This Is Who Some of Us Are

Astonishingly, Trump won the presidency again. Despite everything.

  • Slate: Americans just voted to burn it all to the ground;
  • Trump supporters are calling for executions; and how they laugh at Trump rallies;
  • Zack Beauchamp on Trump’s existential threat, and some hope for optimism;
  • Robert Reich on the Resistance;
  • Tom Nichols suggests that the danger of a Trump administration might be undercut by his incompetence;
  • Personal comments about sexism and racism; how Democrats are not denouncing the results as evidence of cheating; how it will be interesting to track Trump’s promises/threats against results; and how I find this result more shocking than the one in 2016.

Or to the rest of the world, this is what Americans are. This too shall pass.

Slate, Christina Cauterucci, 6 Nov 2024: Americans Just Voted to Burn It All to the Ground, subtitled “This is an even more decisive turning point than 2016.”

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An Election About Elections

We won’t know today.

  • David A. Graham at The Atlantic about how this election is a test;
  • Evidence about how European nations would vote in today’s US presidential election;
  • More about the Republican backlash to the idea that women can think for themselves;
  • Short items about educated women, submission to Christ, how Democrats are demonic, how RFK would remove fluoride, and how today Trump uttered 15 falsehoods in 15 minutes.

The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 5 Nov 2024: This Is a Test, subtitled “Can the country pass?”

This is an election about elections.

One of the two leading candidates in the race, Donald Trump, has not only demonstrated a long-running skepticism of rule of law; he is also the only president in American history to attempt to remain in office after losing an election. This election is a test: Can the American public resoundingly reject a man who has not merely been a chaotic extremist but has also attacked the American system of republican government itself?

No, because to many Americans, Trump represents something more important than the “American system of government,” despite how much they claim to venerate the Constitution. Graham concludes,

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Of Course This Won’t Be All Over Tomorrow

  • Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds;
  • Trump says rallies are full while a cameraman pans over an empty arena;
  • CNN fact-checks Trump’s final day of his campaign;
  • When called out, Trump says never mind, I was kidding;
  • Robert Reich offers some reassurance;
  • WaPo asks whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, and the answer, for most people, is yes;
  • David A. Graham at The Atlantic asks yet again, how is the election this close?
  • Quick takes on voting like atheists, and Tucker Carlson stating that hurricanes are because abortions.

Again and again, why do so many people support a man who lies constantly? You can’t believe anything he says! That means you can’t *count* on anything he says, no matter what he promises. He’s a con man. Why do his fans believe him??

NY Times, news analysis by Peter Baker, 3 Nov 2024: Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds, subtitled “Throughout his life, Donald J. Trump has bent the truth to serve his needs, never more so than on the campaign trail to win back the White House.”

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César Hidalgo, WHY INFORMATION GROWS

Subtitled “The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies”
(Basic Books, 2015, xxi + 232 pp, including 51pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index)

A few weeks ago I sat down to read the new Yuval Noah Harari book, NEXUS, and just a few pages in noticed a footnote crediting much of his understanding of the concept of “information” to César Hildago’s WHY INFORMATION GROWS. And I realized, I have that book! It’s that green one! So I got it off the shelf and browsed a bit. His thesis based on that browsing seemed very similar, at least analogous if not identical, to a key idea in the Brian Greene book I read recently, UNTIL THE END OF TIME (review here) — the idea that order can build up, despite the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but only *temporarily*, even if temporary means billions of years, because of the course of the life of the *entire* universe, that order (or information) will dissolve back into entropy. (Greene calls this “the entropic two-step”.) How interesting! That meant the little green Hidalgo book has ties to two other big books. So I set Harari aside, to get Hidalgo’s ideas from the source. And here we are. How does this idea relate to “information”? How exactly does he define “information”? That’s what Harari deals with too.

(More broadly, the idea of that evolution can happen despite the 2nd law of thermodynamics, an idea disputed by naive, ill-educated people who desperately want evolution to be untrue so that can think their Bible is true, relates to a broad range of topics. And another 2015 book I haven’t read, Matt Ridley’s THE EVOLUTION OF EVERYTHING.)

So: the universe is made of energy, matter, and information, and it’s the last that makes it interesting. It hides in pockets at the universe succumbs to entropy. Nevertheless, information grows. Without summarizing the entire book, here are some key points:

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How Much Is There Left to Say?

  • David French: There will always be a Trump;
  • David Frum: No one has an alibi;
  • Facts, if anyone cares, about the economy under Biden and Trump (On 17 points: Biden advantage 11, Trump advantage 5, and 1 unclear);
  • How Musk’s mother claims she can vote multiple times; How a Project 2025 leader suggests Christians will be forbidden to worship; How maps show that Trump and his fans actually despise most Americans; Zach Beauchamp compares Trump to Orbán; Gingrich is infuriated over the idea that wives might vote differently than their husbands; Vance suggests testosterone aligns with conservative politics; and how Trump has lured evangelicals to follow Satan.
– – –

NY Times, David French, 3 Nov 2024: There Will Always Be a Trump. That’s Only Part of the Problem.

This echoes a key theme of my blog; as I said in my summary of the Prothero book yesterday, “there will always be gays and bigots.” Base human nature will never go away. But it’s despite that that humanity has made progress.

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Ramping Up

It’s happening right before our eyes.

  • How Trump’s 2020 Playbook is being put into action;
  • Trump simulates oral sex in public;
  • Jonathan M. Katz on what Trump’s team will do following the election;
  • Robert Reich reminds us of 101 terrible things Trump has done;
– – –

NY Times, Jim Rutenberg and Alan Feuer, 2 Nov 2024: Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action, subtitled “Step by step, Donald J. Trump and his allies are following the strategies that caused chaos four years ago. Election officials say they are ready this time.” [gift link]

Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.

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Prothero: WHY LIBERALS WIN THE CULTURE WARS…

(EVEN WHEN THEY LOSE ELECTIONS), subtitled “The Battles That Define America from Jefferson’s Heresies to Gay Marriage”

(HarperOne, Oct 2016, 326pp, including 62p acknowledgements, notes, and index.)

I’ve mentioned this book a few times, the first time even before it was published (in Dec 2014), and I finally sat down to read it closely a few weeks ago. Well, a portion of it closely. The book consists of a framing argument, and five chapters of examples covering over 200 pages. I read the framing argument, and the fifth example, totaling about 100 pages. Much of the framing argument was already there from the video I linked in 2014 (though the link has changed to this.)

The gist of the book, in my own terms, begins with the recognition that change is ongoing and inescapable. (At least since the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of humanity around the globe that has brought previously isolated groups and cultures into contact with one another and so forced them to learn how to get along. This dovetails with my comments two days ago under the “what does this say about us?” article.)

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Another Trumpy Day

  • Trump imagines Liz Cheney before a firing squad;
  • A history of Trump’s violent remarks;
  • And his “enemies list”;
  • Trumpists’ playbook for trying to overturn the election — check back next week;
  • How Trump appeals to America’s xenophobic history;
  • When leopards tell you they will eat your face, believe them;
  • Another asking of the question, Who are we, America?;
  • Trump doesn’t have the attention span for a coup;
  • And consideration of what will actually happen if Trump wins, with my own predictions.
– – –

The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 1 Nov 2024: Trump Suggests Training Guns on Liz Cheney’s Face, subtitled “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?”

\

It’s nothing really new.

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And Now We’re Talking about Garbage

How the mighty have fallen.

  • What does Trump being a narcissistic sociopath say about us? I have some ideas;
  • How another confrontation by a child to her Trump-voting father does not go well;
  • More about Trump’s, and Biden’s, garbage comments;
  • How Trump fans are already planning to contest the election;
  • And how Trump promises to protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Despite the “again” MAGA clearly believes the United States is the greatestest country in the whole world ever, because of Jesus and whatnot, despite all the Democrats, and the press, and the elites on coasts, and Puerto Rico. And despite the Constitution, which they flout at every turn. Cognitive dissonance indeed.

LGBTQNation, Molly Sprayregen, 31 Oct 2024: Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath. So what does that say about us?

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And So Here We Are

  • Trump’s closing argument is vulgarity;
  • How Trump is unable to produce evidence of voter fraud; Similarly, how a far-right social media personality is unable to substantiate his calumny against James Carville;
  • Shorter items: How Trump pardons only those loyal to him; how a Christian pastor cherry-picks the Bible; how presidents do not actually control much of the economy; how those who support Trump’s mass deportation aren’t thinking things through; how immigration actually affects the US economy; and how a Christian pastor still believe in demons.
– – –

Washington Post, Editorial Board, 29 Oct 2024: Opinion | Donald Trump’s closing argument: Vulgarity, subtitled “Trump has made politics coarser, and somehow he’s managed to become even cruder in recent days.”

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