January 28, 2017 · 12:40 pm

Why Lie about Election Results?

Isn’t it the epitome of stupidity to question the validity of an election you just won? Especially if you just won the election based on very small margins in a few key states and after every poll in every major news publication said you were going to lose big.

Of course, Trump is spinning this to be about 5 million or so votes that lost him the popular election. If there really were 5 million fraudulent votes isn’t it possible that many of those were in the decisive states where Trump won, like Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin? And isn’t it possible that those votes tipped the election in favor of Trump? In that case, is Trump willing to call for a reelection if voter fraud tipped the election in his favor?

In terms of just basic reality, it makes no sense that illegal immigrants would come out and vote and expose themselves to possible deportation. If you know anything about those who are undocumented, you know they stay as far under the radar as possible and avoid consuming or participating in public services or going anywhere where they may be confronted by the authorities. That 5 million illegal immigrants risked getting caught just to sabotage the election is absolutely absurd.

So why lie? I think there are four main reasons the President and his entourage lie:

  1. Small Penis Syndrome. You lie to yourself because you cannot face the fact that you are a very, very small man.
  2. The Emperor has No Clothes. You lie to your boss because that is what he wants to hear. Trump has never been employed. He has always been the boss and no one has ever told him he is wrong. So if you tell him what he wants to hear and it reinforces his narcissistic self-image as a winner, then you can keep the boss happy. In this sense, Trump will be the easiest president in history to manipulate. All you need to do is play into his ego.
  3. Testing the Limits and Alliances. You lie to see how far you can get lying, how much your fan base will accept your blatant falsehoods, and which news outlets and political allies will defend you no matter what you say or do. This is the test of committed tribalism. And so far he’s gotten away with it.
  4. Voter Turn-Out and Fighting Against the Inevitable. In both Bush 43’s first election and Trump’s, the Republican candidate won the election but did not win the popular vote. Trump arguably did worse than Romney yet was able to pull off the election due to the Electoral College. In order words, there is no real popular support or mandate for his policies. But as demographics continue to move against the GOP and its policies, elections will continue to be won by Democrats getting high voter turn-out and Republicans trying to make it harder and harder for Democrats to vote. One of the major reasons for the voter fraud lies of the past few years – and now even more evident with Trump’s massive lack of popularity – is to create enough hysteria to pass draconian voter suppression laws. The GOP simply has not other long term game plan to the White House. On the congressional level, they achieve the same by gerrymandering.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to get an independent panel (which we know will never happen) to review votes, especially in close states. But when that was suggested by Jill Stein with support by some people in the Hillary camp, the Trumpsters cried foul. Now ironically, Trump is questioning his own victory. Both amusing and scary.

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December 26, 2016 · 3:37 pm

My Year in Books 2016

fiction

Y2016 was a busy year. We had our third child, but somehow I still found time to read a slightly larger than normal volume of books. Here is my list:

non-fiction

While I did read some very good books, I wouldn’t say that there were any must reads this year. I probably got the most from non-fiction, with highlights being: The Snakeshead, an amazing story of a Chinese woman who became a billionaire illegally bringing Fujianese Chinese to the U.S.; Sahara Unveiled about a trip across the desert; Servants of Allah about the many African slaves in the Americas who were Muslims and carried their religion with them; Sapiens about the history of humankind and our evolution put into a behavioral/political/historical context; and A Short History of Reconstruction about, you guessed it, the period after the Civil War when the U.S. tried to rebuild the divided nation and economy based on free labor and find a place for recently freed slaves, marked by white supremacist violence and terrorism.

manchild

There were a handful of good novels including Youngblood, A Homegoing, Goat Days, and a General Theory of Oblivion. There was also an underlying – though not intentional – theme of African American lives which included the aforementioned non-fiction about Muslims in America and Reconstruction and the novel A Homegoing. Even Goat Days is a story about slavery. I also read Edward P. Jones’ excellent short stories about D.C,. Lost in the City. But probably my best read of the year was Claude Brown’s semi-autobiographical Manchild in the Promised Land.

pelecanos

And, whenever I needed a break from my ambitious list, I could always turn to the D.C. crime writer George Pelecanos. Though most of his books are similar in theme, characters and stories they are so easy and enjoyable to read, especially as a Washingtonian.

Finally, I finished the year off by re-reading Haruki Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun. It was never my favorite of his novels, but there were three pieces of narrative in the novel that always stuck with me and that I wanted to revisit:

But I didn’t understand then that I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

Izumi wasn’t the only one who got hurt. I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

Every time we met, I took a good long look at her. And I loved what I saw.

“Why are you staring at me?” she’d ask.

“Cause you’re pretty,” I’d reply.

“You’re the first one who’s ever said that.”

“I’m the only one who know,” I’d tell her. “And believe me, I know.”

. . . for no particular reason.

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December 16, 2016 · 6:00 pm

Things I’ve Read (recently)

things-ive-read

The following are some interesting and insightful things I have read in the past few months from the following three non-fiction works of history:

Servants of Allah traces the history and influence of the large number of African Muslims who were brought to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade. The book documents how, contrary to the popular historical depiction of African slaves as peasants, many – especially those who were Muslim – were educated and literate. In particular, I find the following excerpt interesting as it serves as a reminder that in the populist Islam vs. the West narrative, Christianity isn’t always the brightest light on the hill:

Ibrahima pointed out “very forcibly the incongruities in the conduct of those who profess to be the disciples of the immaculate Son of God.” The Africans had experienced or witnessed forced conversion as a justification for slavery, whereas in their religion, conversion was a means of emancipation. They were in daily contact with religious men and women who were nevertheless sadistically brutal. The debauchery of Christian men who sexually exploited powerless women—not accorded the status of concubines—could not have escaped them. As slaves, they had experienced the Christians at their utter worse. Because they did not have a race or class consciousness, they saw the Americans primarily not as whites or as slaveholders but rather as Christians.

Similarly, Sapiens – a materialist recount of the evolution of humans in a historical context – helps put current Western/Christian fears of the Other into perspective:

These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors). More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

The figures of 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died of violent crime (a total of 741,000 victims of human violence). In contrast, 873,000 people committed suicide. It turns out that in the year following the 911 attacks, despite all the talk about terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.

With A Short History of Reconstruction what I found most interesting was how (i) terrorism, in the form of organized violence was employed successfully by Southern whites to maintain the status quo of white supremacy; (ii) an assortment of coordinated efforts by the police, the legislature and courts, and white civil society (often through terrorist violence) were employed in full force to sustain white supremacy and the economics of free labor; (iii) the political rhetoric to rationalize the above – for example, on taxation, federalism, and personal responsibility – are all very much alive and part of the conservative lexicon and worldview today; and (iv) all of the above defined the Jim Crow South up until 1970, a legacy which we undoubtedly still suffer. Continue reading →

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November 19, 2016 · 11:22 pm

There is Hope

donaldtrump_f

If just a little more than a half century after the close of World War II and the murder of 6 million innocent lives, Trump is capable of rehabilitating anti-Semites, and if 30 years after the Cold War, our president-elect can turn a Soviet KGB official-turned-despot from foe to roll-model, then there should be hope for Muslims around the world that one day the hatred they suffer will come to a happy end.

If a black man can become president in America? And if a white man who has admitted to committing fraud and bragged of sexual assault, has been married three times and unfaithful countless more, has gone bankrupt four times, lost $1 billion in one year and made the U.S. tax-payers pay for it for another 20, consistently rips everyone off, rides a golden elevator, and believes in absolutely nothing . . . if he can become a Republican and then elected president of the United States, surely anyone can. So if a fraud and phony can make it, you can too. The sky is the limit.

See, there is still hope for America and Americans.

Just be patient. The dream is alive. Sleep and dream.

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November 12, 2016 · 12:13 am

My Final Election Reflection: It Wasn’t So Unique

13clinton-master768

After the initial shock and hysteria of the Trump victory, I have had some time to reflect. My final conclusion is that in general terms the results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections were pretty normal, with nothing out of the ordinary.

Let’s start with what we know about U.S. elections:

  • Americans are tribal and vote based on demographics rather than adherence to political ideals
  • Americans are complacent and apathetic; hence voter-turn out tends to be low
  • Because political parties are basically just branding, as such, they focus on fringe issues to differentiate themselves from each other. With a two-party system, this means that the partisan/sectarian split tends to be very close to 50-50% of the population
  • Because of the above, there are very few swing voters and the key to winning elections is not swaying voters, but getting more of your sect to the polls (ie, rallying voters) than the other team.
  • Because of changing demographics in favor of Democrats, the Republicans have an interest in making it as difficult as possible for certain parts of the Democratic constituency to vote.
  • The incumbent party generally loses the presidential election after two terms.

Now let’s look at this year’s facts and how voters behaved:

  • Obama currently has the highest approval ratings of any exiting U.S. president in recent history
  • The economy is performing relatively well, with low unemployment in states like Michigan where Hillary lost this year, but Obama won in 2012
  • There was low voter turnout
  • There was low voter turnout for Hillary
  • There was low voter turnout for Trump, with Trump receiving lesser votes in this election than Romney did when losing to Obama in 2012
  • There was almost no media coverage of the issues, 32 minutes in total on the three major networks.

So what do the combination of what we already knew and what we’ve seen this year tell us? That this was a pretty normal election. Here’s why:

  • Contrary to what you may be hearing, Americans are not angry. Otherwise, we would have seen large turnout, as we did in 2008. The economy is doing well, and Americans overall like the sitting president. But neither Obama nor Biden were on the ballot, so in theory there was no continuity candidate.
  • Without getting into a discussion as to why or if justified, Hillary was an unpopular candidate. She didn’t persuade Democrats to vote for her in 2008 and wasn’t able to articulate a new reason to vote for her in 2016.
  • There was no discussion of issues, which doesn’t really matter anyways because Americans vote based on sect, not policies. So it didn’t matter that Donald Trump – the New York City Playboy conman with entitled, gelled-back haired offspring– was the picture of everything Republicans have always hated about the Northeast.
  • It was consistent with our history that the Republican party (non-incumbent) candidate would win after two terms of a Democrat in the White House.

So put aside the alleged changing political dynamics, racism (there’s always been racism, heck, our country was founded on it), and Middle America’s political revolt and anger. Obama would have likely won by a landslide had he been able to run.

Twenty-five percent of voters, some 90 million people, didn’t show up. Trump did worse than Romney who lost big. Hillary was a horrible candidate because she was unable to rally Democrats. Americans continue not to give a damn and are increasingly more sectarian. These should be the stories of the day.

The fact that Trump was able to empower racists, xenophobes and anti-Semites is anecdotal, a negative externality of the campaign. Something to be ignored by White Privilege.

Our take away could be that the victory of a highly incompetent cheat and race-baiter who got a nudge from the FBI Director means that America as meritocratic and post-racial is pure myth. But being able to keep the fiction alive . . . that, my friends, is White Privilege.

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November 10, 2016 · 11:51 pm

If You Voted for Trump, Own it. All of It

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a Bollywood-themed charity concert put on by the Republican Hindu Coalition in Edison, New Jersey, U.S. October 15, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst - RTX2P03M

UPDATED BELOW

I had been hoping to put together my overall thoughts on the outcome of the election, focusing on how this election was lost by Hillary Clinton. Not so much because Trump was a great candidate or because Americans were overtly racist – actually Obama has the highest approval ratings of any modern exiting president. So race is not the story. The fact of the matter is that Democrats didn’t want Hillary in 2008, and there was no new reason for a large number of Americans to suddenly want her now. The sad moral of the story was that – although one could argue that the Clinton’s did some good for the country – it was more than time for them to be retired and to just leave us all alone.

I was even going to give a few arguments about how besides Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich suddenly becoming the second and third most powerful men in the world, the country definitively becoming a police state and the end of the bill of rights as we know it, likely the country would not change course. That’s the beauty (or tragedy) of our fictional political system, something that my father-in-law graciously pointed out to me when he saw his two American grandsons and son-in-law on the morning after. Plus Trump has never kept a promise, so why would he keep his campaign promises now?

But then this morning, I started reading and hearing first-hand accounts of multiple acts of racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and anti-Semitic acts of intimidation around the country. Things like Hispanic school kids being taunted by the classmates, chanting Build the Wall and your father is going to get deported, black women being assaulted in public by white men (with “Obama can’t help you now”), blacks and Hispanics being told to sit at the back of the bus, swastikas decorating buildings, and a Muslim American woman who got along with her neighbors for years but woke up to a sign on her lawn telling her to go back home.

If Trump had said, for example, vote for me and I will deport all Jews to Israel, and you voted for him, then I would tell you that voting for him was incompatible with our friendship. And if Trump said, as he did repeatedly, Muslims (which include my wife and children) would be banned from entering the country and you voted for him, then I would want to know why you thought that our friendship and my family were more dangerous than a Hillary presidency. Don’t tell me that Trump isn’t really going to do that. He’s already publicly said that there is something wrong with my family. Is there?

The thing is that the cruelest acts against humanity don’t happen because of isolated evil masterminds. They happen because of complacent masses looking the other way. I hate to use the Hitler analogy, but that is exactly what happened in Europe. Give the people a common cause and enemy, and they’ll commit the most atrocious acts in your name.

Of course, I am not claiming that the majority of Trump voters are deplorable, racist, xenophobic, anti-Semites. But everyone in the country who voted knew perfectly well that Trump was courting all of those extremist factions in our society, and by winning, there are Americans who now feel empowered to openly, publicly and without shame insult, intimidate and assault minorities.

Trump opened that can of worms, and if you voted for him, you have absolutely no excuse NOT to take ownership. What do Republicans call this? Personal Responsibility? So own it.

Don’t we tell Muslims that they are all collectively responsible for terrorists claiming to be Muslim? So take your own medicine and start owning up. Maybe these acts are temporary and will wane over the next few days, but they won’t until as a society we say they are unacceptable. If you voted for Trump, denounce the racism, xenophobia and antisemitism being perpetrated in your name, lest you too be a terrorist.

UPDATE 11/11/2016:

I apologize for beating a dead horse, but I keep hearing Trump voters saying that they should not be held accountable for the acts of other Trump supporters. But if you just voted for a guy who clearly made part of his campaign value proposition that (1) no Muslim could be trusted because a few Muslims were terrorists, and (2) Mexicans were racists, how can you now say that is it unfair to judge the whole group based on isolated actions of the few?

It’s like saying that I voted for Hitler’s Make Germany Great Again part but not the antisemitism, so you can’t blame me for the Holocaust. It doesn’t work that way. If you voted for Trump, you can’t now pick and choose what you voted for.

When I advocated for Obama in 2008, the moment he won, I immediately began criticizing those policies which I disagreed with and have done so ever since.. So if you don’t agree with the racism, xenophobia and antisemitism, then challenge the man you elected to disavow those who do or own it. It’s your country  now.

To the same extent, the Democratic Party needs to take ownership of why they failed so miserably to produce an electable candidate and platform. Over 90 million eligible voters did not vote. That is the true story of this election. The DNC has some explaining to do. Those who didn’t vote also need to own this.

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November 9, 2016 · 6:35 am

Ashamed

I have this beautiful baby girl in my arms, my lovely wife on the other side of the bed, my two boys in the next room, all sleeping peacefully while Americans are voting to ban them from entering our country!

My in-laws are visiting. What do I tell them when they wake up and ask if my country hates them?

I am profoundly embarrassed and heartbroken.

I hope you are all real proud.

 

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November 7, 2016 · 1:57 pm

Blowin’ in the Wind .. the End of the Fiction

donald-hillary

How many years can a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea?

On the eve of this 2016 Presidential Election, it is looking like that story we’ve been telling ourselves for generations is fiction. Maybe we are not that great nation of ideas, that beacon on the hill, governed for and by the people after all, but a sectarian state where Republicans and Democrats are no different from the feuding Shiites and Shia of Iraq.

Think about how Republicans rationalize voting for Trump – perhaps the most disgusting and unqualified candidate of any major party in our nation’s history – by convincing themselves that Hillary Clinton is both evil incarnate and on a mission to purposefully destroy the country. The only honest assessment is that America the Beautiful has devolved into a tribal, sectarian state.

Let’s face the facts: Hillary Clinton is a crypto-Republican. During both her husband’s presidency and her time in government she has consistently promoted conservative causes and was certainly no radical. She has never taken a politically unpopular position and likely never will. She is best defined by her political expediency and certainly not ideology. In fact should she win on Tuesday, Hillary will become the most right of center Democrat to serve as President of the United States since the Great Depression.

On issue after issue, Hillary is undoubtedly a more suitable Republican candidate than Trump.  That of course assumes that we vote based on the issues, instead of tribal preferences. That the vast majority will vote in perfect alignment with their demographic, only confirms that tribalism is the most accurate determinant of voting behavior today in America.

In his recent history of humankind, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes about the cognitive revolution that took place in our species when we achieved the ability to create fictions, empowering us to “imagine things collectively.” In essence:

We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined order are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively.

So what happens when the pillars upon which our fictions rest begin to crumble? Continue reading →

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October 18, 2016 · 1:20 pm

Cognitive Dissonance (or the World According to Trump)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a Bollywood-themed charity concert put on by the Republican Hindu Coalition in Edison, New Jersey, U.S. October 15, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst - RTX2P03M

  • The media is beating Mr. Trump (by rigging the election) vs. Mr. Trump is capable of destroying ISIS, restoring law and order and safeguarding the National Security
  • They’re not nice and unfair vs. Mr. Trump is tough
  • Immigrants are bad vs. Trump gets to keep marrying them
  • Mrs. Clinton is a liar with a dangerous liberal agenda vs. the Podesta emails prove she is secretly pro-Wall Street, pro-fracking and pro-military intervention (ie, she is a closet Republican)
  • Central Park Five are guilty because they admitted to crime vs. Trump is not guilty even though he bragged about repeatedly committing sexual assault
  • Mrs. Clinton aided and abetted Mr. Clinton’s behavior as a sexual predator by standing by him vs. Mrs. Trump stands by her man and blames the media.
  • Big government, regulation and intervention are bad vs. police are always right, increase Stop & Frisk, build a wall and increase regulation of immigration.
  • Taking a knee is unpatriotic vs. claiming elections are rigged
  • Protesters are violent vs. Police responding with military equipment are keepers of the peace
  • You don’t like it, leave the country vs. Mr. Trump doesn’t like it, we should change the country
  • Christianity vs. Mr. Trump
  • Mr. Trump will be incredible vs. Mr. Trump’s campaign

For bonus points, if gaming the IRS makes you uniquely qualified to reform the tax system, would:

  • a misogynist and sexual predator be uniquely qualified to solve gender inequality?
  • an undocumented immigrant be uniquely qualified to reform immigration?
  • a jihadist be uniquely qualified to lead the fight against terrorism?
  • a drug dealer be uniquely qualified to lead the war on drugs?
  • a white supremacist be uniquely qualified to fight racism and antisemitism?
  • a corrupt official be uniquely qualified to fight political corruption?
  • the Ferguson police department be uniquely qualified to reform racist police practices?
  • a man who’s never been a locker room be uniquely qualified to engage in locker room talk?

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October 1, 2016 · 10:11 pm

If You Vote for Trump, You Are No Longer Friend or Family

oh-canada

Looks like we‘ll need a Plan B if Trump is elected.

Canada may be the closest place in North America that Mr. Trump will allow my family. And I say this as a person who had to degrade himself by pretending to be Canadian just to get some in Europe during the Bush years.

In all seriousness, family and friends, please do not vote for Donald Trump. I understand and get that you may dislike, detest even, Hilary Clinton. I am certainly no fan of hers.

BUT PLEASE DO NOT VOTE TRUMP.

Think about it: besides Mr. Trump running a campaign centered fully on hate, fear and division, he has also pledged that if he becomes the next President of the United States of America, he will prohibit my wife and children from entering our country. That means that if you vote for Mr. Trump, you are saying that is is perfectly alright to:

  • prohibit my family from entering the U.S., and
  • never see any of us again.

I say “never see us again” because if you vote for him and I find out, you are not welcome in my home. I will take your vote for Trump as a personal rejection of me and my family.

If you don’t like Hilary, either vote for a third party candidate or just vote down ballot. If you are a Republican or a Conservative Christian, you know quite well that Trump is neither. He is a dishonest cheat in absolutely everything he says or does. As USA Today recently wrote in its unprecedented editorial against Mr. Trump,

He is erratic. Trump has been on so many sides of so many issues that attempting to assess his policy positions is like shooting at a moving target. A list prepared by NBC details 124 shifts by Trump on 20 major issues since shortly before he entered the race . . .

He is ill-equipped to be Commander-in-Chief. . . .

He traffics in prejudice. . . .

His business career is checkered. . . . A series of investigative articles published by the USA TODAY Network found that Trump has been involved in thousands of lawsuits over the past three decades, including at least 60 that involved small businesses and contract employees who said they were stiffed. So much for being a champion of the little guy. . .

He isn’t leveling with the American people. . . .

He speaks recklessly. . . .

He’s a serial liar. . . .

For the life of me, I don’t see anything concrete that Trump stands for other than racism, xenophobia and insult. If you vote for him, that is what you stand for.

Finally, I am a U.S. citizen as are my children, and what possible argument can there be for denying my family from entering my home country and the place where my parents and siblings live? Because my wife and children are Muslim?

2-brothers

As far as I know, no one in my wife’s family has ever advocated for or supported:

  • Capital punishment
  • Bombing, invading or occupying another country, preemptively or otherwise
  • Carpet bombing
  • Killing human shields
  • Killing the (innocent) family members of terrorists
  • Torture or enhanced interrogation
  • Humiliating women or your political adversaries.

Meanwhile, Trump (and arguably Hilary even) have supported all of these.

So you have a choice this election. Do you ever want to see me again? Because if you vote Trump, you are rejecting me and my family. That is clear. It is not a joke. It is not funny.

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Filed under Elections 2016, Friends / Family, Married to a Moroccan