Cansplain (v): (not to be confused with mansplain)

1. to nicely explain something about the United States, to Canadians;
2. vice versa.

Within minutes of one another, two people asked me to cansplain executive orders. Donald Trump is signing a lot of these, and people are distressed because they're seeming to do all kinds of terrible things. What are they?

You could, of course, read Wikipedia. Here's a fast-and-loose version.

Bureaucracy

Most of the work of government happens in a bureaucracy that's organized into units that I will call ‘departments’. There are some important differences:

I often feel that I spend too much time engaged in online political discussion. As I do, I'm aware that this likely does little to change political outcomes—who gets elected, and what policies they pursue—that concern me and drew me to those discussions in the first place. This is because:

1. I am stuck in my own communities of like-minded people, and
2. Any other person who stumbles across my posts and comments is unlikely to be swayed by reading them, no matter the tone.

All this said, I still try my best to enter or start discussions that help …

Echoing Robert Stavins, I have only a narrow area of expertise,¹ and it does not include political science. I know that some of the following turns on empirical questions that can be answered with data and rigorous analysis, and that there are researchers trying to do just this. I should, and will, acquaint myself with the knowledge they have produced; but that will be a gradual project.

In the meantime, I and others need to make decisions about how to get by in a world that seems, suddenly, different from the one some thought we lived in. We each …

My American friends, and friends in America,

Think about your neighbours—women, the poor, immigrants, Muslims, Latinos, queers, trans people, and others. Think of the people in other countries who depend on U.S. aid, diplomacy and action for their survival or security—including from the threat of climate change. Think of their faces and their names. (If you don't know their names, resolve to learn them.)

You may be tired after a 20-month campaign. They are, too. You may wish you could have a break, to recover yourself and your equilibrium. They won't get one. Trump, and the worst …

One of the ways terrorism works—yes—is by provoking a reflexive reaction whereby the targets, out of terror or anger, compromise their values. The availability heuristic leads them to worry that more violence is imminent and that they face a choice between principle and safety. From my untutored perspective, the chief reason terrorism fails is that these reactions—especially revenge—don't tend to help alleviate the conditions that brought its perpetrators to anger and then violence against its targets. However, this doesn't diminish the schadenfreude felt by terrorists as victims harm themselves.

So as we respond we must not …