The Donald J. Trump Presidency

Ҩ wrote:I don't really remember him that well from LoPP, but I seem to remember being kind of weirded out by him. His online presence seems very different than what I recall.

Ҩ wrote:Hipinion

facebook ned wrote:The one I've heard referenced the most is something along the lines of, "See, there's only like 2 ISPs right now and they have all the money and all the power. Once we get rid of net neutrality, they'll fuck everybody over, because they are greedy. Then, other competitors will pop up to compete with the now hated villians and the people will get to choose. In the end, only the best run companies who look out for thier customers will stick around as big ISPs and somehow both price and service will be better." Of this argument, I say that the part about the big companies fucking us over is pretty much a 100% certainty, and the rest is baseless assumption that'll probably amount to absolutely nothing.

Ned Braden wrote:I've probably missed the discussion, but out of curiosity, can you guys come up with pros for net neutrality repeal?

In an astonishing order, the Trump administration has banned the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words — including “fetus,” “transgender,” “diversity” and “science-based” — in any documents used to prepare the agency’s budget, The Washington Post has reported.

CDC policy analysts were reportedly informed of the forbidden words in a 90-minute meeting in Atlanta on Thursday with senior CDC officials. The other banned words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement” and “evidence-based,” according to the Post, citing an unnamed policy analyst. The meeting was led by a senior member of the CDC’s Office of Financial Services. She didn’t know why the words were forbidden and said she was merely relaying information, the Post reported.

Instead of the words “science-based” or “evidence-based,” analysts were told they could use instead: The “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the newspaper reported.

The Post’s source could not recall a previous time in any other administration when words were forbidden.

Dr. Loren Schechter, director of the Center for Gender Confirmation surgery at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago and a member of the board of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, said he was shocked by the edict.

“I’m not sure what the ultimate rationale is for doing this aside from trying to erase certain types of people off the map,” he told HuffPost, referring to the ban on the words “transgender” and “diversity.”

“I think walking back hard-earned civil rights is something that is, number one, quite shocking to me and, number two, quite concerning. Simply choosing to ignore reality, science, medicine, will not make these things go away and will not really advance anyone’s cause or lead to improved health outcomes.”

“This is quite an absurdity,” Schechter said. “The president sets the agenda. It’s quite scary ... it really sends a chill down your spine. I can’t imagine how you don’t allow terms to be used. It’s sort of like the thought police here.

“Perhaps we can say the world is flat now,” he said.  

Twitter erupted following the news. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) complained that Trump is “making America stupid again” and wondered if leaders would soon be supporting voodoo and leeches to fight disease. A tweet from Planned Parenthood said the Trump administration has “disdained” women’s health, the LGBTQ community and science from the start.

Treating science as a matter of opinion rather than an objective, evidence-based reality appears to have become a hallmark of the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to climate change. So, too, is scrubbing certain words and information from discussions, documents and websites that don’t fit with Donald Trump’s vision. The Department of Health and Human Services has dropped information on its website about LGBTQ individuals.

“Banning valid terminology from government reports is both ignorant and dangerous,” Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at New York University’s School of Medicine, told HuffPost in an email. “Not since Lysenko and Stalin has government made hate, malice and duplicity official policy. The Trump administration with its seven-dirty-words policy has now elevated lying to a national standard.

“We cannot replace truth with bias — the nation cannot survive a steady diet of bullshit.”

Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate. He trusted his own expertise ­— no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”