Taking Canadians to a Midwestern Macy’s is very rewarding. You get to watch people discover that a kinder, gentler world is possible. 

Canadian – and especially Quebecois – clothing stores are very unforgiving. You will be judged, scoffed at and made to understand that the clothing industry will not accommodate your freakish body.

You’ve got to go to pop business lit to get a feel for the nature of the transformation. This is from a book by the founder of LinkedIn:

“The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career,” he wrote. “You never know what’s going to happen next. Information is limited. Resources are tight. Competition is fierce. The world is changing. And the amount of time you spend at any one job is shrinking. This means you need to be adapting all the time. And if you fail to adapt, no one — not your employer, not the government — is going to catch you when you fall.”

It’s all true.

What I don’t get is when people go, “Removing restrictions on fracking will destroy the environment!” It’s the same logic that motivates the endless war on drugs: fight the supply while doing nothing about the demand. And we all know how successful that plan is.

As long as the demand for oil is high, it will be wrestled out of the planet’s entrails. What does it matter where exactly it’s taken? It’s one planet, one environment. At least, when you get it here in the US, you get the added benefit of controlling world affairs. 

My own reaction to the election is as follows. I hoped that the nation-state model could drag out its existence for a while longer. But the kind of knowledge that groups can unconsciously access is greater than what individuals can do. The collective verdict is clearly that national governments are irrelevant and the market-state is on. It’s everybody for themselves, and national politics exists just for fun.

By the next election, it will be way too late to attempt salvaging the nation-state. Even the last sad remnants will be dead and gone. 

At this point, the new world order is being constituted. Whoever saddles it first will own the 21st century like the US owned the 20th.

…The number of tourists has risen by as much as 30 percent every year for the last four years, according to Iceland’s Tourist Board. They brought in revenues of $3.2 billion in 2015, a third of the country’s export earnings. Tourism is the single biggest employer. . .

A poll in October conducted by the national broadcaster RUV reported that 87 percent of Icelanders want the government to raise fees or taxes on tourists.

Dumbasses would rather go hungry than adapt to even just a temporary presence of somebody a bit different. Note that they are in no hurry to create any alternative industries either. It’s just pouting and whining.

I can assure you that hardly any voters in Missouri heard anything about Clinton’s paid family leave and other proposals. Clinton could have run television ads here talking about what she wanted to do for working people. Instead, she ran ads letting us know that Donald Trump ties are made in China.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. This is a dumb lie aimed at the people who sit in their coastal enclaves and would rather have a coronary than actually live in Missouri. I, however, do live here☆ and I had no idea that the ad about ties even existed. 

The ad about paid maternity leave ran a bazillion times. But here’s the problem. People who want that leave were already Dem voters. The ones who voted against Clinton don’t want the leave. They want the kind of life where they’d never need it. 

When Hillary said “I’ll fight for paid family leave”, the people in question heard her say, “I will fight to destroy the only way of life you consider worthwhile.” Also, using “family leave” instead of “maternity” is anathema in these parts.

Not everybody values the same things as you do. Not everybody wants to live the same life. 

People, I know it’s tempting to chalk up the loss to some mistake in the campaign minutiae. But this loss isn’t about that. 60 million people in this country actively don’t want the ideas you offer. 90 million don’t want these ideas passively. If you fixate on “It’s Hillary’s fault”, you’ll keep losing. The Congress has been Republican for years. Governorships have been getting redder and redder. Is that because of Hillary, too?

It’s the messaging that’s the problem, not the wrapper, even though the wrapper is imperfect, too.

☆ My local paper and TV are all from MO.

Let’s cherish this moment when the US still stands up to Russia:

The United States says it was one of three countries to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism over freedom of speech issues and concerns that Russia was using it to carry out political attacks against its neighbors.

Russians have decided that not being super grateful for Stalinism constitutes glorification of Nazism. Any country that doesn’t position being conquered by Stalin’s troops back in the 1930s and 1940s as the best thing that ever happened to it is a Nazi country and needs to be invaded by Russia today. 10,000 Ukrainians are already dead at the hands of Russian troops because Ukraine “glorified Nazism” by being critical of Stalin.

The US managed to remain one of the 3 countries that saw through Russia’s ploy to pass this resolution as a carte blanche to invade even more countries. After Trump is inaugurated, that will no longer be possible. He has zero interest in either freedom of speech or preventing Russia from becoming the world’s only superpower.

Let’s cherish this moment while it lasts.