The Weekly Sift

So here we are, living in the Chinese curse of interesting times, the kinds of times we used to scare the 18-year-olds with. “If you don’t vote, we could wind up …”.

Here we are.

Like most people I know, I’ve been suffering occasional attacks of rage or depression. But it’s also oddly energizing sometimes. If you ever had fantasies of being a hero, well, gear up; the villains are taking the field. It feels like we’re in a trilogy, somewhere around the end of Book Two. Ancient evils have jumped out of history books and grainy newsreels, and are appearing on live TV. Their words and ideas are coming out of the mouths of our neighbors.

Who thought we’d have to deal with this in our lifetimes?

For some while now, everything that you can think to do about the situation is going to seem hopelessly inadequate. But it’s important that you do it anyway. That’s how it is at the end of Book Two. You’re a Hobbit with all of Mordor in front of you, or an Ewok facing a galactic empire. The idea that you’re going to turn things around is laughable. And a lot of the stuff that people think to do will come to nothing, just like it seems. But some of it won’t, and if anybody can say for sure which is which, I haven’t met them yet.

So anyway, today I plan to type a bunch of words onto a screen. It’s what I can think to do. You think that seems hopelessly inadequate? Tell me about it.

The featured post will be a list of the things I’m watching for out of the Trump administration. As bad stuff starts to happen, it’s important that we spot it quickly and see it for what it is. My list starts with mundane stuff (like taking credit for Obama’s accomplishments) and progresses through to scarier things (like winking at right-wing paramilitary groups and paying Putin back for his help in the campaign). I don’t think we should be jumping at shadows by reacting to things Trump hasn’t done yet, but we definitely need to be watching those shadows and preparing ourselves to respond quickly if something comes out of them.

That should come out sometime between 9 and 10 EST.

The weekly summary has a lot to cover, particularly the appointments Trump has been making. (To quote the Sundance Kid, “Who are those guys?”) But also, settling the Trump U lawsuit, the Hamilton flap, whether Democrats should support Trump’s infrastructure plan, that alarming graph about sea ice, and a few other things. And I’ll close by letting They Might Be Giants sing us out.

This week two major issues hit the headlines, one (rising ObamaCare premiums) that has substance, and another (the emails on the Abedin/Weiner laptop) that I suspect doesn’t, but is more sensational. Which to spend my time on? These are the kinds of inner conflicts that test a blogger’s mettle.

It’ll probably kill this week’s traffic numbers, but I opted for the boring issue that probably means something: The featured post will be “What’s Up With ObamaCare (other than premiums)?” So: 2017 premiums on the ObamaCare exchanges will be up an average of 22%. Could this be the beginning of the so-called “death spiral” insurance people dread? What’s that mean, anyway? If one is starting, what can be done to stop it? Given that things can be done, will they be?

That post is just about finished, so it should be out around 9 EDT.

Of course, I do have to cover the emails — not just the FBI angle but WikiLeaks too — but that will be in the weekly summary, where I can link to other people who say just about everything worth saying. (Basically, I had the same reaction as a lot of folks: 24 hours of Chicken Little, followed by “WTF, Comey?”) Also in the summary: the Bundy acquittal (another WTF moment), Trump’s voter suppression effort, the conclusion to draw from that bizarre Newt Gingrich interview with Megyn Kelly, tips from across the pond on disrupting racism, and a few other things, closing with a nostalgic look back at being a Cubs fan in the late 70s, when an exciting loss was practically the best thing you could hope for.

This is one of those weeks where it’s easy to get sucked into the same story that the news channels have been talking about 24/7: the women accusing Trump of sexual assault and other unwanted boorish attention. And I will link to that stuff for those of you who haven’t already had enough of it, but the point of the Sift is to be an alternative to the news-hype machine, not to participate in it.

So instead of joining the isn’t-this-awful chorus — it is awful, but you don’t need me to tell you that — I decided to focus on the silver lining of the story: The public is getting an education about sexual assault. That could have consequences well beyond the election. This week’s featured post will be “A Teaching Moment on Sexual Assault”, and it will cover four areas where I think the public consciousness is being raised: how ubiquitous sexual assault is, the myths so many of us believe about it, why so many women don’t tell anyone about it, and the tactics men use to get away with it.

I still have some work to do on it, and it’s the kind of topic where I have to check the wording of every sentence to make sure I’m not unintentionally saying something offensive or insensitive, or perpetuating myths of my own, so it may not come out until 10 or 11. (If I do offend you, complain in the comments. There’s a good chance I’ll say “Thank you” and re-edit some part of the post.)

The weekly summary is where I’ll talk directly about the Trump scandal and his responses to it, including a really disturbing revival of what would become a Nazi conspiracy theory if you just added the word Jews to it. (Some of his followers have done that.) Also: more WikiLeaks releases of hacked Clinton-campaign stuff, including transcripts of her Goldman Sachs appearances in 2013. (It turns out they weren’t speeches, but Q&A sessions.)

There’s also a thwarted white-supremacist plot to bomb an apartment complex in Kansas where a lot of Somali Muslims live, and the firebombing of a Republican headquarters in North Carolina. An international agreement made real progress on climate change. The Scots are looking at a post-Brexit independence vote. And probably some other stuff. There will be a closing, but I haven’t picked it yet.

And I turn 60 today. I am now officially entitled to start saying: “Not bad for an old guy.”

Most of what we hear about Donald Trump is meant to enrage or energize us rather than inform us. Every day, newspapers are full of articles about Trump, what he said, what somebody said about him, and so on. Almost every day, you can see part a Trump rally on a cable news channel, or listen to a panel of pundits discuss him. Despite all that coverage, though, we seldom learn anything new or significant about him.

But now and then, an article actually tells us something important. Some reporter took his job seriously, did some real investigating, and found something voters should know about. Not opinion or speculation or psychoanalysis, just facts put into a context. Usually such articles get attention for a day or two before getting swamped by coverage of Trump insulting somebody or saying a bad word.

I decided to collect them. So this week’s featured post is “Investigative Reporters and Donald Trump: the 10 Best Articles”. If you want to know how Trump runs his businesses, what the Trump Foundation controversy is about, what conflicts of interest a President Trump will face, and so on, this will be a good place to start. That should be out between 9 and 10 EDT.

The news this week was also dominated by the campaign: fallout from the debate, a list of ordinarily reliable Republican newspapers deciding not to endorse Trump, and so on. But some other things happened as well: Shimon Peres died. Congress avoided a government shutdown, then overrode an Obama veto before immediately regretting it (and blaming Obama). Gary Johnson had another “Aleppo moment”, but I decided it says more about what’s been happening to American journalism than about him. And the weekly summary will close with an act of everyday heroism. That should be out maybe around 11.

With all the partisan back-and-forth of the election, it’s easy for Americans to lose track of what’s going on in the world, or to see entire regions of the Earth as little more than footballs for the candidates to kick back and forth. Resisting that trend, this week I look at how the battle against ISIS is going. And the answer is: surprisingly well, but victory probably won’t solve all the problems we think it will. This week’s featured post “ISIS is losing, but what happens next?” should be out by 9 EDT.

In the weekly summary, I can’t stop myself from getting pulled into the journalistic black hole of the election. Trump has continued to gain in the polls, and Nate Silver’s best model still sees Clinton as the favorite, but gives her only a 60% chance of victory. The Birther issue returned this week. Clinton came back from her bout of pneumonia. Trump once again hinted at her assassination. You know, just another week on the campaign trail. We’ve got six more of them to look forward to.

But other stuff is happening too. Electric cars are about to take a significant step forward in terms of both range and affordability. The Census Bureau released the most upbeat report I’ve seen in years: In 2015, the economic recovery actually started to reach the people who need it. Britain is still trying to figure out what Brexit means. And if you want to carry concealed weapons without the hassle of getting any training or filling out a bunch of forms, Missouri just rolled out the red carpet for you. (For some odd reason, Missouri police aren’t thrilled about all the help they’re going to be getting from “good guys with guns”.)

Expect to see the weekly summary before noon.