Donald Trump's conflicts of interest are already a source of ongoing corruption.

Nine Democratic Senators call for a National Intelligence Estimate on the extent of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and ask the DOJ to confirm that a criminal investigation is ongoing, or to begin one.

Oh, look. The Benghazi investigation is officially done.

I guess Republicans are probably really tired of investigating stuff right now.

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-pro-trump-bot-colonised-pro-clinton-twitter.html

http://politicalbots.org/?p=787 Bots and Automation over Twitter during the U.S. Election

http://politicalbots.org/ An international research group studying political bots.

A survey of voters asked if they remembered seeing a headline, and if so, whether they believed it was true.

It may come as no surprise that high percentages of Trump voters believed stories that favored Trump or demonized Clinton. But the percentage of Clinton voters who believed the fake stories was also fairly high!

familiarity equals truth: when we recognize something as true, we are most often judging if this is something we’ve heard more often than not from people we trust.

...

if you want to be well-informed it’s not enough to read the truth — you also must avoid reading lies.

The Senate recently passed the Water Resources Development Act, which included a provision that would require the use of American Iron and Steel. But as the House considers the bill, Paul Ryan is pushing to have that provision removed.

Soon after the election, I heard Ryan was planning on beginning to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Now this. I'm almost suspicious that he's deliberately playing the bad guy to make Trump look good when Ryan "backs down". (Then again, maybe he's just a jerk.)

How a moderate Republican could stop Trump in the Electoral College, most likely followed by votes in Congress.

The less we expect of our people, the less democracy we have.

Donald Trump is a vile liar. So are the people who associate with him. So are the Republicans who supported his presidential campaign, or stood by as though it was fine to say nothing. Don't regard them as anything other than vile liars.

journalists need to understand what Trump is doing and refuse to play by his rules. He is going to use the respect and deference typically accorded to the presidency as an instrument for spreading more lies. Reporters must refuse to treat him like a normal president and refuse to bestow any unearned legitimacy on his administration. They must also give up their posture of high-minded objectivity — and, along with it, any hope of privileged access to the Trump White House. The incoming president has made clear that he expects unquestioning obedience from the press, and will regard anyone who doesn’t give it to him as an enemy. That is the choice every news outlet faces for the next four years: Subservience and complicity, or open hostility. There is no middle ground.

This is an interesting look at Trump's personality, but it shrugs off the danger we're in.

Donald Trump is a liar, a cheat, a narcissist, and a petty bully with no principles. And Trump himself is only part of the danger. I have no doubt that some members of the 1% are actively looking for opportunities to flush democracy down the toilet for the sake of making an extra billion. And they may be colluding with wealthy Russians.

That’s how you move Trump. You don’t talk about ethics. You play the toughness card. You appeal to the art of the deal. You make him feel smart, powerful, and loved. You don’t forget how unmoored and volatile he is, but you set aside your fear and your anger. You thank God that you’re dealing with a narcissist, not a cold-blooded killer. And until you can get him safely out of the White House, you work with what you have. People in other countries have dealt with presidents like Trump for a long time. Can we handle it? Yes, we can.

I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.

Donald Trump has filled his staff with these liars.

Yascha Mounk of Harvard and Roberto Stefan Foa of U. Melbourne have proposed 3 criteria to measure the strength of a democracy.

• How important do citizens think it is for their country to remain democratic?
• How open are citizens to the idea of non-democratic forms of government such as military rule?
• How strong are political parties with an antisystem platform calling the current government illegitimate?

If support for democracy is falling, while opposition to democracy is rising, the democracy is "deconsolidating" -- in danger of falling to an authoritarian government. Under these criteria, democracy is in danger in a number of Western countries, including the US, UK, and AU.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, chair of the House Oversight Committee, has shown great enthusiasm for persecuting Hillary Clinton. But for some reason, he doesn't seem to have any interest in investigating Donald Trump's glaring conflicts of interest.

Donald Trump is using the methods of tyrants to control the media. He was already doing this during his campaign, and he has only gotten worse since becoming President-Elect.

• Berate them directly.
• Refuse access to those he disapproves.
• Turn the public against them.
• Condemn criticism and satire aimed at him.
• Threaten them with lawsuits and potential new laws.
• Limit media access.
• Speak directly to the public. (There has been mention of Trump continuing to hold rallies. He likes the instant gratification and adulation of a cheering crowd.)

http://robertreich.org/post/153748549760

Trump is dangerous. But his election has also angered many millions of people who don't like him. We need to take advantage of that.

We've been too dependent on the theory of monolithic power, "the idea that government and the representative leaders within our institutions are the primary means to change people’s lives." Government and civil rights organizations are necessary, but not sufficient. We can't sit back and depend on them to work for us.

"Together, we can redefine civic participation not by organizational membership but as movement-building. Movement-building is an ongoing process of building leadership, relationships and avenues for getting involved."

Strategic Unity and Common Purpose: "We may disagree on specific policies, but we can be united around values and a common vision for the future — the American ideal of inclusivity, around civil liberties, around a secular government that protects the freedom of diverse religions, and around the right to decide what happens to our bodies."

Participatory Leadership: "We need participation-oriented leaders whose job is to empower and activate rather than represent and control, allowing communities around the country to replicate the same behavior"

Strategic Action: protest is good, but it isn't a strategy. "Strategic action feeds movement growth by ensuring each action leads people to another action."

Existing movements have been working hard (and sometimes bleeding) to fight for the rights most of us have taken for granted. "White Americans ready to fight must either prioritize minorities' struggles or we will all lose."

Lawrence Lessig is tired of hearing that the US is not a democracy. The US is not a direct democracy. But it is a republic -- a representative democracy.

Interview with a man who has run several fake news sites since 2013.

Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue.

...

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in the Trump era, Christine Amanpour

As all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well: First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating -- until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison

...

First, like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate.

It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth.

...

The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard.

...

The conservative radio host who may be the next white house press secretary says mainstream media is hostile to traditional values.

I would say it's just the opposite. And have you read about the "heil, victory" meeting in Washington, DC this past weekend? Why aren't there more stories about the dangerous rise of the far right here and in Europe? Since when did anti-Semitism stop being a litmus test in this country?

J. Alex Halderman, Professor of Computer Science at U. Michigan, says yes, it's possible that the election was hacked. We should audit the results. And paper ballots should always be used in future elections.

19 May 2016. Republicans defeated an amendment by Rep. Sean Maloney D-NY, aimed at upholding an executive order that bars discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors. Seven Republicans switched their votes under pressure from House leaders. Final vote 213-212.

"Farewell, America", Neal Gabler

If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans?

...

The virus that kills democracy is extremism because extremism disables those codes. Republicans have disrespected the process for decades. They have regarded any Democratic president as illegitimate. They have proudly boasted of preventing popularly elected Democrats from effecting policy and have asserted that only Republicans have the right to determine the nation’s course.

...

The media can’t be let off the hook for enabling an authoritarian to get to the White House. ... When he ran, the media treated him not as a candidate, but as a celebrity, and so treated him differently from ordinary pols. The media gave him free publicity, trumpeted his shenanigans, blasted out his tweets, allowed him to phone in his interviews, fell into his traps and generally kowtowed until they suddenly discovered that this joke could actually become president.

National Election Defense Coalition - a nonprofit that fights for fair elections and voting rights.

Elizabeth Warren on the horde of lobbyists Trump has appointed to his transition team.

Donald Trump is a liar. What a surprise.

Juan-Pablo Brammer on why many poor whites feel they can identify with Donald Trump. The capitalist myth insists that anyone can work their way up with hard work and cleverness. They have accepted this idea completely.

Where we're heading under "President" Trump.

Prof. Timothy Frye on the disturbing abnormalities of the 2016 election -- and their similarity to the status quo in weak democracies.

• candidate keeping his finances a secret
• threats to imprison a political opponent
• racism, xenophobia, and misogyny
• interference by a foreign government
• media circus
• politicization of security services (FBI)

Leonid Ragozin: "We Russians have watched our president embrace anyone prepared to join his gang and do his bidding. Americans will see the same from [Trump]." Expect him to neutralize criticism over xenophopia, racism, and misogyny by welcoming people from various communities into his camp, and appointing some to government posts.

"Putin and Trump don't create ethnic movements, they create gangs in which the only criterion that really matters is whether you are 'with us' or 'against us'"

But as managing editor of the fact-checking site Snopes, Brooke Binkowski believes Facebook’s perpetuation of phony news is not to blame for our epidemic of misinformation. “It’s not social media that’s the problem,” she says emphatically. “People are looking for somebody to pick on. The alt-rights have been empowered and that’s not going to go away anytime soon. But they also have always been around.”

The misinformation crisis, according to Binkowski, stems from something more pernicious. In the past, the sources of accurate information were recognizable enough that phony news was relatively easy for a discerning reader to identify and discredit. The problem, Binkowski believes, is that the public has lost faith in the media broadly — therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer. The reasons are familiar: as the business of news has grown tougher, many outlets have been stripped of the resources they need for journalists to do their jobs correctly.

The problem is not JUST social media and fake news. But most of the false stories do not come from mainstream media. The greatest evils of mainstream media are sensationalism, and being too willing to spin stories the way their sources want them to.

Columbia Law Professor Richard Briffault on the history of the Electoral College and the issues surrounding "faithless" electors.

Ideas about what to do during a Trump presidency. It seems too optimistic to me. I hope I'm wrong.

Lawrence Lessig argues that the Electoral College should reject Donald Trump and elect Hillary Clinton.

Gloria Steinem responds to the election of Donald Trump.

I’m being realistic, not negative. Almost every issue of equality now has majority support in public opinion polls, ideas of race and gender are changing, activism and iPhones are exposing the racial violence that has always been there, sexual assault from the campus to the military is no longer hidden, and Trump’s very public misogyny has unified women, educated men and inspired activism. It’s the Anita Hill effect, but deepened and multiplied. Trump has helped to expose desperation among those jobless and working poor who support him only because they oppose Washington.

Mike Caulfield says Facebook's feed algorithms are far from its only problem. The entire site design encourages sharing of items that users haven't inspected beyond reading the headline.

The forces that propelled Mr. Trump’s rise need to be confronted and defeated. It won’t be easy, given that tens of millions of Americans will vote for him and believe deeply in him. But if these forces are not defeated, what happened this year will be replicated in one form or another, and the Republican Party will continue to inflict great harm on our republic.

• Anti-intellectualism [Actually, outright insanity. Complete disregard for reality. Trump and his followers "believe" whatever they want to "believe". The Republican party has become a party of frauds and liars.]
• Political recklessness [Playing bullshit games instead of doing the duties they were elected to do. The refusal to vote on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee is one example.]
• Appealing to nativism and xenophobia [No shit. This article is otherwise forthright. He should have said fascism and white supremacy.]

Aside from the sins of the Republican Party:

• Major media failed us by giving this asshole all kinds of free publicity.
• Responsible journalists did their jobs. We need to support them, and we need more of them.
• Entertainers pretending to be serious political commentators and fake news sites have become a danger to democracy.
• Trump supporters: shameless racists, or just astonishingly stupid? [No, moron, Hillary Clinton is not just as bad as Trump.] Can we please improve education at least enough to counterbalance the ineducable?

the greater sin of the Republican Party wasn’t that Mr. Trump won the nomination by carrying a plurality of votes in a large field. It was that people who surely knew better rallied to Mr. Trump once he became the nominee. Some advised him, others defended him and excused him, and still others tried to ignore him.

And we should never forget who those people were, Paul Ryan.

GOP States Keep Ignoring Court Orders to Restore Voting Rights -- Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, and North Caroline won't stop suppressing the vote.

But the thing is, this doesn’t make me different than Trump supporters; it makes me exactly the same as Trump supporters.

While our very real fears may manifest themselves in different ways, and while those fears may look and sound dissimilar, they are really the same fears: The fears of being left behind, left out, and being turned against.

But on issues of racism, race-baiting, religious intolerance, misogyny, sexual assault, white supremacy and demagoguery — there can be no gray area, Peter. These are disqualifying issues and you are completely wrong to support Donald Trump.

Senate Republicans have refused to give President Obama's Supreme Court nominee a hearing, under the pretense that it is too close to an election, and "the American people should have their say on this issue".

Now, they're talking about refusing to consider anyone that Hillary Clinton nominates.

The people already spoke twice when they elected Barack Obama. The people are about to speak again.

The motivations of Trump supporters.

Jon Udell and Mike Caulfield discuss web annotation and personal wikis as tools for fact-checking on the Internet.

Trump is Bad for Business. Letter opposing Donald Trump, drafted by 12 business leaders and signed by hundreds.

Conservative Media's Influence on the Republican Party<br> Jackie Calmes, 27 July 2015

The Conservative Case Against Donald Trump

This article is actually written about Trump's pronunciation of Nevada as it is short and to the point. It almost seems like Fox had to just throw an article out there to cover the topic. Basically this article talks about Clinton supporter's attacks on Trump for the way he says their State's name. While the CNN article went deep into Trump's political and economic strategies, this one was a quick review of why people were mad at trump for the way he talks.

The first thing i noticed when i got to the NBC website was that all of the political articles are about Trump. That really says something about the style of politics that are alive in the U.S. today. Although the article title talks about "Nevada" and how Trump says the State's name, it actually takes a deeper look into Trump's past business dealings and political affiliations. As opposed to the Fox news article that actually did focus on his pronunciation of Nevada. On top of that the author in this article goes after Trump's VP candidate as well as others that are in Trump's campaign committee. This article seemed more like an attack on trump rather than a criticism.

Why conservatives shouldn't vote for Donald Trump.

The Republican Party nominated an ignorant, bigoted, authoritarian candidate to be president of the United States. The best message that the country can send with the popular vote is that if you try to win the presidency by stoking race hatred and promising to degrade the Constitution, you will lose and lose badly—that a fascist does not have an even-odds chance of becoming the most powerful person in the world.

“Among millennials, especially,” [Ross] Douthat argues, “there’s a growing constituency for whom rightwing ideas are so alien or triggering, leftwing orthodoxy so pervasive and unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise.”

...

“I don’t see sufficient evidence to buy the argument about siloing and confirmation bias,” Jeff Jarvis,a professor at the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism said. “That is a presumption about the platforms – because we in media think we do this better. More important, such presumptions fundamentally insult young people. For too long, old media has assumed that young people don’t care about the world.”

“Newspapers, remember, came from the perspective of very few people: one editor, really,” Jarvis said. “Facebook comes with many perspectives and gives many; as Zuckerberg points out, no two people on Earth see the same Facebook.”

Public opinion matters.

Hillary Clinton: Not a Loose Cannon Shooting Verbal Spit Wads.

Strong (written) language. In the video, the paralanguage makes things sounds quite a bit more difficult. Fear of reprisals? Unwilling shift to clickbait?

Palmer Luckey is funding "Nimble America," an organization that supports Donald Trump by mocking and badmouthing Hillary Clinton. Luckey sold virtual reality company Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014

First — and this cannot be said enough — Clinton and Trump are not equally bad candidates. One is a conventional politician who has a long record of public service full of pros and cons. The other is a demagogic bigot with a puddle-deep understanding of national and international issues, who openly courts white nationalism

...

Second, a vote isn’t just about the past — although comparing these two candidates on their pasts still leaves one as the clear choice — but about the present and the future.

There is a simple truth here: Either Clinton or Trump will be the next president of the United States. Not Jill Stein. Not Gary Johnson. Clinton or Trump

Many of the programs and research downplayed constructivist education. A Nation at Risk. No Child Left Behind. It's difficult to write a "program" to sell for constructivism. Once that mindset is so public, it's difficult to create a different path, although we who believe have never given up.

Are the class lines smooth? This statement seems insufficient to describe complexity of the split.

Exactly.

Clay Shirky explains that voting for a third-party presidential candidate is wasting your vote.

The Commons' motion to appoint militia commanders independently of the king met with resistance from Charles I.

The Commons drew up the Militia Ordinance of 1642 to quell the Irish uprising.

The House of Commons drew up a bill of attainder declaring Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, guilty of treason. After the bill was signed by Charles I, Strafford was beheaded - very literally brought low "by the head"!

The House of Commons also volubly opposed Catholic practices in England before and during the Civil War.

Probably referring to the House of Commons, which drafted the Petition of Right, a document that prohibited the king from infringing on specific liberties.

English Protestants were massacred in the Irish rebellion of 1641, a slaughter documented in John Temple's The Irish Rebellion (1646).

Referring to the defeat of German Protestants by Catholic forces during the Thirty Years War, contemporary with the English Civil War.

Lady Jane Grey ruled England for nine days before she was overthrown and executed by the notoriously Catholic Mary Tudor in 1554, at age nineteen. Known as the Nine Days Queen, she is the shortest reigning monarch in English history.

Roman Catholicism, due to the perceived Catholic leanings of Charles I.

Referring again to Richard III's alleged murder of his nephews.

Puritans migrated to New England in the 17th century due to the Catholic leanings of Charles I and rising religious tension in England.

Due to his marriage to the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, Charles I gained the mistrust of Puritans such as Bradstreet.

Paradoxically, even as the war has politically curative properties, its violence threatens to destroy England.

The metaphor likens the Civil War to a medicinal concoction meant to rid the body (England) of disease-causing humors - or, in this case, of Charles I.

I am seeking opinions as to the nature of this amendment. Is this good for homeowners or good for only big business? Is this Yes on 1? Or is this the REAL amendment?

This FB page and amendment has said to be a sneaky back door legislation that will actually ensure power to the big dogs and make it harder for us to get solar. Please correct me if wrong.

This bill is on alert as it may actually make buying solar HARDER and not EASIER. Please help me out on this one. Trying to annotate a better link but this will have to do for now. I am trying to comment on yes on 1 video..

Surprised by the US focus of this piece, from the start. But this phrase is particularly awkward, coming from a UK publication. Sounds a bit like people from the US coming to Canada and talking about “the country” in reference to our southerly neighbours. Feels strange, especially from those who teach here.

Donald Trump and members of his staff have disturbingly close ties to Russia.

"Donald and Hobbes", several Calvin and Hobbes strips remixed into a lampoon of Donald Trump.

De ce point de vue, il n'est pas nécessaire d'argumenter longuement sur ces dispositions car le convergence des structures de productivité peut produire des miracles et agrémenter le soutien du jeu des stratégies des forces en présence.

RETIRED U.S. AIR FORCE Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.

agnotology - the study of willful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favor. (Coined by Robert Proctor of Stanford University.)

• tobacco companies
• climate-change deniers
• politicians

Withholding evidence and outright lying are just the two most obvious tactics. They also take advantage of people's desire to be reasonable, by claiming there are two sides to a topic that doesn't actually have any reasonable opposition -- the "balanced debate" scam. And they influence people by conflating the main issue with others -- personal liberty, religious beliefs, capitalism vs socialism.

Automated posts from social media accounts pretending to be real individuals are being used to influence public opinion. (The Chinese government uses regular employees to post "real" messages at strategic times.)

Unlike the typical pamphlets we may think about today, in this era, pamphlets were used for political information.

A “well-informed citizenry” require journalistic assistance. Which is why US elections are such a neat context to discuss literacy, public opinion, agency, representativeness, and populism.

And that once again, those with power and money will give the rest of us a little gift ...

Yikes

This is the crux of it all -- who has access and who does not have access means who has a voice and who does not have a voice. Who gets ignored?

And this is a good thing, right? Unless of course, the "crowd" has views opposite your own, and then it is a bad thing. I like the focus here of localizing the impact of the flattening, improving lives in our cities and towns.

"Where I won't have to say anything of real substance because it's only status updates anyway"

Not me, though. I am still one of the fans of the centrist theme and message of the Bill Clinton years but I often feel very lonely in that zone. I'm not saying Hillary does it for me, either. But Bernie is too far left for my taste.

So, there is a possibility of some sanity ... unless of course, it is the nutjobs who have also opted out of the political parties and will make an even stronger lurch to the right or left than the primaries are showing right now.

This may be the key to the unknown element of the election -- while the primaries tell one story, the general election may unfold another - driven by those of us not affiliated with either party. Whose message will reach those people?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gndkcb12X1c

Whoa. Anybody know anything about this?

It’s in the realm of policy, however, where I find Bernie intellectually quite dishonest, and Hillary pretty damned honest. When you scrutinize his policy ideas, as wonky liberals have begun doing (finally) in the last couple of months, those ideas don’t stand up, on a bunch of different levels.<br> One of those levels is political—as in there’s no way, in the foreseeable future, there will be sixty votes in the Senate, much less support in a likely GOP-controlled House, to pass single-payer health care, or break up the big banks, or reform the political campaign system, or provide free college tuition for every student. You can excuse that by saying, Well, that’s his vision, his end goal, maybe not achievable in his first term but possible over time, especially if we get the “political revolution” he calls for.

But there’s a deeper level at which these policy ideas are intellectually dishonest. Even if you could somehow get them passed, practically they either wouldn’t work or would be recklessly disruptive or both.

Nice.

Mike Caulfield explains why he supports Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, in response to a pro Sanders article.

According to numbers from the American Journalism Review and the Pew Research Center, less than a third of U.S. newspapers have a reporter present at the statehouse (either full- or part-time) and almost no local television stations assign a reporter to state politics.

Net result: the public’s awareness of and access to the activities of state government is vanishing, at the same time that the decisions made by state-level actors are having greater effects on American lives.

The first step towards righting this asymmetry is access, and there’s a good idea out there you need to know about: State Civic Networks are state-based, non-profit, independent, nonpartisan, “citizen engagement” online centers, and they should exist in every state. (Think C-SPAN, but way better, and focusing on statehouses.)

Free things are often unhappy-making

sigh

This model backed many of the privatizations in Latin America. But the same regulators were working with new private companies in the market.

Aaaargh

who could have seen a bad thing coming?

Six Responses to Bernie Skeptics<br> Robert Reich

"Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right", Jane Mayer (19 Jan 2016)

review

While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.<br> . . .<br> my poll asked a set of four simple survey questions that political scientists have employed since 1992 to measure inclination toward authoritarianism. These questions pertain to child-rearing: whether it is more important for the voter to have a child who is respectful or independent; obedient or self-reliant; well-behaved or considerate; and well-mannered or curious. Respondents who pick the first option in each of these questions are strongly authoritarian.

The article goes on to say that support for Trump is likely to continue to grow. People tend to become more authoritarian when they feel threatened. And people are worried about terrorism -- and maybe about losing jobs to immigrants.

The main reason for Trump's lead among right wingers might be simply that it seems like he could win. This is the most pathetic group of Republican presidential hopefuls I've ever seen.

While technology doesn't solve everything, I firmly believe it has a critical role to play in fixing our politics. Better and easier ways for citizens to hold their government accountable, engage with their elected officials and each other, and way more exist. We're using one right now.

The two-party system, formal debate, and typical advice for essay writing all emphasize picking A or B, and then defending it to the death. We should place more emphasis on the identification of alternatives and the collection of objective facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect

We tend to assume that most people think and feel similarly to us. We then categorize those who don't as "other" and somehow inferior. This tendency is intensified when we gather with people who are in fact like-minded. And that happens in social media, where we tend to follow those with similar views.