The Humans and the Bots

Had a thought today about the world in which we currently live. It was poker-related, too -- in fact, online poker-related -- so I figured I might share it here.

Post-Black Friday my online poker playing essentially dwindled to some half-hearted noodling on a couple of the small, remaining sites, then disappeared entirely save the occasional play money game on PokerStars.

Not long ago I got an account on this new site called Coin Poker. It went live in November, and I believe it was sometime in December or maybe early January when I hopped on there for the first time. The site is “powered by blockchain technology via Ethereum,” and in fact the games are played with a newly invented cryptocurrency, “Chips” or “CHP” (now listed on a couple of exchanges).

The site had an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) -- actually a “pre-ICO” and then two stages of ICOs -- in which a good chunk of these CHPs were sold for Ethereum. Meanwhile the site has been conducting tournament freerolls to give away the rest of the CHPs. There were a lot of those early on, though the schedule has thinned a little lately.

It’s through the freerolls that I won some CHPs and began a modest “bankroll” on the site, something with which to play in the “cash” games. I haven’t explored where exactly things stand as far as depositing and withdrawing are concerned, and don’t really anticipate doing so soon (unless perhaps I were to run my small total up significantly).

Playing on the site has been diverting, though, and for the first time in several years I have found myself genuinely invested in the games when playing poker online. I’ve even revived some of those earlier online poker memories of pleasure and pain associated with wins and losses, to a lesser degree of course.

When I first started on the site, I’d join the freerolls which like all the games on the site are played either four-handed or six-handed. Very frequently there would be players at the table shown as sitting out, something I grew accustomed to quickly. At a six-handed table there might be three or four seats occupied by the non-playing entrants, and occasionally at four-handed tables I might be the only live one there just scooping up blinds and antes until the field got whittled down.

At the time I assumed the site was filling the empty seats with these “dummy” players just to make the freerolls last a little longer, or perhaps to foster the impression of more traffic than there really was. Whatever the reason, I haven’t noticed the sitter-outers as much lately, or at all, really. As the site has grown a bit more popular, I imagine if there were such a strategy employed before it has now been withdrawn. (I’m only speculating.)

I wasn’t bothered too much by all the players sitting out, although the presence of all of those silent “zombies” at the table did cause me to recall the controversies and occasional hysteria surrounding the use of “bots” in online poker. Coupled with some of the news from the past few weeks (and months), that in turn has made me think about the significant influence such software applications running automated tasks or scripts online now have upon our lives.

It’s an enormous subject, but in particular I’m thinking about those indictments handed down last Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that charge 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities with conspiracy to defraud the United States via their attempts to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If you’ve read through the 37-page document spelling out what happened (or heard it summarized), you’re familiar with some of the methods employed by these agents to manipulate news and opinion consumed by Americans during the campaign, especially via social media.

The report describes in detail how a Russian company called the “Internet Research Agency” (a name sounding equally generic and sinister) employed hundreds to help generate content published via fake accounts with invented personas on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, content that was in turn disseminated far and wide “via retweets, reposts, and similar means.”

The network has been characterized as a “bot farm” and even this week there was evidence of the network or something similar continuing to operate via the rapid spread of various messages (including false ones) in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Lakeland, Florida a week ago.

One of the more curious aspects of the “disinformation operation” (as some have described it) is the way invented news and opinion gets picked up and further distributed by unsuspecting social media users (i.e., Americans not involved with the operation). The indictment describes “unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters” of the campaign the Russians were supporting as having performed such work along with others “involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups.”

In other words, certain messages and information “campaigns” begun by this Internet Research Agency were initially promulgated by a vast number of fake accounts with programs or “bots” helping extend their reach and influence. Then actual, living and breathing humans receiving those messages (and unaware of or unconcerned about their origin) passed them along as well, increasing their audience and influence.

Setting aside questions of legality and jurisdiction (and ignoring entirely the many other areas being explored by Mueller and his team), I just want to isolate that phenomenon of an automated message sent via a “bot” being received and then resent by a human. The fake accounts being directed by the scripts are simply executing commands. The humans who then receive and resend those messages do so consciously, although they, too, act by rote in a sense, simply hitting “like” and “retweet” in what is often an uncritical fashion. (Bot-like, you could say, depending on your predilection for irony.)

When playing against the “dummy” non-players in those freerolls, I could comfortably bet or raise against them every single time, knowing full well that even though they might resemble “human” players sitting there at the table, they weren’t going to play back at me. They were programmed simply to fold every time the action was on them. If you’ve ever played against “the computer” in crude games (including poker games), you’ve probably similarly been able to pick up on the program’s patterns and exploit them to your favor.

Of course, increasingly sophisticated programs have been created to run much more challenging poker playing “bots,” including those powered by artificial intelligence. These programs can in fact exploit the tendencies of humans who often find it very difficult to randomize their actions and thereby avoid detectable patterns. It’s much harder to know what to do against these, as some of the more recent efforts in this area have demonstrated.

Many of those who forwarded along memes, photos, articles, and other bot-created content during the 2016 presidential campaign weren’t aware of the original source of that information (were “unwitting”). They were -- and are, still -- being exploited, in a way, by others who know how they tend to “play” when using social media.

The “game” is getting a lot harder. As far as social media is concerned -- and news and politics and everything else in our lives that has now become so greatly influenced by message-delivering mechanism of social media -- it’s becoming more and more difficult to know who is human and who is a bot pretending to be human.

Especially when the humans keep acting like the bots.

(EDIT [added 3/19/18]: Speaking of CoinPoker and bots, there’s an interesting new article on PartTime Poker sharing some research regarding the site’s unusual traffic patterns. The title gives you an idea of the article’s conclusion -- "CoinPoker’s Traffic is a Farce.")

Image: “Reply - Retweet- Favorite” (adapted), David Berkowitz. CC BY 2.0.

The Maniac at the Table

It’s easy to overreact.

A new player sits down at the table and immediately starts opening every pot, consistently raising two or three times the “norm.” He’s betting and raising after the flop, too, instantly disrupting the game’s previous rhythm and causing a kind of temporary paralysis to take over many players at the table.

He’s kind of a jerk as well, it turns out, making rude comments to the dealer and wait staff, and even directing a few unfriendly, terse judgments toward others at the table.

You gradually start to adjust to this newcomer -- or to tell yourself you’re adjusting, even if you’re still folding every hand to his raises while keeping mum. “I’ll find a spot,” you think to yourself, convinced this new, reckless-appearing style can’t possibly be effective over the long term.

Since the inauguration a week-and-a-half ago, the president of the United States and his team of advisors have heightened fears among many that his tenure in office will create lasting damage to the nation’s welfare and standing in the global community. Whether they will succeed in transforming the country’s core values -- equality, liberty, individualism, justice, the common good, diversity and unity -- is less certain, although those, too, are obviously under siege.

Indeed, through a hastily delivered series of executive orders and presidential memoranda, numerous erratic and hair-raising statements (including threats) by himself and his team to various groups including the press, and the continued advancement of an overall impression of instability and startling unpredictability, it appears damage has already been done that will take many years and likely multiple subsequent administrations to repair.

Unlike at any other time I can remember -- save, perhaps, the days following the attacks of 9/11 -- the country and its organizing principles feel genuinely threatened. Every single day since January 20 has presented new evidence to suggest that life as we know it both here in the U.S. and elsewhere is swiftly transforming into something less certain and more potentially destructive. Those among us who are not overtly supportive of the president and his team will suffer the most and the most directly, although even many of the most ardent red hat-wearers are going to find themselves significantly hurt as well.

Many commentators have suggested a few analogies between the present administration’s wrecking ball approach to governance and the damage inflicted during the five-and-a-half years of Richard Nixon’s presidency. It’s a logical step to make, given that there are some parallels. It’s also kind of an assuring one, in a way, suggesting as it does (at least indirectly) that what is happening right now isn’t necessarily as bad as it seems since, well, the world didn’t end with Nixon.

That’s what a friend of mine was telling me just last Friday after I commented to him how “exhausting” it was following the coverage of yet another crisis or three having been introduced by this administration. I brought up to him Nixon’s famous “Saturday Night Massacre,” that remarkable, turning-point moment in the Watergate scandal when the president’s willingness to abuse his power became much clearer to many and the idea of impeachment became a lot more concrete.

In May 1973, Nixon had his Attorney General Elliot Richardson appoint a Watergate Special Prosecutor to investigate improprieties related to the ’72 election, and Richardson appointed Archibald Cox. In fact Richardson had only been made A.G. immediately before making the appointment, and during his confirmation hearings had assured the Senate he wouldn’t use his authority to dismiss Cox without there being sufficient cause to do so.

In July came the public revelation of the White House taping system, and Cox soon was asking for copies of tapes of some of the recorded conversations about the break-in and its subsequent handling. The White House refused to hand them over, and Cox responded by serving a subpoena for the tapes. The resistance continued with Nixon continuing to refuse to hand over tapes, claiming “executive privilege.” By October Nixon and his staff came up with a compromise plan to have a senator listen to and summarize the tapes, but Cox refused to agree with such a compromise.

The next day -- Saturday, October 20, 1973 -- Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused to do so, referring back to his promise to the Senate, and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered the Deputy A.G. William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, and he also refused the order and resigned. Finally the next in line, Soliticor General Robert Bork, did fire Cox.

News coverage of that night is interesting to follow, and gives a sense of just how strange and scary it all seemed at the time. There is two hours’ worth of audio that compiles TV networks’ reporting from that evening and just afterward available over on archive.org. You hear anchors breathlessly describing the developments as “stunning” and “dramatic” and “unprecedented,” with talk of a constitutional crisis like nothing they had ever witnessed before.

To my friend I remarked that every single day last week felt like what those anchors were describing when reporting on the Saturday Night Massacre. It began with the president’s dark, divisive inauguration speech and absurdist one-man show before the CIA where his primary message concerned his “running war with the media.” Then came the feverish first performance by his press secretary in which he threatened to “hold the press accountable” while (1) strangely insisting upon statements about the inauguration crowd sizes that were verifiably false, and (2) not taking any questions himself. (It was more out there than anything Ron Ziegler ever did as Nixon’s sometimes combative and accusatory press secretary.)

The next day the Counselor to the President infamously defended “alternative facts,” helping encourage Orwellian-inspired commentaries. The various executive orders and memoranda then came raining down over the next several days (I won’t summarize all of them), fueling the fire of discontent in very deliberate-seeming ways. Finally on late Friday afternoon came the E.O. titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” which suspends the U.S. Refugees Admissions Program for 120 days while also prohibiting entry into the country of anyone from seven countries, all of which have overwhelmingly Muslim populations.

Chaos and confusion followed that last one, including protests and ugly scenes at airports all over the U.S. In the days since details have surfaced regarding the non-standard procedures followed by the president and his team to produce the order, including failing to consult with administration officials and his own party’s legislators before the order was signed.

As I say, I had already been reminded of the Saturday Night Massacre a few days before. But then last night everyone was reminded of it when the current Attorney General Sally Yates chose to defy the president in a manner that somewhat echoed Richardson’s action, even if the circumstances are quite different, when issuing a directive to the Justice Department not to defend the executive order. The president swiftly fired Yates (adding -- as he cannot avoid doing whenever he does anything -- a bitter, personal social media message about her).

I wake up this morning to more headlines sounding the alarm, and I brace myself like many others are for the next threat to emerge.

The argument over “who’s worse” between Nixon and Trump is an interesting one, though perhaps of limited practical value at such an early stage.

Nixon is the past. His presidency caused significant trauma to this country, weakening both the office and the American government in serious ways. After Nixon became president and especially starting near the end of his first term in office, he explored methods to remake government entirely, in particular to increase the overall power of the executive branch either by reducing constraints upon it or by exploiting weaknesses in the system of checks and balances. He and his reelection committee additionally engaged in outright criminal activity.

The Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up (and, as importantly, the attempted cover-up of the cover-up) would not only overwhelm Nixon’s ability to continue as president, it would obscure deeper, more significant corruption and illegality both in his campaign and his administration, not to mention the usurping of power that enabled him to order intervention in Cambodia without Congressional approval and similarly to continue the Vietnam War by evoking his title as Commander-in-Chief of the military.

However the “system” did manage to remove him from office (thanks both to some good fortune and strategic missteps by Nixon himself). And, as my friend reminded me, the country and its government did survive him.

Now this new jerk has come to the table. Some of us actually invited him. And within just a few hands it’s obvious that he is clearly doing everything he can to ruin the game. I’m reminded how I pursued this same analogy nearly a year-and-a-half ago, right after the first G.O.P. debate, in a post titled “America Is In Serious Trouble.”

Whatever his intentions might truly be, it’s clear he wants both to provoke us all and to keep us all fixated on him and him only. Eventually everything we do or say (he hopes) will necessarily be influenced by him. He’s not just playing to win, but to make it impossible for anyone else ever to win again.

Sure, it’s easy to overreact. Then again, against certain opponents whose actions are themselves wildly, crazily disproportionate, what feels like overreacting is simply responding in kind.

Images: “Trump signing order January 27” (top), Staff of the President of the United States, Public Domain; front page of the New York Times (October 21, 1973), Fair Use.

Going Over Their Heads

This week in my “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics” course the assignments include a viewing of Nixon’s televised resignation speech, delivered on the evening of August 8, 1974.

Nixon begins the speech saying “This is the 37th time I’ve spoken to you from this office,” an opening move designed to suggest a kind of “transparency” that contrasted sharply with the whole idea of a “cover-up” which had led to the offenses listed in the articles of impeachment that had already been recommended by the House Judiciary Committee (obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress).

There is conflicting information out there regarding just how many times Nixon delivered televised speeches from the Oval Office -- some places agree with him and say 37 times, others list fewer. Most agree, though, of all the presidents of the television age, Nixon used the medium as much or more than anyone else, with Ronald Reagan the only one to challenge him for such a title.

Nixon considered such speeches a way for him to communicate directly with American citizens without having his words or ideas filtered through the interpretive lens of those reporting on him. Doing so enabled him to have more control over the response, or so he believed, and not have to rely on a press with whom he was on increasingly antagonistic terms as his career went along -- not to mention his steadfast belief in a bias against him shared by most media.

A few of these speeches represented examples of Nixon’s greatest political triumphs, going back to the “Checkers” speech of September 1952 on up through the famous “Silent Majority” address on Vietnam in early November 1969. They also now retrospectively appear as some of his most ignominious moments, such as the three Watergate speeches (given in April 1973, August 1973, and April 1974), each of which present evidence of Nixon delivering what were later conclusively shown to be blatant lies and intentionally deceptive statements.

In any case, Nixon always valued the idea of having what felt like a “direct” line of address to the American public. Writing about the “Checkers” speech and the role of television in politics in general in his 1990 book In the Arena, Nixon told of reporters then having “naturally found it very difficult to accept that by going over their heads to the country on TV, I had proved them wrong.”

That’s how Nixon viewed such televised addresses -- a way of reducing the power of the press by “going over their heads” and getting his message to the people without any interference.

Yesterday I couldn’t help but think of this notion of a president speaking “directly” to the people when reading president-elect Donald Trump’s barrage of tweets strangely calling into question the legitimacy of the election he won nearly three weeks ago.

You’ve no doubt seen or heard about the tweets. The most wild-eyed and crazed of them refers to how Trump believes he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” (Trump won the Electoral College, but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 2.2 million, according to the most updated counts.) In another he specifies Virginia, New Hampshire, and California (three states won by Clinton) as sites of “serious voter fraud.”

“Why isn’t the media reporting on this?” asks Trump in the latter tweet. “Serious bias - big problem!”

Trump provides no evidence to support such claims, nor does he refer to any sources that do. From the reporting of others it sounds as though Trump is repeating some unsubstantiated claims made shortly after the election by a conservative activist named Gregg Phillips (also delivered via Twitter) that were subsequently promoted on the conspiracy site InfoWars.

InfoWars is a site identified with conspiracy theorist and talk show host Alex Jones and has provided a means for him to advance various fictions about historical events -- e.g., that the Oklahoma City attack, 9/11, and the Boston Marathon bombing were all “false flag” operations conducted by the government to increase its power; that the Sandy Hook school shootings didn’t even happen, nor did the moon landing in 1969; that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States (an idea Trump promoted and used as a gateway for his entry national politics); that global warming is a fiction invented by the Chinese and Muslims in New Jersey publicly celebrated on 9/11 (ideas Trump has also repeated); and so on. Jones even argued Mitt Romney really won the 2012 presidential election.

Like Nixon, Trump’s antagonism toward media and its “serious bias” inspires his “going over their heads” to communicate directly with the public, although Trump appears to favor Twitter over television as a preferred medium. In his 60 Minutes interview the Sunday after the election, Trump described Twitter as “a method of fighting back” against “bad” or “inaccurate” reporting on him. (He also said he would be “restrained” -- or, rather, “do very restrained” -- when using it going forward.)

But what Trump is presenting as his own, “unfiltered” message about what he thinks to be true is itself a kind of reporting being presented by sources that aren’t just biased in favor of a particular ideology, but seemingly unbound by reality, free to manufacture “info” out of whole cloth.

Nixon lied and covered up and did all sorts of things an elected official -- never mind a president -- should never do. He often claimed he rarely bluffed as a poker player, but he bluffed a lot as a politician, including repeatedly at the very end when he was called down and went busto.

But as paranoid and delusional as Nixon could be, he at least operated within a largely recognizable, shared actuality with others. These aren’t even “bluffs” Trump is tweeting out -- they don’t even meet the minimum standard of credibility to be characterized as such.

I suppose some believe there’s a method to the madness, though that would be even scarier than what is more likely the case. It’s an instinctive response to Trump, I think, wanting to impose some kind of order on what seems utterly chaotic (and frightening, given the stakes in play).

Tim Murphy tweeted an interesting comment yesterday. He’s a writer for Mother Jones, I’ll hasten to add, so as not to sound like some who simply tweet “I hear” and leave it at that.

“People act like Trump’s playing like eight-dimensional wizard chess with his tweets,” began Murphy. In other words, for those who don’t understand the president-elect’s intentions, he is communicating “over their heads,” perhaps only to those who for whatever reason can follow what he’s doing.

“But the much more obvious explanation,” added Murphy, “is he’s unstable.”

Image: “Donald Trump” (adapted), Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Rigged!

It’s probably undeniably partisan-sounding to suggest something as audacious as the idea that there is a non-zero chance the result of the 2016 presidential election was entirely unaffected by some variety of selective tampering or outright fraud.

Making such an overture is probably also an invitation to charges of groundless paranoia, not unlike the reaction many had nearly a decade ago to suggestions that online poker could in any way be rigged.

Earlier today poker pro David Paredes -- one of those who originally began to raise suspicions about cheating on UltimateBet (which turned out to be true) -- sent a tweet alluding directly to the latter while indirectly commenting on the former.

“When my friend and I first examined odd-seeming data on UB, every smart poker player called me an idiot. We wound up getting 22M refunded,” said Paredes.

We’re two weeks on, now, from that surprising Election Night that began with continued confirmations of Hillary Clinton’s wide lead in the polls suddenly being consumed by actual returns that reversed the outcome in favor of Donald Trump. The initial response by some included dismay regarding the seemingly erroneous polling data, with many exceedingly curious about how the pollsters could have gotten it so wrong.

In the last few days talk of recounts and closer scrutiny of the ballots in certain states is getting a little louder. It still doesn’t feel much like anything will come of it, but it’s enough to inspire some interesting lines of speculative thought.

Stepping back from it all and imagining a scenario in which there was some form of tampering done in a few key states that affected the outcome, I’m reminded of poker’s early history and the rampant cheating that marked the game’s first century. In particularly I’m thinking of schemes followed through by card sharps in saloons and steamboats who set up their victims initially with unsupported accusations about cheating and/or games being unfair before cheating themselves.

One method falling into this category was for the card sharp to lose a few hands, then call for a new deck as a way to imply a belief that something untoward was going on. The request might be accompanied by grumbling about cards being marked, which ideally would elicit protestations from others that the game was honest. A new deck would then be introduced -- one that he himself had doctored earlier -- enabling the sharp to cheat and win in a game others had already declared to be square.

Another tactic sometimes used by cheaters would be to make conspicuous pronouncements about how much they were losing when in truth they were cleaning up. For example, there’s a long story in John Nevil Maskelyne’s Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill (1894) about a Spanish sharp named Bianco who marked cards in advance and had decks shipped to locations in Havana he subsequently visited.

“He played everywhere, of course, and where he played he won,” explains Maskelyne. “To avert suspicion, however, he was careful to complain constantly of the losses he had sustained.”

Going further, sometimes among a group of colluding players the one managing the cheating would himself purposely lose in order to throw off the scent. George Devol refers to such a scene in Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi (1887) when once was playing with his cheating partner Canada Bill Jones. “Bill did the capping,” he says, “and as he lost, their suspicion did not light on him.”

The common thread here is that losing players are less likely to be thought of as cheaters, and more likely to be of the group accusing others of cheating. Meanwhile the winners are more likely to be defensive about games being fair in order to ensure their victories are understood to be legitimate.

During the final months of the campaign, Trump (who according to the polls had been consistently positioned as losing) consistently forwarded a “rigged election” narrative, even going so far as to enlist supporters to volunteer to be a “Trump Election Observer” and “Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!” (Here’s an archived version of the invite from Trump’s website, now removed.)

In fact Trump went so far as to file a lawsuit on Election Day in Las Vegas having to do with how voting was being managed in the state. The complaint concerned early voting and polls being allowed to stay open later than scheduled, something the Trump campaign characterized as evidence of a “rigged system.” A judge rejected the suit that afternoon, directing the campaign to take it up with the Secretary of State, but the story lingered throughout the day and early evening as a continuation of the “rigged” narrative being advanced.

Here’s an overview from Politico detailing the many types of fraud that were preemptively suggested by Trump’s campaign. The narrative earned a predictable response from the Democrats (who by all indications were “winning”) who decried the suggestions as not only lacking evidentiary support but a threat to the stability of the nation’s government. “Why Trump’s talk of a rigged election is dangerous” was the headline of one CNN article that made the same sort of argument found in many places during late October/early November.

Many of those calling for audits now find themselves in a position not unlike the one occupied by those poker players who’d earlier insisted on the game being square who then later themselves began to harbor suspicions about cheating.

What might come of it remains anyone’s guess. Indeed, amid such an atmosphere of failed predictions, it is hard to be confident about any forward-looking statements, although it seems more likely than not that nothing substantial will result from these calls to “audit the vote.”

That is to say, as was the case in 1960 and 2000, there may remain doubts in the minds of some about the legitimacy of the election result, but ultimately it doesn’t appear there will be any serious, legally-consequential revisiting of the matter during these next couple of months.

I wonder, though, how the story of the 2016 campaign and election will be told decades from now -- and in what ways the word “rigged” will be used in the telling.

Image: “Vote!”, kristin_a (Meringue Bake Shop). CC BY-SA 2.0.

Trumpster Fire

There’s something kind of unusual going on around here. I smell smoke.

No, nothing in the house is burning. Nor is anyone burning leaves or anything nearby, at least not today. But the smoky smell is lingering. Everyone is starting to notice.

It comes and goes. I’ve smelled it more often in the mornings when feeding the horses, while in the afternoons it seems to die down. Then it’ll come back later as the sky darkens and night falls.

We’ve been aware of the smell for several days, perhaps a week. The longer it lasts, the more worrisome it becomes. In the last day or two I’ve started to think of it as symbolic, too, representing a similar kind of vague threat that recently started to hang over us.

Our farm is located in the western part of North Carolina, a couple of hours away from the mountains. It’s up there that around 15 different forest fires have been burning up something close to 50,000 acres over recent days, forcing more than 1,000 people from their homes.

Firefighters have had difficulty controlling the fires thanks to the drought conditions we’ve been experiencing in this part of the state. And there’s no rain at all in the current 10-day forecast, which doesn’t bode well.

I’ve been staying inside mostly. Yesterday I noticed our county had been colored in “red” on the map, designating the air quality as “unhealthy.” There’s a worse color -- “purple” for “very unhealthy” -- although none of the counties have been shaded thusly just yet, I don’t think.

I mentioned the symbolism suggested by the smoky smell and the vague feeling of anxiety it inspires. I refer of course to the flashpoint of last week’s election, and the gradually building apprehension caused by the president-elect’s quizzical movements and proclamations, stress-causing tweets, and hazy plans to make over the country in ways even his ardent supporters have to regard as troubling.

And there were plenty of supporters, including around here. I mean if you look at a different map of the state, around three-fourths of the counties were red on that one, too.

I won’t recount all of the many whiffs of trouble we’ve been noticing. For that you can read Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker who provides a catalogue of items in a new article titled “Donald Trump’s First, Alarming Week as President Elect” -- kind of like hand histories, you might say, from a series of inexpertly played hands.

Recounting much from the election winner’s two interviews, the half-dozen press releases from his transition team, his “several important personnel and policy decisions,” and his 23 tweets, Lizza concludes the “first week was marked by seeming chaos,” suggesting that “what we’ve learned so far about the least-experienced President-elect in history is as troubling and ominous as his critics have feared.”

We don’t know what’s coming next. Most of us like to think whatever changes the future might bring won’t be destructive or hurtful or otherwise for the worse. But we don’t really know. Depends on a lot of things, including things we can’t control. Not unlike the wind, or the rain (or lack thereof).

The smell persists in a threatening way. Sometimes, after being exposed to it for a while, we become less aware of it. But then it hits us again -- bitter, a little pungent, even stinging.

And we wonder how close or real the danger really is.

Photo: Citizen-Times.