My shortest essay ever...

anti-socialengineering.com changes it's name to hypermanipulation.com

Just to make life easier...
The blog has been around long enough that through the ages I have lost my passwords to the various iterations of Google's takeovers.
We are going forward with hypermanipulation.com

How in Hell is Trump still President?

"In psychology, there’s an idea known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. It refers to research by David Dunning and Justin Kruger that found the least competent people often believe they are the most competent because they “lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they’re doing.”

This is a quote from an excellent article by Vox. The article is a summary and commentary upon a very recent interview US President Donald Trump gave to the NY Times.
Please go read this article here

The Vox article describes a man who has lost at least some of his cognitive ability. The interviewer allows Trump, in his own words, to prove himself a man unfit for the office he holds. Donald Trump is not just a liar, but delusional, not just inarticulate but incoherent. He is willfully ignorant and authoritarian in a job where his power is absolute. If he was on the Apprentice, he wouldn't be able to deliver his lines and it wouldn't matter because his choices would be confined to the arena of celebrity. The fact that the President of the United States has lost his marbles (no offense to all other sufferers of cognitive dysfunction) is terrifying. Doing nothing about it is shameful.

Thus, this article. Do please at least make yourself aware of that which you are not aware.
Don't be like Donald Trump. Don't let America suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
You don't know what it is you don't know. Don't pretend to be an expert about that.
What you know compared to what you don't know could be expressed in the same ratio as the amount of time you are alive compared to the infinity before and after that.

How the hell is Donald Trump still President?

 

Russian bots picking fights.

It has come to my attention that Russian bots, and bots from other nations, including conservative American bots are trolling the internet, trying to pick fights.
This, apparently, is starting to happen here.
I, for one, will be talking to all bots in an attempt to see 1.) If it is really a bot, or just a stupid human and 2.) How smart these bots are.

Perhaps in the future I will write a piece on this phenomenon.

Are you ready for President Pence?

With White House staffers being either fired or quitting, with CEOs of major American manufacturing turning their backs on the Businessman in Chief and with Trump himself repeatedly opening his mouth to spout his insane ideas, it seems that there is now an effort to remove the President from office, in the name of ability, if not reputation.

However, what everyone is forgetting about is that this won't necessarily fix the problem. Trump is a narcissistic bigot, apparently a liar and unlikable, but he's also a mouthpiece. Because of his volume, at least with Trump you know what you get. Once the blowhard is exorcised, the White House will place Pence POTUS and the stream of ludicrous information will stop. However this doesn't mean that the insanity will stop. Trump and his gaggle of gargoyles have "drained the swamp" as they set out to, replacing every chicken in the hen house with a fox. Getting rid of the King Fox, does not rid us of every other fox, it just boards up the windows, locks the door and creates an information vacuum. Evil nutjobs will still be running the country, they'll just be doing it in secret.

So let's take a look at the Vice President. Michael Pence is an extreme right wing, Christian conservative. He wasn't always, he was a democratic Catholic until the Reagan years, when he was born again, literally, to the dismay of his family. It has been said that "Pence doesn't just wear his religion on his sleeve, he's wearing the whole Jesus jersey." So with ancient legends steering his moral compass, he believes things like: abortion is murder, gays can be cured, immigrants had better beware and refugees had better turn around, healthcare is Socialism, global warming is a myth, drugs, sex and gambling are "bad," ignorance is better than knowledge, sheep are better than wolves, etc. He carries with him the same deck of cards as Trump and his cronies, he's playing the same game, only Pence has a much more developed poker face. 

If he replaces Donald Trump as President, the song will remain the same, we just won't get to hear it anymore. This is scarier than the evil you know.