Brian D. Buckley

A lot of people say that if you swear all the time, it loses its effectiveness. You’ve got to reserve it for situations where it’s really warranted. I’ve tried to write my blog according to that rule.

With that in mind, take a look at this fucking bullshit.

No, the U.S. isn’t permanently banning all Muslims from coming in. Not yet. But we have institutionalized religious intolerance.

This isn’t going to happen, it has already happened.

The authors of this news article seem calmer than I am, so I’ll let them explain:

President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing Syrian carnage be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.

So far, this is a geographical test, not a religious one — at least nominally. If that’s all it was, I’d only be regular angry: the ordinary, moderate amount of anger I feel every day when I look at the news. But keep reading.

Declaring the measure part of an extreme vetting plan to “keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of the country, Mr. Trump also ordered that Christians around the globe who are seeking entry into the United States should be granted priority over Muslims, for the first time establishing a religious test for refugees.

I don’t think I can adequately express how furious I am at the phrase establishing a religious test for refugees.

Okay. Breathe.

Out of curiosity, what are these countries we’re so concerned about?

Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

To be fair: These are, of course, dangerous and unstable places, and of course we should be careful about who we let into our country. (It wasn’t exactly an open-door policy before this order.) Also, to be fair: Many predominantly Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, are not on the list.

The main thing is that we prevent another 9/11 from happening. Right?

Announcing his “extreme vetting” plan, the president invoked the specter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most of the 19 hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., were from Saudi Arabia. The rest were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. None of those countries is on Mr. Trump’s visa ban list.

Oh. Well, um. Hm.

Saudi Arabia was the home of 15 of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden. It is an absolute monarchy in which Sharia law dominates and women aren’t allowed to vote.

Egypt was the home of one of the 9/11 hijackers, has been racked by violence, and is run by a dictator.

Not to mention, Turkey — another predominantly Muslim country — has been racked by violence, and is run by a president with strong authoritarian leanings.

By Trump’s logic, these are also very scary places, right? Kind of weird that they’re not on this list. But then, I’m sure he has his reasons. It’s not like he has business interests in —

Oh wait, just kidding. Trump has business interests in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. (And, incidentally, Indonesia.)

At this point you may be wondering if there’s a complete list of Mr. Trump’s business interests. Haha, nope! Because he still, somehow, still hasn’t released his tax returns. And he’s not planning to. (Reminder: There’s a petition.) But if you’re curious, Time has a good list of the business interests we do know about (or have reason to suspect).

So, to summarize:

• Muslims are dangerous
• But not the ones who can help make Trump rich
• Christians are not dangerous
• Torture is fine
• If you’re fleeing the ravages of war and torture, and you think the U.S. is some sort of haven of peace and liberty, you’d better find Jesus in a hurry
• Jesus was a Middle Eastern refugee

Stay tuned. We’ll be talking about more ways to fight back in the days and weeks to come.

Then sign this WhiteHouse.gov petition.

If it gets 100,000 signatures, a White House response is guaranteed (at least, under the current rules). It already has 362,000 signatures, so we’re way past that requirement. But the more signatures it gets, the stronger the message it sends.

You may think petitions don’t do a lot, and you may be right. But since it takes about thirty seconds and approximately zero effort, there’s not a lot of downside. Let’s fire on all cylinders.

A package arrived on our front porch, and I’m so confused:

What say you, good readers? Follow instructions? Or cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war?

UPDATE: It’s a Swiffer.

It was recently announced that Star Wars Episode VIII would be titled (subtitled? sub-subtitled?) The Last Jedi. Given the quality of recent installments in the franchise, and the return of both Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher (whose scenes were all shot before she passed away), there’s plenty to be excited about.

Even better, we at BrianDBuckley.com can now exclusively reveal this list of alternate titles for Episode VIII, all of which were very close contenders for the final name.

• The Ocho
• Master Skywalker or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dark Side
• Gungan Style
• There Is Literally No Title We Could Choose Which Would Cause You to Not Buy Tickets
• The Force Gets Sleepy Again
• C-3PO and Jar Jar’s Ewok Hijinks
• Oh No It Is a Spherical Superweapon
• Rey Doesn’t Like Sand Either but She’s Not Getting All Whiny About It
• We Ship Kylo Rey
• The First Order Retaliates (A Totally Original Storyline Bearing No Resemblance to The Empire Strikes Back)
• Let’s Talk About Midi-chlorians
• Kylo Ren Recites Some Poetry that Got a Really Positive Response on Deviantart
• The Hanukkah Special
• Title’); DROP TABLE Titles;–
• Our Screenwriter Quit but We Found Some Pretty Good Fan Fiction
• Pride and Prejudice and Droids
• Han Solo’s Resurrection and Immediate Second Death
• That’s Not How the Force Works
• The Plural of ‘Jedi’ Is ‘Jedi’ Okay?
• Whatever Fan Site Had ‘Finn Is Secretly Snoke,’ Good Job, You Guys Nailed It
• The Non-Canon Adventures of Sith Lord BB-8 and His Apprentice Poe
• The Penultimate Jedi

I never realized I could get such warm fuzzies from quality journalism.

In case you haven’t heard, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer — in his first press conference as speaker for the President — told a few petty and easily debunked lies about crowd size, among other things. Showing a bizarre obsession with the minutiae of this subject, he also took time to attack the media for “deliberately false reporting” (i.e., debunking his boss’s wild assertions). He launched a particular attack on a single detail of a single report by a single reporter, which was found to be false (and which the reporter had corrected already, within minutes of publication, along with an apology).

Of course, he took no questions.

It now fell to Kellyanne Conway to defend the indefensible — a job at which she has a great deal of experience. The video above is Chuck Todd from Meet the Press grilling her on these absurd, childish, unnecessary, easily debunkable, Orwellian lies. Why did the President feel the need to do this?

Over and over, he told her: “You did not answer the question.” “You did not answer the question.” “You did not answer the question.”

When, at one point, she referred to Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts,” he helpfully clarified:

Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the five facts he uttered . . . were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods.

I honestly have a hard time understanding this phenomenon.

It doesn’t matter how much you like Trump, or dislike the media, or anyone else. This is just basic, verifiable information. You don’t have to hate Trump for it, or say he’s a bad person. We’re just talking, at a very elementary level, about whether information is accurate or not.

You either care about the truth, or you don’t.

Many people don’t. But it’s incredibly gratifying that so many people, of so many political persuasions, still do.

It’s not often that I have anything nice to say about Fox News, but the video clip above is just glorious.

There’s a longstanding myth that anti-Trump protesters are largely paid professionals doing it for the money rather than from sincere belief. Like most such myths, there has never been any evidence for it, but that doesn’t stop people from believing.

A few days ago, on January 17, Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed a man who claims to run a group called Demand Protest, which supposedly pays people to go to rallies and demonstrations. Carlson delivers possibly the best opening I’ve heard for any interview, ever:

So, um, this is a sham. Your company isn’t real. Your website is fake. The claims you have made are lies. This is a hoax.

And that’s just in the first 60 seconds.

The Demand Protest guy makes a show of defending himself against these accusations, but as the interview goes on, it becomes obvious he’s just messing around. He says he was inspired by people like Julian Assange “and Peyton Manning,” which took my brain a second to process because he says it so casually.

Eventually the hoaxer explains:

It’s pretty darn easy these days to just say whatever the heck you want on national TV and have it passed off as truth. It’s pretty incredible to me how easy it was to get the coverage we got.

Indeed it is.

Two and a half hours till Inauguration. Now more than ever, let’s keep our eyes open for the truth.

I want to learn how to write the way babies learn how to talk: With constant practice, without dwelling on failure, certain of achieving a potential I can’t yet imagine.

With so much abuse flying out of one person’s mouth (er — keyboard) it can be tough to keep it all straight. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

Sunday, January 1, 2017
(No tweets today!)

Monday, January 2, 2017
The mayor of Chicago (implied)
The media and “pundits”
China

Tuesday, January 3, 2017
General Motors
Obamacare
Congress
U.S. intelligence community (implied)

Wednesday, January 4, 2017
John Podesta
The Democratic National Committee
The media
The Democratic National Committee (again)
Hillary Clinton
The media (again)
Obamacare
Senator Chuck Schumer
Democrats

Thursday, January 5, 2017
Democrats
Senator Chuck Schumer
Obamacare
The media
Toyota Motor Corp.
The Democratic National Committee

Friday, January 6, 2017
The media
Hillary Clinton
Democrats
Arnold Schwarzenegger
The Democratic National Committee

Saturday, January 7, 2017
The Democratic National Committee
(…and it’s not even noon yet)

Oh well. He may be hotheaded. But at least he’s not, like, in charge of making treaties or launching nukes or anything.