Interesting and reasonable conservative view of Trump, although the author brushes over Trump's obvious flaws and contribution to the nation's divisiveness.

One Liberal Has Ignored Current Events Since November 2016. What Has He Truly Missed?

Erik Hagerman is the poster child for post-2016 liberal angst. Unlike the many Americans who vowed to move to Canada or France or some other foreign locale if Donald Trump won the presidency, Hagerman has made good on a vow he made in connection with the election.

As the New York Times reported in a front-page feature article, Hagerman and all who wish to have contact with him adhere to “the blockade.” That’s the way he refers to his refusal to read, listen to, or watch any news about what’s going on in the world.

While he does read about the weather and discusses the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team with his mother, pretty much everything else is taboo, making it difficult for the 53-year-old retired Nike executive and former digital-shopping tech for Walmart and Disney to converse with most people. But since he has never married and lives alone on an Ohio farm, where he works on art projects and reclaiming wetlands, it isn’t all that much of a problem. If it means he must wear headphones blasting white noise while in a nearby town for a morning cup of coffee lest he have any inadvertent contact with other humans, Hagerman thinks that’s an acceptable price to pay. (He used to listen to music but found that the gaps between songs allowed some words and phrases uttered by people sitting at nearby tables to filter in.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/erik-hagerman-media-blackout-what-has-he-missed/

The statements criticized the mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf, for her decision last month to warn city residents that a raid by federal immigration agents targeting roughly 1,000 people was imminent. The agency’s deputy director, Thomas D. Homan, said that Ms. Schaaf’swarning had helped “864 criminal aliens and public safety threats” to evade capture in the raid.

Mr. Schwab said in interviews, first with The San Francisco Chronicle and then with CNN, that he had been frustrated by the remarks, and had quit “because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts.”

“I asked them to change the information,” he told The Chronicle, referring to the 864 people to whom the statement alluded. “I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

He explained that the enforcement agency would have been unlikely to capture all of the roughly 1,000 undocumented immigrants in the area that it had targeted, and that it was incorrect to identify those who were not detained as threats to public safety.

“We were never going to pick up that many people,” he said. “To say that 100 percent are dangerous criminals on the street, or that those people weren’t picked up because of the misguided actions of the mayor, is just wrong.”

Mr. Schwab did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. He resigned last week, according to CNN.

“I just couldn’t bear the burden — continuing on as a representative of the agency and charged with upholding integrity, knowing that information was false,” he told CNN, adding that in his 16 years of experience in government he had never been asked to deflect when he knew something was inaccurate.