Trump Is In Their Brains

So, this gets retweeted or liked into my twitter stream:

He gave a very reasonable answer, that he was a little busy to be bothered with Twitter in light of the bombing.

My response was this:

That's the thing, isn't it? The media is obsessed with Trump and has been for some time. As they say, he's living in their head, rent-free. It's why he won the primaries against better conservatives and Republicans.

Now, don't get me wrong, I know they had no choice but to cover him and his, uhm, antics during the campaign, because they had to as he was running for President. See how smart he was? Free coverage because the media had no choice but to cover him. They couldn't ignore him, as critics wished they would (which would work with, say, Westboro Baptist, to make them go away), because that would be negligent as he already was news worthy. Brilliant manipulation on his part.

BTW, if you aren't aware of Scott Adams' ongoing dissection of the rhetorical and persuasion tools that the Trump Team has been using, you're missing an education on what's been going on. I don't even agree with him on all his points, but he isn't a Trump fan or defender (as the folks who hate Trump are painting him), and he is seeing the manipulation for what it is. (of course, this could be me in a moment of confirmation bias because I also thing Trump is playing the media like a fiddle).

Back to the point (and there is one).

I have long held the belief that when we've experienced something, we tend to adopt that (or those, if it's plural) experience into our lens, our perspective through which we interact with the world. A simple example of this bias I think about is the old red car metaphor. It's not just red cars, per se, it's the familiarity bias and observational selection bias working in tandem to make you think that "now that I have a red car, I see them every where. There must be more red cars being made then before." Nope, you're just paying attention to them. Indeed, what we attend to creates our reality.

Another version is the sudden appearance of pregnant women everywhere when your wife becomes pregnant. (hint: they were already there). A more serious example I think about is racism. If you are black in America, you have experienced it, and that makes you see it everywhere, even in situations where it isn't present.

All of this is to say that Trump as so successfully implanted himself into the minds of his detractors that they can't refrain from checking his Twitter feed, because, well, they have to because he's already newsworthy because he's the US President. Note: I don't follow him on twitter. I don't have to (or want to), mostly because he gets retweeted into my timeline so much. Argh.

So, we have "Trump-Glasses" wearing idiots like the reporter that thought that (because the lens/perspective through which he or she sees everything is smeared with Trump) asking the London Mayor his thoughts on a Trump tweet was a reasonable, worthy, or necessary question.

I have written and talked about my Trump thoughts, feelings, and impressions. I don't like the guy, but I have enjoyed how he has played the press, driven the leftists insane (literally, in some cases), and shone a light on our electoral processes like the primary system and electoral college. I think he's a progressive and crony capitalist at heart and that scares me. But what really scares me is the way his detractors and enemies (which includes the majority of our media types) have become so consumed by their hatred/fear/disgust that they are literally blind to their own obsession with him and things like his tweets that it's literally all they appear to think about.

I think he should keep tweeting, seriously. It's how he talks to his base without the media filter, and I guess that's why they can't help report on it, to try to control it, to shape his message like they would if they were the quote-conduit. If would serve them better to ignore the tweets and not make them into news stories, frankly, but I'm not giving them that good piece of advice. It's too much fun watching them lose their minds.

Random Thought About World History

I happened upon a cool photo via Instagram today that got me thinking..

Does anyone remember the PBS-style (probably a BBC show) called Connections from back in the 80s (it actually was the 70s, as it turns out)?

It may have been the 2nd or 3rd iteration that caught my attention as the host was explaining some cool thing about Europe in the 300s AD and then, with a jump cut was in India or somewhere to explain what was happening there at the same time.

What a great concept!

This informs my ADD-ish brain often when I learn stuff. So, naturally, when I read the Wiki on step-wells and saw that the first rockwall step wells were built some time around the aforementioned 300AD (see what I did there?), I thought "what were Germans/Aboriginals/Native Americans/Irish building then?"

from http://www.mid-day.com/articles/mapping-indias-forgotten-stepwells/17185189

There's probably a cool book or website along these lines, so look for an edit of this post with some links, but for now, just sharing today's little thought process.

There is a website devoted to mapping and archiving stepwells mentioned in the article the above image came from, stepwells.org. There are a lot of them!

Here's a good article from another person trying to catalogue and save them. Lots of pictures.

More Evidence For Small Government

Just a quick post today as I ponder the bloated mass that is our health care economy....

Got an email at work about my HRA (not FSA or HSA or...you get my point here, right? TOO MANY TYPES OF ACCOUNTS) and in trying to figure out what the "HRA Wellness Credit" was as opposed to the HRA itself, I poked around to determine what I can use the money on.

There is, of course, a site to help you know what is eligible and what is not. It's a very detailed, user-friendly site, in fact, I give it high marks for interface and use. The only reason that such a site is necessary, of course, is because of the aforementioned bloated mass that is American Health Insurance and Care, Inc. That's right, folks, because the US Gov't has a hand in all of this, there are strings attached to the $$ that your company GIVES YOU or that you have WITHHELD FROM YOUR PAY expressly for the purpose of offsetting uncovered medical costs.

Chard Snyder has a handy site to help you spend your FSA (and HRA?) dollars, in fact. Of course they do, why in the world would they miss out on this opportunity to keep the dollars that they manage for you? Seriously, they would be stupid not to!

I am trying to point out that all of this economic activity (building websites to help wade through the ridiculous restrictions on what you can spend health care dollars on, companies existing to manage your HRAs, FSAs, etc.) is only necessary because the Federal Gov't is so thoroughly enmeshed into what should be an independent sector of the economy. Ridiculous.

I tell you, this thought has roots in an old realization when working for a small family business that they had to waste money employing an accountant and payroll service because of the morass of taxes imposed by the federal government and the requirement to withhold payroll taxes rather than a much simpler (for the business) idea that I, the earner, am responsible for paying my quarterly income taxes and must therefore save a portion of my income and write that painful check a few times a year. These businesses are essentially forced to do the work (and pay for the privilege) of the IRS. Ridiculous.

Imagine the tax revolt we would have if there was no such thing as withholding?