Right off the bat, the first thing to know is that, apparently, the media doesn't read shit. I didn't actually predict anything. I'm not Miss Cleo (RIP), you know? Instead, when Trump released his first batch of policy papers online in September (the immigration plan was posted in April), I just read them. I'll note here that I read them from beginning to end, while also acknowledging that, as a complete set, they still amounted to less reading than the average Cracked article.

Pixabay
I will accept your medals, though.

Nevertheless, I did read them. I highly doubt that I'm literally the only person who read them, but there were definitely times when it kind of felt that way. What bothered me the most about the media coverage that followed after Trump unveiled his immigration policy is that, for the most part, the "reporting" just kind of conformed to whatever his favorite talking points on the subject happened to be at the time. Most news stories pointed out that the policy included a section about building the wall and making Mexico pay for it. There were plenty of outlets whose coverage included detailed statistics about the impact deporting millions of undocumented workers would have on our economy. However, to this day, not a single news outlet has even casually mentioned stuff like this:

www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

I mean none. No one. Go ahead and Google it. Run the phrase "refugee program for American children" through your Google box and see how many stories you get about intrepid reporters cornering Trump and asking him to explain exactly what this program would entail or why it's in the middle of his immigration policy. You won't find any. You'll find a ton of links about Obama's refugee program for Central American kids, but the only evidence you'll find of Trump's plan is a link to his site.

That's a problem, right? You don't come to me for news. There is an entire wing of society whose job is to deliver news and information. Not a single one of them have even brought up what, at least to me, seems like a pretty big deal -- especially when you consider it in the context of his immigration plan as a whole. That leads me to the next point ...

Deporting millions of undocumented workers would leave a huge hole in the workforce and ultimately cripple our economy. At no point during this campaign has Donald Trump told us how he'd address that problem. Except he has. He totally has. Goddammit, people. He has.

The problem is that he hasn't said it during a speech or an interview, and that's all that gets analyzed on your nightly news and late-night talk shows in any kind of detail. Meanwhile, do you remember any point in time when a legitimate news person sat down and went through any of the candidates' plans point by point, on the air? I don't, and I imagine it's because that would be insanely boring to watch, and the subsequent ratings drop would lead to the producer who decided to green-light that segment getting replaced with someone who isn't afraid to get some titties on the screen during an election cycle.

A75/iStock
Or leg titties!

The problem is, that kind of detailed analysis is exactly what we should be getting from our legitimate news sources. Not everyone has time to read every candidates' policies in detail. If they did, there would probably be a lot fewer of us wondering how Donald Trump plans to fill all those holes in the job market. Unfortunately, covering speeches, town hall appearances, debates, and anything else that isn't a long-winded document on a website is way more pleasing to the eye.

So because Donald Trump hasn't explicitly said in public how he he'll address that concern, we just assume he doesn't have a plan and write off his deportation talk as something that's too crazy to ever happen. Well, like I've been saying for months, a perusal of his immigration plan should tell you exactly what he has in mind when it comes to filling the jobs that mass deportation will leave behind. Here's another clue:

www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

Please read that slowly and as many times as you need to for it to register. This is at least the third column in which I've included that passage from Trump's immigration policy. It could not be written any plainer. I've been saying for as long as anyone would listen that Trump's plan is to take jobs from immigrant workers, undocumented or otherwise, and give them to inner-city residents. I didn't say it because I was guessing. It just literally says on his website that this is his plan.

Nevertheless, when Trump's RNC acceptance speech at several points veered off into promises of all the good things he'll do for inner-city residents, specifically naming places like Baltimore, Chicago, and Ferguson, people were still surprised for some reason.

twitter.com/Jaymillz31
This marks the first time in history I've wanted to use an emoji as a caption.

This should not have caught anyone off-guard. At the very least, I hope it wasn't a shock to the Clinton campaign. He put his plan in writing a long time ago, and a requirement of that plan involves directly addressing inner-city residents. But it still took Trump saying it on television before anyone believed he would.

Also, please note that the foreign workers in question in that blurb I posted above aren't even in the country illegally. In fact, the J-1 visa program makes for a fine segue into the next point ...

They run the gamut from au pair (professional babysitter) to physician (professional doctor), and there isn't a single farming job in the bunch. He has similar plans for the H-1B visa program, which covers STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) jobs. But bring up that Trump is planning to take jobs from immigrant workers and give them to inner-city workers, and you're almost guaranteed to get a smug reply about how those are jobs Americans don't want and would never do. Hell, that's not even true of all the jobs undocumented immigrants will leave behind, much less workers who are here legally.

So when I said way back in October that he'd sell his hate as hope for the poorest citizens in this country, it wasn't a guess. Anyone who read his immigration plan thoroughly enough could have connected those dots and written their very own article about all the ways Trump mirrors Hitler. Oh, and speaking of that ...

Specifically in reference to Usenet newsgroup discussions, he theorized that, given enough time to carry on and fester, any online argument will eventually result in someone comparing something to Hitler.

However, over the years, it took on a different meaning that was more along the lines of "Whoever brings up Hitler first in an online argument automatically loses the argument."

Here's the thing: That's total goddamn nonsense. Some things in this world are going to be Nazi-like. I'm sorry, that's just where we are as a planet right now. By that bullshit logic, if you were trying to convince someone on a message board that white is the superior race and they said you were acting like Hitler, you could claim victory right then and there.

haribo.com
Everyone knows that's only true for gummy bears.

This Salon article about the "odiousness" of Godwin's Law reminds us that half the objective of the Nuremberg Trials was to form a set of guidelines by which future leaders could be judged to determine if they were maybe getting a little too Nazi-like. According to the warped version of Godwin's Law that's been adopted by so much of the internet, if that trial happened online, the war criminals could claim an immediate victory.

Even Godwin himself said in an article he wrote for The Washington Post that comparing Trump to Hitler is perfectly acceptable as long as your history and facts line up properly.

Eventually, the professional media types and political experts got comfortable with acknowledging that Trump was eerily reminiscent of Hitler, but it took a long damn while. There's no way to prove it, but I'd be shocked if Godwin's Law didn't have some role in that delay for a lot of people.

Even something as beloved and time-tested as Occam's Razor isn't as foolproof as people like to pretend it is.

Wikipedia
I think that's Occam there in the middle?

If you're unfamiliar, it says that, when presented with competing hypotheses, you should choose the one that requires the fewest assumptions. Sounds great, but in this case, those really are the words of someone living that 1300s life. It's not quite as applicable to modern life. You know who doesn't view Occam's Razor as a problem solver? Science. The scientific method doesn't view Occam's Razor as an irrefutable rule that can be used to make decisions. You probably shouldn't either.

What I'm getting at is that your internet rules are meaningless when a guy who slept with a book of Hitler's speeches on his bedside for a decade is running for the highest office in all the land.