It’s time once again for the nightly Twitter bluster from our embarrassing president-elect.

What do we learn from this, other than that Trump can’t spell? What we should learn is that the world now thinks that America is weak. That was not a science vessel: it was a military ship probing submarine access points to and from Chinese ports. This was in international waters, so I’m not defending the Chinese seizure…but I can understand it, and most importantly, isn’t it obvious that China is confident the US will do nothing about it? They know we are soon to be lacking a serious head of state, with a clownish buffoon who is the product of foreign meddling in our politics, and so hey, sure, let’s poke the dull-witted twit a bit.

Expect more of this. It isn’t just terrorists — established world powers have been annoyed at American dominance for the past century, and they don’t mind tormenting the world’s biggest bully.

An advisor to Trump and member of the transition team just bare-faced asserted that the Earth is less than 6000 years old. This was after Anthony Scaramucci tried to invalidate modern science by arguing that scientists once argued that the Earth was flat and that the universe rotated about it. Never mind that those ideas preceded modern science and were relatively rapidly dispelled as evidence was acquired.

Watch those irony meters, gang.

Scaramucci wasn’t convinced. Later in the conversation, he said the Trump team simply wanted common sense solutions. Non-ideological.

Some of the stuff that you’re reading and some of the stuff I’m reading is very ideologically-based about the climate. We don’t want it to be that way, he said.

This has become the latest insult from the deeply ignorant: “You’re ideological!” Always said as they espouse some stupid ideological position of their own.

Rebecca Watson addresses this latest Trumpery more entertainingly.

We’ve added a new group blog to our roster, FREETHOUGHT RESISTANCE. Many of the writers here can contribute to it, and we’ll be adding more anti-fascist content as time goes on…and as our outrage grows. We’ll also welcome guest posts, and in fact have already added a post from Sunsara Taylor, calling for action at the refusefascism.org site. We would favor posts that have specific proposals and information for activism; tell us about your local event, about organizations working towards good causes, about unjust actions by the illegitimate regime that require responses. Send such posts to any of your favorite bloggers here; we do require that you use a valid email address, but you can request that it be posted anonymously.

What motivated this new blog is the appalling normalization of Trump by the media. We refuse to be part of that, and many of us have decided that we needed to be clear in our stance, that we reject this government hijacking by the alt-right, and further that we oppose the widespread apologetics for racism and misogyny and homophobia and all the other vicious bigotries that have been revitalized by the right. I want to someday be able to tell my grandchildren that I resisted, I fought, I spoke out. I hope you feel the same way.

This will not be us.

When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” claimed the Washington Post. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.

In fact, The New York Times wrote after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” Journalists wondered whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.

Yes, the American press tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy.

Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, he didn’t report it. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.

We will be taking the Trump situation seriously. We will condemn it without reservation.

Nicholas Kristof does it again, demonstrating the all-too-common inanity of the NY Times’ op-ed pages. He’s very concerned that college campuses have become “echo chambers”.

I share apprehensions about President-elect Trump, but I also fear the reaction was evidence of how insular universities have become. When students inhabit liberal bubbles, they’re not learning much about their own country. To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.

We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.

“We” liberals? Kristof is more of a privileged center-right kind of White Dufus. Just the fact that now, in the time of Trump, he finds it important to wag his finger and tut-tut at those damn liberal universities tells you that he isn’t one of us. He’s the sleazy con man cozying up to you, smarmily reassuring you that he is on your side, while he’s planning to pick your pocket.

It is ridiculous to even suggest that students live in a bubble, and that we need to make a special effort to help them meet Republicans. We are surrounded by them. Many grew up in Republican families. There are Republican students here, and Republican student clubs. Republicans have been aggressively plastering campus bulletin boards with Republican political slogans. We have a far right Republican alternative paper littering the campus. If 10% of our professors are Republican, it’s rather definite that students will encounter them. Even his own numbers make it clear that his whine is nonsensical.

Since 40% of Americans are creationists, does that mean, that using Kristof’s calculus, we should be hiring more biology professors who deny evolution and reject all of the evidence? We should aim to be representative of all good ideas, not simply all ideas; we should have standards. Education is not simply the indiscriminate dumping of every delusion that has been farted out into the world into students’ heads.

Some of you are saying that it’s O.K. to be intolerant of intolerance, to discriminate against bigots who acquiesce in Trump’s record of racism and misogyny. By all means, stand up to the bigots. But do we really want to caricature half of Americans, some of whom voted for President Obama twice, as racist bigots? Maybe if we knew more Trump voters we’d be less inclined to stereotype them.

That’s standard right-wing cant coming from our so-called fellow liberal. How do you know that “many” of them voted for Obama twice? Only about 40% of eligible voters did their duty this time around, you know; it is possible for [Obama voters] and [Trump voters] to be non-overlapping sets. I expect that there are some who did vote that way, but keep in mind that 3% of the electorate voted for Gary Johnson. There’s a fair bit of noise and badly informed voting going on.

But this is the tired old “I have friends who are black” or “I’d let a black man use my bathroom” excuse. It doesn’t matter. Trump campaigned on nativism, discrimination, and open racism. The people who voted for him didn’t see any of that as a problem. That makes them implicitly racist.

I know a few Trump voters. It’s not stereotyping to say they made a bad decision for very bad reasons. And yes, the entire white population of America is racist to varying degrees, so it’s not a caricature, it’s a statement of fact. (Which statement will, no doubt, elicit louder howls of protest than the fact that unarmed black men get murdered by the police. I know my people.)

The weakest argument against intellectual diversity is that conservatives or evangelicals have nothing to add to the conversation. “The idea that conservative ideas are dumb is so preposterous that you have to live in an echo chamber to think of it,” Sunstein told me.

Of course, we shouldn’t empower racists and misogynists on campuses. But whatever some liberals think, “conservative” and “bigot” are not synonyms.

Good grief. Liberals didn’t equate conservatives with racists and misogynists. Conservatives did, by happily embracing the Southern strategy, making theocracy a key plank, using racist gerrymandering to pad their representation, engaging in voter suppression, and now, electing a racist, misogynist incompetent to the presidency. You don’t get to complain that conservative and bigot have become synonymous when that is precisely the identity modern conservatives have consciously adopted!

I’ve known conservatives. I’ve listened to conservative ideas, and even when I’ve disagreed with them haven’t necessarily thought them stupid. I consider Obama to be a moderate, sensible conservative, too, who has implemented quite a few policies I find wrong…but Jesus, at least he’s been a competent bureaucrat. But those were conservatives before Reagan, the Gingrich revolution, the Tea Party, and the ascendancy of Trumpkinism. I’d be willing to agree that those crappy ideas are actually radical, reactionary bullshit that is not conservative at all, but when Republicans, the conservative party, have become the willing reservoir of the brain-eating prion disease of far-right loonitarianism, they’ve bought it, they own it, and they don’t get to now claim conservative thinking isn’t a vile toxin infecting the Republic because Eisenhower was pretty restrained and sensible, once upon a time.

I’m one of Rachel Swirsky’s patrons on Patreon, so I get to read all these little stories, and you don’t. One of her latest is November, 2016 — One Dozen Counterfactuals for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections, which consists of 12 alternate histories for how the past year could have turned out. I’m going to mention just one:

9. During the nomination stage, both Warren and Biden tossed their hats into the ring along with Sanders’ and Clinton’s. Exciting debates about how best to move forward with progressive policy led to a renaissance in thought. Intellectuals, activists, and community leaders were invited to lead vigorous discussion. Some – like Noam Chomsky – became candidates themselves. The ultimate winner’s name has been lost to history, as they insisted on giving collective credit to the movement which transformed the American political landscape into a pony-strewn rainbow meadow.

I think I’ll just lie back and pretend that one really happened, because the reality is too dystopian and vile.

Just for a little while, though. Because we have to wake up soon and fight back.

I sometimes find myself in very good company.

Jessica Valenti, Lindy West, and…me? Gosh, thanks. I’m flattered.

Also, while it’s not really personal, the Daily Stormer wants to murder people like me. They’ve provided a helpful list for Trump’s right-wing death squads to kill, including:

1. Lying journalists (where “lying” is defined as opposing Right-Wing Death Squads, I guess)
2. Political opponents
3. Human rights activists
4. Legal immigrants
5. Liberal university professors (that’s me!)
6. Filthy sluts (basically, any woman who has sex)
7. Artists and musicians

Strangely, this list isn’t tagged as “satire”. Instead, it’s got this odd note at the end.

Editor’s note: This is in no way a call for violence or murder. This is a policy position paper in the form of a listicle. The Daily Stormer is opposed to violence, and simply supports the practical implementation of innovative policies which will lead to a great America.

Oh. They’re opposed to violence, it’s just that as a matter of policy they want me executed by roving squads of extra-judicial politically-motivated assassins. Got it. That makes it all better.

But hey, it’s gratifying be classed as an enemy of the oppressive state along with artists and human rights activists and women and all those other decent people. I’ll take it. I wouldn’t want to be a member of a class that had the approval of the Daily Stormer, after all.

I had no idea of the extent of Obama’s tyranny. Did you know he forbade you from saying “Merry Christmas”? Corey Lewandowski says so, so it must be true.

That’s exactly how Republicans get elected: by telling people lies about their situation, and getting them to believe them. Then, once elected they have to do nothing but declare their own lies false.

Why is Lewandowski still on television? Fox News, I can understand…but shouldn’t a respectable news organization assess the quality of their contributors, and refuse to consider giving air time to people who are demonstrably untrustworthy and dishonest?

Oh, those wacky Trump supporters…they are so filled with joy, they planned a big victory parade in North Carolina!

The Loyal White Knights had previously announced they would hold a “Trump victory parade” in Pelham on Saturday morning. Hundreds of protestors and reporters arrived in the small town in Caswell County for the event, though the KKK never showed.

Oh, no, they didn’t show? Were they overwhelmed with a surfeit of exhilaration? Did they party just a little too hard? I supposed you could say that.

The founder of the local Ku Klux Klan was unable to participate in the group’s festivities Saturday because he was in jail in connection with the stabbing and beating of another man at a KKK meeting the night before.

The Caswell County Sheriff’s Office reported Saturday night that two men were arrested that morning after allegedly assaulting a man who was in town for a Loyal White Knights meeting.

What a shame. I hope this doesn’t quench the Klan’s joie de vivre, and that they have many more exultant, triumphant meetings in the future.

The infamous pipeline is going to be rerouted.

The Army will not approve an easement that would allow the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works announced Sunday.

It must be a good decision, because it’s really pissing off the right people.

North Dakota’s sole member in the House of Representatives, Rep. Kevin Cramer, a Republican, expressed his disapproval in a scathing statement released Sunday that slammed President Barack Obama as well as the protestors.

“I hoped even a lawless president wouldn’t continue to ignore the rule of law. However, it was becoming increasingly clear he was punting this issue down the road,” Cramer wrote. “Today’s unfortunate decision sends a very chilling signal to others who want to build infrastructure in this country. Roads, bridges, transmission lines, pipelines, wind farms and water lines will be very difficult, if not impossible, to build when criminal behavior is rewarded this way.”

Building infrastructure is great. Building great dangerous leaky pipelines to pump poison over water supplies, and to torment and abuse the people most affected by them, is not. Suppressing the people’s right to protest is also not great.

In a democratic election, far-right, immigrant-hating, Hitler-wanna-be Norbert Hofer has been defeated. That’s good news — I’ve been feeling like democracy has been inclining toward fascism lately, and it’s nice to see the trend reversed in at least one country.