general

Emails from friends continue to roll in confidently predicting tanks, sieg-heiling, and pogroms from orange hitler, right around the corner. You know, Hitler, who came to power because of Russia. The Trump we have isn't bad enough, we must magnify his power in our minds.
Recommended antidotes, two posts from Corey Robin:

Against the Politics of Fear

I cannot tell you how much I loathe this kind of politics. At a very deep and personal level. I loathe its operatic-ness, the way it performs concern and care when all it really is about is narcissism and a desperate desire for a fix. I loathe its false sense of depth and profundity. I loathe its belligerent confidence that it, and only it, understands the true awfulness of the world. I loathe the sense of exhilaration and enthusiasm it derives from being in touch with this awfulness, the more onerous citizenship, to borrow a phrase from Susan Sontag, it constructs on the basis of this experience.

December Diary: From the Political to the Personal

This [Politico article re: Trump browbeating Capital Hill Republicans] is ... fascinating, in spite of itself, about the aura of power that the Bannon/Breitbart operation behind Trump tries to create. If you read it quickly, it sounds scary: message discipline enforced by Bannon from on high, gets transmitted to terrified members of Congress down low.

But what’s the actual threat these guys wield? Tweets. Tweets. In other words, they’re depending on that old dream of politics watchers in the US—the presidential bully pulpit-hoping it can be more of a power than it has ever really been.

More analysis to calm Nazi-screeching friends (as if): Radio War Nerd webcast re: the different strains of conservatism tapped by the Trump transition team (paleo- vs neo-conservative, Heritage vs AEI, CPAC connections). Slightly dated because taped right after the election but interesting.

Medium has one of the better rants on Clinton loss apologetics, titled ”Why Are You Still Talking About Hillary Clinton?”

Well, here’s why. For one thing, she’s still out there in the public eye, concocting excuse after excuse for why she couldn’t beat the guy from The Apprentice. Her media loyalists are also still out there in full force, spouting rationalizations of her conduct day after day, and denying culpability for their role in bringing about her failed candidacy. (1) They are confabulating a story to explain away the loss. If left un-rebutted, this “narrative” will eventually congeal into accepted wisdom, and it will then be cited for years and decades to come as reason why they are completely blameless. Notwithstanding their 2016 humiliation, the Clintons still have a huge, well-funded, and feverishly devoted PR apparatus, including a vast array of functionaries and loyalists inhabiting all different segments of elite society. These loyalists have made clear their desire to implant into the public psyche the idea that Hillary is not responsible for her defeat — it was the fault of a whole bevy of sinister exogenous forces.

1. Update: Global Guerrillas has a good list of Clinton campaign excuses. [GG took the post down -- the internet archive still has it, though]

Blogger Nina Illingham has been keeping track of Trump cabinet picks in a series she calls The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Clicking on each "meme" (a pic summarizing all the mutant's negatives) takes you to Illingham's blog post, which continues the argument in text form.

Illingham was a Clinton skeptic but hasn't wasted time turning her acid attentions to the orange wonder.

Her blog also has amazing collections of tweets from Clinton partisans in the journalistic community. These were the people we were supposed to "stand with" in the fight against Trump. Yuck.

An angry emailer, who read some criticisms of Clinton partisans on this blog posted after the election (but admits to reading none of the criticisms of the Clintons posted before the election), writes: "Maybe you feel bad or guilty that you helped Trump win and you don't want to admit it? So you are still criticizing the Hillary supporters?"

Reply: "The posts after the election were in response to emotional outbursts such as your email. Sorry if that wasn't clear."

Discussing "the new OPEC deal to cut oil output – the cartel’s first since 2008," the UK-based newspaper City A.M. writes:

OPEC as a whole agreed to cut 1.2m barrels per day (bpd) from production from the beginning of the new year, with the Saudis themselves bearing the brunt of the cuts with a personal reduction agreed to at just under 500,000 bpd. But as OPEC now accounts for less than half of all energy output in the world, it is a very weakened cartel...

Placing this in a larger world context, City A.M. continues, at high wattage:

This, in its way, is as momentous a shift in global power as the stunning recent Brexit and Donald Trump votes. Whereas Brexit showed Europe to be in absolute decline, while the election of Trump brings to an abrupt end 70 years of the U.S. as the global ordering power, the Saudi’s meek surrender brings to a close the long age of OPEC domination of the world’s energy market. This year truly has seen the death of one world order, along with the uncertain birth of another.

Back up there: "The election of Trump brings to an abrupt end 70 years of the U.S. as the global ordering power." This is a UK writer's perception. Let's assume it has validity. Does this mean the election of Hillary Clinton would have continued the U.S.'s role as a "global ordering power"? Is that term a euphemism for empire? If all the above is true, wouldn't a vote against Hillary be a vote against US imperial aspirations, or a de facto empire? And what is wrong with that? As Holden says in Blade Runner, "they're just questions, Leon."