Outrage fatigue Feb 7, 2017
One of the ideas behind my post on political apathy was "outrage fatigue", which the Onion satirically wrote about over a decade ago by describing liberals reactions to all the Bush-era stuff that was going on at the time.  I guess it's kind of an old concept, and perhaps it's more of a liberal problem than anything, but it generally feels like a sense of exhaustion and apathy about whatever issue is currently center-stage.  It's frustrating because I feel like I'd like to be more outraged at things like Trump tweeting "Any negative polls are fake news", but I just don't have it in me.  I think part of it is a rational response to the results of previous outrage, i.e. nothing.  Outrage, opinion pieces, protests.  These things accomplish nothing when literally 50% of people disagree with every fiber of your being.  I'm done here. #politics
Political apathy Jan 26, 2017
"Can you believe that thing Trump did/said/tweeted/ate/shouted/emoted?"  Yes.  Yes, I can.  And I completely don't give a fuck. 

A little background here:  I voted for George W. Bush twice during my conservative Christian days.  And I voted for Obama twice in my liberal post-religious days.  Since I've been old enough to vote, I've voted for a winner.  Until this election, where the villain won.  So that could have something to do with it. 

But aside from that, I just feel completely unrepresented.  Conservatives:  "That's how we've felt for the past eight years."  Yeah, I get it.  We've had Osama the Socialist Muslim as our overlord for eight long, terrible years, where unemployment went down and the economy went up.  It's been horrible, I know.  But I can see one major difference between the Obama and Trump presidencies:  Obama wanted to give things away, like healthcare to poor people and rights to gay people.  Trump wants to take things away, like abortion rights for women and the freedom to talk about climate change.  This difference is a false equivalency; you can't say, "Yeah but your guy did bad things too."  If you can't see this difference, that's exactly my point. 

Part of my apathy stems from this whole idea of a post-fact world, where true statements of fact and provable ideas mean nothing to a rabid, shouting mob.  I've always been a fan of concrete ideas -- things I can prove right or wrong, black or white.  Even during my Christian days, my faith was rational, resting on the assumption of the existence of an all-powerful deity.  There are true statements, and there are false statements.  If we can't agree on which are which, we're screwed.  So we're screwed. 

Republicans now control the White House, the Congress, the Senate, and soon enough the Supreme Court.  My side, which fights for the separation of church and state, the rights of the marginalized, and ... well ... the fucking planet, are perpetually overruled.  Every single idea that was pushed during the Obama years is about to be undone, and the new ideas of the Trump army will steamroll all opposition due to simple majority rule. 

People like to point at the unhealthy idea of us versus them, the right versus the left, conservatives versus liberals, rural versus urban, etc.  I don't see this going away anytime soon.  And I don't really play well with others, so I'm not the solution to this problem.  If you hold onto an idea that's provably false, that's a problem for me, and I can't just set it aside and move onto other things.  You're wrong, you must know you're wrong, here's why you're wrong, and you're an idiot for not understanding it.  Since this gets us nowhere, I've moved onto the next step:  I just don't give a fuck.  Believe what you want.  Do what you will.  Obviously facts won't change your opinions.  Reason won't prevail.  I'm just staying out it. #politics
Post election 2016 Nov 9, 2016
So Trump won.  That's disappointing.  Not so much because my candidate lost, but because Trump is very obviously the bad guy.  Hillary's not great, but she's at least not the villain in the story. 

At least we'll stop hearing about Hillary's emails.  And the Clinton Foundation.  And Benghazi.  And Whitewater.  And whatever other somewhat -- or very -- shady things she's done in the past and will do in the future.  Speaking of which, her political career is over.  She'll be a little too old for the next time around.  Plus, she's probably dead on the inside from this ridiculous farce of an election.  I say good riddance.  Get some new blood in the party.  There are better female politicians than Hillary Clinton. 

Trump is truly a political outsider.  So this should hopefully put to bed whether or not having an outsider as president is a good thing.  I'm open to either answer. 

Apparently a lot of rural white people were angry about jobs, and that's essentially what won the election.  I guess we'll see if Trump the businessman can create jobs as Trump the president, instead of simply painting things gold and filing for bankruptcy, then cheating on his taxes.  I personally don't think presidents have much to do with the job market, but I'd gladly change my mind in the face of countervailing evidence. 

It's kind of funny to hear people demonstrate their lack of understanding about how elections work.  Several fellow New Jerseyans proclaimed their pride in voting for Trump, and I had to hold my tongue from telling them that since Hillary won NJ, their vote literally had nothing to do with Trump winning.  You could almost say their votes didn't count. 

I feel slightly numb and a little stressed about the whole thing.  Yes, I knew Trump had a chance.  But I half-hoped people would come to their senses at the last minute and make the adult decision.  Sadly, that didn't happen.  And as much as I don't like the guy or anything he stands for, I think the biggest source of my anxiety is just the uncertainty he brings everywhere he goes.  I don't trust him, because he's proven himself to be untrustworthy.  I guess we'll see.  We've had a good run, America. #politics
Trump supporters Oct 24, 2016
A lot of people see Donald Trump as the physical embodiment of narcissistic xenophobia and Hitler-esque hate tantrums.  He is exactly that, to be clear.  He's an orange, ignorant, pig-faced, clown of a human being, whose business model consists entirely of writing his name on things.  Bravo, sir. 

But I really don't think Donald Trump is the problem.  Donald Trump is a representative, possibly the elected representative, of a large group of misinformed, Bible-thumping, gun-toting racists that make up a good percentage of the United States.  And that's sad.  I'm not even sure Trump believes the things he says, or even realizes how many people like him and why.  He's almost like an unwitting pawn in the grand game of thrones.  We're a nation of self-made, superstitious, white, Christian, hyper-nationalists who hate poor, black people.  Of course Donald Trump rose to power.  It had to happen eventually. 

But that's not completely fair.  Not all Trump supporters are misinformed, or Bible-thumping, or gun-toting, or racists.  Some of them are only one of those things.  And that's the other sad thing:  The Republican Party is a mess.  They say cool things like, "Let's lower taxes," and follow it up with, "and imprison people who perform abortions."  Or "Let's lower the national debt," and "make Christianity the official religion of the United States."  I can get behind fiscal conservatism.  But that bullshit social conservatism needs to die a long overdue death.  We've progressed as a society.  Move on. 

I keep going back to this video of Republican blowhard Newt Gingrich.  If you can't bear to watch his stupid fat face say these childishly ignorant things, I'll quote: 
Gingrich:  Current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it's not where human beings are. 
CNN:  But what you're saying is ... liberals use these numbers, they use this sort of magic math.  These are the FBI statistics.  They're not a liberal organization, they're a crime-fighting organization. 
Gingrich:  But what I said is equally true.  People feel more threatened. 
CNN:  They feel it, yes.  But the facts don't support it. 
Gingrich:  As a political candidate, I'll go with how people feel, and I'll let you go with the theoreticians. 
That right there is a problem.  And again, it's a representative problem.  Gingrich, and Trump, and every other dim-witted, sexist, meat-peddler is -- or at least pretends to be -- immune to facts.  Statements of fact, scientific polls, verifiable measurements -- they're all worthless to a certain large subset of the American populace.  But feelings fly.  They sell.  They get you votes.  That's one of the [many] reasons people don't like Hillary:  She's too unfeeling.  I just wish people could recognize when a mouth-breathing, petulant, pussy-grabber was selling them feelings, and when a cold-hearted, robotic, career politician was selling them policies.  It's a dangerously unbalanced false equivalency. #politics
Libertarian unreasonableness Oct 21, 2016
Libertarianism is something I know relatively little about, but I find its tenets somewhat attractive yet completely unrealistic.  The general idea is a smaller government, with more personal freedoms.  Sounds good so far.  A common talking point is which functions of the federal government a libertarian candidate would remove.  Department of Education, Department of Commerce, that type of thing.  But when you start considering the effects of these policies, things get a little ridiculous.  For one thing, the government employs a lot of people.  So if you removed parts of the government, you'd have a fairly major increase in unemployment.  People generally frown upon that type of policy.  Second, the government does a handful of things that literally no one else wants to or is able to do, such as garbage collection, wastewater treatment, and food safety enforcement.  Yes, there are private companies that do some of those things, but the government pays them.  Either way, we pay for those things.  You can't just get rid of them.  As for food safety, many people think we should just get rid of food and consumer product safety regulations because they're part of a slow, bloated government.  The problem is, there's no profit incentive to make your products safe, or free from bacteria, or medicinally effective.  The government establishes and enforces those guidelines because literally no one else will.  And in fact, you really don't need to dig that deep to find out what the world was like before food safety laws and the FDA existed (hint: meat is a great way to kill people).  The overwhelming fact of the matter is the government is important.  Can it be better?  Yes.  Can it be smaller?  Yes.  But running on a platform of gutting the federal government is just unreasonable. #politics
Kaepernick's pledge Sep 19, 2016
I find it immensely ironic that people are offended by Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protest which consists entirely of kneeling or sitting during the playing of the national anthem.  It's like saying, "This is America, where we blindly assert our allegiance to our national identity, and if you don't participate, you're a traitor."  Read the fucking Bill of Rights. #politics
Trump on Fallon Sep 19, 2016
People are mad that presidential candidate Donald Trump wasn't asked difficult questions when he appeared on Jimmy Fallon's late night talk show.  Like really mad.  I really don't think it was that big of a deal.  I mean, sure, Donald Trump is a buffoon, and deserves to be ridiculed for his stupidity and lack of capacity to hold political office.  But this was a talk show.  A late night comedy show.  It's really not the time for serious matters, like comparing your foreign policy plans to your opponent's.  It just doesn't fit the format.  Plus Trump is already constantly in the limelight getting grilled, not to mention the upcoming debates where he'll surely prove his ... merit.  Get over it. #politics
Undecided voters Jul 25, 2016
As of right now, the current American election landscape features two candidates with the lowest approval ratings in the history of elections.  It's essentially a choice between a shit sandwich and a shit salad.  Literally every human being on earth either hates one candidate, hates the other, or hates them both.  They're pretty terrible people.  At least we can all agree on that. 

But what a lot of people like to ignore, or delude themselves into not believing, is that it's a two-party system.  You either vote Democrat, or you vote Republican.  Voting for a third-party candidate is literally throwing your vote away, for the convoluted reason that entire states are won or lost in support of a single candidate, which are then fed into the electoral college system to determine a winner.  Or whatever.  I don't understand how elections work.  But I do understand that if I'm a Republican (hint:  I'm not) voting in a Democrat-heavy state, my vote will likely be outweighed by the rest of the votes.  Not only that, but if I vote for a third-party candidate in either a Republican-heavy or Democrat-heavy state (those are the only choices), my vote will surely be outweighed by the rest of the votes. 

UNLESS everyone gets on the same page and votes for a third-party candidate, which will happen exactly never.  And of course a side effect of voting for a third-party candidate is that it takes votes away from one of the two main candidates, ensuring the victory of the other. 

Anyway, to my main point.  Most people say they're undecided about who to vote for, for the aforementioned scatalogical reasons.  Or more accurately, they're definitely not voting for the opposite party's candidate, but they're not yet comfortable voting for their party's candidate.  My prediction is that all that rhetoric will wash away, and people will vote for whoever is the forerunner of their political party.  That's how the two-party system works.  You can be as undecided as you want, and you can feel uncomfortable about supporting a candidate, but in the end you'll eat that shit, whether it's a sandwich or a salad, because there's literally no other viable option. #politics
Melania Trump speech Jul 21, 2016
I think the whole fracas of Melania Trump's plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention was an intentional move meant to distract attention away from the fact that the RNC is a complete shitshow. #politics
Caring about issues Dec 31, 2015
People really only care about issues when they're directly affected.  Cases in point:  #politics