Are Our Laptops And Smartphones Spying On Us? Why? And For Whom?

Beginning a few years ago we began to feel like our laptops could read our mind. We'd be on social media and something we'd talked about recently would pop up in our newsfeed, as if someone creating that newsfeed had been listening in.

Our laptops gave us the tool we needed to investigate this bizarre suspicion and we found articles about it at ComputerWorld, the BBC, and WebProNews. Funny, though, articles relating to this conversation did not begin appearing in our newsfeed. There are some theories and investigations the gods of the internet do not want circulated.

How does our Facebook feed know what we’ve been thinking? It collects all our clicks and our likes and feeds them into computers to create algorithms that organize how the newsfeed works, but it seemed like someone was listening to our conversations too.

Thinking and behavior are the products that Facebook sells to its paying customers. (We are not FB’s paying customers, we are the product FB sells.) Facebook sells their product widely, not just to clothing stores and car dealers and treatment centers and plastic surgery clinics. They sell it to whoever has money to buy that information. How raw is that data? Is it fully targeted? Are that data and the algorithms that sort that data user friendly enough that a 400 lb. man on his bed in Macedonia or Hungary or Belarus or Russia can climb inside the heads of millions of Americans from halfway around the globe? What other players helped Russia and the Trump campaign weaponize our personal computers against our democracy?

Facebook might not be the main spy. They might be the main evidence that spying is going on. Which is the tail and which is the dog? Facebook might only be the weapon the manipulators are using. How firm a hold does Facebook have on how its algorithms are used? The only real criterion it seems to focus on before enabling a manipulation of the newsfeed is this: has the manipulator paid to use the Facebook algorithm; if so they get permission to go ahead.

When Trump happened it seemed creepily possible that a new force was abroad in the world upsetting the usual ways consensus is created and public decisions are made. Surprising upsets had exploded key western alliances. In the months since it became evident that those upsets had been engineered in very cynical, undemocratic ways. Russia had helped hack the Democratic Party in this country, but there were other operators involved.

Multiple bad actors working toward one goal = Conspiracy.

The multinational Big Data corporation Cambridge Analytica began to pop up in news stories from The Guardian, the DailyKos and others. There was concern and speculation about their manipulations of their Big Data because of what was known about the man who owned the company.

Since Brexit and Trump, Russian meddling was evident in the Netherlands and in France, failing in both elections. Then, this summer, the BBC reported Cambridge Analytica has been busy in the Kenyan election.

Cambridge Analytica is just one of the companies devoted to reading our minds and manipulating our behavior for profit. CA is owned by right wing libertarian/authoritarian Robert Mercer, one of the biggest supporters of Trump, a Bannon patron and mentor, a backer of Breitbart, America’s leading purveyor of right wing memes and falsehood. The president’s son-in-law Jared was Trump’s deputy for this kind of online mischief during the campaign. (He may be more puppet than tech wizard, but a puppet is more useful to the Russians than a wizard would be.)

Late this week Vanity Fair reported a story that tried to sort out the relationships between Kushner and Mercer and Russia and how our election was manipulated.

We have big data companies messing with our minds via our laptops which are weaponized to spy on us. What do we do to keep ourselves safe? We buy software from cybersecurity companies. The dominant player in this field is located where?

The world’s leading cybersecurity software company, Kaspersky Labs, is located in Russia, founded and built into a global software giant by a Russian computer wiz. Kaspersky Labs is also cozy with the Russian government’s spy agencies. (No one becomes a billionaire in Russia today without being cozy with Putin and his spy agencies.)

This article from Bloomberg explains some of the worries about the Kaspersky/Putin relationship which Kaspersky says does not exist.

Before we jump to too many conclusions (half of the conclusions would be enough to worry about if they are correct) this article in Wired says it wouldn’t have been necessary for the Russians to have American collaboration to hack our election, but they say they still may have had that collaboration. And a U.S. citizen acting as a co-conspirator is just as culpable if he is only a puppet.

Targeting has been the keyword as the Russian election hack has been reported. For Trump to run the table on an election that every poll said he had no chance of winning required some incredible luck, incredible assistance from bad actors, or else incredible sophistication in operation and targeting, and the best description of the Trump campaign was “seat of the pants” and “ad hoc.” The candidate’s message was undisciplined and bizarre. There were none of the traditional deployments, none of the usual planning, none of the kinds of organization and structure that successful campaigns need to win. This was why the result smelled so fishy. Maybe it required a crib––having all the answers beforehand. The how and by whom part of this story has been unfolding all summer. We know the Russians hacked computers and flooded the voters with falsified news stories, lurid rumors, and counterfeit reporting. But how was it targeted. The targeting required deep understanding of how Americans think and behave and how to manipulate that thinking and behavior.

This is how the picture was coming together in July:

Newsweek: Did Russia use Kushner's data operation to target Democratic voters?

Philadelphia Inquirer: to understand the Russian hacking of our election follow the data

The National Memo reports some of the details of how Trump and Russian election strategies were aligned

I get angry to think that the useful public utility developed with our tax-funded research and launched to make it easier for everyone to participate on a level basis (see Net Neutrality) with quick and easy and fair access has been turned against us, turned into a tool to manipulate us and subvert our democracy, weaponized against us. And that this has happened with the willing and profitable cooperation of our new president and his allies foreign and domestic.

False Narratives Are Part Of The FoxNews Brand

Ari Melber's interview with the private investigator who is suing FoxNews reveals key details about how FoxNews and the Trump White House tried to fabricate an alternate narrative to distract from the looming Russia collusion scandal.

This is how the Murdoch companies work. They see political advantage for the Right in distorting and corrupting legitimate investigations and exploiting real tragedies to do this. In this case it appears the goal was to discredit the investigations into Trump collusion with the Russians.

While Trump complains that our legitimate news media fabricates “fake news” the real fake news industry is based at FoxNews and appears to be working under the close direction of this White House.

Bill Moyers lists some of the other false narratives cooked up by the Right to confuse the public.

The Hill reports on Trump's very own news program, loyally and cheerfully and blandly and blondely reported by his blonde daughter-in-law, who is married to his blond son. "Bow! Bow! To the Daughter-In-Law-Elect!" ~The Mikado

A free society with a functioning democracy relies on the existence of a vigorous and honest press to guarantee the public has good information, that the public can trust its information, that the public can trust they are not being tricked or deceived.

But in Trump World honest news is the enemy. They have created what Orwell warned us about: a dictatorship of lies, in which the Truth is called a lie and the regime’s own self-manufactured Big Lies are fed to the public as gospel.

The Murdoch media and the Trump White House see news media as a political tool and a political weapon, divorced from truth and reality. Because truth and reality endanger the Trump regime. Because truth and reality undermine their power.

Because the Trump regime holds this cynical belief they think everyone else does too, that their opponents are just as cynical and dishonest. They cheat because they believe everyone cheats. They lie because they believe everyone lies. Of course every story that embarrasses Trump or the Republicans must be a lie.

Remember, FoxNews was originally dreamed up in the Nixon White House, the brainchild of Roger Ailes, then a Nixon staffer. Dishonest beginnings.

Ailes wanted to call it GOP-TV: a news source where everything was Republican spin and every story was a Republican weapon. When Rupert Murdoch learned about it he loved it. He put it together in the mid-90s as FoxNews and put Ailes in charge. The goal: to discredit and destroy the Clintons and the Clinton presidency.

There is a clear pattern here. The Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory resembles the fixation about Benghazi but ultimately harks back to the never-ending tabloid accusations that the Clintons had murdered their close friend and White House staffer Vince Foster. The story was pushed for years, not in the form of actual facts but with Fox personalities asking leading questions about Vince Foster’s death, substantiating the unfounded speculation, not with any evidence, but by raising their eyebrows and nodding. This was also the method used to charge and prosecute Hillary Clinton in the media for the “murder" of ambassador Chris Stevens. FoxNews kept the false narrative alive and Trey Gowdy and Darryl Issa’s inquisition in Congress kept the viewers glued to FoxNews. This is how the Murdoch press operates, carefully coordinated with the right wing faction in Washington. A poisonous symbiotic relationship.

Meanwhile innocent people are incriminated unfairly and grieving families are victimized.

In the UK, remember, the Murdoch press distorted and corrupted the Scotland Yard investigation of the murder of a young girl, hacking into the dead girl’s phone and preying on the grief of the girl’s parents. Frontline covered the Murdoch phone hacking scandal in detail on PBS.

Trump's Violent Attack On Truth

The other day, after Trump gave Turkish dictator Erdogan a cordial meeting at the White House, Erdogan watched his personal security detail attack and violently tackle, beat and kick peaceful protesters across the street from the Turkish ambassador's residence. This occurred on our soil while the Turkish president watched.

Reported by the Guardian.

Video at BoingBoing.

This appears to be where Trump is headed. This was a demonstration of the kind of brute force President Trump envies and admires.

Across the country there are new legislative efforts to criminalize peaceful political protest, to criminalize free speech. And what informs free speech? The information and facts we get from a free press. Trump is cracking down on press freedom already.

A reporter asking questions at the FCC was manhandled and arrested.

"Security guards at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters here manhandled a well-regarded reporter at a public hearing today and forced him to leave the premises after he had tried to politely ask questions of FCC commissioners.

"The reporter, John M. Donnelly of CQ Roll Call, is an award-winning journalist. He is also chairman of the National Press Club’s Press Freedom Team and president of the Military Reporters & Editors association. He has chaired the NPC Board of Governors and formerly served on the Standing Committee of Correspondents in the U.S. Congress, which credentials the Washington press corps.

"Donnelly said he ran afoul of plainclothes security personnel at the FCC when he tried to ask commissioners questions when they were not in front of the podium at a scheduled press conference.

"Throughout the FCC meeting, the security guards had shadowed Donnelly as if he were a security threat, he said, even though he continuously displayed his congressional press pass and held a tape recorder and notepad. They even waited for him outside the men’s room at one point.

"When Donnelly strolled in an unthreatening way toward FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly to pose a question, two guards pinned Donnelly against the wall with the backs of their bodies until O’Rielly had passed. O’Rielly witnessed this and continued walking…"

In West Virginia, a reporter asking HHS Secretary Price questions was arrested and faces charges. Charges of what? Of asking questions.

"On Tuesday evening, Public News Service reporter Dan Heyman was arrested at the West Virginia State Capitol after asking Price about the Republican health-care bill that passed in the House last week. Heyman wanted to know if domestic violence will be considered a preexisting condition if the bill becomes law.

"Price didn’t respond, so Heyman kept asking his question. He said he followed Price down a hallway and reached past people in his entourage while holding his phone. Then capitol police “decided I was just too persistent in asking this question and trying to do my job and so they arrested me,” Heyman said."

This is the Trump administration’s goal: to suppress, intimidate, and jail journalists for doing their job.

The Pointer Institute reports that Trump asked FBI director Comey to jail journalists who were embarrassing him.

"President Trump asked former FBI Director Jim Comey to lock up journalists for publishing classified information during a February Oval Office meeting, according to a memo written by Comey shortly after the meeting summarized Tuesday by The New York Times.

"Trump urged Comey to imprison journalists at the beginning of an exchange during which he also asked the former FBI chief to back off an investigation into then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to the story."

The story reported in The Guardian.

This intimidation predates the inauguration. We saw it on camera. We saw it in his legal intimidation of women who charged him with sexual assault. If Trump dislikes what someone says or reports, even if it’s true, he will retaliate––with all of the power and leverage a billionaire possesses, and with violence. Now he has the power to retaliate with the full force of the federal government and its police agencies.

How violent might this get? Trump has a record of defying rules and limits. He has a record of retaliating with force. Look at the foreign leaders he admires. Putin, whose operatives have been silencing his critics and opponents with lethal poisonings and machine guns and by throwing them from high windows. Trump admires Philippine leader Duterte who has bragged about joining his death squads on killing sprees.

Which brings us back to one of the tyrants Trump is modeling himself after.

Trump invited Turkey’s dictator Erdogan to a warm embrace in the White House, and Erdogan returned this favor by staging a vivid demonstration of how his dictatorship works at home. Kurdish protesters were assembled legally and peacefully across the street from the Turkish Ambassador’s residence, when this happened. The video is shocking. Muscular thugs in dark suits chasing and beating peaceful protesters, knocking them down then kicking them in the head and the groin. Brownshirt behavior in Washington DC carried out by a foreign dictator friend of our president. Think of it as an advertisement for Trump’s kind of leadership. Jackboots worn with business suits.

Reported in The Guardian.

This is not new. Erdogan’s personal security guards beat up journalists outside the Brookings Institution in March of last year.

Donald Trump’s campaign showed an escalating tendency toward violence. Trump himself has shown a tendency to push things as far as he can go and then further. When stopped or discouraged by officials or judges or rules he challenges their validity, questioning the law, discrediting the rules and norms that make the United States a democracy. Trump obviously would much prefer being president of a dictatorship where he can do whatever he likes and destroy whoever opposes him or criticizes him or asks him embarrassing questions.

Trump, the man who brazenly slanders and libels anyone who stands up to him, wants to change the libel laws to enable him to go after his critics. Now he has presidential powers to follow through on his threats. His goal? To undermine Americans’ ability to sort fact from fake and truth from lies.

Reported by Politico.

Newsweek analyzes Trump's threats to the First Amendment and lays out what it means going forward.

Trump fears the truth because truth and facts are our best defense against tyranny.

Trump won the election because of the flood of fake news. His campaign repeatedly cited and pushed fake news stories. They applauded and validated the fake news being produced by Russian proxies to pollute our politics.

The Trump campaign won the election in large part because they adopted the strategic false memes and smears the Russians were producing. They welcomed it and distributed it. They were playing by the Russian playbook and it worked. This according to intelligence expert Clinton Watts, in testimony before Congress.

Video testimony via CNN

The White House staff feeds President Trump a steady diet of fake news stories, which shape his “reality” (which is entirely unreal). And this enables him to shape his devoted followers’ reality to conform with his delusions.

Reported by Newsweek.

This war against truth and information is central to tyranny and Trump’s goal is exactly that. It’s happened before, but earlier tyrants did not have the power and machinery this president has to undermine our free access to good information. Trump is weaponizing the Big Lie, which is the tool Hitler and Stalin used to consolidate their power.

At VOX, historian Timothy Snyder explains how tyrants gain power by first destroying free and reliable information, by destroying truth.

When Do We Call It Treason?

The Atlantic describes how carefully Donald Trump has followed the Russian line all through this election.

He continues to deny he had any connection to the Russians. But he did. Many of his close aides were in close touch with the Russian government. This was reported in November by the New York Times.

Trump knew the Russian government was behind the attacks on Hillary Clinton. This is reported here by The Hill, the respected conservative paper of Capitol Hill. He knew it before election day. He actually encouraged the Russians to do more to help him. He applauded their crime and accepted the benefit, as did the entire Republican Party.

Once the Republicans have consolidated their ill-gotten power they will control any investigation that takes place. Which means shaping findings to match their own propaganda. Another trick from the dictator’s toolkit. VOX runs through the Republican strategy for covering up this Russian coup.

Trump’s hold on power is not as strong as Russia’s hold over him. A report on how they will blackmail Trump is here at the Daily Beast. The Russians are in the driver’s seat. The Republicans are in one of those little child’s seats with its toy steering wheel, strapped securely next to Mommy.

Every cabinet post Trump announces and every bizarre diplomatic misstep he’s made since his election (sic) proclaims the fact that he is taking dictation from the Russian dictator.

There is a lot of good reporting about this now, but during the campaign there was a rigorous effort to make sure that the massively corrupt and incompetent and dangerous Trump was not reported as being any more corrupt or dangerous or incompetent than Hillary Clinton. This hoisted his plausibility and minimized his flaws. It invented and inflated flaws in Hillary Clinton. The reporting gave credence to the months long campaign of character assassination aimed at her by the Republicans. The press behaved as if they were recording secretaries for the Republican Party, and for the Russian government helping the Republican Party. Trump was normalized and Clinton was rubbished.

This has happened before. During the 1930s reporters from American and British newspapers carefully expunged the ugliest promises of Adolf Hitler. They normalized him. Mussolini “made the trains run on time.” And Hitler loved dogs and small children. Hitler had made it very explicit that he planned to conquer Germany’s neighbors and create a living hell for the Jews–––all those portions were edited out of the English language editions. Once you have normalized a monster it becomes very hard to change the public’s mind about them.

The normalization of Hitler and Mussolini, from Smithsonian magazine.

The Russians helped create much of the fake news propaganda against Clinton. The stuff about her underground torture chambers and the pedophaelia operation inside a DC pizza shop. All laughably untrue, and all swallowed whole by the obedient FoxNews and Breitbart trained Republican voter. Meanwhile the true and truly horrifying stories being reported by reputable news organizations about Trump were dismissed and disbelieved. The Republican voter has been trained to believe the latest fevered conspiracy theory but not to believe America’s intelligence agencies.

The guy who helped make America gullible and open the door for the Russian takeover is now the top advisor to the new president. An analysis of the poisonous rise of Breitbart by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Let’s get back to the Russian takeover.

How did the fiercely patriotic Live Free Or Die Republican Party decide to climb into Putin’s pocket? They were in dangerous decline. They were losing the election. It was all slipping from their hands, the power, the respect, the feeling of importance. Then suddenly help came in the form of leaked Democratic emails and information. They decided they hated the Democrats more than they hated the Russians. They hated the idea of Democrats running the country a lot more than the idea of the country being run by the Russians. Like Quisling in Norway, who handed his country to the Nazis, there were promises of shared power. The Russians would lift them up where they belonged.

Imagine if Watergate had not been run out of the Nixon White House but out of the Kremlin. And imagine if the Republican Party had known this and all the material gained by the illegal spying had fueled Republican wins all across the country. As Charles Pierce reports, that is what happened this year.

The Republicans have seized power, with Russian help. Their win was narrow and deeply corrupted. They don’t care, they plan to come down hard. They plan to rule as hard right as they are able. They plan to nail down their control, purge the government of less than true believers. They plan to discredit honest news organizations and promote their own propaganda outlets. They plan to punish opponents. (They are already promising to prosecute and jail Electoral College electors who don’t fall into line next Monday.) This is what dictators do. Putin is their role model, their hero. Americans did not vote for this.

I keep reading that there is nothing we can do. The Electoral College must ratify Trump’s election, they say. They point out that even if we can remove Trump from the presidency the Republicans who also gained power with Russian assistance will be the ones choosing his replacement. They went along with this coup and will benefit from the crime. Them’s the rules, folks. We must honor the rules. We must accept what has happened because to refuse is a violation of our principles. When do we call it treason? Once they are in power that will be impossible because treason will be anything that disputes their power over us.

I feel like we are in a car accelerating toward a cliff and we’re being told using the brake now would violate our warranty.

How Comfortable Are Americans That Vladimir Putin Has Appointed Our Next President?

"The situation is the most stark challenge to a free people that has arisen in my lifetime. We have political and democratic muscles that have atrophied from disuse that now have to be called upon immediately to rescue the republic no matter how many people find that to be too rowdy and inconvenient for their refined political tempers. We have institutional safeguards that have rusted from neglect, but which still work if we're strong enough to turn the handles. We are in the deep, dark woods now. We all are, in a very real sense, survivalists.”

~Charles Pierce, the most astute political commentator of the day, in Esquire

Read Pierce's whole column here

In 2000 we allowed the Supreme Court to overrule the voters and install a president who was inadequate. At least three major catastrophes came about during his presidency, which a competent president probably would have avoided, and a fourth, climate change, which the president the voters elected, Al Gore, would definitely have confronted head on.

This year we have watched helplessly as fake news stories, armies of angry bigots and, not least, the dictator of Russia have installed a corrupt, dishonest, ignorant and downright dangerous incompetent as our president elect.

Will we do something now?

It was also announced today that President Trump will not be interested in daily intelligence briefings.

If Trump becomes our next president, if the Electoral College fails in its sole constitutional job, to prevent unfit men from occupying our highest office, The White House will have been occupied by these three figures:

2001-2009, NINCOMPOOP (Republican)

2009-2017 SKILLED, WISE LEADER (Democrat)

2017- NINCOMPOOP (Republican)

GOP Climate Apocalypse

Scientific American reports on the urgent warnings our military leaders are sending about the dangers of climate change. The Republicans only listen to the military when they–the Republicans–want a war. When the military wants to avoid dangers they aren’t interested.

The story in Scientific American

The Guardian reports that Trump’s junta plans to cut out Nasa’s climate, oceanographic and atmospheric scientists. Listening to who instead? Soothsayers? The oddsmakers at Ladbrokes? Wizards in white pointed hoods?

The story reported in The Guardian

The arctic which, as every devoted fan of Christmas knows, is traditionally freezing cold this time of year, this year has chosen to be alarmingly warm. The 60s animated specials about Rudolph and Santa were not scientific predictions of an ideal future. When the arctic melts entirely, the oceans rise, the permafrost thaws releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere as well as long-frozen diseases and anthrax spores, the ocean currents change––whole crop regions rely on the reliable circulation of ocean currents and rainfall, not something we should mess with. Melted ice caps will tend to change the salt content of the oceans, possibly endangering the vast and complex ocean flora that produces the oxygen all human life depends on to live. Climate deniers are endangering all of us. For what? To prolong the fossil fuel profits of the companies that pay them.

The story reported by PBS's NOVA

Reported at SLATE

The Republicans in Congress are also completely hypnotized by the climate change denial industry and the fossil fuel companies that send them money. Endangering our country for money. When do we call that bribery and treason? The latest insanity: Congress obediently tweets misleading bogus news stories also produced by the fossil fuel PR machinery.

Reported by NBC News

From Bloomberg, a very useful debunker of all those climate change deniers who say human industry has nothing to do with it. A set of clear graphs says otherwise.

ThinkProgress: Trump talks climate policy with the NYTimes and they obediently repeat what he says as gospel. Unwise.

National Geographic reports on the link between climate change and extreme weather. No, Oklahoma, it isn’t just God’s will...

Fortune Magazine (that pinko communist rag) reports that solar and renewable jobs are outpacing fossil fuel jobs. (Until Trump jerks us back toward disaster.)

Steve Bannon, former Goldman Sachs banker, was also deeply involved in the highly publicized Biosphere experiment in Arizona. He was the guy who took the serious experiment and rigged it to suit his own preconceptions. But, to paraphrase an old saying “You can’t bribe Mother Nature."

Reported by Motherboard

I watch as the Republicans lead this dangerous lurch toward climate disaster and wonder how many of them are rubbing their hands with glee, imagining the imminent end of civilization that will cause Jesus to return. It might be a good time to ask them publicly if this is what they are aiming for. Are they hoping and actively working to cause global collapse and bring on the apocalypse? I thought Jesus told us to be good stewards of this earth. Some very bad, very irresponsible, very dangerous stewards are now in control of things.

Did Russia Win The White House?

The American voters chose Hillary Clinton by more than a million and a half votes and the margin is growing as absentee votes are counted. The ongoing updated vote tally is shown here.

But Russia and the Russian spy agencies and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin wanted Trump and it looks like they got what they wanted.

Esquire's very readable and credible political reporter Charlie Pierce reports on the Russian connection here, and here.

The Hill newspaper reports on it here.

Mother Jones reports on it here.

The Russian government wanted someone weak, inexperienced, irrational, incompetent and vacillating and Americans who voted for Trump helped them achieve that.

With perhaps some additional help from voter intimidation and voter suppression and election rigging.

David Pakman addresses vote anomalies in key swing states

Published on Nov 14, 2016
--According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Hillary Clinton won four key battleground states (NC, PA, WI and FL), but ultimately lost those states according to computerized vote counts

The data from TDMS Research

BBC journalist Greg Palast addresses these concerns more directly here

(This sounds like the kind of rhetoric Trump was shouting just before the election. But it isn’t rhetoric. It has to do not with predictive polling but with information collected as the vote was happening, which is less prone to deviations. The deviations are what alert the public to irregularities. That is what this information suggests may have happened.)

So there were a number of very disturbing forces pushing for a Trump victory.

Another mechanism that distorted this election was the way social media amplified and disseminated the lies being told. Because of the greater skepticism of progressive voters most of the fake stories that worked their way into this election were biased toward Trump.

The story from WIRED

Fake news sites sold more Americans on bogus negative stories about Hillary (I read one that reported that close associates said she emitted a sulphuric smell indicating she was in league with Satan. She does not, and she is not. People believe this crap because if it’s on the internets it must be true) and bogus positive stories about Trump (the one having the greatest effect may have been the one saying Pope Francis endorsed Trump, when in fact Pope Francis clearly and forcefully rebuked Trump and the hateful policies he calls for.)

Untrue stories and rumors are often in play during elections, but this year the untrue stories outplayed the true ones.

The story reported by Buzzfeed

(I realize Buzzfeed sounds a bit like a fake news source. This is actually a very well founded story.)

Trump benefited from the sad fact that many Americans base their most important decisions on feelings rather than facts. Which is ironic, because it wasn’t very long ago that Republicans were the party that prided itself on being rational and responsible. They derided liberals as being fact averse. That has flipped entirely.

Vox discusses the fact that conservatives believe the false stories far more than liberals do

One of the Big Lies cited in the Vox story was broadcast to the millions of gullible Trump supporters is now the top advisor in Trump’s White House, the notorious white supremacist Steve Bannon.

One of the fake news creators discussed his filthy profession with the Washington Post. He seems to be enjoying the damage as much as Putin is, while frantically denying any blame for the millions of people he lied into voting for Trump. He has a point: if you can persuade a stupid person to drink poison the joke is on them, right? Too late to apologize now.

The Oxford English Dictionary announces a Word of the Year each year. This year’s word is “post-truth”. We’ve reached a point when what is true doesn’t matter to millions of people. This should be troubling. This is one of the first corruptions that occurred during the Nazi era in Germany. Now I realize Donald Trump is not Hitler because Hitler was a vegetarian, but apart from his eating habits there are a disturbing number of close similarities, not just in what Trump promises to do but in the kinds of poisonous rhetoric he used to get people out to vote for him. The only real difference is that Trump shouted these things in English and not in German.

The true story about "post-truth" via the BBC

Nothing we can do, right? Too late now, right? Let’s all curl up in fetal positions underneath our beds, right? They won’t find us there...

Actually? Actually there is something that might prevent the inauguration of President Trump.

Something called the Electoral College. It’s the old device the slave states put in place to increase their influence in Congress by adding electoral power for people they owned as property.

But it was also put in place to keep power from being given to dangerous people who catered to the mob. Not the Mob, as in the Mafia. The mob as in the unwashed and volatile public. The ignorant folk who are easily fooled by fake stories about an honest candidate being dishonest and a dishonest candidate being truthful. The Electoral College was created to prevent people like Donald J. Trump (con man, fraudster, tax evader, sociopath, fascist, incompetent) from gaining power.

And to avoid that outcome we can still hope that enough of these carefully selected Electoral College Electors will refuse to ratify the presidency of Vladimir Putin’s favorite.

I am recommending that everyone who knows rational people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida or any state that swung or squeaked by for Trump to phone them and ask them to write sincere and respectful personal letters to the Electors in their state. Other letters can be written to respected Republicans who might have some influence, who those Electors might respect.

One argument that might be persuasive is that Trump is erratic and irrational and likely to fail in a manner that will reflect very badly on the Republican Party. His errors and his poor judgment will be the party’s fault forever. The Republicans now own all three branches of government. They will own whatever unfolds whether they intended it or not.

Many conservatives have already disowned him. And are continuing to after the election.

The story from SLATE

Folks in the redder parts of the country tend to revere America’s military. You might inform these Republican in the Electoral College that our nation’s military rate climate change as one of the greatest security threats America faces today.

The story about the security threat from global warming via Scientific American

If Trump is inaugurated there are other things we’ll need to do. But let’s try to stop him before we get to that point.