Age of the Geek

It has begun
     President-Elect Donald Trump is a busy guy.
     Too busy for things like taking the stand in a court trial for defrauding students of Trump University. Instead, the man that bragged about not settling lawsuits, settled, paying out $25 million to make the problem go away. That makes sense. Such things can be distracting. Heck, Trump even got ahead of the game by pre-emotively announcing that he wouldn't use funds from his charitable foundation to pay the settlement.
     Because using charity funds to pay off his personal debts is something everybody would expect Donald Trump to do.
     In the end though, $25 million is a small price to pay to free him up so he can get down to business. And by business, I mean his own private business. Because while Trump is reportedly ducking out of intelligence briefings in the ramp-up to his Presidency, he is spending a lot of time talking to his new peers in the World Leaders Club. Leaders of countries that Trump happens to be doing business in. And sometimes his daughter, who is running his company in the most keenly sighted "blind trust" in history, is present during these conversations.
     It's okay though, because according to Trump, "The President can't have a conflict of interest. Which is a sentence I think most people would agree with if said in a different context.
     But even if he isn't directing 100% of his attention towards his Presidency, that's what delegating is for. Trump can look after his business and delegate the rest to his trusty cabinet. After all, he hires the best people.
     People like the new White House Chief of Staff, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. I guess "draining the swamp" of Washington D.C. corruption doesn't mean what I thought it might. For a guy that ran on a distrust of Washington insiders, his White House is going to be run by a guy who is as inside as you can get.
     On the other hand, even if Trump did drain the swamp, he's still bringing in scum of his own. Steve Bannon, founding member of Breitbart News, will move from his position as Trump's campaign manager to Counselor to the President. Under Bannon, Breitbart became Gawker for the alt-right, a haven of sensationalistic garbage journalism that would make Fox News look fair and balanced by comparison. This is the man who will have the ear of the President.
     It gets better though. Trump's National Security Advisor will be Michael Flynn, a former Lt. General who was forced into early retirement and spent a good chunk of the last year trying to out-inane Trump on Twitter. According to some of Colin Powell's leaked e-mails, Flynn was effectively fired because he was a pain to work with and had only a casual relationship with facts. This is the guy in charge of delivering intelligence reports to President Pence… I mean Trump.
     Meanwhile, the CIA is going to be directed by Representative Mike Pompeo, which is good news if you're a fan of torturing inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
     For Attorney General, Trump has picked Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a man who voted against prohibiting torture of prisoners, supports civil forfeiture, is strongly anti-immigrant, and who literally said he could not comprehend the fact that Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol.
     Thankfully, rumors that Ben Carson would be named the Secretary of Education did not come to pass. To dispel such rumors, Carson, a man who ran for President of the United States, announced that he was not qualified to run a federal agency.
     Instead, the Secretary of Education will be Betsy DeVos, a woman who has made a political career out of advocating for charter schools over public schools. She's all about choice, so when she slashes federal funding for public school programs, you'll still have the choice to drive your kid to Dubuque every day as an alternative.
     These are the people Trump thinks will make America great again.
     In the meantime though, he mostly just seems to be making America hate again. This month the FBI released a statistics report showing that hate crimes in general increased by 7 percent from 2014 to 2015.
     Getting deeper into the numbers, religiously motivated hate crimes saw a 24 percent increase, a healthy chuck of which can be attributed to the 69 percent spike in hate crimes against Muslims, reaching their highest rate since 2001. And that's without counting the hate crimes against Sikhs, who occasionally get targeted by people not smart enough to tell the difference between them and Muslims.
     With hundreds of reports of harassment being monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center in just the first week since the election, I'd say odds are better than average we'll be seeing new records next year.
     Of course that's not to say that Trump supports such actions. After all, he looked right into a "60 Minutes" camera and said "stop it." That's enough right? After all, it's just hate crimes committed in his name. It's not something serious, like getting booed at the theater, which inspired Trump to go on yet another Twitter tirade.
     Unless of course that was really just meant to distract attention away from the previously mentioned fraud settlement.
     All of this and he's not even President yet. It hasn't even been a month since the election. He's still nearly two months away from being sworn in and already his administration is a cesspool of corruption and cronyism, flavored with the ever present hint of white nationalism.
     This weekend, after protesting the Green Party's recount, Trump alleged that millions of illegitimate votes were cast. That sounds like a good reason to do a full audit, just to double check everything.
     Or even better, let's just do the whole thing over again.
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and doesn't expect the recount to change anything, but is crossing his fingers anyway.