Your reader makes an important point about refusing to label Trump but learning how to deal with him and his personality traits. Ironically, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns a newspaper, The Observer, that wrote an opinion article in January 2016: “How to Deal With a Narcissist: 5 Secrets Backed by Research.” It now seems like a cry for help. We now know why there are reports of Kushner being quiet when Trump talks. It’s one of the five strategies outlined in the piece. I also found an article from Psychology Today when trying to deal with a narcissist in my life: “8 Ways to Handle a Narcissist.”

A prominent person in the tech industry remarks on how the Trump is trying to play us:

Great blogging from Fallows and your readers on how the media can deal with Trump. Trolling, fake news, his lying—very serious issues for the media. I believe he and his folks are doing a lot to point “fire” when they want to distract from something else. For example, KellyAnne and the Romney thing take the heat off the conflicts of interest [here’s a link to the latter]. Trump saying something moderate on global warming or Obamacare, then, his minions/Republicans working behind the scenes destructively. Friends are reporting to me that they’re getting calls, a Trump recording, telling them to ask their representatives to push to repeal Obamacare. This is absolutely one of the hardest politicians the media has ever seen and he has an astonishing ability to manipulate.

Another reader, Mike, tries to keep us all focused on what really matters:

In addition to Fallows’ Time Capsules, I have collected a small list of similar resources:

• A running guide to Donald Trump's highly abnormal presidency (VICE News)
• Donald Trump’s Conflicts of Interest: A Crib Sheet (The Atlantic)
• Trump's conflicts of interest take White House into uncharted territory (The Guardian)
• A running list of how Donald Trump’s new position may be helping his business interests (Washington Post)
• Trump’s Lack of Transparency Again Exposed by the Routine Openness of a Foreign Leader (The Intercept)
• Data firm in talks for role in White House messaging – and Trump business (The Guardian)
• Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’ (The Guardian)
• Trump Foundation admits to violating ban on ‘self-dealing,’ new filing to IRS shows (Washington Post)
• In Scotland, Trump Built a Wall. Then He Sent Residents the Bill. (New York Times)
• Trump could gain the most from his own tax plan (CNBC)

Of course, this barely scratches the surface. I mean for Christ’s sake, he still hasn’t released his tax returns!

Many of these stories pop up and then fade away with the next news cycle (usually brought on by whatever new inane thing Trump has tweeted), so it seems to me like nothing really sticks: he is The Teflon Donald. He peddles paranoid conspiracies with a pathological persistence, and when journalists do their job, he hits back with claims of a “biased”, “rigged”, “phony”, “failing” media. This is, as they say, problematic.

This next reader thinks that even Fallows isn’t going far enough in “calling it like it is”:

In the spirit of your own blogging, in addition to using the words Lie and False and Cruel and Amoral, etc., when they fit, please use the word Propaganda. This is an intentional pattern and strategy of our Propagandist-in-Chief. Please stop calling it “a furry creature that barks and chases squirrels up trees” and start calling it a dog.

Another suggestion for the media comes from reader Greg:

I believe journalists should stop using the word “tweet” to describe the tweets that Mr. Trump so often issues. Now that he is President-elect, his tweets carry far more significance than just the off-the cuff rants of an impulsive campaigner, as was often the way they were characterized in the past year. Calling these soon-to-be-presidential statements “tweets” only reinforces the tendency to not take his comments so seriously. But these are now presidential pronouncements. They express policy, positions. If Mr. Trump is going to continue to use Twitter as a major form of communication, then give these communiques (another good word for them) the gravitas they deserve. If The Atlantic still feels a need to source them to “Twitter,” then do it a final sentence or somewhere else in the story.

Another suggestion comes from another reader named Mike:

It would be interesting to see a new Time Capsule series focused on one issue: who in the media is vying to be the next Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. Both of these individuals were totally played by the GW Bush administration and wittingly played along for their own career success. I’m sure you remember the whole Iraq war thing. Sadly, I have no doubt that a new generation of reporters have no concern for truth or hard investigative work. They are too busy fluffing their nest today. Not to mention all the financially focused, false-news web sources that have exploded in number.

Investigative journalism needs to call out its own pretenders. I believe that should be a guideline for the media in reporting on the upcoming liar-in-chief administration.

This last reader, Rob, proposes an extremely unlikely but interesting scenario:

Donald Trump has upended the political and ethical norms of American presidential campaigns. This has been said so often and has been true for so long that observers may be numb to it. The list of unprecedented acts and statements is long and varied. [Fallows assiduously chronicled them here.] None of these acts are strictly speaking illegal. Yet they are shocking nonetheless because, taken together, they reflect his view that he may do anything that is strictly speaking legal to advance his narrow personal interests. That is, Mr. Trump has implicitly rejected the idea that extra-legal social, political, and ethical norms support our democracy and enable it to function even when the nation is deeply divided.

If Donald Trump the norm-destroying candidate were to become Donald Trump the norm-destroying President, the consequences for the stability of our democratic governing institutions could be grave. Freedom will not flourish where the conduct of those in power is regulated by law alone. Those who want to “give him a chance” implicitly hope, even if they don’t necessarily expect, that the weight of the office will transform Mr. Trump into someone more attentive to the importance of long established norms.

But hope is not a plan, especially when the stakes are so high. So I am proposing that the House of Representatives prepare, and have at the ready from Day 1 of the Trump administration, draft articles of impeachment that will do what Donald Trump may be unwilling to do: enforce norms rooted in fundamental constitutional commitments.

I have drafted templates (modeled on the Articles of Impeachment of Bill Clinton) and appended them [in my email]. My examples highlight two constitutional principles worthy of protection through threat of impeachment. The first three articles deal with the potential for Mr. Trump to use his office for financial gain, either his own or that of family members or business associates. The last article deals with the potential for Mr. Trump to use the vast powers of the executive branch to impose costly, embarrassing, and disruptive investigations on his political enemies and critics.

Both kinds of abuse of power may not be strictly “illegal” in the sense of violating any governing statutes, and they are unlikely to be within the reach of courts to prevent. For that reason, it is all the more important for Congress to rise in defense of them.

I am not naive. I recognize that the House of Representatives (and the Senate) are presently in the control of the same party as Mr. Trump. The House is not going to impeach the President on the first day of his administration, and it shouldn’t. But that is not a reason to refuse to prepare them. In fact, there are several reasons to prepare the articles even if they remain in a drawer during the entirety of the Trump administration.

First, the act of publicly preparing the draft articles themselves will serve as a marker of important constitutional norms that Mr. Trump transgresses at his and the nation’s peril. Drafting model articles of impeachment will inform not only the President himself, but also those in his administration. There are constraints on the President built into the deliberative process within the executive branch. Articles of impeachment pre-drafted by members of Congress could strengthen the hands of those in the administration who see public value in restraining the self-serving impulses of the President. And, of course, drafting articles of impeachment would inform the public as well, providing a baseline against which to judge Mr. Trump’s choices.

Second, publicly preparing the draft would itself be a valuable assertion of Congress’s role in regulating the outer edge of what is a vast area of discretion committed to the executive branch. Defining the boundaries of permissible executive discretion is not a job only for the President or the Supreme Court. The President always has an interest in advancing the power of his own office. And transgressions that affect the political culture writ large may well prove out of the Court’s reach. Congress has an institutional interest in overseeing executive branch abuses. Under the unprecedented circumstances we face, with this incoming President so cavalierly expressing a willingness to abuse the powers of his office, it is especially important for Congress to declare its readiness to police the conduct of the President himself.

Third, sometimes the credible threat of deploying power is all it takes to encourage better conduct. For example, the President possesses the veto power. But he will commonly issue a veto threat, after careful internal White House deliberation, in an effort to encourage Congress to take a better course of action. Likewise here, a credible impeachment threat may be all it takes to encourage President Trump to take a better course of action.

Fourth, it is no secret that the President and many members of the Republican congressional delegation do not see eye to eye on matters of policy and personal conduct. By declaring their intention to police the President on matters of constitutional principle related to his personal conduct, the Republican leadership would be able to maintain separation from a President they have reason to fear may disappoint for lack of experience and competence across a wide array of his responsibilities. Republican members of Congress may not wish to tie their political fortunes so tightly to this President. If some meaningful number of Republicans could stand on Constitutional principle and endorse the drafting of potential articles of impeachment, Congress would be credibly threatening actual impeachment should Mr. Trump not alter his behavior.

I recognize the irony of proposing an act that runs contrary to a political norm (Congress threatening an incoming President with impeachment) in defense of political norms in general. But the damage from the election and transition process is substantial. And Mr. Trump has shown almost no indication that he is approaching his new and rather awesome responsibilities with a respect for the dignity of the office and the power it carries. Scolding the cast of a Broadway show via Twitter, and baselessly asserting that his opponent’s popular vote lead is the product of “millions” of fraudulent votes suggests that this President-elect has learned precisely the wrong lesson: that indulging his petty, self-serving impulses works. The only institution with the authority to declare that he is wrong is Congress.

• Members of Congress who act as a check and balance on the president will see their stars rise, especially if they are accessible to the media. The Narcissist in Chief isn’t the only person in Washington with an ego. It will start first with the Never Trumpers, especially those with nothing to lose, who are near retirement. Then the younger ones will want some of the glory. Again, an indirect conduit to White House news. They can use their authority to demand information, reducing the media’s research costs.
• The bulk of the front-facing media attention will be on members of Congress, especially if the Narcissist in Chief refuses access, out of necessity. The Narcissist in Chief will react accordingly when he is no longer the center of attention and possibly dig a very deep inescapable hole for himself. Most of his attacks are projections, so that’s your first place to look.
• A Deep Throat will come forward within a year, if not sooner. This leads me to a related point: As long as Melania Trump remains in Trump Tower and the Secret Service has two floors, it will be difficult to get information out of Trump Tower. Perhaps NYC will get tired of the security costs and hassles and that will change.
• There will be a renaissance in investigative journalism. Ah, back to the glory days of Watergate.
• FOIA, FOIA, FOIA. Did I mention FOIA?  Shoe leather. Digging through court and registry files. You may also end up having to order transcripts of court hearings. SEC filings.
• Cultivate the people who were around the failed businesses.
• Keep a sharp eye on what the foreign press is covering. They’re watching what he’s doing in their countries and what their governments are doing to cultivate the U.S. president.
• Get to know the people at the ACLU and other civil rights groups. They will uncover legislative initiatives the media might overlook and incidental findings that aren’t immediately relevant to the cases they’re litigating so they won’t come out in court. Some of this will be quite juicy.
• We’ll probably see a continued increase in paid media subscriptions, as the media is seen as the only hope of keeping feet to the fire. Many more will come after people have paid off Christmas bills, if they didn’t receive them as gifts. Proposed Social Security and health insurance reforms will be big drivers of this. Baby Boomers and older seniors will be the ones buying the subscriptions initially. They’ll be frightened and Lord knows they don’t need any more tchotchkes for the house. Attention to issues that immediately affect that demographic will bring eyeballs to your sites. And a younger demographic will be wondering how they have to reorient their investment and life strategies. That’s the next wave: people needing in-depth analysis. What will they do with the new education paradigm for their kids?
• Fake news sites will enchant for a while until the fake news hits too close to a subject the reader knows something about. Their credibility will be shot with the majority of the public before the end of the four-year term ...

Maybe I can have a bit of fun with an unrelated prediction here too. Now that no one is coming after their guns, the NRA will have a fundraising shortfall. It will be interesting to see what they do to make themselves relevant again.

I’ll keep this handy to compare against the unfolding news.

***

Next, a reader with mental-health experiences writes to point me toward what has become a very popular post on Medium, “Coping with Chaos in the White House.” It is by N. Ziehl and is adapted from an earlier Facebook post by the same writer.

The Medium post is a 10-point checklist, which I encourage you to read for yourself. Unlike most analysis of Trump’s behavior at The Atlantic or other major press outlets, it’s based on a “medicalized” discussion of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. Again, I am explicitly not making any such medical assumptions. But if you assume that the list applies to the behaviors Donald Trump has unambiguously shown, I think you’ll find its items very useful. Samples:

1) [This behavior] is not curable and it’s barely treatable. He is who he is. There is no getting better, or learning, or adapting. He’s not going to “rise to the occasion” for more than maybe a couple hours…

2) He will say whatever feels most comfortable or good to him at any given time. He will lie a lot, and say totally different things to different people. Stop being surprised by this….  If you’re trying to reconcile or analyze his words, don’t. It’s 100% not worth your time. Only pay attention to and address his actions.

4) Entitlement is a key aspect.... As we are already seeing, he will likely not observe traditional boundaries of the office… This particular attribute has huge implications for the presidency and it will be important for everyone who can to hold him to the same standards as previous presidents…

8) People [with these traits] often foster competition for sport in people they control. Expect lots of chaos, firings and recriminations… He will punish enemies. He may start out, as he has with the NYT, with a confusing combination of punishing/rewarding, which is a classic abuse tactic for control. If you see your media cooperating or facilitating this behavior for rewards, call them on it.

And, some final how-to advice for media and citizens as we enter this new terrain:

10) Whenever possible, do not focus on the narcissist or give him attention. Unfortunately we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the president, but don’t circulate his tweets or laugh at him — you are enabling him and getting his word out. (I’ve done this, of course, we all have… just try to be aware.) Pay attention to your own emotions: do you sort of enjoy his clowning? do you enjoy the outrage? is this kind of fun and dramatic, in a sick way? You are adding to his energy. Focus on what you can change and how you can resist, where you are. We are all called to be leaders now, in the absence of leadership.

We are all called to be leaders now, in the absence of leadership.

Our journalistic and political assumption is that each side to a debate will “try” to tell the truth—and will count it as a setback if they’re caught making things up. Until now the idea has been that if you can show a contrast between words and actions, claim and reality, it may not bring the politician down, but it will hurt. For instance: Bill Clinton survived “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” but he was damaged then, and lastingly, when the truth came out. To close the loop, knowledge of the risks of being caught has encouraged most politicians to minimize provable lies.

None of this works with Donald Trump. He doesn’t care, and at least so far the institutional GOP hasn’t either.

How can the press gird for action? Here are three early indications from the news:

***

1) Call out lies as lies, not “controversies.” In covering Trump’s latest illegal-voting outburst, The Washington Post and The LA Times took the lead in clearly labeling the claim as false, rather than “controversial” or “unsubstantiated.” The Post used the headline at the top of this item, and the one below on another fact-check report:

The LAT also took this approach in an online story:

By contrast, the version I’ve seen from the NYT takes a more “objective” tone—there’s “no evidence” for Trump’s claim, much as there was “no evidence” for his assertion that Ted Cruz’s dad played a part in the JFK assassination.

What’s the difference? The NYT said that the claim had “no evidence.” The Post said it was false. The Times’s is more conventional—but it is also “normalizing” in suggesting that Trump actually cared whether there was evidence for what he said. I think the Post’s is closer to calling things what they are.

A long-experienced figure in the news business sent me a note about the contrasting Post and NYT stories:

It’s not that Trump cited no evidence, it’s that the claim itself is groundless. Reading The Times, you would think that Trump broke a debating rule.

Now look at the two ledes, emphases mine.

Times:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he had fallen short in the popular vote in the general election only because millions of people had voted illegally, leveling his claim — despite the absence of any such evidence — as part of a daylong storm of Twitter posts voicing anger about a three-state recount push.

Post:

President-elect Donald Trump spent Sunday ridiculing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign for joining a recount effort in Wisconsin, ending his day on Twitter by parroting a widely debunked conspiracy theory that her campaign benefited from massive voter fraud.

Subtler, perhaps, than their respective headlines, but one reflects the essential truth whereas the other is merely fatuously accurate.

***

2) Fighting for Reality Itself. I highly recommend this new essay by Ned Resnikoff at the Think Progress site. It explains the chaos-generating logic of Trump’s seemingly illogical stream of nonstop lies big and small, which Resnikoff traces to reality TV, to Breitbart and Steve Bannon, and to Vladimir Putin’s advisor Vladislav Surkov. It also lays out very different responsibilities for the press and public institutions from what they have assumed their duties to be. A sample about the media:

If the United States is to remain a liberal democracy, then Trump’s non-linear warfare needs to fail. Politics needs to once again become grounded in some kind of stable, shared reality. It’s not clear how that could happen. But there are at least a couple of steps that anti-authoritarians can make right away...

Journalists need to understand what Trump is doing and refuse to play by his rules. He is going to use the respect and deference typically accorded to the presidency as an instrument for spreading more lies. Reporters must refuse to treat him like a normal president and refuse to bestow any unearned legitimacy on his administration.

They must also give up their posture of high-minded objectivity — and, along with it, any hope of privileged access to the Trump White House. The incoming president has made clear that he expects unquestioning obedience from the press, and will regard anyone who doesn’t give it to him as an enemy.

Seriously, please read and reflect on this essay. Also, please read Michael Tomasky’s latest essay in The Daily Beast.

***

3) Dealing with this kind of man. While I was chronicling Donald Trump’s lies, outbursts, and attention-failures in the Time Capsule series, I received a large amount of mail offering medical hypotheses for why he might behave the way he did. I suspect the same is true of most other reporters who have written about him. And like most other press operations, while the campaign was underway The Atlantic deliberately decided not to “medicalize” any discussion of Trump’s behavior. Most of us are not doctors; even the doctors who were writing to us had not dealt with Trump firsthand; and from a civic point of view, the real issue was the behavior itself, not whatever label you might attach to it.

The campaign is now over; Trump is set to assume enormous power; and the world and the country need to understand how to deal with him. A reader with professional expertise in this field has sent a note on how journalism should prepare for Trump, especially in thinking about his nonstop string of lies.

Again, to be clear, this reader is not “medicalizing” Trump’s behavior or recommending that the press do so. But there are common-sense meanings for terms to describe behavior, which we can use without relying on a medical diagnosis. We can say someone seems cruel without saying he’s a psychopath; that he seems amoral without claiming he’s a sociopath; that he seems moody or depressed without implying a clinical diagnosis. And in common-sense terms, anyone can see that Trump’s behavior is narcissistic, regardless of underlying cause. I turn it over to the reader:

Now that he is poised to assume power, I (and a lot of others) are feeling some urgency around holding his worst tendencies in check and preventing him from following through on his noxious campaign challenges.

It troubles me to observe that so far the news media are having trouble when they deal with him directly. I am seeing good investigative reporting on his conflicts of interest, for instance, but it looked like the NY Times just sort of rolled over when they interviewed him in person.

Nobody seems to realize that normal rules do not apply when you are interviewing a narcissist. You can’t go about this in the way you were trained, because he is an expert at manipulating the very rules you learned. It’s clear to me that reporters (and anyone else) who will deal with DT directly need to take a crash course in handling someone displaying these behaviors.

The Times got in trouble by trying to make sense of his words. It’s an easy mistake for people in a word-saturated medium to make, but anyone who’s dealt with a narcissist knows you never, ever believe what they say—because they will say whatever the person they are talking to wants to hear. DT is a master at phrasing things vaguely enough that multiple listeners will be able to hear exactly what they want. It isn’t word salad; it’s overt deception, which is much more pernicious.  

But the Times fell for it. I’m watching the same mistake get made over and over again, but I don’t know how to help journalists get out of the trap. If we are going to survive the days ahead, someone needs to teach reporters the difference between naming narcissism—[JF note: which, to emphasize, there is no point doing]— vs. dealing effectively with a narcissist.  

There's a ton of information out there about how to deal with narcissists. I would really like to see journalists get as interested in the topic—and adept at the strategies—as abused spouses are. We need to somehow widely disseminate ideas for dealing with it.

The narrative on election night was all how Clinton turned victory to defeat, her campaign overconfident, her voters staying home, and her herself unable to best perhaps the least capable candidate ever nominated by a major party.

The numbers in Florida and California just do not support that evaluation. In both places, turnout was up over 8 percent. She pulled a 930K vote lead in counties covering 58 percent of the state’s voters, counties where Obama ran up a 770K margin that enabled him to win a 70K victory in 2012. Her lead failed because Trump himself ran up a million vote margin in the remaining rural counties, beating Romney’s numbers by 350K. Hilary lost Florida, but she and Trump engaged the voters.

In California, she will nearly double Trump's tally, and out-poll Obama (the 2008 and 2012 version) by about three percentage points. She will receive nine million plus votes in California. These are the votes pushing her national total two million and more votes past that of the President-elect.

She will not be inaugurated two months hence, not in virtue of a pitiful campaign. She wasn’t perfect, and sometimes not very good, but she received support from enough of the republic to win the office in any universe not governed by an 18th century compromise with the slave-owning aristocrats of the Carolinas and Virginia.

She has 2.5 million more votes than the person who will be inaugurated. That is not a close margin.

This is what a democratic crisis looks like.

***

We all know that the electoral college is the established system for choosing presidents. (Though the National Popular Vote compact is a way better idea for a modern nation—and is what we would expect and recommend for any other nation.) We all know that if there were no electoral college, the campaign dynamics would have been different and the popular vote total might have been different too. We know as well that this is different from the 2000 election, in which a change in the outcome in even one state would have changed the electoral college result, in favor of the popular vote winner, Al Gore. The dynamics now are different.

But as the reader says, this is quite a disproportion. On the one hand, we have a result swung by a tens of thousands of votes in three crucial states. On the other hand, we have enormous impending changes in international and domestic policy. Americans would not regard the result as normal or proportional if they observed it anywhere else.

Alone among systems of government, democracy imposes duties on the ruled as well as the rulers. It doesn’t work if those duties are shirked by too many people. People of means—coincidentally the traditional core of the Republican Party—have a special interest in maintaining standards of ethics and probity in candidates for national office, for without lawful and universally accepted authority no property is safe.

The Republican Party supported a war hero and veteran legislator for President in 2008. It backed a legitimate businessman and successful governor in 2012. This year, it fell in behind Trump. About as many Republicans voted for Trump as for Romney four years earlier. The great majority of these were not distressed working-class voters. They weren’t threatened by minorities or by globalization. They were—are— people who have lived easy lives, never wanting for anything save the most garish accoutrements of great wealth.

They knew Donald Trump was ignorant and dishonest, and it didn’t matter to them. They knew he was a sex predator who fathered children by various women, and it didn’t matter. Cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wives, consumer fraud, the bogus charity, the sponsorship of the Russian intelligence services, the anti-Semitic associates, cheating contractors who had done work for him, the picking on individuals before massive rallies, the insufferable racism, the continual running down of America—none of that mattered.

No, the only thing that mattered to Republicans of means once Trump was nominated by the Republican Party was that he had been nominated by the Republican Party. Loyalty to party took precedence over loyalty to American democracy, its mission, and traditions. What counted—all that counted—was that Trump had been chosen to lead Our Team.

What a pathetic thing is decadence. Millions of Republicans as comfortable and secure as any people who have ever lived, who owe everything to the historic miracle that is the United States, chose to go along with a presidential candidacy shot through with moral degeneracy and contempt for the public good. They had other choices in the primaries; they were warned by their own former leaders what Trump represented. They voted for him anyway, hoping to give their team a win in the game, the shallow entertainment that is all they think of politics.

They have put this Republic that has been the light of the world for 240 years in danger. They have put freedom in danger. Years of easy prosperity and soft living have taught them that America could be taken for granted. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Stimson, Eisenhower, Reagan might just as well be random groups of letters to these people, stifled by material wealth and physical sensation.

They will have second thoughts, these comfortable Republicans of means. They will flake off from Trump long before the sad nostalgists and struggling rural voters who actually believe his promises of magic. They will lower his approval ratings. But they made him President, and gave him a Congress full of cyphers, slackwits, and doddering old men to work with. What a price our country and the world will pay, and for how long they will pay it, because those Americans most richly blessed failed so completely in their duty as citizens.

***

“Democracy doesn’t work if its duties are shirked by too many people.”

Apropos for today, “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing,” by William Butler Yeats, 102 years ago. For the reminder about this poem I thank a Republican friend who took an early and honorable stand against Donald Trump.

     Now all the truth is out,

     Be secret and take defeat

     From any brazen throat,

     For how can you compete,

     Being honor bred, with one

     Who were it proved he lies

     Were neither shamed in his own

     Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;

     Bred to a harder thing

     Than Triumph, turn away

     And like a laughing string

     Whereon mad fingers play

     Amid a place of stone,

     Be secret and exult,

     Because of all things known

     That is most difficult.

Back to our reader in San Diego:

All through his life as a celebrity, Trump’s appearances have been either scripted or edited to show him in the best light—or at least a humorous light. His anger was his tool, but it was always shown as a strength of character, not as a flaw. Then, during the campaign, Trump expected to be shown in the same manner and was dismayed to see his true self. He really doesn’t recognize himself. To him, The Media have edited all of his appearances to make him look bad on purpose. That’s the only reason I can come up with to explain his constant insistence that he didn’t “say/do/act like that.”

Trump’s supporters have fallen for a man who is only as real as a storybook. Reality TV is built upon layers and layers of pretense: scripted storylines, production staff who stir the pot in order to create tension, sequences of events are edited for a better arc, and so on. The viewers know this, but still they are certain that a person’s “true” character is being revealed.

It’s like looking at Photoshopped pictures of fashion models; you know it’s not a true representation of the person, but you still expect the person to look like the picture. Then, when you see him/her at the airport, you’re surprised he’s/she’s not as gorgeous.

Another reader on the era of reality TV:

Decades ago I pursued a journalism degree, at the University of Montana J-school, followed by a master’s in print journalism in Stanford’s communication department. Throughout I was drilled in the catechism of our ancient craft. I learned that the three purposes of journalism are to inform, to persuade and to entertain—in that order. A couple of my most prescient professors issued dire warnings that we must protect our trade against the tendency toward frivolity, or entertainment.

Today, I think we have arrived at a point where, at best, these go in reverse order, or at worst we are almost entirely in the entertainment realm. It began, perhaps, with choosing an actor as our president. It ends up with a reality television star as candidate: a person only capable of entertainment, with a dash of persuasion, but zero information. The disturbing part is how readily the public was brought along. I realize myriad factors are at play, but how sad that we have an election that was “informed” almost completely by entertainment.

Back to the real world of information, here’s a thorough debunking of Trump’s talking points on the stump—“25 outright lies in a single speech”:

One of Trump’s greatest rhetorical strengths is interrupting people with pithy and withering insults. That may have worked against “low-energy Jeb” and “Little Marco” and others in the primaries, but it probably didn’t work in the one-on-one debates of the general election, as reader Todd argues:

I might be too late getting to this, but I think an under-discussed tactic of Clinton’s was that she studiously ignored Trump’s interjections during the debates. My recollection is that in the GOP debates, the other candidates generally allowed Trump to stop their train of thought as they responded to his snipes. Clinton didn’t do this. She just kept pushing on, saying what she wanted to say and ignoring Trump. I feel that this decision was vitally important, keeping her on long-form answers where she has the advantage on Trump and not getting bogged down in trading barbs, which is Trump’s territory.  

Clinton rigorously prepped along those lines, of course, and many are have remarked on her “listening woman face.” (My colleague Rosa has covered this territory with readers.) Here’s another reader on a key moment in the Trump-Clinton debates:

Over the course of the presidential debates, Trump repeatedly said that he’s “smart” for exploiting tax loopholes and that he’s “entitled [to do so] because of the laws.”

Much has been written about this in a vaguely indignant way that doesn’t really name the core offense, and I think the problem is that we’re all partially persuaded by this idea that it’s smart to behave in a way that makes money. But there really is a moral failure at play in this dynamic. Let’s look at a comparable example: a middle-class family that chooses to eat all of their meals at a local homeless shelter.

There’s no law prohibiting such behavior, and for a family of four this would be a “smart” way to save money. But the overwhelming majority of people would, I think, be horrified by such an idea and far too humiliated and embarrassed to do such a thing. It’s not clear to me, though, that Trump would respond this way. As it stands, he has effectively argued that this middle class family is “entitled” to eat at the homeless shelter because the law doesn’t explicitly prohibit it.

The vast majority of your emails have been critical of Trump rather than Clinton, but here’s a pretty standard critique of Clinton, from a reader in Kansas:

I disagree with Fallows that Hillary Clinton’s “experience” as U.S. senator and secretary of state was meaningful. I tune in to C-Span often. I read the NYT, The New Yorker, NY Review of Books, Slate and Salon; I listen to NPR almost as a religious devotion. All of these outlets (C-Span is neutral of course) have been cheerleading for Clinton for years. But I can’t recall any of them actually enumerating her accomplishments as Senator or SoS, identifying any “value added” attributable to her while she held  those positions. What controversial positions did she stake out and take the lead on in the Senate? Was her time in the Senate any more impressive than other Democrats who shared her basic policy views like, say, Al Franken? How, precisely how, did she distinguish herself?

To me, she was just biding her time, schmoozingly building her resume for the single goal she has targeted since college: POTUS.  I think the same holds for her tenure at SoS. What—specifically what—value did she add to policy-making on such areas as our approach in Libya (no, not Benghazi), Syria, Ukraine, the European refugee tragedy, to name a few? It’s one thing to prefer her clearly over Trump—no contest, really—but to rhapsodize her “experience” as senator and SoS? I just can’t see the empress’s clothes.

For a much longer and thorough series of criticisms of Clinton, and the Clintons more generally, check out the “Lesser Evil” episode of Sam Harris’s podcast, Waking Up, featuring my old Atlantic and Dish colleague, Andrew Sullivan:

A reader, Lee, recommended that episode after seeing this curated list from my boss Matt Thompson. Lee was “hooked from beginning to end”:

The “Lesser Evil” episode is a relentless takedown of both candidates—in the interest of building the case that voting for Hillary is the only viable option. Frankly, I had stopped thinking so critically of Hillary because Trump is so dangerous. While I still can’t agree with the “Hillary is evil” argument, the extended criticism of her in the first half of the episode was both necessary and reasonably thoughtful. (It also has some crossover appeal; I can imagine Limbaugh-inclined relatives listening and reconsidering Trump, or at least their NeverHillary stance.) And then that first half was totally overshadowed by their articulation of the incredible threat Trump and his rhetoric pose to so many aspects of Western democracy, leaving Hillary as the only sane choice.

This next reader is opting out of that choice:

I see nothing positive in either candidate. Trump is unfit by temperament. Clinton is unfit by ideology. It’s like having to choose between a train engineer with no experience and an experienced engineer who will take you to a place you don’t want to go. One might get you in a train wreck; the other surely will take you where you don’t want to go.

I’m not getting on the train. I am not casting a vote for president for the first time in 50 years. Since I’m in California, my non-vote will not matter. But I will be able to look myself in the mirror and say that I followed my conscience.

In response to Fallows’s note “A Third-Party Voter Makes His Case (and I Dissent),” a reader sighs:

Third-party voters in the U.S. seem confused about a two-party system. In a two-party system, factions coalesce into two parties before the election. In a parliamentary system, factions coalesce into two parties after the election.

Which system is better? I have no idea. However, voting third party in a two-party system makes no sense except to satisfy the pique of the third-party voter, a kind of narcissism and not at all honorable. The problem for third-party voters is not Clinton or Trump, it is the system itself.

This next reader would agree:

This election isn’t about Clinton, it isn’t about Trump, and it sure isn’t about your New York reader’s feelings, sentiments, ideas, or sense of self. You either get democracy, or you get not democracy.

One of only two people will be president-elect on Wednesday morning: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. There is effectively no other option for voting, no matter who else is running. You can either help Trump win, or you can help Clinton win. You don’t get any other choice.

This morning, I was conceding to the Bernie die-hards (in absentia, since I can’t stand to talk to any of them at this point) who won’t vote for Clinton, that I suspect Sanders would be in a better position against Trump at this point. We certainly wouldn’t have to put up with Comey.

But it simply doesn’t matter, because it’s no longer an option.

This is the problem with pseudo-intellectualism—or bullshit, in simple language.  People don’t know when to stop. They always think there’s a but, when there’s only a binary.

There’s much more on the subject in the reader thread “The Hunger for a Third Party in 2016.” This next reader suspects Trump will go third party himself:

I thought it was interesting that in Chris Bodenner’s note “The Trap the GOP Should Have Seen Coming,” he quotes several people who contend that the GOP should have abandoned the party to Trump and started a third party. But, as James Glassman has said, it’s nearly impossible to do that in America at the moment.

I contend that the way forward is to convince Trump to start the “T” Party and take his core followers with him (35% of the GOP), allowing the party to rebrand itself in a more contemporary way that focuses on small government, low taxes, state’s rights, and a strong military. If they leave behind their xenophobic, so-called “values” issues, they could appeal to the 40% of Americans who are registered Independent.

Why would Trump start the 3rd party? Because he won’t want to leave the national stage. The adoration and “many people who say” he is great would persuade him he couldn’t lose. Because he is mad at Republicans who backstabbed him. Because he doesn’t do “math.” Because nothing would appeal to his ego more than having a party that was all about him ... or should I call it a cult?

One other hand, this reader doubts that Trump will be able to mount any political comeback if he loses today:

All he wants to do is to win so much that he will get sick of winning, but you can't do that from the political sidelines, especially after having lost to a woman. When his base finds out that he was lying all along about “the wall,” and that he has no real power now, they are not going to start a revolution on their own without a leader. And they are not going to start a revolution with a leader who himself lost their cause. It is going to end with a whimper and not a bang.

The only permanent threat to democracy will be if the Democrats don’t realize that they got off easy, and if the Republicans don’t think it wasn’t their fault. Unless the Left can figure out how to appeal to the white working class, the whole thing will just happen again next time. The Republicans, embarrassed at being a permanent minority party, will try to whip up their base again, and the Democrats will represent “the system” that the base is angry at.

Our hope with the Time Capsule series was to create a comprehensive collection of Trump’s most egregious acts of unprecedented, norm-shattering behavior for members of the Republican mainstream to reflect upon and avoid in the future. A long-time reader, Jack, appreciates Jim’s efforts:

As a retired USAF veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, I would like to offer my kudos to James Fallows for his admirable contributions. His insight, opinion based on fact, and the manner with which he delivered them is, without a doubt, a credit to your publication.

And another reader, Steven, wants to see Fallows continue the Notes series even if Trump is soundly defeated today:

Thank you to James Fallows for his Notes. His blogging has served as a form of lifeline as I was starting to wonder if I was alone in my thinking. Fortunately, I realize that is not the case. Unfortunately, I also realize that even after the election is over, we have not heard the last of Trump or his followers. More importantly, I fear we have not heard the last from his pretend followers more interested in achieving their life long goal of minority rule, namely the cynical GOP leadership who put power (disguised as party) over country.

The easiest path for them to follow is to continue with their damaging obstructionism now targeted against Clinton. This one issue, combined with continued gerrymandering and voter suppression, is the ONLY thing the disparate factions of the GOP can agree on and is the only glue that seems to hold them together. They appear ready, willing, and able to whip that mule to victory or total defeat.

Please consider continuing your Notes series after the election, as I suspect we will continue to see things we have never seen before as our democratic institutions continue to be attacked. You may also consider rebranding it using a different title. Either way, Fallows’s brave voice of clarity and reason will be needed to serve and defend the Republic.

• No on Prop 53. In my profile of Jerry Brown three years ago, I said that his lifetime’s immersion in California politics had equipped him, in his return stint as governor, to make the big long-term investments that had been so important to the state’s past growth. One of California’s challenges is its arcane “direct democracy” system of initiatives and referendums, which were enacted in a reform spirit more than a century ago but in practice turn out mainly to favor well-financed interests and pressure groups. One well-financed activist, a rich farmer from the Stockton area, has put millions into financing a proposition that would add another layer of gridlock and impediment to big statewide projects. Most newspapers in the state have editorialized harshly against it, e.g. Sac Bee, SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury News, Santa Cruz Sentinel, East Bay Times, and the Monterey Herald. Here is a video from Brown himself. As the governor puts it in that clip, “It may sound OK, but it’s bad for California.” If I lived anyplace in California, I would vote No on 53.
                                                                                                                
• Yes for Robert White. If I lived and voted in D.C., which in fact I do, I would (and will) vote for Robert White for an at-large seat on the City Council. As I mentioned back in June, his upset victory in the Democratic primary over incumbent Vincent Orange was a positive step for the city. And while I’m at it, also Yes for Mary Lord for the at-large seat on the D.C. school board. (And, very locally, Yes for Chuck Elkins for the Advisory Neighborhood Commission.)
                                         
• Yes on D.C. Statehood. The 99%+ of the U.S. population that lives in the 50 states doesn’t care. But it’s just not fair that those who live in D.C. pay the same income taxes as everyone else, but have no representation in Congress, and no state-style sovereignty over local decisions. How would the Utah or New York legislatures like it, if some Congressman from another part of the country got to double-check laws that they passed? We don’t like it either. It’s a symbolic vote, but: C’mon.
                                         
• And for the presidency. You already know this one.  

Read; think; vote!

In addition, it appears to be that Comey has, as a number of commentators put it, lost control of his agency. Again, this should be grounds for termination, and Clinton should bring in a new director to clean house and impose some real discipline on the agency. That some agents are intervening in the political process by leaking information is inexcusable.

I note that, when first elected, Obama chose not to pursue criminal actions against any members of the Bush Administration, even though there likely were sufficient grounds to do so. The reason was that Obama feared that the partisan reaction to prosecuting would have poisoned the well and eliminated any chance of the GOP working with him on his legislative agenda. Of course, as we now know, the GOP refused to cooperate anyway. (In addition, Obama chose not to seek indictments because he was loathe to create the apparent precedent of prosecuting the prior administration. IN this regard, he showed prudent, long-range thinking.)

***

Investigations would be good, not bad. Another reader wanting a tougher line:

Respectfully, I think you’re way off base here. First, you summarily conclude that “hearings or investigations into whatever has happened at the FBI would not be worth it for anyone.”

The problem here is that an investigation into whatever happened at the FBI is not simply a matter of punishing the director for his error/malfeasance, but actually investigating a disturbing series of events at the nation’s national largest law enforcement agency. It wasn’t just Comey. Credible reports indicate that (1) Comey acted in part because he knew an anti-Clinton faction at the FBI would leak it first; and (2) that there is a rogue faction at the FBI that was pushing against FBI and DOJ orders to investigate a public candidate for office and to leak damaging information and innuendo at a critical time in the election season. At the very least, the director is unable to control his bureau. What happened absolutely needs to be investigated, and whatever bad actors responsible need to be rooted out. If there is a larger cultural problem at the FBI, that needs to be exposed and fixed.

Otherwise, this will continue. And not just in elections. What if this faction decides to investigate members of the Clinton administration, and leak personal information to the press? How can President Clinton or her AG trust the FBI, if they suspect the FBI will leak critical information? Just because Republicans have abused their investigative powers does not mean there isn’t a real value to them.

Second, you recognize that Comey cannot continue at the FBI, but you argue that neither Clinton nor Obama should fire him, because that would appear too political, and the FBI director’s 10-year term is supposed to insulate the FBI from political pressure.

Well, that ship sailed. Maybe the 10-year term was supposed to insulate Comey from political pressure, but it clearly did not. The president also possesses the authority to fire the director, presumably in situations where politics be damned, the director cannot continue in his job. This is just one situation, as you yourself recognize.

Third, if firing Comey would be too political, how is it any better for Obama to publicly castigate him and pressure him to resign?

Fourth, you’re judging the Democrats by a double standard. Comey can interfere in a general election in violation of both agency policy and arguably a statute (the Hatch Act), but he cannot be punished by the president, even when a statute specifically authorizes the president to fire him? If the president fires him, it is Comey who made the U.S. look like a banana republic, not the president.

***

‘A kind of coup.’ A reader who identifies himself as a disabled Vietnam veteran sends a copy of his open letter to the president:

President Obama:

In my view, a Special Prosecutor should be created to investigate the FBI.

It would appear that an FBI  in-house group of Republican political operatives staged a kind of coup and created a serious political crisis on the eve of the 2016 election.  They did it deliberately and with the clear intent of affecting the election.  Whether Director Comey knew about it or not is irrelevant (I suspect he did).  The constitutional implications of this act are fundamental to the sanctity of our government.  Nothing less.

Not since Gore/Bush in 2000 has a presidential election been so blatantly tampered with. It remains to be seen how the election will come out, but there is no doubt that the so-called “FBI letter” put a serious dent in Clinton’s sizable lead. According to Nate Silver (who I consider the most reliable source), her lead dropped from roughly 10 points to roughly 4 points. The actions of the FBI, including Comey, had a clear effect. [JF note: the Silver/538 model, which rated Trump’s chances lower than some other sources during the primaries, has consistently rated them higher than most others during the general election campaign. When the results are all in, the polling experts can figure out which approach worked out best in this extraordinary year.]

This is a gravely serious threat the security of the U. S. government and should be seen as such.  We all have been pointed to the Russians, when all along the real tampering has come, once again, from our own Republican Party. Please take swift and strong action to expose this national security threat.

***

On the other hand. Another reader with a military background says that Comey took a difficult but unavoidable step:

I live in Maryland and am strongly supporting Clinton. However, I have friends and family who are adamant Trump supporters and who, with justification, believe the Clintons are not forthcoming about their dubious behavior, an issue that is hard to refute!

They believe the system is rigged. Had Comey not come out with his announcements prior to the election and had there been evidence of Clinton misconduct, what would have the reaction? Total belief on the part of Trump and his base that the system had been rigged—that the FBI held evidence back that would have elected Trump—confirming exactly what Trump had been saying!

Comey inoculated the country from that disaster!  And it would have been a disaster!

Do you disagree that had Comey withheld the fact that he had more emails  and it turned out that they contained inappropriate behavior by Secretary Clinton, that would have sparked widespread outrage, and right so!  The fairness and legitimacy of the election would be challenged by the 48 percent of Americans who were Trump voters .

Frankly, I do not believe that the Washington media has little, if any, understanding of the Trump supporters! Frankly, I am stunned by them, I disagree strongly with them, but they are not stupid; they are concerned about the country.  I had hope that your flight across the country would have provided some insight to the divisions of the country and the unfortunate passion with which those divisions are held.

To address this central part of the final reader’s argument: “The fairness and legitimacy of the election would be challenged by the 48 percent of Americans who were Trump voters.” First, he’s not going to get close to 48 percent of the vote. Even if he did, what I’ve seen convinces me that most or all of his real base would believe there was “an email problem” regardless of anything Director Comey ever said.

The email “scandal” is a very peculiar one. Hillary Clinton made a significant mistake in setting up the system to begin with, and for being so grudging about recognizing that. But as far as I can tell, it’s a mistake whose main victim is herself. I’m not aware of anyone demonstrating or even claiming specific harm to the national interest because of her email practices. Yet people who chant “lock her up” usually start with this on the bill of particulars.

***

Clinton should “go high” by keeping Comey. Here’s another reader with a somewhat sympathetic view of the FBI director (previous readers along those lines here):

Yes, Comey should resign, but I’m not sure that his resignation should be accepted. His sin—being obsessed with his reputation—is one of which the Founders (George Washington above all), not to mention all modern politicians, have been guilty. And many if not most of them typically go about tending to their reputations in far less salubrious ways than he has.

Justin Dillon is right: The original decision and announcement not to prosecute Clinton should have been made by AG Lynch and her lieutenants. That way anyone who believed that a Democratic AG had made a partisan decision to decline to prosecute her party’s nominee could have expressed their displeasure at the ballot box in November. We don’t know whether Comey tried to pass the buck to Lynch (as he should have), but if he did, it seems likely that such an attempt would have been rejected.

Instead, the FBI—and Comey personally, with his reputation for probity—were used as a kind of heat shield, like the protective layer which, with one tragic exception, kept the space shuttle astronauts safe during their re-entry into the atmosphere. Then the late-breaking emergence of the Wiener emails put Comey on an even nastier spot, especially with the “fifth column” of troglodytes in the Bureau that Wayne Barrett has described (thank you very much for that link) itching to inflict far greater damage on his reputation (a cover-up!) by leaking their preferred version of the story.

If Clinton and the country manage to survive Comey’s horribly clumsy attempt to salvage what remained of his reputation, refusing to accept his resignation would give her and her party a very visible opportunity to “go high.” She and they would undoubtedly be accused of rewarding Comey for his last-minute announcement re-exonerating her. However, these are career politicians and partisan operatives, and being criticized unfairly is a baked-in part of the gig that they signed up for.

***

Fix the (metaphorical) bayonets. From a reader who starts out agreeing with me that no one should fire Comey:

I think I agree with you on this. From a purely cerebral analysis, I’m sure I do. But all this norm smashing—as we’ve all been discussing for months—isn’t going to end just because Trump loses. Indeed, the Republican elected officials are going to be driven by a political constituency driven to madness to act in an increasingly undemocratic fashion during the Clinton II Presidency.

So, as you say, the Democrats have two choices. They can resist the (reasonable) impulse to act in kind, playing the adult in the room while the Republican burn down the house around them. Or they can—at least selectively—fight fire with fire and step outside the previously accepted norms of behavior in order to thwart at least some of the craziest Republican actions.

We already know we’ll be facing problems with appointments (not just judicial, don’t kid yourself), appropriations legislation, and perhaps most ominous of all, a renewed debt ceiling fight led by the most nihilistic politicians in recent memory.

I’m not sure which course I favor. I’d like to at least be proud of our actions, but there’s no doubt that American small-d democracy is in peril, and maybe it’s time to fix bayonets ...

I know from context that he means the last line metaphorically.

Read; think; vote.