"America is moving on from blind allegiance to faith, but most politicians haven’t got the memo."

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What Do Nontheists Want? Equal Representation in Government.
By Roy Speckhardt, December 23, 2016

In light of President Barack Obama’s signing of the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, the first piece of legislation with specific language protecting nontheists, humanists, and atheists, it is clearer than ever that the nontheist movement has gained significant traction in politics. But is it enough for the next president to be an open nontheist?

In an election season where Marco Rubio urged Republican voters to choose him because he was the most Christian, Hillary Clinton’s religious beliefs were questioned, and the current President-elect openly pandered to the Religious Right (ultimately winning four in five Evangelical votes), one wonders whether religion’s stranglehold on politics will ever end. In an article written on the eve of the election titled, “Why an Atheist Won’t be Elected President,” Christian evangelical Ray Comfort argued that this can never happen because of his view that atheists are inherently untrustworthy and their morals are groundless. But this insistence that those of a minority (in this case, nontheists hold minority views on religious questions) could never be elected our nation’s leader is one that tends to get disproven time and again.

As much as analogies between movements are fraught with difficulties, it’s instructive that Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency in 2008 shattered the previously-held notion “not in our lifetime,” alluding to the belief that there could not be an Black president due to the historical context of slavery less than 150 years ago and the daily reminders of continuing racial prejudice. Interestingly, raised in a secular humanist household, Barack Obama displayed qualities of kindness, compassion, and empathy unseen in the “moral majority,” who fronted a large amount of the pushback Obama faced due to his race. Also relevant to the rise of nontheists, Obama is the first president to include specific language in legislation, speeches, and addresses pertaining to the nontheist community. Even religious radical Senator Ted Cruz has called for the inclusion of atheists in religious freedom, showing a significant shift in the American mindset.

Obama’s victory, the first by any non-white male, helped ensure that the conversation surrounding Hillary Clinton’s campaign was less about her gender and more about her policies. The women’s suffrage movement culminated in women gaining the right to vote in 1920, and less than 100 years later, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the Democrat’s nominee for the presidential election. Despite her electoral college loss, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, with the majority of Americans preferring her over Donald Trump. With more and more candidates veering from the old white-male norm, it’s time to start considering an atheist president’s chances with less skepticism.

Indeed, not only is such a phenomenon possible in the near future, we came astonishingly close in the recent election. Bernie Sanders sought the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton and surprised many by the degree of success he achieved. Although Sanders was raised Jewish, he previously stated that he is “not particularly religious,” and that he is “not actively involved with organized religion.” While scrupulously avoiding religious pandering, Bernie Sanders energized many American voters, and according to some, would have defeated Donald Trump in the general election. If the hypothetical scenario were true, and Bernie Sanders were to have won the presidency, then America would have elected its first non-Christian, not particularly religious president.

Some argue that an atheist president could never emerge from a majority Christian country, but there are a plethora of examples of atheist heads of state winning an election despite being in the minority. In Chile, a country where nearly 70 percent of the population identifies as Christian, Michelle Bachelet won the presidency twice, first in 2006, and again in 2014 while identifying as agnostic. In Australia, a country that has consistently ranked in the top ten for happiness, quality of life, and economic freedom, eleven of the past twelve prime ministers have been atheist. In France Prime Minister Francois Hollande is an atheist in a country that is predominantly Christian. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, an atheist, didn’t participate in the religious portion of his swearing-in despite the dominant role the Greek Orthodox Church plays in his country.

Despite what Ray Comfort said about lack of trust in atheists, a growing number of Americans see no problems with not believing in gods. Many Americans, as well as people worldwide, are moving away from religion. In Europe, religion is becoming a non-factor in society, as churches are closing, leaving many religious leaders to wonder whether their message has any chance of surviving into the next generation. In the US, we are also seeing a steady shift in demographics towards more who choose “none” when asked with which religion they identify. It’s only a matter of time before these changes impact the political prospects of those detached from traditional religion. The number of people who would vote for a candidate for public office who didn’t happen to believe in a god has steadily increased in recent years and is poised to jump to still higher levels.

There’s a disconnect between the politicos who trash atheists and continue to assume they have no weight in public life, and the rapidly rising numbers of self-identified atheists and their allies. America is moving on from blind allegiance to faith, but most politicians haven’t got the memo. So what we see today, the overwhelming majority of American candidates and federal office holders stating (and often overstating) their Christian beliefs, is about to be a relic of our past. Not only are future openly nontheistic leaders likely, but there will be a point in the not too distant future when nontheists are pandered to much in the same way as evangelicals are today.

Those still clinging to the hope that there will never be an atheist president fail to acknowledge just how much how inevitable change is in our country. The presidency of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win, and Bernie Sanders’ popularity among young voters all speak to the fluidity of opportunity of those whom don’t represent the old paradigm. Politicians largely ignore nontheists in America, but they do so imperiling their future election hopes. There is a growing understanding in America with regards to acknowledging non-theists in the public sphere—and yes, there will be an atheist president one day. But Christians need not fear that day. Unlike some, nontheists understand that they have no religious privilege—that they must serve all their constituents equally.
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Hmmmm, just a bit thin-skinned, isn't he?

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"'I don’t condone what Donald Trump believes in,' Gunplay said. "I don’t condone his ideology. But what I do respect is his business."

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Gunplay Says Trump is Both 'About That Business' and 'Blatantly Racist'
By Omar Burgess, November 27, 2016

Miami MC Gunplay recently joined Tim Westwood for an interview, and the topic quickly turned to the state of politics in America. When asked about president-elect Donald Trump, Gunplay was cautious about making any headlines.

“I don’t condone what Donald Trump believes in,” Gunplay said. “I don’t condone his ideology. But what I do respect is his business. You won’t see the click bait saying, ‘Gunplay voted for Donald Trump.’ But he’s alright with me, man…as long as he stays in the borders and the parameters of not being a total racist, which it is right now.”

Gunplay was quick to point out Trump had zero political experience before winning the 2016 Presidential election. Trump has gained a reputation for hia business acumen dating back to the 1962 revitalization of the Swifton Village apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio (a venture that was itself marred by a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination). Newsweek’s recent in-depth look at Trump’s business ventures makes a statistical counter-argument.

“In 1978, the year his father set up that sweet credit line at Chase, Donald’s tax returns showed personal losses of $406,386—$1.5 million in present-day dollars,” the article stated. “Things grew worse in 1979, when he reported an income of negative $3.4 million, $11.2 million in constant dollars.”

Similar business ventures such as Trump Steaks, GoTrump.com, a Monopoly-based Trump board game, Trump Ice drinking water, Trump on the Ocean restaurant and the Trump New Media video on demand service all lasted one year or less.

Gunplay and Westwood ultimately laughed off Trump’s successful White House run and called Trump “a hustler.”

“He bought that bitch,” Gunplay added. “That’s like [Rick] Ross going to be the President. He hustled. He did his thing. You gotta respect it. But I don’t believe what he believes in. His ideology and all his cockiness—that ain’t cool.”
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Very likely it is.

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"He won. An admitted establishment guy until he started running, he seems to have returned to his more familiar self."

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Trump's Lovely Lies
By Kathleen Parker, November 26, 2016

 In this season of Thanksgiving, a quirky source of gratitude has emerged -- Donald Trump’s many campaign lies.

What else can one call the promises that he now treats as alien concepts? Almost daily, he reverses himself on a campaign promise, confirming what this column predicted: He would never keep his vows.

As a matter of practicality, Trump couldn’t do much of what he bragged about, such as build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. Now he’s talking fences.

Likewise, it isn’t the prerogative of the executive office to investigate, prosecute or jail Hillary Clinton, whom he now says he doesn’t plan to investigate because he doesn’t want to hurt the Clintons.

Similarly, Trump apparently no longer thinks that climate change is a Chinese hoax and is “open-minded” toward future discussions. When Marine Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s apparent choice for defense secretary, told the president-elect that he could get more information from a prisoner with a couple of beers and a cigarette than by waterboarding, Trump said, fine, he will rethink waterboarding.

If Trump has never been burdened by the truth, he at least has been true to his core value, which is say or do whatever it takes to win. And for him, what worked were lies. Or at least untruths.

What does seem true is that he never had any interest in governing, as evidenced by his reportedly being surprised to learn he had to replace so many White House staffers. Who knew?

Early on, Trump told us as much when he couldn’t really put a finger on why he wanted to be president. In a wide-ranging interview last April with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, he wandered around the barn for several minutes looking for an answer, checking the sky for the Trump chopper to swoop down in a reverse deus ex machina to rescue him from this daunting question: “Can you isolate a moment when it kicked to yes?”

Not right off, no, he couldn’t.

First, it was the escalator ride, looking down on all those cameras, comparing the moment to the Academy Awards. Had the cameras not arrived, would Trump have returned to his office and forgotten all about it? Next, he talked about his TV show, his money, his children, hitting any topic that came to mind, circling, circling, searching for that dadgum moment. Woodward pressed on.

The polls, yes, it was the polls! Oh, also, watching Mitt Romney, “a very, very, failed and flawed candidate,” lose to Obama. After a mind-boggling discussion about breaking eggs to get elected, Trump landed on anger. Yes, he was angry. Plus, he always wins.

In Trump’s exhausting, attention-deficit world, winning is the end point, making this particular victory problematical. After the “Grand Opening” on Inauguration Day, the bands, confetti and the Inaugural Parade, what follows is much less fun -- governing a fiercely divided nation that Trump helped create and making good on all those campaign slogans.

“How do you unbreak those eggs?” Woodward asked.

“That’s the question,” Trump replied.

Here’s another: How do you un-nut the nutcase? How does Trump explain to his base that he wasn’t really a crazed xenophobic bigot who will ban Muslims and thinks most Mexicans are criminals? How does he explain that he never intended to follow through on many of his crowd pleasers?

Hate to break another egg, but the answer is he won’t. Just as Trump never provided any substantive evidence for people’s faith in him, there’s no reason to believe that Trump cares what they think of him now. He won. An admitted establishment guy until he started running, he seems to have returned to his more familiar self.

Going forward, everything is anyone’s guess. As his base begins to show cracks, wondering what to do with their “Lock her up” T-shirts, his foes are wrestling a fresh angst -- caught between detesting the man who spoke so foully of others and stupidly of issues, and the one who didn’t really mean it. A rational, decent Trump is not the man America elected and both sides, for better or worse, feel jinxed. How does one revile the man who now says what you believe? How does one trust the man who obviously lied?

Finally: Who is the real Donald Trump and what does he stand for?

That remains the question.
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How about saying "eeny, meeney, miney, mo"?

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"Only in America can you be Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-War, Pro-Unmanned Drones, Pro-Torture, & still call yourself 'Pro-Life.'"

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Republicans, you’re not Pro-Life, you’re a hypocrite.
By Brandon Cloud, November 26, 2016

One of the most divisive issues in our country is over abortion and a woman’s right to choose. There is a large portion of the United States that call themselves “Pro-Life.” For those in the “personhood” movement in the United States, there is no doubt about when life happens—it is at conception, when the sperm meets the egg. The personhood movement has gained a foothold among antiabortion activists who are looking to pass laws that define embryos as people with full rights. Personhood advocates aim to outlaw all abortions, along with in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research, and emergency contraception. Granting embryos personhood would also mean that someone who killed a pregnant woman at any stage in her pregnancy would be at risk of prosecution for a double homicide. And in those states that restrict a woman’s right to utilize a living will if she is pregnant, no living will could apply from the moment of conception. An accidental car accident could put you at risk for vehicular homicide if you caused a miscarriage.

The biggest empirical problem with the view that personhood begins at conception is the scientific fact that a large percentage of embryos lack the capacity, under any circumstances, to become human beings. During the period of embryonic development that begins with fertilization and ends a few days later with successful implantation of the blastocyst into the uterine wall—the period known as “preimplantation development”—up to 50 percent of human conceptions fail to survive, most likely due to genetic errors in the embryo.

Miscarriage is the most common type of pregnancy loss, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Studies show that anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of all clinically recognized pregnancies (meaning that an embryo has implanted) end in miscarriage, depending in part on the age of the woman.

The biological facts don’t tell us where to draw the line as to when personhood begins. But they do show that many embryos that result from conception—indeed, the majority of them—lack the capacity to become living human beings. They do not produce disabled humans. They cannot produce any sort of human life. Science and medicine know this. They are simply too intimidated to say so.

In its moral zeal, the personhood movement makes a huge mistake when it tries to legislate a starting point for human life that is inconsistent with biology. And scientists are making an inexcusable blunder not to point out factual errors by those engaged in the argument about when life begins. Human life is very difficult to start. More often than not, it fails post conception. To argue that personhood begins at conception is to reach for a moral stance that the facts simply do not support.

Beyond the fact that the Personhood stance makes absolutely no sense, the entire thought process of being “Pro-Life” within the GOP base is flawed by the very name they choose to be referred by. There is mounds of evidence that shows that the party itself is anything but Pro-Life or even Pro-Quality of Life. People who call themselves “pro-life” oppose abortion. Since that’s the only argument the “pro-life’ moniker is applied to we should just call their position what it is: opposition to a woman’s right to get an abortion, or anti-abortion for brevity. I, personally, think the Anti-Choice is more appropriate. It works because the people who proclaim that they are “pro-life” are using that term to describe their position in regards to whether or not a woman can choose to have an abortion and absolutely nothing else. There is no aspect of life they are promoting the refusal to allow a woman to make a choice regarding her own body. Pro-Fetus works because a large swathe of the “pro-life” movement are the same people who support cutting funding to programs like WIC, food stamps, and other programs which generally help mothers and children. If they were really concerned with “life,” and not just the fetus, then they would aggressively commit themselves to make sure children have enough food to eat, a proper education, and a place to live. Since their concern for the fetus ends as soon as it is born, they are clearly pro-fetus. It’s irrefutable that the people who would deny women the right to have an abortion are trying to control women. If someone thinks they’re more qualified than a pregnant woman to decide what she does with her body, without her input, that’s control, pure and simple.

Attempting to dominate or control another person in a relationship is considered domestic abuse, so how is attempting to control women whom you’ve never met not considered abuse? A woman in Ireland died last year because she was denied a lifesaving abortion for a pregnancy that was already ending in an unavoidable miscarriage. How are the doctors who denied her that life saving procedure any better than a man who tells a woman how to dress, or what to do? If controlling what a woman does with her time is considered abuse then denying that same woman a medical procedure should be considered equally abhorrent.

A lot of the arguments that fuel the anti-abortion debate are religious in nature. Since not everyone follows the same religion, trying to assert your religious beliefs over other people can be considered nothing less than pro-religious control. Not all of the “pro-life” movement is opposed to abortion, necessarily, but they are in favor of controlling people on the basis of religion. Rick Santorum, for example, who strongly opposes abortion for religious reasons, had no problem with his own wife having a life saving abortion. Despite the fact that his own wife needed one, because of his religion, he continues to insist that it should be denied to other women. What’s more controlling than that?

 John Fugelsang ✔ @JohnFugelsang
Only in America can you be Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-War, Pro-Unmanned Drones, Pro-Torture, & still call yourself 'Pro-Life.'
12:32 PM - 25 Jan 2011

In his 1996 HBO special Back in Town, the late comic legend and social critic George Carlin nailed the hypocrisy of social conservatives who rail against abortion and birth control with “pro-life” rhetoric while simultaneously attacking social programs designed to support struggling families, supporting war and inciting violence against women. “They’re all in favor of the unborn,” Carlin says in the clip. “They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you!” Carlin paced the stage, hyping the audience with assertion that the same conservatives who use pro-family rhetoric object to programs like food aid, free school lunches and cash payments to the nation’s many deeply impoverished families. “No nothing! No neonatal care, no day care, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing! If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re preschool, you’re fucked!”

And fucked they remain: Budget proposals adopted earlier this year by the Republican-controlled House and Senate budget committees call for $3 trillion in federal spending cuts from 2016 through 2025. The progressive Center for Budgetary and Policy Priorities estimated that the each plan gets “more than two-thirds of its non-defense budget cuts from programs for people with low or modest incomes even though these programs constitute less than one-quarter of federal program costs.” Meanwhile, child poverty rates in the U.S. are already some of the highest in the developed world, and have been increasing since the mid-2000s, the Washington Post has reported.

“Conservatives don’t give a shit about you until you reach military age,” Carlin said. “Then they think you are just fine. Just what they’ve been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.” A 2002 Gallup poll showed members of the religious right were far more likely to support strikes on Saddam Hussein’s regime than those with relaxed religious views. As of 2008, polls of evangelical Christian leaders demonstrated many supported continuing the war in Iraq. So at least as far as the U.S.’ most recent major war is concerned, Carlin’s contention that social conservatives are fairly aggressive on foreign policy stands up to scrutiny.

Carlin also hit anti-abortion activists for extremist violence and intimidation against providers that was common then and is increasingly common now. “These people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors!” Carlin says in the special. “What kind of pro-life is that? What, they’ll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they might just have to kill it?” People who harass or attack women’s health care clinics or their staffers and patients aren’t representative of the entire anti-abortion movement. But the wing of a movement that feels comfortable using force and threats to achieve their ends is inseparable from it. As Mother Jones reports, the heated rhetoric among presidential candidates that grew out of July’s Center of Medical Progress video controversy coincided with a surge in violence, threats and arson directed at Planned Parenthood clinics, culminating in a Nov. 27 massacre at a Colorado Springs, Colorado, location, resulting in three deaths.

Carlin makes one final assertion in his 1996 set: “They’re not pro-life. You know what they are, they’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets. Anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women.” He’s painting with a broad brush. But even today, statistics back Carlin’s claims. A 2013 ABC News poll found just 23% of Republicans want more women elected to office, despite the U.S.’ already scant female representation in elected positions. More recently, a 2015 survey concluded participants who agreed with sexist statements about women were much more likely to hold anti-abortion views — including both people with paternalistic views toward women and outright misogynists. Misogyny is defined as the hatred of women, and what’s more hateful to women than treating them like they’re too stupid to decide what to do with their bodies, by denying them a procedure which could be life saving, medically necessary or, in many cases, the responsible choice to make? I can’t think of many things more hateful than letting women die, or forcing them to carry a rapist’s baby to term, because you think you’re more qualified to make their medical decisions than they are.

I’m not necessarily an apologist for Obamacare, as I much prefer Medicare for All, but one cannot say they are legitimately pro-life while opposing equal access to healthcare– especially by the poor. To say “you are required to carry your baby to term” in one breath and then say “but want vaccines so that your baby doesn’t get sick and die? Sorry, you’re out of luck there” is the opposite of being pro-life. Arguments like this reduce the movement to simply being pro-birth, and nothing more. I recall an occasion during one of the many, many, many republican debates during the last primary season. Ron Paul was asked if someone who was ill, but didn’t purchase healthcare, should simply be allowed to die. Members of the crowd quickly shouted out “yeah!”, and Paul’s response, left me unconvinced that he fundamentally disagreed with the statement. Ensuring people have the medical care they need to live, is part of being in favor of life.

After adjustments for inflation, the minimum wage today is $2 less an hour than it was in 1968. However, a study by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United revealed that by simply raising the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $10.00 an hour, it would lift 58% of the working poor out of poverty. There are millions of Americans stuck in an inescapable life of poverty- not because of laziness, but because their hard work at lagging minimum wages are insufficient for basic needs, such as housing. According to the Low Income Housing Coalition, the best case scenario for minimum wage workers can be found in Arkansas and West Virginia where one would only need to work 63 hours a week at minimum wage in order to rent a two bedroom apartment at fair market value. Live in New York? You’re looking at working 136 hours a week in order to pay just for housing. My home state of Maine? That’s 81 hours a week. It’s impossible to say that we are legitimately in favor of “life” when millions among us are unable to afford basic housing regardless of how hard they work.

If you’re Pro-Life then you can’t support unrestricted gun rights. This one should be the most obvious, but it’s not. Individuals with a pro-life worldview need to take a more reasonable approach to this issue than those who typically control the narrative. If one holds a foundational belief that we need to radically side on the side of life, then we ought be willing to sacrifice some of our rights in order to be true to that guiding principle. The “Christian” life bids you to set aside your own personal rights and interest in the name of others, and we can start here on the issue of gun control. It’s an impossible argument to call oneself pro-life, but to also argue that any citizen ought have access to military grade assault weapons, which are objects designed to take life away. There is no other purpose for guns, beyond killing things. To resist reasonable, middle-ground measures such as background checks, registrations, and mandatory safety training does not indicate that one is holistically on the side of life. In society, we recognize that cars are great tools, but can also harm people. As such, we require a license to operate one, registration of all cars, insurance on cars in case someone is injured, and accountability measures for people who don’t play by the rules. To completely abandon that logic with guns, is beyond fathomable- especially if one claims to be in favor of life. People who are legitimately in favor of life, need to be far more reasonable with compromise on the whole gun discussion.

Being pro, or in favor of life, means that we are in favor of all life. That includes those who are on death row. If you are “Jesus centered” in your approach and development of worldview, you should see that Jesus himself in John chapter 8, stood in the way of an imminent execution. And, while perhaps the law had the right to demand death for certain criminals, as far as Jesus was concerned there isn’t anyone alive who is worthy of acting as the hangman. Culturally, we know that capital punishment is expensive, ineffective, and inconsistently practiced across racial lines– which alone make it an unjust practice even without solid theological reasons for opposing it. Worldwide, 93% of all executions are carried out by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United States. Hardly the international pro-life community, no? Our culture in the US has become so captivated by retributive justice, we have completely lost sight of the task of restorative justice. If we value life, we must strive to see lives restored instead of lives destroyed.

History, and extensive studies, have shown that making abortion illegal doesn’t get rid of abortion; it only makes the procedure more dangerous and unregulated, which causes more women to die from complications. According to the World Health Organization, “illegal abortion is usually unsafe abortion.” Anyone who would call themselves “pro-life,” while simultaneously trying to outlaw abortions, making them more deadly, is a hypocrite.

I consider myself pro-life because I support programs and policies which help people to thrive, including abortion. There’s nothing “pro-life,” or noble, about forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term, especially when that fetus could put her life in danger, was conceived through rape or incest, or would be subjected to a life of difficulty and poverty because the mother is unable to provide for a child. We can’t continue to allow people to pretend that they support life, on the basis that they oppose abortion. We have to be willing to say, “No, that’s not what you are, and I’m not going to let you lie about your position in order to make it sound more appealing. You are not pro-life. If you were, you would be fundraising for orphanages instead of protesting at abortion clinics.”
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"'I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of,' Chomsky said."

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Noam Chomsky: People Who Didn’t Vote For Clinton To Block Trump Made A ‘Bad Mistake’
“I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of.”
By Paige Lavender, November 25, 2916

Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, said people who didn’t vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block a Donald Trump presidency made a “bad mistake.”

 Mehdi Hasan ✔ @mehdirhasan
Noam Chomsky tells me on @ajupfront that leftists who didn't vote for Clinton to block Trump made a "bad mistake":
10:10 AM - 24 Nov 2016

Chomsky told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan there’s a “moral issue” in voting “against the greater evil” ― Trump, in this case ― even if you don’t like the other candidate. But he also said there was a factual question regarding this year’s candidates, pointing out Trump and Clinton’s “very different” records.

“I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of,” Chomsky said.

Chomsky said in January he’d vote for Clinton if he lived in a swing state, despite his support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran against Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary.

“Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a skeptic who says we can’t do it,” Chomsky said. “What they are saying is, ‘Let’s destroy the world.’ Is that worth voting against? Yeah.”

Chomsky criticized Trump in May, calling his refusal to accept the science behind climate change “a death knell for the [human] species.” Chomsky has also been critical of the Republican Party, saying the GOP’s policies pose “serious danger to human survival.”

Chomsky told The Huffington Post in February, Trump’s success could be attributed to his ability to appeal to “deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors like those that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war and catastrophe.”
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"'There is little that looks worse on a man than a tie that is either too long or too short.'" The long tie, combined with his silly hair style, leaves Trump open to ridicule. But do we care? NO!

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What it says about Trump that his neckties are too long
By Eric Zorn, November 25, 2016

I once picked on Democratic Vice President Al Gore in a column because he claps like a child, so be assured there's nothing partisan in my attack today on Republican President-elect Donald Trump for wearing his neckties like a little boy.

When we're young and small and compelled by social circumstance to dress up, standard-issue ties are too long for us and so hang like leashes from our collars. We can't help it.

But as we get older and larger, we learn to knot our ties so the point extends right to the belt buckle — "no more, no less," as sartorial expert John T. Molloy put it in his seminal 1975 guidebook "Dress for Success."

"There is little that looks worse on a man than a tie that is either too long or too short."

Trump, however, still knots his ties so that they hang well below his belt buckle — often several inches, a fashion-don't so egregious that GQ recently used it as the subject of a photo spread titled, "The one style lesson you can actually learn from Donald Trump."

The now-defunct men's fashion magazine Details once asked about Trump, "What in the name of Macy's clearance aisle is the deal with his tie?"

Earlier this year, Business Insider's senior finance correspondent Linette Lopez referred to Trump's dangling neckwear as a "tragic mistake" and noted that "too-long ties are often used for comic effect, and unless your name is Krusty and you work at the Big Top, they are generally frowned upon in the workplace."

Surely more than one adviser has told Trump this, perhaps while gently reproving him for his '70s-game-show-host coiffure. And, just as surely, the conclusion that he is prone to ignoring sound advice is more disquieting than how he wears his ties.
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"In a separate suit filed against the state by Detroit schoolchildren, they claim lack of state funding in city schools has denied them literacy. ... Gov. Rick Snyder and state education officials said there is no fundamental right to literacy for Detroit students."

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How much could Trump’s education secretary damage public schools? Just look at Detroit.
Detroit schools help explain Betsy DeVos’ mission.
By Casey Quinlan, November 25, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Betsy DeVos, a philanthropist and a strong supporter of school choice, as his education secretary. And although DeVos isn’t a household name, she could end up having a big impact on public school students across the country.

For evidence, just take a look at Detroit — a city where DeVos’ influence shows how an expansion of charter schools without the proper oversight can hurt the quality of education for low-income students.

Throughout DeVos’ career as a school choice advocate, she has aggressively pushed for the expansion of charter schools. Although many charter schools across the country benefit low-income families seeking an alternative to public schools, educational equity advocates often raise concerns that a lack of accountability allows less effective charter schools to thrive. And DeVos has been at the forefront of efforts to push against this accountability.

DeVos sits on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, which advocates for its education reform priorities in the Michigan state legislature. This group is responsible for pushing the legislature to end its plans for a Detroit commission to regulate charter schools.

Sixteen years ago, DeVos, and her husband, Dick DeVos, also pushed for a statewide ballot initiative to amend the state constitution so that tax money could go toward private school tuition. Although this effort didn’t succeed, charter schools in the area expanded anyway. The state lifted its cap on the number of charter schools. Twenty-three percent of Michigan students did not enroll in their home public school district in the fall of last year, which allows students to attend charter schools or public schools outside their community, with 10 percent of students attending charter schools.

Now, Detroit has the second largest share of students in charter schools, at 44 percent, behind New Orleans. Each year, nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money goes to charter schools, but oversight is very weak, according to a yearlong investigation by the Detroit Free Press released in August.

The investigation, which looked at 20 years of charter school records, found evidence of wasteful spending, schools with poor academic records that continue to enroll students for years, and school staff using their positions to profit off of deals for themselves or others. It also found that many charter schools run by for-profit companies did not disclose how they spend taxpayer money.

Some states make it clear that charter authorizers are supposed to provide oversight and accountability to schools in exchange for revenue, but that is not the case in Michigan, The Atlantic reported. An Education Trust-Midwest report released in February found that Michigan charter authorizers “face almost no accountability” for their performance.

Another issue in Michigan is the involvement of for-profit companies in charter schools. The state allows a wide range of education institutions to create charters — such as school districts, community colleges, and universities — and receive 3 percent of the money that goes to those schools. They also get the huge benefit of being the only entities with the power to close schools that are underperforming. Now, for-profit companies operate 80 percent of charters in Michigan, according to The New York Times.

Although the average charter school student in Detroit is making greater gains than public school students in Detroit, data on proficiency in math and reading show that both charter school and public schools have a long road to improving students’ academic performance.

Only 17 percent of Detroit charter school students were rated proficient in math, compared to 13 percent of students in traditional public schools, according to Michigan Association of Public School Academies data released in 2015. Forty-three percent of Detroit charter students were rated proficient in reading compared with 39 percent of students in traditional public schools. Compared to the state average, these scores are still low. Eight in 10 Michigan charters had academic achievement below the state average in both reading and math, according to a Center for Research on Educational Outcomes at Stanford University report.

The steady growth of charter schools in Detroit comes at a time when the Detroit Public School system is struggling financially. Last spring, DPS filed a lawsuit against the state claiming it violated the civil rights of students through its emergency manager law. The district has been run by emergency managers since 2009, weakening the authority of the board of education and allowing an unelected emergency manager to make decisions about school finances. In a separate suit filed against the state by Detroit schoolchildren, they claim lack of state funding in city schools has denied them literacy. Attorneys for Gov. Rick Snyder and state education officials said there is no fundamental right to literacy for Detroit students.

Teachers have been bringing awareness to the issue of poor funding of Detroit schools in the form of protests. Last January, teachers protested the conditions of public schools and took photos of inedible food, damaged school buildings, and dead rodents and posted them on social media. Since then, there have inspections of schools, which confirmed that many schools were unsafe places for kids.

In the midst of all of these issues, DeVos has pushed for less regulation and oversight of charter schools and stated that public schools are failing children — all without advocating for better state funding of public schools.

David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Michigan, told The Detroit News that the choice of DeVos would be “devastating for public education.”

Hecker added, “She wants her million and billionaire friends to profit off of childhood education.”
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Oh, sure, of course. Say, didn't they come from the U.S.?

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"The Electoral College is an anti-democratic anachronism in a democratic age."

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The dangerous scheme to deny Trump the presidency
By Damon Linker, November 23, 2016

It began with an online petition launched in the hours immediately following Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the general election. Yes, Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College, the argument ran, but she won the popular vote (by a large and still swelling margin). That justifies asking electors to abandon Trump and switch their support to Clinton when they vote on Dec. 19 to make the outcome official.

This is a terrible idea guaranteed to spark a constitutional crisis.

By all means, work to abolish the Electoral College once the 2016 election is behind us — there are strong arguments for and against making such a change — but asking electors to disregard the electoral vote outcome in favor of siding with the popular vote winner this year smacks of an attempted coup. Trump and his supporters would undoubtedly charge that the system is rigged. And they would be right.

A thoughtful liberal pundit and a trio of respected scholars have floated a similar but more sophisticated argument in favor of hijacking the Electoral College vote: Elevating Donald Trump to the presidency constitutes an emergency situation, a moment of existential threat to the republic. The Electoral College was designed to prevent precisely this kind of threat — by allowing electors to overrule the popular will when it appeared ready to empower a potential dictator. Republican electors would never break from Trump in large numbers if they thought it would lead Clinton to prevail. The key is therefore to get a bloc of electors from states Clinton won to choose a Republican alternative to Trump. That could embolden electors from states Trump carried to switch to someone else. As the scholars sum up their proposal, "If only 37 electors from states Trump won join this bipartisan effort, the election will be thrown into the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority can then make a final choice."

This proposal may be somewhat less fanciful and egregiously irresponsible than one attached to the online petition, but not by much. It's crucially important that those of us who are deeply alarmed by the prospect of a President Trump take a stand against the proposal and explain why it needs to be forcefully rejected.

Let's begin by acknowledging what is the most likely outcome of this anti-Trump gambit: that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives newly empowered to pick the president ultimately chooses … Donald Trump. There are two interrelated reasons why this is by far the likeliest result: Trump himself is extremely popular with a plurality of Republican voters, and there is no consensus among those who dislike Trump regarding who to support as an alternative. This is the same dynamic that led Trump to survive every effort to sink him during and after the Republican primaries. Very few politicians were willing to risk antagonizing the Republican electorate by turning against him, and that would almost certainly continue to be the case through deliberation in the House over who should become president on Jan. 20.

And that points to why the worst possible outcome of the electors throwing the decision to the House would be for Trump to be denied the presidency. Yes, Trump poses a very serious threat to the country and its liberal democratic norms, but he is not the root of the problem. His millions of passionate supporters are. Among other things, these voters rallied to Trump because they responded to his message that the country's political and economic system is rigged against them. Denying the presidency to their preferred candidate after they'd been told for weeks that he prevailed in the election would confirm every conspiracy they ever entertained.

That would be civic dynamite.

Think it's bad that 200 or so neo-Nazis gathered this past weekend for a celebratory conference in the nation's capital? Just wait until that number surges into the thousands or more, which is exactly what would happen if Trump's most committed supporters felt permanently frozen out by the country's political establishment. Democracies don't succumb to dictatorship when a handful of bad individuals ruthlessly seize power from out of the blue. They succumb to dictatorship when a large, angry faction of the population throws its support behind a handful of bad individuals and supports them in ruthlessly seizing power. For those who think we've already reached that point with Trump, I assure you that it could (and may yet) get much, much worse. Trump's opponents need to be extremely careful that they do nothing to hasten that eventuality or make it more likely — by, for example, denying Trump the presidency and thereby driving him and his supporters out of the democratic political system altogether.

The only way the Electoral College maneuver could succeed is if the institution had its own base of legitimacy — if it were widely respected as an august body of Wise Men and Women whose deliberations issued in a dispassionate, extra-partisan expression of the common good. This whole scheme only works if our collective response to such a radical intervention would be, "Thank you for saving us from ourselves."

But of course, no one views the Electoral College this way. In any given election, each state awards a set number of electoral votes. It takes 270 to win. We presume that the outcome is automatic: Whoever gets to 270 is the victor, period. We rarely even think about these electors as people, let alone the wisest among us.

In the scheme proposed by the professors, this body of unelected and unaccountable electors would take it upon themselves to overrule the outcome of both the electoral vote contest and the popular vote contest. Assuming Trump didn't end up prevailing in the House, the end result would be one president-elect deposed by a body lacking in democratic legitimacy and replaced by another also lacking in democratic legitimacy. There are probably actions that would do more to delegitimize America's political institutions, but I'm hard pressed to think of what they might be.

The Electoral College is an anti-democratic anachronism in a democratic age. Americans are free to consider doing away with it once the 2016 election is behind us. In the meantime, responsible Americans should refrain from encouraging electors to think of themselves as the conscience of the nation. They have no standing to serve in that role, and in acting otherwise they could easily end up making our very serious problems even worse.
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"The Constitution says nothing about “winner take all.” It says nothing to suggest that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way."

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The Constitution lets the electoral college choose the winner. They should choose Clinton.
By Lawrence Lessig, November 24, 2016

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “Republic, Lost: Version 2.0.” In 2015, he was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers. It is compelled by nothing in our Constitution. It should be rejected by anyone with any understanding of our democratic traditions  — most important, the electors themselves.

The framers believed, as Alexander Hamilton put it, that “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the [president].” But no nation had ever tried that idea before. So the framers created a safety valve on the people’s choice. Like a judge reviewing a jury verdict, where the people voted, the electoral college was intended to confirm — or not — the people’s choice. Electors were to apply, in Hamilton’s words, “a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice” — and then decide. The Constitution says nothing about “winner take all.” It says nothing to suggest that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way. Instead, their wisdom — about whether to overrule “the people” or not — was to be free of political control yet guided by democratic values. They were to be citizens exercising judgment,  not cogs turning a wheel.

Many think we should abolish the electoral college. I’m not convinced that we should. Properly understood, the electors can serve an important function. What if the people elect a Manchurian candidate? Or a child rapist? What if evidence of massive fraud pervades a close election? It is a useful thing to have a body confirm the results of a democratic election — so long as that body exercises its power reflectively and conservatively. Rarely — if ever — should it veto the people’s choice. And if it does, it needs a very good reason.

So, do the electors in 2016 have such a reason?

Only twice in our past has the electoral college selected a president against the will of the people — once in the 19th century and once on the cusp of the 21st. (In 1824, it was Congress that decided the election for John Quincy Adams; likewise in 1876, it was Congress that gave disputed electoral college votes to Rutherford B. Hayes.)

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland but won in the electoral college, only because Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall turned New York away from the reformer Cleveland (by fewer than 15,000 votes). In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote by a tiny fraction — half a percent — and beat Al Gore in the electoral college by an equally small margin — less than 1 percent.

In both cases, the result violated what has become one of the most important principles governing our democracy — one person, one vote. In both cases, the votes of some weighed much more heavily than the votes of others. Today, the vote of a citizen in Wyoming is four times as powerful as the vote of a citizen in Michigan. The vote of a citizen in Vermont is three times as powerful as a vote in Missouri. This denies Americans the fundamental value of a representative democracy — equal citizenship. Yet nothing in our Constitution compels this result.

Instead, if the electoral college is to control who becomes our president, we should take it seriously by understanding its purpose precisely. It is not meant to deny a reasonable judgment by the people. It is meant to be a circuit breaker — just in case the people go crazy.

In this election, the people did not go crazy. The winner, by far, of the popular vote is the most qualified candidate for president in more than a generation. Like her or not, no elector could have a good-faith reason to vote against her because of her qualifications. Choosing her is thus plainly within the bounds of a reasonable judgment by the people.

Yet that is not the question the electors must weigh as they decide how to cast their ballots. Instead, the question they must ask themselves is whether there is any good reason to veto the people’s choice.

There is not. And indeed, there is an especially good reason for them not to nullify what the people have said — the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. We are all citizens equally. Our votes should count equally. And since nothing in our Constitution compels a decision otherwise, the electors should respect the equal vote by the people by ratifying it on Dec. 19.

They didn’t in 1888 — when Tammany Hall ruled New York and segregation was the law of the land. And they didn’t in 2000 — when in the minds of most, the election was essentially a tie. Those are plainly precedents against Hillary Clinton.

But the question today is which precedent should govern today — Tammany Hall and Bush v. Gore, or one person, one vote?

The framers left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton’s favor.
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"Krugman has taken to Twitter frequently since Trump was elected to express concerns over various parts of a Trump presidency." The same concerns we have.

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KRUGMAN: Trump is going to bring about 'an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in US history'
By Bob Bryan, November 21, 2016

Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist, once again took to Twitter on Monday to express his discontent with the future Donald Trump administration.

In a series of tweets, Krugman decried the possibility of corruption within the Trump administration, particularly in regard to Trump's massive proposed infrastructure plan and foreign policy.

"We're about to enter, or may already have entered, an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in US history," Krugman tweeted on Monday.

Krugman suggested he believes that the public-private co-investment strategy of Trump's proposed $550 billion infrastructure package would allow the president-elect to give favorable contracts to associates or even his own companies. Krugman wrote that Trump's family could take $10 billion "skimmed off the top" without anyone noticing.

"Expect to see lots of privatization and a general shift from transparent to murky so that favors can be traded," Krugman wrote.

Trump has already prompted questions about his business dealings and family as he transitions into the presidency. Presidents typically put their private business interests in a blind trust during their terms. Trump has said that his business interests would be shifted to his children.

Yet Ivanka Trump sat in on a meeting last week with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which critics have said is a conflict of interest.

Additionally, Krugman said the president-elect's foreign policy would be tilted toward authoritarian governments that could trade favors with Trump.

"And think about the pro-tyrant bias of foreign policy," Krugman wrote.

"Democratic regimes — say, in Europe — are by their own rules unable to offer de-facto personal bribes to the US president," he continued. "Putin's Russia or, for that matter, Xi's China, will be fine with sending huge business to the profiteer-in-chief. And that will cause a tilt of US policy toward authoritarian regimes."

Krugman has taken to Twitter frequently since Trump was elected to express concerns over various parts of a Trump presidency.

Krugman concluded Monday's tirade by telling people to "stay alert."

Here's the entire tweetstorm:

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
We're about to enter, or may already have entered, an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in U.S. history. What does it mean? 1/
7:04 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
We're about to enter, or may already have entered, an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in U.S. history. What does it mean? 1/

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
Important to realize that the money stolen by the first family is a minor issue; $10 billion, say, skimmed off the top is rounding error 2/
7:06 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
Important to realize that the money stolen by the first family is a minor issue; $10 billion, say, skimmed off the top is rounding error 2/

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
What matters much more is the distortion of policy in directions that can be monetized. Gratuitous private investors in infrastructure 3/
7:07 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
What matters much more is the distortion of policy in directions that can be monetized. Gratuitous private investors in infrastructure 3/

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
is just the start. Expect to see lots of privatization and a general shift from transparent to murky so that favors can be traded 4/
7:08 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
is just the start. Expect to see lots of privatization and a general shift from transparent to murky so that favors can be traded 4/ 

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
And think about the pro-tyrant bias of foreign policy. Democratic regimes -- say, in Europe -- are by their own rules unable to offer 5/
7:10 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
And think about the pro-tyrant bias of foreign policy. Democratic regimes -- say, in Europe -- are by their own rules unable to offer 5/

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
de facto personal bribes to the U.S. president. Putin's Russia or, for that matter, Xi's China, will be fine with sending huge business 6/
7:11 AM - 21 Nov 2016

21 Nov
 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
de facto personal bribes to the U.S. president. Putin's Russia or, for that matter, Xi's China, will be fine with sending huge business 6/

 Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman
to the profiteer-in-chief. And that will cause a tilt of U.S. policy toward authoritarian regimes. Stay alert 7/
7:12 AM - 21 Nov 2016

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But, but, but.... he doesn't HAVE any character!

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"The billionaire real estate developer also dismissed any need to disentangle himself from his financial holdings, despite rising questions about how his global business dealings might affect his decision-making as the nation’s chief executive."

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How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them?
By Paul Waldman, November 23, 2016

While we’re still analyzing the election results and debating the importance of different factors to the final outcome, everyone agrees that white working class voters played a key part in Donald Trump’s victory, in some cases by switching their votes and in some cases by turning out when they had been nonvoters before.

And now that he’s about to take office, he’s ready to deliver on what he promised them, right? Well, maybe not so much:

President-elect Donald Trump abruptly abandoned some of his most tendentious campaign promises Tuesday, saying he does not plan to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email system or the dealings of her family foundation, has an “open mind” about a climate-change accord from which he vowed to withdraw the United States and is no longer certain that torturing terrorism suspects is a good idea.

The billionaire real estate developer also dismissed any need to disentangle himself from his financial holdings, despite rising questions about how his global business dealings might affect his decision-making as the nation’s chief executive.

And it’s not just that; at the same time, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are getting ready to move on their highest priorities, cutting taxes for the wealthy, scrapping oversight on Wall Street, and lightening regulations on big corporations.

Imagine you’re one of those folks who went to Trump rallies and thrilled to his promises to take America back from the establishment, who felt your heart stir as he promised to torture prisoners, who got your “Trump That Bitch” T-shirt, who was overjoyed to finally have a candidate who tells it like it is. What are you thinking as you watch this?

If you have any sense, you’re coming to the realization that it was all a scam. You got played. While you were chanting “Lock her up!” he was laughing at you for being so gullible. While you were dreaming about how you’d have an advocate in the Oval Office, he was dreaming about how he could use it to make himself richer. He hasn’t even taken office yet and everything he told you is already being revealed as a lie.

During the campaign, Trump made two kinds of promises to those white working class voters. One was very practical, focused on economics. In coal country, he said he’d bring back all the coal jobs that have been lost to cheap natural gas (even as he promotes more fracking of natural gas; figure that one out). In the industrial Midwest, he said he’d bring back all the labor-intensive factory jobs that were mostly lost to automation, not trade deals. These promises were utterly ludicrous, but most of the target voters seemed not to care.

The second kind of promise was emotional and expressive. It was about turning back the clock to a time when immigrants hadn’t come to your town, when women weren’t so uppity, when you could say whatever you wanted and you didn’t feel like the culture and the economy were leaving you behind. So Trump said he’d toss Hillary Clinton in jail, force everyone to say “Merry Christmas” again, and sue those dastardly liberal news organizations into submission.

And of course, there were promises — like building a wall on the southern border and making Mexico pay for it just so they know who’s boss — that claimed to serve a practical purpose but also had an important expressive purpose. And now one by one Trump is casting them all off.

So what are we left with? What remains is Trump’s erratic whims, his boundless greed, and the core of Republican policies Congress will pursue, which are most definitely not geared toward the interests of working class whites. He can gut environmental regulations, but that doesn’t mean millions of people are going to head back to the coal mines — it was market forces more than anything else that led to coal’s decline. He can renegotiate trade deals, but that doesn’t mean that the labor-intensive factory jobs are coming back. And by the way, the high wages, good benefits, and job security those jobs used to offer? That was thanks to labor unions, which Republicans are now going to try to destroy once and for all.

Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it.

So what happens in two years when there’s a congressional election and two years after that when Trump runs for a second term? Those voters may look around and say, Hey wait a minute. That paradise of infinite winning Trump promised? It didn’t happen. My community still faces the same problems it did before. There’s no new factory in town with thousands of jobs paying great salaries. Everybody doesn’t have great health insurance with no cost-sharing for incredibly low premiums. I still hear people speaking Spanish from time to time. Women and minorities are still demanding that I treat them with respect. Music and movies and TV still make me feel like I’m being left behind. When Trump told me he’d wipe all that away, he was conning me. In fact, in many ways he was the fullest expression of the caricature of politicians (everything they say is a lie, they’re only out for themselves) I thought I was striking back against when I supported him.

Those voters may decide to vote for a Democrat next time. Or they may be demobilized, deciding that there isn’t much point to voting at all. The nearly all-white areas where turnout shot up in 2016 might settle right back down to where they used to be.

Or maybe Trump will find a way to actually improve the lives of working class voters. That’s theoretically possible, but absolutely nothing he has done or said so far suggests that he has any idea how to do it, or even the inclination. So he may try to keep the fires of hatred, resentment, and fear burning, in the hopes that people forget that he hasn’t given them the practical things he said he would.
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"It’s clear Trump’s rhetoric has given new reign [sic] to the racist and xenophobic prejudices held among some Americans."

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The Donald Trump presidency so far, in one tweet
By Tara Golshan, November 22, 2016

Update: This article has been updated to reflect Trump’s recent comments in an interview with the New York Times.

Since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump has returned to his typical tweeting habits: He’s feuded with the cast of Broadway musical Hamilton, called Saturday Night Live “one-sided,” censured the “failing” and “nasty” New York Times, lambasted the “crooked media” for reporting corruption claims against him, and lamented not having “the time to go through a long but winning trial” on the Trump University lawsuit.

But as Politico’s Dan Diamond pointed out, what president-elect Trump has not tweeted about is more telling of what’s to come. He has not tweeted about the spate of hate crimes being carried out in his name:

 Dan Diamond ✔ @ddiamond
Trump tweets since election
- Blasting media: 12
- Blasting 'Hamilton': 4
- Blasting people committing hate crimes in his name: 0
6:46 AM - 22 Nov 2016 · Washington, DC

At a conference over the weekend, alt-right think tank National Policy Institute President Richard Spencer’s opening remarks — “Hail Trump, hail our people” — were met with Nazi salutes. Southern Poverty Law Center has recorded 200 alleged hate crimes so far.

"Since the election, we've seen a big uptick in incidents of vandalism, threats, intimidation spurred by the rhetoric surrounding Mr. Trump's election," Richard Cohen, SPLC president, told USA Today. "The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats."

It’s clear Trump’s rhetoric has given new reign [sic] to the racist and xenophobic prejudices held among some Americans. In an interview with the New York Times Tuesday, asked directly about the Nazi salutes made in honor of his victory, Trump condemned the action. But Trump, who has had to denounce the support of Ku Klux Klansmen in the past, hasn’t used his preferred 140-character platform to comment on the recent outpouring of white nationalist crime.

And his reason for largely ignoring the hate might be buried in yet another tweet attacking the New York Times:

 Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that - but why announce?
3:36 AM - 22 Nov 2016

In other words, Trump doesn’t seem to understand why you would “announce” negative or unpleasant truths about yourself. It’s a mantra he has followed throughout his campaign, spinning violence at his rallies into the “passion” of the American people, or ignoring it all together.
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