believe the opposition has become clear and present danger to the country, making compromise or possibly even co-existence impossible. I hear this from conservatives and liberals alike, and boy are they angry about it.

To be clear, most of them aren’t talking about armed revolution, and the ones who are don’t have the numbers to come anywhere close to succeeding. But it seems to me we are heading in a direction where people eventually decide, “What the hell is the point of democracy if my side doesn't win?”

It may take us decades to get to that point. It might take until November. I don’t know. But it’s clear there’s a serious breakdown of trust in the current electoral process – it’s not rigged, but people think it is because they don’t understand how it works. Everyone thinks it’s a simple matter of whoever gets the most votes wins – it’s not, and hasn’t been for a very long time. But people don’t know that. And making matters worse is the process that does exist is starting to buckle under the strain of political polarization among the voting public.

If something isn’t done to correct this – either by reforming the process, simplifying it or even just educating people on how and why it works the way it does – the problem is going to get worse. Democracy works when people trust the system. When that trust is replaced with sufficient anger, suspicion and paranoia … well, at the very least you get D. Trump as a POTUS nominee telling his Very Very Angry supporters to assume a Hillary victory is illegitimate – and refuse to let her get away with it.

If we’re lucky, D. Trump’s numbers will keep dwindling until all he has left is a handful of die-hards. On the other hand, in a room full of dynamite it only takes one dingbat with a match to set it off.

Revolution ballroom,

This is dF

By now you know that Donald Trump responded to Khizr Khan’s DNC speech in the usual Trump way: by attacking his wife and implying she wasn’t allowed to speak. Because, you know, that’s what radical Muslims do. Not saying he is one. Radical, I mean. I’m just saying, etc.

This in itself isn’t that notable – Trump has said worse thing about various people throughout this campaign with no noticeable negative effects on his popularity. For all the dithering from GOP players over this and the general notion that American combat veterans are the one sacred cow in the political arena you never ever go after, the fact is that Trump’s constituents don’t care. 

And if you think Trump is awful, you should see the people who speak on his behalf. Like these people who responded to Khan’s speech by circulating a conspiracy theory that Khizr Khan is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that his son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was a double agent for al-Qaeda.

(Note that they’re not saying he is, they're just saying he COULD be and someone should investigate this because HELLO, MUSLIM.) 

And those who aren’t going for full-on conspiracies are taking Khan to task for not using his speech time to denounce the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Which translates to many conservative ears as: “ISN’T IT INTERESTING YOU CHOSE NOT TO DO THAT? IF YOU ARE NOT WITH THE BROTHERHOOD WHY DID YOU NOT DENOUNCE THEM WHEN THE REAL ENEMY OF AMERICA IS ISLAM OF WHICH YOU ARE ONE?”

So no, I don't think this is going to damage him all that much as far as his support base is concerned. 

What’s more interesting is this: 

The job of POTUS generally involves a lot of public criticism – some of it fair, much of it not. It’s part of the job description. Trump does it to Obama all the time. But Trump’s response to Khizr Khan indicates that he won’t put up with any criticism he deems unfair (which so far seems to be all of it) and if he can’t discredit yr argument, he’ll discredit you and yr family. We don’t have to imagine how this might play with someone who will have the NSA, CIA and FBI at his disposal. After all, Trump wouldn't be the first paranoid, vindictive POTUS with an enemies list (which includes the press) and zero tolerance for criticism. 

So, you know, there's that to look forward to.

On my list,

This is dF

At least I hope so. This is one of those stories where it pays to wait and see what happens next before drawing conclusions from it. So naturally everyone is jumping to the conclusions they want for maximum political impact. Put another way, at this stage the leaked emails prove whatever conspiracy theory you want them to prove, and no future research into their contents is going to change yr conclusions.

So feel free to ignore the rest of this post, because what the hell do I know?

1. The going conspiracy theory is that Vlad Putin is somehow behind this with the goal of helping Trump win (i.e. the emails were allegedly stolen by Russian hackers, Donald Trump and Putin are BFFs, COINCIDENCE?!).

That theory is big on speculation and light on hard evidence (at least for now) – which isn’t stopping Hillary from running with it, and why not? It’s a great hook, especially during convention week, although personally, every time Hillary mentions Russia now I can't help thinking of Burn After Reading.

However, we do know that (1) the DNC’s email servers were in fact hacked, and (2) the evidence is piling up that Russian intelligence agencies were behind that.

What we don’t know for sure yet is whether the leaked emails acquired by Wikileaks from “Guccifer 2.0” came from that specific hack – or how reliable the documents are (for example, if it IS a Russian intel operation, could some of the juicier files have been edited or planted?). It’s already been suggested that Guccifer 2.0 himself may be a false flag to throw cyber-detectives off the scent.

What fun!

And we also don’t know for sure if Vlad Putin personally ordered the hack, or even knew about it. We probably never will.

2. Whether or not Wikileaks has been weaponized by Putin to sabotage Hillary’s campaign, we know for a fact that the timing was intentional because Julian Assange wants Hillary stopped in her corrupt Wall-Street-stained tracks. He’s made it no secret how he feels about her, and that he’s partly motivated by the fact that Hillary wants him arrested.

3. In any case, all the shock/horror of the DNC’s apparent attitude towards Sanders is so much shadenfreude to me. To paraphrase Rick Wilson: A political party playing political tricks against a candidate who is not a party member? INCONCEIVABLE!

For my money, the emails are an interesting look under the hood of a major political party that illustrates the truth that politics is a “whatever it takes” business and politicos play dirty to win. Believe it or not, this is how political parties work (to include the RNC, and yr kidding yrself if you think it doesn’t).

Yes, it IS sleazy and dishonest. Unfortunately, that’s how this game is played. And sorry, but at least some Sanders fans aren’t really in a position to take the high road on civilized, honest conduct in a presidential campaign.

4. While the emails do indicate that the head of the DNC was taking sides, there’s no evidence that some of their more nefarious plans (exploiting Sanders’ alleged atheism, for example) were ever executed, or that the DNC actively rigged votes or cheated, or otherwise had a definitive influence in the results. That doesn’t excuse the intent, of course. But so far I haven’t seen any particular smoking gun proving the DNC actively rigged anything (based on my definition of “smoking gun” and “rigged”, anyway). That may change later. But it’s been a few days now, and so far, all it really shows is that the DNC was not happy about a non-Democrat using the DNC to compete against an actual Democratic Party member and looked for ways to mitigate that – which, again, shouldn’t surprise anyone.

5. Of course Bernie Bros are using this bombshell to prove Hillary cheated and stole the election, therefore … what? She should quit and give it to Bernie? We should all vote for Trump who may be the most dangerous nominee to ever run for office but hey at least he’s honest about it?

I don’t blame Bernie fans for seeing it as one last chance to dump Hillary in favor of Sanders. But even Sanders said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Guys, drop it unless you'd rather have Donald Trump turn the country into a batshit xenophobic trash fire than let Hillary be in charge of it, in which case yr all idiots.”

So at this stage, I suspect at least some Bernie fans are at the same emotional space that birthers were after Obama was elected (and later re-elected): they no longer care about the election results, they just want everyone to admit that they were right about Hillary all along and would it kill you to say that in front of everyone and apologize to me?

6. So in the end, I’m a lot less concerned about the alleged conduct of the DNC (which is sleazy politics as usual and no reason to either drop Hillary or support Trump) and way more concerned by the possibility that a foreign govt (with the possibly unwitting help of Julian Assange) is engaging in a form of cyberwarfare to actively influence the outcome of a US presidential election. That’s the far bigger story here.

And while Trump might benefit from it, I doubt he or his alleged Russian business connections had anything directly to do with it.

On the other hand, if Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails suddenly turn up on Wikileaks, well yeah, you can say there’s a connection there.

You’ve got mail,

This is dF

ITEM: Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos has been banned from Twitter for tweeting racist abuse at Leslie Jones, who is currently starring in the Ghostbusters reboot, which has angered people like Yiannopoulos because they ruined a perfectly good movie by putting a bunch of girls in it to kowtow to the liberal Feminazi agenda or something.

So yeah, a few things here:

1. For the record, I haven’t seen the movie yet, and while I don’t think we needed a Ghostbusters reboot, I have no problem with the casting.

2. As usual John Scalzi saves me a lot of typing here regarding Yiannopoulos’ cries of censorship and liberal bias at Twitter. Basically, no and no.

3. Scalzi also raises a point that Leslie Jones has also mentioned – that Twitter needs to do more about this kind of thing, and not just when it happens to celebrities with lots of followers.

It’s true that trolls are a perennial problem anywhere on the internet, and yes, shutting them down doesn’t make them or their racist/sexist attitudes go away. But there’s a big difference between free speech and bullying – especially when it’s the kind of professional organized bullying that trolls like Yiannopoulos engage in. (For more on this, I recommend this piece by Laurie Penny, who has known Yiannopoulos for some time and attended his pro-Trump rally at the RNC Convention this week – poor woman.)

Social media has become so poisonous that companies like Twitter (and Facebook and all of them, really) do need to be more proactive in protecting users from abuse. It’s difficult for them to do that because their business model relies on keeping users, not kicking them off permanently. But it’s either that or people like Leslie Jones quitting. They can’t have it both ways for much longer – especially now that one of the biggest trolls in the country just accepted the GOP nomination for President.

Not with the banned,

This is dF

The Twitbookverse is a-dither over the FBI’s decision to not press charges against Hillary Clinton for using her private email server when she was State Secretary.

And as you might imagine, I’m not impressed with the dithering, largely because just about all of it is coming from people who wanted to see her go to jail solely for political convenience.

Conservatives are upset because they’ve oh so badly wanted to put Hillary in jail since Whitewater, and liberals are upset because arresting Hillary is about the only way that Bernie Sanders is going to get the Democratic nomination at this point. I don’t know that either group really cares about what she did or why – they just care about a result that takes her out of the election.

I can’t prove that, of course. But as Josh Marshall at TPM has pointed out, it was always pretty obvious from all available public evidence that the only way the FBI would indict her was if they had some damning evidence that hadn’t been made public yet. They didn’t. So the result is only a surprise to people who had convinced themselves (with the help of select media echo chambers) that Hillary was guilty guilty guilty.

The consolation prize is Director Comey’s comments about her conduct. You can bet that’s going to be fed straight into the relevant political machines and milked for all it’s worth to “prove” that they were right all along and that HRC is a lying evil liar who lies about things that are untrue and Obama covered up her crimes and Wall Street owns and she endangered national security and dammit so much we don’t want her to be President WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING TO US WHAT ABOUT LORETTA LYNCH BENGHAZI AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Or they could just say that it proves she showed bad judgment, which is probably true. But that’s not against the law. And I doubt it will cost her that many votes anyway.

Then again, who can say when her opponent is a guy who can praise Saddam Hussein and still not blow the election?

Anyhow, when you add up every single Republican-led Congressional investigation that’s been thrown at her since the early 90s – millions of dollars wasted with absolutely nothing to show for it – I think it’s reasonable to conclude that whatever else you may think about Hillary, she hasn’t broken any laws or done anything bad enough that would disqualify her from being POTUS.

So clearly the GOP has only one option moving forward: start a NEW investigation.

This time I know it's for real,

This is dF

It’s official: the UK has decided to leave the EU. (Or, as Fox News calls it, “The UN”.)

I haven’t had much to say about the Brexit, mainly because – like a lot of people – I’d assumed it wouldn't actually happen. Well it has. So here’s my official blog post on it as required by the One World Bloggery Association:

1. One illustrative point: according to Google, around the time that the polls closed, its search engine saw a +250% spike in searches for “what happens if we leave the EU”.

NOW they ask.

2. And since they’re asking, Vox has a good summary here.

The Economist also has some worthwhile commentary on this.

The upshot is that the actual Brexit will take a couple of years, but the short-term impact of uncertainty will hurt the country’s economy, and the long-term impact could be even worse, depending on how the negotiations go and who’s in charge of them on the UK side.

Also, while I think the UK – or at least England – might survive the Brexit, ultimately there is no real upside – unless you believe what Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage say about how Britain’s economy will be awesome. Which the fact-checkers say you shouldn’t. But fact-checkers, what do THEY know, eh?

3. But then it was never really about the economy anyway. It’s pretty clear that for UKIP, it was mainly about immigrants. Basically, a lot of Brits are freaked out by the surge in migrants, and Boris and Nigel have exploited that xenophobia and convinced them that the answer to their problems is to leave the EU, kick out the foreigners and make Britain “Great” again.

4. Which may sound familiar to those of you living in America. Or Texas.

5. To be fair, not everyone who voted “Leave” is a xenophobic racist. Some people said they supported the Brexit because they felt the EU is undemocratic. I suspect at least some of them said that because it sounds better than “I hate foreigners”. But like most of the other claims the “Leave” campaign made, it’s not really true – not to the extent that it justifies leaving. The EU has many many problems, but it’s not the dictatorship Nigel Farange makes it out to be.

6. Meanwhile, it turns out at least some of the people who voted “Leave” only did it as some kind of half-assed protest and didn’t seriously think their side would win. Oops!

7. But for the most part, UKIP won the referendum by (1) exploiting prejudiced and ignorant attitudes towards foreigners, and (2) citing economic justifications that were based on blatantly false and easily debunked pretenses. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this – just about all of the Leave camp’s claims about the EU were outright wrong, and it didn’t take a lot of effort to prove they were wrong, and people voted for them anyway.

This to me is more important than whether the worst-case Brexit scenarios actually happen. They may be overblown. We’ll find out eventually. What’s not overblown is that a blatant appeal to racist xenophobia paid off for the instigators. That speaks volumes about the current state of the UK. Even if the “Remain” side had been on the winning side of that thin margin, UKIP has already succeeded in letting every immigrant in the UK know how roughly half of the population feels about them.

The fact that D. Trump got himself the presidential nomination more or less the same way speaks volumes about the current state of America. Whether he wins or not, there are consequences, because a Hillary victory won’t change those attitudes towards foreigners.

BONUS TRACK: By the way, here’s some photos from 1975, the last time the UK had a referendum about leaving the EU. Notice how Margaret Thatcher is in favor of staying.

Anarchy in the UK,

This is dF

ITEM: The Washington Post has become the latest in an ever-growing line of news media barred from attending Donald Trump’s rallies and press conferences after the paper gave him "incredibly inaccurate" coverage.

GLOSSARY: “Inaccurate” = “reporting what Trump said, not what he meant to say”.

Or something. It’s hard to know, exactly. It probably changes according to whatever mood Trump happens to be in at the time. Also, this is the same guy who claimed in his WaPo statement that WaPo is a propaganda tool for Amazon to protect its monopoly and avoid taxes. So, you know, accuracy is relative.

This isn’t the first time Trump has kicked reporters out of his campaign events or his press pool. It probably won’t be the last. The real question is whether it matters. And the answer probably depends on how far Trump would take this if he wins.

That depends who you ask, of course. The liberals are predicting apocalyptic visions of Nazi AmeriKKKa, though I suspect they’d be doing that if Jeb! was the nominee like he was supposed to be. Trump apologists – and in fact Trump himself – insist that Trump The POTUS will act differently from Trump The Candidate, so don’t worry, he’ll curb his more extreme side once he’s in office.

The latter opinion seems plausible when you remember that Trump is knowingly playing to a base that’s been built up on a rabid distrust of both Establishment politicians and the mainstream media. Banning reporters could just be a part of that schtick, and it’s always possible he’ll drop that shtick once he wins. He’s already said as much.

On the other hand, he has expressed an interest in amending libel laws making it easier to sue the hell out of newspapers who write “inaccurate” things about him. So who knows, really?

Supposing he does continue his media blacklist as POTUS, this raises an interesting question: is it really necessary to be in Trump’s physical presence in order to report what he says and does?

I mean, his speeches are already widely covered. I could probably “cover” his campaign from here in HK if I wanted to. The same would arguably true of President Trump’s career unless he imposes a full media blackout, which seems unlikely.

Also, I recall what Ana Marie Cox pointed out seven years ago: the White House Press Corps is arguably little more than a glorified steno pool who report whatever spin the POTUS or his media-trained Press Secretary hurls at their questions. No matter how much access they have to Trump, he’s not going to give them anything he doesn’t want to give. So why show up at all?

Still, I would agree that all this is beside the point. A POTUS who only grants access to media who doesn’t write “inaccurate” things about him (especially one whose definition of “inaccurate” seems pretty broad and arbitrary) isn’t exactly in the spirit of the First Amendment of the Constitution. And we already know what happens if you take Trump’s current attitude and run off the end of the Earth with it.

I don’t think Trump wants to take it nearly that far, mind you. But it’s clear he’s become frustrated that the media isn’t as credulous as it was when he started his campaign. That’s likely because (1) he’s no longer the loudest buffoon in a crowded field, but an actual presumptive nominee, and (2) journalists have finally gotten a handle on his interview style, so he’s no longer able to baffle them with his reality-TV bebop, as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications scholar at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, told the LA Times:


In other words, Trump can’t get away with just being “good television” anymore.

The honeymoon is over,

This is dF

There is much a-dithering over the rise of Donald Trump as America’s new emperor. Much of it is reasonable. Some of it is overblown. And at least some of it seems to assume that Trump has basically already won the election.

Which he hasn’t. Yet. He might. It seems unlikely, but then so did his chances at getting anywhere near the nomination.

Anyway, the social media dithering over his success has inspired a few observations from here in the Team Def Citadel.

1. bedsitter23  has made a similar point elsewhere, but the great irony of Trump is that he’s more uniter than divider. For the first time in my lifetime, my conservative and liberal friends actually strongly agree on something: if our choices are Trump or Hillary, America is screwed. Their reasons may differ to the point of unintentional hilarity. But whoever wins a Trump/HRC, they will be united in their hatred for the sitting POTUS.

2. On the other hand, Gary Johnson is now suddenly polling 10% vs Trump and Hillary. So hey, if enough Cruz/Bernie fans coordinate their ragequitting, Johnson could win this.

(Okay, maybe not, but in this election, nothing is impossible at this stage.)

3. I hear over and over again that Trump doesn’t represent the REAL America or even the REAL Republican Party. And yet he is winning a lot of votes. He may not represent the “real” GOP, but he has a real constituency that is big enough to push him on top. As Trump might say, “Who’s doing the voting? Someone’s doing the voting, Don.”

4. Many people also say Trump isn’t qualified to be POTUS because he insults people, gives credence to conspiracy theories, demonizes groups of people as “the enemy” and expresses a lot of opinions and policy ideas that are based on false information that he may think is true but only because they’re reinforced inside the particular personal/political echo chamber he inhabits.

Fair comment. On the other hand, I see this on social media every day.

I’m not kidding. My FaceTwit feed is packed with memes and clickbait headlines full of conspiracies or stories designed to provoke righteous partisan outrage, most of which later turn out to be misleading or outright false, but people keep believing them because they don't trust any “objective” media telling them otherwise. If it doesn’t fit their worldview, it’s dismissed. No one remembers that Snopes link you posted debunking that story. (Some of them are convinced Snopes is financed by the opposition anyway.) 

I get this from both sides. Liberals, conservatives – almost all of them post stuff like this to some level. And both sides are drowning in tsunamis of misinformation, cynicism and snark that you can only get from a media landscape whose default mode is reality TV, celebrity gossip, infomercials, football and insult comedy.

In that kind of environment, who else is qualified to represent the American People™ of 2016?

So in that sense, maybe Trump is the POTUS we deserve.

6. And why not? George W Bush lowered the bar dramatically. It’s not like we didn't know he was a boob when he was running. And he served two terms.

Future history books (assuming history books still exist in the future) may peg Trump’s success as the point where the perceived qualifications for being POTUS dramatically shifted. People don't want intelligence, vision and statesmanship in a POTUS. They want a vaudeville entertainer. Trump may be a xenophobic, sexist racist fascist nincompoop, but hey, so was Archie Bunker and All In The Family was a great show, right?

I could be wrong. But dig this excerpt from a recent NYT article about Bernie fans who would rather take Trump over Hillary:


In other words, for many people the POTUS race has become just another reality television show. In which case, it’s no wonder Trump is doing so well.

The unreal world,

This is dF

ITEM: The US Senate’s commerce committee is investigating whether Facebook is suppressing ideologically conservative news or stories from conservative organizations from its "trending topics" column.

The allegations originate from a story on Gizmodo citing anonymous Facebook “news curators” who say they were told to ignore certain stories and inject others into the column, regardless of how popular they were. Facebook denies this.

A few thoughts:

1. If Facebook is suppressing conservative content, you sure can’t tell from my newsfeed because I get an earful of batshit every day from that side of the aisle.

2. It’s reasonable to assume that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) only really cares about this because of the alleged liberal bias. If news curators were ignoring liberal-leaning stories, I doubt he’d bother calling the committee to order over it. The same goes for any other conservatives who may be crying outrage over this.

3. Thune’s contention seems to be that because Facebook is a social media site and not a news organization, it’s subject to different considerations regarding political media bias, not least because Facebook itself states that the trending module only lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook” and is generally driven by algorithms, with minimal human input to confirm the algorithms are working.

4. The thing is, even if the allegations are true, there’s nothing illegal about it unless yr argument is that Facebook is guilty of misleading marketing. In terms of the First Amendment, free speech and fairness, there’s an eloquent argument out there that social media outlets – which are privately owned companies – can set whatever content policies they want, and are under no legal or constitutional obligation to be “fair”. Pretty much all online sites set content policies (to include policing trolls in the comments section). And technically there’s no law dictating that any media outlet has to be fair and balanced, so why should Facebook be any different in that regard?

Thune may be right that “Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet.” On the other hand, “the values of an open Internet” doesn't mean every site on the internet has to give equal coverage to all issues. Furthermore, it’s disingenuous for him to complain about anything being “inconsistent with the values of an open Internet” since Republicans are currently ideologically opposed to net neutrality, which is very much an “open Internet” value.

5. The actual point of the Gizmodo story was that Facebook’s trending column is run pretty much like any other news media outlet – with a gatekeeper/editorial function that is subject to the personal biases of the editorial team. Those biases may be more or less balanced, or they may be along the lines of Breitbart or AddictingInfo. But they’re rarely 100% neutral.

It's also worth mentioning that, according to Gizmodo, Facebook’s editorial decisions on trending topics were based in part on whether the stories in question were (for instance) duplicate topics, hoaxes, poorly sourced, or a rumor going viral within its own particular echo chamber with no outside verification. For example, if a story breaks that Obama is planning a false flag terrorist attack to cancel the election and declare himself emperor, and it’s only being reported on World Net Daily and similar right-wing crackpot conspiracy sites who are basically just repeating what WND said, then it’s not necessarily a “trending” news story, depending on yr definition of “trending”.

However, this does raise a valid question: is trending by definition 100% organic? Should it be? Would it more useful if it is? If so, to who – you, or Facebook’s advertisers? (Let’s remind ourselves here that Facebook users are not customers – they are product for the actual customers – i.e. advertisers.)

If there’s any “scandal” here, maybe it’s that Facebook’s trending algorithms don't work that great without human monitoring. Personally I’d prefer more human curators than less. But then I’m old school and I’m an editor by trade, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

(Also, I don't actually use the Facebook trending topics thing. So it doesn't matter to me how good Facebook’s algorithms are.) 

And it probably doesn't matter in general because from here on out, most people won't be arguing about algorithms. They’ll be arguing over Facebook’s Big Fat Unfair Liberal Conspiracy against poor oppressed conservatives. There's a trending topic for you.

Antisocial,

This is dF