STRAUBINICAL NEWS DIGEST Eight.

Just as "fake news" has itself become news, the rumor of a story has become, through the alchemy of social media, the story of a rumor.
  An ugly and false allegation about local pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong circulated on social media before the election. The bizarre claim was that a pedophilia ring operated inside this business, and both underground tunnels and Hillary Clinton were involved. (Why Hillary Clinton, a person who we've been told endlessly has enriched herself in numerous legal ways, would diversify her portfolio by expanding into this market, I couldn't say. It would seem that the "lock her up!" crowd is willing to believe virtually anything about Clinton, while accepting virtually no criticism of Donald Trump.)
  For a while, the restaurant has been receiving a  disturbing amount of death threats, due to the wildfire-like rumor-spreading possibilities available on sites like Reddit. Reddit had to actually ban the topic of "pizzagate," as the horseshit "scandal" was imaginatively dubbed. After enough credulous Americans started adding two and two and getting seven, they apparently decided

GOOD THINGS COME IN WACKY PACKAGES

  My son isn't furious with me right this minute, which is nice, but an awful lot of ducks had to be lined up to get us here.
  Earlier, he was seething with rage because I'd lost a valuable athlete trading card that he'd given me. I toyed with the idea of saying that I hadn't lost it, I'd just forgotten which enormously safe place I'd put it. Rejecting this gambit, I went into my office and checked the obvious spot where I would put a thing that was tiny and card-shaped, belying its immense worth. I looked at my Wacky Package collection.
  On top of the stack was a Willie Nelson trading card I'd forgotten about. I can't recall why my son had this, but he gave it to me a while back because while he wasn't clear as to who Willie was, he figured I might be. Now I was irritated at myself for putting the damn sports card some other place that I would never remember, instead of with the Wacky Packages.
  (Digression time-- these Wacky Packages were a big part of my childhood. After learning that Art Spiegelman had been one of the main creative guys behind the goofy parodies of consumer products, I realized that he'd led me to Mad Magazine, which in turn led me to Lenny Bruce, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, Robert Crumb, Jaroslav Hasek, etc. So I went to a Spiegelman book signing in the hope that I could thank him for setting me on a path toward Bohemianism. He was gracious in accepting this credit, and I kept our tête-à-tête mercifully brief.)
  I returned from my fruitless card search, and tried to avoid my son's gimlet eye.

STRAUBINICAL NEWS DIGEST Seven.

  Donald Trump, if we're very lucky, will put to rest a canard that's long rankled me-- the business of Obama's Achilles heel being his exorbitant levels of self-regard. There would seem to be no reason to talk about that anymore as if it's a negative; this season, self-regard is in. It will be interesting to see if Trump, when the dust clears, will have spent more time bragging about the Carrier Miracle than it actually took to do the deal. (A similar phenomenon was observable years ago when The Who's various repackagings and recyclings of a slim discography began to outnumber the original releases.)
  Trump is fond of framing his deeds in a semi-heroic light. For many of his admirers, he's something of a flawed demi-god, combining rough-and-tumble "guy talk" with supernatural abilities, not unlike his mythological analogue, the half-human, half-god Hercules. The eugenically pre-determined dealmaking prowess is why he stepped up to help a brother out, so to speak, but it's the tawdry locker room braggadocio that humanizes him.

DONNY APPLESEED

DONNY APPLESEED

Donald Trump's strongest argument for his presidency may have been his fabled dealmaking ability. Of course, the fable was largely created and spread by the man himself. The Trump version of the Johnny Appleseed story is perfect for modern America-- where Mr. Appleseed went around doing something, and was celebrated for it, Mr. Trump did something, and went around telling people to celebrate it.  
  In Trump America, the polarization makes people swell with pride when they oppose the other side. And when the other side has facts-- which they do, sporadically-- then the facts must be opposed also. Sometimes they are spun, but this takes work, while discrediting is available to the entry-level political thinker. And this discrediting process has been going on for years. Richard Nixon's peevish grumblings about NPR have metastasized into a widespread elephantine dismissal of media as "evil," a tiresome word. I've seen and heard Trump voters talk about this, and their collective thoughts about "the media" are one of the most transparently obvious examples of confirmation bias in American history.
  Full disclosure-- I'm a human being. Thus, I'm subject to confirmation bias just like the Trump voters are. This means that I respond to things emotionally, and after the fact I look for logic to bolster my emotional reaction. And I cherry pick the facts and spin that make my feeling look like truth. It must be said-- since I'm skewering the right and its ignorance today-- that smart people are as good as, or better at this confirmation bias game, than the less smart.