2016 Nov 29^th

The President–elect still seems to be having a problem distinguishing events in the real world from those present only in his imagination.  Some time ago he claimed that many thousands of Muslims in New Jersey had cheered and cheered when the twin towers fell on 9/11. Since no one else saw any such thing, and since the President-elect still claims that this is true, we must assume that his nervous system responsible for reflecting reality has gone haywire.

There has recently been a move to recount ballots in several critical states, states that Trump won by relatively narrow margins. He is enraged by the effrontery of this suggestion. He claims that the process will accomplish nothing. He is correct in believing that it will not overturn the election results; it will, however, more firmly establish the legitimacy of his win. That would seem desirable but questioning his win at all overcomes that advantage. His thin skin is not thickened by the election results.

He has also been tweeting again. He has recently gathered the heads of various news organizations to remonstrate with them about their coverage of his election campaign. As evidence of their bias, he points to a picture of himself in which he appears to have a double chin. Many other failures to treat him “fairly” are documented as well. His herding of reporters into a confined area, calling them “scum” and inciting his listeners to violence against them so that they needed a police escort to leave his rally is not mentioned

Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by over two million votes; he finds this intolerable.  So Trump claims that millions of votes were fraudulently cast. Therefore, you see, he didn’t really lose the popular vote at all. He, of course, offers no evidence for his claim except the obvious one: he lost the popular vote and so there must have been cheating. He blames the news services for not proving that there was no cheating, so if you can’t prove that there was no cheating therefore there must have been cheating. Logic courses were apparently not part of the curriculum at Wharton when Trump was there.

Then there is Steven Bannon who is challenging Trump for the “Distorting Reality” top prize. Bannon recently commented on a piece by Kimberley Strassel in “The Daily Beast.” The article cited claimed Bannon said that he “was a Leninist who wanted to destroy the state.” Bannon responded by saying the story was “by a guy I never met in my life. This story is taken as gospel with nobody checking on it.” Unfortunately for Bannon the writer, Ronald Radosh of the Hudson Institute, sent a letter to the editor of “The Wall Street Journal” describing exactly the time and place of his encounter with Bannon confirming everything he had said.

Here is a Breitbart quote on the Confederate Flag just two weeks after Governor Nikki Hayley had that flag removed from the statehouse grounds. “Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage.” This was the flag prominently displayed by the gunman who murdered nine people of color as they prayed in a Charleston church.

Livy, a Roman historian said that people in government tend to attract other people to government much like themselves. How right he was.