If Lemony Snicket Described Donald Trump

It is a strange fact of this world that the buildings people live in often reflect what they are like. For example, I once knew a woman who lived in a very impractical home shaped like a shoe, and who suffered from perpetual verrucas, due to damp from an ineffective drainage system shaped to look like shoelaces. It is therefore not surprising that we sometimes use metaphors about buildings to say what somebody is like. So a person who is very learned and is a professor of math might be said to live in an ivory tower. Rather than being a tall building made of elephant's tusk, this means that the person in question inhabits a rarefied atmosphere, words which here indicate that they are so clever they have become removed from reality.

President Trump did indeed have a tower named after him, and he was quite removed from reality, but no one could say whether he was clever. Although Trump Tower was not a metaphor, it could be turned into one. For instance, somebody might say that the giant, glass construction was an evidence of his vainglory, a word which here means 'ruthless self-obsession and desire to take over the world'.

If it is unfair to judge people on the basis of the houses they live in, it is even more insensitive to criticize them for how they look. Polite, respectable children such as Violet, Klaus and Sunny would never have said that Count Olaf was evil because he looked evil. Yet he did look villainous, because he enjoyed playing the part of the villain. This being so, however, he went to great lengths to appear not to be a villain in order to fool people over the course of his evil schemes.

President Trump, the case in point, was a very bad man, but he cultivated the air of a permanently affronted toad. What we would like from this world in which people act in the ways we expect from their clothes and their houses is for villains to disguise themselves ostentatiously, a word which here means 'in ridiculous wigs and with make-up that fools no-one except those with responsibility for the Baudelaire orphans'. We should like our villains to go about their evil plans in underhand manners helped by a troupe of immoral actors. We should like them to reveal the plan gleefully to its victims, and for it to just barely fail at the last minute, so that they can once again escape the clutches of justice and leave the Baudelaire orphans with a glimmer of hope, even if that glimmer of hope is like the memory of an ember fading in the fireplace of a beloved mansion that was all-too tragically burned to the ground.

What we want from our villains is that moment when the scales may fall from the eyes of those who were up-to-now taken in.

President Trump did not need to disguise himself to engage in his peculiar brand of villainy. The suit into which he fitted like a plasticine model of himself was one he was probably born into. Everything that seemed ridiculous about him was in fact essentially him, no matter how improbable it seemed. For this reason, there was no moment at which the fake moustache could fall off, so to speak, and for the evil scheme to suddenly become apparent to all. He had made himself successful by a curious show of telling everyone how evil he was, so that he was like a magician who tells you what the trick they will perform is, then fools you anyway. Now nobody could grab at the side of his face and tug to show that it was really a convincing rubber mask. It no longer had any effect to point out, rationally, why his whole rationale was evil. To use one of the real metaphors of which we have just spoken, what seemed to be his wig was, in fact, unconvincing hair.

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What is Socialism?

Taxing the rich and redistributing their wealth to the poor (or to those who don't work) is not socialism, that is capitalism with welfare. The tendency to refer to welfare capitalism as "socialism" is a misnomer, and redistributing wealth via taxation is really a centrist and mainstream economic policy, far from the more radical ideas promoted by socialists.

So what is "real" socialism? Socialism is a pretty broad term which encompasses lots of different branches of though these days, but the crux of socialism is the idea that workers should control the means of production. Socialists articulate this idea with the concepts of the bourgeoisie and proletariat classes. The bourgeoisie is the class which controls the means of production and does not need to work in order to survive. The proletariat is the class which must trade their labor for wages in order to survive, and cannot gain wealth simply by profiting off the labor of others.

These concepts do not explicitly advocate for resentment toward the wealthy as you seem to perceive them: it is possible for the proletariat to become wealthy in a capitalist system, after all, though it is quite difficult. In particular, they aren't meant to engender resentment toward those who are wealthy since they worked hard: the primary concern is with those who profit off the labor of others but do not labor themselves. Socialists refer to this as exploitation of labor and it is one of the primary problems socialism seeks to address. Since ownership of the means of production--businesses, factories, whatever--is frequently passed down family lines rather than doled out on the basis of "who is the hardest worker", the bourgeoisie becomes a hereditary class of owners and capital-holders who contribute nothing yet consume most of the wealth.

Socialism can be enacted in many forms:

In most countries who call themselves socialist it is enforced by nationalizing industries so that everyone is basically an employee of the government, and the workers "own" the means of production since they theoretically have some say in the way the government works. This is a heavily criticized way of doing it, since government bureaucrats typically assume the role that the bourgeoisie once held and workers don't really have any more control over the means of production than they would under capitalism. It is therefore sometimes derisively referred to as state capitalism. Traditionally this has been enforced by violent revolutions by socialist partisans--which is one of the many issues with this form of socialism.

Market Socialism, which I view as a superior form, retains the free market aspects of capitalism while implementing worker control of the means of production. This is accomplished by abolishing wage labor, and instead ensuring that any worker who provides labor gets some portion of the profits which reflects their contribution. This could be done by paying workers in company shares, forming a co-op, etc. The simplest example for this would be any enterprise where 2 people agree to do some work together and split the profits 50-50. Assuming each contributes the same amount, it is much more fair than the capitalist alternative, which might have 1 person assume the role of "company owner" and pay the other person an arbitrary wage which may not be as great as their contribution. This sort of ownership, if anything, inspires greater levels of worker engagement and hard work, since they own a stake in what they are producing rather than just working for an arbitrary wage.

So if your fundamental concerns are that socialism basically gives people something for free and undermines the need for labor, please rest assured that getting free stuff doesn't have much to do with socialism--welfare capitalism is just a more compassionate approach to typical capitalist systems. Socialism is about control of the means of production and ending labor exploitation--welfare systems are a far cry from full socialism.

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Why Florida Sucks Ass

On paper, Florida sounds like it should be great. Over the past few years it has only had a few weeks where it dipped below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, humid heat is way easier to deal with than dry heat, beaches, oceans, clubs, nightlife, etc. As far as natural disasters go, hurricanes are kind of the best one since you generally have plenty of time to evacuate if the storm gets bad and when they aren't bad you usually get a day off work for a hurricane party.


However, Florida's biggest problems are the insanely corrupt local and state governments, the complete lack of culture in cities and the racism in the white areas.

Governmental Corruption

The corrupt local and state governments have resulted in Florida being unable to take advantage of Obamacare making healthcare miserable to afford. Their current Governor is also the man who oversaw and was responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in US history, so that's partially why the healthcare system got so screwed up.


Florida also has a terrible problem with corruption from real estate developers. Because of how much of Florida's economy is dependent on tourism, migration from other states/countries and retirees resettling in Florida, real estate developers have managed to secure a disproportionate hold on governmental power in Florida. This is why the road system is so fucked in Florida and why the Federally built highways are the only functional pieces of roadwork in the state, generally only getting backed up due to poorly designed arterial connections from the shitty local road system and crashes. Developers can easily push around the local, county and state governments to get roads built straight to developments with zero regard for city planning. Florida can have traffic as bad (or worse) as California, with less than half the population.


That same governmental corruption also permeates the school system, which has resulted in overcrowding in schools and a distinct lack of qualified teachers due to cratering teacher pay and the State's continuous attempts to bust the teacher's union in Florida. This has led the state to pursue voucher and charter school programs that are rife with another layer of corruption themselves because of the stunning lack of accountability that these schools enjoy, making them prime targets for embezzlement and money laundering by the staff that own these schools, along with poorly preparing Florida students for higher level education. These types of situations also disproportionately negatively effect the poor, those in crises, students that are disabled and students of color.


Florida is also an economic time bomb as sub-prime lending hasn't gone away in the wake of the '08 collapse and is ratcheting up again, with the state doing literally nothing to stop it because of Governor Scott's limp-wristed and corrupt financial leadership of the state. This is compounded by the state's brazen attempts to ignore and obfuscate any kind of acknowledgement of the existence of climate change, despite the fact that climate change will most likely turn Florida into a third-world country economically at the end of the century by destroying its entire coastal property market.

Lack of Culture in Cities

Florida is arguably the worst state for culture to feature major cities. This is largely a result of the massive urban sprawl in Florida that basically colonizes farmland and wilderness with deed-restricted communities much in the way locusts devour a countryside.


Every city in Florida will have the following: Every major corporate chain that could make it financially, a sushi place, that one dive bar, the one hole-in-the-wall place that you have to try, a Korean market and a Latin supermarket. Every. Fucking. City.


The most culture each city has goes as follows:


Tallahassee has hills and the corrupt state government. They also have a Melting Pot... which is an achievement for their city I guess because you can't fucking visit Tallahassee without someone suggesting that shitty Melting Pot restaurant.


Tampa Bay Which is actually a cluster of cities that are all in constant alpha-competition for big dog in the area. Tampa went for big events (sports teams, theme parks, aquarium, whathaveyou), St. Pete and Dunedin are trying to be Brooklyn by the Sea and Clearwater is slowly imploding as the Church of Scientology has ruined downtown economically while the coke problem has seen a resurgence at the beach. Unfortunately, all Tampa is actually known for outside of Florida is strip clubs and its beaches.

I want to take a side bar here to address beach culture in Florida outside of Miami. Beach culture is the absolute worst part of the state of Florida. People crowd into vehicles, to take the over-crowded and poorly designed road system, down to the poorly designed single-lane beach roads to get to the beaches where the culture clash of hipsters, meeting parrotheads, meeting jocks, meeting hippies, meeting the sun-ruined elderly, meeting the druggies/homeless, meeting the tourists, meeting the snowbirds, meeting the waitstaff economy that hates them all, meeting the criminals looking to take advantage of aforementioned groups. And you have to listen to whatever group you are with at the time complain about the traffic, the wait times to get anywhere, how expensive everything was/is/is becoming and you also get to listen to them complain about every. fucking. other. group. that is there that happens to not be your particular little tribe.


The absolute worst aspect of it though is how the closer someone lives to the beach, the more likely you are to hear them say "life just moves too fast in other places". This can range from them referring to New York/LA to Clearwater or New Port Richey depending on how insufferable they are as a human being (which, for anyone that might not know are predominantly suburban communities where nothing of note happens on a regular basis).


The closest Tampa comes to real, honest to god culture, is the Greek Orthodox Community Sponge Docks in Tarpon Springs and Ybor City's culture of Cuban cigars and rum that survives due to the resurgence in the popularity of cigars and the improving relations with Cuba.


Orlando Probably the best downtown life in Florida for your buck if you're out of college. But still has massive traffic problems and the constant influx of tourists to visit the theme parks will be a consistent hell you have to endure. Orlando also probably has one of the worst culture clash problems in the state with radical racism meeting black communities, white hipsters, retirees and the largest Puerto Rican population outside of the island. Still, you can afford to rent in Orlando for a decent price around downtown, unlike Miami.


Miami is a tough one. One of the largest Hispanic populations in the United States makes Miami a much better experience if you know Spanish, have connections with wealthy Jews or both (it can actually lead to some amazing nights if you do). If you don't, or are a white racist, you are probably going to have a much harder time enjoying Miami. It is one of the worst cities in the country rent in by ROI, faces the most dire economic threat from climate change in the state and has the most insufferable sports fans you will ever meet that aren't fans of the Yankees, Patriots, Raiders, Barcelona FC, Man U or Arsenal. Miami literally has the worst worst drivers in the United States. 

This is due to the combination of terrible road design and cultural bubbling over of pissed off Israelis, disenchanted Spaniards, Cubans that want you to get the fuck out of the way, Jews from New York that hate they have to drive everywhere now, white supremacists that equate cultural superiority with the height of their truck lifts for some inexplicable reason and the elderly. Miami residents don't even blush at admitting this either, that's how fucking bad it is to drive in Miami. Miami is also ridiculously expensive. Parking's expensive, beaches are expensive, food's expensive and don't even dream about going near South Beach unless you're willing to blow through $300-$1000 bucks depending on which facility you stumble into. It is a fucking ridiculous place. Getting out of the city helps, but again, knowing Spanish helps. But that won't get you away, since Hialeah ranks 3rd in the United States for worst drivers and you actually really need to know Spanish there since it has the largest Hispanic population in the United States.

Racism in the White Areas

So all the stuff I mentioned before is annoying, but can be ignored to find something positive in each of these places. What's much harder to ignore in Florida is the persistent culture of racism and bigotry that filters through fundamentalist Christian and far-right circles in Florida. It is almost impossible to escape dealing with this bullshit, even in Hispanic dominated communities like Miami. The most egregious of the racism targets anyone non-white. Basically, through either outright hate speech or dogwhistles, these people will communicate that they do not like non-whites and do not want to be around non-whites, they don't believe in race mixing and usually drive a large truck of some kind, possibly with the "ole' stars and bars". These are, more often than not, transplants or the children of transplants from the "deep south" of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina or Georgia.


The much more insidious kind of racism is native to Florida is the kind of racism mentioned above, except it doesn't target "legal" Latinos. Basically, these kinds of racists are your true Floridian racists. They are generally pretty racist toward black people, which is usually reinforced by racist Latino friends, but will probably still have a black friend or two that "is alright". But Jews are the devil to them, particularly "Hollywood or New York Jews". Muslims are the supreme enemy though to these "folks". You will not know this person long before they say something blatantly racist, slandering all Muslims (which to them is Muslims in Iraq and Syria). They will look at you like they've said nothing wrong, every. single. time.


Then there's good 'ole Baptist racism. This is the kind of racism that targets any black community that isn't Baptist, Catholic Latinos, Jews and Muslims.


Finally, you have racism toward mixed relationships among every group in Florida.


You a white guy and want to date a Puerto Rican girl? Prepare to have every Puerto Rican man hate you with the passion of 1,000 burning suns and shit talk about you in Spanish to your girlfriend as you stand right there because they assume you can't speak Spanish.


You a white girl that wants to date a black guy? You'll find people of all ages that sneer at your relationship and casually call you a whore while all the black chicks shit talk your boyfriend right in front of you!


You a black girl that wants to a date a white guy? Get ready for racism from both sides of the aisle!


You're an Asian that wants to date anyone that isn't Asian? Too bad! You live in Florida! Find a weeaboo furry chick with yellow fever, I'm sure the thousands of you can fight over that one chick.


A lot of these problems exist everywhere in the United States, but I would actually go so far as to say that while Florida may be not be the most racist state, it has the most diverse racism out of any other state and you will be forced to deal with racism in some way living in the state of Florida if you are not a white Baptist Christian that only dates other white Baptist Christians.

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Let's Talk About Running

Well, part of it is the way this kind of research is done. A "running injury" is usually defined as "anything that keeps you from running for more than a day, or causes you to reduce your training load". So "80% get injured every year" sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that this includes things like blisters, stubbed toes, and skipping a run because you feel a bit too achey after a speedwork day and take an extra rest day just to be on the safe side. Running, being an endurance sport, is especially prone to this kind of injury: running injuries often develop slowly and progress gradually, and are caused by repetitive stress; in other sports, injuries are more often happen in a split second, and while it may go wrong less often, when it does go wrong, it goes really wrong. The kind of sports injury that sidelines you for weeks or months, I believe, doesn't happen significantly more often in running than the average physical sport; running accidents very rarely kill people or cause severe brain damage.

That said, distance running does have a very high potential for repetitive stress injuries. Two reasons for this; one, it's an endurance sport. This means that you perform the same movement over and over and over, so any imperfection you have in your movement patterns will be amplified by sheer repetition. That little scraping in your gait, that you normally don't even notice, will give you a bad blister after 30,000 steps; the way your hip drops when your left foot lands is not a big deal for everyday activities or chasing a bus once in a while, but 10 miles into a run, it will start punishing your knee. On top of that, a typical running training regimen routinely involves exercising your slow-twitch muscles to the point of deep fatigue (a.k.a. the "long run") for the purpose of pushing that point up. Once you've reached that point, movement patterns will change to compensate for those muscles that are no longer capable of working properly, and this often leads to even worse running form and even more stress on the joints and connective tissue.

The other reason is that running is a high-impact activity; if you dial in the right amount of training, it makes your bones, joints, and connective tissue stronger, and more resilient against impact forces, but if you do too much, it's easy to overload your body. And because the kind of training stress we're dealing with often takes a day or two to fully manifest, it's easy to overdo - you run a bit too much, but it feels great, so you do the same thing again the next day, and it still feels great, but by the end of the week you suddenly feel super groggy and everything hurts.

And then there's the endurance athlete's mindset of "embracing the suck". Many of us are in it because we want to experience self-inflicted suffering, exploring and expanding the limits of our bodies. To a degree, this is healthy and the way to improve, but there's a fine line between suffering that is mostly mental, and little more than physical discomfort, and the kind of suffering that is plain old pain, a warning signal our body sends us, urging us to stop doing whatever it is we're doing. It's not always easy to tell the difference.

And finally, I believe a certain level of consumerism also plays a role. As in any other sport, many people are looking for easy solutions; but running is as simple a sport as it gets, there's basically just your mind, your body, and the road, everything else is mostly irrelevant (yes, this includes running shoes). So the usual approach of solving your problems by buying a product doesn't work, but there's a whole industry built around telling you that it does, and people fall for it big time. The treatment for knee problems is fixing your running form, doing strength training, and adapting your training schedule so that it doesn't hurt you; but this requires brutal honesty, and people are often more comfortable listening to someone who tells them that what they need is a particular kind of running shoe or sock or compression shorts or sports drink or whatever.

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Trump's View of Others is Utterly Self-Contingent.

If someone praises him or works with him, they are a winner. If they criticize him or give him even the slightest of ego wounds, then they are failing disgraceful losers.

Everyone has a little bit of this in them. I mean we all think better of people who compliment us, and perhaps if someone criticizes us we start to think of reasons why "that loser has no right to say ____ about me...."

But Trump displays this behavior to a compulsive, uncontrollable degree.

He is unable to accept a criticism, any criticism, however valid or mild, of anyone on his "winner list."

He incontinently accepts and amplifies every criticism, however poorly founded or unsubstantiated, of anyone on his "loser" list.

He seeks revenge, domination and humiliation of those who defy him.

I don't get how some people have not spotted this pattern yet.

It is how we get Trump repeating the idea that Ted Cruz's dad shot JFK. There was no mastermind plan behind this smear. Ted Cruz opposed and defied Trump therefore everything bad anyone has ever alleged about Ted Cruz, even if the claim came from some egg on Twitter, must be true.

it is how he was continually caught retweeting White nationalists. It's way too complimentary to say that "Trump is indifferent to the source of a claim." It would be more accurate to say that "The nature of a claim, in Trump's mind, vindicates or discredits the source." That is how a poll was "respected" one day and "failing and dishonest" the next purely based on its results - the claim vindicates or discredits the source. It's exactly backwards which is why it's so hard for ordinary people, I reckon, to get to grips with the way Trump thinks.

Let's take the opposite case - Trump being given a criticism about someone who is on his "winner list." How does he react? Right now a story that's developing is Bill O'Reilly asked Trump whether he was concerned/critical about the fact that Trump was praised by Putin, a man who has journalists and political opponents murdered. And Trump replied "We've got a lot of killers too." This is actually the second time Trump has made this claim. People are outraged because Trump made a baseless claim that the USA kills journalists.

But interpreting Trump's words as factual claims is simply missing the point.

The right way is:

1) You made a criticism of someone who has praised Trump.

2) Beep boop, Trump's psyche interprets this as an attempt to inflict ego injury.

3) Trump's mouth leaps to his psyche's defense with a blurted, usually incoherent attempt to minimize, dismiss or delegitimize the criticism.

It's like people don't get the idea that showing Trump a photo, a representation of the real world, will do nothing. Because his statements aren't really claims about an external, real and objective world around us. They're more like value-creating statements that impose on reality a super-reality in which he is continually vindicated.

People have noticed that Trump lacks shame. He lies shamelessly, he insults shamelessly, he is shameless in never admitting error, he doubles down. I mean: It would have been the easiest thing in the world, in the inauguration crowd nonsense, to have Sean Spicer come out on Day 2 and say "Yes Obama got a larger crowd because his inauguration was a historic event, and in any case DC is a heavily Democratic city where half the population is Black and naturally wanted to cheer on the first Black President, but Trump's supporters are certainly excited for his Presidency and now the President is focused on his mission of making America great again, etc."

All this would have been so easy. But instead the President sends out his Press Sec to tell a shameless bold face lie that the media almost has no choice but to turn into the day's leading story, to ruinous effects.

It's because even in situations where it would be easy to make a bad situation go away by losing a small amount of face, his psyche will not allow him.

His ghostwriters have turned this into a macho businessman personality where his philosophy is "Never show weakness to the dogs of war" or some bullshit - but the reality is that his uncontrollable horror of losing face is because of deep personal insecurities.

We can tell this is objectively the case because his behavior is compulsive and reckless. It's not geared to advancing his own interests. It's self destructive. Always remember Trump is not some genius like, for instance, Dilbert Man makes him out to be.

Consider Trump's lies. All politicians lie. But most politicians don't tell lies that they will obviously be caught on in 15 minutes, like Trump's lie about receiving a letter from the NFL. Trump tells these lies because he can't help himself. Most politicians lie needfully - that is, they lie when the Truth threatens to bring about embarrassment or accountability. Trump lies compulsively because even the mildest "reality checks" are for him ego-shattering events.

I want to point out that I, nor anyone reading this comment, is qualified to actually diagnose Trump with anything. Diagnosis has to happen in a therapeutic environment with the participation of the patient.You can't diagnose someone with a mental illness via TV.But what you can do is spot a consistent pattern of behaviors.

We already see states and leaders formulating their actions in light of modeling Trump's behavioral patterns. For example Theresa May's visit was a big cuddlefest, not because May actually likes Trump, but because the apolitical apparatus of the British state behind May has made the calculation that deliberate flattery of USA's leader is now a necessity in US-UK relations and may position UK advantageously vs the other European states.

This is disgusting and concerning. And this extends beyond our allies, obviously. Other state actors, like our adversaries Russia and China, are also surely operating with a consciousness of the President's mental weakness and the idea that Trump's psyche is a mechanism or opportunity to "short circuit" the American state acting in its own actual national interest.

Bottom line, this is dangerous for our country and if I may say so, SAD.

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