Now that Donald Trump has Won

All the more reason why you shouldn’t rely on social media to get your news fix.

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Seems like Cambridge Analytica is going down in flames. The United Kingdom’s Channel 4 released the first segment of their undercover investigation in which the CEO of the company brags about honey-traps, entrapment, and using spies to dig dirt. The UK’s information officer is seeking a warrant with CA’s offices to be raided this morning.

Edit: This article in The Guardian is also all kinds of worrying.

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Trump has fired McMasters and hired John Bolton as National Security Advisor. That is of course all sorts of worrying, not the least bit of which is Bolton penning an OP ED in the Wall Street Journal advocating for a first strike against North Korea last month. Bolton is of course also an unrepentent cheerleader for the Iraq war, a virulent islamophobe, and leads a Super PAC that employed Cambridge Analytica and is generally funded by the Mercers.

Of course only Congress can declare war. However, the U.S. hasn’t actually officially declared since World War II. At the very least it would still need a Congressional Resolution to authorize the use of military force. It would still be questionable whether the Republican lead congress would go through with that, but let’s just say that all of this has made the elections in 2018 and 2020 even more important.

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Next thing you know, Trump will nominate his pilot to lead the FAA.

Oh wait…

We are already seeing somethings that are affected like ALL (mandatory and voluntary) OT is cancelled for April.

Has not been like this in a long time. I don’t predict it will last long because it has happened in the past, but I feel things could be different.

Not looking forward to any new changes that may come as a result of this.

You likely already know this, but as happens, someone may not. That’s very common in authoritarian regimes. Promoting based on closeness to you and outside of skillset. Famously done by the most recent German authoritarian.

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I guess it is my turn for something beloved from my childhood to be tainted by its creator turning out to be human excrement. “Roseanne” was one of my favorite TV shows back in the day. It was genuinely funny, it showed a working class household with genuine problems which was not common at the time, it had genuine social critique, etc.

The series has now received a revival just like a ton of other shows from the 90s (X-Files, Full House, etc.) and quickly shot up in the ratings. Only problem is that Roseanne Barr in the meantime has become a full-on right-wing conspiracy nutter. Chemtrails, Pizzagate, going after the Parkland shooting surivors, the whole nine yards.

Well fuck.

Crazy thing is, it’s not much of a meantime, either. She was an avowed socialist - even running for the greens on a socialist platform(where she got beat by Jill Stein) and attempting a presidential run with the openly socialist Peace and Freedom party - seemingly right up until the 2016 election. where she surprised almost everyone by going full-on Trump.

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Or her goal was to siphon votes away from the left and divide :-p

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I don’t know what sometimes causes people to completely jump political views like that. Roseanne wasn’t the first and probably won’t be the last.

Dennis Miller, back in the 90s, was about as liberal as they came. However, after 9/11, he became the poster boy for right-wing “comedy.”

Miller got scared as hell by 9/11, and decided to drink the conservative Kool-Aid.

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Maybe it’s just a sign that your beliefs aren’t based on a lot of thought and reflection, making it very easy to overcome whatever tenuous holds you had to your previous ideology.

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I was raised to believe “Creation Science”. The thing that convinced me of evolution’s merits was… surprise: actually learning what it was, instead of the weird telephone-science version.
What I find interesting now is when people scoff at creationists, asking them to explain evolution. A good 50% (ok I didn’t actually count, but… too many for comfort) can’t, or state the telephone-science version.

When your belief isn’t backed by critical thought and matured by exposure to different experiences, your belief is a cardboard box on the porch before a storm.

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And almost certainly not anyone who actually deserves it.

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