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Biden has a huge margin of victory.As of the average polling in the states that have lasted several months so far, there are only 20 Trump Ironbound states left: Montana (3), Idaho (4), Wyoming (4), Utah (6), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (4), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Indiana (11), South Carolina (9), West Virginia (3), Louisiana ( (8), Missouri (10), Arkansas (6), Tennessee (11), Mississippi (6), Kentucky (8), Alabama (9), and Alaska (3). That's a total of 125 electoral votes.That number is a far cry from 270. Sure, maybe Georgia (16), Florida (29), Texas (38), and Ohio (18) have a chance of a thrilling Republican hold or take in the end, but those four states only total 101, and that's still not enough to add up.And I think: Trump can't keep all four states, he must lose at least one state; moreover, the all-out canvassing in these four states means that all other states have almost given up. And Trump's team's financial and energy resources don't prevail.So there's no need for a generalized narrative; Biden personally or the Democrats don't have a huge scandal before the vote, and the current voting preferences in the states won't suddenly and dramatically fall in Trump's favor.A few minor rhetorical errors by Biden will basically not change the voting picture.Of course, I don't think that news stories about a senior Republican official jumping on the bandwagon again, or members of the military not supporting Trump, or the recent release of a journalist's new book, "Outrage" - that kind of pre-election noise would drastically change the judgment of the electorate, but by the same token: Biden saying the wrong thing again, or Democrats supporting black lives, or a large number of whites voting for Trump - is more pure speculation.The number of voters is a huge and impossible to accurately estimate base, and you can't extrapolate the likely support of states (note: states, not the country in general, because the vote count is state by state, not the whole country) based on a new book by one or two journalists, a few celebrity statements, and dozens of high-ranking officials jumping against, including the intentions of thousands of soldiers. You can only make comprehensive predictions based on polling data that is more authoritative from one stage to the next. What worthwhile conclusions can be drawn by not looking at the polls at all, but only by personal gut feelings (red necks will vote for Trump)? Biden continues to lead states greater than or equal to 5% polling, and it's now safe to say that Trump is completely out of luck.There are also the televised debates, which will have an almost negligible effect on the vote. Don't expect Trump to swoop in with three last-minute debates and pull in a large number of electoral votes. The voting landscape this year is already very clear.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't fail to use your brain to simply compare Hillary's example from four years ago. Times have changed, Biden is not Hillary, and Trump has gone from a vegetarian to a dynastic president. Times and circumstances have changed.Hillary's campaign slogans of "respect" and "self-actualization" were somewhat unrealistic platforms launched in a time of relative peace, because she is a female political elite, only in their own best field to do the full story. And her former Secretary of State's official status and the reopening of the emailgate investigation had a detrimental effect on her, resulting in her inability to take any Republican ironclad states except Democratic ironclad states, and being narrowly overtaken by Trump's crazy pull in the last minute in several swing states. Team Hillary's self-confidence that she was a sure thing was also a major factor in her defeat. Hillary lost Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, leading to a full house. This is a small probability event, and it doesn't happen often. This year, it's only possible that Trump will lose Texas or Florida.According to the percentage of voters who won Trump's popular vote but lost the electoral vote for Hillary in 2016: 3 million to 120 million, a ratio of 2.5%. That is the latest margin of error for the overall polls, which is no larger than that. Biden's overall poll approval rating is now 6.9% higher than Trump's, so isn't that a big difference?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- looked up the latest polling data for each state recorded on the Real Clear Oplitics website.Wisconsin: Biden +6Kentucky: Trump +20South Carolina: Trump +6Minnesota: Biden +16Maine: Biden +9Florida: wide disparity in numbers across polls now, highest Biden +3, lowest Trump +4North Carolina: highest Biden +2, lowest Trump +1Virginia: Biden +14Arizona: big gap between different polls, highest Biden +6, lowest Trump +1New Hampshire: Biden +3.Oregon: Biden +12Michigan: Biden +8Pennsylvania: Biden +4Oklahoma: Trump +25.Ohio: Biden +4Missouri: Trump +8New Jersey: Biden +17Texas: Trump +2New Mexico: Biden +15Georgia: Trump +2Massachusetts: Biden +38Louisiana: Trump +16.California: Biden +29Utah: Trump +18Montana: Trump +7Yi Ah Wah: TieVermont: Biden +24The latest polling data for each state is updated daily based on information on the website.A total of 20+ states are covered here, not all. But essentially all of the battleground states with contested data are available. According to this data, the states where Trump received electoral votes are, at most, 23: Montana (3), Wyoming (3), Idaho (4), Utah (6), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (5), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Texas (38), Missouri (10), Indiana (11), Iowa (6). Kentucky (8), West Virginia (5), Arkansas (6), Louisiana (8), Tennessee (11), Mississippi (6), Alabama (9), Georgia (16), South Carolina (9), and Alaska (3). Total electoral votes 186.Haha, only 186 votes. It's not even close to 270 votes, and with essentially no third-party runoffs this session, this situation is enough to make Trump sit on his hands.As you can see based on the above polling data: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida are all Biden's. (and the less conspicuous reality that Arizona is starting to turn blue)Only Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri count for Trump for now.The one that's really up in the air: North Carolina. But with 15 votes in North Carolina, it's uncertain whether Biden is desperately needed or not. Florida and Ohio are in their pockets, North Carolina doesn't matter!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I advocate taking things as they come. The general election is a contest of the number of votes received by each state, and the election itself, which can only be influenced indirectly but not manipulated directly by the media, the financial giants on Wall Street, and the financial owners behind the military-industrial complex.Therefore, the U.S. democracy of "direct voting and indirect statistics" is not a "fake democracy" at all, but a real democracy. However, it is precisely this "real over-populist democracy" that objectively allows extremists like Trump to come to power and run the country's administration, while the two powers in the separation of powers - the Congress and the Supreme Court - are not subject to direct manipulation. -There is nothing you can do about it. There is no way to impose a strong check, only to speak for a part of the population.So the problem is that democracy has become an obstacle to historical progress at a time of historical emergency. Democracy is not a sham, and democracy itself is not a bad system.This leads to another question: if you look at the phenomena of American society, especially its problems and contradictions, you will not be able to draw any valuable conclusions from your own nationalistic point of view, but at best you will be writing for the sake of writing, deliberately attracting praise, and expressing your own sense of existence.A narrow "class-only analysis" is also harmful. At first glance, the weapon of class analysis seems to be a tried and true one, but in fact it is a kind of mechanical materialism that cuts off in-depth analysis and consideration of "contingencies, exceptions and cases" right from the start. --The Republican Party represents military industry, while the Democrat Party represents finance; then finance capital benefits too much and squeezes the interests of military industry capital, so military industry capital wants to introduce a Trump to restrain the Democrat Party. It's far-fetched on international relations, okay?Analyze complex social problems and don't try to hardwire them with simple mathematical formulas! And don't write with a "show my superiority" mentality! In fact, the many capitalist tycoons in the United States have no influence on who the current President is or who will be elected. At best they will use their larger size to try to influence that candidate, but not sway.I don't understand how the BLM affair will reduce Biden's vote. Can it be reduced enough to swallow up all the public opinion that Biden once led?Biden was always against the smash and burn, okay? Can Trump smear all those smash and burn incidents out of thin air because the Democrats took advantage of the situation to stir it up? Has any mainstream media outlet given him a platform to produce evidence? Wouldn't his tweets alone still only strengthen that irony of his? The problem is that his iron plate has been greatly diminished by the epidemic and the economic crisis! A total of just 100+ poor irons, but also have the nerve to scream every day. Biden's discs are 200+ in hand, okay?Only if the BLM-induced smash-and-grab objectively expands out of control, resulting in a certain number of white civilian deaths, can the entire election be turned around.BLM incident, Trump better fend for himself, and expect the incumbent Democrats, especially from the non-incumbent Biden, to subtract points?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And someone else said: because Hillary ended up losing the election in 2016, the polls that year It's all bogus; hence this year's polls are bogus. --what a mouthful! Hillary's state-by-state pre-election polls, with only Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan showing a slight lead over Trump (around 3 percentage points), ended up actually being outpolled by Trump by a point or two. Michigan was only 0.3% short, a very small margin. The total electoral votes for these three states is 46, which is 92 once in and out.Specifically Hillary is losing in these three states that she thought she was sure of winning all three.Of course Hillary herself can not say how much she lost, her own blue state territory has three last narrowly turned red, rather than lose in a state one in one out (2000 Gore lost George W. Bush that is called a heartbreaking, lost a Florida, and then lost just over 500 popular votes! , Hillary should examine herself for being overly conservative. Because her pre-election advantage over Trump was a slight and steady lead to stay ahead, not ever behind; but the lead wasn't big enough so the theoretical multi-point misses caught up with her. She only turned blue one red state over Nevada, not enough of a basic advantage.Biden is not Hillary, and history will not simply repeat itself, or else would it not be fatalistic and idealistic?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hillary is a former Secretary of State with malfeasance errors; Biden is not.Hillary's running mate was near a setup, and clearly not as competent as Biden's partner, Harris.The environment in which Hillary ran didn't encounter a global epidemic and was largely a peaceful one.Trump went from being a vegetarian to a president on duty, and his governing blunders were real and greatly magnified.These four factors have contributed to the fact that this year's election is not directly comparable to that of four years ago. The sudden epidemic and the ensuing economic crisis have made Biden's base significantly higher than Hillary's right off the bat. In that case, even if Biden's personal ability is not a chunk above Hillary's, it's enough to steadily keep the advantage to the end.Looking at the historical data (2016 Hillary/Trump, 2012 Obama/Romney, 2008 Obama/McCain), these three Rust Belt states should be Democratic vote banks, unfortunately, Hillary lost them all unfortunately, but Obama took them all by clear margins: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Therefore, Biden will try to keep all three states. The latest polls currently show that Pennsylvania has the smallest relative advantage for Biden, and given that Pennsylvania is Biden's birthplace, it's strategically impossible to lose.Nevada is the only state in the West that Hillary has taken by surprise, while Obama has taken it twice in solid fashion. So Nevada must now also be Biden's iron vote bank. The good numbers are good.Georgia is a red state that the Democrats can't crack, and Obama has failed twice, so the state can be strategically abandoned.Ohio is equally delicate: Hillary failed, Obama narrowly won twice. This time it's up to Biden. The state's poll numbers lead by a margin close to that of Pennsylvania.Iowa (Iowa) has regressed: it was once Obama's two-term iron vote bank, Hillary dropped it, and now Biden is still polling below Trump. I'm afraid I'm not sure I can take this state, although it's contested and strategically drawn into a red state.Florida and North Carolina: completely unpredictable final results. Relatively speaking, Florida is a little bit more Democratic, with Obama winning twice (+0.9% and +2.8%) and Hillary losing at the last minute (-1.2%). North Carolina is even closer than Florida, almost exactly half and half, and it looks like the winner won't be known until after the vote is checked.Arizona is the only traditionally red state where Hillary and Obama all lost, and where Biden is now far ahead in the polls. Only Arizona flipping blue was done by Biden alone.In fact, when I compared the polling data, it was only for states where Biden was leading by no less than 5% that I was careful to judge that the state's electoral votes went to the Democrats; and states where Trump was leading by no less than 1% were tentatively classified as Trump red state vote banks first. That's enough double marking to make me struggle inside myself, too.With that in mind, I don't expect Texas to go blue (if such a world event happens, I'll open the champagne to celebrate! Texas flipped blue, meaning the ousted Trump must be abandoned by the Republican collective! Take the hand of the Republican establishment and the Democrats behind it to give a helping hand and completely join forces to annihilate the Trump family, that's the perfect outcome); you can also give up Iowa and Georgia; for North Carolina, gamble with your eyes closed and shoot each other in the penalty box, plan in the man and accomplish in the day; but Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, take it all!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A lot of people, on whether a Biden presidency 'can do the job'. ", showing an astonishing amount of distrust. It must be said, of course, that there is no precedent for a 79-year-old president in the two-hundred-year history of the United States (the highest records are Trump, 71, Reagan, 70, and William Henry Harrison, 68, respectively, with the result that the elder Harrison set a record by taking office on March 4 and dying of illness on April 4, which is equivalent to being a president who has been in a hospital bed for two months). What dying president in American history would a politician of such advanced age resemble?However, apart from the question of whether Biden can complete his four-year term in good health, I think Biden is a living fossil from the classical era, and he is the best reconciliation agent for the United States in crisis. As long as he can do the three tasks of "security", "unity", and "survival" on American soil, Biden is excellent. In terms of foreign expansion, all Biden can do is "repair the cracks" only.Perhaps only eight years is enough time to see what Biden can do. But his physical age just doesn't allow for two terms in a row.But Biden's 36 years as a federal senator, his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and his eight years as vice president in an active Obama administration make me think this is an old man who's always waiting for a chance to flex his political muscles. It can't simply be underestimated.Criticizing Trump while dragging Biden down to criticize him is too thoughtless.In the same way, the idea that Trump is "more eloquent" than Biden, and that Trump will win a televised debate between the two, is absurd. Is there no one to moderate a televised debate? No audience there? It's the two old men, Trump and Biden, who are better at swearing than each other?Don't look at Trump's arrogant mouth in the face of his fans, even God dare to accuse mockery; in a neutral debate in full view of the public, his self-speaking demagoguery, but will expose his own shortcomings. Biden doesn't need to refute him to death on the spot; it's enough to clearly express what he intends to do and what he intends to stop. Trump's monologue would only be self-defeating.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So the question, quite naturally, is framed by the question for " From the fact that Trump is close to certain defeat in the current public opinion of the United States, he has shifted to the reasoning of what kind of accurate and impartial perspective should we, as uninterested bystanders, view this objective fact.In my opinion, historical facts are objective and not subjective; however, the interpretation of historical facts is subjective. How to make the "tone" become highly close to the facts to restore and move towards objectivity? This is something that every rational person must seriously consider. Pragmatism and materialism, these two weapons must not be lost.Trumpism must be analyzed and studied, and the necessary logical reasoning is fine; but one cannot get into the mire of subjective idealism and not get out of it. The current democratic electoral system in the United States gives people like him the opportunity to exploit the loopholes, but it also provides a demon mirror to identify the reactionary nature of such people. In today's American society, public opinion is extremely divided due to various contradictions, and public opinion cannot be as highly unified as it seems in some countries, but there are always different voices at the same time. But this is not simply a bad thing, it's just that we can't simply assume that the loudest noise in the crowd means majority public opinion!Of course, I still want to emphasize one sentence: if we want to pay attention to the problems and phenomena in American politics, if we want to get some valuable conclusions from it, the observation perspective can only be "first stand in the American political system of the current economic situation and cultural conflicts, and then further stand in the whole human constitutional system of the height of civilization". There is no other suitable perspective.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ in conjunction with the latest Real Clear Politics presentation. State by state polling data, in my opinion: Biden's position is now essentially a "win-win" situation, i.e., he has already pocketed the minimum 270 electoral votes needed to win. This is based on the source: the inclusion of no less than 5% of each state's combined polling data in the "iron vote bank". If Biden leads Trump by no less than 5% in a state that has been polling for months, that state is Biden's vote bank as of today. The opposite is also true.The first possibility: a close victory. By this standard, a full 270 votes would be sufficient. Therefore, Biden only needs to make sure Wisconsin (Biden +6.4) and Michigan (Biden +6.1) get there, and the rest of the battleground states can be completely ignored. The rest of the battleground states can be ignored entirely. Hawaii, District of Columbia, Nebraska 1 vote]Second possibility: a solid win. Take Pennsylvania (Biden +3.9) based on the first.Third possibility: a complete win. Build on the second by taking all three states that are currently polling with a slight lead: Florida (Biden +1.6), Ohio (Biden +2.4), and North Carolina (Biden +0.6).The fourth possibility: a big win. On top of the third, take three red states that are currently polling only rarely behind Trump: Georgia (Trump +1), Iowa (Trump +1.4), Texas (Trump +2.3).----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hillary's defeat had three states that were polling ahead pre-election and behind post-election: wisconsin (Hillary +5 at the same time), Michigan (Hillary +4.3 at the same time), and Pennsylvania (Hillary +1.8 at the same time). Biden's lead in all three states is currently higher than Hillary's in the same time period. It's just that Pennsylvania Biden's lead numbers aren't high enough. So Wisconsin and Michigan are going to keep it, and Pennsylvania is still going to fight.But the one thing that Hillary didn't do was done by Biden: Arizona completely flipped blue, and that out and out put Biden and Trump up by 22 votes! Meanwhile, the three states of North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio have also gone from being no sure thing at all four years ago to being very much more than half a chance of taking them.So it looks like Biden's pick was quite a bit ahead of Hillary in several battlegrounds over the same period.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll say one detail about Biden Sr. that many have missed: his untimely death of his eldest son, Beau , who had signed up for the Iraq war in 2003. Supposedly a journalist with the army, but wore a uniform after all. The son of a high-ranking military officer, he was born and died as usual. There is a photo of Biden gazing at his son before he left to prove it. He was the kind of leader that the American people needed, and his personal integrity was one of the few things that could be found in American society. "I will protect America" - that won't be his empty words.That's why I want so much for old Biden to fulfill his lifelong dream. This dream is not rooted in a selfish desire for power, but in a sense of service to the American people embedded in his bones. That is a spirit that we, as foreigners, need to learn from.Reposting an article.With 40 days to go before the Nov. 3 U.S. election, the race between the two presidential candidates, Trump and Biden, is heating up. Life is deteriorating. Biden, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of Trump and knows all too well what the U.S. economy really needs.Here is the full text of the column.Why should you support the Democratic candidate, Biden, in the U.S. elections to be held in November? Commentators have given many reasons for this problem. However, they rarely analyse the impact of the different results of the election in economic terms. When discussing the topic of elections, few economists talk about the impact of the election results on the well-being of the population. Why should we care about the economy, because the economy is not just about "money", a good economic foundation is also an important arena for people to pursue personal development, fulfillment and satisfaction.The reason why we should support Biden for economic reasons starts with the reason why we should oppose Trump for economic reasons. Let's start with Trump's corporate tax cut plan, a labor-intensive plan that didn't boost investment or drive growth as he originally boasted, and the result of such a big effort was that the deficit ballooned in his first three years in office.In the face of fiscal profligacy, Trump took no notice, an approach that set an extremely poor example for future U.S. administrations. Of course, it's inevitable that the deficit will increase again in the near future because of the need to deal with the new crown epidemic, and given the unique circumstances at hand, there are many benefits to be gained from expanding fiscal spending. Trump's threats against American businesses at every turn also add new variables to the investment and trade outlook. He is doing exactly what Mussolini's syndicalist approach did: the government is playing business like a puppet. At a time when businesses need entrepreneurship and innovation the most, economic policy is holding them back.In addition, Trump has wrongly targeted the harmless trade deficit, and his attempts to cut the U.S. trade deficit have not only led to a significant shrinkage in global trade, but also weakened the efficiency of resource allocation, both domestically and internationally.His populist rhetoric has not brought higher incomes to low-income groups or disadvantaged people who suffer from discrimination, but rather has wiped out justice and fairness in the economy. The prevalence of low pay rates among the underclass is shockingly low, and the quality of life that can be afforded at this wage level is shockingly low. For all of this, Trump is indifferent. Not only that, but he's also sitting on his hands when it comes to eliminating race, gender, and social discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Trump's inaction has been matched by inaction: he has weakened the Affordable Care Act, which was passed while Obama was in office and has hit low-income people hard.Trump insists that climate change is a hoax, an attitude that puts the world economy and even the future of humanity in even more danger. He pointed out that the severe mountain fires in the western United States are the result of ineffective "forest management". The bravery and sacrifice of the men on the front lines were also ignored by him. He does not understand, also does not care about the heroism of the public burst of boundless creativity, do not understand that only the people dare to dedicate and pioneering, it is possible to achieve economic success in the United States.His vilification of the FBI and the CDC has shaken the very foundations of the American superstructure. His unprovoked trade barriers have directly triggered trade wars and pushed former allies against each other. He has made no secret of his admiration for dictators and centralized rulers, aiding them in the establishment of 21st century fascist regimes. His habit of lying his way to the presidency has eroded public confidence in government.The list of Trump's misdeeds is endless. The most egregious is his attempt to abolish the "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" program. In his mind, those who entered the country illegally as children, but were raised and educated in the United States, should all be deported. His tactic of spreading fear among the population is equally disgraceful, as fear of reprisal and arrest has created a climate of fear and suspicion among childhood arrivals.Today, many voters are supporting Biden for precisely these and other reasons. Trump is like a roadblock on the road to restoring economic prosperity and restoring social justice and harmony to the United States. However, whether these reasons alone can defeat Trump, the answer is not yet certain. What many American citizens fear most is a government that focuses on serving only certain interest groups and is unconcerned about core matters such as economic growth and job satisfaction.In addition to supporting Biden because Trump is not doing a good job, Biden's own strengths cannot be ignored.First, Biden is well aware of the huge wage gap between ultra-low- and middle-income earners in American society, a fact that remains unchanged even if single mothers receive government funding. Growing up in a steel mill in Pennsylvania, Biden could not turn a blind eye to the plight of low-income workers. Therefore, if elected, Biden should push for legislation that would increase subsidies for low-income people.Second, Biden is just as concerned about the serious threat that climate change poses to human life. There are countless problems associated with climate change, such as the burning of fossil fuels leading to increased carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures. Government intervention and international cooperation, such as the Paris Climate Agreement signed by many countries around the world in 2015, will be necessary to address these issues. Yet during the Trump administration, the United States has unilaterally withdrawn from the agreement. If Biden is elected, he will leave no stone unturned to continue to push for a solution to climate change and play a stalwart role in it.Finally, since the early 1970s, the U.S. economy has effectively stagnated, leaving aside the "information revolution" of about a decade. The prolonged economic downturn has led to growing dissatisfaction among the working class about their place in the payroll distribution. It was this sentiment that laid the groundwork for Trump's victory in the election in the first place. Unlike Trump, there is no doubt that Biden is eager to restore the American economy to its former glory.In summary, voting for Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, and for Harris, the vice presidential candidate, is of extraordinary significance. Because of Trump, the U.S. economy is falling all over the place, and Biden is using his life's experience to tell the world that he cares about the people can not live a rich life, also care about the people can not realize the dream in their hearts.The article provides a detailed analysis of the substance of Trump's economic policies over the past three years from a professional perspective. Those who closed their eyes and thought "Trump can restore the economy" can rest.According to my interpretation, Biden's ideas to solve the employment problem and when Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" has an important similarity: cash for work. To create jobs for workers, to provide them with the "dignity of personal worth" again, rather than simply unemployment benefits.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I did some historical research on the Supreme Court, and the gist of it is this: from 1869 to the present, the default number of Supreme Court justices is 9, with 4 conservative justices and 4 liberal justices, and the Chief Justice has swung left and right depending on the situation.Only in history did Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 attempt to expand the number of Supreme Court justices, but without success.The conclusion is that when the Democrats have both the presidency and a majority in both houses, the Supreme Court will be the last piece of ground for the Republican Party, or conservatives today.Today this conservative justice, who appears to be a Trump appointee, will never have the opportunity to bend to Trump's personal will but will have to face President Biden as long as Trump is not re-elected to the presidency. So what is there to worry about? Trump can't be president, it's all talk.It turns out that there are many more ways for a sitting president to constrain the Supreme Court than the Supreme Court can effectively constrain a sitting president; for example, what trouble has Trump created by having four liberal justices plus a chief justice who can theoretically turn left these past three years or so in various perverse ways?It is the presidency that is the most critical position in the separation of powers. It's just better not to have a president in hand, but the majority of the Senate and House of Representatives fell into the hands of the opposition party, only this kind of situation will be more difficult to be president.As long as Biden becomes president, there will be a situation where the majority in both houses are Democrats, and Biden, the future president, will only be more comfortable and more nourishing than Trump.Don't expand the Supreme Court until the time is right to do so. In my opinion, the stalling tactic works best. People live and die, and that's the final destiny of justices who serve their entire lives.Go all out to win the presidential election and don't be distracted by factors other than the general election. What has changed in the latest polls so far is that the Biden advantage has increased slightly in Ohio, but shrunk in Arizona; and the Trump lead in Texas has increased in percentage.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the current state-by-state polls from different organizations, Biden has 221 votes in the bag. Three other states are polling steady and consistently ahead: Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (20), and Ohio (18). These three states currently look more likely to take it.Michigan (16), on the other hand, and Arizona (11) have individual polls where Trump has a slight lead and the rest of the polls where Biden is leading, indicating instability.Florida (29) is extremely close, with both having modest leads.In summary: Of the six states WI, MI, PA, AZ, OH, FL, Biden is going to take at least three of them.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Was Biden in a hurry at the debate? Not a bit of it. It's always the clownish Trump who jumps up and down in a hurry. This man is the real enemy of human civilization. He is completely devoid of the minimum conscience and boundaries of a human being. I'm sure such debates won't add 10% of swing voters to Trump: what's the point of electing a sitting president who doesn't actively talk about his own policy agenda on stage and spends most of his energy disrupting and blocking opposition candidates' statements? What can he do for us?I think the voters who are still on the fence are seeing clearly: who looks more like a man who wants to be president for America, and who is there to waffle. Trump messing around to interfere with Biden's results, leaving himself with insufficient time and energy to speak out about his future policy agenda, is a sign of a trapped and dying beast. Trump will only take the initiative to express certain messages when he has absolute control of the conversation.Biden has interrupted Trump at times, but only briefly (to deny the gratuitous insult to his youngest son); Trump doesn't interrupt, he deliberately tries to make a strong statement to deflect the rhythm, which is why Wallace didn't stop Biden once, but stopped Trump several times and rarely reminded Trump, "You're not debating me. Wallace himself is one of the American people's best observers of the statesmanship of the two men. Trump is a rabid dog!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From the start of the campaign, the candidates of each of the two parties, each in their own "turf", facing offstage mainly "their own fans", respectively, to start the "air war" mode, until the final verbal duel- -Debate, where you can see a little bit of every politician (note: I use the neutral word "politician" here, rather than the obviously positive "politician" or its opposite) How a "politician" ("politician") reveals his hidden true intentions and character to the public and the media.The "air war" is obviously much safer, because you don't have to face questions and boos, you don't hear on-the-spot retorts and expositions of lies, and you can say "I'm so, so, so perfect and he's so, so bad" all you want.But not debate. Debate is full of facts and logical support, and self-talk, especially nonsense, is not for public display. Simply put: "Speech" allows a certain degree of sensationalism and self-aggrandizement, while "debate" is about presenting one's arguments to others, and requires more fact-based logic. However, Trump completely followed the bullying rhetoric and jerk logic he used as the "current president" based on his sense of superiority.Trump's performance falls into five categories.First, continue to fabricate lies to boast of achievements that do not exist, especially the superlative that "two million could have died but only 200,000 died under his leadership".Second, exaggerating or fishing for negative data to attack his opponents. This time, the "corruption figures" against Biden's youngest son reached the point where they were just made up. It was all because the attacker was in an overly eager mood at the time and came up with a huge figure on the spur of the moment.Third, he stole the talking points from the other side to prevent them from speaking properly and forced them into the orbit of his own words. He's trying to engage in brainwashing, and he thinks the stage is full of his redneck followers. Language imperialism + thinking imperialism.Four, labeling and clubbing whatever political terms sound bluffing: socialism, communism, totalitarianism.Five, every time you talk about the problems of your own administration, you invariably blame external factors, such as the absurd cause-and-effect reasoning that "200,000 people died because China was the first to get the virus, so the United States was affected". This kind of logical intelligence is typical of the thinking of a poor second grade middle school student.The nonsense about other countries (China, Russia, India) withholding death data (and the US doesn't), looks like no one in the US is going to refute that head on? Including Biden, who also dodged the question? The fact is simple: you can't make a unilateral assumption of guilt by suspecting another country of withholding data, you have to take into account the relationship between that country and the World Health Organization! As long as one is registered with the World Health Organization for a long time and hopes that the organization will benefit one's country in public health events, there is no incentive to conceal (and possibly exaggerate) the number of deaths in one's own country!Thus, the number of deaths in a country would have been reported to the World Health Organization at the same time! Any country that tries to hide the death toll from its own people must also hide it from the World Health Organization and swallow all the bitter fruit of "the epidemic is a catastrophe, but I have to swallow it by the skin of my teeth and it is hard to get solidarity from international organizations". Which country would be willing to do such a "selfish but selfish" act in today's globalized environment?Now Trump can make himself invincible forever: he's not responsible for how many people die in the U.S. because he can inform every country on the planet about the World Health OrganizationI believe that there are only two normal outcomes for a politician who can take the logic of lies and muckraking to this level: first, he automatically loses the right to be elected as a normal person in a democratic system. Secondly, he is guilty of "public opinion agitation" against his country and the world, and should be deprived of his right to freedom of life, and even his right to life, in accordance with the procedure established by law.Would it not be a betrayal of the United States Constitution for a constitutionally empowered President to repeatedly tell lies, spread fear and incite hatred in the United States? Is it the rape of American public opinion? Should he be prosecuted for "treason"? (Harris's definition of Trump seems to be accurate today: he is a "criminal".)That such a man should be given the right to vote is in itself a disgrace to American democracy and constitutional government.Trump is not a man! He's not alone in his crime! He is backed by a vast, unseen social soil that extends beyond the borders of the United States, beyond the American electorate. It is the disease of humanity, the disease of social values. The source of the sickness is extreme selfishness.The ravages of fascism throughout history have inflicted unhealable wounds on human civilization. Now, this twenty-first century fascism is back in the dregs; yes, it may seem like an isolated, private case, but its influence is far greater than a virus of nature! As a member of the human race, shouldn't we be reflective? Is everyone unintentionally and objectively contributing to the problem? Do we still want our civility?Trump is guilty, and all the crowds that advocate on Trump's behalf are collectively to blame. The idea of condoning sin is itself criminal.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Biden has flaws and limitations, both stemming from his personal character and from the Democrats' of the camp. For example, he also simply used "Trump is a pro-Russian pawn" as the wrong target to bash Trump. This is a classic case of barking up the wrong tree, a logic that puts partisanship over factual determination. In fact, the Trump administration does not have a pro-Russian motive, but rather Trump has a personal "secret envy of Russian dictatorial leader Vladimir Putin's personal authority, which he does not have yet". The only reasonable reason to use "Trump envies Putin" as an example to hit Trump is that Trump puts the national interest below his personal desire for power; not the pan-Cold War narrative logic of "this proves that the Trump administration is close to our traditional enemies of the United States". -- i.e., this example is a matter of Trump's personal virtue, not a mistake in his administration's foreign policy.I hope the Bidenites will proceed cautiously, not forgetting to self-reflect and pursue their own hardness while striking iron on the way to opposing Trumpism. In the same vein: everyone who criticizes Trump should think first: has their position ever sat crooked? Have you ever been paranoid? Have you ever been irresponsible?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think the most profound theoretical attack on Trumpism, so far, comes from Barack Obama's speech at the Philadelphia Museum of the Revolution. Of course, there is no absolute proportionality between this and Obama's personal virtue, but rather the "absolute truth" came from him; others, whose personal virtue is probably higher than his, have no idea that the danger of Trumpism has reached this level: a level that transcends the national interests of the United States and the specific interests of the American people. The height of "anti-modern human constitutionalism and democracy".The speeches of Biden, Clinton, Michelle, Pelosi, Hillary, Harris, are either impassioned, or eloquent, or concise, but in the final analysis, the criticism of Trump is still limited to the level of emotional perception (Michelle), the level of U.S. partisan competition, the level of U.S. national interest, and even the level of personal feelings of competitors (Hillary's "that's how I lost"). ("The"). [Relatively speaking, Biden, Michelle, and Harris all mentioned to varying degrees in their speeches a concern for the American people, a call to arms for the American people, so the realm is a bit higher. There is no sin in being patriotic, but patriotism is not simply loving the government; one must first love the people of the country to be truly patriotic].Only Obama's words transcend American nationalism and nationalism and rise to the level of "the political cornerstone of human civilization - the democratic constitutional system". Whether or not Obama has perfectly lived up to the principles he said in his political life, at least his words have set a benchmark for how we should understand democratic constitutionalism.And for those foreigners who see a Trump destroying American democracy and immediately cry "thus proving that this American democracy itself is fake", I can only say: you are nothing but the opportunists Liu Shaoqi criticized a long time ago: when you pour out the bath water, you throw out the baby too!The "leftist infantile disease" has to be cured. Similarly, "entertaining serious political topics" is also a disease. The danger of anti-Japanese mythical dramas is that we have a "gloating" mass soil.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think I'm a gloating person. But Trump, the political junkie, was also attacked by a natural virus on the eve of his all-out effort to grasp the political straw that is the President, is this God's will?I pray that after a long treatment process, he will recover as a human being, clean up his act, reflect on himself in prison, and live the rest of his life in peace; never again as a politician scourge the American constitution, scourge the American people, and scourge the achievements of human civilization.He cannot die. At least not now. Because, not yet.I'm virile enough to see the end of this guy's natural lifespan, so I'm not in a hurry. I'm in a hurry to see the end of his political life!So that's what Surprise October is all about?The aftermath will have to be left to the virus to take control.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- According to British Prime Minister Johnson's timetable: it was March 27th that Johnson announced his own testing After testing positive, he was immediately isolated alone at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's residence, but also presided over a video conference; on 5 April, his condition suddenly changed and he was urgently checked into hospital at the Prime Minister's residence. He was then discharged and moved to a country house to recuperate, knowing that he would not return to the Prime Minister's residence to resume work until April 27. Johnson was off work for a full month.Consider that Johnson is "only" 56; Trump is 74. The probability that he will be diagnosed and "back to work" is no less than a month. In that case, he will not be able to participate in any of the offline activities prior to voting day, mainly the live debates and canvassing, and it is not good enough to have someone else (Pence) handle such activities on his behalf. Therefore, the result of the voting day, for him is almost equal to the "fate of God".Trump is currently only in quarantine at the White House. But the White House is not a hospital; if his condition develops, he must leave the White House and be taken to a hospital ward. So that's the next news point: will Trump stay in the White House or be taken to a hospital?If he's not taken to the hospital, then the condition is not serious and can heal itself. But even then, the quarantine will be long and he will have to engage in some online canvassing.It's inappropriate to say anything right now, and all depends on what happens next.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It's worth mentioning: immediately a lot of Chinese public numbers began to talk nonsense and make up all kinds of Conspiracy theories. The deterioration of public opinion is already showing its beginnings.One topic in the ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- debate was Trump's pre-presidency in 2016 and the How many taxes were paid in 2017. The question was not originally among the six topics designed for the debate, but somehow it was brought up, and it was moderator Wallace who very bluntly confronted Trump and demanded that he answer. As a result, Trump short-circuited his brain and told the truth, to the effect that: I was just a businessman at the time, businessmen, it's natural to want to make more money and pay less taxes. --But such a naked confession is tantamount to admitting without a fight that he had a motive to evade taxes. Can Trump be sure that the tax authorities will set all his taxes as "legal and reasonable tax avoidance"? What if a sum of even a few million dollars (not a lot of money for his fortune, but not a small amount for tax evasion) was found to be "illegal tax evasion"?Also what would the red necks supporting him think if they listened closely? Would anyone think that the president they're pinning their hopes on is doing one thing to his face and another to his back? How will this stupid confession not be seized upon and greatly exploited by the Democrats when they resume?------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Trump left the White House almost immediately and headed to Walter Reed Army Hospital's "The Office of the President", it's called "to remain in office" [the correct word is "to be treated"]. Of course, he walked on the helicopter. Yesterday's news also said he would be quarantined at the White House. I said: the White House is not a hospital, and if you're really sick, you have to go to a hospital. As it turns out, it moved much faster than Johnson leaving the prime minister's residence. All the signs point to the possibility of a "dramatic deterioration" in Trump's condition, and whether he can survive or not is really on the agenda now.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I don't want to watch the show and I'm not going to make up a story. My conclusion is as follows: the patient, Trump, deserves humanitarian treatment; and President Trump, once he has recovered from his treatment, or even right now, - yes, right now, - should be judged by history! He is nothing less than a sinner of America, a sinner of the American people, and a sinner of contemporary human civilization. He is a political representative of anti-democracy and anti-science. Out of a sordid motive of pursuing his own personal power, he knew the danger of the virus epidemic but failed to report it, not to mention taking positive measures to deal with it, but instead persistently used political lies to deceive and fool the people of his own country, repeatedly blamed other countries for no reason and repeatedly shirked the responsibility of his own government. This is happening in the United States of America, which has the highest economic strength, comprehensive national power and level of medical technology!That is his crime: to make a mockery of human life instead of using science as a basis. I wonder if there is a law in force in the United States on "misconduct by a public official"? Dereliction of duty, and a wanton disregard for human life! Should it be punishable by law? Should it receive the judgment of history?Do you really believe that some of the red-state voters of America who were waving their flags for him just a few days ago, really believe that such a wealthy businessman, uneducated and lacking in basic civic responsibility, can represent the U.S. government in harboring its people, that is, you? By working hard and paying your taxes, you are carving more than 200,000 symbols of the lives that have been lost into that hat called "presidential" on his head?Under his rule, there is no MAGA, only MTGA (make trumps great again).Abstain from the election! Don't waste your precious votes on a political patient who has killed and maimed so many lives that he cannot even protect himself in the end. If you can, vote for a leader who is willing to represent the American people and who has solemnly promised to keep America safe. "Security" is the only prerequisite for today's America and today's world to go forward. Without security, a rampant virus can take a worker today, kill a President tomorrow, and the day after that? Maybe it's your loved ones, your parents, your siblings, your children who will be swallowed up.When you don't know whose name to put on the ballot, let the two philosophers of democracy and science tell you the answer.As Americans face the presidential ballot, which of us does not have a ballot in our hearts? Everyone should think twice about what to put down on it and who to vote for.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'd like to give a few words of praise to Biden here. I've heard a lot of elite commentators (professors and media personalities of all sorts) on all sides of the aisle refer to Biden with either disdain or an ulterior motive of "old man sympathy". This is a major directional bias in how the general public perceives and positions Biden as a politician (i.e., a statesman, not a politician). What exactly are the criteria for the existence of a political leader? Is it possible to say: just being a busy affairs person is good enough to qualify? Or, on the other hand, is a smooth-talking and exceptionally pro-people figure like Obama excellent?"Thanks" to Trump as the "negative political instructor", I was able to use Trump as a mirror to reflect the light of his opposite, Biden. I feel like too many people are obsessing over how much Biden "does or doesn't do himself" and some are saying he's just a mascot, or even a showman. No! No! Why not? A few months ago, Biden himself gave his answer. He was once interviewed by a female reporter (not too young, not too bad), who asked what he thought of Trump's joke that you "don't look like a man" when you wear a mask all day.Biden made it very clear that the most important quality of a leader is "leadership". He did not particularly cite examples to discuss this, the reporter did not continue to ask questions. But now that I think about it, it is the sense of "leadership" that is the key to Biden's role as the leader of a major modern open democracy.In my opinion, Biden put his "leadership" principle into practice very well: he can be like Obama praised as "lion-like work for the United States", can also make jokes and faces, cycling exercise, take time to eat ice cream, always wear designer Ray-Ban sunglasses. . When he gets serious and reprimands Trump for his treatment of the middle class, there's no sign of acting at all (How can there be pleasure in saying 'you are fared'?He's trying to tell us he cares about the middle-class? Give me a break!That's a bunch of malarkey!). He loves his son with a natural "I love my son as a child" - he's not trying to be bitter, but he's not Trumpian cynical, and he's not a Pence-esque "eye-rolling vice president" either! ". Young Obama is truly fortunate to have had the good fortune of meeting such a slack-jawed elder statesman helper as Biden. Biden is an invaluable asset to American society that has been absolutely neglected for years.In my opinion, Biden's level of understanding goes beyond that of the average public servant, and he offers us a more logical way for a constitutional democracy to function - with the intellectual "leadership" of a leader, pushing his administration and its members to do their jobs. To make the most of the positive energy. There are few, if any, American politicians with his level of awareness.

Some good short stories are:1: The Shooting Match by Augustus Baldwin Longstreet2: The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Poe3: Pickman’s Model by Howard Philips LovecraftI have also herein included a short story of my own composition which I penned in the flickering yellow light of pumpkin-scented candles during a power outage amid the spectral green lightning flashes of a violent thunderstorm at midnight! I call it Coven of the ForgerIt was that time of year when leaves are dying; the branches of deciduous trees becoming starkly bare revealing long narrowing extensions of themselves which stab into the dull red sunset like varicose veins of melancholy thoughts which gnarl and twist their way through the hopeless empty appendages of disenchanted human souls. The balmy vespers of summer were yielding to the creeping autumn chill that reaches out from the Arctic like the ghoulish clawed hands of a frosty ghost from an icy haunted house at the top of the world.Doors and windows were closed tightly. Top blankets were being dragged out from musty closet stowage and placed unceremoniously at the foots of beds. Somber gray gloom brooded on the darkening horizon of shortening daylight hours, seeping into the pedestrian subconscious like swamp hags crawling closer to thumping beating hearts along the crooked edges of lengthening shadows.The slight rapping on the outer door of the reception room might have been Poe’s raven pecking. Reclined in the worn executive chair that I had picked up at a second hand store on Fourth and Main, I somehow wasn't entirely motivated to leap up and dive for the door-handle in spite of the fact that, after coughing up the security deposit and first month's rent for this new office, I desperately needed a client. The soothing rhythm of the freezing afternoon rain was lulling me to repose beside the flickering blaze crackling warmly in the small red brick fireplace, so I shouted, "Door's open! Come on in!"The squeaky knob turned. The old door creaked. Then silence."I'm in my office! Come on back!"Soft soled shoes don't make much noise and the whisper of thighs in a skirt is even less audible. A moment later her slight figure stood before me. The shaded lamp on the corner of my desk cast a subdued yellow glow on her right side. Her left was in shadow. Ruddy reflections from the fireplace danced weirdly on her shadowed side.How it could be that she wasn't drenched from the cold rain is a mystery that would be solved later. At the moment my attention was heavily occupied by her rare mien. I hadn't seen one like her since being tortured in vacation bible school at the Pentecostal Holiness church way down south in the little farm-town backwater of Chipley, Florida. She was covered from chin to wrists to ankles in a drab denim dress. Her hair must have been very long because it made a huge bundle where it was tightly bound at the back of her petite head. No doubt that luxurious auburn hair had been lengthening since birth because those zealously faithful fundamentalists in the Old South don't believe in cutting the hair of females.I had never seen such pale skin. The blood coursing through the delicate network of her circulatory system appeared hazy blue. Due to a prominent lack of mascara, her translucent eyelashes didn't seem very long, and without lipstick, her thin flat lips were something less than appealing.Barely an A-cup, the softness of her exquisite features is the only thing that prevented me misidentifying her as an adolescent boy - only feminine flesh can be that angelically gossamer. This young lady could have been a ballerina, except that the slow burn of Celtic independence emanating from her medieval aura would have obviated participation in any such regimented choreography as flitting about the stage in a tutu.At the time I didn’t know much about witches, nor had I any idea that I was about to find out more about practitioners of the ancient craft than I consider healthy for a person to know; but, it was obvious to a trained observer like myself that the purity of her clannish bloodline had been carefully preserved through selective breeding since long before Hadrian started building a wall to delineate the northern boundary of Britannia.I removed my patent leathers from my cluttered desk, sat up straight, and motioned the dainty dame to one of the two cheap metal folding chairs that temporarily served as a place for clients to sit. She seated herself without a word, placing her modestly large Faux leather tote on her lap, then turned her Prussian blue eyes on me and blinked through the clean lenses of her tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses.During a moment of uncomfortable silence, I waited for her to speak. We listened to each other breathing. I decided to break the ice."You shop at Warby Parker, I see."She stopped blinking and, in an eerily harmonic voice that hauntingly bespoke heavenly choirs, replied, "What's that?""Your eyeglasses," I returned with a gentle nod of my head, "the vintage look is sensible and economic. You're obviously a woman of discretion. I admire your unpretentious style."It may have been wishful thinking on my part, but at the sound of my masculine voice boldly speaking the word 'woman' I thought I saw a rush of warmth flush her pale cheeks in faint pink patches. She glanced bashfully aside, then back at me. The ghostly complexion had returned."Thank you, I think, but," she unfolded a small sheet of paper that had been hidden in her exquisite palm, consulted it, then, "are you Mr. Frost? Mr. Bryn Frost, the private detective?"I was so enchanted by her melodic voice that I was incapacitated for immediate reply. This served to provide me with deeper insight into her unique personality because she squirmed ever so slightly on the metal chair, blinked again and spoke more music to my ears.“I told the ladies at the front office that I was looking for Mr. Frost. They indicated that I should walk up the hill to bungalow 13. There’s nothing on the door to identify this as a business location. I don’t see a name plaque on your desk. I want to make sure I'm in the right place. Is this the office of Frost Investigative Services?”Her fairy voice was the sonic equivalent of milk and honey. The elusive hint of her Gaelic accent transported me hundreds of years back through time to a secret mystical garden of earthly delights. With a monumental effort I dragged myself from the soothing spell of her intonations thereby returning to the present moment and the subject about which she was addressing me. I cleared my throat, " Uh, yeah, well, I just signed the lease agreement day before yesterday. The lettering artist hasn't been round to paint my name on the door, yet. As for a name plaque for my desk, that’s something I’ll relegate to my secretary....that is, as soon as I hire one. I'm currently interviewing for a secretary. I thought you might have been my four O'clock."I wasn't interviewing for a secretary. I didn't have the money to afford a secretary, but I wanted things to look good to this potential client. You know what they say about first impressions.It was now my elegant visitor’s turn to seem bewildered, so I answered her question directly.“Yes, I am Bryn Frost of Frost Investigative Services. You are in the right place. Private detective Frost, the selfsame, entirely at your disposal, ma’am. How may I be of assistance to you?”She was mute for another moment or two, so I gently prompted, “You want to employ the professional skills of a private eye, but the subject of your inquiry is a delicate matter? No need to be embarrassed. I assure you my integrity and discretion are worthy of your trust. You want me to check out your new boyfriend, make sure he’s not hiding a licentious past? Or is it that you suspect your husband of being unfaithful?”I didn’t labor vainly under the plebeian misconception that my fair visitor was the type of woman to permit herself to suffer from either one of these inconveniences, but I wanted to get her started talking, help her relax and lay it on the table for me. Some think this type of provocation approach is a devious underhanded tactic. They call it reverse psychology. I myself consider this method a subtle form of mind probing, entirely ethical and worthy of the modern shamus.“Nothing so tawdry, Mr. Frost. I’m not married, nor am I vulgar enough to have a so-called boyfriend. Please forgive my lack of focus. I'm not used to being alone in a bungalow with a strange man, and I have never before consulted a private detective. I’m not entirely sure how to begin.”“Why don’t we start with your name. You know mine. How about telling me yours?”“Yes, of course, I’m Tamsyn McBane.”“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss McBane. How may I help you?”She gripped the straps of her tote and squirmed again, “I, well, the truth is, Mr. Frost, this is very difficult for me. I’ve been driven to desperate measures, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Meaning no offense, of course. I’m sure your profession has its merits and I’m sure you’re very good at what you do.”“No offense taken, Miss McBane. However, the fact that you wouldn’t be here consulting a private detective unless you thought it absolutely necessary naturally leads me to be interested in knowing how you found out about me. I won’t get my feelings hurt if you simply picked my name out of the Yellow Pages.”She smiled a little. This, I deduced, was a good sign in my favor.“No, Mr. Frost, I didn’t pick your name from a phone book. A friend of mine, a member of our cov--, uh, our social group, yes, well, she, Narcissus Ravenwing, told me about you. She knows something of my difficulty and she recommended I bring my problem to you. She had known of you through another friend, I don’t know him, who would have been wrongfully prosecuted for a crime he did not commit had it not been for your keen detective skills uncovering the truth and vindicating him. His name is Michael Hammond.”“Ah yes, I remember the case, from about two years ago. One of this town’s most prominent matrons called the police to report a break-in. Some of her jewelry had been stolen and Michael, due to a petty theft on his record from a few years prior, had come under suspicion because he was employed as a groundskeeper at the matron’s mansion which is located in the well-to-do Tiara Park neighborhood on the north side of town.”She was paying attention, I was touting my formidable investigative skills. Smoothly, I prattled on like steam rising from a boiling pot of sirloin stew.“Michael had only himself to vouch for his whereabouts at the time of the crime, yet when questioning him, I was able to ascertain that, though he had been home alone on the night in question, he had also been doing some online shopping. Upon further investigation, I discovered that he had made a couple of credit card purchases during the same time frame that the jewels were stolen. This helped get Michael off the hook.“A tip from one of my informants revealed that a ring of burglars from out of town had been working Tiara Park that week, so I immediately checked with a local car rental business where I found that a Cadillac Escalade had been rented to Newt Thompson which is an alias of Norton Thomas who has a number of first-degree larceny arrests, though none resulted in convictions.“The rented SUV containing a pearl necklace belonging to the Tiara Park matron was discovered in an alley in a seedy part of town, but the jewel thieves have yet to be apprehended. Most likely they were out of the Cadillac fencing the jewels when police swarmed around the rented automobile. From a lookout position, a fire escape or window perhaps, the culprits saw what was happening and made their escape. At any rate, yes, I was able to fully vindicate Michael Hammond of the crime.”“Which is why you came so highly recommended to me, Mr. Frost. It is my hope that you will be as successful with my dilemma as you were with Mr. Hammond’s.”“I shall do my very best for you, Miss McBane.”“Please, Mr. Frost, call me Tamsyn.”“Delighted, and you may call me Bryn.”She smiled, I beamed.“Now, Tamsyn, in order to empower me with the information I need to help you, it is of the utmost importance that you be completely honest with me in every particular. Hold nothing back. Tell me everything you know, for instance, were you about to say 'coven' a moment ago when you caught yourself and replaced that word with ‘social group’? Friends with names like Narcissus Ravenwing are often members of witch covens.”This time I knew for certain I saw her pale cheeks flush with faint pink patches for the primary reason that this time they weren’t so faint.She seemed reluctant for about twenty seconds, but then her admirable strength of character prevailed. With a deep breath which she sighed out with a relaxing of her tense dainty shoulders, Tamsyn McBane began an eerie narrative in which she stated the facts of her agony as she knew them at the time.“Yes, Bryn Frost, I am in a witch coven. I wasn’t going to tell you about that, but you caught my little slip of the tongue. Which, when I think about it, is encouraging to me because it demonstrates how alertly observant you are.”“Thank you, Tamsyn, but why weren’t you going to tell me about you being in a coven?”“I want you to take me seriously, Bryn. I didn’t want you thinking I’m some sort of flighty eccentric, because I really do need your help and I want you to do your very best for me.”“I can assure you I will. What exactly is it that you want me to do?”“I want you to find my grandfather. He’s gone missing, you see. He disappeared under very mysterious circumstances about a month ago.”“Have you reported it to the police? A month is sufficient time for someone to be officially classified as a missing person.”“Yes, I know. Of course, I went to the police, but they have very little to go on. The detective in charge of my grandfather’s case was very forthright with me. He told me that in all likelihood my grandfather would not be found….not alive, that is.”“You say your grandfather disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Describe these circumstances to me, and please do tell me everything. If you really want me to find out what has happened to your grandfather, and I believe you do, then, as I’ve already explained, it is essential that you tell me all.”Tamsyn shrugged her shoulders looser, slouching into an exasperated posture, and gazed down at the hardwood floor with a tired look in her radiant blue eyes, “There’s not much to tell, really. My grandfather is very dear to me. I’ve been looking after him for almost a decade now. I was upstate attending college when my grandmother died. At first my mother was going to come down, but she and my father have very serious career obligations. As wrapped up in their work as they are, even though they didn’t want me to put my formal education on hold, I knew it would be a big help if I came here to look after grandfather,” she shrugged her pretty shoulders again, “well, they’re so wrapped up in their careers that I knew they’d soon get over the slight disruption of my grandmother’s death and on they would go with their noble ambitions as if nothing ever happened.“My grandfather’s normal routine was to leave every morning at eight to open his curio shop downtown. Every evening, Monday through Saturday, he would be in from work for supper promptly at seven thirty. One evening exactly four weeks ago to the day, my grandfather failed to show. After an hour had passed, I naturally became worried. He’s nearly eighty years old, but his health is such that one would hardly place him a day over sixty. Still, though, someone of such advanced years, well, who knows what might happen at any moment without warning?“I called the curio shop to find out what was the cause of his unusual delay. There was no answer and apparently his cell phone had been turned off because when I dialed that number, it didn’t even ring. By now I was becoming very worried and in my growing concern, I called the home number of his assistant, Mr. Hartley, who explained that he hadn’t seen my grandfather since just before three that afternoon. It seems that grandfather had gone to meet a client at 3 o’clock about a specific curio commission. The meeting was to be held downtown at the Station House, which is a 24 hour diner on Main Street. You probably know the place.”I nodded confirmation. Tamsyn continued her story.“My grandfather eats lunch at the Station House everyday. His curio shop is two blocks from the little restaurant and he walks there and back which helps maintain his surprisingly good physical condition. I called the Station House, but the day-shift crew had already gone home, so I couldn’t talk to Milly, the waitress who, being my grandfather’s favorite, always serves him his lunch in his favorite booth. The owner of the Station House, Mrs. Sheridan, thoughtfully gave me Milly’s home phone number. When I called Milly, she said that my grandfather had not been to the Station House for lunch that day, nor had he been there for the three o’clock appointment that Mr. Hartley had spoken of.“At this point I was on the verge of panic, so I called the police. I told them everything that had happened. A patrol unit was dispatched to take my statement officially and have a look around the house, after which I was told that my grandfather’s whereabouts would be investigated. It was late the following afternoon when I finally heard from the officer who had taken my statement the night before. He said that my grandfather had not been located. Then the officer put me on the line with the chief of the Rune City police department, a Mr. Dirk Hollenbeck, you probably know him?”“Yeah, I know Chief Hollenbeck. He’s dedicated to his job, but he’s a bit of a scrooge. Doesn’t like me nosing around in official police business, yet is always happy for any leads which I can provide as a result of my nosiness.”Tamsyn nodded her agreement, “Yes, I know the type. He didn’t seem very polite on the phone, but this Chief Hollenbeck told me that he was a casual acquaintance of my grandfather’s. The Chief said he was as concerned as I. He told me he was putting his best man on the case, a Detective Coombs, but I got the feeling I was just being brushed off. Why the Chief bothered to speak to me at all, I don’t know. Here it is a month later and the police are no closer to knowing what has become of my grandfather than they were the night I reported him missing. As I said, the official in charge of the investigation, Detective Coombs, has as much as told me that I may as well give up on ever seeing my dear missing grandfather again.”Tamsyn pulled a tissue from her tote, daubed at her eyes and nose, then looked to me as if for guidance with her emotionally painful hardship. The rain outside was very icy, now. Thousands of pellets were clattering on the roof of the bungalow. I had been making notes while Tamsyn was talking. I flipped to a new page, then offered words which I hoped would be of some consolation to her, yet without intimating any false hopes about the plausible reality of her grim conundrum.“Tamsyn, I’m going to do the best I can for you. I realize you love your grandfather very much and I have some idea of how traumatic this must be for you. Detective Coombs is a conscientious professional. We can be assured he’s doing all he can. You have made a wise decision in coming to me, because the higher the number of trained investigators searching for your grandfather, the better the odds are that he will be found. I don’t want to build your hopes up too much, though.”The fair maiden cringed at this blunt statement. The awful hurt that showed on her fair features made me deeply regret my insensitivity.“As crude as it may sound, the fact is that statistically speaking when someone has been missing this long, odds are they won’t be seen or heard from again. I hate to say it, Tamsyn, but there is a possibility that your grandfather is….”I hesitated for a moment. I was only making a bad situation worse, really jamming my foot in my face - me and my big fat mouth. I gazed sympathetically at the charming damsel for a long moment during which I saw the brutal reality surge meanly through her.In merciful empathy I didn’t complete that last horrid sentence. Tamsyn was an intelligent and mature woman. She understood the hard facts, which was very helpful of her because I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with any emotional outbursts. I stood up, put another log on the fire, then returned to my desk.I took up my pen again to scrawl another note for future reference, then I spoke very gently, “Tamsyn, please tell me about your grandfather’s milieu. Tell me about his coworkers, friends, people like that Mr. Hartley you mentioned, or any family you have living with you or who live in the area. I want to know everything about your grandfather’s social circle, his daily routine, and his past. Tell me all about him, including as much about his background as you possibly can. I want to find out what has happened to your grandfather. Honestly, I really do. The more I know, the better the chances for a favorable outcome of my investigation. Now then, what is your grandfather’s name and is he your maternal or paternal grandfather?”“He is my maternal grandfather. His name is Nolan Fitzgerald. We don’t have any family here in Rune City. My parents live upstate in Portland which is where I was studying for my bachelor’s degree in anthropology. My father’s sister also lives in Portland, but as for relations on my mother’s side of the family, well, most of our kin are in Ireland with a few permanently residing in Scandinavia.“In regard to my grandfather’s social circle, I suppose I have pretty much described it to you. There’s his assistant at the curio shop, Mr. Hartley, Milly the Station House waitress, and the casual acquaintances whom my grandfather sees when dining at the eatery - Chief Hollenbeck, for example.”“What about his customers, his clientele? You say your grandfather owns and operates a curio shop? What sort of curios are we talking about?”Tamsyn tensed again for a moment, then relaxed into the disagreeable resignation that it would be better for her to tell me what she obviously didn’t relish telling me than it would for her to hold anything back.“My grandfather is Nolan Fitzgerald….the forger.”I looked up from my notepad with charged excitement emblazoning the animated features of my face, “You mean the Nolan Fitzgerald? I knew his name sounded familiar! I can’t believe this! Your maternal grandfather is the famous counterfeiter who sold an unpublished Emily Dickinson poem to a European collector for one million dollars! Then after his arrest involving another forgery it was discovered that Fitzgerald himself had actually written the poem and passed it off as an original Emily!”“Yes, Bryn, that is my grandfather.”“This is incredible! I followed his trial! It was a national sensation! His legendary exploits were headline news for four solid months!”I paused briefly, “uh, but something happened to me, a situation came up. I didn’t get to watch the jury deliver their verdict. I didn’t get to witness the sentencing. The judge banned cameras from the courtroom, but they have those sketch artists, you know. I missed the very end of your grandfather’s sensational trial.”“That was a long time ago, Bryn. My grandfather completed his prison sentence at Raiford making use of the Law Library Program while there. Upon his release he returned here to Rune City and, oddly enough, with the assistance of that very same client to whom he sold the counterfeit Emily Dickinson poem, opened the curio shop where he specializes in creating replicas of artifacts and relics from ancient civilizations.”“You mean the person your grandfather duped for a cool million actually helped Nolan Fitzgerald set up in business when he got out of prison?”“That forged poem is now worth two million dollars. The European client who was duped, as you say, by my grandfather, is actually one of his biggest fans and most prominent clients. As a matter of fact, Monsieur Favreaux was instrumental in getting my grandfather’s sentence reduced to the absolute minimum allowed by law.”“Tamsyn, I apologize for using the word ‘duped’. It was thoughtless and impolite of me. Believe me when I say that I am a very staunch admirer of your grandfather’s work.”“Then how can you be a private detective and not even know that you live in the same town as a notorious convicted forger?”Now my face grew hot with pink patches.“It’s a long story. I’ve recently returned from an experience involving missing time. Have you ever heard of missing time?”She shook her head in the negative.“It’s similar to an alien abduction, so you see, there’s no need to worry about me thinking you’re crazy, because most people think I’m the craziest person in this town. My incident happened a year and a half ago. I wound up in the lollipop factory out in northern Oregon, but I’m back now and believe me, my detective skills are as efficient and as potent as ever, possibly even more so. Chief Hollenbeck was a captain when I went away. He was glad for me to be gone, but whenever I’m around his success rate at solving crimes always goes up, so even though he detests the very ground I walk on, he has to bite the bullet because I’ve got a second sight that he knows will never be his.”“You went away a year and a half ago?”“Well, I didn’t go of my own accord, and I still haven’t figured out how I ended up all the way across the country in Oregon. The truth is, I don’t really know what happened to me. The whole year and half is a blur - seemed to fly by in only a few hours. Most of it I don’t remember. I have flashbacks, though. I’m putting it all together in bits and pieces. Flashbacks, recurring nightmares, but hey, enough about me. We’re here to find out what has happened to your grandfather.”“A year and half ago is when my grandfather got out of prison and opened the curio shop.”“Well, then, that explains why I didn’t know,” I scratched my head with my ballpoint pen, “but I thought his trial was a year and a half ago? How could he have gotten out of prison a year and a half ago?”“His trial was four years ago.”I was dumbfounded. The missing time was still haunting me. I should have kept my big fat mouth shut. This potential client may come to doubt my aptitude. She may get up and walk out the door. I wouldn’t blame her if she did.Tamsyn looked thoughtfully into the fire. The gloom of dusk was gathering early. It would soon be night and the freezing rain would make getting home a very treacherous hazard, indeed. I cleared my parched throat and forged ahead as if I hadn’t made a complete fool of myself, “Now then, what else can you tell me about your grandfather?”“That’s pretty much it.”“What about this person he was to meet at the Station House? Who was it?”“I don’t know. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman or a group of people. I’m starting not to be sure of anything.”That made two of us.“Whoa, hey, Tamsyn, don’t go falling apart on me. I’m going to help you. I guarantee I’m going to find out something for you. The police, and no offense meant to them, but, well, they have other cases, whereas I can give the search for your grandfather my full attention, and I’m going to, believe me.”She gave me a weak smile, but her red-rimmed eyes exposed the doubt in her mind. I was starting to like Tamsyn McBane. I wanted to tell her as much, but somehow it didn’t seem like the time or the place.“Now, your grandfather’s assistant, Mr. Hartley - you said he told you of the meeting your grandfather was to have that afternoon, the one the Station House waitress said he didn’t show up for. So, this Mr. Hartley should be able to provide us with a name for the person or persons whom your grandfather was to meet. Which means I need contact information for Mr. Hartley. Tomorrow is Friday. Will he be at the curio shop? Or wait a minute, your grandfather’s been gone for a month, so, is the curio shop still open?”“Yes, the shop is still open. Mr. Hartley has been very understanding about this nightmare misfortune. He’s been very helpful and supportive. He’s keeping the business going so far, but my grandfather was the master artisan, the expert creator of the replicas, so I don’t know how much longer Mr. Hartley can maintain the economic health of the business.”Haydn tensed. His secret silent alarm warned him that Helen & Hortense were approaching. Quickly, he turned off the hologram machine. He knew that if he were caught, he would be taken before the Council of Moods for emotional adjustment. Should he be judged harshly enough, a Subliminal Contractor would be called in. Haydn’s libido would be removed. He had seen what that had done to other men. He shuddered at the thought. There was no way Haydn was going to let that happen to himself.Ever since women had taken control of society and all forms of authority, macho role-playing that catered to the male ego was frowned upon as juvenile and counterproductive. His male fantasy of being a slick private detective simply would not be tolerated, but Haydn knew he had nothing to worry about. His was a gifted talent for software engineering. He had covertly managed to override security protocol so that if anyone ever checked the hologram log, there would be no evidence of what he had been doing - all his sessions were automatically deleted the moment he exited the program.In a brilliant stroke of genius, he had embedded a one terabyte biochip into the soft skin of his groin. By this clever expedient, he was able to save his fantasy worlds so as to pick up where he left off whenever he began a new session. Elaborate world-building required hundreds of programming hours. Haydn was religiously devoted to not losing any of his time-intensive work.He left the hologram room and stepped up onto the mammoth observation deck. The interplanetary research vessel, Sagan, had entered orbit around Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Gazing out through the huge window of the gargantuan space craft, he sighed with a dismal note of languor. The incredible view of the dazzling cosmic scenery was sensational, yet Haydn was sated with mere looking. He was ready for a real physical hands-on challenge - something he could feel as well as see.The incoming data from all spectral analysis reconnaissance probes indicated prolific microbial life in the salty subsurface ocean of the mysterious moon with the dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere. He hoped there were organisms much bigger than microbes. The long monotonous trip from Earth had Haydn aching for the hazards of life-threatening excitement, but he knew better than to let his true feelings be known.The automated doors to the observation deck opened. Helen and Hortense entered the gallery. They were Haydn’s chaperones. All chaperones were female. Karate, judo, psychology classes, study of the effects of testosterone on male behavior, an hour in the gym each morning and an hour each afternoon - the female chaperones rippled alertly with brains as acutely trained and toned as their sinewy musculature. The jerseys of their uniforms were mirrored so that the males they monitored would have to see their own expressions when they faced their strict disciplinarian masters.Helen & Hortense confidently stepped onto the observation deck, the reflected sunlight of Titan setting their stern visages aglow with ethereal luminescence. Haydn smiled submissively, his long white robe giving him the appearance of harmless tranquility. The chaperones stood challengingly before him. Haydn bowed his shaved head in obedient supplication.

BEGIN ADDENDUMToday is October 15, 2016. When I wrote the answer below, some 10 months ago, many facts about Trump were not well known. Since then, much evidence of past misdeeds have come to light, and Trump has also repeatedly damned himself by his own words.So I’m updating my original answer:Trump is, in my not-so-humble opinion, a racist. Unequivocally.From Huffpost’s Here Are 13 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist:He attacked Muslim Gold Star parentsTrump’s retaliation against the parents of a Muslim U.S. Army officer who died while serving in the Iraq War was a clear low point in a campaign full of hateful rhetoric.Khizr Khan, the father of the late Army Captain Humayun Khan, spoke out against Trump’s bigoted rhetoric and disregard for civil liberties at the Democratic National Convention on July 28. It quickly became the most memorable moment of the convention.“Let me ask you, have you even read the U.S. Constitution?” Khan asked Trump before pulling a copy of the document from his jacket pocket and holding it up. “I will gladly lend you my copy,” he declared.Khan’s wife Ghazala Khan, who wears a Muslim head scarf, stood at his side during the speech but did not speak.In response to the devastating speech, Trump seized on Ghazala Khan’s silence to insinuate that she was forbidden from speaking due to the couple’s Islamic faith.“If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News that first appeared on July 30.Ghazala Khan explained in an op-ed in the Washington Post the following day that she could not speak because of grief over her son.“Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could?” she wrote. “Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?”He claimed a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican”In May, Trump implied that Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over a class action against the for-profit Trump University, could not fairly hear the case because of his Mexican heritage.“He’s a Mexican,” Trump told CNN of Curiel. “We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe.”Curiel, it should be noted, is an American citizen who was born in Indiana. And as a prosecutor in the late 1990s, he went after Mexican drug cartels, making him a target for assassination by a Tijuana drug lord.Even members of Trump’s own party slammed the racist remarks.“Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a reaction to Trump’s comments, though he clarified that he still endorses the nominee.The comments against Curiel didn’t sit well with the American public either. According to a YouGov poll released in June, 51 percent of those surveyed agreed that Trump’s comments were not only wrong, but also racist.Fifty-seven percent of Americans think Trump was wrong to complain against the judge, while just 20 percent think he was right to do so.When asked whether he would trust a Muslim judge, in light of his proposed restrictions on Muslim immigration, Trump suggested that such a judge might not be fair to him either.The Justice Department sued his company ― twice ― for not renting to black peopleWhen Trump was serving as the president of his family’s real estate company, the Trump Management Corporation, in 1973, the Justice Department sued the company for alleged racial discrimination against black people looking to rent apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.The lawsuit charged that the company quoted different rental terms and conditions to black rental candidates than it did with white candidates, and that the company lied to black applicants about apartments not being available. Trump called those accusations “absolutely ridiculous” and sued the Justice Department for $100 million in damages for defamation.Without admitting wrongdoing, the Trump Management Corporation settled the original lawsuit two years later and promised not to discriminate against black people, Puerto Ricans or other minorities. Trump also agreed to send weekly vacancy lists for his 15,000 apartments to the New York Urban League, a civil rights group, and to allow the NYUL to present qualified applicants for vacancies in certain Trump properties.Just three years after that, the Justice Department sued the Trump Management Corporation again for allegedly discriminating against black applicants by telling them apartments weren’t available.In fact, discrimination against black people has been a pattern in his careerWorkers at Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, have accused him of racism over the years. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $200,000 in 1992 because managers would remove African-American card dealers at the request of a certain big-spending gambler. A state appeals court upheld the fine.The first-person account of at least one black Trump casino employee in Atlantic City suggests the racist practices were consistent with Trump’s personal behavior toward black workers.“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told the New Yorker for a September article. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”Trump disparaged his black casino employees as “lazy” in vividly bigoted terms, according to a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, a former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.“And isn’t it funny. I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” O’Donnell recalled Trump saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”“I think the guy is lazy,” Trump said of a black employee, according to O’Donnell. “And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”Trump has also faced charges of reneging on commitments to hire black people. In 1996, 20 African Americans in Indiana sued Trump for failing to honor a promise to hire mostly minority workers for a riverboat casino on Lake Michigan.He refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for himThree times in a row on Feb. 28, Trump sidestepped opportunities to renounce white nationalist and former KKK leader David Duke, who told his radio audience last week that voting for any candidate other than Trump is “really treason to your heritage.”When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if he would condemn Duke and say he didn’t want a vote from him or any other white supremacists, Trump claimed that he didn’t know anything about white supremacists or about Duke himself. When Tapper pressed him twice more, Trump said he couldn’t condemn a group he hadn’t yet researched.By Feb. 29, Trump was saying that in fact he does disavow Duke, and that the only reason he didn’t do so on CNN was because of a “lousy earpiece.” Video of the exchange, however, shows Trump responding quickly to Tapper’s questions with no apparent difficulty in hearing.It’s preposterous to think that Trump doesn’t know about white supremacist groups or their sometimes violent support of him. Reports of neo-Nazi groups rallying around Trump go back as far as August.His white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.A leader of the Virginia KKK who is backing Trump told a local TV reporter earlier this month, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.”And most recently, the Trump campaign announced that one of its California primary delegates was William Johnson, chair of the white nationalist American Freedom Party. The Trump campaign subsequently said his inclusion was a mistake, and Johnson withdrew his name at their request.He questions whether President Obama was born in the United StatesLong before calling Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists,” Trump was a leading proponent of “birtherism,” the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is thus an illegitimate president. Trump claimed in 2011 to have sent people to Hawaii to investigate whether Obama was really born there. He insisted at the time that the researchers “cannot believe what they are finding.”Obama ultimately got the better of Trump, releasing his long-form birth certificate and relentlessly mocking the real estate mogul about it at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that year.But Trump continues to insinuate that the president was not born in the country.“I don’t know where he was born,” Trump said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday. (Again, for the record: He was born in Hawaii.)He treats racial groups as monolithsLike many racial instigators, Trump often answers accusations of bigotry by loudly protesting that he actually loves the group in question. But that’s just as uncomfortable to hear, because he’s still treating all the members of the group — all the individual human beings — as essentially the same and interchangeable. Language is telling, here: Virtually every time Trump mentions a minority group, he uses the definite article the, as in “the Hispanics,” “the Muslims” and “the blacks.”In that sense, Trump’s defensive explanations are of a piece with his slander of minorities. Both rely on essentializing racial and ethnic groups, blurring them into simple, monolithic entities, instead of acknowledging that there’s as much variety among Muslims and Latinos and black people as there is among white people.How did Trump respond to the outrage last year that followed his characterization of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists?“I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan,” Trump said during his visit to the U.S.-Mexican border in July. “The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.”“The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.”Donald Trump, July 2015How did Trump respond to critics of his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.?“I’m doing good for the Muslims,” Trump told CNN in December. “Many Muslim friends of mine are in agreement with me. They say, ‘Donald, you brought something up to the fore that is so brilliant and so fantastic.’”Not long before he called for a blanket ban on Muslims entering the country, Trump was proclaiming his affection for “the Muslims,” disagreeing with rival candidate Ben Carson’s claim in September that being a Muslim should disqualify someone from running for president.“I love the Muslims. I think they’re great people,” Trump said, insisting that he would be willing to name a Muslim to his presidential cabinet.How did Trump respond to the people who called him out for funding an investigation into whether Obama was born in the United States?“I have a great relationship with the blacks,” Trump said in April 2011. “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”Even when Trump has dropped the definite article “the,” his attempts at praising minority groups he has previously slandered have been offensive.Look no further than the infamous Cinco de Mayo taco bowl tweet.Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrumpHappy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10157008375200725:0 …Former Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) had a good breakdown of everything that was wrong with Trump’s comment.“It’s like eating a watermelon and saying ‘I love African-Americans,’” Bush quipped.He trashed Native Americans, tooIn 1993, when Trump wanted to open a casino in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that would compete with one owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Nation, a local Native American tribe, he told the House subcommittee on Native American Affairs that “they don’t look like Indians to me... They don’t look like Indians to Indians.”Trump then elaborated on those remarks, which were unearthed last year in the Hartford Courant, by saying the mafia had infiltrated Indian casinos.In the 1980s, Donald Trump was much younger, but just as racist as he is now.He encouraged the mob justice that resulted in the wrongful imprisonment of the Central Park FiveIn 1989, Trump took out full-page ads in four New York City-area newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty in New York and the expansion of police authority in response to the infamous case of a woman who was beaten and raped while jogging in Manhattan’s Central Park.“They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes,” Trump wrote, referring to the Central Park attackers and other violent criminals. “I want to hate these murderers and I always will.”The public outrage over the Central Park jogger rape, at a time when the city was struggling with high crime, led to the wrongful conviction of five teenagers of color known as the Central Park Five.The men’s convictions were overturned in 2002, after they’d already spent years in prison, when DNA evidence showed they did not commit the crime. Today, their case is considered a cautionary tale about a politicized criminal justice process.Trump, however, still thinks the men are guilty.He condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protesterAt a November campaign rally in Alabama, Trump supporters physically attacked an African-American protester after the man began chanting “Black lives matter.” Video of the incident shows the assailants kicking the man after he has already fallen to the ground.The following day, Trump implied that the attackers were justified.“Maybe [the protester] should have been roughed up,” he mused. “It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”Trump’s dismissive attitude toward the protester is part of a larger, troubling pattern of instigating violence toward protesters at campaign events that has singled out people of color.One reason Trump may have exhibited special disdain for that particular demonstrator in November, however, is because he believes the entire Black Lives Matter movement lacks legitimate policy grievances. He alluded to these views in an interview with the New York Times magazine this week when he described Ferguson, Missouri, as one of the most dangerous places in America. The small St. Louis suburb is not even in the top 20 highest-crime municipalities in the country.He called supporters who beat up a homeless Latino man “passionate”Trump’s racial incitement has already inspired hate crimes. Two brothers arrested in Boston last summer for beating up a homeless Latino man cited Trump’s anti-immigrant message when explaining why they did it.“Donald Trump was right — all these illegals need to be deported,” one of the men reportedly told police officers.Trump did not even bother to distance himself from them. Instead, he suggested that the men were well-intentioned and had simply gotten carried away.“I will say that people who are following me are very passionate,” Trump said. “They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”He stereotyped Jews and shared an anti-Semitic meme created by white supremacistsWhen Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in December, he tried to relate to the crowd by invoking the stereotype of Jews as talented and cunning businesspeople.“I’m a negotiator, like you folks,” Trump told the crowd, touting his book The Art of the Deal.“Is there anyone who doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room?” Trump said. “Perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to.”But that wasn’t even the most offensive thing Trump told his Jewish audience. He implied that he had little chance of earning the Jewish Republican group’s support, because his fealty could not be bought with campaign donations.“You’re not going to support me, because I don’t want your money,” he said. “You want to control your own politician.”Ironically, Trump has many close Jewish family members. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009 before marrying the real estate mogul Jared Kushner. Trump and Kushner raise their two children in an observant Jewish home.Then in July, Trump tweeted an anti-Semitic Hillary Clinton meme that featured a photo of her over a backdrop of $100 bills with a six-pointed Jewish Star of David next to her face.“Crooked Hillary - - Makes History!” he wrote in the tweet, which also read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” over the star.The holy symbol was co-opted by the Nazis during World War II when they forced Jews to sew it onto their clothing. Using the symbol over a pile of money is blatantly anti-Semitic and re-enforces hateful stereotypes of Jewish greed.But Trump insisted the image was harmless.“The sheriff’s badge ― which is available under Microsoft’s ‘shapes’ ― fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it,” he said in a statement.Mic, however, discovered that the the meme was actually created by white supremacists and could be found on a neo-Nazi forum more than a week before Trump shared it. Additionally, a watermark on the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets racist, sexist political memes.He treats African-American supporters as tokens to dispel the idea he is racistAt a campaign appearance in California in June, Trump boasted that he had a black supporter in the crowd, saying “look at my African American over here.”“Look at him,” Trump continued. “Are you the greatest?”Trump went on to imply that the media conceals his appeal among African Americans by not covering the crowd more attentively.“We have tremendous African-American support,” he said. “The reason is I’m going to bring jobs back to our country.”In fact, Trump has the lowest level of African-American support of any Republican presidential nominee since 1948, according to FiveThirtyEight. As of the most recent polling, just 2 percent of black voters plan to vote for him ― fewer than the percentage who plan to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson.It’s may not be surprising that Trump has brought so much racial animus into the 2016 election cycle, given his family history. His father, Fred Trump, was the target of folk singer Woody Guthrie’s lyrics after Guthrie lived for two years in a building owned by Trump pere: “I suppose / Old Man Trump knows / Just how much / Racial hate / He stirred up / In the bloodpot of human hearts.”And last fall, a news report from 1927 surfaced on the site Boing Boing, revealing that Fred Trump was arrested that year following a KKK riot in Queens. It’s not clear exactly what the elder Trump was doing there or what role he may have played in the riot. Donald Trump, for his part, has categorically denied (except when he’s ambiguously denied) that anything of the sort ever happened.END ADDENDUMI don't think he actually is a racist, but I don't think it matters. What does matter, I think, is the psychological relationship between Trump and his followers. I'm not a trained psychologist, but I do think he is a textbook example of someone with a narcissistic personality disorder, also known as megalomania. Here are its signs (from Wikipedia):Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by an over-inflated sense of self-importance, as well as dramatic, emotional behavior that is in the same category as antisocial and borderline personality disorders.In addition to these symptoms, the person may display arrogance, show superiority, and seek power.The symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder can be similar to the traits of individuals with strong self-esteem and confidence; differentiation occurs when the underlying psychological structures of these traits are considered pathological. Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others, when in reality they have a fragile self-esteem, cannot handle criticism, and often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth. Comments and criticisms about others are vicious from sufferers of NPD, in an attempt to boost their own poor self-esteem.Who are his supporters? They are almost exclusively white people who lack a good education and are anxious about the state of the country and their personal well-being and status as citizens.So you have an insecure man who craves personal validation speaking to groups of people who want their anxieties addressed.Trump needs people to cheer him on, so he experiments with different ways to present himself. He sees that the more outlandish his behavior, the more a certain group of people flock to him.Now all Trump needs is to bind these people to his stage persona. He does that by assuaging the crowd's anxieties with a simple, emotionally powerful theme: other people are the cause of our distress. Those people can come from any group: Mexicans, Moslems, liberals, you name it. By using scapegoats, Trump transforms anxiety into hatred. Hatred soothes anxiety by making one's emotions somebody else's fault.So, Trump gets psychological validation from the crowd, and the crowd gets its anxieties addressed. The circle is complete.And thus we find ourselves in the midst of a hurricane....