Fabulously good writing. Terrifying content. And she's right, by which I mean that nothing I've ever seen or read or known is at odds with what she's saying.

There are going to be a lot of refugees. I wish I were younger.

The "Read the rest" link is broken. It is meant to go to the same place as the "greatest single piece of journalism" link, right?

That is a fantastically awesome article.
When she tweeted, "I am in a car with Team Milo. That's a thing that's happening. Wish me luck." on the 19th, I was a tad concerned but she wrested the story right out of the gaping maw of civilizational collapse.

That is a fantastically awesome article.
When she tweeted, "I am in a car with Team Milo. That's a thing that's happening. Wish me luck." on the 19th, I was a tad concerned but she wrested the story right out of the gaping maw of civilizational collapse.

Her tweets from the RNC, particularly tonight, are also worth reading. I might suggest a shot of one's beverage of choice before doing so, though.

Journalism-related, also from Boingboing: Fox News chief Roger Ailes resigns after sexual harassment claims, Murdoch takes over.

I've been following her on twitter all week. Awesome reportage.

#1: "There are going to be a lot of refugees. I wish I were younger."

Not sure there's anywhere to go at this point. Everywhere is having its own issues. But I'm probably not thinking of everything. So... anyone got their eye on somewhere specific?

Reading this article and other links over the past five days has left me feeling like I understand the fears and horror experienced by middle-class Romans standing by helplessly during the worst of the reign of Nero. The churning in my guts comes from the fear that, however remote the chance, Donald Trump could become president.

I see a miniaturized version of this nightmare here in Illinois, where Bruce Rauner, another egotistical, amoral billionaire, is the state's chief executive. The state is sitting on a churning abyss, suspended between his stubborn determination to implement a "mandate" to turn the state into a business-oriented paradise (earned by a narrow margin in the popular vote) and the equally obstinate Democrats who feel they cannot yield an inch without sacrificing our social safety net. The clash has left the state without a budget for two consecutive fiscal years.

The worst part of my nightmare is that if Trump wins, there may not be an effective opposition to keep him from dragging us completely down the toilet.

And Rauner does not have nuclear launch codes.

There are still some Republicans with consciences. One precinct leader in Texas resigned -- his resignation letter is well worth reading. He sounds like someone I could have a real political conversation with.

A nitpick: the precinct leader is a Texan, but the precinct itself is in Illinois.

Reasonable nitpick. Glad you read it.

Teresa @1, Stephen Frug@8

Can I register a slight, and not entirely easy to articulate, unease with the way the idea of upping sticks and leaving sometimes features in this kind of conversation (or at least the ways in which it's often developed.)

I appreciate that for many of you, the idea of leaving - and of knowing when to leave - in response to scary political developments in your home country will be an important part of your family history; and that some of you probably wouldn't be here even to have this conversation if family members a few generations hadn't made the right call. But speaking as someone living in a country that's recently gone through some very scary political developments (see Open Thread 212@866 for a few pointers); and as someone who has come close to facing that kind of decision for real within the past week - had things worked out differently, Turkey might be under military rule this week, and I probably would be figuring out how to leave* - I feel that in conversations like these I sometimes see people allowing themselves to imagine a fantasy of what being a political refugee might look and feel like.**

Is this just a piece of hipster expatriate tone-policing? Well, maybe: it's been a rough week, with a lot of time spent on the 'phone to the consulates of various countries to establish a) whether we can leave the country at all at the moment and b) whether we can do so without putting homes and and livelihoods at risk (tl;dr - given the contingencies of our particular situation, the answer to both questions is 'Yes'), and I'm probably a bit grouchy.

But also, maybe not. Right now, there are a lot of political refugees sloshing around in various places. You're all good people, and I know that some among you will have done more than I ever have to help political refugees in their own communities. But I can't help thinking that on a collective, level, fantasies about what it might be like to be a political refugee, and the circumstances it might take to make you into one, might be part of what makes it difficult to come up with a humane political response to them.

(To be clear: I don't see anyone indulging in fantasy in the current thread yet. But this is an itch I feel some need to scratch right now.)

*Living under military rule has been one of my 'get out now' conditions for as long as I've lived here . It hasn't seemed like a realistic worry in the almost 16 years I've been here until last Friday. (A state of emergency, imposed by a democratically elected government, is - while the sort of thing that makes me worry - a rather different matter.)

**Here's a check to see whether that might apply to you: if you have disabled family members that you wouldn't be thinking of leaving behind, and you're talking about moving to Canada without knowing how that would affect you chances of being able to settle there, then you're allowing yourself a political fantasy. If that's the kind of thing you've thought about, maybe not.

We looked at both Canada and Australia during the Bush II regime. Short answer: we can't.

We're looking at Cape Breton, just in case... Note: we would be ex-pats NOT applying for citizenship, I believe that does make a difference. My brother has talked for years of retiring to somewhere warm, last I heard he was considering Costa Rica.

In the horrible event of a Trump presidency, I know me and my family wouldn't be leaving the country. We're white, middle-class, and can fake heterosexual pretty well; I figure we're safe enough it's damn well our duty to try to help fix things for all the people who can't get out, if it turns into something like that.

I don't think it's going to happen. But I've certainly been surprised before.

If Trump wins, I'm not leaving. Someone's got to stick around to resist him.

I'll be proud to be on the Trump Administration's equivalent of the Project Insight target list, even though I'm sure I'm not a first-strike priority.

Leaving the country looks from where I sit like a privilege of the rich (for values of rich from my perspective that are probably experienced as struggling middle class by some of the "rich" in question). Generalizing madly: until and unless one becomes a true refugee, to be welcome anywhere else requires family ties or considerable wealth or a highly-desirable occupational specialty.

Another option, greatly facilitated in my case by white skin, may be simply to shelter in place out here in rural red-state America. Here the greatest challenge will be to keep one's mouth shut; the risk of Ron White syndrome is considerable. "I had the right to remain silent ... but I DID NOT HAVE the ABILITY." Red-state America is already full of white dudes of no economic or political consequence; it's hard to imagine that even the worst Trumsterist dystopia will treat them (us) so much differently or worse. Of course this requires the ability to turn a blind eye toward the family members and neighbors for whom the dystopia sucks worse. (Decamping for foreign shores is similar in this regard.)

So, I know that one of the big problems with the left in America - and specifically why Democrats are unable to gain significant traction with poor whites who live away from the coasts - is that there is a tendency by us coastal liberals to look down on the out of work blue collar middle-American laborer who's seen their job go overseas or vanish altogether to increased automation. I know (or rather, have been repeatedly told) that it's the economic frustrations of people left behind in capitalism's evolution over the last 50 years that cause things like a successful Trump campaign in the form we've seen. I understand that failing to provide for people directly hurt by the growth of free trade is a big failure of Democratic policies during my lifetime.

So I understand that my gut instinct to look on those true believers mentioned in Penny's piece with disgust or self-righteous pity is a problem and an indulgence that, collectively, we cannot afford. Also, I am under rather clear religious injunction to love my enemies, and to do good to those hate me. That I believe that some of those who hate me are doing their own religion wrong does not in any way loosen this obligation; in fact, it makes it stronger.

At the same time, how can I look upon those who would turn to Trump with anything but disgust? How can I, a white straight dude who is hated only by reason of some opinions I might happen to hold, and who therefore does not bear the brunt of the hate, possibly think it moral to extend love or do good towards those who are inches away from calling for literal lynchings? How is there any moral stance but to stand screaming NO in the face of this rage machine?

And yes, I realize that tactically matching the rage machine that is the Trump with an equal and opposite rage machine is a losing strategy. After all, they're much more trained and practiced at rage than I am.

Visible performance of my own hatred and disgust is an unaffordable indulgence. At the same time, failing to react with performative anger when confronted with a phenomenon like this feels like a betrayal of those friends of mine who aren't white, straight, cis dudes.

I'm too old to start over in a new country. I'll stay unless we really have the press calling Trump "Dear Leader" or we have Nuremberg-style rallies.

I'm also too old to be much use in a militarized resistance. I'll try to contribute in other ways, which I won't enumerate here because if the Trumpistas do take over I don't want them to know what to look for.

Daniel Martin #19: "...they're much more trained and practiced at rage than I am."

That reminds me of a funny true thing I heard this morning:

"Never argue with idiots. First thing they do is drag you down to their level, and once they've got you there, then they can beat you with experience."

It may be time to re-read a rather old SF novel: "Wasp" by Eric Frank Russell

Daniel Martin @19, you parallel some of my thoughts. It's not all about me, and yet I'm the only one whose behavior I can control. What, then, am I supposed to do?

The interview linked from this tweet from Wil Wheaton, which I saw because it was retweeted by abi, is an interesting window. Another one that I don't have a link to was a Facebook post identifying a subset of Trump supporters who are older, white, blue collar, and living in a bubble of people who are the same. Both of those perspectives are helping me view many Trump supporters as people who I strongly disagree with, but who have reasons for their opinions rooted in their lived experience. (I'm less charitable toward the man himself and his primary supporters/enablers, but that's another matter. ObSF, Cordelia Vorkosigan to Vorrutyer in Shards of Honor, "You exceed my capacity." [for forgiveness])

I understand that, as a white, upper middle class, U.S. citizen, Christian, cisgendered woman I fall into only one category of people that Trump denigrates, and that insulates me in many ways from his visceral impact. I understand that anger is a perfectly justified response. But I don't think it's the only justified response. As a moral matter I do not wish to hate that many human beings, and as a practical matter I believe that regarding all his followers with uniform unbridled contempt plays into his hands.

Daniel Martin @19:

I read what you are saying, but as a coastal liberal professional, it strikes me as...backwards.

I see Democratic policies during my lifetime aimed more at helping the displaced working class than Republican policies. Democratic policies support a strong social net, support unionization, support lowering barriers to education, support better healthcare, etc.

I have a friend who, literally, packed up his job so it could go to Mexico. (The last month of his employment at that company was crating up the machines.) He's voting for Trump. His wife and daughter are Hillary supporters and are aghast at this (I know this because the daughter asked me to try to change his mind).

I think he's deeply mistaken, but I can understand that he's reacting on a visceral level to personal harm; this is not something that can be argued rationally against. Even pointing out that Trump merchandise is made in China isn't going to make one bit of difference to him. I console myself with the fact that his vote is more than offset by the rest of his family.

He's not a bad man. He's not particularly misogynistic or homophobic or racist that I've ever noticed. But over the years, I've learned that you can't argue someone rationally out of a non-rational opinion.

I expect that quite a lot of Trump supporters are like my friend; they've bought into the visceral rhetoric (read: Fox News lies) and it's overridden their rational consideration of actual interests. So I don't hate them or even dislike them (well, except for the ones who are racist and/or homophobic and/or misogynist and area using Trump as cover to actually express their real viewpoints - they can take a long walk off a short pier). I feel sorry for them. But I sincerely hope they stay home on election day.

Daniel Martin @19: I hear you. I've given up going to Confession for the rest of the election season. I can't honestly tell the priest that I'm sorry for the hate I'm feeling toward Trump and his followers or promise amendment.

I am volunteering in the GOTV effort, donating what I can to the campaign, and praying both for my country and my own soul...

I am very, very frightened and sad.

I have some neighbors and acquaintances (I know because we've talked about it, very carefully and politely) who are voting for Donald Trump. They don't believe that he's a racist, that he lies all the time, that he's incompetent or insincere. They think he will (somehow -- it's never clear how) change the things in the country that they don't like. They think he's not sexist. They aren't bothered by his followers' anti-semitism or white nationalism, or by his embrace of torture; they discount it. They are not, themselves, all white or male or cisgendered.

They think President Obama is incompetent, untrustworthy, a tyrant, and that he wants to take away their guns. They think Hillary Clinton is a crook, a liar, a tool of Wall Street, that she has committed treason. They say all these things in calm, reasonable tones.

I don't know what I could possibly say to them that would change their minds, so I don't try. We don't talk politics; we talk about other things: kids, gardens, the traffic, other stuff. Meanwhile, I'm scared and angry. I've got pale skin, I was born here, I'm a woman, I'm queer, I'm a feminist, I'm Jewish and Catholic, I'm a liberal Democrat. Am I personally in danger if Trump wins? I have no idea. Are some of my neighbors and friends in danger? Possibly. Is the country in danger? I believe so. I can see the steps Trump might take with a complaisant, cowed, or even enthusiastic Republican Congress: national ID cards, "re-education" camps, private militias with police power, massive deportations.

I won't leave. No way, no how.

Speaking as someone who left the US for other reasons, and left the UK partly because of a gut feeling about what has blossomed into Brexit...leaving just to go isn't a good idea.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, if you're not going toward as well as away from, you're going to find the new place pretty hard to endure. It's possible—refugees do it all the time—but it's hard. I mean, it's hard enough sometimes when you chose to go to the new place and love it dearly. Without that, most people will fester terribly.

And secondly, the place you're going may not be safe either. Here I am in the Netherlands, land of tolerance, but note who else she meets at that party. And even if there weren't a pervasive worldwide drift toward the paranoid right, America's reach is pretty wide. There are not a lot of places on this planet where you can really escape, not and live the kind of life we live.

I too was dismayed by the number of people expressing a desire to leave the UK after the referendum result. Mind you most seem to have abandoned that idea, it was more just an expression of exasperation.

Magenta Griffith #22- coincidentally I just got that book at the start of June.

There are still some older UK people who, when they express despair that the country is going to a left-wing hell in a politically-correct handcart, threaten to move to Canada or Australia or New Zealand. They never seem to know any more about the politics or culture of these countries than I do (which isn't really very much); it comes from a lazy stereotype of the (mainly white bits of the) Commonwealth being like the UK but twenty or thirty years behind the times, thus satisfyingly lacking All That Nonsense, whatever it might be.

"My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria Station and go anywhere I damn well please."—Ernest Bevin.

I never travel anyway, but it's always been a cheering thought that if I wanted to, I could up sticks and move to anywhere between Lisbon and Tallinn, instantly, and no-one could stop me. Brexit promises the end of that civilized idea, or at least a severe bureaucratic check on it, and it hurts, even though the reasonable social democracy that I want to live under seems to be as much in retreat elsewhere in the EU as it is in the UK.

It'd appear that the DNC is appealing to our Better Angels, based on Michelle Obama's speech.

After watching the DNC last night I have SUCH an urge to knock heads together...

The witless Bernie nuts who are so politically ignorant that they don't know that being the last speaker of the evening is a privilege politicians fight for -- so they bitch and moan about having to wait through some sparkling speakers to hear their idol.

Plus, there's the claim that the seven DNC members "rigged" the primaries, when all these people did was discuss tactics to prevent Sanders from being the nominee. Hello? This is politics not beanbag and of course the party wanted the candidate who had worked to help the organization for 30 years.

Sigh...

CSPAN was identifying the last speaker of the night as "Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vermont", which would suggest he's not officially switched parties yet.

Of course the party would want a party member as their nominee!

Daniel Martin (#19) We have seen our savings and our lifestyle vanish into the maw of the current business model, which is essentially, to divide every enterprise into the smallest possible pieces and have them do business with each other.

My husband's retirement savings vanished into some kind of deal whereby the original company spun off a different company with different rules, which somehow ate up all of his savings. His job vanished into a system where businesses were bought and the property they owned separated off into another corporate entity, which then rented the premises back to the actual operation at extortionate rates. The result was that the business could barely afford to go on operating and took their shortfall out of the employees, hiring fewer than than the workload required and paying them less per hour than before (corrected for inflation).

Our mortgage was bought and sold and bought and sold many times, each time picking up the burden of having to pay for its own purchase, so that we now owe several times what we used to owe, all without having missed a payment or voluntarily increased our loan.

You know how, when you wanted to buy a house, you used to go to Your Bank -- the one where you had your savings account and your checking account, the one where you bought your kids' savings bonds? And you went to the corner with the sign reading "Home Loans"? Well, if you do that now, you will be referred to a home loan company, not Your Bank, and they will send out an appraiser from an appraisal company (also not Your Bank) who will compare your house to every house in the US and find it wanting, so that your rate of interest will be higher. And then when they have given you the loan, and you think "Well, that's over, Thank (whoever)!" they will sell your loan (see above).

And that's where our security has gone. It doesn't involve jobs or corporations going overseas, although I'm sure there is some connection with the mindset that says everything is about how much we can charge for it and what clever ways we can find to charge more.

older@34:You may want to consult a mortgage expert. If lending companies buy and sell your loan amongst themselves, it should have no effect on the amount you owe.

Older@34, Steve Halter@35: One ought not need to be a lawyer to manage everyday business but increasingly it seems one does.

Is it perhaps time for a "Standing at the Gates of Worldly Hell" thread? I hope that ML readers have better ideas than some of the people who seem hell-bent on marching proudly in.

Older @34: Our mortgage was bought and sold and bought and sold many times, each time picking up the burden of having to pay for its own purchase, so that we now owe several times what we used to owe, all without having missed a payment or voluntarily increased our loan.

Wait, what? How does that even work? Was that written into your original loan agreement? If not, how is this even legal?

(Not doubting you, just never heard of this  scam  type of mortgage before...?)

Friends, I have no idea how it is even legal. I do know that we can look for no relief until we complete every little bit of the repairs and restorations that were under way when we began to have health difficulties almost ten years ago.

Needless to say, we can't do that, because we can't afford materials out of current income, and we are no longer physically able to do most of the work ourselves as we used to, and we can't get loans against our barely adequate income.

But that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the current system of dividing everything up and charging separately for it. I think the only place I still pay one agency for the entire job is at the auto repair shop, and some of them sub-contract some of the work (eg transmissions). It's "free enterprise" metastasized.

Older #39: Indeed, it may not be legal -- it might be worth talking to lawyers, various agencies, or NGO groups.

Older: At the very least, it might be worth going back over your original loan contract...?

Older #39, ctn'd: I'm guessing that a judge would not be enthused about a loan that multiplies its amount despite all due payments. They might even use words like "loansharking".

Separately, if your loan has been sold and resold too casually, you might well be able to get it revoked entirely, by demanding (in legal process) that your current payment-collector "produce the note".

*IF* it's an adjustable-rate mortgage, the rate can go up despite timely payments. But as interest rates are still very, very low, I'd be surprised to find that the rates had gone up by much. (I am not a lawyer or mortgage banker, however.)

Oh yeah. ARMs. ::shudder:: I'd only take on one of those if I was EXTREMELY sure of my ability refinance if the rate went pear-shaped.

Which reminds me: I watched The Big Short over the weekend. Very well done. Mind-boggling doesn't really cover it.

Cassy B (#43) -- It seems to have become an adjustable rate on some previous sale. The rate went up years ago, and has never come back down. Since we're quite old, we are not regarded as eligible for long term loans, and in any case, the regulations are a lot more restrictive than they used to be. The only outcome of getting a different mortgage (aside from leaving Extortionate Mortgages Inc) would be an increase in our rate of interest and our payments.

Older @45: The lender selling the loan cannot change the contract you signed. It cannot transform a fixed-rate mortgage to an ARM, lengthen the term of the mortgage, etc.

If the conditions of the loan are changing because of 3rd party actions in a way that isn't described in your contract, then there's a problem.

It may be worth talking to legal aid or similar about the situation.

And mortgage fraud is definitely a thing, so it's definitely worth being clear on the details of your note.