"Donald Trump Is the Dark Triad Man"

This is very creepy, but will appeal to Trump fans.


Here is "dark triad" as defined by wikipedia:

The dark triad is a subject in psychology that focuses on three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Use of the term "dark" implies that people possessing these traits have malevolent qualities.

The TrumpenReich Cometh

We don’t know whether the election of Trump is an American echo of the winter of 1932-33 in Germany, when a fragile democracy collapsed into tyranny and an infamous demagogue rose to power on a promise of economic renewal and restored national pride, with an unmistakable racial subtext. 

It’s an inflated comparison in many ways: Trump is too lazy and stupid to be a good Führer, and lacks any semblance of a consistent ideology; his true believers are nowhere near a majority, and are unlikely to participate in any form of mass mobilization that involves leaving the sofa. Kristallnacht is more likely to come back as a hashtag than a physical event. 

snip

At the very least the Trump election is a moment of unprecedented national emergency, and a critical symptom of how badly American political life has decayed. The whole scenario remains deeply ludicrous, although it long ago stopped being funny. It more closely resembles a plot twist in an Alan Moore graphic novel than anything any of us expected to see in the real world: A reality TV star and real estate salesman with the demeanor and intellect of a petulant child has been elected president with a minority of the vote, thanks to a flukey electoral system, a severely divided and demoralized electorate, a beleaguered and overconfident opponent and a concatenation of other circumstances too strange for fiction.

snip

That’s before we get to all the vile things Trump has said and done to galvanize the most ignorant and jingoistic tendencies in the American public, and the incoherent and/or vile list of things he has said he will do in the future. Those are also aspects of the emergency. Then there’s the fact that President-elect Trump has so far served as a channel for the most retrograde elements of the hard right: He has appointed an old-line white Southerner with clear links to Jim Crow-style racism as his attorney general (Jeff Sessions), a defrocked general given to paranoid anti-Islamic tirades as his national security adviser (Michael Flynn), and a millionaire zealot who wants to defund public schools as his secretary of education (Betsy DeVos). 

Never mind the “alt-right,” an increasingly meaningless term that describes a basket of miscellaneous deplorables. Mike Pence or Steve Bannon or whoever is orchestrating things behind the scenes is installing a right-wing dream team that would have been too extreme for Dick Cheney. 

Those who try to assure us that the emergency is not an emergency, or to insist that the enduring institutions of democracy will surely triumph over this mass hallucination, are either cowardly or stupid or have their heads buried somewhere that isn’t the sand. Furthermore, they are steadfastly refusing to learn anything from recent experience: Aren’t these the same responsible grownups who understood how things worked in the real world, and who felt sure that Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee,and then that Hillary Clinton would win the election in a historic landslide? 

At some point, clinging to your broken idols while barbarians ransack the temple just becomes pathetic. To be more charitable, the “normalizers” are just afraid. Which is understandable; we should all be afraid. We have good reason to be afraid if we are Muslim, if we are gay or lesbian or trans, if we are black, if we are recent immigrants with or without papers. We have good reason to be afraid if people in those communities are our neighbors, our family members, our friends, our loved ones. We have reason to be afraid if we are Americans who do not define that nationality by looking backward to an imaginary past. The question now is how we respond to that fear. What we do with it.

snip

It took years for American politics to deteriorate badly enough that Donald Trump could be elected dogcatcher, let alone president. There’s plenty of blame to go around. None of us did enough to stop it from happening, quite obviously. So now we confront a national emergency that must not be denied and an old question out of the history textbooks that cannot be avoided: Whose side are you on?

Or as this guy says-- Winter is Coming:

This piece on white nationalism and Trump is worth a read:

Why I Left White Nationalism

Basically, IMHO, white nationalism (or any sort of race-based nationalism) is a primitive, tribal instinct, a reaction to a complex world that is hard to adapt to for some people. It is not a good philosophy or a worthwhile expression of humanity.

Appeaser in Chief

Look for Russia to whole-heartedly invade and annex Ukraine when President Trump is in office, and have trump do nothing.

Whee!

"Make Germany Great Again"

This movie (Look Who's Back) came out in Germany in 2015, about Hitler coming back to life in modern day Germany. It's streaming on Netflix-- check it out if you can.

So seriously, at one point in the movie, Hitler says "I just want to make Germany great again".

I wonder if this movie is where Trump (or one of his people) got his "Make America Great Again" slogan.

Trump's Cult of Personality

It's pretty obvious by now that a very large number of Trump supporters have attached some sort of mystical savior-like qualities to him.

It's really weird and creepy.

It's also disturbing to see conspiracy sites like Alex Jones and people at Washington's Blog act as if Trump is some amazing superman. Maybe even an Ubermensch.

Many of these people do happily see signs of Hitler-like qualities in Trump, while others seem willfully blind to it.

Keep in mind Trump:
-- ran a scammy fake university, that he just settled a lawsuit over for $25 million
-- has ran multiple businesses into bankruptcy
-- lost almost $1 billion in one year, in the Casino industry
-- boasted of sexual assault
-- was accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women
-- set a record for lies in a campaign
-- engaged in not so subtle race-baiting
-- openly promoted right-wing conspiracy theories
-- proposed banning a whole religion from entering the US
-- publicly asked Russian hackers to break into State dept emails
-- has no concept about nuclear weapons policy, and has freaked out security experts
and on and on and on... the list is almost endless of things he did that should have disqualified him from the presidency. And yet people voted for him anyway in enough numbers to eke out a win in the electoral college.

He breaks all the rules, and gets away with it because he says the right things to his supporters.

The only thing that can explain his supporters behavior is some weird cult of personality.

But it's such an amazing joke that anyone thinks he can change anything in DC or make it better. He's a total obvious conman.

It's not clear whether the Alex Jones outfit really believes in Trump, or they cynically or supporting them for some unclear reason. Certainly Jones' followers seem to be happy to go along with rightwing fascist bullshit. But it just goes to show how gullible conspiracy people can be.

Then there's the Evangelicals, whose support of Trump is the biggest joke in the world. Trump embodies loose sexuality, is a complete narcissist and knows almost nothing about Christianity.  But
Evangelicals have latched onto him as some sort of culture warrior/savior-- truly bizarre.  But it just goes to show how gullible Evangelicals can be.

The there's the media, which clearly loves the attention Trump brings to the media. They put up with his crap for the most part, because they always give the benefit of the doubt to conservative and they love RATINGS.  So they can make money as Trump completely fleeces the country, drives it into bankruptcy, and god knows what else.

Prepping That Race War

Racism wasn't just act during the campaign-- Donald Trump Is Building a Team of Racists

National Security Advisor appointee Michael Flynn is an Islamophobe

Attorney General appointee Jeff Sessions is an old-fashioned Southern racist-- this one is the most blatant, given the importance of the position

White House Advisor Steve Bannon is a white nationalist

CIA director appointee Mike Pompeo also appears to be an Islamophobe

But he’s a Tea Party member, a climate science denier, and an extreme anti-choicer who doesn’t support rape/incest exceptions. He thinks Edward Snowden should be executed. He thinks the people at Guantanamo Bay look “well-fed” and are well treated. He’s a Benghazi nutcase and he’s a fanatical opponent of the nuclear agreement with Iran. He’s been denounced by the The Council on American-Islamic Relations for saying Islamophobic things on the House floor.

Basically, all of these people are extremist right-wing hacks who do not belong in power in the US.

Flynn also has some disturbing ties to Russia.

Flynn is also the guy that first said that Obama and Clinton "founded" ISIS.


But the bottom line is that either by accident or design, Trump is surrounding himself with people who will create racial/religious tensions, probably in order to create a national emergency they can use to grab more power.

More on Election Fraud

So where does all of the above get us? It’s a mountain of statistical and mathematical and logical and demographic discrepancy and suspicion and nothing more. I can’t definitively prove that the vote tallies were rigged. And as a practical matter it would be so tricky for a hacker to rig the results in various states, without any of the local precinct overseers catching on, that no one has even been able to posit a plausible method for pulling it off.

But still, these things can’t all have legitimately happened.

In order to believe that the official vote tallies are legitimate, you have to accept that all of the above legitimately happened: African-Americans in the south went from turning out in droves for Hillary Clinton in the primary to not caring if she won the general election. Donald Trump got perhaps seventy percent of the same-day voting in Florida. The polling averages were wrong for the first time in modern history. Trump beat his poll numbers despite having spent the primary season tending to fall below them. Clinton fell below her poll numbers despite having spent the primary season tending to beat them. In every state where Trump pulled off a shocking upset victory, he just happened to do it with one percent of the vote. And in an election that everyone cared particularly deeply about, no one really turned out to vote at all. I can accept any one of the above things happening as an isolated fluke. I cannot accept all the above happening. And so for once in my evidence-driven career, I’m left to believe that the conspiracy theorists are right: the vote tallies are rigged.

Hillary Clinton is the only person to ever win the Presidency by millions of votes and “lose”

UPDATE: good details in this article:

A Fair Election? Serious, Hard-to-Explain Questions Arise About Trump Vote Totals in 3 Key States:

A series of explanation-defying questions surrounding Donald Trump’s victories in key 2016 swing states has prompted a cadre of voting rights attorneys and electronic voting machine experts to consider formally filing for presidential recounts in coming days. These recount-justifying anomalies go beyond the discrepancies in media exit polls predicting a Hillary Clinton victory on November 8 and subsequent vote counts where Trump won states that have not backed Republican presidents for decades. Recounts could clarify or verify whether several different forms of electronic hacking could have padded state voter rolls and altered resulting counts. Former state election directors contacted by AlterNet were extremely skeptical of the election theft theories that accompanied the troubling vote-count patterns. They added that the courts would not change election results unless there was overwhelming proof. Spokespeople for election departments in possible recount states also said their voting systems were designed to block hacking, especially after federal intelligence officials this summer said Russia hacked into two state voter registration databases (Illinois was named) and warned states to be vigilant. Russia also was reportedly behind hacks of DNC and Clinton campaign emails. The count anomalies and possible explanations cited by the team of voting rights attorneys and electronic voting machine experts, whose experience in these issues dates back to the 2000 and 2004 elections, combined a mix of old and new threats. In some cases, known electronic voting machine vulnerabilities may have been tapped to inflate county-level vote tabulations, they said, suggesting those machines should be impounded and examined. Where Russia may have been involved, their theory goes beyond anything imagined in past elections. They posited that last summer’s Russia hacks of voter registration databases could have yielded sufficient information to create large numbers of phantom absentee ballot voters, inflating the Trump vote in certain swing states that helped win the Electoral College. Recounts and related litigation could explore if either happened, they said. Obtaining and comparing pre- and post-election logic and accuracy reports of voting machinery might begin to trace the “older school” vote-count tampering, where countywide totals are calculated. (American elections are run by county officials.) Similarly, comparing voter lists from states hacked by Russians, such as Illinois where more than 200,000 voter files were taken, to states with very high numbers of absentee ballots, could reveal if phantom voters were put into those state’s databases, they said. “The theory here rests not on the claim that the hackers used data from Illinois to apply for registration status and absentee ballots,” one attorney explained. “Rather, the theory is that the hackers used the data from Illinois to place fake voters into voter registration databases which they also hacked… A leading computer scientist agreed this is how it could be done.” While other election administration experts contacted dismissed this scenario, saying post-election audits in swing states would find discrepancies between the number of paper absentee ballots cast and electronic totals assigned to that ballot category, the anomalies cited by the election integrity team represent their basis to pursue possible recounts in several midwestern states.

Read the rest.

Be On the Alert for Mayhem and Worse in the Coming Year

So I was thinking about the one hopeful thing after the shitstorm coming from the Trump presidency, is that Democrats can try to win back the House and Senate in 2018. There should be enough backlash to Trump to do it by then.

Then I was thinking about GWBush, and how unpopular he was after his selection after 2000, and then, hmm, why didn't the Dems take back Congress in 2002?

Then I realized, oh fuck, 9/11. And then the march to war in Iraq.

I am predicting a national emergency (massive riots, terrorist attack) in the next year, that the Trump administration will use to grab more power and deflect public unrest. Then they will use that power boost to hold onto Congress, or worse, martial law, and/or declare Trump supreme leader.

These Trump dudes are the worst of the worst, and only the GOP can stop them. But most of the GOP are only to happy to go along with it.

We're fucked.

Russian Hackers Created Dissension in the DNC

According to Kurt Eichenwald (and I suspected this was the case given everything else in this election):

Next, the infamous hack of DNC emails that “proved” the organization had its thumb on the scale for Clinton. Perhaps nothing has been more frustrating for people in the politics business to address, because the conspiracy is based on ignorance. 

Almost every email that set off the “rigged” accusations was from May 2016. (One was in late April; I’ll address that below.) Even in the most ridiculous of dream worlds, Sanders could not have possibly won the nomination after May 3—at that point, he needed 984 more pledged delegates, but there were only 933 available in the remaining contests. And political pros could tell by the delegate math that the race was over on April 19, since a victory would require him to win almost every single delegate after that, something no rational person could believe. 

Sanders voters proclaimed that superdelegates, elected officials and party regulars who controlled thousands of votes, could flip their support and instead vote for the candidate with the fewest votes. In other words, they wanted the party to overthrow the will of the majority of voters. That Sanders fans were wishing for an establishment overthrow of the electorate more common in banana republics or dictatorships is obscene. (One side note: Sanders supporters also made a big deal out of the fact that many of the superdelegates had expressed support for Clinton early in the campaign. They did the same thing in 2008, then switched to Obama when he won the most pledged delegates. Same thing would have happened with Sanders if he had persuaded more people to vote for him.) 

This is important because it shows Sanders supporters were tricked into believing a false narrative. Once only one candidate can win the nomination, of course the DNC gets to work on that person’s behalf. Of course emails from that time would reflect support for the person who would clearly be the nominee. And given that their jobs are to elect Democrats, of course DNC officials were annoyed that Sanders would not tell his followers he could not possibly be the nominee. Battling for the sake of battling gave his supporters a false belief that they could still win—something that added to their increasingly embittered feelings. 

According to a Western European intelligence source, Russian hackers, using a series of go-betweens, transmitted the DNC emails to WikiLeaks with the intent of having them released on the verge of the Democratic Convention in hopes of sowing chaos. And that’s what happened—just a couple of days before Democrats gathered in Philadelphia, the emails came out, and suddenly the media was loaded with stories about trauma in the party. Crews of Russian propagandists—working through an array of Twitter accounts and websites, started spreading the story that the DNC had stolen the election from Sanders. (An analysis provided to Newsweek by independent internet and computer specialists using a series of algorithms show that this kind of propaganda, using the same words, went from Russian disinformation sources to comment sections on more than 200 sites catering to liberals, conservatives, white supremacists, nutritionists and an amazing assortment of other interest groups.) 

The fact that the dates of the most controversial emails—May 3, May 4, May 5, May 9, May 16, May 17, May 18, May 21—were after it was impossible for Sanders to win was almost never mentioned, and was certainly ignored by the propagandists trying to sell the “primaries were rigged” narrative. (Yes, one of them said something inappropriate about his religious beliefs. So a guy inside the DNC was a jerk; that didn’t change the outcome.) Two other emails—one from April 24 and May 1—were statements of fact. In the first, responding to Sanders saying he would push for a contested convention (even though he would not have the delegates to do so), a DNC official wrote, “So much for a traditional presumptive nominee.” Yeah, no kidding. The second stated that Sanders didn’t know what the DNC’s job actually was—which he didn’t, apparently because he had not ever been a Democrat before his run. 

Bottom line: The “scandalous” DNC emails were hacked by people working with the Kremlin, then misrepresented online by Russian propagandists to gullible fools who never checked the dates of the documents. And the media, which in the flurry of breathless stories about the emails would occasionally mention that they were all dated after any rational person knew the nomination was Clinton’s, fed into the misinformation.

Factors Contributing to the Election of Trump as POTUS

1) A shameful, craven, profit-driven conservative media that only ever presented Hillary negatively and Trump positively, and which was how too many voters got their information

2) A craven, profit-driven mainstream media that always gave the benefit of the doubt to conservatives, that refused to call them on their lies, that refused to take Trump seriously as a candidate, never really challenged him, never thought he could win, and only saw him as a ratings machine

3) A craven, profit-driven mainstream media that obsessed over minutia and refused to discuss policy in any meaningful way

4) A craven, profit-driven mainstream media that obsessed over Hillary's emails out of all proportion to any other story

5) A shameful, craven, profit-driven mainstream and partisan media that refused to discuss climate change, in any sense, despite it being a massive global threat

6) A shameful clickbait online media that promulgated misinformation

7) Celebrity culture and reality TV culture

8) A lazy, uneducated citizenry very susceptible to demagoguery and simple solutions

9) A shameful, craven Republican party that allowed Trump to trample all norms and enabled his candidacy

10) Conservative Christians freaked out by modernism

11) Whites losing their dominant status in the US, upset over 8 years of Obama-- i.e. RACISM

12) fears of globalism, fears in an uncertain world and the attraction of nationalism

13) hackers and wikileaks-- not only did they disrupt the general election, but they caused massive dissension and distrust in the Dem party

14) Russian influences on hacking, creating dissension in the US political process, particulary on the Dem side

15) Trump's unusual charisma, showman skills

16) Hillary's various weaknesses as a candidate

17) Sexism against Hillary, even (particularly?) from women

18) the pettiness of the left over not having a perfect candidate, their preferred candidate

19) insanely wrong voter polls that misled people in campaigns and the media

20) electronic vote theft?

21) GOP voter suppression

22) the challenge of winning from same party as current two term president-- historically hard

Thoughts on Trump's Election

DU's "bigtree":

On Tuesday, roughly half of America declared war on their fellow Americans by sending a dangerously unstable demagogue, a obsessive compulsive megalomaniac, to lord over us in the White House. 

Prominent among those who voted for Donald Trump was a sizable bloc of people who share his racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and bigoted views. 

As I watched Pres.-elect Trump's plane land, as he made his way to the White House after accepting the invitation of the man he insisted for years wasn't a U.S. citizen, and unqualified to be president, I was absolutely overwhelmed with anxiety and foreboding for the futures of my fellow countryfolk. 

I’m looking at the official reception of Trump’s presidency from the media and pols, and I’m witnessing a critical disconnect between the warnings Pres. Obama gave about a man with Trump's character and temperament assuming responsibility for our nuclear arsenal, as well as the rest of the myriad levers and hair-triggers of the presidency - mechanisms which can work to keep us safe and secure, or, conversely, plunge our lives into chaos and devastation - contrasted against the post-election politeness coming from him and Trump’s campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, urging us to 'keep an open mind,' and to give this man room to succeed. 

So much of the Trump appeal in the campaign was directed at assuaging those forces which are actively working to limit or eliminate our government's protections, defenses, or aid to the vulnerable, imperiled, or afflicted among us. There was zero conciliation with the targets of his often vindictive agenda - no healthcare alternative offered, for example, to replace the Obamacare he pledged to repeal; no regard expressed for the innocent, productive, but undocumented residents who are now facing a very real threat of a major upheaval of their lives as Trump and his republican-dominated legislature threaten to muscle them out of the country, as he promised. Only his self-promoting insistence that whatever he devised would suit us all. 

Trump supporters at the polls voted to effectively allow 100's of thousands of us to die unnecessarily every year for need of life sustaining medical care enabled through the ability to obtain or afford insurance. 

Trump supporters voted to allow our planet to die, with the candidate promising to reverse and eliminate every vestige of the Obama administration's efforts to unilaterally move ahead of the republican Congress' obstinacy and resistance to efforts to confront and address climate change and global warming. 

Trump supporters voted to re-institutionalize racism and bigotry - usher in a new era of 'Jim Crow' - rallying behind their candidate's promise to 'ban' Muslim immigrants and advancing the man who openly disparaged the character and reputation of Mexican immigrants and citizens, alike. 

Trump supporters voted to uproot the lives of 742,000 young DREAMers, and place Trump in charge of thousands granted refuge and protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 

Trump supporters voted allow a regression in women's rights, from their candidate’s threats to reproductive choices, to implicit disregard for, and pledged hostility toward, declared victims of sexual assault. They’ve advanced a man to the highest office in the land who has been recorded bragging about his ability to ‘grab’ women in the most private of places - bragging that he’s essentially entitled to the assault by the mere virtue of his position. 

Trump supporters have voted to allow Russia a role in our government’s consideration which is as dismissive as their candidate has been of Putin’s government’s abuses and intrusions into our political process – not to mention the myriad other activities of the regime which run counter to the legitimate and vital interests of our nation and our allies. Not surprisingly, just this morning, news came that a Russian ambassador is bragging of coordination between the actual Trump campaign and the Politburo. 

Trump supporters have voted to legitimize white supremacy, most notably, the Klan, advancing a man into the White House who hired an avowed white supremacist as a senior coordinator of his campaign for president. Indeed, the entire white supremacy network is openly celebrating the Trump presidency as validation of their own brand of bigotry, racism, and divisive hatred. 

Trump supporters voted to allow, sight-unseen, any conflict-of-interest their candidate will almost certainly have as president between his office and his many business interests and debts. Whatever he’s been hiding in his tax returns will tell that sordid tale. Couple that with an upcoming court date in his Trump University fraud trial, and you have a presidency so mired in scandal that it will have zero authority to dictate anything from that high office. 

One of the rationalizations offered for the disturbing and consequential statements Trump has made in this campaign, and what he’s said in the past, is that perhaps he didn’t really mean any of it. It was all just self-serving patter designed to win an election. That would make some sense, looking at the contradictions, duplicity, and flip-flops which have marked any (rare) discussion from the candidate about policy. He’s just an opportunistic demagogue. 

What I believe is that Trump supporters have elected a dangerous, life-threatening sociopath who will only tolerate the needs of Americans as far as his own narrow, often personal, interests are defended and enhanced. I really don’t need any more evidence of this. 

Trump’s entire campaign has been a stark and sobering preview of the horror-show ahead. I truly fear for our nation in a way that I don’t really believe I even fully comprehend the depths we will sink to before we have hope of recovering. 

We need to prepare for what will be a long and grueling opposition. We need to prepare and organize.

"Autocracy: Rules for Survival" by Masha Gessen:

Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won. 

I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: 

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions. He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents. To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns. 

Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it. 

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy. Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution. The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information. The power of the investigative press—whose adherence to fact has already been severely challenged by the conspiracy-minded, lie-spinning Trump campaign—will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier. Even in the unlikely event that some mainstream media outlets decide to declare themselves in opposition to the current government, or even simply to report its abuses and failings, the president will get to frame many issues. Coverage, and thinking, will drift in a Trumpian direction, just as it did during the campaign—when, for example, the candidates argued, in essence, whether Muslim Americans bear collective responsibility for acts of terrorism or can redeem themselves by becoming the “eyes and ears” of law enforcement. Thus was xenophobia further normalized, paving the way for Trump to make good on his promises to track American Muslims and ban Muslims from entering the United States. 

Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself. Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home. 

Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected. 

Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be."  

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Farewell, America. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently.

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Senator Harry Reid's letter on Trump. 

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Aaron Sorkin's letter to his daughter, after Trump's election.

Election Theft

So-- I don't think we can rule out some vote hacking that enabled Trump's win, given so many red flags about Trump in this odd election. This isn't to discount Trump's very real and disturbing support from millions of people. But the level of support is still surprising, coupled with so many wrong polls...

What's particularly weird is the Democratic Underground site is still down, after being hacked on election day, and this site is where we used to discuss election fraud heavily after the elections. One thing I realized, just last night, is that it's possible that the Clinton-Sanders primary was hacked, not by the Dems/DNC, but by the enablers of Trump (rogue US intel; hackers for hire, maybe Russian and US). The hacked the Sanders-Clinton race because they realized Clinton would be a better (weaker?) opponent for Trump in the general election-- had more vulnerabilities. And then when Trump was still blowing it in the general election, they hacked the general voting in key places. They also had voter suppression tactics working for them, as well as Comey's stunt with the "re-opened" FBI investigation. The election was indeed rigged, as Trump said, but by his supporters/enablers, not by the Dems.

 Remember, Trump projected everything about himself onto his opponents. Make sure you watch the very end.

Deep Conspiracy Thoughts on the Election

Wouldn't the ultimate, evil PTB hide themselves and lie about who the enemy was?

A LOT of conspiracy types really tended to go for Trump, and to hate Hillary Clinton. Alex Jones was a prime example of someone driven seriously insane by Hillary. But I hope everyone knows that Alex Jones cannot be trusted, and hasn't been trusted for a long time in the hard-core, serious conspiracy world. Jones is a disinformation artist, a conspiracy sell out and has turned into a joke and partisan right-wing hack. At the same time, I have to say that much of the conspiracy world is crap, especially the types that orbit around Jones: they are shills that put out bad analysis, use biased thinking, use bad source material, and prey on people who fall far too easily into confirmation bias.

One reason I haven't done much conspiracy research anymore is because when you do this for a long time, you can see how much shit there is in the field. I even admit that a significant amount of stuff I've written here over the 12 years I've had this blog is shitty analysis or just wrong. Anonymous Physicist wrote some really good essays and had some unique, well-reasoned ideas. But his theories even though they were very interesting and often important findings, were basically speculation without any proof.

I really like conspiracy IDEAS, and often they do have good explanatory power for important things in our weird world. But it's very rare to be able to have solid proof of a conspiracy theory.  Personally, I also think that it's also important to not base real world politics on unproven conspiracy theories.

Out on the world wide web, there are hundreds of bad conspiracy sites-- sites that often masquerade as some sort of alternative news site. There's so much that is poorly reported, poorly research, presented in a very sensational way, and stuff that is just plain wrong. And of course there are sites that are blatant misinformation or disinformation put out by intelligence agencies from the US or other countries. And as I have written before, the worst of the worst are the endless youtube channels that trumpet false flag fakery every time some shooting occurs.

So back to Hillary Clinton-- isn't it *possible* that she was NOT the real enemy, and she was actually *basically* good?

There have been an incredible number of lies about her, over her whole political life. She is perhaps the most lied about person in politics, ever. There are hundreds of outrageous lies about her, bought and pushed by the right-wing. But, in reality her politics as a senator and presidential candidate, policy-wise, has been pretty centrist, reasonable and fair. Nonetheless, in this recent presidential campaign, she was fucked over HARD by the GOP, by Trump, by wikileaks, by the news media. Painted unfairly as a criminal by a bunch of professional lying fucks.

Does the news media and the GOP ever stand for truth and decency?  Not really.

I'm not here to defend everything Hillary Clinton ever did. But I'm saying that there is no way she's as bad as the right-wing said.

The vast majority of the complaints about Hillary were for her vote for the Iraq war, and for some of her foreign policy decisions as Secretary of State.

First, let's talk about her vote "for the Iraq war". Looking at her statement at the time, it's clear she wasn't really voting for a war per se, and certainly she was not casting a vote for Bush's Iraq war as it played out:

Let's remember the vast majority of Republican Senators voted for force authorization and a good number of Democrats. But for some reason, only Democrats running for President (Kerry, Clinton) got really picked on for that. Odd, isn't it?

Keep in mind, Hillary represented NY city, really the epicenter of the attacks, and there was incredible pressure on her to go hard on terrorism. So I think it is fair to give her a break on this vote.

Regarding her time as Secretary of State, the fact is US foreign policy is very complicated and messy.  And after the Bush administration, international relations were in a shambles. Moreover, everything she did was misrepresented to some extent by her political opponents, and/or ridiculously politicized (such as Benghazi). Things like supporting regime change in Syria, though it obviously led to a horrible civil war, in theory, the regime change was to depose a bad dictator; the same for Libya, or to counter Russia in Ukraine. These were common bi-partisan views on foreign policy, not unique to Hillary, and there were Republicans that were more hawkish than her.

I know there's the alternative conspiracy view that all these foreign policy decisions were deep state actions to help the NWO and/or the international banking system and/or to keep the military-industrial complex going and/or to start a broader world war. I'm not defending these military actions per se, but I am saying that these situations were far more complicated than is often portrayed, and Hillary herself could have acted out of relatively nobel, humane intentions. We should keep that as a possibility, since that was the stated intention-- to help people being persecuted in Syria and Libya. Even Iraq and Afghanistan.

So let's go deeper.

Remember the deep ultimate conspiracy postulated here by Anonymous Physicist -- that there are evil aliens controlling us, and they are quarantined here on planet earth by other aliens.  The evil aliens really want to  break out of quarantine and get off earth, and to do this, they need nuclear weapons. 

While this probably sounds sort of crazy, it is still a fascinating idea that can explain a number of other conspiracy issues such as Apollo moon landing fakery, UFO's, and why things are so fucked up here on earth.

I'm not saying the evil alien-quarantine theory is an absolute fact, but it's a useful model to work with.

But I have some additional ideas on this model.

The evil PTB would need most of the nukes on earth for their purpose of breaking out of quarantine. But the problem is, right now, most of the nukes are controlled by two countries: US and Russia. The nukes are pointed to earth, but really what is need is to point the nukes at the atmosphere of the planet, to the outer edge where the quarantine ships are, to disable them. That would mean total control of all the US-Russian nukes, and to be able to re-direct them.

With different governments in opposition to each other this would be impossible.

But if US and Russia became friendly, and allied militarily, their nukes could be tied to one controller.

Who favors closer relations with Russia and the US? Trump and Putin, of course.

Who would block such a union? Hillary, of course.

So Hillary could be saving us from the ultimate horror scenario of the atmosphere getting nuked, essentially destroying life on the planet.

Keep in mind that Hillary wanted UFO disclosure as president, which had some real possibility of uncovering the ultimate evil PTB. That didn't happen, and now we have a president-elect, who has ties with and is making nice with Russia.

Conspiracy types typically portray Hillary as the one hell-bent on starting a nuclear war with Russia, but to me, that isn't plausible. I don't buy that she is that evil, in willing to kill almost everyone on the planet.

You know who seems like a true psychopath to me?

Donald J. Trump

Der Fuehrer Trump

Trump is a eugenist and racist, with white supremacy leanings. He ran a blatantly racist campaign. There's a good reason neo-Nazis and the KKK support him.

He's a demagogue. He has authoritarian tendencies. According to his ex-wife, he kept a copy of Mein Kampf near his bed.

Earlier, I posted the many uncanny similarities between Hitler and Trump.

I think it's very possible he wants to become dictator of the US, and make the White Race "great again".

We need to be really careful and watchful with him in power. I would not be surprised if he uses some domestic attack, some race riot (like those already starting), some "terrorist attack" to seize extra powers.

Who will stop him?

Republicans would certainly be good Germans, and probably most Democrats.

Would you go along with Trump if he declared himself dictator and started purging/deporting blacks and hispanics?

Aliens!

One of the more interesting things about Hillary's campaign is that she openly discussed having UFO disclosure if she was elected, though it got surprisingly little attention.

Trump and the GOP oddly ignored Hillary's position on this-- traditionally this would be something to make her look kooky.

But with Trump winning, obviously disclosure not going to happen now.

I have to wonder if this was the intent of our evil alien overlords, who want to remain hidden.

President Trump on 11/9-- a Political 9/11

A liberal's nightmare-- Trump, Pence and the GOP in control of the Senate and House and an open SCOTUS seat...

I guess the globalists aren't in power and didn't rig the election for Hillary after all.

Unless Trump is the guy they wanted for their own dark reasons... maybe he's easier to blackmail or control.... so they rigged it for him.

Sure is odd how badly all the polls and predictions were off.

The suffragettes are still suffering.

33 of the Day-- Suffering Suffragettes

The Night of Terror occurred on November 14, 1917 at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

A group of 33 female protesters, members of the Silent Sentinels who picketed the White House daily to ask for voting rights for women, were brutally tortured and beaten by the workhouse guards and the superintendent, W.H. Whittaker.[1] These women were mostly members of the National Woman's Party (NWP), an organization led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns that fought for women’s suffrage.

In 1917 the Silent Sentinels became the first organization to picket the White House, asking for women’s rights. They held banners denouncing President Woodrow Wilson and burned copies of his speeches, because they considered him to be an enemy of the women’s rights movement.

The unrelenting suffragists, who began protesting in January when Wilson took office, were prompted by the chief of police to stop picketing. The women did not stop, and arrests for "obstructing traffic" began in June. The women were imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse. After three days the women were released and they went back to the White House to continue protesting.[2]

By November arrests began again, and on November 14, superintendent of the workhouse, W.H. Whittaker welcomed the 33 returning prisoners by brutally torturing and beating the women.

This brutal greeting is known as the "Night of Terror", but it was not the only time the women were mistreated during their imprisonment. There was continued mistreatment in the form of harsh living conditions, rancid food, being denied medical care when many of the women were ill and some very old, being denied visitors, and "punishment cells".[1] Many women went on a hunger strike, sparked by the co-founder of the NWP, Alice Paul. These women were placed in solitary confinement and subject to force-feeding.

After about two weeks, a court-ordered hearing for charges against the women suffragists took place. The decision of the hearing declared that every one of the 218 suffragists had been illegally arrested, illegally convicted and illegally imprisoned.[2] The Night of Terror was not addressed in the hearing. The women who were illegally imprisoned and tortured for picketing were aiming to promote women’s rights, and they were backed by the National Woman’s Party. However, when the Nineteenth Amendment for women's rights was passed in 1920, very little credit was given to the NWP.

Closing Arguments

Compare and contrast:





I admit that Trump has a couple of ok points about problems with the US system, and so I can understand this appeal.  But here are the problems:

1) he has no real, honest solutions for our problems. He displays no real political skill apart from being a demagogue. He's not even a good businessman. He's a conman, he's corrupt, he's a crook. His wall is a joke. His deportation plan is grotesque. Trade agreements are there for a reason and will ruin the economy if we back out of them. Washington is not going to change because he is elected, unless he becomes a dictator, and if so, then he will have destroyed this country, not saved it.

2) he won't admit the real problems of capitalism run amok-- excessive greed is the problem for so many of the econbomic problems in the US. He doesn't discuss the environment at all, he won't recognize the incredible danger of climate change. His election would be a disaster for the natural world.

3) he has run an incredibly ugly campaign, where he's insulted every possible group, showing open racism and sexism. He's preferred to lie and to construct conspiracies over presenting any sort of honest argument. His campaign isn't even well organized. It's filled with amateurs and hacks. He's easily run the worst presidential campaign I've ever seen in my life.

He deserves to lose, and lose badly.

And if he wins, American deserves him...

38 Days of Keith Olbermann Rants on Trump

This last one is a gem, but they all are worth a watch.

Trump's Comeuppence

Trumpuppance:

Dispatches from Trump’s bunker are becoming Felliniesque. It reminds me of the unbridled joy I took in reading those late stories about Mitt Romney’s absolute denial that he was about to be beaten like a half-starved rented mule. The difference this time around is that Trump really does seem to understand that he’s about to go down like an overmatched tomato can.

He’s never getting that revenge he wanted against President Obama.

He’s met a woman he couldn’t push around.

And now his high roller brand is shot. Everyone knows he’s not really a billionaire.

His credit is probably shot, too, since anyone who needs to know now realizes that he’s a horrible risk who doesn’t honor debts or contracts.

He’s going to get nailed to the wall on Trump University, probably in state after state after state.

He’ll never get another show like The Apprentice.

He’ll never be able to say he’s a winner again.

His daughter is pissed because no one will buy her clothes and her inheritance is as good as in bankruptcy court.

The in-laws aren’t too impressed with Trump’s decision to make his final argument an anti-Semitic jihad against a global Jewish conspiracy to suck the lifeblood out of the white working class.

His wife now knows a lot more than she needed to about Trump’s behavior and affairs when he leaves her watchful eye.

The IRS is going to finish that audit soon, or begin one if that was just a lie.

His foundation has a few…uh…problems.

And there’s all that Russian stuff to explore. That ought to keep his buddies at the FBI busy for a while.

As for the media and the GOP? The stories they tell about Trump will be as far from flattering as possible.

And Trump won’t be able to crash charity balls anymore because people know he doesn’t actually donate any money.

His buddy Christie won’t be leading the Justice Department to save either of their asses.

Mike Pence won’t remember Trump’s first name.

Gingrich and Giuliani will graduate to their next big scam.

But Trump will still have Breitbart. Breitbart and Twitter and a Facebook Trump TV channel with no financing and no investors.

And whether his racism was an act or not, it was still "deplorable". Yes, it was.