...Huh. You're still here?
Well, not much has happened between my last post (some 5-odd months ago) and now. Just an entire semester of graduate work, my final semester starting next week, my IRB approval coming last week, even got a paper presentation accepted for the PCA/ACA national conference in San Diego in April.
What brings me here, however, after a subtle reminder that I even have one of these following me noticing that my bank still gets charged hosting fees, is something far more dire than memes, my studies, or my automotive new hotness.
Nope, it's the single-most damning sign of the impending end of the human race.
In roughly a week as of the time I am writing this, this spray-tanned double-decker pig fart will officially be "President Spray-Tanned Double-Decker Pig Fart." Obviously, I have not learned my lesson from my previous forays in to political commentary here, but with Trump's taking of the office mere days away, especially on the heels of Obama's farewell speech a few days ago, I feel the burning need to throw in my two cents, even if nobody reads it.
It's my blog, I'll write what I want.
Fact is that ever since the election, however, many people close to me in my life has reacted with fear and panic, like a cornered prey animal being stalked by a hunter. It's not unwarranted, some of these people face discrimination, the dissolution of their marriages and hard-won rights, deportation based on their religion, and various other persecutions if we go off of Trump's campaign promises (though in all fairness, Trump's record of saying something truthful is, at best, utter garbage.) People are entitled to their opinions and reactions, but at the same time, for people to claim to hold the high ground, they have to walk the high road.
All I'm saying, is that it is within our rights to criticize Trump the man, attack his stances, call him out on his bullshit, fight back when he attacks those who cannot defend themselves. Fighting a liar with lies, however, just brings you down to his level.
Attack Trump based on facts, fight back with the truth. Spreading patently false stories because they project Trump in a negative light doesn't hurt Trump, it hurts you. Verbally attacking his daughter, her husband, and her kids on a commercial flight makes you as scummy as those you profess to oppose.
I've gotten up and left rooms before because of people who, out of the blue and without provocation, launch themselves in to vicious rants against future First Lady Melania Trump, calling her a prostitute, based on a six-month-old retracted article based on a debunked tabloid article from Slovakia, and that she posed nude in Playboy. Yeah, because I can imagine anyone who decided that they wanted to pose in Playboy thought "I might be First Lady one day."
Point is, lashing out at everything and everyone attached to Trump for things unrelated to what Trump does, or things they didn't do at all, is not the reaction of someone who is better than him. That is the reaction of someone like him. Part of fighting the scourge of fake news proliferating in social and mass media is to recognize that being truthful is a two way street. Focusing only on fake news that doesn't fit in to your world view is how you act like him.
Don't be like him.