I saw this story about a crazy guy driving into #NoDAPL protesters and shooting a gun. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it doesn’t sound like the guy has been arrested or anything either. I’m on the fence about the #NoDAPL thing personally. After cursory review, I understand the outrage, but it also looks like the proper due diligence was done by the Big Evil Corporation. But that’s beside the point. The part of the story that struck me was this quote by a protester:

This is a very simplistic examination of Hitler’s rise to power compared with Trump’s, and what Trump might have to do to assume the same level of dictatorship that Hitler had. I’m distilling most of this from the excellent Wikipedia articles on Hitler’s rise to power. If you want the full story, go there. Then find some books because Wikipedia doesn’t make much sense sometimes. I’ll be trying to keep this a bit light, but don’t take that to mean I don’t take this seriously.

Once again I woke up thinking I needed to correct and expand upon my earlier post. Regarding the safety pins, I completely forgot to mention that I fully support the idea of making minorities feel safe. Even if I don’t feel like I can participate myself, I applaud others for doing so. In my real life activities, based on past experience, I don’t think it’s likely that I would encounter any bad situations, but if I did, I’d like to think I would try to intervene if I could. It’s not really my forte, though.

Note: This was written, well, after the third presidential debate, but I never actually published it until now. Some of the things I wrote are kind of hilarious with the hindsight knowledge of how the election turned out. Where to even start. Chris Wallace was the best moderator of the three debates, at least in the sense that he asked the best questions. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to keep the candidates on track any better than the others, or keep them from cross-talking or keep the audience from cheering. He also seemed really nervous. (Not that I blame him.)

More from the “random post-election thoughts” bin: I don’t think I ever documented this, but Clinton won (or “is winning” I should say) Virginia 49.60 to 44.56 with 99.88% of precincts reporting. (I was going to round that but I suddenly realized I have no idea how you’re supposed to round election results. Normal rounding? Truncation? One up, one down?) It’s a bit outside the range I guessed (I guessed that if Clinton won by less than 3-4 points the election would go to Trump) but Trump still won.

I was thinking about this and I want to issue a slight correction to what I wrote in my last post: On those Electoral College hopes: Again, I understand. Nobody in your circles wanted Trump to be president. You’re seeing some bad things spreading like wildfire all across social media, and you’re panicking. The nightmare might be coming true. Trying to convince electoral college voters to change their votes before it’s too late sounds like a great plan. But it’s illegal. It’s unethical. It’s sinister. And I’m sorry to say this, but it’s UN-AMERICAN.

I’ve been watching Trump *very* closely since election night. He hasn’t said more than a handful of words since his victory speech. He hasn’t gloated. He hasn’t blustered. Everything is going very well. Extremely well. Shockingly well. Everything is proceeding exactly like the peaceful transfer of power should go. Everyone in Washington appears to be conscious of the nation’s fears and taking deliberate steps to calm things, despite all the reporters trying their best to rile things up again. Frankly this transition so far appears to be going better than the one from Bush to Obama, which I also thought went very well.

This post has taken days to work on, and it’s not finished, but I gave up and you’re just going to have to deal with it because I’m ready to move on now. I’m aware that people feel very passionately about this election, so I will warn folks on both the left and the right that there might be some triggers below. I’m still a centrist, and I view this election and this country through a fairly dispassionate moderate filter. Still, even I’m feeling overwhelmed by all the anger and fear and disappointment I’ve seen after the election. Most of my Internet circles experienced this election result quite like another 9/11. So it might be better if you wait a while to read this. I don’t want to throw gasoline on any fires here.

This is exactly what I’m worried about: “No, no, no,” @mike_pence said when a woman suggested "revolution" if Hillary Clinton is elected. "Don’t say that.” https://t.co/IjOzsTSkPm — Jason Noble (@jasonnobleDMR) October 12, 2016 Good on Mike Pence for challenging it. Kind of. Using divisive rhetoric to win support is kind of double-edged sword. Pence can’t exactly say to the crowd, “I know we’ve been *saying* that demons will erupt from the earth to devour your children if Hillary is elected, but you guys know we’re only saying that so you’ll vote for us, right? We don’t actually *mean* it.”

Trump did better than expected in the second debate, better than the first debate, in my opinion. I’d probably call it a draw, in the sense that neither candidate wiped the floor with the other. Trump’s still struggling, but everyone expected (hoped, perhaps) he would implode-and he didn’t. When I watch the debates, I’m purposefully trying to look past the surface stuff and see things that will get buried later. The media tends to focus on the more sensational things that happen, but I guess I’m more interested in the boring stuff.