Links - 11th December 2016

Thank Zordon,the Power Rangers movie features the original theme song - "it is glorious. I don’t think there’s anything more 90s than the Power Ranger intro, a glorious headbanging gateway drug to metal and sick solos that most ikely inspired Dragonforce to be awesome. It’s a signature tune alright, on of hope and fun. And you’d be forgiven for thinking that such an iconic theme would be absent from the grittier and more grounded Power Rangers reboot hitting cinemas next week."

How to Break an Illusion - "He has lots of levers. Expect him to push one lever after another until the monster framing cracks. By summer the story will be that he’s the most flexible and centrist president in our history... Watch for Trump to save some kittens – as many as necessary – until you can’t hold in your mind the frame that he’s a monster. Enjoy the show. The Master Persuader is just getting started."

The Cognitive Dissonance Cluster Bomb - "One option is to accept that if half the public doesn’t see Trump as a dangerous monster, perhaps he isn’t. But that would conflict with a person’s self-image as being smart and well-informed in the first place. When you violate a person’s self-image, it triggers cognitive dissonance to explain-away the discrepancy. So how do you explain-away Trump’s election if you think you are smart and you think you are well-informed and you think Trump is OBVIOUSLY a monster? You solve for that incongruity by hallucinating – literally – that Trump supporters KNOW Trump is a monster and they PREFER the monster. In this hallucination, the KKK is not a nutty fringe group but rather a symbol of how all Trump supporters must feel. (They don’t. Not even close.) In a rational world it would be obvious that Trump supporters include lots of brilliant and well-informed people. That fact – as obvious as it would seem – is invisible to the folks who can’t even imagine a world in which their powers of perception could be so wrong. To reconcile their world, they have to imagine all Trump supporters as defective in some moral or cognitive way, or both."

Research says there are ways to reduce racial bias. Calling people racist isn’t one of them. - "In talking with researchers and looking at the studies on this, I found that it is possible to reduce people’s racial anxiety and prejudices. And the canvassing idea was regarded as very promising. But, researchers cautioned, the process of reducing people’s racism will take time and, crucially, empathy. This is the direct opposite of the kind of culture the internet has fostered — typically focused on calling out racists and shaming them in public... when they hear politicians and journalists call them racist or remind them about their privilege, they feel like elites are trying to distract from the serious problems in their lives and grant advantages to other groups of people. When Hillary Clinton called half of Trump voters “deplorable,” she made this message explicit... People don’t want to be immediately dismissed because they might have a view that you consider wrong or even vile; they want to feel heard. And once that happens, it’s a lot easier for them to make mental space to understand other people’s problems."

Donald Trump voters - Important political issues - "I voted for Donald Trump because he will deport illegal immigrants more than Clinton. As a legal immigrant who had to wait 13 years for an immigration visa approval and pass two health screens and an English language proficiency exam prior to entering the United States, I consider it an insult to to cater to criminals who disobeyed immigration laws and cut in front of all law-abiding immigration applicants waiting patiently to be approved. I have never received any government assistance, nor is it my goal to do so. My dignity disallows such a thought. To witness some illegal immigrants gaming the welfare system boils my blood."
"He had tapped into what the everyday Joe — and Jane — were feeling but had become PC-shamed from expressing. As Trump cleared each hurdle during the campaign, and I saw how the media, the establishment and celebrities tried to derail him, my hope began to grow that I would be able to witness their collective heads explode when he was successful. Tuesday night was beyond satisfying to watch unfold"
"I am white, I am a woman, I am pro-choice, I am educated, and I voted for Donald Trump"
"My entire family — five Muslim immigrants from Turkey — voted for Donald Trump in Florida because of the Democratic Party’s pandering to Islamism. As people who have actually experienced Islamism in its purest form, back in Turkey, we supported the candidate who promised to help us fight that issue, regardless of any of his other policies. For us, the people of the Middle East, this election was just too important to hand over to someone such as Hillary Clinton."
"As I watched, I got the impression that voting was a mere formality. The commentary was all about how Hillary Clinton was set to get down to business once the pesky election was over. It was obvious watching the election returns on several networks that not one of them prepared for the possibility of Donald Trump triumphing. Why was that? My vote was my only way to say: I am here and I count"
"The lies never stopped. Then came the Clinton Foundation, foreign donations and the emails. I have 100 percent Clinton Fatigue"
"The Constitution is a social contract, not a poem to be variously interpreted. If people want to permit gay marriage or abortion for any reason, then make both legal through the legislature, not via an unelected oligarchy rewriting the Constitution."
" I don’t need my president to be nice to everyone and to give them a warm, fuzzy feeling. Get a bathrobe for that"
"I am a gay millennial woman and I voted for Donald Trump because I oppose the political correctness movement, which has become a fascist ideology of silence and ignorance. After months of going back and forth, I decided to listen to him directly and not through minced and filtered quotes from the mainstream media"
"As a retired federal employee with a security clearance, I have protected classified information. Failure to do so has resulted in prison for many, and rightly so"

Glenn Greenwald: Trump will have vast powers. He can thank Democrats for them. - "Blinded by the belief that Obama was too benevolent and benign to abuse his office, and drowning in partisan loyalties at the expense of political principles, Democrats consecrated this framework with their acquiescence and, often, their explicit approval... Obama’s approach to executive power flipped so quickly and diametrically that it is impossible to say if he ever believed his campaign-era professions of restraint. As early as May 2009, Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official under George W. Bush, celebrated Obama’s abandonment of his promises to rein in these authorities... Liberals vehemently denounced these abuses during the Bush presidency... But after Obama took office, many liberals often tolerated — and even praised — his aggressive assertions of executive authority... According to a 2012 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats and 67 percent of moderate or conservative ones now supported keeping Guantanamo Bay open. After just three years of the Obama presidency, liberals sanctioned a system that allowed the president to imprison people without any trial or an ounce of due process."

'Tolerant' educators exile Trump voters from campus: Glenn Reynolds - "The response to the shock has been to turn campuses into kindergarten. The University of Michigan Law School announced a ”post-election self-care” event with “food" and "play,” including “coloring sheets, play dough (sic), positive card-making, Legos and bubbles with your fellow law students.” (Embarrassed by the attention, UM Law scrubbed the announcement from its website, perhaps concerned that people would wonder whether its graduates would require Legos and bubbles in the event of stressful litigation.) Stanford emailed its students and faculty that psychological counseling was available for those experiencing “uncertainty, anger, anxiety and/or fear” following the election. So did the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. Meanwhile, even the Ivy League wasn’t immune, with the University of Pennsylvania (Trump’s alma mater) creating a post-election safe space with puppies and coloring books... At Cornell, The Fix reported, students held a "cry in."... Yale had a ”group scream.” At Tufts, the university offered arts and crafts, while the University of Kansas reminded students that there were plenty of “therapy dogs” available. At other schools, exams were canceled and professors expressed their sympathy to traumatized students. It’s easy to mock this as juvenile silliness — because, well, it is juvenile silliness of the sort documented in Frank Furedi’s What's Happened To The University? But that’s not all it is. It’s also exactly what these schools purport to abhor: an effort to marginalize and silence part of the university community."

UMich Law School Cancels Trump Trauma Play-Doh Event After Mass Ridicule - "In a speech, the school’s president Mark Schlissel praised the protests and noted – to loud applause – that 90% of students had voted “in favor of a candidate other than Trump.” Schlissel went on to say that those who did vote for Trump voted in support of “hate” and “fractiousness.”"

Donald Trump holds high the flag for gay equality - "the moment was barely reported by the media despite the fact it happened in front of the traveling press corps accompanying Mr. Trump. Political reporters, not unsurprising, largely failed to write on the moment where a Republican challenged their negative media stereotype."

Why Trump Doesn’t Scare Me - "You know how Trump is always saying inappropriate and violent-sounding things? Most people see that type of language as offensive and even dangerous. The exception is people who grew up in New York. We see it as “talking.”... Trump has been consistent for decades in his practice of making an aggressive first offer and negotiating down to something reasonable. He talks about it in his book, The Art of the Deal. So when Trump announced he would deport 11 million people, I saw that as an aggressive opening offer, consistent with his history, and nothing worthy of fear. Most of the world saw it as a final offer... if you think Trump is a racist, you were probably offended that he referred to Judge Curiel as “Mexican.” But if you do not think Trump is racist, you might notice that Americans with Italian heritage refer to themselves as Italian. And Americans with Irish backgrounds often call themselves Irish. Even Americans with Mexican heritage call themselves Mexicans. It’s just a shorthand way of talking. Every single one of us talks the way Trump does... My perception is that what people see as Trump’s racism is actually their own confirmation bias. That doesn’t mean I’m right. But keep in mind that I am trained to spot confirmation bias in others, and this is the cleanest case I have ever seen."

'You Have No Place Here' – Grubhub CEO Demands Pro-Trump Employees Resign - "Maloney’s critics aren’t even all Trump supporters; it seems anyone with even half a sense of decency knows what the CEO says is just plain wrong."



Mike Rowe weighs in on the results of the election, and offers a bit of sanity - "despising our candidates publicly is very different than despising the people who vote for them. Last week, three old friends – people I’ve known for years – each requested to be “unfriended” by anyone who planned on voting for Trump. Honestly, that was disheartening. Who tosses away a friendship over an election? Are my friends turning into those mind-numbingly arrogant celebrities who threaten to move to another country if their candidate doesn’t win? Are my friends now convinced that people they’ve known for years who happen to disagree with them politically are not merely mistaken – but evil, and no longer worthy of their friendship?"

Stop Funding Hate are fascists - "Stop Funding Hate are a lefty Social Justice Warrior (SJW) organisation seeking to censor non left wing views in the British Press. You will find them on Twitter as @StopFundingHate and on Facebook as https://www.facebook.com/stopfundinghate/ . Their tactic is to hit the income of certain newspapers by political action against the advertisers in these newspapers. Their Twitter profile says: “Don’t hate the media – change the media. Help us take on the divisive hate campaigns of the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express”. You can see quite clearly that they are specifically targeting the non lefty press. Divisive hate campaigns are OK in the Guardian (who are regularly accused of anti Semitism) and the Mirror. Because what Stop Funding Hate mean by “hate campaigns” are anything that THEY disagree with. Basically this is blackmail. Newspapers are being held to ransom by extreme left wing activists who are saying to them that if they oppose socialism they will be hurt financially... socialist George Orwell, prescient as always, said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. Obviously authors are brighter than ex soccer players... all of us should go out and buy the Sun, Mail and Express out of solidarity with these bastions of our rights and freedoms."

City University students vote for campus ban on Sun, Mail and Express - "The motion, while largely symbolic, is embarrassing for the university, which runs one of the UK’s top journalism programmes... “The students in the class I was teaching today were furious and understandably so at gesture politics from a fraction of the student body,” he said. “They understand that the answer to journalism that you may not like is to do the journalism better.” During the meeting, another motion titled “why is my curriculum white?” was passed attacking the university as the “primary motor in reproducing this ideology of whiteness”. The union has resolved to take an active role in “decolonising” the curriculum and “start asking where are our black lecturers”. The student union’s move follows the high profile campaigning group Stop Funding Hate pressuring businesses to drop their commercial relationships with the same three newspapers because they run “divisive hate campaigns”... online publication Spiked released its latest free speech rankings for universities, finding that 90% of institutions were carrying out some form of censorship, up from 80% a year earlier... almost two-thirds of UK students back the National Union of Students’ no platforming policy"

What Do You Do When Someone Travels Around The World To Copy You - "Everything from the exact location, composition of the shot, processing, clothing, and sometimes even the caption! At that point, it's not just copying, it's creepy."
Addendum: Something's really amiss about the claims of this blogger who was being 'stalked around the world'

LOL doodles found in high school textbooks from around the world will help the healing…