On the topic of climate change and president elect Trump's appointment nominee for the head of the EPA, this article describes the efforts of scientists to preserve their research before it disappears. Throughout this "guerilla archiving" process, many have begun fearing an almost 1984-esque future, in which Trump's cabinet with eradicate recent data on climate change in the US in order to further solidify their idea that it indeed does not exist. Others maintian the belief that they will instead be forced to end the collection of data, reducing its credibility by reducing the visible trends throughout the years.
Do you feel that this is an overexaggeration? Or does this seem like less and less of a stretch? Is the left wing consistantly digging for dirt to soil the name of our president elect? Is he not as bad as the liberal media makes him seem? So far, many of Trump's nominees have seemed like the polar opposites to their respective offices. Do you think this is an exaggeration as well, in which his candidates hold more merit than the media gives them credit for? Or are the only good things coming out of this election's results easy topics for Gov Blogs and SNL Skits?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
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Ok, I guess you could argue that the left wing just wants to constantly be proving why our president elect is dangerous, but if you look at who Trump has been appointing, you see that they actually have reason to complain and worry. A man who thinks climate change is debatable is now head of the EPA. I don't think we're exaggerating anything by saying that this will likely prove to be at least in some ways detrimental. His candidates may hold merit, but not necessarily merit that matches the goals of the agencies they are being appointed to run. I don't think the media is making worse than it is; it is something be should be concerned about. Trump is uninformed and has never held elected office, and now, yeah, he's appointing people who at least know things in their field, but these people might push us back in time, and might have huge influence over Trump's ideas and rulings. What is they just further engrain his opinions in his mind, making him even less open to change? It is funny to laugh at it on things like SNL, but its funny because its true and its happening, and people have genuine reason to be scared, and use the media as their outlet to point out just how ridiculous these events have been.
ReplyDeleteWhile in a normal world this would seem like an overexaggeration, nobody really knows what this administration will do. Regarding liberals talking bad about Trump, most of the stuff Trump does deserves to be criticized. Sometimes, the media goes a bit to far. For example, CNN once reported that Giuliani said Trump was better than "a woman", when in reality he had stuttered and was saying something else about Clinton, not referring to her gender. It is no secret that much of the media has a liberal bias. However, the conservative bias on Fox is just as bad. But I think Trump constantly criticizing the media has made them more hostile to him than they would have been otherwise. I would say about 70% of the negative Trump reporting in the media is justified.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the appointments, I think the criticism is very valid. His Secretary of State nominee is very close to Putin and has no experience in government. His EPA nominee denies basic climate science and is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. His HUD nominee is a neurosurgeon who, while undoubtedly is very intelligent, has no experience in urban planning. The amount of generals in the cabinet seems to blur the lines between government and military. While these cabinet appointees are undoubtedly experienced in other areas, their lack of government experience and opposition to the traditional roles of the departments is concerning.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm not scared to express myself... SNL isn't that funny. It has its moments (Baldwin's Trump impression is great but overused), but it only 1/5 jokes they tell land with me. You may say that it's because they only have a week to prepare, but there is a huge staff of writers that are constantly writing material. I think the problem a lot of time is their delivery.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, Donald Trump's nominees appear unprofessional, glad we haven't talked about this before.
Do Democrats have a right to worry? Certainly.
Are they over-exaggerating? Yes, but they have a good reason to expect the worse. As it's been said, many of these appointees seem to be intelligent people in their own right, but inexperienced in government. I hope these appointees surround themselves with experienced people for advice in the coming years.
Trump keeps proving that his is unfit for the job he was elected into over and over again—liberals are just pointing it out and being cautious of the future. He has shown he is an unpredictable man, so making copied of documents he will not like isn’t a bad idea. Since being elected, he’s only made people’s lives more difficult and things won’t begin to get easier soon. For the bureaucrats working in the agencies directly affected by his appointees, the future is bleak. So far his appointments have not represented the agencies’ attitudes, most of who are blatantly against their possible agency’s principles.
ReplyDeleteI think the left wing is constantly trying to dig up dirt on Trump, but he makes it very easy for them to do so. While this could be a bit of an over exaggeration, it is not wrong for them to worry. So far Trump has appointed people with as much government experience as any high schooler, to influential and important top government positions. Some of these people have views that are directly against the very agencies they run, which doesn't really make sense. Other appointees have such strong ties to Russia, bringing Trumps relationship with Putin into the spotlight once again. So while the media might constantly throw dirt on Trumps name, it is his own fault.
ReplyDeleteDoes it count as digging if all you have to do is scrape the surface? I don't think that the left wing is constantly digging, in fact I think all of this information is just so easily available and obvious that its hard not to write about it. Journalism jobs, blogs, SNL skits, and this little "democratic rebellion" that we have going on that is bringing people together are all good things that have come out of this election.
ReplyDeleteI also don't think that the people hoarding, copying, and filing information on climate change are crazy. After the Holocaust, people took tons and tons of pictures, wrote books, and kept memorabilia to remember so that no one could deny the fact that it happened. Later, they made museums and made it a crime in some countries to be a denier. I'm not saying that we go that extreme, but I am saying that while we have time we need to prepare. This means consolidating money, information, resources, etc. just in case. Life could be fine in a post-Obama world, however it could also be hell. As we've seen, in Trump's America people think that it's okay to bully, discriminate, abuse, and lie and that's not the way it should be. The people who are making sure that this information stays safe are completely sane and incredibly smart. What happens in court cases? You gather evidence to prove your point. We need our evidence and we ought to gather as much as we can in the next month or so before it starts to disappear. I even advise printing everything out because who knows what the Russians will hack into next. I'm aware this is extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I overreact to everything and I love over exaggerating, so this doesn't seem to be very suprising to me. Just like everyone else, I was shocked by the results of the election and now I don't know what to do or believe or predict. Losing all of this information would be tragic and I prefer being safe than sorry. Trump's nominees don't really appear to fit their positions even though they might be very qualified in a completely different area. The nominees can be whomever and have whatever but if they are going to so strongly against what their agency's sole purpose is, it is hard to take them seriously and to respect their position.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that right now, I feel the least confident I've ever felt in our upcoming government. I guess that doesn't really mean much considering I haven't really considered politics up until about a year ago, but regardless, I have no idea what to believe at this point. Trump's selected positions scare me, not for the fact that they are mostly CEOs and other top positions, but more upon the fact that most of their political and ecological stances would lead to them reaping significant benefits from ignoring climate change or passing legislation to break the legitimacy of it. It feels like Trump is surrounding himself with an echo chamber that directly benefits all of their personal interests, but doesn't actually help the state of the country or contribute to the world. What a surprise. I guess I'm not sure what I expected anyway out of someone to reacts on twitter to the slightest insults.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the media is being biased, or that they are "digging deep" for stories to taint Trump. If there are stories, they report on them. It's how news works. Trump simply is giving them plenty to report on. As for this specific case, it seems like slight exaggeration. I do not believe that the Trump administration will physically delete databases and findings. I do believe they will delegitimize them, and the scientific community as a whole, but saving all the data won't do much to save that. I am afraid for the scientific community, and I hope that their findings remain relevant and important. Without a scientific community, the world is based on lies and opinions, and the shift is already occurring before our eyes. Furthermore, his candidates are just as bad as they are being portrayed. They may hold merit, but they are not right for the position. An education secretary who believes in the privatization of public education? This is not an exaggeration, it is the media reporting on the truth about candidates, and it is sickening. I genuinely believe that the media is doing its best in the trying times, and I do not believe in the sentiment of "liberal media", unless you're watching MSNBC, of course. And unfortunately, the best that is coming out of this administration is potentially better infrastructure (is it truly crumbling though?) and semi-decent SNL skits. But like Marcus said, what can you expect out of a twitter troll.
ReplyDeleteIan, SNL is only funny when it's about Trump. Or when it's about David S. Pumpkins. That's it. But onto the matter at hand.
ReplyDeleteThe election of Donald Trump in our "xenophobic" "post-truth" world, is probably seen to many as the end of the age of Reason. Let's talk a little about the founders.
We often regard "the founders" as these mystical men, found only on marble statues, their legacies passing through our veins, meant to fill us with pride to be one of the few God himself chose to be "American". While we are very lucky to be here, we basically live inside a massive lab experiment that has, for 250 or so years now, gone pretty well. The founders lived in the dead center of the Age of Enlightenment, drawing old ideas from Locke, drawing economic theory from Adam Smith, and drawing the idea about how people should have access to knowledge from Diderot. The problem is, for this democracy thing to work, people need access to information. You can't vote based on fake news, or based on propaganda. You need facts and unskewed statistics. This was the ideal for which Diderot strove. This was what the EC was made to protect against. And, many years later, the grand experiment of the Age of Reason seems to have failed. Donald Trump, a thoroughly unreasonable man, has won the presidency. The Enlightenment was perhaps naïve, but it's over now. Post-truth is the way of the future. Feelings over reason or logic.
But it doesn't have to be. The "Dark Age" of a Trump presidency can be weathered as long as information shines through. Just like the Dark Ages of days gone by were weathered by the preservation of libraries in Ireland, we can weather these. So, yeah, keep your research so in 4 years we can get back to focusing in on saving the planet.
We never really know what to expect when it comes to politics anymore, so a comprehensive eradication of decades of scientific proof for the most detrimental world-wide phenomenon to happen to our environment seems plausible. Yet, I do believe that this frantic preservation of data seems like a bit of an overreaction. If the Trump administration were to delete data (data which probably cost a lot of money to collect), wouldn't that be considered a high crime? Treason, maybe? I mean, it is likely to be federally funded data. I doubt the Trump administration would get away with something as ridiculous as that (*knock on wood*). If they were, I see him being at risk of heavy media fire, and giving even heavier Trump backlash.
ReplyDeleteGiven the President-elects blatant denial of climate change along with his support of fossil fuel businesses, I don't think its impossible that decades of data would be discontinued. I'm highly suspicious though that our existing data will be deleted, so preservation seems like an overreaction. That being said, I do think that this is fair criticism. Calling out our soon-to-be President when he says/does crazy things isn't mudslinging- it's perfectly justified. Trump's nominees are only qualified if you match their relative focus with the names of their proposed positions. Besides that, I just hope they don't work to tear apart the agencies they'll likely get appointed to.
ReplyDeleteI think liberals are stretching the truth a little bit, but it's still the truth. Trump has appointed inexperienced people to go with an inexperienced president, so it's only natural that people are worried. These situations that liberals are panicking about are most likely worst case scenarios, but they shouldn't be ruled out. I have some hope for the future. I don't think things will be as bad as people are making them out to be. These people Trump has appointed should give us some stress and confusion, but it will probably be fine. I don't think that these people, including Trump, should be given more credit, but I do think that people may be over exaggerating a bit.
ReplyDeleteThose who don't believe in global warming often don't even entertain the facts that support it, and sadly some of those people hold political positions. This could be viewed as a slight exaggeration, but from experience, it's always better to be safe than sorry and to make to copies of their reports. Trump could alter the findings, but he wouldn't get very far before the smart scientists who published the findings would realize and cause an outcry in the scientific and environmental community. By doing so, he would dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole and drive away potential supporters.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Trump is, he's a complete wild card. One day he loves parts of the ACA, the next he wants to completely repeal it. I do, however, have hope for his stances on Climate Change and Global Warming. Right now his talking point is that it's a lie perpetuated by the Chinese. But I would not be surprised if tomorrow he said Climate Change is real and we need to get our act together. What give me great hope in this is that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, is a Climate Change advocate. But nominating Scott Pruitt for EPA and Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State is worrying.
ReplyDeleteThis definitely doesn't seem like an over exaggeration. the Trump administration, despite priding itself on "transparency" (aka twitter), has already censored information on the EPA website regarding climate change since this article was posted. This hasn't just applied to global warming either; information on the White House's stance on LGBT rights and other issues has been obfuscated in various ways under Trump. I agree with your initial proposition regarding his cabinet picks Dora- they seem wholly unqualified to lead the nation in their respective fields. In respect to the EPA and this article, Scott Pruitt will undoubtedly set research on global warming back by some amount. Non-federal based studies might be more highly valued on climate change over the next four years as a result of this.
ReplyDeleteI think saying he will erase the evidence is a bit of a stretch, but I do agree that we have a lot to worry about. While I think finding dirt on Trump is definitely part of the liberals' plan, I feel there is a legitimate threat to the nation in who he is planning on appointing to the cabinet and how he is planning on running these departments. It is a complete and utter catastrophe that the new head of the EPA is someone who doesn't believe in climate change, and none of his other appointees really fit their offices either. While trying to preserve the evidence before it is erased may be a bit of a stretch since it will be hard for anyone to delete all of the evidence, I do think we have to worry about the direction this country is headed in, as Trump will try to eradicate most of what goes against his beliefs.
ReplyDelete