To most of these I say "uuhh...yep". This entire list can be boiled down to "because you refused to tolerate my stupidity, called me out on my bigotry, and refused to get aboard the dumbfuck train yourself."

I'm getting tired of this "You didn't listen to us common white folks" crap. No, we listened. We've been listening to it all our lives. We just think you're morally bankrupt, ignorance-exhaulting bigots who's ideas are in no way worthy of being taken seriously. You don't get "political equality". That isn't a thing.

Polls

What if I told you that polls can be misleading, and sometimes flatly wrong (as we've seen recently)..but that doesn't mean we should just dismiss polls and pollsters simply because by it's very nature it's an imperfect science and just believe whatever the hell it is that it's convenient to believe. The truth is that scientific polls are *usually* right. Where they're wrong is the exception and not the rule.

This sort of thinking is no better than climate deniers pointing to 1 piece of data that scientists got wrong out of the thousands and thousands of things they've been right about and claiming that ALL of the data must be wrong if it ALL of it isn't right.

This is no better than Trump dismissing evidence of Russian election meddling because it was provided by "the same CIA that said Iraq had WMDs". A side note to that...lets not forget Iraq should have never even been in the conversation, nevermind if anyone thought they had WMDs..but I digress.

What I am saying is this is lazy, dissonant thinking.Look at the whole picture, not just the hot-button issue on the news right now. The biggest thing that some don't get is that ***The REASON THAT IT'S SUCH BIG NEWS WHEN STUFF LIKE THIS IS WRONG IS THAT IT'S USUALLY CORRECT.***

The Flint Movie

In response to a theme I see popping up on social media memes lately about the Flint water mess...

It may surprise you to learn that the people that need to unfuck it and the people at Lifetime are not in fact one in the same. Our useless Michigan legistlature and our shithead Governor has to do that. Someone else on this thread called it "awareness porn"...I mean, okay, I guess you can take that sanctimonious attitude about it if you want but lets take stock here of who has done what... Lifetime is airing a movie about it that will reach an audience and raise awareness (even if only a little) that wouldn't otherwise care about this type of thing... then we've got people sharing memes with their friends on facebook that are largely preaching to the choir (Jelessia, I'm not picking on you specifically). 

Yes, the criticism about it having a white lead may be fair, it might not be... everyone in Flint is affected, not just the black population even if they have a slight majority. While representation is important, at this very moment the water thing and exposing the corrupt criminals in our government behind it is way more important and I'm glad a spotlight is being put on it even if it's just a crappy lifetime movie. But I admit, I'm a white dude who doesn't personally feel the sting of represtation problems, so I suppose taking that portion of my opinion with a grain of salt is fair.

Cleary these memes that say "X is happening but Flint still doesn't have clean water" annoy for much the same reason a lot of social/political memes do: They misrepresent and oversimplify the problem. 'A' usually has little or nothing to do with 'B' and it's just sort of this vague lashing out at the abstract concept of society while completely ignoring the specifics of the situation.

Few people outside of those in Flint are more pissed off about this shit than I am, and it goes back to to the day at the height of the great recession that Snyder decided he was going to strip elected leaders of their power and appoint an "emergency financial manager" to certain cities (including Flint and Detroit). Let 'em make their stupid, sappy lifetime movie. It's more than what most people can do/are doing.

Multi-Factored Analysis

In response to this cartoon from The Nib and Matt Lubchanksy: https://thenib.com/a-year-of-magical-thinking

People seem to want to point the finger at one thing and one thing only, but guess what... something this big and complex isn't going to have 1 simple cause...Factors that ALL contributed to Trump being elected include (in no particular order)...

1. DNC Meddling
2. Bernie not conceding soon enough despite the DNC meddling.
3. A largely bs email investigation.
4. A separate email hack by Russians.
5. Fake news and other propaganda spread by Russians.
6. Fake news and other propaganda spread by for-profit right wing sites.
7. Hillary's "Trust Issues" (whether or not you think those were justified or not).
8. Our shitty electoral college system that gives smaller/less populous states more weighting in the system. Remember...the major of americans, by 2.8 million, voted for H.
9. James Comey's dumbassery.
10. *****TRUMP VOTERS***** (sub-causes: a racist, xenophobic voter base exercising backlash and racial resentment over 8 years of a black left-of-center president).

I'm sure I could think of 10 more if I tried. The point is, if any ONE of these things didn't happen, the outcome may have been different, but that doesn't mean whatever ONE thing you choose to cherry-pick was some sort of "ultimate cause".

In short, this election was a cluster-fuck.

Gnomelf

Drawing I did of a friend's character. Winston the Gnomelf.

Glenn Beck Profile in the New Yorker (By way of the Washington Post)

Glenn Beck — yes, that Glenn Beck — tells New Yorker, ‘Obama made me a better man' (Washington Post)

Picking my jaw up off the floor again, first it was "Vote for Hillary" from Glenn Beck, now it's this...

About his views on Obama: “So much of what I used to believe was either always a sham or has been made into a sham. There’s nothing deep.”

"Beck went on, in the interview, to state that he now supports the Black Lives Matter movement."

"Beck’s primary inspiration for these changes in viewpoint, as the brief profile suggested, was first lady Michelle Obama."

"In the profile, Beck addressed the alt-right, telling the magazine that “these people scare the hell out of me.”

Speaking of Donald Trump: “This guy is dangerously unhinged,” he said. “And, for all the things people have said about me over the years, I should be able to spot Dangerously Unhinged.”

--None of this is to say I "like" the guy, or forgive him for all the damage he has done. However, it does give one a little bit of hope that the crazies can be reformed...at least a little.

Was reading an article recently about how movie cops are rarely ever in the wrong when shooting and killing a suspect... think John McLane, Dirty Hairy, Popeye Doyle. They're always seen as the heroes that cut through the red tape of the bureaucratic justice system. Partly, this is because bureaucracy doesn't make for good cop/action movies. There are certainly movies that deal in bad cops, (Serpico, for instance), but rarely do the heroes of those stories become pop-culture icons...cuz ya know, goody goody cops are boring or something. My point is that for example, the French Connection is legitimately a great movie. It's a heavily fictionalized/based on a true story type of thing, but how sad it is that some people have looked at that film and thought that Popeye Doyle was somehow meant to be seen as a good person or a hero. Hell I'm pretty sure he uses "N" in a completely in context unambiguously racist way within the first 10 minutes to clearly establish him as a raging racist cop. How sad it is that good character writing (of a largely "bad" person) has almost become the rule instead of the exception when forming anti-heroes that we're supposed to cheer. I'm guilty of it myself, I loved LOVED 24, but ya know, I understood it was a tv show and the real world doesn't really have ticking time bombs who's location needs to be beaten out of a terror suspect. I enjoyed it purely as suspensful entertainment. Horrified am I to slowly come to realize that some people think the world DOES work this way and seem to want to encourage the pressence of Popeye Doyles and Jack Bauers in real-life law enforcement. They say kids have trouble separating fiction and reality, but I'm much more worried about the adults who vote and should know better. Not sure why I felt the need to write about this at 3am.

Even if you're a Hillary hating conspiracy theorist, her leaked Wall street remarks were....unremarkable. I've seen headlines from crappy second-hand "we only post links to stuff, and don't do any actual journalism" sites with headlines like "No Wonder She Didn't Want to Release the Transcripts!". I'm over here like...did you read it? The big "damning" thing I heard people up in arms for was her saying that "Blaming wall street for the financial crisis is an over-simplification"... Which, it is. A perfect storm of different factors went into creating that mess, yes, INCLUDING sketchy Wall Street behavior.

 I'd be a terrible politician. "My fellow Americans, what if I told you that everything you think you know about the problems we face is only a sliver of what's really happening, and there isn't really one easy answer for a solution. Good thing for you I brought slides, get comfortable."

Washington Post - Wikileaks Reveals Hillary Clinton to be Reasonable

This isn't meant to trivialize this latest (SHOCKING) revelation, but I just saw a headline that said "Has Trump Finally Gone too Far?".... listen...Over the past year that question, or variations of that question or simply the statement "He's gone too far!" have been used so much that it's lost all meaning. Sane, rational people have known the man had "gone too far" long before running for the presidency. Has he gone too far?....STFU and stop feigning shock over this stuff. The people that support him know damn well what a steaming sack he is.

The question SHOULD be, to those writing these headlines or those that really ARE shocked by this: Since this happened 11 years ago, what kind of person am I that I'm only NOW realizing what a worthless sleazeball this guy is?

So, this is my life. And bear in mind similar situations seem to happen frequently. Also, it may come across as humblebraggy, but I promise that's not what I'm going for.

I'm downtown today...just making an effort to get out of the house on a nice day, plus there was a small music fest thing going on on main street. Stopped at a few places, among them a record store, and I bought a few records. After that I go into the Pretzel Bell (restaurant/bar) on main st for lunch and go downstairs to the bar. I set the bag of records on the bar and I order a salad and water, later I decide on a beer. An attractive blonde, late 20's sits down a few chairs over. She asks me what's in the bag, I say "records" as if that wasn't already clear from the store logo on the bag. She asks like what? I say "Ooh, just various stuff". The conversation pretty much ends there. I then realize that oh, right, she was giving me an opening to talk to her...I should have at least taken the records out of the bag and talked about what I bought. Ok, well, I miss queues like that...moving on. My salad comes, I eat it. At some point later her male friend comes and sits down on the other side of her, not a boyfriend...he's talking about someone else he's trying to get with. During the conversation he shouts to me "hey bro!" and asks me my opinion on something, (which I won't detail here...it was a "dude" question). I look over and answer him and chat with him about it for a few minutes. The girl then exclaims "WOW, I've been trying to talk to you for 40 minutes... I asked you about your records, your salad, your hat and you wouldn't talk to me, but you answered right away when he talked to you."

A couple things. She wasn't *really* being snotty about it, just sort of saying it in a joking manner. Secondly she wasn't my "type". Not that I look for a certain type, but this was an extremely outgoing, talkative person... Nothing about her, aside from her outward attractiveness really interested me (basing this on her conversation with her friend, personality). Anyway, what I'm saying is I'm not really kicking myself in that regard. The point is, while I heard the question about the records, I was in my head daydreaming SO much that I didn't even hear her or acknowledge her when she asked about my food or my hat. A person sitting right next to me. I think I only paid attention to the guy because he sort of shouted to get my attention. They left shortly after that.

I wasn't going to take her home with me, date her, ask for her number...any of that. Hell, she had a few drinks and was probably just feeling social (did I mention she seemed to love talking). However I left the place feeling like a huge asshole because I couldn't even muster up the social prowess to just be nice to someone at a bar. This is why developing and maintaining relationships is so difficult for me (and aspies in general, while we're on the topic). I JUST DON'T GET IT. And it's as simple as that. I only "get it" later on when I think about the situation.

Shortly after that I walked out of the place, down Liberty st and saw those 2 again in an alleyway goofing off, laughing, taking pictures or something. I thought "yep, that's not my life".

The guy's name was Trevor as well.