Twisted Logic

There is a very twisted logic that operates US elections.  The components make sense but assembling them into a whole leads to a twisted, regressive, non-functioning pile of shit.

In our system of government there are so many veto points that even an out-of-power party can do quite a bit to stop progress (mostly by way of the fillibuster in the Senate, and the president's literal veto power).  This means that to have a functioning government one of two conditions needs to be met: all the branches need to be controlled by the same party, and in the Senate that must be a supermajority (60 senators), or the minority party in the Senate must consent to allow the majority party to govern, and/or (depending on who controls what) the two parties must cooperate and work together.

It makes sense, however, for the out-of-power party to do all it can to stop the in-power party from achieving anything perceived as good.  Republicans, and only Republicans, have taken this to heart and understand that even if they control Congress, anything good (or bad) would get credited to the president (not really fair but that's the way it goes).

So it makes sense for the party that is not controlling the executive to make things in the country worse, so that the voters are more likely to change the control to them.  Republicans are perfectly content to harm the country so that they can gain in future elections.  If Democrats were willing to do the same, this might balance out but they are not.  Democrats, unlike Republicans, actually try and accomplish as much good for the country/their district as possible whether or not they are in power.  This means that they cooperate with Republicans to make bills more to their liking.  It also means that if they succeed the Republicans get credit, which means a weaker position in future elections (so Republicans are more willing to cooperate with Democrats if Republicans control the presidency).

This has the natural result of politics that will favor Republican policies over time.  This is true even if (as is actually the case) Democratic policies have more support in the electorate, and (as is also true) the evidence indicates they are better for [the economy, the planet, people's welfare, happiness...].

So why don't Democrats play the game the same way.  There are logical reasons for this too.  The main one is that Democratic voters are far more likely to believe that compromise is a good thing to do.  This has gotten less true of late, and is less true when applied to politics than to life in general, but it is still the case.  

Republicans play politics as a zero-sum game.  Democrats do not.  This means that, frustratingly for any thinking person: Republicans are more likely to win in the long run, and the US is more likely to lose (note: not because of policies, though I think that too, but because periods where Democrats are in charge, Republicans are fine with hurting the US to gain power back, but the reverse is not true).

The twisted logic is that it could be that voting for Republicans may be what is best for the country and best to advance Demcratic priorities, and that this will continue to be true so long as the two parties are playing different games.  Either Democrats need to wise up and play the same game as Republicans, or voters need to get over racism, sexism and xenophobia to actually vote for the party that has their interests in mind.  The past few decades hasn't left me with positive feelings about the Dem establishment, and after this election, I don't have much hope for the latter.

"That's great it starts with an earthquake..."

The USA, in memoriam: it was a nice ride while it lasted.  My take is twofold, though both are arguably the same (the Democratic party establishment is horrible and just doesn't fucking understand US politics).

First, every presidential election brings out a lot of people who don't normally vote.  Most of those people, like most of the electorate just vote for the same people/party they do every 4 years.  However, lots of people (and it'd be nice if there was polling for this but I doubt it is possible) vote for "something different," or more accurately vote for the least political [seeming] candidate on the ballot.  Obama was clearly that, so was Bush Jr., and also Nader.  In the 90's it was actually Perot, though Bill Clinton didn't seem as much the politician as either Bush Sr. or Dole.  Reagan was also a non-politician politician and may have been the one to start this trend.  There isn't a candidate we've had that is less politician like than Donald and so they voted for him.  (Note: in my previous diatribe on his supporters these voters mostly fall in the "stupid" category.)

Second, the Democratic party establishment has a tendency to get behind competent, capable, long-time party insiders like Hillary (in 2008 and 2016) and Kerry and Gore, that most of the electorate consider boring and/or corrupt (and, unfortunately, no, it doesn't matter that they are wrong).  Kerry was not an exciting candidate and there is a very good chance Dean could have won.  Yes, Gore probably did win, but it's pretty easy to stipulate that his boring persona hurt him, of course it's hard to see any other candidate as the nominee that year since he was VP and all.  Obama managed to overcome a lot of the party establishment by actually winning some of them over.  This year, Bernie was the Dean candidate: he probably would have won the general but the party establishment steamrolled him and pressured others to stay out of the race to clear the field.  It was Hillary Clinton's turn.  She was a bad candidate in 2008 and was again this year.

Now, this isn't her fault and it really is frustrating for me to dump on her in the wake of Donald.  She is competent and would have made an excellent president, and the negative perception that people have of her is largely due to decades of asinine media coverage of non-scandals.  Even if there wasn't that, however, she is just the consummate insider, and a small but significant segment of this country just fucking hates politicians that seem like politicians.   (I don't particularly like her but very specifically for her too-militaristic foreign policy stance and friendliness with bankers.)

Yes!

Good God I hope network/cable news morons read this story at Vox and apologize to the American people.

Ha, ha, just kidding, they can't read!  If they could they clearly wouldn't be acting the way they are.

Think We've Evolved Since the Salem Witch Trials?

Nope.  There's an inkling toward the end that some actual abuse may have happened in some of those cases, but it got tied up in the satanic panic and so is all questionable.

Zombies

I don't watch Walking Dead, mostly because I think Rick is (perhaps appropriately) a cartoon character and not particularly likable.  That said, zombies are fun.  This zombie infection calculator is neat, but I think it is missing something, namely, transportation.  While a zombie may cover ground at a walking/running pace an infected but not yet zombie could get in a car and move lots faster.  

The actual infection rate would probably depend pretty heavily on awareness and countermeasures.  So that calculator is probably wrong but it's not clear how to make it better.

In Which I Discuss Krugman and Economics

Short post this, as it's really a thought more than an actual discussion or criticism.  Out of this post of Krugman's--a comment on transportation costs and technologies--is this bit:

As I see it, we had some big technological advances in transportation — containerization, probably better communication making it easier to break up the value chain; plus the great move of developing countries away from import substitution toward export orientation. (That’s a decline in tau and t in my toy model.) But this was a one-time event. Now that it’s behind us, no presumption that trade will grow faster than GDP.

That sounds, at some level, right, but it is backwards looking only and seems to ignore the phenomenon that is the internet.  Yes, if I order a good chef's knife from Amazon then that has to be transported to me.  But if I order a book for Kindle/Nook or a digital video game off Amazon or Steam, then I'm still getting something, and that is a something that would have required transportation even 10 years ago (in most cases) because the digital online sales of those items just didn't really exist yet.

The transportation cost of digital items is approaching zero--there is a bandwidth cost, so it's not = 0 but it's pretty damn close.  Krugman doesn't seem to be able to envision a future where technological improvements could do something similar for physical items--odd for a sci-fi fan.  There are people who thought that 3D printers might make the same thing happen for actual physical objects...and they still could, but only if they get a lot better--don't think 3D printers, think Star Trek replicators.

There a whole lot of economic questions/problems with this happening, but it isn't something that can't happen.  We're already partway there with information related things (games, books, music).

Obamacare Problems Shouldn't Surprise Anyone

Ok, first thing, I feel I need to say whenever I discuss the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare): it is a Republican plan.  It is the conservative answer to the question: "How do we provide health coverage for everyone?"  The liberal answer can take a few forms but the easiest is "single payer" (aka: medicare for everyone).

ACA's 3 legged stool is straight forward:

1. Require insurance companies cover everyone (no preexisting condition exemptions).
2. Mandate everyone get insurance (otherwise, because of 1. the sensible thing is to not get insurance until you are sick/injured, which doesn't work for, I think, obvious reasons--if not obvious: this would devolve to just paying for health care, i.e. no meaningful insurance at all)
3. Provide subsidies for those who can't afford and penalties for those who can to make sure everyone gets insurance.

There are a couple ways for this this to breakdown but they amount to the same thing: too many people or insurance companies opt out.  This is exactly what is happening.  Healthy people not covered via employers are just not getting insurance on the exchanges, which means those that do purchase are in worse health than average, so the costs to cover them are higher than expected and so we see the combination of insurance companies dropping out of the exchanges and/or raising fees dramatically.

The public option would have done quite a bit to fix this: by making it possible for people to buy into Medicare (essentially) on the exchange, you wouldn't have to worry about insurance companies leaving, and the costs would be fairly low since they could be leveraged with Medicare and/or Medicaid.  Problem solved...except insurance companies did not want this because they feared (and liberals hoped) that the public option would be cheaper and provide better coverage than insurance plans, and so, over time, people would leave the insurance companies for the public option.  Basically this is a back door slide into single payer.  Not sure it would have worked but it wasn't just the liberals who thought it might: insurance companies agreed.

If there is no public option then there are a couple other mechanisms for fixing this, but both amount to the same thing: anyone that "opts out" has to pay the equivalent of a bronze tier insurance coverage.  While this technically could mean increasing the size of the penalty or just giving everyone insurance and then billing them, it would probably need to be the former.  At that point, why pay a penalty and not get insurance when the cost is the same?  So people would sign up in larger numbers.

Good Conversation With One Oddity

This conversation between Ezra Klein and Molly Ball is pretty good overall (though it doesn't really address what to do about things) but for a very odd point Molly made near the end.  She said

It’s his celebrity, it’s his money — so many of his positions are so antithetical to the interests of the donor class in the Republican Party that only someone with his own money and visibility could have done that. And, as you said, his shamelessness: He doesn’t care what people think of him.

That’s rare, particularly among rich, famous people. Most rich and famous people care very much about their image. And he doesn’t, and that’s a remarkable quality.

But he does care...a lot.  He carries grudges against people who say that he is a bad businessman or that he cheats (taxes, contractors, whatever) or that he is only where he is because of a rich father...or that he has short fingers.

There have been plenty of stories (I doubt this was the first, but maybe) saying the reason he got into the race in the first place was because Obama slighted him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (I don't know if a better argument that that event shouldn't exist could be made).  His entire net worth is a judgement on what the value of the "Trump" brand is.

He cares.  He's just way too stupid to understand what he should do to actually get the respect he craves.

Sounds Good to Me

I'm not sure I agree about the $20 but yes, the main use of the $100 and $50 bills are illegal (tax evasion and illicit purchases/sales).  So drop them.  Of course if we're going to start changing up our money system we should also drop the $1 bill in favor of $1 coins and start minting $2 coins, drop the useless penny and really drop the almost as useless (and also money losing) nickel (note the only multiples of 5 cents that can't be made without a nickel are $0.05 and $0.15).

A part I thought was interesting that I would guess most people aren't aware of was when Rogoff said:

The tax evaders are at the upper part of the income distribution. Payment recipients, like cleaners, don’t owe taxes. And if they’re paid under the table, then when they reach retirement age and try to get their Social Security, there isn't any.

The general understanding of immigrants taking jobs, being paid under the table and not paying into the system is really a case of employers cheating the tax system.  Bringing undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, will help prevent this possibility.  I would guess that it would do a better job than abolishing the $100 and $50 would.

Incidentally after that statement the next back and forth was somewhat nonsensical (going from 2% to 4% inflation target would confuse people but negative interest is perfectly sensible?!?).  I think both issues would actually be solved by NGDP level targeting (say 5%) that doesn't have the inflation only "confusion" (which is really banker hysteria) or the goofiness of negative interest.

What Your Vote Says About You

In this person's case, it mostly says they are A Idiot.

I'll admit I'm somewhat sympathetic to 3rd party candidates and voters.  The problem is most of them are represented by this person whose decision is just stupid.  On a related note I also found John Oliver's bit on 3rd party candidates to be off the mark (quite unusual) while Samantha Bee has been spot on (not unusual).

The problem with 3rd party candidates is our elections.  We don't have a parlimentary system where 15% of the population voting for Green party would translate to 15% Green party in Congress.  It translates to zero.  More because most districts don't require a majority to win (i.e. you can win with a plurality...which could technically be as low as 34% but more likely in the mid 40's) the only function a 3rd party candidate really performs is to siphon votes away from the major party candidate that is closest to them in terms of policy.

If all states/districts did run off elections whenever a leading candidate got less than 50% then there would be a stronger argument to vote for 3rd parties.  It would help give a more complete picture of what the electorate really wanted.

Almost by definition in a 2 party system, neither party is going to represent you as well as some (real or fanciful) potential 3rd party could.  That's just going to happen when the two major parties are trying to figure out how to get 50% of the vote.  It's hard to get 50% of people in this country to agree on any single issue much less a whole slate of them.  Unfortunately, in our electoral system where we vote for individuals for all offices in winner take all type elections, a 2 party system is the only one that makes sense.  There are a very small number of reasons to vote 3rd party:

1. Both politicians really are the same (think Simpsons episode where aliens replace the 2 party candidates) and it doesn't matter so much who wins.  Note: this was Nader's argument in 2000 which I thought was crap at the time.  This is a pretty hard argument to make today, if only for procedural reasons (whether government will function).
2. One party has put forth a particularly horrid candidate and that party's members can't vote for their candidate.
3. Non-voters only: people who don't vote but get inspired by some particular candidate.  This can happen for main party candidates too (see: Obama) and yes, everyone should vote, but some people just don't.  Ever.  Showing up to vote for a 3rd party is better than not voting at all.  If you have ever voted D or R this category does not apply to you.

In fairness to the A Idiot there is also a piece by a Gary Johnson supporter.  I disagree with that person on the main issues brought up but that person is not A Idiot.  This is a weird election and this falls firmly into the point 2 above.  If it were a standard Republican on the ballot instead of the Lilliputian fingered, Brobdingnagian-egoed orange one then that person would be A Idiot too, but it isn't.  In this election Republicans and conservatives voting Gary Johnson make sense, Democrats and liberals voting Jill Stein (or Johnson) are A Idiots.

WA I-732 Climate Bill

No, I hadn't heard of it before either.  It is an interesting story to say...well, something about it.  I'll admit I'm rather partial to both sides of this.  A strong push could have actually accomplished something and rather than seeing the glass as half full, should be supportive liberal groups have rather--HULK SMASH--so, ok.

I've also likely got a white dude perspective on this, but if various liberal/social groups state that they want x, y and z and some white dudes write up a bill that includes x and y but not z (even if said white dudes didn't expressly talk to them) why is that so bad?  Yes, I get the seat at the table aspect, but, in the end it comes off as "I want these things, you are giving me some of them, but you didn't talk to me and aren't giving me everything so fuck you and your plan."

On the other hand: anyone who wants to push for any legislation that helps with climate change that preemptively concedes language/policy to imaginary "sensible Republicans" is pretty much a idiot that deserves their inevitable defeat.  You want Republicans to be invested, you have to force them to it.  You are better off with the liberal super fantastic bill that you can really get everyone who is currently supportive of your primary motive(s) behind.

Oh, and also, too: revenue neutral plans are only useful if you have plenty of revenue already, which isn't really true in most of the US, including Washington and if you don't then they're for shits. So: bad fucking idea.

I don't live in WA, but if I did I suspect I'd be pissed at everyone involved but vote for the bill.

We Couldn't Function if We Remembered

I understand where this post is coming from and what the author is trying to convey, but there is a very good reason we don't keep horrors in mind for long: we wouldn't be able to function if we did.  The fact is that keeping in mind bad things happening a long way away isn't useful.  Most people can't really do anything about the crisis.  Yes, as a nation we absolutely should, but individually, there just isn't a lot a person can do...even giving money, which can be useful for lots of problems isn't really doing much here.  Most of the problem needs to be solved by nations: ending the crises that are producing the refugees and, more immediately, helping those refugees get out of bad situations and allowing them in to nations/places where they can start their lives back up again.

It's actually one of the great adaptations of humanity that, by and large, we get over very bad things, even when they happen to us.  It allows us to keep functioning, and to live.  The image and the reality of that dead baby is horrible, but if you have to remember and carry that with you every day, how could you possibly go on?  Especially when there isn't much of anything you can do to prevent that going forward.

I suppose the press has a responsibility to keep the pressure on by keeping awareness up, but at this point, everyone knows there is a crisis.  It seems to me that the writer remembering that baby is really just inviting suffering into her life.  She may be in a better position than me to "do something" in that she has an actual audience and can keep writing about it, but even if she does, I'm not sure that would really help.  We need decent people in power in politics (in the US and Europe)...

I. Don't. Get. His. Supporters.

Yea, yea, lots of them are deplorables, many of the rest are stupid, and some (maybe the rest?) are, for lack of a more specific descriptor: evil.  Really, though, even for supporters in the first two categories, isn't the idea of this person as President of the United States enough of an embarrassment that they just couldn't bring themselves to vote for him?  So maybe not I don't get his supporters as much as I don't get how they could actually turn that support into voting for him for president.

By definition a country that would elect a Donald Trump it's president can't be great.  It is obviously, seriously flawed.  And it may happen!  I don't think it will, but it could.  

I'm actually kind of surprised that more conspiracy theories haven't surfaced so my unsubstantiated but every bit as probable as a Trump presidency seemed 4 years ago theories...  

1.  Donald bet $[1, 5, 10]bn that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in 2016, and decided to become the Republican nominee to make it happen (figuring that a typical Republican may actually win since so many voters have such a poor opinion of her).  Had been going well, but the Russians are on the other side of the bet so they are trying to interfere in support of Donald and not have to pay out.

2. Less fun bur more likely... Aside from the more sensible Republicans who have thrown support to Hillary (or at least said they would not vote Donald)--a group that actually includes Dubbya--and the sycophants who have turned into Donald cheerleaders (Giuliani and Christie) the overall republican establishment is lining up in "support" of Donald's candidacy with no actual intention of letting him be president.  How?  Well in order of decreasing niceness (and, oddly enough increasing benefit to Republicans)...

Nice version: they already have the impeachment documents drawn up and will be ready to go with them the day after he is inaugurated.  Less nice is blackmail adjacent: they have his tax returns and will threaten to release them if he does not resign immediately after being elected--clearly he will do just about anything not to have those released.  Really not nice: well, Donald doesn't seem like someone to take orders quietly does he?  

Debate Ratings

I didn't really watch, though it was on and I heard a fair amount.  The thing is, not watching doesn't make me an uninformed or uninterested voter, which is what this article about the ratings (high but not as % of voters) is implying.  In 1980 there were newspapers and local rallies, but for most casual voters the debate (only 1 in 1980) really was the only way to get to understand who the candidates were with respect to each other.  That's not really true today.  Between cable news, and the internet there is far more exposure for the candidates than there was then, and people who want to know about them already do.

Further, this election paints such a stark contrast that it's actually really hard to not know who you will vote for at this point.  I suspect that many to most "undecided" voters are really just in the process of acceptance.  They will end up voting for Hillary Clinton or Gary Johnson (or staying home) but aren't happy about either choice.

They Want to Blow it Up

So, if you are a rational, logical, coherent, compassionate, humane individual (any one, or all) then there isn't any question that you will vote for Hillary Clinton.  It really doesn't matter if you like her, her politics, her policies, her family, since the other major party candidate has no business being anywhere close to power.

The apparently >50% of Trump supporters who are deplorables of one variety or another has been discussed elsewhere quite a bit.  The remainder are more of a question.  It's possible that many of his other supporters are also deplorables, but smart enough not to answer questions in a way that proves it.  It also seems like there is a group that just wants to blow shit up.  People who may not ever bother voting, or who regularly vote for 3rd party candidates, and who see in Trump a candidate whose election could actually wreck US politics.  I should add: no matter how bad he will be, he won't be enough to destroy US politics so it can be reworked.  He's too incompetent.  He will do real lasting harm, but the likelyhood of much good coming of it is low, and whatever good may come won't be enough to offset the damage.

I think the "Blow Shit Up" constituency is largely incoherent, lacks knowledge of our world/country/politics and/or just doesn't give a damn about their fellow human beings/Americans.  They are, however, a constituency that doesn't normally have a major party candidate to support, and because they don't necessarily vote in most elections, they may be larger than most people think.

Elizabeth Warren is Awesome!

They were talking on the radio about the Wells Fargo CEO taking "responsibility" which, I thought, was odd, since, he still has the job, and all the money he's earned, and will continue to make lots of money and get a big bonus.  I'm not sure what kind of "responsibility" he is taking other than saying the words.  So Sen. Warren tore into him and I feel (somewhat) better about things.

This Election "Undecided" = "Doesn't Like Clinton but Probably not a Racist", or "A Idiot"

I understand not liking the Clintons (not Hillary in particular who I think is better than Bill), but there is no world in which voting for Trump is acceptable to anyone who isn't a racist, misogynistic, sexist, xenophobic ass hole.

If you are voting for Donald Trump you are at least one of those things.  If you are a "liberal" and not voting for Hillary you are probably "a idiot" (if you are a "liberal" and voting Trump see the previous assessment).  I like the idea of viable Green and Libertarian parties for local politics and the US House.  There's really no way that works in this country for president (and really even for US Senate), so if you vote Jill Stein in most places you are a idiot.  If you are "conservative" and vote Gary Johnson, then that is probably the best sign that you are in fact conservative and not a racist ass hole pretending conservative means something it doesn't.

So undecided voters are a bit of a mix.  Some are "a idiots" certainly, but a large fraction are probably Republicans (nominal or de facto) who understand that supporting Donald puts you in league with racists, sexists, bigots and one yuuuge misogynistic authoritarian demagogue (who may or may not be a racist bigot, but that doesn't matter...no, it really doesn't).

And What Gave You That Idea?

There's a whole bunch I don't really understand in this election, but every once in a 30 second period looking at anything about Trump something stands out as particularly bizarre.  Take Jacob Monty an Hispanic member of of Trump's "National Hispanic Advisory Council" (seriously, and yes, that is an actual thing):

“I was a strong supporter of Donald Trump when I believed he was going to address the immigration problem realistically and compassionately,” Jacob Monty explained. “What I heard today was not realistic and not compassionate.”

Ok, really?  Really?!?  I know there has been a lot of completely unwarranted wishful thinking among Republicans and Republican leaners regarding what Trump's "real positions" were but there has been precisely zero evidence that he had any realistic or compassionate plan for anything but immigration in particular.  His campaign was built on the wall and calling Mexicans rapists and banning Muslims from entering.

What the fuck is wrong with this person?  Is he that stupid?  Did he think he could actually make a difference on policy just because Trump is obiously an idiot who doesn't understand anything but will parrot whatever he just heard back?  In fact hating immigrants (particularly those of color) is the only thing that is remotely consistent in Trump's entire campaign.

Another bit of WTF was this morning when a reporter on NPR said something about how "Trump's supporters" have been waiting for these policy details on...

No! No, a million times no.  His "supporters" have not been waiting on policy details.  They don't give a crap about policy details.  If they did, they wouldn't be his supporters.

It's pretty obvious I don't like Republican policies, but if you are a Republican who does give a crap about policy details, you supported any non-Trump candidate, and now you are either behind Gary Johnson (economic policy) or Hillary Clinton (foreign policy) or just not going to vote ("the gays shouldn't marry and marijuana should stay illegal damnit!").  The people who are waiting for these details are a combination of less hateful Republican voters who really want some excuse to go ahead and pull the lever for someone they know is horribly unqualified, and more left leaning people who want the option to further mock Trump and his supporters for their non-nonsensical positions (and there is no way any policy position that Trump could take would be able to make any sense against the backdrop of reality and his previous positions/statements).

Yes, This Election is Terrifying

There is something very broken in a party that could nominate Donald Trump.  While victory is unlikely, he does have the second best chance of anyone to end up president January 2017, and even assuming he does lose there's a good chance that 40+% of all votes cast will be for him, and that represents a large fraction of our population that is ok with a racist, sexist, man-child as president of the United States.

There is absolutely no way that any thinking, caring, or frankly, just breathing person could believe that he is qualified.  So any vote for him is demonstrating a desire to burn the United States Constitution, and perhaps the world beyond.  I suspect that he is too stupid, incompetent and lazy to actually be as destructive as his rhetoric would imply, but just his becoming president would wreak havoc.

A lot of people don't like Hillary Clinton.  I'm not a huge fan (though for very different reasons than you hear about from the mainstream media...seriously, the emails? the foundation? press conferences?).  Yea, there's some poor judgement, but to compare her problems to Trump it's like the difference between accidentally stepping on someone's toes because you were staring at your phone to deliberately murdering someone along with their entire family, friends, neighbors, bombing the city they lived in...

It's not fucking close.  This isn't some lesser of two evils Mussolini vs. Hitler.  It's Anne Hataway (you may not like her but she's going to be good at the job) vs. fucking Donald Trump...I tried to think of a comparison, but to be fair most horrible people are still way more competent than he is he's like a clown pretending to be Stalin or something... Oh, maybe Kim Jong-un, but I'm not sure he's got enough power to count.

People on the Internets are Horrible

I don't mean to diminish what the author of this piece has gone through.  There are a lot of horrible people on the internet who do things that range from mean but mostly harmless to fear for your life threatening, and that shit really needs to stop, but, I'm sorry, your bad experience with people on the internet is not representative of the bulk of society nor does it mean that the US has not gotten more tolerant.

There is probably a pretty sound defense of the position that we haven't gotten more tolerant (particularly towards Muslims and darker skinned immigrants), but what I think is actually happening is that while the internet has made it possible through anonymity and global reach for like-minded haters to find each other, the Trump campaign (in particular) has made those intolerant among us feel more free to express that intolerance both online and even without the protection of the anonymous internet.

I think that the Black Lives Matter movement is actually being heard in a way that would not have happened 20-30 years ago (yes, the prevalence of video is helping this).  Sexism and related issues are being taken more seriously.  I don't think anyone would argue that gay people are not better off today than in the 80's (or 90's, or even the 00's).  In the past couple years even trans people are getting more respect than they have outside of a John Waters film since...well, ever.  I would not be surprised if Muslims and Latinos are groups that face greater intolerance than they would have in the 90's (probably more so for Muslims).  Even for those cases, however, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it isn't just a fairly small group that is much louder than they used to be, rather than a larger fraction of the population.

Racism, sexism, xenophobia, et cetera are not gone, but we really do seem to be getting better across the board, especially among the youngs.  That there are horrible people on the internet doesn't really change that and neither does Trump.