This, 1000%. Damon Lindelof has a lot of talent, but he needs someone to keep him grounded. This is really the problem when someone becomes known. Who's going to stand up and say, Damon, some interesting ideas, but what the fuck, man? Once you're established as a name, you get basically free rein, for better or…

I think there's a compelling argument to be made that the GOP is right. Remember that before LBJ's Great Society programs, the federal government really didn't have a whole lot of entitlement programs. It had a fairly limited role - defense, for the most part. Sure, you had Roosevelt's response to the Great…

To be clear: they're fine with people getting medical care. They just don't want to pay for it. That's the clearest distillation of the philosophical difference between the parties. The GOP wants people to mostly pay for it themselves. The Dems want tax dollars to mostly pay for it.

Trump's disapproval ratings are extremely high. What won him the election was the fact that the Rust Belt didn't feel like Obama's policies helped their economy and voted for change. I guarantee you things will be very different this time around. The Rust Belt economy won't be any better and voters will turn on…

… and it matters not a whit. Elections have nothing to do with being right. They have everything to do with selling a message that people are buying. This sort of attitude is what lost the election for Dems. People not in the blue population centers don't like being looked down on by politicians in their…

I'd say it's more that the Democrats have managed to be labeled the party of politicians who don't understand the average American. In modern elections, when a Democrat wins, it's because he manages to connect with ordinary people. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama tapped into that. Bill Clinton had his "I feel…

I'd say it's very simple. There's a structural change in the US economy that's been going on for a while but reached its tipping point in this election cycle. Jobs and money are going where the knowledge is, which is increasingly condensing into metro areas. The Rust Belt feels left behind. That's what this whole…

By area, absolutely. Almost all of the square footage of the country is red.

I honestly think Trump won't run for a second term. It's too much work and frustration for him. Trump will say he's turned Washington around, let Mike Pence run, and go back to Trump Tower.

The most accurate word would be "polarizing". I hated myself for sitting through this episode. I almost turned it off 15 minutes in and then I said well I've been watching this far, why not finish. I have not the faintest idea what happened or why it mattered. I feel like Martin Starr's character in "Party Down". …

If you write a paragraph like that, how can you honestly enjoy any art? Art is a feeling, not an exhaustive analysis. It makes me think of that Dead Poet's Society scene with poems ranked on a two-axis scale. I think we might enjoy works of art (or entertainment, if you prefer that term) more if we stopped trying…

Does it matter whether he's right or not? I think the idea of adding scenes as color even though they don't "matter" is a great one. It's sort of like a cross-country drive. Sure, you could just drive straight through and get to the end, but why? Wouldn't it be nicer to see some roadside attractions? And then you…

The point is basically that Fargo doesn't have an agenda. Some shows push ideas (not necessarily a bad thing). I think of Fresh Off The Boat trying to show the reality of Asian-American life or Atlanta shining a light on being young and black. They have a specific message they want to get across. Fargo isn't that…

I bought it. It's sort of like hiring someone to fix your plumbing. You don't rake the guy over the coals to verify his knowledge. You hire him so he can figure out the details. You just want your drains to work properly. Also, midwesterns as a group are typically fairly trusting. I think it was more like "hey,…

I detest the "we've seen it before so how can it be interesting" argument. Ever watched the NBA? Everyone makes a run in the fourth quarter. Ever watched a musical? They almost always have an 11 o'clock song where the protagonist makes a realization and expresses it in song. One might describe the NFL as…

What world are you living in? Virtually every place you pay for advertises. You pay your cable company. They show advertisements. You pay to go to a movie. They show advertisements. You pay to go to a sporting event. They show advertisements. I don't understand why people are treating this like some rubicon. …

Just out of curiosity, suppose a terrorist attack was planned and carried out via Tor. Would that change your view in any way? I feel like the privacy folks never confront that - the reality that protecting people from monitoring means evil people can exploit that to do terrible things. If privacy folks would say…

I hate to break it to you, but no one cares what you're doing. This idea that we have to live in fear of being monitored is the height of narcissism. You aren't interesting. The government doesn't care what web sites you go to unless they're, say, a Jihadi recruiting board. What on earth would make you think…

No, you've done a fairly good job of describing it, and that's my problem with people who fearmonger about this. The "slippery slope" argument is nonsense. By that logic, creating a government at all would be bad, because hey, once you create that government, that's the top of the slippery slope down to full-on…

Because it's an annoyance. If you want to do targeting marketing to customers, you have to get each individual person's consent. That creates an enormous amount of work, and for what? Does anyone care that they're using it for targeted marketing? I've not seen one person who can make any sort of argument as to why…