Wot, No President!

[poliphilo]

They removed the corpse from the basement and put it in a bath- whereupon it coughed, sat up and "said, "Sorry we have to do this again," then lay down in the bath water, opened its mouth and drowned. This was a dream I had just before waking.

I got the date wrong yesterday- and wrote about there not having been many fireworks when bonfire night hadn't actually happened yet. Perhaps one should note it as one of the effects of lockdown that one loses track of time. Anyway the actual bonfire night wasn't that much livelier than the night before. There were a few bangs around eight o'clock- and that was it. I had been sent a petition to sign requesting a ban on fireworks for the sake of domestic animals- which I binned for a number of reasons- the chief of which being that I'm constitutionally averse to banning things. Further down the list would come the observation that it's just not true that all pets are spooked by fireworks- and, indeed, I don't think I've ever owned one that was. Ailz reminds me of a cat we used to have who would sit up on the window sill specifically to watch the sparkles in the sky.

It seems the USA still doesn't have a President. All the mainstream media I see is unquestioningly hostile to Trump, calling his accusations of fraud "false" and "fake" without bothering to investigate- which is either culpable naivety or dereliction of duty. From what I know of the history of US politics- indeed of politics worldwide- both sides will be doing all they can to finangle their way to victory. These are not nice people- and the main difference between Biden and Trump is that only one of them has drawing-room manners.

Comments

[sovay]

The reason why the mainstream media is "hostile" to Trump is because the ones who fact check have spent four years, and specifically this campaign cycle, finding a very high preponderance of what he says to be lies.

This. Thank you for typing it out so concisely.

Trump tried to claim victory in this election at about a quarter to three in the morning on Election Night when something like less than half the country's results had come in. It was appropriate to report that statement as false because it was. Not enough ballots had been counted to determine the claim; he was—and as of my last glance at the press, remains—nowhere near the number of votes in the electoral college needed to take the presidency. His entire administration has been marked by similar lies of such constancy and obviousness that while it is still necessary to fact-check them, it is a perpetual Gish gallop and they are not neutral background noise. His easily proved lies have incited violence that has killed people. His unfounded claims of fraud on the part of the Democrats (which if true would be affecting only his performance in the presidential race; the Republicans have otherwise done far better out of this election than they were projected to) have the potential to do the same. It is responsible not to amplify these claims as truth until they can be shown to be, and right now, there is no evidence in favor and much to the contrary.

I wish the media had pushed back on him years ago like they are doing now. One of the things I feared about this election was that the papers would simply, as they have done for far too much of his adminstration, take him at his word.