The Devils You Know

 I've had this quote from a Washington Post story rattling around my head all day. It goes:

 "When the true Hillary Clinton and the real Donald Trump are revealed to Americans, there is no way the American people are going to pick the petulant 12-year-old,” said Bill Burton, a former senior Obama strategist."

And that, to me, reveals a fundamental flaw in how the Democratic Party is approaching this election. Clinton and Trump have both been in the public eye and pop culture symbols for decades, there is nothing about either of them to "reintroduce" the public to. That statement, and the ad of Donald Trump talking about women, shows that the Democratic strategy here will be to bring up all the shit of Trump's past to show him as an unserious, ill-prepared, living calamity waiting to be inflicted on the American people. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because that is exactly what the 16 other Republican candidates tried once they realized Trump's campaign wasn't a promotional tour for whatever cockimaney thing Trump was hawking at the moment. Obviously, it was a resounding success, so Clinton and the Democrats making use of the exact same playbook will of course be seen as evidence of their keen political acumen.

A campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is going to swing on how each of them can use their past to project a brighter future for the country and how deeply people buy that projection. This isn't unusual in a Presidential election, obviously, but it has added significance this time around given that you know, the general feeling that the country is going to absolute shit is pretty pervasive on all sides.  

For the campaigns to sell their story they'll need a pretty intimate knowledge of how the spin cycle works, and how to manipulate it to their narrative's advantage; especially since both of the major players here have decades of history and everyone who knows their name will already have concrete beliefs about who they are, what they represent, and how they'll perceive the spin work done for their narratives. On one side, we have a guy who just got people to speculate over whether he pretended to be his own publicist (and, consequently, get people to speculate about how this will be the thing to kill Trump's campaign.  Which reminds people of all the other things that were supposed to do that before, but haven't.)  On the other, you have someone who has to get one of their super PACs to spend $1 million to hire professional internet trolls.

Yeah, this all bodes well.

Democrats work to win election, lose country

The Democratic party has been in something of a celebratory mood since Trump locked up the Republican nomination. The general idea is that since Trump is literally the most hated candidate in political history Hillary Clinton can then ride that resentment of minorities (and Republican donors) to the White House. What the Democrats seem wholly uninterested in answering is what becomes of the country once Clinton tries to govern it.

The Pall Settles In

Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.  Republican voters looked and listened to the man who is pretty much the exact Republican stereotype (racist, sexist, completely ignorant of the rest of the world and can't pronounce correctly any country that's not America) and thought to themselves "Yes! Our Great Orange Hope as finally arrived!"  Then, 10.6 million people cast their vote for him, making him the second most successful primary candidate in the party's history.  So remember, Republicans wanted this.  Trump isn't a fluke and he's not a prank, he is the man voters have chosen to embody all they stand for and hope to be.  So if you have any sense that something really important about who we are and what kind of people we can be just died a sad, lonely death, you're right.  And that's the problem.


RT

The Lightbringer gets a lampshade

There are some things that are just doomed to fail.  In one aspect, you feel bad for those things, but in another, more deeply felt way, you pretty much wish you could say to higher ups "Why the fuck did you think this was a good idea?"

Remix, not Remaster

It is my deep, deep, hope that when BioWare does the inevitable re-release of the original Mass Effect trilogy for the X-Box One and PS4 that they take to the opportunity to fix some issues with the original games that I think would open things up and make for a better experience.

Why Bernie Should Stay in the Race

At this point, it looks like a bleak and unlikely road to the nomination for Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton's delegate lead isn't insurmountable per se, but the amount of things that he needs to go right to get the delegate lead make it highly unlikely for him. Naturally, the mainstream media is calling for him to quit the race so Hillary can better focus on the national election. But, I say he should stay in precisely because it makes things more difficult for Hillary. Since the primary season started, Hillary's negatives have climbed higher and higher, to the point where her only saving graces are that people hate Drumpf and Cruz even more than they hate her. Now, being hated less than a pseudo-fascist and the Zodiac Killer (page 32 is the relevant page, fyi) isn't really a strong foundation to launch a national campaign for the hearts and minds of voters, and it's exactly this advantage that Bernie should press as the July convention draws closer.

Let's Talk About Religion

I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in God, gods, Tarot, horoscopes, or any other mystical bullshit that flails about to explain a world it becomes increasingly embarrassing to exist in.  That being said, I do believe that there is something about religion that most of my fellow atheists and skeptics miss the point on and that is, religion is not a logical belief, it is an emotional one.