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[Trekkin]

I'm beginning to think he's a genuine mad hatter loony that's managed to hide it JUST well enough that he's seen as mentally fit enough.

I would be careful about attributing a lot of what Trump says to madness, or indeed to Trump himself.

Trump is still fundamentally that little kid from Queens looking at the Manhattan skyline and saying to himself that one day he'll be rich and famous, with lots of big fancy gold things with his name on them and nobody to tell him he has to eat his vegetables. His understanding of wealth is a Richie Rich comic, and he has always had too much of his father's money to realize how gaudy that is.

This childishness bleeds over into his belief in the myth of the executive: that somehow, quite apart from the practical knowledge of how to produce goods and render services and so forth, there exists this special universally applicable executive expertise concerning "how to be successful" -- and furthermore that this elusive expertise is inestimably more valuable than any of the skills possessed by the little people, thereby justifying executive pay. At least part of Trump's vague bluster about "making good deals" and "building very inexpensively" and "winning" is a product of that worldview, and it comes through in everything from his utter lack of understanding of technology (or "the cyber") to his dismissive attitude toward "wonkish details" ("forget the little ****" like a fifth of the economy, Freedom Caucus.) Policy and protocol and knowledge are for the little people. Trump, the executive, need only understand that winning and money are good. Thus how he can run the country like his business, you see.

This makes him hugely vulnerable to manipulation -- you can tell him up is down and he'll believe it without question as long as you appear to buy into his con and call him the smartest winningest winner ever with the best genes and impeccable taste in steaks. Breitbart said he walks on water, and so he welcomes Bannon's leap-off-the-far-right-wing authoritarianism and cyclical history and all the rest of it with open arms. Sessions, by virtue of being the first real live senator to don the red hat, can get Trump to say anything he wants about those darned young thugs running around high on the devil's arugula. Pence, too, was deferential and reverent toward Trump's ill-defined goodness, and so gets a free pass to try to turn America into the Republic of Gilead. Actual executives have an even easier time of it, since kid Trump always looked up to them and never understood why they treat him like a fart in the room. Thus why Goldman Sachs executives run so much of the executive branch now. They're "his", much like "[his] Generals" and the Republicans he thinks he owns by virtue of getting them elected.

The problem with calling Trump insane, then, is that the appearance of insanity, insofar as it is engendered by his fecklessness and mutability, is simply that he sees the world in terms too tribal and abstract to realize when two of his underlings want mutually exclusive things and will happily praise both while letting them, the littler people, fight it out. He will happily take credit for whichever one wins, of course, and act like it was his idea all along, which is what makes him so valuable to extremists. Bannon's crowd (including Miller and Sessions) just wants to bring down "the administrative state" by maximizing chaos, so a buffoon with the memory of a goldfish is perfect; he won't stay bought, so he'll accrue obligations to no effect and maximize dissatisfaction with "the establishment."

Meanwhile, McConnell is facing a donor base that is increasingly refusing to donate to a party that can't repeal Obamacare, a party too used to obstruction to actually agree on policy, and a President whose usefulness to the party in both an electoral and a legislative sense is ambiguous to negative; with Priebus out and the repeal dead, he has neither means nor motive to try to steer Trump in a more conventionally conservative direction. He can read the polls too, and knows full well that pivoting Trump would lose Republicans more alt-righters than they'd gain moderates at this point. That's not a concern for Bannon and only minimally one for Sessions, who simply want to get as much as possible out of Trump before the whole thing collapses. They know how unlikely they are to see his like again, and so are thinking on time scales shorter than an election cycle.

Imagine politicians as point masses: small, dense things that move according to the sum of the forces acting upon them. Trump is simply a particularly light one, and therefore sensitive to a lot more wobble than someone with more ideological inertia -- and for the forseeable future, all the people pulling on him are yanking him towards crazy. Thus, towards crazy he goes, but let's not forget that some of those people will still be there if he should leave or be removed. Left to his own devices, Trump would be golfing all day, holding rallies, and signing whatever Ivanka and Jared say he should; the forces that move him in authoritarian, regressive, and/or insane ways are external to him and need not leave with him.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

His understanding of wealth is a Richie Rich comic, and he has always had too much of his father's money to realize how gaudy that is.

Hey now, Richie Rich was a fair-minded philanthropist, don't go slandering him with Trump's name.

Anyway, in my ongoing attempts to restore Ameripol to talking about anything other than Orange Slice, here's a Gallup poll on partisan changes over the last two decades.

Highlights:

 - Republicans jumped from 39% to 82% belief that the federal government has too much power, Democrats stayed level at 37%.

 - Democrats fell 42% to 20% on wanting to reduce immigration, Republicans rose slightly from 53% to 60%.

 - Worrying about global warming has undergone divergence: Democrats jumped from 78% to 89% while Republicans fell from 64% to 40%.

 - Republicans fell 45% to 24% on the government being responsible for healthcare, Democrats stayed level at 75%.

 - Democrats fell 58% to 41% on support for the death penalty in cases of murder, Republicans stayed level at 80%.

 - Both parties have fallen in trust for mass media: Democrats 62% to 49%, Republicans 40% to 16%.

 - Majorities of both parties support same-sex marrage.

 - Both parties strongly support doctor-assisted suicide, Democrats 81% and Republicans 67%, odd given that only a few states have ever legalized it.

 - Both parties have slightly fallen in the belief that white-black race relations will always be a problem: Democrats 43% to 38%, Republicans 50% to 44%.

 - Both parties now have exactly the same belief that healthcare in the US is good, 56%. Democrats rose, Republicans fell.
 
 - Democrats fell from 56% to 52% in the belief that a third party is necessary, Republicans rose from 36% to 57%.
 
 - Both parties rose strongly in support for public smoking bans, Republicans 33% to 57%, Democrats 40% to 59%.

[origamiscienceguy]

It seems the real loser is the media.

[Neonivek]

Both parties strongly support doctor-assisted suicide, Democrats 81% and Republicans 67%, odd given that only a few states have ever legalized it.

There are a lot of things in American history that were a largely popular idea but were somehow difficult to implement.

[Frumple]

What likes to happen is people are pretty enthusiastic about a concept in the abstract, but far, far less when it comes time for particulars. Folks like the idea, get cold feet when it comes time to actually give the docs a general go to put down grandpappy.

It seems the real loser is the media.

Eh, not really. Not until the industry starts leaking money like a sieve. 'Till that happens it only matters so much how much folks distrust 'em, they're still makin' bank. The fun bit is that distrust might actually be a market grower. People who think the newsies are dishonest scum still like to know what's happening, and wouldn't y'know it they're oddly amicable about those critters who're telllin' it like it is about the MSM (FTFE). if it's not obvious, they're probably not actually doing that

And they're still media. Still the same industry, still growing more or less the same sort of employees with a few changes, still using much the same infrastructure,* etc., etc., etc. Distrust of one section of the media doesn't do much when you turn around and suck the teat of a different one, heh.

* For now, anyway. Sooner or later we're going to see a proper next gen development in news aggregation or somethin' able to do a real solid job of trawling blogs and social media and such for what you want to know about, and when that happens a great deal of the media is going straight to the hell it could stand to spend some time in.

[Egan_BW]

trawling blogs and social media and such for what you want to know about

I think you mean "what you want to think".

[Frumple]

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

[Baffler]

And they're still media. Still the same industry, still growing more or less the same sort of employees with a few changes, still using much the same infrastructure,* etc., etc., etc. Distrust of one section of the media doesn't do much when you turn around and suck the teat of a different one, heh.

* For now, anyway. Sooner or later we're going to see a proper next gen development in news aggregation or somethin' able to do a real solid job of trawling blogs and social media and such for what you want to know about, and when that happens a great deal of the media is going straight to the hell it could stand to spend some time in.

As much as it could stand to spend some time there, whatever New Media that will end up replacing it will almost certainly a downgrade. Blogs and social media are no more honest than corporate media, and far less accountable for their dishonesty, yet even now old media outlets have most of their 'journalists' do nothing but monitor social media. Quality goes down, but so do expenses. Besides, if media is full of propagandists now, just wait until everyone and their brother can get a soapbox to go with the voice the internet already provides. Best case scenario would be aggregators reposting people like @IvanSidorenko; an intelligent, well spoken person with good sources on the ground in Syria that he acquired mainly by being a Russian MoD mouthpiece. Worst case is people getting filter bubbled into a bunch of different alternate realities.

I'm jealous of the UK's BBC to be honest. It has its own problems with partisanship and how it handles things that're inconvenient for the government, but they pale in comparison to our own.

[nenjin]

The issue with New Media to me is how hungry everyone is for exposure. It feels rare that someone creates a blog or a channel just to rationally and calmly explore issues, and that the quality of their work is what sells their offering. New Media gets created because someone wants to become a breakout success and picks a pet issue to use as their vehicle to do so. Everyone wants page hits. Everyone wants to sell ads. Everyone wants likes. Everyone wants to get paid.

So you need to be first, you need to be provocative and you need to get shared. Being truthful, even-handed or even methodical are all the enemies of those principles. After all, Google Ad-Sense doesn't give a fuck if you're factually correct or if people check your page simply to see how awful you are. It's all the same money.

That's not to say everyone out there in New Media is a scumbag. But it's the reason most will just shrug their shoulders when caught out and say "well I'm not a professional journalist." Rather than waiting to do the research, vet the story and get it right, which can end up being less profitable or marketable than being first, outrageous or trending.

It's funny how people shit all over professional journalists (not always without good reason) but still point to them as the exemplar they don't have to live up because "It's not my job."

[Frumple]

Hell man, it's not like that describes current and previous media any less. Half or better of the reason the concept of going (near) full net doesn't strike me as something that actually would be a downgrade is 'cause that helterskelter shit is exactly what the news is now, and with a few exceptions that stood out more because they were exceptions than anything, has been for more than my lifetime. Same damn thing except harder to land a lasting crotch shot when they need a kick to the nethers 'cause they got more money to blow shrugging it off.

As much as it could stand to spend some time there, whatever New Media that will end up replacing it will almost certainly a downgrade. Blogs and social media are no more honest than corporate media, and far less accountable for their dishonesty, yet even now old media outlets have most of their 'journalists' do nothing but monitor social media. Quality goes down, but so do expenses. Besides, if media is full of propagandists now, just wait until everyone and their brother can get a soapbox to go with the voice the internet already provides. Best case scenario would be aggregators reposting people like @IvanSidorenko; an intelligent, well spoken person with good sources on the ground in Syria that he acquired mainly by being a Russian MoD mouthpiece. Worst case is people getting filter bubbled into a bunch of different alternate realities.

Heh. No more honest, but more immediate, easier to crosscheck much of the time (which is a hell of a thing considering how much of a PitA that is)... and no, they'd be a lot more accountable than what we have now, so far as I can tell.

News agencies haven't been accountable for shit for a long time -- when about the whole of your consequences is publishing a half-hearted retraction after the damage is done and you still get to roll in the same pile of cash, that ain't accountability, that's a farcical caricature of it. In practice they get held to an even lower standard than blogs often enough it's noticeable.

Meanwhile we're seeing what happens when the internet gets pissed and goes rabid over someone screwin' something up. Individuals and more local stuff may still be able to spin, but they got a helluva' riskier proposition in failing to. Unlike our media corps. There's downside as much as up on that front, but so far as actual accountability goes there really ain't a comparison. One you actually have a decent chance to reach out and touch hard enough someone notices. The other you ain't gon' get to do shit besides sending a letter to the editor that no one'll read.

... also I could definitely see the floodgates opening entirely on "propagandists" actually ending up a good thing. Saturation wise it can't really get much worse than it already is now, and just think on it for a second: What exactly the hell is a news agency going to do when the base of their consumers that give a damn about talking heads have direct feed to the ones they want to listen to?

They can double down or stay the course and eventually get buried by the masses anyway (and good bloody riddance), or they can finally get off their ass and be a fourth estate worth the friggin' title. Leverage the advantages pooled and structured resources with a bucketload of established connections give instead of being able to coast by on sensationalism more than anything.

We already have the damn filter bubble crap offline, anyway. It'd be easier to pop the bastards if they had less respect behind 'em and a wider spread of stuff to filter.

[Akura]

I remember the... storybook, I think. The upside down storybook. Can't particularly recall the surrounding faffery, but it stuck a bit for one reason or another.

Wasn't that when Hurricane Katrina hit?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Martin Shkreli convicted on 3 of 8 charges. Bring on the affluenza.

[martinuzz]

Martin Shkreli convicted on 3 of 8 charges. Bring on the affluenza.

The funny thing is, there was this outrage over increasing the price from 13.50 to 750 dollars for the Dataprim anti-infection pill.

Why is there no outrage over it costing 13.50 in the first place? The pill costs 40 cents in the Netherlands. It's almost as if your health department / insurance negotiator / whomever it is that sets healthcare prices really hates people with hiv.

[wierd]

Captialism seeks to charge the highest price the market can bear. This leads to expensive healthcare, BY DEFINITION.

If you want affordable, easy access healthcare, you cannot use capitalism to get there.

[Neonivek]

The thing is that Capitalism doesn't function unrestrained for multiple reasons.

One huge one is that consumers have very little ability to enact their own interests or to police themselves.

So what happens when a mass of impatient time pressed people meet a entity that has infinite patience and infinite time?

The government steps in when the market fails to deal with certain issues.