Good news: We are still here

It is difficult to summarize all the stupid, awful things Trump has done since taking office since there are so many stupid, awful things to catalog–and it’s barely been over four months since he was sworn in (I’ve been swearing the last four months, too).

The good news is that he still hasn’t blown up the world. Yet.

As of today, his Gallup disapproval rating is 53%. That’s actually below peak disapproval of 59%. Bafflingly, 41% approve. This number astonishes me. It means that, on average, four out of every ten Americans will tell you that they approve of the job Trump is doing.

This is the same Trump who has been a reckless, racist, blithering, embarrassing, narcissistic disaster of a president. He has bumbled more in four months than the worst presidents could manage over eight years. He makes dumb little kids seem smart.

What is wrong with America?

Still, the world hasn’t blown up yet.

April Fools’ Day is dumb and I agree with Elizabeth Lopatto

Today is April 1 and thus April Fools’ Day. Elizabeth Lopatto has a nice article on The Verge titled Everyone hates April Fools’ Day — so why does it endure?

It has some history on the origins of this dubious “holiday” but rightly focuses on how dumb and annoying it is. It’s basically a day to be a mean liar like Donald Trump or that guy who tells a joke that everyone politely laughs at in an obligatory way.

A lot of internet sites and companies that take part seem to be going through the motions now so maybe it is finally starting to die out. Blizzard is phoning it in through lazy fake patch notes, Google has recycled a Pac-Man gag in their maps. Here’s hoping the time and effort invested in these fitfully amusing stunts are put into something more useful, like providing hair brushes for cats.

Trump is a record-setting president

Record-setting at being unpopular, that is.

This Gallup poll shows Trump’s approval rating now stands at 36%. This is a little over 60 days into his term as president. You know, when the president is normally still popular, having just been elected.

Trump’s current 36% is two percentage points below Barack Obama’s low point of 38%, recorded in 2011 and 2014. Trump has also edged below Bill Clinton’s all-time low of 37%, recorded in the summer of 1993, his first year in office, as well as Gerald Ford’s 37% low point in January and March 1975. John F. Kennedy’s lowest approval rating was 56%; Dwight Eisenhower’s was 48%.

But good news! It can get worse, as these past presidents have demonstrated:

Presidents George W. Bush (lowest approval rating: 25%), George H.W. Bush (29%), Ronald Reagan (35%), Jimmy Carter (28%), Richard Nixon (24%), Lyndon Johnson (35%) and Harry Truman (22%) all had job approval ratings lower than 36% at least once during their administrations.

Mind you, these presidents actually had to do stuff to earn those low approval ratings. Trump is just naturally gifted.

The latest polling came after the Republicans pulled their American Health Care Act from a vote in the House. These are the same Republicans that railed against the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare as many called it) for seven years, vowing to repeal it and replace it with something better. Finally, with control of all three branches of government–the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency–they couldn’t do it.

Trump blamed the Democrats for not voting for a terrible plan. The Tea Party (“Freedom caucus”) want to burn down the country and were opposed to the AHCA because it didn’t have enough burning. Enough of the few sane Republicans balked that they realized it was unlikely to pass, so it got pulled. Trump also blamed the Tea Party contingent. He did not blame his own foolish brinkmanship (demanding a vote on a Friday before they had enough votes). He figured he could boss his party around and found out he couldn’t.

Because he is an untalented idiot.

Because he has more ego than sense.

Because his father handed him a fortune and he only excels in spending it poorly and having businesses go bankrupt, showing all the savvy of a damp towel.

And yet I still come back to 62 million Americans voted for him. And the average Republican still loves him, even as his first two months has been a string of disasters and embarrassments.

Because, apparently, 62 million Americans really like having an untalented idiot in the White House. One of their own, perhaps.

Filtering for a better future

I subscribed to a Pinterest newsletter until it started regularly including content that I was not only not interested in, but found unwelcome. This happened despite specifically indicating what my interests were. Somehow I still ended up getting loads on “pinterests” featuring topless tattooed women on motorcycles. I mean, if you like that, great. But I don’t and Pinterest really, really thought I did.

I subscribed to a Medium daily digest and the first one I got was an unusually rich trove of interesting topics and info. This proved to be a fluke as it subsequent digests were nothing but self-referential articles about getting more people to read your posts on Medium mixed in with right-wing screeds or poorly-written and unoriginal stories. I’m perfectly fine with being unoriginal, provided the spin provided is interesting or well-constructed. Instead, I find articles where the rules of English have been tossed aside in favor of a weird quasi-informal tone that reads like something halfway between a Facebook post and a text message.

I unsubscribed to the Medium digest.

The Pocket digests still arrive every few days but I find I’m looking at the stories less, in part because some of the digests are thinly-disguised collections of links to support the inevitable “sponsored” story (which is really just an ad) and also because the political stories are almost uniformly depressing these days and much of the rest of the news is the same as well. It feels like hope has been crushed down in favor of the rich and stupid being allowed to shape our inevitably dismal future.

Mostly I wonder if it will ever be possible to filter this kind of stuff so it shows things I find genuinely interesting, while at the same time avoiding the creation of an echo chamber where I only get news or exposure to ideas I already accept. I keep at open mind and I’m always willing to listen (within reason). I imagine a world where I didn’t have a Facebook finger. The Facebook finger is represented by the ‘swipe down’ gesture used by my index finger as I go through the Facebook news feed, vainly hoping for something that isn’t a regurgitated meme, insipid “like and share of you agree” bit of inspiration or an allegedly cool thing/video someone (along with thousands of others) found.

But I don’t think it will ever be possible, at least not until the far future (if we as a species make it), so for now, the only way to filter is to do it manually and suffer the memes, the self-indulgent nonsense and the “you’ll find this interesting!” stuff that is actually the opposite of what you’re looking for.

Bleah. Time to read a book.

January 2017 list: A bad month for jogging and humanity

Here’s an incomplete list of things that sucked in January 2017:

  • snow on New Year’s Eve that added to existing snow and has persisted through the entire month on the trails where I run, making jogging possible only if I include slipping, falling and fracturing bones
  • the mailbox in the building got broken into (on a Sunday when there’s the least amount of mail to steal) and it’s been out of commission for real mail (they’re still delivering junk mail, yay) for a few weeks, with replacement locks that may not be installed until as late as mid-February
  • I only lost 1.7 pounds. Better than gaining but still a bit disappointing
  • everything Donald Trump did in his first 11 days in office. After only eight days he had a negative approval rating and has lived up to every sensible person’s worst fears. A thoroughly awful person and a terrible, awful president. Shame on everyone who cast a vote for this vile excuse for a man
  • there’s more but after Trump, meh

Sad!

Donald Trump officially became the 45th President of the United States today. Sad!

He and his cronies are already busy undoing every positive thing Obama accomplished. They’ll probably keep on with the bad stuff, though (drone killings, chasing after whistleblowers, etc.)

I can’t conceive of a scenario in which the next four years won’t be terrible. I have said it before but I am still utterly astonished that 60 million people voted for someone so obviously unfit for the role. I’d say America deserves what it gets but everyone in the rest of the world will have to suffer, too, and that sucks.

My best hope remains with him (and Pence and well, every Republican) being kidnapped by Bigfoot. I suppose it would require a Bigfoot army. If I can get one thing for Christmas, then, it would be a Bigfoot army. Come on Santa, make it happen.

Three days until who the heck knows what

In three days Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States.

It sounds like the start of a terrible alternate universe novel and yet here we are with reality saying otherwise.

As much as I think he will be a terrible president–he is a terrible person and wholly unsuited for the role 60 million American idiots voted him into–his choice of Vice President is vile in its own way so even fantasy scenarios of Trump not completing his term (gets bored, impeached, kidnapped by Bigfoot, etc.) are unsatisfying, knowing that things would still be bad, just a different kind of bad.

Mostly I just can’t believe so many people voted for him. I used to be fairly cynical when I was younger but as I matured (or at least got older) I mellowed and began to look at my fellow human beings as at least decent and reasonably intelligent types.

But over 60 million voted for Trump. It’s not just mindboggling, it is, to me, literally beyond comprehension. I’ve read a lot of the reasons he got crucial votes in the so-called rust belt that enabled his electoral college victory (there is some solace in that he did lose the popular vote by about 2.8 million) but none of the reasons can compare to the nigh-endless list of why he is completely unfit to be president. Nigh-endless, I say! It’s depressing.

Anyway, here’s hoping the media relentlessly savages him as he deserves. He’s so thin-skinned and petty that maybe he will resign in frustration after all the means things people say about him.

Blargh.

But seriously…

Trump? Really?

I’ve never been more willing to believe that I’m just having a long, fantastically elaborate (and horrible) dream than I have this past month.

On the one hand I am (morbidly) curious to see what happens. On the other, I expect nothing less than complete disaster, which dampens the curiosity by a factor of about a billion.

It’s like the entire world is getting a lump of coal for Christmas. And I’ve been good this year! Mostly!

Goodbye and good riddance to November 2016

The best thing about November was the day it hit 18ºC thanks to the Pineapple Express. I was not expecting t-shirt weather this month.

I also resumed running, so that was good.

Almost everything else sucked, to various degrees. I’m not even going to attempt a list, it would just be sad and depressing. Instead, I will blow a loud raspberry at November 2016 and hope that December is better.

The Post-Truth world is cramping my (writing) style

What a strange and terrible month November has been. It feels like huge things have gone horribly wrong and a bunch of the little things have fallen apart, too. After the first six days it has been a struggle to write anything–my NaNo novel, this blog, thoughts on a napkin, anything. I feel not just uninspired but kind of depressed. Not in the clinical sense, just blah and unmotivated, a pervading sense of “Meh, what does it matter, the world sucks” overriding everything. And it does. The world is full of stupid, ignorant people. I have long suspected this but as the years passed and I grew older and gained more experience and perspective, I shed my cynicism and chose to believe that people are fundamentally good, that they are decent and do the right thing (most of the time).

I no longer believe this.

People are fickle, prone to acting on often irrational emotion, are easily swayed to act against their own interests and are generally not interested in logic, rationality or anything that might disrupt their world view, however absurd or unrealistic it might be. It is the veneer of civilization (which is going to be sorely tested in the next decade or two) that holds everything together, but that veneer is thin and, I think, on the verge of peeling away, with dire consequences.

If you think we are removed from our savage, primitive past, consider what has happened in the last century, the wars, the acts of terrorism, the millions upon millions of people killed. And what were they killed for? Not believing the right ideas. Living on the wrong chunk of land. Nonsense. We fight and kill over nothing worthwhile because we can do no better.

We see people like Trump elected president–an ignorant, bullying, racist, sexist and entirely unfit individual for the office–because we can do no better.

The best we can hope for is that our species somehow survives itself long enough to evolve well past where we are now. Climate change–and remember, Americans just elected a man who thinks it’s a hoax–will force us to face reality, not the preferred bubble so many prefer to see as reality, but the actual, horrible truth.

But we won’t pull together, we will tear apart. We will devolve to our worst selves, incapable of adapting to the massive changes to come. We will do this because we prefer ignorance to reality, because in the end we’d rather help ourselves than help others.

I wish I didn’t believe this because it means the only thing that makes sense to write any more is post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction. And while I love a good post-apocalyptic dystopian story, I’d prefer to write whimsical, funny things, stuff that is slight but entertaining in its own way. But it’s been challenging this month. The news is just so relentlessly awful (the real news–the fake news is even worse).

But if the choice is to despair or hold onto hope, however slim, I have to go for the latter. Who knows, maybe there really is some benevolent alien race waiting to swoop in and harvest save us. Or we’ll figure out cold fusion and lick global warming at the same time. Or a comet will sweep past Earth and the dust in its tail will boost everyone’s intelligence exponentially. “You’re playing 3D chess again? The challenge only starts when you move to 4D chess.”

And flying cars for everyone.

I conclude with two promises to myself: the first is to write something every day. On this blog, in a story, on a napkin. But somewhere. And every day. The second is to retain that thin hope, to stave off pessimism.

Okay, one more: no farmer’s tan next summer.

The Post-Truth world

I saw a phrase used the other day that neatly explains so much of the recent election of Donald Trump as US president (typing that out still feels like indulging in the worst sort of fan fiction).

It’s just two words: post truth. You could hyphenate it or capitalize it or both to make it look more official:

Post-Truth

It is a simple concept. Trump ran on a campaign built on fear, hate and unworkable, impractical promises. He would bring back manufacturing. He would revive the coal industry. He would force Apple to make their computers in America. He’d build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it. Muslims would be essentially banned from entering the country until he could “figure out what was going on.”And nearly 50 million believed enough of these promises/threats to see him elected.

The reality will be much different, of course. But it doesn’t matter because we are now living in the era of Post-Truth. Objective facts, reality itself–these things no longer matter to a large swath (or swatch, if you prefer) of the population. And this is not just a US-specific phenomena, it has just manifested most spectacularly there, with chilling results for the world at large.

Simply put, a lot of people do not care about reality anymore. They don’t care about facts or science. Reason and logic are meaningless. These people have retreated into the safety of the world as they perceive it, as they want it to be. These people are essentially unreachable through conventional means, whether you are seeking their vote or simply asking them to listen objectively to what you have to say.

They will not listen unless they hear what they want to hear.

The danger is a demagogue–like Trump–can manipulate these people and acquire power by telling them what they want to hear, then use that power to do terrible things. And when re-election comes, the people like Trump will deflect and again tell people what they want to hear. “It’s not my fault, I want these great things for you, but the system is against me.” And he will retain their support.

I don’t see an easy way to get past Post-Truth. Maybe everything must collapse before it can be rebuilt.

Climate change may very well provide the key to that.

So as people elect demagogues who placate them by telling them foolish lies they want to believe, the Earth undergoes dramatic transformation as the climate goes through significant warming. Millions, maybe even billions, will die as we collectively do too little and do it too late to help ameliorate the worst of the effects. It sounds like indulging in the worst sort of fan fiction again, but it could happen. All evidence points to it already having begun.

Well, that was depressing. At least we’ll have funny cats on the internet until it all comes crashing down. Promise us you won’t take away the kittens, Mr. Trump.

WTF America

I would never discuss politics on Facebook.

I shouldn’t say never, actually. Probably never is more accurate. I might do it by accident or during a momentary lapse in judgment.

Why would I never discuss politics on Facebook? Because it’s like rolling over a big rock and discovering all the yucky bugs underneath, except the bugs are your FB pals and you never before realized they had political views you find daffy, baffling or downright infuriating. You wished you’d have just left that big rock alone.

But here on my blog I have my own peaceful little echo chamber. I almost never disagree with myself. Every big rock I roll over has  nothing more than rich, nutrient-filled earth under it, the stuff life happily springs from.

When I post on my blog I don’t have to face disappointment from yucky bugs or be tempted into fruitless arguments with people who I had previously found to be nice or sane.

Today’s topic is the U.S. election held on November 8, 2016. That was four days ago. American voters did a silly thing–they elected Donald Trump to be their next president. Just when I was ready to forgive them re-electing George W. Bush after they re-elected Obama, they go and do this.

Trump is a narcissistic bully, thin-skinned, sexist, racist, xenophobic and ignorant on basic facts about the world and his own country. He ran on a campaign of fear and hate, filled with ideas that were vague or terrible or unworkable or all of these things. He acted like a vulgar clown. He demonstrated over the course of a typically drawn-out campaign that he was singularly unfit for the office of the president. And yet he beat out 16 other Republicans to win their nomination. He beat Hillary Clinton (though not in the popular vote) and won it all.

The silver lining is that the vagaries of the loopy Electoral College meant that his victory was extremely narrow and tapped into a unique and fortuitous (for him) set of circumstances. He benefited from low voter turnout: only 50% of eligible voters cast ballots and of those, about 25% voted for Trump.

But these things are inconsequential to the fact that he did win.

Americans have made a venal manchild their next president and already we are seeing emboldened white men attacking minorities. The Ku Klux Klan is celebrating. This is happening because Trump’s hateful, racist rally cries have been legitimized by his victory.

Americans should be ashamed at what they have done to themselves–and to the world. The American people are better than this–or so we had imagined and hoped. The apathy of the tens of millions who didn’t vote must also be held up as shameful in a country that has always prided itself on the strength of its democratic institutions. They have, through their inaction, helped elect a person who doesn’t even know how many amendments the U.S. Constitution has. What sane person would find it to be a good thing to have such ignorance in a president?

I would like to hold out hope here but the best I can manage is that maybe Trump won’t be as terrible as feared. But even in that I see a downside, in that it would help normalize his awfulness and make it that much easier for him to win re-election.

In conclusion: WTF America.