More Words I Hate

It's been a while since I last wrote about words that I dislike, so by now I have a few more examples ready to share.

First is a word I actually like but am soooo sick of hearing in one specific phrase: fledgling nation. There was a week recently when I kept hearing those words repeated on the news ("The fledgling nation of East Timor..." "The fledgling nation of Kosovo...") and I thought, When that phrase was first used, it was a nice metaphor, but now it's wrecking the nest.

In my previous post on this topic, I talked about the phrases "a wealth of" and "a host of." In the same vein, this time I want to gripe about galore and aplenty. Not much better is abound -- as in that classic Realtor® phrase, "Closets abound." When I put all three words into one Google search, I found links to sites related to tourism, sports or real estate... none known for their measured use of the English language.

Enough about quantity over quality. Another thing that aggravates me is singulars made plural and plurals made singular. Two cases in point:

Person. It's definitely an oddity of English, but really, the plural of person should not be persons. It's people, right? I blame the police (or maybe police T.V. shows) for popularizing the "missing persons department."

Imagine if this usage had been common in classic song lyrics. We'd have Barbra Streisand singing "Persons... persons who need persons are the luckiest persons in the world..." or The Youngbloods admonishing us, "Come on persons now, smile on your brother, everybody get together try to love one another right now."

Okay, I just checked my dictionary (American Heritage) and it tells me that "persons" can be used for specific, small numbers of people, but that in modern usage "people" is also acceptable in that case. The British site World Wide Words says:

Though persons survives, it does so largely in formal or legal contexts...and often seems awkward and old-fashioned. Where it survives it emphasises that each member of a group is being considered as an individual: ...“Eight persons shared a single room”. From the evidence, it seems that the trend towards using people instead of persons is accelerating and that it may not be so long before persons vanishes from the language except in certain set phrases.

So it's not wrong, I admit, to use "persons" but it does sound fussy, legalistic and over-corrected, which is why I don't like it.

Troops. Troop is a group noun -- it's a group (usually of soldiers). More than one group of soldiers can be referred to as "troops." "Support our troops" means support our groups of soldiers. One member of a troop (at least in the cavalry) would be called a trooper in the old days.

But nowadays each soldier has somehow become a troop of one, as in this headline recently run in the Star Tribune, which tells us that two soldiers died, not two entire troops. (And I would point out that the word "soldiers" would have fit in the same line width as "troops," so that's no excuse here.) Can I expect, one day, to read a headline that says "1 U.S. troop dies in Afghanistan"? Because if troop really means one individual soldier, that construction should be possible.

Rekindling

As I’ve grown to be an older woman, I hate to admit I’ve lost some of the anger about the status of women I felt when I was young. It used to burn inside me, but now, cushioned by upper-class, white, and heterosexual privilege, I surround myself with comfortableness, dressing as I please in a mostly gender-neutral way, while my body ages and makes me less of a target for men.

Two pieces of writing in the past day are bringing it all back, though. First, Jessica Vallenti’s Guardian excerpt from her new book Sex Object. Beyond the “you’d look pretty if you’d smile” and cat-calling harassment women constantly face, she recounts being a young girl and teenager on the New York subway, where she learned at 12 not to be alone with a man on an empty car or to be with too many men on a crowded car.

I’m 56 and her words still managed to shock me, partly about how mundane the experience became after awhile, even while she resisted what it meant about her and all women’s status in the world.

(And this aspect of using public transit in a rape culture must be dealt with if we are to have a world that runs on less energy. Bill Lindeke wrote an article for MinnPost a while back on street harassment, related to this topic. How can women be part of the public, generally, or specifically of public transit, if they are completely unsafe?)

The second piece of writing is a victim’s statement to her now-convicted rapist, Brock Allen Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer. I tried very hard not to read it as I saw the link tweeted and retweeted all day Saturday. I thought I knew what she would say. I thought I had heard it before. I thought I didn’t need to see it.

But I did. Her words should be part of the initiation of teen-aged boys into manhood, countering all the rape and abuse they see these days in porn, forcing them to know that girls and women are people and not objects to do with as you will when it pleases you.

Her words are so convincing that I'm astonished Turner has not admitted he committed a crime, despite his conviction and light sentence. Like the writer, I’m grateful to the two Swedish men who were biking past and interrupted the attack (which took place behind a dumpster… remember that when you hear that Turner claimed “consent”) because what they saw sickened them.

It should sicken everyone. This young man is a sex offender and he requires treatment, but instead he’s getting six months in county jail because the judge is afraid the recommended sentence will have a negative effect on him. Turner has convinced himself he’s a victim too, that his life is ruined because he drank too much. (And even that idea, that alcohol “made” him do it, is crap.) That’s denial or privilege or letting yourself believe what you hear from your supporters because you can’t face your own truth. Or he’s a sociopath.

What is it like to be his mother or father? To see your golden boy—whom you coddled in an upper-class cocoon through swimming lessons and even Olympic trials, all the way to admission at Stanford for god’s sake—commit an act like this and behave this way after he was caught? It’s almost worse than being the parent of one of the Columbine killers, because at least their sons are dead and not denying they did it. You have to live with seeing him, still loving him unconditionally (I imagine), but when do you make your son own the fact that he’s not the victim: he’s a rapist?

Court experts say that it can sometimes be dicey to have women as jurors at rape trials because many of us will do almost anything to distance ourselves from what happened to the victim. It couldn’t happen to me, we think. She must have done something to cause it. Reading the words written by Brock Allen Turner’s victim solve that problem. I felt as though I became her, reading her words. She is real, she is human, she could be anyone, and especially any woman.

It should be required reading, if there can be such a thing, for adulthood. For everyone.

Reading John Rebus

Inspector John Rebus is a man evolving and devolving, drowning in sadness and loss but still managing to solve intersecting crimes that expose the underside of the Scottish capital city he loves. In 17 novels, Ian Rankin has explored both Rebus and Edinburgh, as Rebus ages ungracefully and Edinburgh is constantly reborn.

Meet John Rebus

I discovered Rebus during a Scotland visit in 2007. The house I stayed in had shelves and shelves of books, but one title sprang out at me even though it was just one spine among many: Fleshmarket Close. I'm always a sucker for a great title, and this one was racy but enigmatic. Sightseeing in Edinburgh a few days later, I realized Fleshmarket Close was the name of a narrow street that runs off the Royal Mile. It had literally been a fleshmarket, where meat had been sold.

I bought a copy of the book not long after returning home (the name was changed to Fleshmarket Alley for the U.S. market, unfortunately) and was hooked. I scrounged every title I could find at the library, reading forwards and backwards in Rebus's timeline.

I managed to read seven of the 17 books this way, completely out of sequence, but I had entered Rebus's life only a few titles before the last book, so it was a less than ideal way to meet the guy. A few months ago, after reading one of the earliest books (number 4, Strip Jack) I wandered into the Minneapolis mystery bookstore Once Upon a Crime and found they had the entire set. On impulse, I bought every book I hadn't read. I've been working my way through them ever since.

The Books

I don't usually read murder mysteries or police procedurals, and if my introduction to Rebus had been the first novel, Knots and Crosses, I doubt I would have read the others. It's not bad; it's just typical of everything I assume about the genre -- too tight a plot, too many coincidences, a character with an emotional life that feels a little too contrived.

The third book, Tooth and Nail, is my least favorite, because it forces the reader into a first-person account of a serial killer. No thanks -- that's not something I want to read again. But I knew that Rankin never used this technique in the later books, so I put up with it.

Somewhere around or just after number 4, Strip Jack, Rankin finally found the real inner life of John Rebus and also learned to plot his stories in what appears to be an effortless way. It's amazing how he can pull apparently unrelated events together into a single, interrelated chain of events without forcing the pegs into their holes.

I don't ever want to see the television series that has been made; I guess that shows how much I admire the books. I can't stand to see how they would be simplified.

The Language

Late in my reading, I started keeping a list of words I was learning from the books. I wish I'd thought of this sooner, because I'm sure there were lots of others.

Irn-bru -- I never looked this up until I'd read at least nine of the books. From the context, I knew it was some type of drink, but I didn't realize it is a bright orange soft drink that's come to be a symbol of Scotland, standing up to the invasion of Coca-Cola and other multinational brands. Daughter Number Three-Point-One has tried some (as it's sold in the U.S.) and says it tastes like a melted popsicle mixed with cough syrup.

setts -- quarried stones used to create a paved street. Different from cobblestones, which are naturally shaped. Referenced frequently in the books because they must make for a jarring drive. Before looking it up, I had imagined they were some type of traffic-calming device or directional barrier that kept people from driving the wrong way on a one-way street. So much for figuring it out meaning from context.

harled -- the walls of buildings are sometimes described as harled, which is a time-tested Scottish method of making maintenance-free exteriors. According to the Wikipedia, the harling process involves plaster, pebbles, and lime wash and results in a surface that breathes, so it won't crack in the cold Scottish winter.

thrawn -- a Scottish word for crooked/twisted/misshapen or perverse/contrary. If you Google it you'll also find out it's the name of a Star Wars villain.

invigilator -- according to the Free Dictionary, this is "someone who watches examination candidates to prevent cheating." Which I gather is a term commonly known in the U.K. With our current test hysteria in the U.S., I suppose this will soon come into vogue here, too.

The City

Rebus gives the reader an anti-grand tour of Edinburgh, including many visits to the public housing projects that are never on a tourist's list of sights, the docks, bridges, parks, rock outcroppings, not to mention the libraries, prisons, and many a public house.

The last half-dozen books take place during the half-decade or so when the Scottish Parliament building was being planned, built or had just opened, and the change in that part of the city is described in vivid detail.


The post-modern Parliament building, adjoining the historic Queensberry House with the red roof. One of the Rebus murders is set in Queensberry House. On Calton Hill in the background are the Nelson Monument (left) and National Monument (right). Photo by Ed O'Keefe

I have to go back, now that I've learned so much more about the place. I'll just be sure not to visit during the Edinburgh Festival in August, which all the locals, including Rebus, hate and try to avoid.

_____________

Here's a list of all the novels, taken from the Inspector Rebus Wikipedia page:

1. Knots and Crosses (1987)
2. Hide and Seek (1991)
3. Tooth and Nail (original title Wolfman) (1992)
4. Strip Jack (1992)
5. The Black Book (1993)
6. Mortal Causes (1994)
7. Let it Bleed (1996)
8. Black and Blue (1997)
9. The Hanging Garden (1998)
10. Dead Souls (1999)
11. Set in Darkness (2000)
12. The Falls (2001)
13. Resurrection Men (2002)
14. A Question of Blood (2003)
15. Fleshmarket Close (published in the USA as Fleshmarket Alley) (2004)
16. The Naming of the Dead (2006)
17. Exit Music (2007)

Plus two short story collections A Good Hanging and Beggars's Banquet, and some other short stories as yet uncollected.

A Term I Hate

In the earlier days of this blog, I wrote several posts about words I hate (here, here, and, oh yeah, here). But there's another phrase I can't stand that I forgot to mention.

It was the subject of a Star Tribune letter to the editor I recently rediscovered in the pile on my desk, lost in the layers since its original publication on July 26 this year:

DISCOURSE
In defense of the 'politically correct'

On the July 23 opinion pages, I twice noticed the notion of political correctness twisted into an antiprogressive slur. A letter writer predicted that political correctness will be "our own demise," while a commentary lamented the marginalization of "those brave enough to oppose the politically correct agendas."

I am sick to death of these allegations of Political Correctness Gone Mad. The treatment of minorities and disadvantaged groups has advanced so much in this country, in part because of the language we use; a cursory review of media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries shows racist and sexist stereotypes that would be unbelievably offensive if published today.

So please, don't say that political correctness limits your freedom of speech (it isn't the law). Don't say that it is an oppressive speech code (that's just blaming the victim and victimizing the perpetrator). There is nothing wrong with allowing minority groups a seat at the table, and in using language that makes people feel welcome.

Michael Chergosky, St. Paul

This reminded me of a quote I came across by Phil Agre. I meant to write about it, but it (like Chergosky's letter) had fallen into the clipping pile. Here it is:

...take the notion of "political correctness." It is true that movements of conscience have piled demands onto people faster than the culture can absorb them. That is an unfortunate side-effect of social progress. Conservatism, however, twists language to make the inconvenience of conscience sound like a kind of oppression. The campaign against political correctness is thus a search-and-destroy campaign against all vestiges of conscience in society.  

Back in the early 1990s when "political correctness" first came into common usage by the Right as a pejorative term, I amassed a pile of clippings about this topic (including a cover story from the local alternative weekly City Pages, if I remember correctly). I was planning to write something about it (kind of a proto-blog post), but I never got around to it and at some point, the pile went to the recycling bin.

These two quotes say everything I would have said, so it feels good to get that off the desk, out of the clipping file, and finally posted somewhere I can find it.

Three Letters that Speak for Me

Three letters to the Star Tribune editor in the past two days. Words I could have written, so thanks to these letter writers for representing me.

From today's paper, on the presidential campaign:

Is anybody interested in truly leading the nation?

Just listened to the final Republican presidential debate of 2015. I do not understand our politics today. We are surrounded by a blast furnace of hate and fear, coming almost entirely from the Republican side. Congress is locked in the politics of "no." Republicans will kill anything Obama endorses and even try to kill his already-booked accomplishments, but lack an agenda of "yes." Where are the alternatives? Or is the goal simply to emasculate the effectiveness of our government?

The Democrats don't fare a whole lot better. When you are under attack, you fight back, but while what we have is not silence, it is something close to it. Obama's presidency, in my view, has been quite consequential and will be recorded as such by posterity despite the powerful roadblocks he faced. Start with completely turning around the economic train wreck he inherited and move on to an admittedly limited reform of the health care system, one limited primarily by the perverse medical insurance system with which we are burdened and move on to the ownership of our politics by the health insurance industry.

What I understand even less than our politics is the willingness of Americans to buy into the politics of fear and hate. Why? What do they think they'll gain? Do people think we'll be more secure by beefing up an already-bloated military and putting "boots on the ground" in places where we're already hated? Do they think we'll be safer by blocking entry into our country for Muslims? The 9/11 attackers had legal visas. One of the attackers in San Bernardino, Calif., was born here.

The bottom line? Hate and fear breed hate and fear, exponentially. Our politics and the public forum are diseased. Our government is no longer a democracy. It's an oligarchy, ruled by money. Our media are owned by the oligarchs, and they govern what the public hears and sees. If this doesn't change dramatically, we may well find ourselves as victims of crypto-Nazis like Trump. Make no mistake. We are in extremely dangerous territory.

John F. Hetterick, Plymouth

From yesterday's paper on the Paris climate agreement:

Fossil fuels

I have two beautiful, smart grandchildren, and I worry that the planet we’re leaving them is going to be in crisis, with species extinction, massive storms, rising seas, unprecedented human migration and ice-cap disappearance, among other huge changes. There isn’t much I can do about this, as one person, but I can do something.

As one of my grandchildren’s presents, they are receiving three promises from me, and I hope they hold me to them: I will use 15 percent less household energy, drive 15 percent fewer miles and eat less red meat. (The last one is hard to quantify, so they will have to take my word for it.) These are not only “math word problems” for them, they are also a challenge for me, because I already try to conserve. But I can do better, and I shall. If not, there will be consequences, but that’s between me and the kids. And if many others joined me, we would make a real difference.

Mary McLeod, St. Paul

On health care costs:

Enrollment experience confirms that system is not sustainable

After just completing the health insurance enrollment process for 2016, I feel compelled to comment on just how crazy our system of health care has become. During the enrollment period, there have been several newspaper and TV news reports about how the insurance providers can’t make money in the individual market or how there is a concern over the migration of policyholders from platinum, gold and silver policies toward bronze-level policies.

There has been very little reported, however, on the plight of the unfortunate souls who find themselves in the individual private insurance group. Yes, if your income falls below the designated level for your age group and size of family, you may qualify for some level of government assistance or tax breaks. However, for those who make just a little too much — in our case $62,900 — then you are on your own.

So what does that mean? It means that you are required by law to purchase a product that will cost you somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of your gross income before you start enjoying the features and benefits of the product.

In what world is this considered affordable?

Yes, it is easy to not think too much about this when you are not faced with having to shop in this market. But beware — about 50 percent of the policies sold to date are to people between 55 and 64 years old. So if you plan to retire early or are forced into early retirement, you will need to beef up your savings to get you to the promised land (Medicare).

We all know that the only way to gain control over this runaway train is to do what nearly every other industrialized country has already done.

We need universal health care in this country.

Gary Staples, Plymouth

Simply Unnecessary

"Simply" is a word that makes me cringe.

It's not the word "simple" I dislike; that's a lovely adjective. But something about that adverbial "ly" suffix, combined with the way the word is used, bothers me.

Unlike many of the other words I hate, which often earned my contempt decades ago, my dislike of "simply" started only about five years ago. I was laying out recipes for a client when I felt what is now a familiar surge of bile. I don't remember the exact words she had written, but they were pretty similar to this:

When the water boils, simply turn off the stove.

The urge to remove that extraneous adverb was almost overwhelming.

Soon I noticed that "simply" usually appears in instructional contexts like this, where it adds nothing more than an air of condescension.

What function does it serve? Is it trying to indicate that you don't need to do this step carefully, that there's no way you could do it wrong? Is that helpful?

It's not just recipes that suffer from "simply." Instructions for how to do just about everything are littered with them, many describing activities that are not simple at all:







Some uses were extra-clueless:


Oh, simply follow the directions. Thanks. I hadn't thought of that.


Sounds simple.


Oh yes, replacing my recursive resolvers is always simple.


If you have to write instructions on how to use window blinds, it isn't simple.


Whaaa?


As everyone knows, e-commerce is something users have no trouble with, because it's so simple.


Ouch!

While looking for examples, I also discovered there are a large number of writers on the interweb who don't know the difference between "simple" and "simply":

I can think of a few cases where the word doesn't bother me much, if at all. If you search "simply" on my blog, you'll find it used mostly in quotes from other sources, but a few times I've used it in a way that seems to work:

Much as I liked the editorial, I thought Steve Sack's cartoon from a few weeks ago probably made the case against the bill more simply and effectively....

or

Daniel Shaw, a speech language pathologist from Minneapolis, wrote simply of the divergence between "my" children -- who have been nurtured and prepared for school...

or

Too often, a concisely written essay is graded lower simply because it's short.

The last of those examples comes the closest to using the word in the way I don't like, and I might have been better off using "only" or "merely" (although I don't like "merely" much either).

It's simple. It's important to be careful using "simply."

Words I Hate

I'm sure there are others, but here is my first attempt at a list of words or phrases I dislike intensely. I will add new posts on this topic as they occur to me.

Some are pretentious, and some are just plain over-used:

• Enhance -- why not just say improve?
  
• Opine -- a guy I knew at my student newspaper used to use this in news stories as an alternate to "said." It always drove me crazy, and I was only 22 then. Not nearly as cranky as I am now.
  
• Nestled -- every bed and breakfast in a rural setting is nestled. Have you ever noticed that?
  
• Amidst -- Does it really need those last two consonants? Or what about just using "among" -- not fancy enough, I suppose. And not "amongst" either, although that one doesn't bother me as much.
  
• "A wealth of" -- puffery, I say!
  
• A host of -- more puffery! I suppose I should add "plethora of" and the frequently misused "myriad of." Why is this construction so common? Why are so many of us trying to say the equivalent of "a lot of" ?
  

Now, let's see if I can use them all in a single sentence.

"I'm looking for a quaint home, nestled amidst a wealth of oak trees and blessed with a host of high-end features," the overpaid CEO opined.

Gee, I didn't set out to write Realtor® speak, but that's what it became without the least bit of effort. Interesting.

What Do Conservatives Love About America That's Actually American?

I saw a short video shared on Twitter this morning, in which a young person asked conservatives what they mean when they say they love America, since they also seem to hate so many aspects of America. (Watch it here.)

The person who posted the video asked, "I’d love to hear someone answer this question."

I'm also obsessed with this question, and grew up in a conservative area, so I was interested to see what people had to say. I filtered through the obvious answers about white supremacy (which is definitely a key part) to see what else might be suggested.

There were a variety of responses.

As a former Republican I can answer this. When they say they love America, they love the America that only exists in the minds of children who haven't learned better. It's why they hate the left so much, because the left knows America isn't the greatest country in the world.
Kris @Kariodude

That reminded me of Stephen Colbert's great bit about how people tend to want everything to be like it was in some mythical past, which always turns out to be around when they were 8 years old. No matter how bad things were at that point in history (people who were 8 during the Depression think it was great, people who were 8 during World War II think it was great, and so on). It's because they were children then and didn't know how things really were.

I think this specifically is what they love. The “American” dream:


chickenjane

That one reminds me of George Lakoff's explanation about the strict father as the base of conservative morality. (Even more on it here.)

Oooh! Oooh! I know! I know!
1. Guns.
2. Being able to control a woman's uterus.
3. A community of citizens who look/act like me.
4. Guns.
5. A voting system that insures I'm represented by people who look and think like me.
6. The ability to never feel uncomfortable.
7. Guns.
Steve Turner

That point about never having to feel uncomfortable. That is definitely part of it.

And I'm trying to remember if I've seen a good analysis of how guns play into it. Something about penises and insecure masculinity in a culture of toxic masculinity? I know, it reminds me of that amazing article by historian Walter Johnson from 2018 about his life growing up around guns, which included these words: "guns are tools: tools for making emotionally stunted men feel whole."

The only real answers I have gotten from conservatives are:
1. This is a Christian nation and they like that (even though this is inaccurate)
2. They like the flag and think liberals are un-American for burning it (they seem to think this is a big hobby)
That’s it.
@og_seibways

I get the sense from a lot of material I've read, written by people who've left evangelical Christian communities, that this point about a Christian nation is even more true than I already think in all my fear of theocracy. Ugh.

My brother had a good answer to this question. He said they want to live in their small mostly white towns and not have anything change, ever.
Tyler Hendrick

This is exactly it. Even a change for the better! If that happens, then they're pissed that they didn't benefit from it for the first few decades they lived there, so it's not fair that others will benefit now.
@unhootchie

It's such a weird ideology like, while there's nothing wrong with being a bit weary of sudden change and what not, the way they go about it is like, almost parasitic in how utterly and aggressively stubborn they are of ANY change. Pretty much since the civil war, they've been the defacto opposition to any sort of societal change for the better, Ending Slavery, Civil Rights, LGBT Rights in general, Inter-racial Marriage, etc etc. Hell I bet they were the main ones opposed to ending child labor too.
@FellowOfSome

Oh, they were definitely opposed to ending child labor.

That complete opposition to change is one of the things at the core of conservatism. I think these three comments touch on some of the main aspects of conservatism, especially the loss-aversion angle, which we hear repeated all the time on topics like student-debt forgiveness. It's like freshman hazing or the continuation of child abuse: I had to live with it, so everyone who comes afterward must also... I turned out all right despite it, so you need to live through it, too. Or even the more twisted, it made me what I am today.

MAD, 1968:


@den_shen_onlen

Super Patriot and conservative are not the same thing, of course, but they often see themselves as interchangeable, and this 52-year-old MAD magazine page shows us that we are not making new observations. 

But we already knew that.

__

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt ascribes conservatives' stances to the way conservatives vary in their feelings about six core forms of morality, compared to liberals. Other social psychologists look to the big six personality traits. 

Jon Tevlin -- Can't Wait to Read Your Columns

If you've ever wondered how far back my filing cabinet goes, this is your chance to get an idea.

In today's Star Tribune, the editor, Nancy Barnes, announced the names of two new columnists. Both have been at the paper for a number of years as reporters, but each had an earlier career at the local weeklies or monthlies before joining up with the Strib.

Gail Rosenblum did a wonderful stint as editor of the monthly Minnesota Parent. Jon Tevlin was on staff at the now-defunct weekly Twin Cities Reader when I first became aware of his writing. I look forward to what both of them will have to say each week.

Here, from the filing cabinet (in a folder labeled "Great Writing/Art in Media," which has now morphed into the blog's Media Goodness category) is this story by Jon Tevlin from the December 13-19, 1995 Twin Cities Reader:

Toy Story
Being a toys-for-tots kid brings joy, embarrassment and weird presents
By Jon Tevlin

In the days before Christmas they'd come dressed in long gray car coats and fedoras and rubbers that they slid over loafers. They smelled of Aqua Velva and talked in the small, measured voices that I used to hear in the back pews of the church.

I never recognized them. Later I heard that church and charity groups preferred anonymity; I guess they were doing it for us. We were on the list of local poor families who got presents and food at the holidays, and such was the shame of poverty, at least in the 1960s, that it should be handled quietly, behind closed doors and away from the curious gaze of the rest of the congregation.

If the church thought it was protecting us kids from the bitter truths, they should know that most poor kids are veterans of shame. I had years to practice the humble-yet-grateful face of a child beholden to whatever kind favor someone chose to bestow on me. I was embarrassed when my mother sent me to the store the first time with food stamps (under instruction not to buy anything conspicuous), for example, and when she sent me to pick up the government cheese, rice and honey they doled out periodically as symbolic alms to the poor.

After a while, the shame was so strong and I was so proud that I chose not to participate in our poverty. I refused to bring food stamps to the nearby Penny's Market, or pick up the free blocks of cheddar. Whenever I saw the church men coming up the steps with a bag full of Christmas presents, I did what my older brother and sister did: I hid.

It's not that we didn't appreciate the gesture. We did, and still do. They were kind people with righteous intentions doing the good deed. But the holiday charity rituals, from the receiving end, are more complex than the obligatory smiling-kid shots you see on TV at holiday time. To us, these strangers left more than gifts; they left an indelible mark about the holidays, our poverty, the nature of giving in America and the glaring discrepancy between the haves and have-nots.

Getting a few gifts was probably better for us as kids than not getting a few gifts, but, for me at least, the kindness of strangers was a kind of further evidence that somehow in this great country one of two things had happened: My parents failed me, or my country failed me. Neither option was terribly uplifting. To this day it has shaped the way I receive gifts -- awkwardly and reluctantly -- and to a certain extent the way I see the world.

The gift-getting ritual was even harder on my parents, particularly my father. He had worked the same factory job for 25-odd years before being knocked out of work by illness. The stress of the holidays was actually compounded, I think, by the sight of good-hearted people giving the gifts he could no longer give to his own children. Every knock on the door was another reminder that he could not provide. So every year he'd get depressed, go into the hospital and thus avoid the pressure.

In the early 1960s, we were probably the typical poor family, struggling to make do on a small pension and Social Security. We were not unlike a lot of our neighbors. Like a lot of them, we got care packages every Christmas from people we would never see the rest of the year.

One wealthy old friend of my father used to drive up to our small apartment building (which was across from a homeless shelter, where we volunteered for the people my parents considered truly needy), in his Cadillac and drop off a box of apples and a ham. He wore a topcoat, and his wife wore a mink. They patted me on the head, hugged my parents, said kind words and then retreated to a world my parents would never know, leaving a world they never cared to know.

In contrast was the person who every year sent a crisp $50 bill in the mail. For years it came, unmarked, unsigned, unaccompanied by a letter; a symbol of anonymous generosity without strings. I still wonder who they were, and can't help but think well of them; I'm sure the money they gave away helped them think well of themselves.

But most of all I remember the men from church, the ones with the gifts, wrapped in paper with pictures of Wise Men and cards that read: Boy, 9; Girl, 14. We were the generic poor kids, the kids without names, the kids whose faces you see on the news Christmas Day, who make you so happy and warm.

The gifts themselves were odd, funny, sad. I remember only a hideous pair of green knitted slippers with red tassels -- given to me as a teen -- and one of those snow globes, which if I recall correctly, came from the Wisconsin Dells. At age 14, my sister got a plastic Indian doll like ones you see in phony Native American stores. We still laugh uncomfortably at the presents. Or perhaps we laugh uncomfortably at being in a position to receive such odd expressions of charity.

Every year, as I grapple with my own charity, I think of what impact my gifts will have and how the recipients will feel. I think of the strangers who passed through at the holidays, bearing weird gifts. To me they possessed an alluring, mysterious aura; they were the Christmas People, consistent yet ephemeral. They came, they gave, they left. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't cherish them, either. We owed each other nothing. They were simply visitors in my own odd little winter wonderland.

(Copyright 1995 Jon Tevlin)

At the time I first read this essay, I was involved in a reading group about class consciousness, and found this piece challenged a lot of my assumptions. I had never thought about the idea of charity from the point of view of the receiver. Rereading it now, what strikes me is how balanced Tevlin is, in spite of the strong emotions that motivated him to write.

John Scalzi's blog Whatever, which I've belatedly discovered and caught up on via his compilation book Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, includes several short essays along similar lines: Being Poor, from September 2005, and Shaming the Poor from March 2008. Both of these pieces reminded me of Tevlin's essay, and I had planned to write about them, possibly referring to Tevlin, when lo and behold, today Tevlin was announced as a columnist.

As people who grew up poor, Scalzi and Tevlin share a background that is somewhat unusual among writers in America's land of theoretical plenty. I hope Jon Tevlin will use his new position to write columns that add nuance to the Strib's coverage of regular people's lives.

He's clearly got the gift of words, and I look forward to this new chance for him to share it with all of us.

At the Minneapolis Protest

As I mentioned yesterday, I went to the counter-protest that formed in response to Mulligan's visit to downtown Minneapolis. I could only be there for an hour and a half, all well before he even arrived in the city.

I took only a few photos, since it was pretty damp and windy:








I joined up with a group of people called the Justice Choir, who brought along a short song sheet, a bullhorn, a marching brass baritone horn, and a couple of drums. Their songs were all pretty easy to participate in. The most popular was sung to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," with two verses about high crimes and so on, then a chorus that involved blowing on whistles they had  passed out:

Whistleblowers blow [blow the whistle], whistleblowers blow [blow]
Whistleblowers blow your horrrrn,
Whistleblowers blow [blow], whistleblowers blow [blow]
Whistleblowers blow your horn.

Whenever we did that song, it was an effective crowd-interaction moment and almost everyone who walked past us was smiling. So my recommendation is for all future protests: organize something that's participatory and has some humor and ideally singing. I think the majority of people in the group had found out about it through a Facebook post. I know I, at least, had never heard of the Justice Choir until the day before.

The whistles they passed out were also very effective at drowning out the small group of overt white nationalist guys who tried to march right through our group carrying a banner that said something about white nationalism. (The banner is the reason I knew they were white nationalists.) They were chanting something, but we couldn't hear them through the ear-splitting screech and neither could anyone else. They went away pretty fast.

One final thing. 

This photo is by Jim Walsh from MinnPost (published as part of this story).


I saw this guy and his sign in person, which means he was also there early, probably around 5:45 p.m. He wasn't there just to see the president speak (since the people who were going inside were entering the arena through the second-floor skyways, rather than the street): he was there to have his say to people who think the president should be impeached. That's his right, of course. But what a thing to say.

According to Walsh's story, his name is Jay Gabbert, and this is part of what he had to say when Walsh asked him about it:

I made my sign this morning, because I’m sick of the liberals’ rhetoric. I just think it’s important that the Trump supporters have their voice for a change. It’s actually pretty simple. Nobody’s out here to hate people and all that nonsense.

So. Yeah. Nobody's out here to hate people and all that nonsense, but liberals are traitors who should be hanged. That's not hate. Nope. Or maybe Gabbert forgot what words he was holding in his hands as he spoke to the reporter. Maybe he was remembering people he knows and even loves who are "liberals." Does he really want them killed?

I hope he's embarrassed.

More on Political Correctness

It almost seemed as though the usage of the phrases "politically correct" and "political correctness" was starting to fade. But Donald Trump, in his usual blithering fashion, has brought them back to a new level.

I've written before about these terms and why I hate them (yes, hate), but to sum it up, I'll quote Philip Agre as I did in that post:

It is true that movements of conscience have piled demands onto people faster than the culture can absorb them. That is an unfortunate side-effect of social progress. Conservatism, however, twists language to make the inconvenience of conscience sound like a kind of oppression.

My favorite recent way of showing the wrong-headedness of the terms? The programmer who set his browser to replace the phrase "political correctness" with "treating people with respect." That sounds about like it, as seen in these examples:



Here are a couple of other articles I've recently discovered that explain why accusations of "P.C. policing" are only a tactic and not a truth claim. First, Amanda Taub, writing for Vox, put it this way:

I, personally, think that the name of the Washington Redskins is racist and hurtful to Native Americans, and should be changed. So if someone asks me what I think of the debate about the team, that's what I say. By contrast, Virginia legislator Del Jackson Miller likes the name and wants the team to keep it. But rather than making an argument on the merits of the name, he referred to the entire debate as "political correctness on overdrive." In other words, he's saying, this is a false debate — just another example of "political correctness" — so I don't have to even acknowledge concerns about racism. 

As in Trump's example during the debate, the phrase is used to dismiss a (usually valid) criticism without having to address it.

Education writer Alfie Kohn calls P.C. "the lazy bully's label of choice":

In addition to defending a conservative status quo from inconvenient challenges — again, without one’s having to offer a substantive defense — the term serves another important function: self-congratulation. To say that x is PC is to praise oneself for having the courage to see things otherwise. And to warn that something isn’t PC is to commend it — or, in many cases, oneself — as bold and refreshing. “Now I know what I’m about to say is politically incorrect, but...” sounds like a cautionary preface, but it actually invites us to view the speaker as daring even though what follows may be merely conservative. Or offensive.

Which is exactly what Donald Trump did in the debate when he tried to make himself sound heroic for calling women fat slobs who should be down on their knees.

Kohn also points out that the use of "P.C." only cuts one way:

If “PC” were just a neutral pin for puncturing any balloon thought to be overinflated, then it might be applied to, say, the view that when the U.S. invades or occupies other countries, it is doing so in the interest of spreading democracy — or that soldiers who participate in these military adventures around the world are “defending our country.” But when did you last hear someone say with a smirk, “I know, I know. It’s politically correct to ‘Support Our Troops.’ But I happen to believe…”?

The things that it's actually not politically correct to say -- like the idea that one can support the troops by not sending them to die in stupid wars, that all wars are stupid, that U.S. foreign policy is implicated in the rise of violent terrorism exemplified in 9/11 -- are instead called wimpy pacifism or even subversion.

The bounds of what can be said are limited, but not in the way the critics of political correctness want us to think.

Twitter B.E., A.E.

This is the hardest Twitter round up I’ve ever done. It begins B.E. (Before Election), and like all things B.E., it now seems like some other self liked these tweets and even in some ways felt hope for the future. I’ve struggled with how to organize them.

There are still some about the election itself from early in the month, but there are many more post-election tweets, which I have organized into subjects like Trump’s cabinet picks, the Carrier deal, or related topics like the upsurge in hate crimes and backlash against “political correctness” and calling racism by its name.

Here are the hard-to-read B.E. tweets from the early days of November, 2016, just before election day:

I am excited to vote for Secretary Clinton tomorrow, but I am even more excited to vote against Mike Pence. Yes, even more than Trump.
Ashley C. Ford ‏@iSmashFizzle

Donald Trump is like the pied piper of shit:


William Lindeke

Question for the election: Which would be worse in 2040, telling kids we have to raise the Social Security tax by 2 percent or we ruined planet?
Dean Baker

Voting 3rd party is a good way to let marginalized groups know that your abstract principles are more important than their very real lives.
Molly Manglewood

I want this election to be over so I can return to my preexisting levels of cynicism, rage, fear, and powerlessness.
Sherman Alexie

Oh the irony of the FBI leaking like a sieve to criticize Hillary for not being careful enough at keeping info private.
John Aravosis

Things we learned in 2016: Giving white people a college education is the gift that keeps us giving:


White supremacy has been around for a long time and is far from gone. But the fact that going to college takes the major edge off of it matters. It is a reminder that when we invest in "common things," in @JedediahSPurdy's lovely phrase, we benefit in common. These numbers suggest that if 10 percent of Trump voters who didn't make it to college had, this race wouldn't be close. So all those people who are #WithHer but cling to public schools being funded by local property taxes need to think.
Anand Giridharadas

Don't blame Black voters if Trump wins. When Democrats win they act like our votes didn't count. When they might lose, now our votes count. Nope.
Brittney Cooper

Once all settles we'll be stunned we treated it as somehow normal that a hostile foreign state all but openly worked on behalf of one candidate.
Josh Marshall ‏@joshtpm

This will always be remembered as the presidential election in which the KKK, the KGB and the FBI all supported the same candidate.
Victor Laszlo ‏@Impolitics

There are a few from election night, before we knew Donald would win:

They built a cash bar at Trump election night party-- and his supporters are going to pay for it.
Dana Milbank

$11 Trump beers at a loser party is what Schadenfreude tastes like.
William Lindeke

Donald Trump getting actual electoral votes is something that should shame us for three generations.
Hunter ‏@HunterDK

Florida's motto should be "We will find new ways to disappoint you."
Aparna Nancherla

How do so many white men really believe they can only lose to a woman and/or person of color when the process is rigged? Then they’ve got the nerve--nay, the GALL--to call everybody who doesn't look like them "entitled". Y'all are really something else.
Ashley C. Ford ‏@iSmashFizzle

Each Democrat should go thank a person of color today for their service to the republic.
Vann R. Newkirk II ‏@fivefifths

What this election has exposed is the LOW FUCKING STANDARDS WE HAVE FOR WHITE PEOPLE.
#FreeBresha ‏@prisonculture

Whether Trump wins or loses, academics will study for years why millions voted for someone so widely seen as con man.
Steven Greenhouse ‏@greenhousenyt

Then the realization slowly pressed itself into our consciousnesses. It was possible Donald would be president:

A litigious, emotionally volatile sociopath best known for firing people on TV is likely to become the most powerful leader in the world.
Olivia Nuzzi

1. This was a year when #BlackLivesMatter was ascendant. A year when we saw more unrest on racial oppression than in a quarter century.
2. If Donald Trump is our nation's answer to that moment, then let me be clear: this is the same nation it always has been.
3. It's not a mistake. It's not "not who we are." It's the same as our history. No better. So don't tell me "it's 2016."
4. Don't tell me "we had a Black president." Tell me you will work to educate yourself and your people on who we have always been.
5. Tell me you will grind and sweat and do better. Tell me we will be better. But don't tell me we are.
Phillip Atiba Goff

for everybody who thought drone killing was cool because you trusted Obama, the bill's coming due on that shit.
Tom Tomorrow

but hey maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and HRC won a squeaker and we'll all have a good laugh at my drama queen bullshit
Tom Tomorrow

Very least, if Trump wins then somebody better fucking hire me full-time. [Naming The Nation and Mother Jones.]
Tom Tomorrow

I'm 55 years old. I watched Ronald Reagan win. Georges Bush H.W. and W. But this is the worst of all possible timelines. We are fucked. We are fucked in ways we can't even begin to imagine. Going to suck to wake up tomorrow and have that moment of remembering what happened.
Tom Tomorrow

If Trump wins, it savages the planet's chances of dealing with climate change. In the (very) long run, the biggest result of a hideous night.
Bill McKibben

Then the next day and the days after, with an avalanche of reactions to the fact that Donald would be the president-elect. These are in more-or-less reverse-chronological order, with the rawest ones last.

My great grandparents were slaves. I choose to stay, to stand and to fight. The question I asked myself all night: Do I really BELIEVE those songs they sang during the civil rights movement? If so my choice is clear.
jelani cobb

I long for the days when I didn't have to care what Trump said, did or bankrupted.
Mark Thompson

I mean, we aren't stupid.


Hold on ... I'm being told we *are* stupid.
Chris Steller

We got Ted Cruz's policies with Donald Trump's temperament. The ultimate disaster
Ari Berman

I have moments, and sometimes entire days, when I just cannot fucking believe this is happening. And perhaps that's his entire point.
Jamil Smith

I'm so sick of this idiot already and it isn't even January 20 yet. The stupidity is astounding.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

We're slowly reaching the point where the most far-fetched part of V for Vendetta is the bloke smoking in a pub.
British Problems

Imagine looking like a pile of old moldy butter and still believing you're genetically superior to all other races. And I know superficial arguments based on appearance are bad but the idea of racial supremacy is already ridiculous. But then I SEE white supremacists and am like, F'real? You got up and thought, "This. Yes this is the pinnacle." You did that? Ay yai yai.
Janine Brito

Trump is all the evidence we need to understand the need to weaken the power of the nation-state & imperial presidency & empower the local.
Richard Florida

1. The president-elect is a Twitter Troll folks, full stop. He's basically an egg turned orange with a tuft of bad weave.
2. All of these antics of the president-elect are not going to stop after inauguration day. So quit listening to the genteel pundits who are delusional.
3. The president-elect actually is rather predictable. The stable of cons and reprobates he is putting together are, too... and much more dangerous.
4. Enjoy Christmas and New Year’s. It might be the last one we have that is not in full on civil war, or being under defcon 2 or 1.
No, I am not joking. FIN.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

Late to this, but I'm setting up a watchdog organization called CaligulaWatch.
Chris Steller

My neighbor (Trump supporter) said "I hope u don’t hate me based on who I voted for.”
Me: No, but based on who u voted for I think u hate me.
Jasmine ‏@JasmineLWatkins

What we now know in a November 9 world: Whiteness is more important than any other identity for millions of White folk.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

This feels like something Marty McFly would see when he steps out of the Delorian in a version of the future he must change:


Lucy Leiderman

Lowest turnout since 2000, Clinton won the popular vote. This isn't a newly empowered majority, the majority stayed home.
Ramsin Canon

This feeling you have right now. Amazement that the country could be so short-sighted, that it could embrace hate so tightly? Welcome. This despair and dread you feel. The indignation, the bewilderment, the hurt, powerlessness, the fear for family and livelihood? Welcome. That knot in your stomach, that feeling of heartache? That uncertainty about your safety? The deep sense of fundamental injustice? For many marginalized people, this spike in distress you feel this morning is what we feel EVERY morning. Welcome. Let this be the last time you are surprised by the prevalence of virulent hatred in this country. Let it be a moment that opens your eyes.
5'7 Black Male ‏@absurdistwords

Given the racism & misogyny in Trump’s win, hard two see how Democrats could have won with an old Jewish guy or a female academic.
Billy Bragg

If one studies history, one knows last night was the most American of things. After racial progress always comes a white backlash. After Lincoln, Grant, we get Hayes who ends Reconstruction and restores the white South. After LBJ, Nixon & the Southern strategy. Obama, Trump. It is not incidental nor a fluke if one looks through the ever-revealing pattern of history that the first black president would be followed by one KKK endorsed.
Ida Bae Wells ‏@nhannahjones

fuck white people. I'm ashamed:


Ari Berman

I think a lot of White Clinton voters underestimated other White voters' racism, and Black voters overestimated White American decency.
Ra's al Sauce ‏@sassycrass

Well. Looks like Ida B. Wells tried to hold it together but Susan B. Anthony said no, let it burn:


wikipedia brown ‏@eveewing

Best analysis heard tonight: "The establishment took him literally but not seriously, while his fans took him seriously, but not literally.”
Jack Shute

Because the way to protest blue-collar job loss is definitely to vote for a New York plutocrat with no policy plans beyond supply-side economics.
Jane Doe, MD ‏@DrJaneChi

What a good day to be a straight white man, just like every other day since the creation of the United States.
danny @kingdanimals

We survived colonization.
We survived the middle passage.
We survived chattel slavery.
We will survive a Donald Trump presidency.
@BlakeDontCrack

The Supreme Court. The Justice Department. The FBI. We handed it over to someone who thinks the Central Park Five should’ve been executed.
Joel D. Anderson ‏@byjoelanderson

Too many people took his stupidity for granted.
suna:)) ‏@buckfruitt

Tomorrow, next month, and next year, somehow, I'm sure this is going to be our fault. We get blamed for simply observing the situation and naming it, let alone speaking out about it, and saying that it's not OK.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

This next few months are going to be very important. The people who said that "they wanted to take their country back" have. Now it may mean they and their preferred candidate will destroy the very country they claim to love so much.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

This is how much our country hates women. I have never been sadder for us.
Julieanne Smolinski

I've been reaching for the wisdom of my ancestors. They didn't deserve it, either. Yet they found a way to survive.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

Truly a timeline of myself on election day:


Aparna Nancherla

Alright, which one of y'all set the Holodeck to Global Nightmare?
Janine Brito

This is just another random reminder that patriarchy is deeply and inextricably tied to white supremacy. Carry on.
Melissa McEwan ‏@Shakestweetz

We can't vote bigotry out of the fabric of American culture. No matter how many elections are held.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

The message this sends to people of color is that a majority of Americans are unwilling to share this country with us as equals.
Mazel Tov Cocktail ‏@AdamSerwer

I wake up every day, look at news & go into, not denial, but refusal. “This is wrong, this is illegal, this is unethical, this is a lie.”
Rainbow Rowell

As Democrats contemplate the future, remember minimum wage hikes won everywhere they were on the ballot in 2014/2016, including AZ, AK NE and SD.
sean. ‏@SeanMcElwee

A little weird to me that after the most epic polling miss in history, we're all citing data from the exit polls.
Christopher Hayes

Most people didn't vote. Of those who did, Clinton got more votes than Trump. To say "Voters sent a message" is to overnarrativize this. Voters sent many different messages. Because of the Electoral College, Trump will be President. That's our system. It's not a message.
Mark Harris

For young people wondering if this is always what if feels like when your candidate loses — no. Nothing about this election is normal.
Rainbow Rowell

In one last act of sad historical irony last night, Donald Trump held his victory party in the hotel where Malcolm X spent his final night.
Michael Moore ‏@MMFlint

Sad confession: there are still moments when I hope Trump is going to stop and say “MY GOD I am bad at this. Never mind. All yours, Hillz.”
Sarah Mackey ‏@sarahjanet

It feels like our country is untangling a giant pair of earbuds right now but also they are on fire.
Aparna Nancherla

Part of anger that people feel when pundits say "give Trump a chance" is, if we'd done/said 1% of the stuff he did, we'd get zero chances.
Robert O. Simonson

Also for the "I'm not racist, I just voted for the guy making racist promises" folks? They have a name for you too. Collaborators.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

Had not fully appreciated until now how much the relentless American drive for optimism resembles abject denial.
jelani cobb
Hillary Clinton is an intelligent, accomplished, highly qualified woman, but many Americans just couldn't overlook those flaws.
Frank Conniff

And, like that, culture's hatred of women--and by extension women's hatred of themselves--all but disappears from election analysis. For the record I think it was underestimated and under-polled by approx. one million percent, across class and other markers.
Sarah Smarshg

Black folks are told to be patient, incremental progress is the only way. Then white folks reverse generations of progress in one election.
Samuel Sinyangwe ‏@samswey

Ruminations on what life will be like in Trump’s America were popular. (Popular. Probably the wrong word.)

So basically Ivanka Trump [as a child] made the "help" buy her lemonade as a kid. Metaphor for...everything right there.
DC Women Kicking Ass

Who we are now:


Travon Free ‏@Travon

It's cute how we keep thinking Trump and GOP's goal is to make government work when I'm sure it's precisely the opposite.
Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd

"My fellow citizens, at 0600 hours, U.S. forces, on my orders, invaded Scotland on a mission to remove the scourge of wind farms. I have apprised Nigel Farage, my preferred contact in the United Kingdom, of the terms I require for a return to peace: No wind farms!"
Chris Steller

Trump was a very unpopular figure during the campaign and remains historically unpopular now. He lost by more votes than any incoming president. What we're seeing, I think, is Trump setting up "the media" as his Clinton-esque foil for his presidency. He will be campaigning full-time against this institution that is widely despised, distrusted, seen as corrupt, compromised.
Christopher Hayes

Pace your outrage. Take time off if you need. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Tom Tomorrow

Indigenous still struggling at Standing Rock.
Black bodies still catching cops' bullets.
Families still being deported.
Trabajo continúa.
@HalfAtlanta

every time I read analysts talking about how current fears of autocracy are misplaced I think of this image:


Saladin Ahmed

Seems like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is gonna empty a lot over the next four years. Can it become a rental? Or an Airbnb?
Robert O. Simonson

1. A quick riff on Trumpism, migration & expensive cities ...
2. Many have suggested (hope) that expensive cities will spur migration to less expensive parts of the county - so-called rise of the rest.
3. My sense is Trumpism stymies any such trend ... & reinforces concentration & spikiness ...
4. Creative class will increasingly migrate toward blue, spiky, tolerant expensive cities/ metros which they perceive as "safe spaces."
5. This will ultimately pack more liberal Americans in spiky blue places, and tilt the electoral map even redder ...
Richard Florida

I don't think many trump supporters are trying to "win" in the sense that classic political commentary assumes. And that's a real problem for analysis and counter organizing. If they're not trying to win but to burn it down, you have to adjust. What if I told you that the Trump America isn't the anomaly, the Obama America was...
Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd

Thus words actually spoken and actions promised - recorded even - become "charges" from "critics." Evidence dissolves into ethereal opinion. Welcome to Gaslight America, where everything is always fine what do you mean everything's not fine are you crazy?
Bearded Stoner

The campaign was a preview of the presidency. The outrages and lies will be so relentless, it will be impossible to even keep up.
Tom Tomorrow

Some will resist. Some will collaborate. But many mushy others will simply try to make the best of it, pitch their wares, avoid the drama. That, too, is how it happens: when too many interpret tyranny as a personal problem to navigate, not a public problem to overcome. "The scapegoating of otherness by miserable people cannot be justified by their misery."
Anand Giridharadas

Obama won a huge landslide in ’08 and was told he had to be bipartisan. Trump lost popular vote and will steamroll opposition without media criticism.
scary lawyerguy

I will not be following the reality TV circus that is the federal government for the next 4 years, except to mitigate its harm where I can.
section_sign

It's in Trump's interest to pick fights with big mainstream media outlets, because it then puts them squarely in the enemy camp. It's a way of unilaterally converting an entity into a "biased" one and thus untrustworthy.
Christopher Hayes

2008: some folk worried the government'd come for their guns.
2016: we're worried the government's coming for our friends. For us. Our kids.
Max Gladstone

Hey, Donald Trump. Those protesters out there? You work for them now. Welcome to public SERVICE.
Crystal Ward ‏@Crystal11

here's a pin they can't co-opt:


Jams ‏@_glocks

I have to admit there was a fair amount of satisfying ad hominem stuff about Donald:

We hate Donald Trump like you hated President Obama. However, we hate Trump because he is racist, you hated Obama because you are racist.
David Yankovich

If he wasn't a dangerous would-be autocrat, there would be something almost touching about Trump's transparent insecurity and vulnerability.
Anand Giridharadas

The metaphor of Trump as a body with no head just gets better and better.
Pat Thompson ‏@pattho

Trump, the thin-skinned, delicate Snowflake-Elect will make the White House a “safe space” where he won’t be triggered by facts/reality.
Mrs. Betty Bowers

Trump says he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge.”
Pedro da Costa ‏@pdacosta

Donald Trump appeals to the worst in people so that they stop caring that he's the worst of people.
Brian Beutler

some relevant anagrams for "trump's america":
- mr. amateur pics
- mr. epic traumas
- racism tempura
Alex Eichler ‏@AJEichler

It's really remarkable how quickly a politician hailed for being authentic is being hailed for not meaning a single thing he said.
Monika Bauerlein

Andy Singer has a vision:


William Lindeke

Trump's favorite business model is renting his name to shady people and making $$ even as the partnership fails. GOP is his latest victim.
almightygod

If I wanted to see a flustered 70-year-old make an epic transition surrounded by their self-centered adult children, I'd stream "Transparent.”
Dave Gilson ‏@daudig

"Drain the swamp" was a Mussolini rallying cry (a literal swamp, the Pontine marshes). This stuff isn't accidental.
Susan Hennessey

Haha we always used to call this the Home Despot haha ha
ha


Chris Steller

There is an alternate timeline where Trump is on season 15 of Celebrity Apprentice grilling Rudy Giuliani for not selling enough hotdogs.
Jesse McLaren ‏@McJesse

Trump during the campaign: "Obama is the worst president in history!" Trump after the election: "Can you teach me how to do this whole President thing?"
Lisa Tozzi

Relax, it's a perfectly normal thing for a leader to give governmental power to his adult sons.


Schooley ‏@Rschooley

The GOP rainbow coalition: Alabaster, eggshell, ecru, cotton, cream, lily, bone, linen, milk...
Mark Harris

No, really, we just wasted 4 years over Hillary's private server and now Prez-Elect Trump is talking to world leaders on his private phone.
Zeddonymous ‏@ZeddRebel

Obama walking through the ruins of democracy feels a bit on-the-nose at the moment:


Brendan Sasso

If Donald Trump wanted to avoid public scrutiny over his every move, he shouldn't have wanted to be president. That's the price of admission.
Noah Rothman

What to do in response to Donald’s election, or next time, or even still this time:

1. This is what scares me: the left loses because we play by the rules. But what happens when no one plays by the rules?
2. I am saying today: We need to play hardball, because Republicans under Trump will be ruthless.
3. But if we respond by breaking the rules, our whole civilization is degraded, democracy is weakened, and Putin wins.
4. I wish there were some way to prove to Republicans they are damaging our society horribly, but they refuse to listen to reason.
5. America today - and the world - are in a much more dangerous situation than our media seem to be able to comprehend.
Elliott Lusztig

Look I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: when the people's revolution finally comes, it's not gonna be led by an old white dude.
Anne Thériault

The next few years will be a test for all of us. But art is a weapon. Artists are made for times like these. We control the vertical & the horizontal. We can influence the Zeitgeist. We can remind the world that bigotry is *shameful* & weak. And all we have to do is not be mediocre. Not pander to the fearful and the entitled. Write for humanity, not one whiny sliver of it. Seriously. They come for the artists first, in times like this. So be it. I will fight them - been doing that. I will *outwrite* them.
N. K. Jemisin

Love is the anti-Trump. Inclusion is the anti-Trump. RESPECT (even for those we disagree with) is the anti-Trump. HUMANITY is the #antiTrump.
BigIndianGyasi

There were lots of thoughts about “why Trump won”:

Here, America. Have some context. This is what you look like. Not that sea of red with little blue islands.


Adam Smith ‏@AdamSmith_usa

Models are only as good as their inputs. Garbage in, garbage out. But the illusion of decimal place precision leads us to infer certainty.
Liam Donovan ‏@LPDonovan

In the zeal to use the power of markets, wonks underestimated how goddamn annoying it is for Obamacare premiums to be unpredictably priced/costly. People would be pretty angry if their Social Security check fluctuated year to year or month to month.
Michael B Dougherty

I am reminded that the supposed experts re: elections, voting, & ground game didn't have the answer this time. We need to make new paths.
deray mckesson

The genius of the GOP: obstruct the president for eight years, then win the presidency because people think the government is broken.
Rob Tannenbaum ‏@tannenbaumr

Being back in my dying hometown was a reality check. Miserable white people want people they hate/envy to suffer too. So they voted Trump. Never underestimate the need for these folks to burn everything down because they failed at life. You might as well suffer too.
Gabe ‏@widestance

While news fixates on workers who swung from Obama, perhaps Trump's millions of suburban educated white zealots with money are more dangerous. Just a thought, as the Far Right's money keeps creeping into every corner of U.S. government while we obsess over the decisions of the poor.
Sarah Smarsh, responding to a tweet by Jeff Sharlet that read, “Evangelical writer Lance Wallnau began to suspect God had sent Trump to be prez when he saw Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair.”

Pre-election from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico: Clinton email server outnumbered Trump conflict-of-interest stories five to one:1372 vs 279.
Zeynep Tufekci ‏@zeynep

The inability of the left to distinguish between an imperfect ally and an enemy is the height of privilege and will be our downfall.
Alex Hirsch

|￣￣￣￣￣￣|
| BETTER’S     |
| GOOD             |
| ＿＿＿＿＿__|
(\__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ 　 づ
Chris Steller

I am a pragmatic voter all day. This expectation of a perfect candidate for the whole country is a damned fairy tale. Black people have had to suck it up & pick who is the least damaging since we got the vote. Welcome to democracy.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

My suspicion: rural vs urban location + high school vs college education deeply shapes prospects in life. Addiction is a consequence. So is Trump.
Atul Gawande

Question for everyone saying Democrats would have won with different policy ideas: Since the media completely failed to cover policy, how would this have worked?
Paul Krugman

Hillary Clinton won fewer than 400 counties nationwide, out of more than 3,000. Those HRC counties make up nearly *TWO-THIRDS* of the U.S. economy.
Jim Tankersley

Take: supporting Trump was less about thinking he would do things he said he would do & more about hearing him say them (& get away with it).
Will Jordan ‏@williamjordann

[White women are] aware of their womanhood. They made a choice. People aren't race "or" gender. They're race and gender.
Trudy ‏@thetrudz

This week, I've been remembering so many conversations I've had with straight white women, who wish they could live their commitments to diversity. "I wish I could put my son/daughter in a more diverse school. But with those test scores, I just can't sacrifice my child, you know?" I've had that conversation a half dozen times, with White colleagues in academia & publishing. I wish I'd listened more closely. Even ensconced in the blue & purple states, even among those of us in the professional class, the language of sacrifice often gets invoked. The discourse analyst in me is intrigued by the lexis of sacrifice. When I was younger, I was awed by White folk who would give up ground and make common cause with us. But in the end, many of you were getting something else, weren't you? It wasn't about us after all.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

Trump won a coalition that felt mocked by the future. Some of that feeling compels our respect; some of it doesn't.
Anand Giridharadas

Getting out of the DC bubble actually made me *more* inclined to think of many Trump voters as motivated by racism and sexism, not less. I'd read the analysis about economic anxiety, then I'd talk to people and hear about imprisoning Muslims, cutting off welfare to lazy blacks. That said, there are millions of Trump voters who voted for reasons other than racism. Lots of decent people told me they wanted change. But I don't buy the "if media spent time in the heartland, they'd get it" stuff. One, media did. Two, what I learned was regularly ugly.
Daniel Dale ‏@ddale8

If you're wondering how poor, exploited white people could vote for a dude with a golden elevator who will fuck them over, here's how. They don't see themselves as poor. They don't base their identity on it. They see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." The stigma against poverty is incredibly strong. It is shameful to be poor, to not have the comforts of the middle class. So they pretend that they aren't poor. They are willing to lie to make it seem like they aren't poor. They purchase things to make it seem like they're not. In my town, wealth wasn't associated with greed, but with hard work and inherent goodness. You are blessed if you have material wealth. When they see Trump, they don't see an extortionist who is rich because of the very conditions that keep their own communities in poverty. They see someone who worked hard and was justly rewarded with wealth. Most men, especially, think they too could be Trump were it not for the unfair obstacles put in their way. White men who don't consider themselves successful enough have so many excuses for their "failures." The idea that immigrants are the reason they are poor and not wealthy like Trump is so appealing. It takes all the shame and blame away. And here we have a man who, they think, "tells it like it is" and is willing to name the things stealing prosperity out of their hands. If these people saw themselves as an exploited class of people, if American culture didn't stigmatize poverty so much, it might be different. But America has so entangled wealth with goodness and poverty with moral deficiency that they can't build that identity. They won't. Capitalism and the American Dream teach that poverty is a temporary state that can be transcended with hard work and cleverness. To fail to transcend poverty, and to admit you are poor, is to admit you are neither hardworking nor clever. It's cultural brainwashing. So if an exploited class of people don't want to admit they're exploited and they blame themselves for their oppression, what manifests? Xenophobia. Hatred of anyone who is "different," queer people, people of color. These people are eroding the "goodness" of America. Still, we need to understand the identity working class white people have built for themselves, one diametrically opposed to, well, reality.
JuanPa ‏@jpbrammer

Turns out the domino theory was right all along. But it was a story about us, not about them.
Jonathan Metzl

1. The map of counties in the US that shifted to Trump, from Romney, is almost an exact map of the counties having increases in drug overdoses.
2. That isn't just a coincidence. I "fell into" writing about Trump because I was documenting addiction & saw him resonating wherever I went.
3. What I said about drugs then I can say about Trump now. Wherever I see hope exiting, I see Trump/drugs entering.
Chris Arnade

i always get a kick out of people blaming "US trade policy" — they don't know who is the VP, but they know our trade policy?
richard sands

Trump won over 80% of voters who have over one square mile of land to themselves:


Richard Florida

If you're a Democrat crying hot salty tears for the white working class, tell me how people of color workers managed to not fall for Trump's message? WHAT could it be? Finally, everyone making that ridiculous claim that "whites who voted for Obama didn't suddenly become racist when they voted for Trump?" Ever considered that those voters ROSE ABOVE their racism to vote for Obama? That eight years of vile slander has "brought them home"?
Jeff Yang ‏@originalspin

1. I actually think in all the analyses of this election, impact of Trump's celebrity has been underplayed.
2. Trump started the campaign with close to 100% name recognition. He had been portrayed as a tough, effective executive on a top-10 TV show
3. He didn't have to do any work -- and did no work -- to get voters to know who he was.
4. And while HRC was obviously famous, she was famous as a politician. Trump was famous, in a way, for being famous.
5. Which might have seemed like a strike against him. But for lots of Americans, fame is, in and of itself, a mark of value.
6. And the success of The Apprentice meant that millions of Americans had already decided, in some sense, that they liked Trump.
7. Trump didn't win because he was famous. But it was much easier for him to reach voters, and to sell his message, because of his celebrity
8. In that way, he had a lot in common with candidates like Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura.
9. Does make me wonder if Kim Kardashian is now thinking about her 2032 campaign.
James Surowiecki

Acres don't vote: people do. One of the reasons we're focusing on white working class votes in the rural Midwest is that their votes *literally* counted for more than people of color in coastal cities.
Christopher Hayes

A big problem on the left is that its elites are suspicious of populism. They prefer nuance, which is great but doesn't win elections.
Josh Harkinson

The formulation that White people who once voted for Obama couldn't be motivated by racism in voting for Trump is wrong. Not how racism works. Case in point: even David Duke said nice things about Obama when he was running. It's called exceptionalizing.
Imani Perry

I don't think the press failed to cover Trump. I think people are scared to recognize just how little white voters cared that he was racist.
Mazel Tov Cocktail ‏@AdamSerwer

White supremacy is impossible without White women. And not silent acquiescence, either. Active complicity.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

"White supremacy does not demand deep conviction. Ruthless self interests, not sincere belief, is the signature feature..."-- @agordonreed
Ta-Nehisi Coates

53% of white women went for Trump. Clinton got 43%. *She didn’t win white women.* Against a misogynist serial gropist. Wow.
Touré

Let's be clear: 'white economic anxiety' is code for whites refusing the precarious circumstances that are designated for people of colour.
Akwugo Emejulu

You can't say this election was a class revolt when non-white working class voters overwhelmingly voted for Clinton.
Dan Pfeiffer

On Trump’s business conflicts of interest and the constitutional crisis it presents:

How much of the lack of pre-election Trump business interest reporting can be blamed on the decimation of newspaper & tv overseas bureaus?
Helaine Olen

Lincoln Bedroom scandal but for the 263-room Trump D.C.
Chris Steller

As the epic corruption begins, remember that the life-saving work of the Clinton Foundation "raised questions" and "cast shadows.”
Paul Krugman

Reactions to actual policy or topics that are close to policy:

Trump's plan to end NASA climate research is roughly equivalent to tossing out all the smoke detectors in your house.
Bill McKibben

Fox News attacked President Obama for saving 1.5 million auto industry jobs, now is excited about 1,000 Carrier jobs.
Media Matters

Quick note on coal jobs and where they went: not to China, largely to strip mines in Wyoming.
Paul Krugman

Climate hawks: we may need to flatter Trump into upholding COP21. "President Trump, only you can save the Earth."
Pat Thompson ‏@pattho

all the republicans excited about these carrier jobs are going to be ecstatic when they learn what the stimulus package did
sean. ‏@SeanMcElwee

Every business owner in America now: "Nice domestic employees I got here. Be a shame if anything happened to them, you know, trade-wise."
Anand Giridharadas

by the way, 26K new jobs have been created every week for the last 8 years (!!) under Obama. but yes, Trump saving 700-800 is just amazing....
Eric Boehlert

Since the election, fewer Republicans want Obamacare repealed; the number who just want it scaled back has doubled.
Kyle Griffin ‏@kylegriffin1

News Flash: Alan Greenspan, the guy who couldn't see the $8 trillion housing bubble that sank the economy, says cut Social Security.
Dean Baker

1. On what lawlessness means. I object to describing the next Administration as a "law and order" presidency until there is evidence that...
2. the President-elect & his team intends to vigorously enforce all laws. The Voting Rights Act is a law.
3. The Violence Against Women Act is a law.
4. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlaws employment discrimination.
5. Torture violates both national and international law.
6. Brown v Board of Education is the law of the land.
7. You are not a "law & order" president because you enforce criminal law & arrest protesters. The selective enforcement of law while...
8. claiming to be "law & order" is one of the lazy concessions of language with which we have too easily been complicit.
Sherrilyn Ifill

If you hear anyone talking about the "precedent" of Japanese internment, you should also know that in legal circles, the Korematsu decision from the Supreme Court, allowing internment, is universally considered one of the Court's most ignominious hours, just behind Plessy v. Ferguson.
Jeff Zentner

This is on the memorial in DC to the Japanese internment camps:


David Swanson

Not at all surprising that the only FDR policy Trump supporters have anything nice to say about is Japanese Interment Camps.
Frank Conniff

Trump has a "plan for urban renewal." Historically, urban renewal has meant "Negro removal."
Nikhil Goyal

History will record that President-elect Donald J. Trump's first substantive public statement was an attack on the First Amendment.
Ryan Lizza

On Trump and his use of Twitter:

There are 2 schools of thought about Trump tweets: 1) he's trying to distract us; 2) he's an idiot with the impulse control of a 4-year-old. I tend more toward the latter. The former gives him too much credit as a self-aware person who understands he's doing anything wrong.
Tom Tomorrow

Attention media: We follow @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. We don't need you to tell us what he tweeted. We need you to tell us that he lied.
Danielle Muscato

Oh, I get it now. If a headline contains the word "Trump," some papers assume we know that's a synonym for "lie":


Pat Thompson ‏@pattho

Just wait until Trump's bag of diversionary tactics includes the ability to drop bombs.
Matthew Yglesias

If Trump has information about widespread voter fraud, he should share it. If he's just blatantly lying, the electors should consider that.
Tom Tomorrow

This factless madness shows Donald Trump to be unhinged. If President Nixon had a Twitter account it would not reflect this much paranoia.
Carl Bernstein

Just to be clear: a man who'll be president as a result of less than 100K vote leads in three states says a more-than-2-million nationwide margin can't be trusted.
Alec MacGillis

Hard to argue against an audit/recount if the president-elect asserts, without any evidence, that there were millions of illegal votes.
Nate Cohn

this is not a twitter fight with some teenager who misspoke
these are the most powerful men in the world and we owe them only bared teeth
Saladin Ahmed

Hugo Chávez had a weekly TV show "Aló presidente," which he would use to announce laws/fire ministers. This is what Twitter will be for Trump.
Mathieu von Rohr

People are buying into this 'Trump's twitter is a clever ruse' thing because the reality - Trump is an unhinged idiot - is way more terrifying.
Nick Spencer

On the Hamilton/Mike Pence interaction:

"Have respect for the office!" people say about a musical where Hamilton tells the president, "Sit down, John, you fat motherfucker."
Courtney Milan

remember booing makes a theater unsafe but bringing in a gun doesn't
Saladin Ahmed

publicly disrespecting fascists is absolutely crucial to resistance as it lets others know that they are not alone with the monsters. when you feel utterly alone in a dungeon sometimes hearing another human voice shout 'fuck you' at the jailer is enough to help you get by
Saladin Ahmed

You can't have a president demanding apologies for people peacefully asserting their freedom of speech.
profloumoore

If we wanna discuss what is rude Mr. President, I'm pretty sure grabbing a woman by her genitalia ranks higher than booing.
i miss the yankees ‏@redrag0n_

To those dismissing this as a silly distraction: Don't kid yourselves. Trump thinks the 1st Amendment goes too far. This is a taste of that. In his few statements since winning, Trump has attacked protestors, newspapers, & performers, lying about all three. This is central to him.
Mark Harris

Trump lives in a world where artists speaking back to power is harassment - but racist thugs who support him just 'love their country.'
Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed

The cast of Hamilton was incredibly gracious/thoughtful. Can you imagine performing for someone who has ACTIVELY attacked your basic rights?
Rainbow Rowell

If Obama believed in electrocution for gays until they become straight I'm confident Broadway would boo him too.
Martin R. Conterez ‏@HungryDogsLair

When you vote for a candidate who publicly mocks the disabled, you do not ever get to complain about theatre-goers booing someone. Not ever.
Jeff Zentner

A society where academia is only utilitarian and the arts only entertaining is every dictator's dream.
GianpieroPetriglieri

President "Lock her up" will now lecture us on civility.
Mazel Tov Cocktail ‏@AdamSerwer

one of the few joys the resistance will find in the coming years is that the figurehead of our oppression is a rattleable public crybaby.
Saladin Ahmed

A screaming crowd demands that we lock up or kill Hillary Clinton: liberals' fault. A crowd boos Mike Pence: liberals' fault.
Morning No ‏@jesseltaylor

I will boo Mike Pence to his hateful face nonstop until he spends a year in jail for every day Purvi Patel was imprisoned.
@anildash

"THE LIBTARDS ARE TOO SENSITIVE!!"
clutches pearls at Starbucks cups
faints at booing
literally dies at "Happy Holidays"
Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft

True story. In 1954 Vice-President Nixon went to the first American performance of Waiting for Godot. Got booed and vowed to destroy the constitution.
Jeet Heer

The Right Wing is always uncivil and it gets results.
#FreeBresha ‏@prisonculture

On Donald's transition team and top-level cabinet appointments, including Steve Bannon of Breitbart:

Trump’s transition team is fourteen white guys, his daughter, and a black man who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs.
‏@missmayn

Can we have a moment with the fact that Obama couldn't EVA be seen near Jeremiah Wright again, but Trump is bringing known racists to the White House.
Elon James White

So civil rights in America will be enforced by a man [Jeff Sessions] whose record suggests he doesn't much believe in them.
Nicholas Kristof

The sad irony is Obama's neglect of the foreclosure crisis helped hand the White House to Trump & his foreclosure profiteer advisors. [Referring to Donald’s Treasury secretary nominee.]
David Dayen

Pro-tip: If you're a blue collar rust belt guy who feels ignored by the system, elect a billionaire who will appoint politicians and bankers!
Tom the Dancing Bug ‏@RubenBolling

I have never seen so many people willing to debase themselves for a position on the Titanic.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

Quick recap: the new education secretary is anti-public schools, the new HUD secretary is anti-Fair Housing, and the new Attorney General is anti-Voting Rights Act.
Alec MacGillis

People with no governing experience bring new perspectives to cabinet much like pilots with zero experience bring new perspectives to flying.
Jonathan Metzl

Trump just released this photo of the new Secretary of the Treasury:


Maureen Johnson

I wish one of the qualifications for US Secretary of Education was actually having been an effective teacher - K-12, higher ed, vocactional/technical.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

Feel like it'd be useful for the next president to occasionally consult with people he's not related to.
DENALI ‏@timothypmurphy

I think executive branch confirmations will be a bigger deal in the Trump administration than people realize. Think how many appointees will quit or be fired. Trump is going to have to go to the senate a LOT for confirmations. A source of legislative branch leverage. They may also let roles sit unfilled. This is a man who went through three campaign managers. Turning over staff is a lot harder in government.
Josh Barro

Speaking of Steve Bannon and the alt-right, there were quite a few tweets about that term vs. the more accurate "white supremacy." Not to mention actual neo-Nazis:

The "alt" in "alt-right" doesn't riff off "alternative rock" but "alternate history." Specifically the "If the Nazis had won World War II" sub-genre.
Hal Duncan

If flag-burning merits loss of citizenship, what should be the penalty for a Nazi salute by a Trump supporter?
David Frum

Scandal: She called white supremacists "deplorable."
Not a scandal: White supremacists give Nazi salute while yelling "Hail Trump."
Aღanda ‏@GrnEyedMandy

Remember the days where you didn't have to read, every single day, about how the KKK approved of something the President did?
Robert O. Simonson

I dig CNN's diverse panel discussing white supremacy:


Melissa McEwan ‏@Shakestweetz

If Clinton had won, we'd be discussing minimum wage and maternity leave. Instead we get to argue about the preferred nomenclature for nazis.
Michael Nordine ‏@slowbeard

I realize other minorities have felt this their whole lives, but this is the first time in 57 years I’m scared to be a Jew in America.
David Brauer

We should not treat white nationalism & antisemitism as an impolite idiosyncrasy for us to politely ignore. -@CornellWBrooks
NAACP

Hey media, referring to Steve Bannon as "former Goldman Sachs exec" is like referring to Charles Manson as "former singer/songwriter.”
Daniel Powell

In a normal world, Bannon would probably not be cleared to enter the White House. In this White House, he will have National Security Clearance.
Ana Navarro

imagine looking like this and truly thinking your genes are superior:


joe mande

Great to see that the man who coined the word "libtard" will be the senior advisor to the POTUS while the First Lady tackles bullying.
Sarah Silverman

Richard Spencer, founder of the alt-right: "The Trump movement was kind of a body without a head. The alt right, as an intellectual vanguard, can complete Trump."
Dave Weigel

Are we going to average 100 hate crimes a day over 4 years?
Phillip Atiba Goff

There were more than a couple of tweets about Facebook, the incidence of fake news, and Russian involvement in the election:

I'd like it not to get lost to the mists of time that one of the two campaigns was subject to one the most devastatingly effective acts of criminal political sabotage of all time, one which generated literally hundreds of negative stories during the crucial final weeks.
Christopher Hayes

It is in Facebook's financial interest to increase "engagement" even when it erodes the foundations of democracy.
Christopher Mims

Tough for the press to admit, but in 10 years we'll generally agree that it got played by foreign agents who wanted to sabotage Clinton.
Dave Weigel

We have now established that there is no penalty for foreign intervention in an American presidential election. Good luck with 2020.
jelani cobb

This is pretty remarkable. More readers "interacted" with Fox/Breitbart articles on FB than CNN/HuffPo/NYT/WashPost/WSJ articles combined.
DavidKenner

Fake news is "Angelina Jolie to Leave Brad Pitt for Space Alien.” What we're talking about now is propaganda.
jelani cobb

"Fake News" = Buzzword of the month. But the spread of false facts is irrelevant compared to systematic misinterpretations of correct facts.
Ola Rosling

Some suggestions for journalism, going forward:
1. Rely less on hot takes.
2. Rely less on polling.
3. Rely on reporting.…
4. Pay reporters.
5. Pay reporters well.
6. Stop overpaying bloviators.
Sarah Posner

Post-truth = lying
Fake news = propaganda
Alt-right = white supremacy
Prevent double-speak.
Use the correct words.
Dan Brown ‏@brownorama

I love how all these people are shocked, shocked about Russian interference in the election. Had this happened in ’08 or ’12, Obama would have been tried for treason. Seriously. So while I hate what is to come... I'm not surprised by the inaction and dithering.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

Your parents in 1996: Don't trust ANYONE on the Internet.
Your parents in 2016: Freedom Eagle dot Facebook says Hillary invented AIDS.
Daniel Kibblesmith

I think we've only begun to realize how much sock-puppets, trolls, and bad actors fucked with electorate. It's not just sewing the ground with fake news. It's throwing gasoline onto every tussle in primary, every camp across political spectrum.
1/ Make people afraid to speak for being mocked and attacked.
2/ Amp suspicion.
3/ Strike at soft spots of imperfect, uneasy alliances.
And it worked. If you wonder why some factional disagreements on left and right got so toxic and crazy ask yourself who/what benefits.
Clara Jeffery

And there were even a few tweets about Hillary:

I like that Hillary appears, like a wood elf or dryad, only to people who seek her with joy in their hearts, then shows them her true face. “Walk into the woods along the path, bring a baby, kneel by the stream, and whisper, ‘I’m still with her.‘ She will appear.”
Rainbow Rowell

also in the snack aisle at a grocery store and a bookstore. I think Hillary might be my patronus.
Sarah Mackey

The first time we ran a woman for President she won all three debates and cruised to a victory of over 2 million votes. Was denied the office.
Elliott Lusztig

And don’t forget voting rights and the Electoral College. If we’re going to change any of this peacefully, getting more people to vote and for votes to count equally is important:

One other thought while some weep for Clinton’s — and the Democrats’ — demonstrated inability to woo the oh-so-fickle white working class... What if folks were as interested in voter suppression as a possible reason for HRC’s loss as her failure to persuade enough white voters? Nah. That’d involve actually working with and reaching out to black Americans, only the most loyal base of voters the Democratic Party has.
Joel D. Anderson ‏@byjoelanderson

I dunno, a system that allows a swing from "Loretta Lynch" to "Jeff Sessions" after an election where Team B got fewer votes seems...flawed.
Alec MacGillis

6.1 million people can't vote in this election because of a felony conviction. And in many states, their lives are literally on the ballot.
Clint Smith

SCOTUS should be appalled at violence and racism resulting from its gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and should restore full enforcement.
Jonathan Metzl

There is nothing inspiring about pictures of long lines for people to vote. It's actually an indicator of municipal failure.
Jason Johnson ‏@DrJasonJohnson

Occasional reminder: the concept that voters need to be "registered" is itself a disenfranchisement strategy.
Jacob Anbinder

Republicans ran a campaign of disenfranchisement, closed hundreds and hundreds of polling stations and lost the popular vote by 2 million.
Ian Karmel

In the Electoral College white votes count more:


Lara Merling

Late in the month, there was a lot of talk about the backlash within Democratic circles against “political correctness,” identity politics, and calling racism by its name as a cause for Clinton’s loss:

If you want to know what complicity looks like, check out all the talking heads now suggesting that anti-racism *creates* racists.
Liam Hogan ‏@Limerick1914

We want the value of our lives to be non-negotiable. They have opened the negotiation. Bridging that divide is not the responsibility of those who fear for their safety and dignity as a consequence of the election. If you endanger people, you cannot ask them to take the first step towards healing. You must first move to make them safe again.
Phillip Atiba Goff

A thing that gets left out of all these "you should empathize with the white working class!" discussions is... and then what? Empathy doesn't have to have a purpose, but there's an agenda in these exhortations. We're supposed to empathize & *change.* And since the empathetic gestures Obama made weren't acceptable - fixing the economy, growing jobs, ACA... Then what gestures should be made instead to show how deeply we empathize with people who are OK with racism, sexism, homophobia? We're supposed to be okay with those things too. That's what it boils down to. Because most of us *do* empathize with the white working class. And we see what they want. Entitlements are OK 'til they think we might get some. Obamacare's fine when it's only called the ACA. It's the association with the first black president that offends. So this is why I keep posting "stop asking me to empathize" articles. I can hear the unspoken "and" that follows the request. As I just said to someone in my mentions, we can empathize. But joining them won't change them. Just us.
N. K. Jemisin

I maintain that what's really being demanded of [black] people isn't hope, but absolution. It's in the exclamations like the one I got recently about refusing to "give up on my white rural American father-in-law. I refuse to believe he can't be changed!" Well okay. The conversations you need to have right now are hard. They are necessarily about people's choices and structural challenges. Attitudes are very hard to change. Your conversation may make you feel better and that may be enough but let's be real about what it is. What, instead, we probably mean to be saying is that changing one's habitus or embeddedness can change his or her worldview.

So how do you tell your racist family or friends that residential segregation & homophily & income inequality is probably why they're racist? I haven't got a clue. But I do know that oppressed cultures developed what you call a hopelessness precisely to manage that tension. It isn't naive or fatalist to resist baseless hope when, to paraphrase the saying, someone really is out to get you. It's rational. And it may be a prerequisite for hard conversations and hard political choices in way that irrational hope is not.

I didn't say pointless. I said hard. The hopelessness so critiqued among black folks has always accompanied resistance. We have always shown up anyway. So, it must be possible. But I guess this is my habitus speaking. I don't get why this is so hard to comprehend. Reject irrational hope AND work hard. Black folk wake up every day and do it. But I guess I can see how that wouldn't be a selling point for non-black folks...
Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd

If only people were as horrified about actually being racist and/or behaving in racist ways as they are about being called racist.
Jennifer Richeson ‏@jaricheson

it is expected of me to connect with and explore the beliefs/thoughts of someone who devalues my right to exist. what is to be gained there? and I suppose what makes me (quietly? deeply?) angry about calls for empathy is that they never go the other way. we ask the queer kid who's been assaulted to try to understand that his bullies' actions come from a place of deep insecurity and fear... we ask the working class black family to understand that the racist working class white family is projecting fear of precarity onto them.
Christopher Persaud ‏@blackgaygemini

Well, let me tell you people, black women on Twitter were the canaries in the coal mine for the events happening now. We were abused. Steve Bannon, and other right wing outlets, now are entrenched in the white house, and they use these racist tactics to silence people. I am not clutching the pearls and crying with you. I feel for you, but as someone who experienced this shit regularly with no help... I'm fresh out of energy to fight for you, because these trolls and abusive racist white people have been doing it to me for YEARS.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler

[The] unspoken assumption [is] that the neglected citizen is a white one. Working-class Hispanic service workers, low-income black communities, etc. etc. are very much ignored in national life. But focusing on their struggles as workers of color within a racial caste system is, I suppose, "identity politics." East and West Baltimore are 45 minutes from DC and utterly ignored by national press. But I don't think that's who he is talking about. When you insert the unspoken assumption, what you have is a call for liberals to push nonwhites out of the circle of primary concern. Under the faulty assumption that one can separate "identity" from universalist concerns. (I'll add also that pieces like this are clearly being written to white liberals. That's the imagined audience.)
Jamelle Bouie

By "political correctness" they mean they should be able to disrespect you without criticism, but you must always be deferential to them.
Mazel Tov Cocktail ‏@AdamSerwer

All of this talk of "giving up identity politics" while people who identify as violent racists come to power is graveyard hilarious. Trying to woo people who hate into being nice hinges on the idea that they don't like hate. They do. It feels good. I've talked to former white supremacists. Listen to them sometime. They'll tell you the problem is hate. And rage. So much rage.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

This will sound cold, but I can't support the infantilization of white voters to excuse them voting against their own interests. People are voting against their own interests because they prioritized hate of the Other over their own survival. They know it. At some point we have to stop pretending people don't know what they are doing in the voting booth, and start talking about why they do it. America's working class has never been all white. No other group of working class voters resolutely votes against their interests this way. Coincidentally no other group gets the running "It is so hard for them to learn" despite every other group having fewer resources. Hmmm.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

Having an email dialogue with an angry reader, and they said this: "I am not a racist. I am a responsible citizen who wants to have jobs for Americans, and prosperous safe communities." The disconnect between me and some of my readers is that they think the latter means the former cannot be true.
Jamelle Bouie

*whispers* Obama spent eight years trying to make white men feel comfortable - they called him a Kenyan Muslim then voted for a fascist.
sean. ‏@SeanMcElwee

Not really in the mood for another "the Democrats need to become the party of racism, too" think piece. That's really what this anti-identity politics stuff comes down: Those people who wanted basic human rights ruined it for "the rest of us." I'm just saying. Democrats, you don't have a party without people of color. Throw us under the bus, and there is no bus.
Courtney Milan

At some point in liberal lexicon, "working people" phrase became the way for Democrats to wink at white voters uncomfortable with civil rights. You can't separate racism from economics. The essential function of racism in America has always been about economics, beginning with slavery. Systemic racism in America has always functioned as an economic caste system, determining who has access to power, privilege & money.
Bree Newsome

When I see someone who has "politically incorrect" in their bio, I just swap "politically" for "generally."
Tauriq Moosa

Even a cursory review of human history shows that racial and ethnic supremacy does not work. What I do know for sure: White supremacy will end the species if we let it. It is maladaptive, an ideology that will lead to extinction. Either we will figure out how to get along with each other and this planet, or that's it for Homo sapiens.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

It can't be overstated how "normal" it has been for humans to treat each other horribly for immoral reasons throughout history. With that said… there are some aspects of contemporary Western domination that are new and uniquely catastrophic. While slavery was not new, the transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced global displacement of human beings in history. While colorism was not new, Europeans' made up concept of "race as biology" is new -- and uniquely difficult to eradicate or overcome. While ideologies of superiority are not new, scientific racism (developed by Europeans to justify colonialism and slavery) is new. While environmental harm is not new, Western expansion / industrialization produced the #anthropocene which is new and uniquely destructive.
Professor Fleming ‏@alwaystheself

Things white dudes can figure out: everything they think you do wrong. Things white dudes can't figure out: racism. I mean this, a white man can tell me how to do literally everything and anything all the time but can't figure out nazis are racist.
Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd

Oppressors always cryin’ about oppressed people not "loving" them. 1) nobody cares 2) oppression is structural; beyond interpersonal feelings. "You hate White people!" I don't, but let's say I do. And then what? Your salary goes down? You lose White privilege? WHAT HAPPENS?! Besides, you don't want love from me. You want me to hate myself. You want deference. You want worship.
Trudy ‏@thetrudz

people are ready to let a fascist who'll make life hell for my family cheat his way into power because they don't want to look divisive. you know what's divisive? fascism
Saladin Ahmed

I've listened to Trump voters who insist they aren't racist. What I've learned: They do not think discriminating against people of color is racism.
N. K. Jemisin

Economic anxiety is justification for being seduced by bigotry yet people of color who turn to crime due to unemployment don't get the same compassion? Explain to me why the rural working class voter deserves more empathy than the boy on a corner who's been failed by every institution? Mind you I think both groups deserve empathy. The problem is one group is given the benefit of the doubt and the other is demonized.
Christiana A Mbakwe ‏@Christiana1987

We do realize that the phrase "identity politics" really means "Stop reminding me that you're human and matter,” right? If you have to ignore someone's identity to treat them like a human being, the problem isn't their identity. The problem is you.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

Every public conversation about racism inevitably ends with the argument that the real victims are people accused of it.
Jamelle Bouie

folks are lecturing us to not shut down arguments with "shaming" or whatnot, and like....not realizing that racism shuts conversations down too.
Vann R. Newkirk II ‏@fivefifths

White people think the word "racist" is an insult and not a description of a behavior, person, or institution.
Rod ‏@rodimusprime

You do realize that Michelle Obama has spent the last 10 years being attacked for everything as FLOTUS. Being POTUS isn't appealing. Stop looking for Black women (who you won't defend or protect or back up) to save you. Michelle Obama has done more than enough. Running for office sounds like hell to me. Pure and utter hell. If you can't fix the election process expect more people to avoid it. To be honest I'm amazed Michelle isn't ready to move abroad and pretend America doesn't exist for a year. I'd need a long break.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

It needs to be said over & over: "political correctness" is a specific idea with a specific intellectual history. It was invented by racists. Of course, it wasn't because open white supremacy was rightfully reviled, but a conspiracy of Jewish intellectuals who duped gentile whites. Every time you popularize the idea of "political correctness" you do the intellectual dirty work of dead Holocaust deniers. Good job dipshit. I’m not exaggerating. "Political correctness" was labeled, by the people who invented the idea, a Jewish conspiracy.
Sam Pritchard @thucydiplease

This sense of unfair victimization is key to what Adorno et al find make someone susceptible to fascism in The Authoritarian Personality.
Robin James

White evangelicals voted 81% Trump. But THE REST OF US are supposed to give up on "identity politics." Right.
Siva Vaidhyanathan ‏@sivavaid

We’ve elected the most inefficient and dangerous government in ages to govern during the most fragile of times because racism
Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd

If being called a racist is enough to drive someone to white supremacy, then you were always cool with white supremacy.
Alt-Power Top ‏@angryblackhoemo

Beyond the election, though sometimes intersecting with it, there were tweets on my other favorite topics of late, like the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock encampment:

LOL at people who condemn Castro's inhumanities but are totally fine with our government treating Native Americans as second class citizens
J-Peazy ‏@JPeazyyy

Mitchell: When it's the military or the police, it's force. When it's workers or indigenous people, it's violence.
Nikhil Goyal

Standing Rock is where our money worship, fossil foolishness, political corruption, and deep racism converge. #NoDAPL
Bill McKibben

#FlintWaterCrisis #NoDAPL:


@prisonculture

Silence is complicity — we don't need silent allies. Choose a side. #StandingRock #NoDAPL
BigIndianGyasi

The best way to stop pipelines is to move to town, sell your car, and fight for #freetransit. Or else you will keep driving to protests.
Free Public Transit

Climate change and sustainable cities:

In a built environment, adding turn lanes [to streets] means tearing down buildings and/or reducing boulevards/sidewalks. This is bad policy.
mike ‏@mikesonn

Great chart on greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture. The dominant sources vary wildly from region to region:


brad plumer

When there are alternatives to cars, people will feel their subsidy to be a burden.
Free Public Transit

You are trying to stop a tsunami of economic demand. People don't care! They want more oil, not less. Give them a different path.
Free Public Transit

Self-driving cars do not inherently ease congestion! We must not release our grip on visions of walkable, cycling, transit-oriented cities.
jennifer keesmaat

Pedestrians can wear what they want. Can't see the human in front of you? You're driving too fast.
jennifer keesmaat

A straight line can be drawn from the de-urbanization [suburbanization] of the 20th century to the 2016 election.
patrick kennedy ‏@WalkableDFW

"Running a leafblower for 30 minutes creates more emissions than driving a F-150 pickup truck 3800 miles.”
William Lindeke

Thought experiment: Community input weighted toward young people, according to remaining life expectancy. Younger people's opinions matter more. Why should someone with 5-15 years left have more say over 30-year-planning than someone with 50 years left (even if they own a house)?
William Lindeke

87% of trips less than 4km in Amsterdam centre are by bike. Why? A “pragmatic mix of pro-cycling and car-limiting policies.”
Chris Bruntlett ‏@modacitylife

Societies make choices. I'd much rather live in a country that subsidizes health care + education than roads + air travel.
jennifer keesmaat

An average car makes as much air pollution in 1 year as 2 elephants weigh. Choose active transportation!
Canada Walks

I wish we built for Halloween walking like we build for Black Friday parking.
mike ‏@mikesonn

Lesson from Paris in transit oriented development: midrise throughout the city vs huge density *only* at transit stops.
jennifer keesmaat

This is a graph of total global sea ice. The red line is this year. Something is very very wrong:


Bill McKibben

"1 km driven by car costs society 17 cents. Society gains 18 cents for each km cycled."
Brent Toderian

Three tweets about why tolls make sense:
Transit riders pay, every trip. So despite the negative + high environmental impacts/costs of driving, the privilege, today, goes to drivers.
Dirty cars, dirty air: transportation is the largest source of air pollution. We want less of this, right?
Those who drive, and drive the most, have the highest incomes. And yet road use is subsidized much more heavily than transit.
jennifer keesmaat

"I think a toll is ridiculous. I'll have to look at something like car pooling.' –resident on @metromorning. *BINGO* it's working already.
jennifer keesmaat

Parking: The Price is Wrong.
Strong Towns

"A parking space would average around $812.50/month if housing a car per square foot matched housing a person."
Brent Toderian

16% of people moving on Toronto's King Street use cars. However, they get over 65% of the space. No equity with Walk&Bike&Transit
Gil Penalosa

"If a driver doesn't pay for parking somebody else pays for it. That somebody ends up being everybody" –Donald Shoup [author of The High Cost of Free Parking]
Strong Towns

Melbourne's magical laneways: a great example of taking space you already have in the city, and using it better.


jennifer keesmaat

WHY CAN'T THE CITY PLOW MY STREET FIRST ALL THE TIME?!? say my neighbors on Facebook. Also they say I HATE TAXES.
Hillary Frazey

We tax buildings more than land, thus penalizing building. Then we use tax incentives to encourage people to build. #facepalm
Rik Adamski

As long as a billion people want suburbs, the energy companies will get away with murder. Give people car-free cities.
Free Public Transit

Crisis. Urgency. Stop treating housing as any good, subject to supply and demand. Prohibit foreign buyers? No second homes? Scandinavians do.
Gil Penalosa

Cities often think of trees as just ornamentation...the evidence suggests that we should think of trees as public-health infrastructure. Urban trees soak up fine particle pollution from cars, power plants, and factories — improving air-quality, and saving lives. Cities/people worried about soaring energy consumption/costs in light of rising temperatures should be planting more trees.
jennifer keesmaat

People vote for racists, then wonder why there are no buses.
Free Public Transit

Racism, white supremacy, police brutality, and Islamophobia:

When you hear hate directed at the Somali community after the Ohio State stabbings — recall NO ONE warned of white males after Dylan Roof shot up a church.
Kerri Miller ‏@KerriMPR

"White supremacy" doesn't [just] refer to the belief "that whites are inherently superior." It refers to support for white POLITICAL supremacy. Support for electoral disenfranchisement of people of color, for instance, is support for white supremacy. Support for gerrymandering legislative districts in order to disproportionately empower white voters is support for white supremacy. White supremacy isn't about what is in somebody's heart. It's about who wields political power. As always, I blame an educational system and a culture that would rather talk about segregated water fountains than legal lynching. Belief in white racial superiority and support for white political supremacy have typically gone hand in hand, of course. Now, of course, (and again) support for white political supremacy goes hand-in-hand with belief in white racial superiority. And these days, the term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to the latter. But its origins, and its literal meaning, are the former. (The term "supremacy" itself refers to dominance, to subordination, not to mere feelings of superiority.)
Angus Johnston ‏@studentactivism

Make no mistake, when people yell "Blue Lives Matter" after Black people are killed, they are celebrating our murder.
Tiff ‏@BlackLoveSong

The story of America over the past 40 years is the poor, immigrants, people of color being blamed for social ills created by Wall Street and elites.
Nikhil Goyal

Black working class people struggling? Meh. White working class people struggling? PANIC O CLOCK.
Jane Coaston ‏@cjane87

The zero sum view of racial progress that says equity among races means whites will do bad is very dangerous and deeply un-American.
Heather C. McGhee

1964: black people get government jobs
1964: white people discover government sucks
ZB ‏@IRBroadshow

The notion that a non-confrontational approach can ameliorate racism in this country is an idea with no basis in American history.
Jamelle Bouie

A. Racism is more than being mean.
B. Racism is a spectrum that starts at normalizing racism and ends with murder.
C. Stop absolving bigots.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

I went to a private high school that was 5% African American. Teacher said it was my responsibility to educate my classmates. I said my parents are paying full tuition, give me a discount since I'm now teaching my peers.
Dbl Heel ‏@Tarheel2104

For all of you who want to retweet me, fuck no. That shit is what leaves me fighting the racists while you get to look woke cause you follow me.
ProfB ‏@AntheaButler [Butler keeps her account set to private after years of harassment]

And US history shows that "coming together" across White class divisions always happens on the backs of Black/Brown/Indigenous/Asian people.
Imani Perry

Don't ever talk to me about affirmative action. The next president of the United States is a white man with no experience and a rich daddy.
Akilah Hughes ‏@AkilahObviously

Education:

How much college would a summer's minimum wage pay for? Not nearly as much as it used to:


Demos

18: can I buy a bottle of wine?
USA: no that's illegal and irresponsible.
18: can I go $50,000 into debt for education?
USA: we encourage it.
paperwash

The Essential Selfishness of School Choice:


Peter Greene ‏@palan57

The Republican plan for public education is the same as their plan for government. Say it's a failure and actively work to make that statement true.
Ben Moser @ benjaminmoser

“Want the best for your child, not for your child to be the best” –Palo Alto psychiatrist quoted in the New York Times. The latter undermines the former.
Alfie Kohn

High school student of my acquaintance: "A creativity rubric? How can they even say that without laughing?"
Alfie Kohn

I love the data that charter schools with weekly teacher coaching work. But in 2011, I wrote that public schools with it do, too.
Atul Gawande

Broadfoot: "IQ provided for the twentieth century the selection that wealth and breeding provided for earlier times."
Nikhil Goyal

Finland is esteemed for providing some of the best education in the world. Children enjoy an hour of recess and unstructured 15-minute breaks.
Gil Penalosa

Is it ironic for students to learn about America's freedom while not being free to leave that classroom?
Sisyphus ‏@Sisyphus38

"What billionth of 1 percent of all there is to know should we teach in school?" —Seymour Papert
Sisyphus ‏@Sisyphus38

The suicide rate for middle school kids has doubled since 2007. Why? Not enough rigor and standardized tests?
Steven Singer

And finally, there were still tweets on other topics and even some funny ones. Life goes on because it has to. I notice there are many more Strange Animals photos this month than I’ve saved lately. I think I’m taking extra comfort in them.

Dead people receive more flowers than living people because regret is stronger than gratitude. –Anne Frank
jamalbryant

Colonialism is a bunch of home invaders who killed your parents, took the house, but offer to let you sleep in the closet if you prove worthy.
5'7 Black Male ‏@absurdistwords

Oh gourd!!


Faces in Things

The first few chapters of Tony Judt's Post War are really worth re-reading on the origins of European social-democracy [after World War II]. Two important factors! The Holocaust and post-war migrations/ethnic cleansing meant European nations were the most linguistically/ethnically homogenous they'd been. Also: right wing parties were totally discredited (or literally dead) because of their collusion with Fascism. The right wing was decapitated. If you lop off the right-most, say, third of a nation's politics, it gets substantially more left-wing. That happened in lots of places. Finally, amidst the sheer devastation of post-war Europe, the State was basically all that was left standing. People looked to it to provide.
Christopher Hayes

Idea for Twitter: shut down between midnight and 8 am, like you were a bar, and your users were addicts. Because, you know, they are.
Robert O. Simonson

Socialism without democracy isn't socialism: it's unaccountable bureaucrats mixing paternalism with prisons and persecution.
Owen Jones

Did you know? Gun-related homicides in Florida are up 31.6% since Stand Your Ground was enacted in 2005.
Legal Defense Fund ‏@NAACP_LDF

Time magazine's "Person" of the Year really should be Gerry Mandering.
Molly Priesmeyer

Part of the reason I like to use crude language (when appropriate) is because white supremacist patriarchy would prefer women like me to be docile.
Flavia Dzodan ‏@redlightvoices

It's always worth remembering that the ambient violence necessary to maintain your own nation usually exceeds whatever you're condemning. [Referring to criticisms of Fidel Castro and Cuba.]
Emmett Rensin

Fought off the Thanksgiving food coma and stitched a few of the journalistic things I am thankful for this year:


Hannah Wise ‏@hwise29

If only conservatives made conserving things a priority.
Jan Middendorp

What percent of our country's problems could be (could have been) solved by public campaign financing and effective gun control?
Pat Thompson ‏@pattho

A very colourful beetle! (Photo: flickr/j_aubz):


Strange Animals

#IDreamOfAWorld in which being Human is a greater binding force than the rampant tribalism that fractures us all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson

There is literally no way that the three little bears sitting on chairs in Goodnight Moon are not in a doomed couples counseling session:


Tim Carvell

Everybody blaming 2016 realizes 2017 will be much worse right?
Chris Steller

Good people of Twitter, this was Ron Cobb on Thanksgiving, way back in the ’60s:


Aliki Chapple ‏@amaenad

Communities not fighting back won't stop war, it just makes genocide easier.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

some white liberals think it's cool to sing along to a musical about founding a slave republic but a crime to respect Castro's achievements
Saladin Ahmed

Until we fully grapple with the fact that America was built on stolen land and stolen labor, we can't face our present and plan our future.
Jose Antonio Vargas ‏@joseiswriting

The gofundme method of financing critical social needs feels like civilization devolving before our eyes.
section_sign

No need for a nanny state. Let's just rely on good will:


Pat Thompson ‏@pattho

The looper inchworm makes its own disguise by plucking flowers from the plant it feeds on. (Photo: Hope Abrams)


Strange Animals

Twitter used to be a series of funny little quips and now it's just a list of succinct and bloody stabbings directly into my ribcage.
Erin ‏@ErinGlaser

it feels almost wrong to write about non-election-related stories, but then I remember this is just another way civil society can be wrecked.
Rachel Cohen ‏@rmc031

The devil's hand tree can be found in Guatemala and southern Mexico:


Nature Is Weird

That so many religions line up SO WELL with capitalistic patriarchy tells me all I need to know about the true nature of those religions.
Son of Baldwin

Maine this week became the first state to adopt ranked-choice voting.
GOVERNING

The Republicans want term limits because they would turn Congress into a boarding school for future lobbyists run by lifetime lobbyists.
@franglophonic

The awesome cecropia moth (Photo: Carol Milne):


Strange Animals

I like that people use Twitter not as it was intended and usually not as its ownership currently wants. Whereas Facebook feels like you're on a leash.
Chris Steller

Unions are liberals' chief institution for turning white working class voters into Democrats. That's why Republicans try to destroy them.
Nick Confessore

I hate the word "hubby" a lot. Like a lot.
Ashley C. Ford ‏@iSmashFizzle

Peak horse:


Benedict Evans

There is no point at which you become good. There is only the process of becoming.
Sarah Mei

Whatever GREAT America you are imagining is never coming back and probably wasn't that great. Time moves in one direction.
John Hodgman

Men's reaction to Jay-Z's transformation to a husband and father are actually kinda terrifying. It's like they've never seen anyone grow up.
Shyne Coldchain Jr. ‏@Smooth_Orator


Hydnora africana or swaddled babies tulip:


Nature Is Weird

Today I learned Herb Block [the cartoonist] coined the term McCarthyism.
Chris Steller