Like many, I think our smart, totally-has-it-together, superlatively cognitively-abled president said something really stupid the other day (such an improvement over Trump!), and I'll just quote from Instapundit, who quotes Larry Correia:
This is bold talk from a military, and a government, that hasn’t won a
war in my lifetime. Not even the War On Poverty . . . But the
Transgender Awareness Training is up-to-date, I’m sure.
Seriously, this kind of threat is not just absurd and unseemly, but a
disqualification for public office. One of many, I realize.
And I guess the ammo shortage will be back on.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Larry Correia: So you want to nuke Omaha?
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a novelist now, but I retired
from the Evil Military Industrial Complex, where I helped maintain
those various advanced weapon systems you expect to bomb me with. Before
that I was a gun dealer and firearms instructor. So basically I sold
guns to the people you expect the people I trained to take them from.”
Plus: “In something that I find profoundly troubling, when I’ve had
this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the
example of Iraq doesn’t apply, because ‘we kept the gloves on’, whereas
fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing
held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people
who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign
country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas. You really hate
us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns?”
In a U.S. civil war, the first targets would be politicians, and
media figures, and they’re all soft targets. Which is odd, because they
seem the most eager to get things started.
There are some new anti-trust laws being proposed in Congress aimed at big-tech. I am not optimistic. I suspect it is a lot of theater for the sake of voter appeal, while they continue to rake in donations from big-tech. Both parties get these huge donations, especially the Democrats of late.
Ending Platform Monopolies Act,
which restrains dominant platforms from using their power across
multiple types of business to give themselves unfair advantages.
Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which amends filing fees for the first time in two decades and provides the government funds to pursue antitrust actions.
What matters is the end-result, if anything, to-what extent it was re-worded by big-tech lobbyists, and how nobody will talk about it once made law (funny how that happens). How many Republicans are on the take you think?
.@Google censored videos where Republicans discussed whether children should be forced to wear masks.
Internet companies should be accountable for enforcing standards on harmful content. It’s impossible to remove all harmful content from the internet, but when people use dozens of different sharing services — all with their own policies and processes — we need a more standardized approach.
Forcing internet companies to police speech, how nice. Not only is this a dystopian nightmare, it would cripple any small competitor's ability to merely exist (conveniently for Facebook). Free speech isn't (and shouldn't be) always nice speech.
Online political advertising laws primarily focus on candidates and elections, rather than divisive political issues where we’ve seen more attempted interference. Some laws only apply during elections, although information campaigns are nonstop. And there are also important questions about how political campaigns use data and targeting. We believe legislation should be updated to reflect the reality of the threats and set standards for the whole industry.
If I can trust any of my American history and constitutional studies, then political speech was one of the big reasons for the first amendment. What is a political ad if not political speech? The laws we have are bad enough. Either you believe in free speech or you don't. The answer to bad speech (i.e., stuff you don't like, misinformation, fake news, etc.), is more speech (rebuttals, facts, logic), not censorship. And that is exactly what more political ad/speech regulation would be.
This all disturbingly corresponds to what Ace has been saying since about 2016, and today:
Now CNN assigns its Chief Deplatforming Officer Oliver Darcy to begin
writing stories pressuring corporations to stop running advertising on
the channel, pressuring their tech monopolist partners to limit and
censor the channel, and asking hyperpartisan, pro-censorship Democrats
if it's time to pass laws outlawing these channels.
6. The tech monopolies, now feeling pressure from corporations and threats of interference from state actors, do what they probably wanted to do anyway, and begin banning/limiting the channels the leftwing doesn't like.
And step 7:
7. Despite the fact that threats from the state contributed to the
censorship by alleged "private corporations," NeverTrump and
Conservative, Inc. say that the sovereignty of the tech monopolies must
never be challenged and we must respect their completely-voluntary
choice to censor alternative media. Which just happens to be a competitor of NeverTrump and Conservative, Inc. media as well.
In other words, they benefit personally, politically, and pecuniarily
from these censorship campaigns just as the leftwing does, and support
these censorship drives for the same craven, mercenary, disgusting
reasons.
Remember, we have to "protect the public" from "disinformation," and force them to watch "real news."
"Real news," like CNN.
CNN, which suggested that the Indonesian airline was destroyed by a black hole.
Real news like that.
Tater has reason to push this agenda. I mean, apart from Jeff Zucker ordering him to.
He needs the competition to be outlawed more than almost anyone.
Facebook looks at step 6 like an opportunity: why not streamline it, get favorable state interference while making it harder for smaller competitors. Remember when the Wuhan lab-leak theory was a bannable fake-news conspiracy theory? Now it is at least a legitimate newsworthy question. Remember when buying masks were bad, then they were mandatory? Remember when coronavirus was not viewed as serious and banning travel was racist and excessive? Boy did that pendulum swing.
The experts, the consensus, the big-tech monopolists are and have been frequently wrong. Imagine them with more power over speech, with the help, support, and blessing of the government.
Excuse me, I'm trying to find the video of Trump inciting the riots.
While I don't doubt Trump is capable of such, and wouldn't be surprised if he did in fact start the riot with a poor choice of words, I am having trouble finding the video of him using language slightly more specific than platitudinous schlock, and at least half as damning as what many, many antifa sympathizers (a lot of which hold office) had to say this past summer.
The president should be held to a higher standard. And Trump falls far short daily when it comes to word-choice and rhetoric. No "buts" here, except this one: every citizen deserves the same due process. Incitement is one of few asterisks to the first amendment, and proving it requires (or should require) a lot more than a mob.
All I could find so far was a short CNN clip where the worst thing I found Trump saying was to "show strength and be strong" which was preceded by images of the rioting--labelled an insurrection--and followed by snarky narration of judgment damning Trump--objective reporting there, top marks.
In the long run, we're all spiritual servants of a spaghetti monster who manages a universe of self-replicating paperclips. Which is to say, we're all dead, but it's still super cool to think of nascent spaghetti-run paperclip economies and galactic culture dynamics. I guess.
I mean, I wouldn't know since I'm not getting a comfortable salary to think about that stuff.
And all three of these [Trump v. Clinton & historical] differences are small compared the variation in
such things across the history of human-like creatures so far, and also
compared to that history yet to come.
Put your crypto-nihilism down and deal with life and loss like a reasonable human being.
There are bad ways to deal with adversity and there are less bad ways. I'll go out on a limb and say that pretending to rise above and see this through some pantemporal lens is of the worse bad variety.*
People don’t seem to understand this: you need to adapt and change and
look outside of your tiny enclaves not out of some moral obligation, but
because you are losing on every imaginable front. You don’t
have to get in touch with the rest of the country because that’s the
right thing to do. You have to get in touch with the rest of the
country because they’re kicking your ass. The Republicans will
control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, have the chance to
appoint at least one and probably several Supreme Court justices, run 68
out of 99 state legislative houses, and hold 31 gubernatorial seats.
That is domination on an unimaginable level. Every minute you spend
signal-boosting people who say that it’s Republicans who have to get on
board with liberal values is a minute you’re not doing anything to
change that condition.
Despite the Republicans winning pretty much everything, this election was close, percentage-wise. If a few more democrats turned out in a handful of states, we would be having a very, very different conversation. Unfortunately, neither conversation is good.
I agree having an "insular, self-aggrandizing book club that treats looking at other parts of the country as an anthropology exercise" is extremely off-putting. But maybe the assumption behind this thinking is also insular, self-aggrandizing, and so far off from much of the country that it is equally off-putting.
So here we are, talking about changing strategy just so we can stop
getting our asses kicked. Fuck flyover country's backwards ideas, we
just need to trick a few more of them to give us a win.
Apparently the old liberal maxim of re-evaluating one's views when faced with contrary evidence, only applies to peripherals, like strategy and messaging. You're so smart, therefore you must be right. Heaven forbid you soften or change some views.
If you want something to look forward to, then rest assured, Donald Trump will face much more scrutiny and criticism than George W. Bush. Why? Because you and your book club hate him, and you now have, more than ever, good reason to:
Yet, beginning in his first month in office and continuing through today, Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended
them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial,
targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and
eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance. ...
The president-elect frightens them, so they are now alarmed. But if they
want to know whom to blame, they should look in the mirror.
If you want to start genuinely courting the Other, start befriending people like Rand Paul. Most Republicans will probably just go along with whatever power grabs Trump can get away with. There are some however, like Senator Paul, who not only disagree with Trump on several major issues, but would be a far more tolerable opposition leader in the future.
* I'm not saying discussions of the future, even distant future are folly, but I am saying that it's a poor way to accept and deal with loss. And holy hell is it out of touch. It's fine if all you do is think about far-off and lofty ideas, but it is by no means constructive or helpful for those dealing with real or perceived adversity in the here and now.
Lefty bubbles. Insulated warm, fuzzy cocoons. Walled gardens. Epistemic closure beguiled by positive feedback loops. The pleasant echos lulled half a country and its "elite" into a false sense of authority.
And then it all came tumbling down. Crashing. I think it was a surprise for nearly everyone. Good for some, bad for others.
I'm not sure I have much to say given what's already been said. So what follows is a roundup of reactions to the election, a bit of the more poignant commentary, and my thoughts on each. Some of which I don't quite understand, but am trying to. Some of it I agree with wholeheartedly and think needs a bit more sunlight, and then some I disagree with.
When bubbles burst, it's usually a shock to those inside. Their thoughts and behavior during the aftermath can be illuminating.
The Left
I'll start with J. D. Vance at the NYT, who like so many others after the election, acknowledge the bubbles they've been living in:
Failed political prognostication is hardly a grievous sin, but it raises difficult questions about the other bubbles I live in. Few would accuse me of lacking compassion for the Trump voter, but the same can hardly be said for many other coastal
elites.
Meanwhile, our country has other groups deserving of compassion. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory became clear, a black friend told me that his kid brother had been subjected to racial taunts at school. I wonder now whether I’m empathetic enough to my friend and his family, and I worry whether those who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump have much understanding for why so many fear a
Trump presidency. The benefits and prejudices of a life lived within a bubble are hardly limited to urban progressive professionals.
You will see this narrative over and over. "Out of touch," "living in a bubble," "we have some reflecting to do," but also the usually subtle implication that the racists have taken over, and super-racist Nazi America is but a shoe drop away.
How do they know? Because Trump once said he wants to ban Muslim immigration. Trump then walked back that stance. Also something about building a wall. I'll admit Trump is brash and far from eloquent, but wanting tighter, more secure immigration and the occasional verbalization of stereotypes does not a Hitler make. And of course, the only kind of person willing to vote for that kind of a man, is a racist.
But people are scared now apparently. I get that for some, relatively very few, discrimination is a real and ugly thing they have to deal with and I want to help them. But for most in modern America? Call me skeptical, but I'm going to have to ask for proof.
Still, for a lot of people, this election is proof enough for them. From Reddit:
click image to enlarge
"I'm a Muslim living in the States. Trump doesn't scare me as much as his supporters do."
"I'm Jewish and I'm right there with you in fearing his supporters..."
Am I in my own bubble? I've never personally witnessed racial or political violence, or threats thereof. Such reports I see are from the same news sources (mostly) "coastal elites" use. I don't see large-scale racial violence or discrimination happening, or even medium-scale. It's generally the occasional something-bad-happened-to-one-person story. Like police going too far, but even then it's not always so clear.
Are they afraid, like we're living in Europe, or the third world hellholes many leftists fetishize?
I want to say I did some looking around for this fear, but no. Just skimming the various newzy and social sites it became abundantly clear. Trump really is the next Hitler to them. The following images are screenshots I took in the hours following the election results:
There was even a "homophobia" in there! Despite Trump being the first Republican presidential nominee to embrace marriage equality, and prominently supported by Peter Thiel. Fucking come on, the Republicans are, and will continue to get, on board the LGBTQ train--so long as it's compatible with individual and religious liberty.
No matter, frequently fallible Paul Krugman will set things straight:
What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous. ...
There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy.
He says he truly didn't understand the country, then in the very next paragraph, half a day after the election, he now claims to know: and its name is backwardness. Jesus Christ; and they wonder why half of America collectively gave them the fucking finger. Arrogant condescending pricks, the whole lot of them.
Might as well get it all out. What insulting buzzwords are America you say?
Way to be civil. Want some grace from the winners? Maybe try not spitting on them.
Trump wasn't my preferred candidate, but the racist labeling only made me want to support him more. Why? It was unfair. If he said the N-word in the last several years, and/or displayed any other overtly racist behavior I would be calling him that myself. But now, in many circles, merely opposing lax immigration is 100% straight-up racist.
But it doesn't even matter. If he's a scumbag then he's a scumbag. What matters is what he'll do as president. What policies he'll bring. What judges he'll appoint. Scumbagerry doesn't translate well into policy, although there are exceptions.
Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and a Republican congress didn't overturn Roe v. Wade. There was some pushback on gay marriage, but look where we are now. We're even legalizing drugs!
After all the hysterics, I feel it's time to Voxplain a thing or two.
Oh my. Vox can't even keep a cool head. People sure aren't taking this well:
So there's the reactions. Fear, sadness, anger, resentment, disgust, combinations of denial and acceptance. But what does it all mean? What brought about this Trump victory?
The Democrats
To paraphrase President Obama, we need to spread the blame around. Hillary's campaign miscalculated. Badly:
“They are saying they did nothing wrong, which is ridiculous,” said
one Clinton surrogate. “She was the wrong messenger and everyone
misjudged how pissed working class people were.” ...
In interviews with close to a dozen top Clinton allies and
former operatives, who did not want to publicly criticize the losing
campaign or candidate, many expressed a deep frustration that the party
had pinned its hopes on a divisive establishment candidate. ...
The issues were crystal clear as early as January 2015, but the campaign thought it could overcome it.
“Make a virtue of her longevity,” Palmieri advised in an email that
month to Podesta, released by WikiLeaks. “Embrace all the Clinton-ness —
the forty years in politics, the decades on the national stage...”
A lot of commentators are saying Trump won because Hillary and the
Democrats colossally fucked up. All that nastiness you see above, well Trump supporters were experiencing that every time they opened their mouths prior to the election. Not the best persuasive technique. The left in general and Democrats in particular really didn't do much to dissuade that strategy. There's more to it
than that--which I'll get to later--but Jonathan Pie nails it:
The Media
Lets not forget the media. For a long time the left and the media would mock the right for complaining about bias. What a time we live in when they openly admit it, and try to justify it. Of course, it was the wrong thing to do. Not because it was unethical, you see, but because it backfired:
John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that
during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based
conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a
clear opportunity to reach the White House.
That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present
a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its
most fundamental function. ...
They
think something is so wrong that all the fact-checking of Mr. Trump
this year, the countless reports of his lies — which he uttered more
than Mrs. Clinton did — and the vigorous investigation of his business
and personal transgressions, bothered them far less than the perceived
national ills Mr. Trump was pointing to and promising to fix.
In
their view the government was broken, the economic system was broken,
and, we heard so often, the news media was broken, too. Well, something
surely is broken.
Ya think? That's the end of the article. The time for coyness has long passed. Why don't you grow a pair and just say what you think is broke. It hit you square in the nose and you still don't say it. Ah but then you might have to risk appearing to agree with those racist cavemen.
If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially
dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move
closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable
and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist
I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.
Whoops! I don't want to say I accidentally helped elect Trump, but I accidentally helped elect Trump.
Any objective observer of the news media’s treatment of Trump can
certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election
— and they don’t have to be wearing a button that says “I’m with her”
for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media’s Trump
bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.
Polls
shows that journalism is one of the least respected professions in the
country, and with Trump calling out media organizations for their bias,
widespread slanted reporting is bound to reinforce this point — and to
backfire. Trump’s campaign is throwing down the gauntlet to the
political class. If journalists are seen as the mouthpiece of that
class, they may soon find themselves covering Trump’s inauguration.
The schadenfreude never ends. I hope Trump's presidency brings about positive change, and is otherwise uneventful, but the dark twisted part of me is cheering on for more entertainment.
The
triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection
of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the
world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on
everything from trade to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
Ah
yes, the establishment. The establishment Republicans didn't want him,
nor the Democrats, nor Wall Street. I couldn't think of a better
endorsement.
5. Listen when they say the jobs have left their areas. That they
can’t afford their health insurance premiums or the penalties for not
having it. They can’t afford their tax rates. They can’t afford to take
their kids to see the doctor, can’t afford to take vacations with their
families, live in fear one-paycheck-to-the-next of missing their
mortgage payment. Listen when they say they are afraid of losing jobs to
overseas and to immigration. Listen when they say they are afraid of
terrorism inside the U.S. Listen, and don’t reflexively dismiss their
concerns as closet racism.
6. Listen when they say how seriously they take their right to own
and bear arms. Don’t reflexively dismiss them as redneck fetishists.
Don’t sneer on social media about how they must have some anatomical
shortcoming for which to compensate. Listen when they say they will die
on the hill of the Second Amendment because they are afraid of an
authoritarian leader taking control of the country.
That burning?
That’s irony.
7. Listen, as well, to why they didn’t like the other candidate. How
they feel about entrenched political dynasties who sell access to make
millions, who conspire to rig the economy for their friends in the 1%,
and do nothing while the poor and middle class fall further behind.
Is Trump authoritarian? I don't know. I hope not, but he's displayed a mildly alarming tendency to favor an authoritarian style. Will that, if it's his thing, translate into authoritarian policies? Maybe, thankfully he's not a religious zealot, nor a drug warrior, nor a hawkish warmonger. At least he wasn't more often than he was, while campaigning.
He's not a very consistent politician. He's just not a politician. He's a blank slate with a few stains.
Trump might be easily compared to a comic book villain, but that doesn't make his supporters one-dimensional minions. Ken White (Popehat), bless his heart, insultingly explains that Trump supporters aren't racist, they just have a little attention deficit problem:
... attributing a Trump victory to racism and misogyny is a quick, cheap,
easy way out. People aren't that simple. Americans didn't
conclusively reject racism by electing President Obama, and didn't
conclusively embrace it by electing President Trump. Trial lawyers know
this: people don't make decisions like computers. People don't tend
to weigh all the evidence or consider all the factors or evaluate every
counter-argument to every argument. People tend, in small decisions and
big ones, to latch on to a few main ideas, come to a conclusion, and
then stop considering contrary evidence. A man sees what he wants to
see, and disregards the rest. Obama's election didn't mean Americans
were free of racism; it meant that Obama effectively communicated big
ideas that connected and shut down the other voices whispering in our
ears. Certainly some Trump supporters are avowedly racist, but some of
them latched on to big ideas and stopped listening to the rest — like
his troubling flirtation with evil.
I get what Ken is saying; it's a lot like confirmation bias, and perhaps a little laziness. But for an eloquent lawyer, that paragraph is damning with faint psychological process explanation.
And the "Troubling flirtation with evil!" Did I miss some evil Trump speech or something? Did he say he likes to kill puppies?
I have some disagreements with protectionism, nationalism, strict immigration, and "locker-room talk," but I wouldn't go so far to call them flirtations with evil.
I honestly don't get this Trump-is-evil stuff. Everybody says it, but damn if I can find direct evidence of it. I guess I'm supposed to "latch on to [those] ideas, come to a conclusion, and then stop considering contrary evidence" regarding Trump's evilness.
A loudmouth politically incorrect dirty old man, sure. An evil man, I don't see it. Popehat continues:
Hillary Clinton won an epic, historic struggle to be the worst
Presidential candidate ever. Ultimately she won that struggle — and
thus lost the Presidency — because she did not persuade. She did not
articulate her core ideas effectively enough, and so not enough people
latched onto them and disregarded the bad things about her. Trump
dallied with racism — hell, Trump nailed racism in the coat closet and
walked out smirking — but Clinton still did worse with Latinos,
African-Americans, and Asians than Obama did. It may be that she was
doomed from the start — too much baggage, too many vulnerabilities. Or
it could be that she lacked Obama's power to persuade. She couldn't get
them to accept her simple pitch and shut everything else out. Trump
could.
It falls to realistic Trump opponents not to crush the people who
voted for him, but to persuade them. In this election the GOP showed
that it could fight back against demographic change — not just by
marshaling high percentages of white voters, but by persuading
higher-than-expected percentages of minorities. The Democrats can't
respond to that by writing 40% of the country off as irredeemable.
Hubris and Entitlement: The catastrophic polling failures of 2016 reflect the fatal pride of Clinton's team and what I'll call "the establishment."
Americans are stubborn and proud. They'll be persuaded, but they
won't be told who to vote for like you'd tell a recalcitrant child to
eat his vegetables. The media, childishly obsessed with Donald Trump
(and frankly unenthused with Hillary Clinton) promoted a us-versus-them
mentality. It was far more class-based than race-based — it was the
message "isn't it unbelievable and hilarious that those people support
Trump." The message was "of COURSE vote Clinton, you idiot" or "you're
pretty dim but at least you can see how to vote on THIS one." Generally
people can't be expected to embrace stories that demean them.
There was another way, but hardly anybody took it. There was the way
of "let me earn your vote by persuading you why these policies are
right," conveyed as part of an effective set of ideas. There were far
too few forceful and effective advocates of how free trade makes us
richer and freer. There were too few people willing to risk a genuine
discussion of the costs of frequent military intervention. Everyone was
too busy arguing what immigration policies they didn't support to debate specific policies that they did support.
The anti-Trump message was based too strongly on entitlement — based on who you are, we are entitled to your vote, by right.
You can see that in the frothing rage at third-party voters after
Clinton's defeat. You'll see it in the ugly backlashes coming at the
minority voters who didn't vote "correctly." But voting isn't a matter
of entitlement. "Vote for me because the other guy's horrific" is not
an effective method to persuade or get out the vote. It's an idea that
focuses on the other guy, not you. You've got to deserve victory.
Clinton didn't. Clinton stank of entitlement to rule, the
media conveyed that message, and that message fatally amplified
Clinton's scandals, conveying that Clinton was entitled to follow the
rules differently, to act differently, to be treated preferentially.
This is what a lot of Hillary voters don't get. Just because Trump was a terrible candidate, doesn't automatically translate to the alternative being a saint. Especially when accompanied by name-calling, silencing, and plain old bullying. I was an undecided voter right up until the last day. I didn't want to vote for Trump, nor Clinton. But everyday on my GAMING twitter feed, there was some insult lobbed toward Trump supporters, liked and retweeted several times. If they weren't racist, misogynist, homophobic, or xenophobic, then they were called idiots. Who wants to join a bunch of assholes? Keep your circlejerk of political hate.
I wanted to vote for Trump just to stick it to those guys. I ended up voting for Johnson, but it was a difficult decision. Even in a safe state where my vote didn't matter.
Before I ramble further, I really want to quote at length from John Michael Greer at Archdruid Report, hardly a Trump supporter, who wrote this a week before the election:
The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out. ...
We’ve got the news
articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have
never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just
plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing
growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total
debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got
the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent
of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former
athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the
tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts
around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to
their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to
be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory
cybercapitalism.
Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round
of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide
dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political
class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots
will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable
lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. ...
Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump ... might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream.
Maybe it's true people are voting for memberberries. Things were nice for them back in the day. Now everything seems to be going to shit. And it is for them. It is for me. Health insurance prices go way up every year. Roads and bridges are falling apart, jobs haven't really come back, there doesn't appear to be an end to terrorism or the war against it. And now the American dream that nearly every adult prior to 2008 could reasonably expect, is absurdly out of reach for millions. Even if you're college educated. Stick to a tiny apartment, ramen noodles, and in 40 years you too could own your own small house! Or retire. Pick one.
So some guy comes up to you and says, "I feel you. I will bring the jobs back. I will make America great again." And then this lady you know, but aren't so sure about says, "What's he talking about, America is already great. Don't be a racist."
The election was in the bag. Only fringe racists supported Trump. Who cares about some email thing, you racist!
The Future
I have to admit, I am a little bit glad to see the hubris
explode in their faces. And now I feel icky. That's another
thing. The level of vitriol and hate toward the opposition is
worse than during the Bush years, worse than either Obama election.
I’d like to suggest, furthermore, that the fixation on
personalities—or, again, malicious parodies of personalities—has played a huge
role in making politics in the United States so savage, so divisive, and so
intractably deadlocked on so many of the things that matter just now. The
issues I mentioned a few paragraphs back—US foreign policy toward a resurgent
Russia, on the one hand, and US economic policy regarding the offshoring of
jobs and the importation of foreign workers—are not only important, they’re
issues about which reasonable disagreement is possible. What’s more, they’re
issues on which negotiation, compromise, and the working out of a mutually
satisfactory modus vivendi between competing interests are also possible, at
least in theory.
In practice? Not while each side is insisting at the top of
its lungs that the other side is led by a monster of depravity and supported
only by people who hate everything good in the world. I’d like to suggest that
it’s exactly this replacement of reasoned politics with a pretty close
equivalent of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984 that’s among the
most important forces keeping this country from solving any of its problems or
doing anything to brace itself for the looming crises ahead. ...
I’m not sure how many people have noticed, though, that the election of
Donald Trump was not merely a rebuke to the liberal left; it was also a defeat
for the religious right. It’s worth recalling that the evangelical wing of the
Republican Party had its own favorites in the race for the GOP nomination, and
Trump was emphatically not one of them. It has not been a propitious autumn for
the movements of left and right whose stock in trade is trying to force their
own notion of virtue down the throats of the American people—and maybe, just
maybe, that points to the way ahead.
It’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the
traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the
overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the
people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never
going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of
moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about
the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it’s time for government at all
levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity
of our republic’s many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring
equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by
their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens.
It's hard for me to disagree with Greer. The "coastal elite," the liberal bubbles, all the people who don't understand flyover country--you've seen them, you know many of them have difficulty accepting political loss. When you've sufficiently defined your opponents as bigoted, then summarily dismiss them (as civility demands), your brain interprets losing to such people as totally unacceptable, virtually unconscionable, as if the Joker killed Batman, as if the world is suddenly just wrong. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"
There's a good chance they won't understand. A good chance they won't listen. A good chance they will crawl back into their bubbles and ignore and/or dismiss us. Decentralizing the federal government might well be a good idea for both sides, but power is addicting. And I doubt the "coastal elite" will willingly trade in their heroin for some weed.
Besides, it's back to business as usual, according to Kos:
If Trump wants to pass a new Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick
Garland, then we can work with him. Anything else, he can go fuck
himself. Infrastructure spending? Let him get the votes from his own
caucus. Anything else he might propose, even if we might agree with it?
Let him get the votes from his own caucus while we hurl metaphorical
molotov cocktails from the sideline.
They broke it, they own it.
Soon
the president will no longer be black; it'll be okay to oppose him
guys. Remember when we used the nuclear option to overcome vote hurdles
and filibusters? Remember when we used executive orders to bypass congress? Well, times change and it's not cool anymore.
I really do not like Donald Trump. And I like Hillary Clinton even less. I will say that Trump has made the debates vastly more entertaining. If only we were voting for fake TV-show presidents.
I tend to disagree philosophically with much of the big Democratic Party positions, and have since I first started researching politics. I am theoretically open to voting for Democrats, and have liked a few of them in the past. It's just that even among the ones I like, they tend to go along with and support their caucus on everything that matters.
And that's another of many weird things about American politics. At least for the ideologically aware, even superior candidates on the other side of the isle you like are more likely to be worse than a bad candidate on your side of the isle you dislike. And when I say worse, I mean worse for the party line (or political philosophy) you tend to agree with. [This view may and will likely not hold true for small, local politics.]
Unless you're a centrist with little care or knowledge of political issues, supporting a perfect, brilliant, charismatic, and caring politician who happens to be with the Bad Guys is very difficult to justify.
I don't think most voters even think about this, let alone have put much thought into their political philosophy. So unfortunately, the point is largely moot. But I'm a nerd and nerds like to talk about stuff that barely matters.
This is why this election has been difficult for me. Not because Hillary Clinton is a perfect candidate, but because a twisted version of my point is what ideologically aware, right-leaning voters are facing.
Hillary Clinton is a bad candidate and Donald Trump is a bad candidate. Hillary Clinton is the devil we know and love to hate, but Trump is a devil we're not very sure about. He says he's on our side, but it seems that his side is how he defines "our side," at least for the times he hasn't explicitly opposed our side.
Maybe we should vote for Trump because that way, at least we have a chance of getting the things we care about, as opposed to guaranteeing getting things we don't want with Clinton--or so the thinking goes. Maybe that's enough for some. It was for me in the past. It's a gamble, but now the odds of "my side" getting what we want are the lowest ever. Trump is no conservative. Trump is definitely no libertarian. Clinton less so. In hyperbolic terms, it's like choosing Hitler or Stalin. Yea so Stalin killed more people, but he had a nicer mustache.
From there I just venture into wildly speculative questions about who would do the least damage. I can't answer that. Nobody can. We shouldn't even be in this situation. It's Douches and Turds all the way down.
But we still try. Scott Alexander suggests we support Clinton, because least variance. That makes sense, if you don't want variance. I however, am very open to variance. And I have my doubts any presidential candidate, from Jill Stein to Gary Johnson would introduce significant variance into the American equation. I guess it depends on what you think is significant, but it's all hypothetical at this point. If we were electing dictators it would be another matter (the office of the president holds enormous power, but we're still a constitutional democratic republic, or however the hell you want to label it--checks 'n balances yo). Judging by history, every new president will attempt to gain more power and will probably acquire some for the office. But short of revolution or coup, will not become a dictator.
So the implication is that the Donald will mildly shake things up just enough to allow the opportunity for things to worsen, or possibly improve. One attractive thing about Trump is that he is the FU vote. A revolution without the actual revolution. A cheap and easy signal that you're fed up. A tempting turd to vote for in that regard.
Let me collect my thoughts and summarize where I'm at after all this back and forth:
Political philosophy is out the window, there is virtually no hope for that.
Both are terrible candidates I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
One is maybe kinda sorta more likely to change things for good or ill.
One is maybe kinda sorta more likely to keep things the same.
In either case, the power of the president will increase some.
Things will probably not change much, either way.
Third party candidates have no chance, and may actually help elect someone you don't want.
My vote is insignificantly small and won't help decide the election, so the only thing that matters is how I'll sleep at night (If you live in a swing state, this point is slightly less applicable).
In my right-leaning libertarian mind, this thinking points me in the direction of Johnson, maybe Trump, or abstention. Clinton represents no change. I want change, but I don't want to roll the dice for a low chance of getting things I want, with a moderate chance of getting things I don't want, from a person I dislike. I won't be sleeping well if I vote for either of them.
That leaves Johnson, who I agree with more than the other candidates, but believe would make a bad president. Which is a good thing since he has no chance.
He's a libertarian, I'm a libertarian. He doesn't seem crazy or corrupt. Not too smart about foreign affairs, but that's what advisors are for. Besides, the foreign policy guru candidate doesn't exactly have the best record on foreign policy. This might be a plus for Johnson.
Since he and third party candidates in general have no chance at winning, this is a luxury vote. At best, I can hope to send a message to the political powers that be that more of the country is more libertarian-oriented than they are, and nudge them to accommodate me and my interests. That's a nice thought. And even though Republicans and some Democrats seem to be tending libertarian more here and there, the trend of increasing statism is vastly more prominent.
At best, I will be able to sleep at night by hoping to send a signal to Washington by voting for Johnson, or any third party candidate. In fact, voting in any safe state your best hope for change via your vote is signalling. Strength in numbers. Does the winner have a mandate? Are the third party candidates really cutting into Pepsi and Coke's bottom line? Do we have to start paying attention to this bloc of voters?
At this point you're looking at poll numbers, thinking of how your vote could possibly have the most impact for the things you care about--strategic voting. This is all nice and nerdy except in the year 2016. Donald is the signal vote. If you're fed up, you vote for Trump. If you hate Trump, or want least variance, you vote for Clinton.
If you're both fed up and hate Trump, you still kinda have to vote for him--if "fed up" is what you're really wanting to say. Otherwise it's very likely your vote for Johnson will be interpreted as a right-leaning anti-Trump vote. In the world of Clinton v. Trump, your Johnson vote will be interpreted through that lens. Libertarian what?
I dislike Clinton enough to vote for Trump. I'm fed up enough to vote for Trump, but I'm wary of and dislike Trump enough to vote for Johnson. And yet I'm pretty sure my Johnson vote, if it even matters, will be misinterpreted.
I'm at a loss. Logic has failed me. I can't endorse anyone. I can at least endorse not voting for Clinton. Abstaining is weak, but it is there, and it's about as tempting as Trump or Johnson. Good luck deciding.
As Senator? Please, that job's nothing compared to being the libertarian diplomat in conservativeland (and sometimes liberalland).
He differs from his father Ron, in that he actually seems to want to win over conservatives and all their variations, while staying (mostly) true to his libertarian ideals. As a libertarian myself, I often wonder why many conservatives and liberals do not join together, considering we all tend libertarian on many issues. It's tempting, therefore, to try to bridge the gaps, to bring these seemingly disparate groups together under common cause. I mean here's just a few things most of use can agree on:
Increasing transparency and accountability in government.
Curbing waste, fraud, and abuse.
A simpler tax code (not necessarily lower or higher taxes, just simpler).
Privacy protection from both corporate and government entities.
Ending corporate welfare.
It's good he's trying. And even if he doesn't win over any lefties, you would think he would do fairly well with conservatives, especially during the Obama administration. But that's not the world we live in.
Here in realityville, politicians frequently miscalculate. For example, one isn't granted carte blanche after scoring a few political points, to unnecessarily demagogue about Dick Cheney and the Iraq war after all these years. Why pick at those scabs when our current president is eagerly inflicting new wounds? Rand is going to have to explain that to the hawkish conservatives he needs, if he ever wants to be more than a Senator. He's got enough explaining to do for them already.
Make no mistake: As someone who opposed the Iraq War, I enjoy watching Cheney get slapped around on the issue as much as the next gal. But it’s one thing to accuse the former veep of ideologically driven Machiavellianism; ’tis quite another to suggest that he did what he did out of loyalty to his Halliburton cronies. That is a far darker charge that, while already generating glee on the left, is also the kind of right-on-the-knife’s-edge-of-nuttiness conspiracy-spinning likely to bite Paul on the butt as he tries to capture his party’s nomination. [emphasis mine]
I don't mean to tell the libertarian diplomat how to do his job; I'm sure he's got far more qualified and capable people than I for that. I'm just pointing out the sad, pathetic fact that people suck, especially politicians--even ones you like. And I like Rand Paul. Even if he thought the Iraq war was entirely based on Halliburton's bottom line, I would still vote for him over Jeb or Hillary.
Here's the thing about presidents: Let's pretend your perfect candidate is on the ballot. You agree with him/her on every single issue. From taxes to foreign policy, abortion to gay marriage, which football team is the best, and on down to your favorite beverage--all prioritized exactly the way you want it. And better yet, your candidate not only wins, he/she wins by a huge landslide--giving the president-elect an undeniable mandate.
You have a few months to bask in the glory of your shared victory, and then watch the historical inauguration over and over (since you obviously recorded it, fanboy) so you can glutton yourself with gleeful tears of joy. But after that inauguration, the honeymoon is officially over. Oh, it won't feel like it's over, but it is. Work has to start. President Perfect now has to negotiate all those pesky checks and balances. And he/she doesn't really have all that much power (thankfully).
That new tax policy you wanted: guess what, it's Congress's job. That health care reform you wanted: Congress. National debt? Congress. Gay Marriage? Supreme Court. That big fancy new immigration law the president spearheaded? Congress shat all over it. Well what about those executive orders you wholly supported? They got badly interpreted and poorly applied in the labyrinth of bureaucracy. Your neighbor's annoying dog? Your dogcatcher hates you.
But not so fast, you say: the president has a lot of power when it comes to foreign policy! To which I respond: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jr., Barack Obama. Virtually the same foreign policies, plus or minus a few scandals. But your president is different! To which I say: yes, but the environment in which he/she operates remains the same, and largely dictates his/her foreign policy, of which Congress has quite a bit of say in. You can vote out the man, but you can't vote out the system. You can change your clothes, but you can't change the weather.
Let's pretend Rand Paul is an extreme isolationist (which he's not): all other things being equal, our foreign policy would change some, yes, but only to the extent Congress and the American people allowed it. Elected officials don't routinely contradict will of those who put them there, nor do they routinely ignore the changing wishes of their constituents. If President Paul recalled every member of the military and cut all ties with our foreign friends, Congress would delay the recall to a virtual standstill (it takes funds to move people), and the president would be out of office within the month, likely sooner. The only way such a thing would happen, is if the vast majority of us wanted it to happen, in which case, you probably wouldn't be complaining.
Realistically, I don't see our foreign policy changing much, regardless of who is elected. And in some ways, that's unfortunate.
I've digressed a bit to illustrate what would likely happen (almost nothing), versus what people fear might happen (we get invaded by every other country) should this scary libertarian guy get nominated. This is why Rand the libertarian diplomat has a difficult job. He's different. We've never had a libertarian president before (at least for a long, long time). We may not like or agree with Jeb Bush, but at least with him we'll get the same turd sandwich we got before, and by golly, we'll like it!
Rand has the awful task of persuasively painting himself as different enough to bring about change we want, but not so different to bring about the scary change we fear. Considering righty libertarians, lefty libertarians, hawkish conservatives, social conservatives, and moderates all have different hopes and fears, uniting them will require a very precarious dance. If he pulls off the nomination, I will be very impressed. I don't envy him.
Yeah I'm just going to go the undignified route because I don't give two shits about politicians and the voting public in general. Let's just drop the pretense: the vast majority of Americans have a rational interest to be politically ignorant, and in our case, they are super-rational.
It's like they've all been urinating in the pool--what's a little pee in this giant pool, nobody will know--and now, thanks to all of them we're neck deep in piss.
A good percentage of those commenters get up on their high horse and say shit like, "Oh I voted for Bush, then I voted for Obama. Now I despise both of them. They are all corporatist war mongers!"
But you know what, it's ok because they're going to vote for the next candidate Pepsi or candidate Coke.
Go fuck yourself.
And no, I'm not saying we should get rid of democracy, I'm just saying it sucks. There are possible improvements, but that's for another post.
Via Gabe at Ace's, Romney has an effective new ad hitting Obama on the idiotic "You didn't build that" comments:
While Obama keeps making personal attacks on Romney, insinuating he's some sort of tax evading criminal banker, Romney keeps the focus on the issues that matter.
Please Mr. President, keep putting your foot in your mouth. Or maybe Obama will try a new demagoguing tactic, since the Bain attacks aren't working out so well:
PPP's newest New Mexico poll finds the race for President there getting a lot more competitive. Barack Obama continues to lead but his advantage is down to 5 points at 49-44, a far cry from the leads of 14 and 15 points he had on our previous two polls of the state.
The big difference between now and April comes with Democrats. Previously Obama was winning them 85-12 but now that lead is down to 73-21. New Mexico is a state, like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where any chance at victory for Romney is going to require winning over a significant number of conservative Democrats. Right now he's doing a pretty decent job of that.
I 'm not sure why he's losing support in New Mexico; maybe it's his stellar record on the economy, maybe it's record-breaking deportations, or maybe it's because his policies negatively impact New Mexico in direct ways. Or all of the above.
This potentially gives Romney and the GOP a huge opportunity. I've always believed Hispanics tended to be socially conservative, it's just that they more easily identify with the political party portrayed as the most pro-immigrant. Right or wrong, that's the Democrats. If the 'conservatives' would logically extend their free-market, limited government principles to immigration issues we could easily add in a whole new demographic to the GOP's base.
It's okay to be anti-illegal immigration, but it's politically cancerous to ignore legal immigration--which is a fucking nightmare for most immigrants. It should be easier, not harder for good people to enter and stay in the U.S.
This is what Hope and Change leadership looks like:
At this point, the hiatus — which reached the half-year mark Tuesday — might be less awkward than an official meeting, given the hornet’s nest of issues that could sting Obama and the council members if the private-sector panel gets together.
For starters, there’s the discomfort many business leaders may feel in appearing to embrace the president with his reelection bid in full swing.
Then, there’s the fact that some members of the commission have conspicuously declined to endorse him. And that Obama has conspicuously declined to endorse some of their recommendations. And that some of what Obama won’t endorse has been warmly embraced by Republicans...
No wonder the Obama campaign and the media would rather talk about Romney's tax records and former employment.
This single example is a metaphor of the entire administration: sloppy, lazy, ineffectual, and always directing attention away from themselves. What has been the number one issue since Obama was elected? Jobs. Or the economy in general.
Apparently assuming the Recovery Act was a cure-all, the check-list president then spent the next two years of his administration focusing on health care. But whether you like Obamacare or not, he left Nancy Pelosi to do the heavy lifting on that. I guess he needed his time on the green.
Even if I was a socialist, I would have to admit the president has been a complete failure of a leader. But it's worse; he won't assume responsibility for his failures, not even the failure to satisfy his base.
The Democratic National Convention Committee announced today that its upcoming Charlotte convention program will be shortened from four days to three days, and that the event will begin on Labor Day...
Either way the numbers don't lie; and Silver basically stops short of calling the anti-Voter ID people a bunch of whiners:
One last thing to consider: although I do think these laws will have some detrimental effect on Democratic turnout, it is unlikely to be as large as some Democrats fear or as some news media reports imply — and they can also serve as a rallying point for the party bases.
According to the Boston Globe, Mitt Romney was CEO and president of Bain Capital until at least 2002, three years after he said he left.
Yeah, I know.
Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009.
Bain Capital and the campaign for the presumptive GOP nominee have suggested the SEC filings that show Romney as the man in charge during those additional three years have little meaning, and are the result of legal technicalities. The campaign declined to comment on the record. It pointed to a footnote in Romney’s most recent financial disclosure form, filed June 1 as a presidential candidate.
“Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way,’’ according to the footnote. Romney made the same assertion on a financial disclosure form in 2007, during his first run for president.
Either Romney left in 1999 or 2002, and while this may muddy the waters and help Democrats paint him as an outsourcer, the potentially bigger story is that he possibly wasn't honest. Coupled with the implied allegations of tax evasion via offshore accounts it isn't exactly good news for him.
I tend to think Romney will open his books, and similarly explain the Bain departure confusion, a reasonable amount of time before the election. But I could be wrong, and Romney doesn't even need to. This is a referendum on failed economic policies Obama.
Since they can't debate Romney on the issues, they will attack his character. Or lie.
Listen, Romney wasn't my first pick. To be honest I wasn't happy with any of the GOP candidates, and it was the least interesting, least motivating, least inspiring GOP presidential primary that I can remember. Sure I want to beat Obama, and there is a HUGE swell of new Republican energy this year because of that. But that doesn't mean our candidates are the bees knees.
Yes I wish Romney could hit a little harder, keep Obama on defense (after all, it is his presidency we're after). But we fight with the candidates we have, not the ones we want to have.
For the life of me I couldn't figure out what the deal was with a couple of seemingly small stories. Then the narrative started to take shape--that Romney is in big trouble, his campaign is confused, his supporters are angry at him, and Romney himself is looking like a flip-flopper among other depressing and nefarious things.
On Thursday, Romney’s team put out word of a massive $100 million fundraising haul — but its skill in attracting donors has done little to tamp down longstanding concerns within the GOP about the insularity and rigidness of the Romney camp. Those gripes are now being aired in public, as center-right staples from The Wall Street Journal editorial page to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham lament what they view as an uninspired, passive campaign. Romney’s general-election approach has resembled the strategy he used during the GOP primaries, a keep-your-head-down, minimalist effort aimed at keeping the focus on his opponent.
Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign's monomaniacal belief that it's about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it's only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.
Of course Republican concern trolling is just not complete without the New York Times. Jeremy Peters opines:
The editorial was a stern reminder of Mr. Romney’s failure to win the trust of the Republican Party’s core conservatives, a group that pays close attention to Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers and cable news outlets. Though political strategists debate the ultimate impact of any single media outlet, what is written in the pages of The Journal and The New York Post and talked about on Fox News — all Murdoch properties — could have the collective power to shape the thinking of millions of voters.
So what do we conclude with this narrative that has saturated American punditry? Answer: OMG, Romney is gonna implode!!1!
As I mentioned, this boils down to two, very small stories.
First, one guy on Romney's campaign staff said that the Obamacare mandate is a penalty and not a tax. It's easy to take either side, or both sides, since the Court was very creative in justifying the mandate as a tax. So one guy went off message on something most normal people could take either side on. The semantics of the mandate/tax don't change what it really does.
Second and finally, the other small story is about what a rich guy tweeted. Yes, Rupert Murdoch has some problems with Romney, and why are we supposed to care? The election is a referendum on Captain Failed-Recovery Obama, not on the true conservative manliness of Romney. Murdoch even said it was a referendum and that "all else [is] pretty minor"! It's not part of the narrative so it doesn't get reported.
