Trump Watch 20180622

While I was driving today, I heard a live broadcast of an event Trump was hosting, called the "Angel Families" event.  The event was intended to highlight the reality of the damage that has been done to American Families because of illegal immigrants being in the country and committing crimes, specifically a group of families that have lost members in some way because of the actions of illegal immigrants (I don't know all the specifics, I did hear about a torture/rape murder, and a drunk driving incident).

Given the recent outrage over the separation of children from parents at the border, I found it a little jarring to hear about these incidents because it seemed that they were being used as justification for that policy, while I felt that the two, while related in some ways, are really very different issues.

And then a couple of things hit me.  First, was that while these stories are true, and important, they can be quite misleading.  There is a quote that I believe is attributed to Stalin, "The death of an individual is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic."

Nowadays, with so many varied outlets able to send out a message, there is a slightly different reality at play as well.  While personal stories can be more visceral, and thus persuasive, they can easily overstate a position as well.  What this boils down to is that people will dismiss those personal stories that go counter to their preferred narrative, while giving greater credence (listenability) to stories that support their preferred narrative.  I have heard the phrase "I don't want to hear about ____" where the blank gets filled in by stories that support a counter position to the one that is supported by the person that makes that statement.  This gets exacerbated by claims that such stories are lies, which in extreme cases (or apparently not so extreme cases) turns into conspiracy theory types of thinking.

There is a problem with trying to evaluate things at a national scale and separating that from a personal scale.  We aren't really designed for that, and evaluating data isn't anywhere near as impactful as a personal story.  That's really how we process, and how we experience things.

Kind of a side note, but also worth noting, it turns out that the picture of the crying child at the border was not an image of a child being separated from her mother (well, not really).  That particular child was returned to her mother, and hadn't been separated at the time (or since).  I'm not sure why not, but that picture became an icon for such separations, and Time cropped the child's image and juxtaposed it with a picture of Trump looking down at her, with the caption "Welcome to America."

That opens up the question of whether it is "fair" or "reasonable" to use that picture to represent the reality of family separations.  On the one hand, it is at best "artistic license" to use that image to represent a particular reality.  It certainly would be better if the image was a direct representation, but the goal was to "tell a story," and it conveys that story well.  On the other hand, it opens the image to be dismissed by people that don't want to listen to that narrative.  The question is where it pushes "undecideds" to I guess.  My question is how can undecideds be pushed to evaluating data, rather than being swayed by emotional appeals that seek to avoid in depth analysis.

• Stormy Daniels
• Trump Charity lawsuit by New York Attorney General
• FBI investigation (it keeps being called a Russian Collusion investigation, but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that at this point
• North Korea
• The Space Force
• The Border Wall
• Alien Children Detention/family separation
• Presidential Pardons
• Civil War Monuments
• Muslim Travel Ban
• China Tariffs/Trade
• Canada-G7 Tariffs/Trade
• NAFTA
• Puerto Rico response

Survivor White House watch.  Nothing really new today.

Giuliani still there as Lawyer
John F. Kelly still there as Chief of Staff
Jeff Sessions still there as Attorney General
Sarah Huckabee Sanders still there as Press Secretary, rumors continue to be denied.
Mike Pompeo - Secretary of State

John Bolton - National Security Advisor
Marc Short - White House Legislative Affairs Director - no denial of plans regarding his departure prior to the 2018 midterms.
Kirstjen Nielsen - Homeland Security Secretary
Joe Hagin - White House deputy Chief of Staff is resigning.- reported June 19th