Dishonored, a look back before the sequel

Dishonored

Grade: B

Platform: PC, 360, PS3

Genre: Stealth FPS RPG

Price: $29.99 GOTY

Site

Steam

Dishonored is an example of how well executed world building can team up with solid gameplay and make a game memorable despite a paper thin story and cardboard characters.  It's also an excellent example of how limitations can spur creativity. 


The limitation in question is the fact that Dishonored was one of the last games to be designed for the Xbox360 and the PS3.  Despite being released in 2012, a time when most gaming PC's were equipped with at least 8 gig of RAM, it had to run on creekingly antique hardware that had, in the PS3's case, a mere 256 megabytes of RAM (that's about 62 times less RAM than a gaming PC of the day).  The CPU and GPU of the Xbox360 and PS3 were similarly underpowered, being around 16 times less powerful than 2012's processors.

All of which meant that Dishonored should have looked awful by modern standards, built on obviously low poly models and with textures that made everything look either cartoonish or muddy.

In reality, Dishonored was strikingly beautiful and still stands out as one of the better looking recent games.  How?

By taking the limits of the systems to heart and building a visual look that would work well inside those limits and fit the world as presented.  Dishonored abandoned any attempt for photorealism and embraced a style that made it look as if the player had stepped into an old oil painting.  It meshed perfectly with the world they were presenting, and the tone of the story.  Rather than being muddy, Dishonored is muted, rather than being blocky it is simple.  All of which helps to convey the mood of the world, and helps mask the gaping void where an entertaining and well plotted story should have been.

The single best thing about Dishonored is the world building, the setting is lovingly crafted, you get the impression of a world that goes well beyond the borders of the game. Even, or perhaps especially, the minor characters seem to fit and have a story and life larger than their role in the game.  This is helped by mostly above average (and occasionally excellent) voice acting and music.  

The gentle Cthulhuoid monstrosities so casually referred to as "whales", the religion that has been based almost entirely around opposition to what is apparently the only source of genuine magic in the world, the dying city, and the technology which is wholly based on "whale" oil (to say nothing of the torture involved in extracting it), all fit together beautifully and mesh with the hints of the larger world beyond Dunwall with each element reinforcing the mood of the setting and story.  Even the costumes, in so many games largely ignored leaving characters dumped into costumes that either don't fit the setting or are taken straight from history and break immersion, reflect a thoughtful design influenced by, but not bound by, actual historic costumes.

Even better, for the most part the game gets out of your way and allows you to enjoy the world by having a well done interface.  I can't speak for how it played on a console, but on the PC the controls were smooth and didn't intrude into the game beyond the absolute minimum. 

All of which is good, because without such a well developed world,  mood, and interface, the game would have had to rely on the characters and story, and it would have been largely forgotten if it had.

Apparently having expended all of their creative energies on the world, the developers at Arkane seemed to have little left for the main characters and the plot.  The plot is a bog standard revenge tale motivated by the worn out and tired trope of the dead love interest and/or kidnapped love interest.  Arkane decided to go with both: a dead lover and a kidnapped daughter.

Corvo is, say it with me everyone, a grizzled male silent protagonist.  Someone must have spent a full minute or two thinking that one up.  Like all grizzled male silent protagonists, he needs a shave, has a scar or two, and is ruggedly handsome in a brooding sort of way.  Yeah, just like the dozens, if not hundreds, of other grizzled male silent protagonists you've played.  They broke the mold a bit, rather than a buzz or shaved head, he's got tousled dark hair, but eh.

Most of the other major characters slot neatly into well worn tropes.  There's the socially awkward genius engineer, here's the politically ambitious general, and look over there is the corrupt aristocrat complete with the loyal servant.  The open villains are similarly shopworn, and when the inevitable betrayal plot element comes up it is with a long expected inevitability that couldn't have been more blatantly telegraphed if they'd actually telegraphed it.  You have to wonder if perhaps Corvo just isn't all that bright since he apparently didn't see it coming.

For the most part, the beautifully realized and executed world, the tight gameplay, and the pacing of the game help to keep you sufficiently distracted that you don't (much) notice how the plot is so well worn that you knew it by heart from the first scene, or that the characters are all made of cardboard.

There are a few exceptions, Emily doesn't fit easily into any established princess trope, for example.  And despite being a bit unoriginal, the Outsider is just too awesome not to love.

If the plot and characters had been given even a tenth of the attention that was given to the setting, the game as a whole could have been so much better.  

There's a degree of improvement in the DLC.  Daud gets a bit more fleshed out, though he's still rather shallow, but Billie Lurk is actually a good character, and while Delilah Copperspoon isn't all that original, nor is her plot, she's got a bit of zip and manages to avoid the worst of the femme fatale tropes that could have caged her in and made her more boring.

So here's to hoping that in Dishonored 2 they spend a bit more time on plot and character, and have the same attention to detail and world building that went into the first. If Dishonored 2 manages to keep the good stuff from Dishonored and include better characters and plot, it'd be worth an A.

Food blogging: Okonomiyaki, the best way to eat cabbage that exists

Type: Japanese

Difficulty: easy

Non-Standard Ingredients: 2 from any Asian market

Grade: B

Okonomiyaki means "whatever you like fried up", you can put just about anything into okonomiyaki as an extra, but there are some basics that don't change.  It's essentially a savory batter with a bunch of cabbage and green onion mixed in along with your optional ingredients, and then cooked kind of like a pancake with thin strips of pork belly on the bottom.  You top it with a sauce called, boringly enough, okonomiyaki sauce, most people also add mayo.  Its simple and good, and as it says in the title the best way you'll ever find to eat cabbage.

There's two main types of okonomiyaki, I just described Kansai (or Osaka) style, which is the type I like best and the only variety I'd recommend trying to make at home.  Hiroshima style is a lot more complicated to try to make at home and involves layering lots of stuff together rather than mixing it up from the start.  

Despite living in Japan for a semester and knowing more about Meiji Era Japan (1868-1912) than anyone who didn't actually get a degree in East Asian history should, I really don't care for most Japanese food, though there's very little I actively dislike there's also not much that really makes me excited.

There are some Japanese dishes that are excellent, sushi may well be one of the best food inventions ever, and no one ever has anything bad to say about miso soup.  But to me most Japanese cooking is a bit like the less inspiring variety of American midwestern cooking.  It's generally sort of sweetish and bland and boring.  There are several exceptions, Japanese dishes I absolutely love, but for the most part I'm kind of meh about Japanese cooking.  

Okonomiyaki is one of the exceptions.  It is just plain good, and oddly new.  As nearly as anyone can tell, it didn't exist prior to WWII, and may have been invented due to the post-war shortages of rice.

In Japan you mostly encounter it at fairs or restaurants, but it's dead easy to make at home.  Most of the ingredients can be found at any American grocery store, and the stuff you can't find at most American grocery stores can usually be found in even the smallest and less well stocked Asian grocers.

Mind, as long as you're headed to your local Asian grocery anyway, you might as well get some other stuff while you're there because Asian grocers are filled with many amazing, awesome, and delicious things.

This recipe makes either two large servings or three medium servings.

Ingredients From An Asian Market That You MUST Have:

You cannot make okonomiyaki without these two things:

Dashi stock.  HonDashi is usually what you'll find both in your local Asian market and in Japan, it's a powder that looks a bit like baking yeast, a small jar should cost less than $3.  If you really feel like it you can try to make your own from kombu seaweed and bonito flakes, but I've never thought it was really worth it.  Until you know what dashi should taste like, just use the powder.  Dashi is the root of almost all Japanese cookery.

Okonomiyaki sauce.  The brand you'll most likely find is Otafuku, and it is good stuff.  Restaurants in Japan often have their own house secret sauce, but I'm not an okonomiyaki restaurant and neither are you so just buy some from the store.

Optional Extras from an Asian Market:

This stuff is kind of nice to have but not actually necessary.

Kewpie brand mayonnaise, has a somewhat different flavor from American mayo

Aonori, ground up seaweed, makes a nice topping for the okonomiyaki and some other dishes

Bonito flakes: super thin shavings of smoked dried fish, traditional topping for okonomiyaki and quite tasty

Miso you're there anyway, miso soup is bloody delicious, might as well grab some and have it too!

Pickled, shredded, ginger, there's two kinds: gari which you get with sushi and comes in pale pink thin slices, and beni shoga which is radioactive neon obviously fake red and comes in julienned shreds.  You want beni shoga for this.  

If you really, really, feel like it you can try to find naga-imo, Japanese mountain yam, if you do you omit the potato starch from the recipe and grind up a couple tablespoons of naga-imo into a sort of slimy sticky stuff that adds extra body to the batter.  I've never found naga-imo at a low enough price I thought it was worth it.

Ingredients From Any Grocery Store:

1 cup flour

2 tablespoons potato starch

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

4 cups chopped cabbage

12 or so green onions, fine sliced on the white end and chopped to about 1/2 inch pieces on the green end

6 strips bacon (or uncured pork belly if you want to be more traditional) cut into 1/2 inch or so strips.

How to cook it:

Measure 2/3 cups of water and add about 3/4 tablespoon of dashi powder, that's a bit strong for soup but perfect for okonomiyaki.  Stir until dissolved.  Congrats, you now have dashi stock.

Mix the flour, potato starch, and baking powder in a large bowl.  Crack in the eggs, and add the dashi stock, and mix with a spoon or whisk until well blended and smooth.  No need for a hand mixer or stand mixer.

Chop your cabbage into somewhat smaller than 1/2 inch pieces, you're looking for bite size here, and mix that into your batter.

Chop the white part of the green onions into very thin slices, and the green part into roughly 1/2 inch long pieces.  Mix that into your batter.

Heat a large pan or skillet over medium heat until it's about right for making pancakes.  Add a touch of cooking spray then put 1/2 or 1/3 of your batter/cabbage/green onion glop.  

Smoosh it flat and round until its only about 1/2 inch thick.  Put bacon pieces on top.

Cover with a lid and let cook for three to four minutes, until the bottom is golden. 

Flip, you may need two spatulas for this step.  Now your bacon is on the bottom and cooking away merrily.  Cover and cook for three to four more minutes.

When the bottom is cooked and your bacon all nice and done, remove from a pan and plate.  Start your next one right away then decorate the first.

Top with stripes of okonomiyaki sauce, mayo, and (if you got it) aonori and bonito flakes.

Eat.

Extras:

That's a very basic okonomiyaki.  You can add whatever you like to the basic batter and cabbage mix.  In Japan you usually see octopus or shrimp, but also chicken, sometimes beef, more pork, tofu, extra veggies (zucchini shredded thin is nice), okonomiyaki is all about what you want to add so add whatever sounds good.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2, the only game you really need, and the world's best hat simulator

Grade: B

Platform: PC, GNU/Linux, Mac

Genre: Team FPS

Price: FREE!

Site

Steam

Released in October of 2007, TF2 is not the oldest game I play and advocate for, but its definitely on the older side of things.  It is, however, still one of the better games that exists and one that a lot of people turn to when they can't decide what to play. It has hats, and fun filled promotional videos. What more could you ask for?

Unlike most competitive games, TF2 has a community that is generally friendly and not made of the sort of tantrum throwing types that make most MOBAs a nightmare to play. Whether this is due to the quick nature of the games, the way the teams are autoscrambled when one side wins too much, or just the age of the game, I'll leave to social scientists to sort out.  Bu the result is a community that typically ranges from pleasant to meh, I honestly can't recall any time on public servers that I encountered someone throwing a tantrum, or even really being much of a jerk beyond the very passive aggressive jerkdom of being AFK during a fight.

TF2 is a game that is balanced by being unbalanced.  There are nine classes, and each has a blend of strengths and weaknesses that keeps any from being OP.  A team needs at least one of each class just to make up for the deficiencies each class has, and there's ways for even less skilled players to contribute.  There's always a shortage of medics, its a fairly easy class to play (though you will die often, because medics are always a top target), and while following around a Heavy or Pyro you can learn the map.  

I would recommend looking at the wiki for at least an overview of a how a class works and what the expectations are for that class, that way when you're playing Pyro you'll know that you need to spy check.

There are a variety of game modes, the classic King of the Hill and Capture the Flag (ahem, sorry, "intelligence") are there, but the busy people at Valve have been steadily adding content, the most recent released only a couple of weeks ago, including new play modes which keep things fresh, though for my money the Payload game is still the most fun.  Though there is something to be said for loading beer into an alien UFO to make it crash before the enemy team can do the same.

The only downside to TF2 is that all nine classes are men, and other than the announcer women basically don't exist except as the pinup girls in the locker rooms.  But the erasure of women is, regrettably, not something that really makes TF2 stand out, so I'm willing to count it as a good game despite that.

Since TF2 is an older game, it can run on older or less expensive hardware with a nice silky smooth framerate. And, despite being older, it doesn't show its age much, I'd say in large part due to the cartoonish graphics that don't try for photorealism.

More to the point, TF2 is simply fun.  It isn't grimdark, it isn't hyper competitive, its just a good time, and one that doesn't take a huge time commitment.  But despite a shallow learning curve, there is a fair amount of complexity to the game, but you don't actually have to know the details of when and why you might want to use the Axtinguisher instead of the Frying Pan.  

You can load up TF2, hop into a game, and play for several hours, or just a few minutes, and it'll be fun either way, and it is that casual aspect that keeps players coming back when they look at their giant library in Steam and can't decide what to play.  For that reason alone, "screw it, I'll play some Team Fortress" may as well be the unofficial motto of PC gamers everywhere.

There are also hats.

Stardew Valley, the only RPG/dating sim/farming game you'll ever need

Stardew Valley

Grade: C

Platform: PC

Genre: Farming, dating sim, rpg

Price: $14.99

Site

Steam

A rarity even in indy games, Stardew Valley is wholly the creation of a single person.  Eric Barone did the coding, the writing, the art, the music, everything.

The result looks like it'd be at home on a Super Nintendo, and that's a good thing.  The 16 bit style graphics add a needed note of whimsy and unreality to the game, reminding you that it isn't really a farming simulator but a game that uses "farming" as a mechanic.

Despite being billed as a farming game, a good portion of the game is a dungeon crawl with an RPGish feel, coupled with a ruthless bit of resource management, with that last being essential to gameplay and much of the challenge.

Your character has a limited endurance, and that pool is consumed when you do much of anything.  Fishing, farming, harvesting crops, fighting monsters, mining for ore, chopping down trees, all consume your energy forcing you to carefully consider what you'd like to do in any given day.  Adding to the problem is that you can't work too late into the day or your character will pass out and you'll be penalized with even lower energy the next day.  And that some things can only be accomplished at certain times of day, or certain weather conditions, or seasons, or days, etc.

Managing your character helps keep the farming from getting boring, as does the variety of available tasks.  If you're bored with farming you can go fishing, or chop wood, or go exploring the caves, or go try to woo a romantic partner.

Because yes, Stardew Valley is also a dating sim.  With all the often squicky problems that dating sims come bundled with.  

Gamifying human relationships is always a fraught exercise.  But in a way Stardew Valley navigates the problem with minimal difficulties.  In part, I think, due to the simple graphics and gameplay that harken back to the older systems it feels less wrong to render human relationships almost entirely as buying someone's love with money.

Because that's how Stardew Valley mostly handles relationships.  Want to date someone?  Give them presents and they'll eventually be your date and marry you.  There's a few added elements, some conversational options similar to the stuff you'd see in a Japanese dating sim, but mostly if you want to pursue a relationship with any of the single people in Stardew Valley you simply find out their favorite product and give it to them repeatedly until they agree to marry you.

Since the rest of the game has a simplified feeling, the purchasing of affection through presents doesn't come across as badly as it sounds at first.

Still, it'd be interesting to see a game where romance options involve some randomness, where every time the game starts some randomly determined characters just aren't that into you and you've got to find that out the hard way.  At least it'd be different.

I will say that Stardew  Valley at least takes a refreshing approach to LGBT issues that fits with the rest of the highly simplified tone of the game.  There are ten single characters you can try to date, five men, five women, and you can pursue any of them regardless of the sex of your character.  Getting a date with a guy, as a guy, plays out exactly the same as getting a date with a girl as a guy.  Bring your intended lots of presents and you'll score.

Even with my reservations about the dating aspect, the game is entertaining and well worth the purchase price.  A solid, averagely fun and enjoyable game.

AlphaGo and the future of game AI

If you aren't familiar with the game of go (also called baduk, weiqi, and a few other names) the recent news of a computer beating a human grandmaster may seem kind of boring and irrelevant.  After all, haven't computers been routinely beating human grandmasters at chess since 2005?

Chess, ironically, has more complex rules than go.  You can learn how to play go in, literally, about five minutes.  Yet making a computer program that can play go at an even semi-professional level has proven to be impossible until just now.

Why?

Because you can't predict your way to victory in go and that's how the chess playing programs win.

Deep Blue won against Kasparov not by actually playing chess, but by predicting what would happen from each move.  There's only 64 squares on a chess board, each piece only moves in a limited number of ways, therefore there's only so many moves that can be made at any given moment.  Deep Blue could predict hundreds of moves into the future, pick the move that would give it the best outcome, and win.

That approach doesn't work with go simply becuase the play space is too big.  There are 64 squares in chess, and each piece can only move so many ways.  In go there are 361 spaces to play in, and any space can be played at any time.  That's just too much to predict.

As a result, go playing programs were never very good.  They can beat a beginner easily, they can challenge a mid level amateur, and even a lower ranking master player could beat them with no real difficulty.  The grandmasters never bothered playing a go program before (at least not in tournaments, I'd be surprised if they hadn't played a few in less public arenas just to see).

AlphaGo wins not by predicting but by actually playing, thinking, more like a human does.  It's a combination of two neural nets (one for strategic evaluation, one for local fights), some old school heuristic AI programming, and yes as much prediction as they could manage (humans try to predict too).

And it just beat one of the very best human go players in the world 4-1 in a five game match.

The team behind Deep Mind says that they're going to try turning their attention to StarCraft: Brood War.  Not StarCraft II, because of all the DRM and such they can't hook their program directly into SC2, while building a custom AI for SC:BW has been possible since it was released.

I have little doubt that they'll be able to make a very good StarCrat player out of Deep Mind.  There are more options in SC than in go, but at the same time its actually simpler from a certain standpoint.  And, of course, any computer will have a micro game that is just plain unbeatable.  I suppose for the sake of fairness they'll have to cap Deep Mind's APM, but even with an APM cap it'll doubtless have a better micro game than any human.  The only question then is strategy, and if Deep Mind can master the strategy of go, I think it'll win in StarCraft no problem.

Don't misunderstand, I love StarCraft, but compared to go it just isn't very strategically deep.

Personally I'd love to see how it does at Civilization.

Leaving aside the potential for developing actual general purpose AI, that is a human level self aware mind, what this means in the shorter term is the possibility of a genuinely challenging AI in single player games.

A much less complex version of the same sort of neural net program that they use with AlphaGo, in a decade or so when computer power makes that possible on your home rig, would allow for a single player opponent that is challenging without cheating.

Right now the only real way for game AI to be a challenge is by cheating.  StarCraft II, for example, allows its AI to have more resources, do more damage, take more damage, etc.  In Civilization the AI gets free resources, city bonuses, etc.  Name a game, if there's an AI that tries to be challenging, it almost certainly does so by allowing the AI to cheat.

Some games make this a central gameplay mechanic (AI Wars for example).  Others try not to talk much about it.  But they all do it.

For now anyway.

Right now Deep Mind is a hugely expensive, highly experimental, result of centuries of programmer time, and it requires a truly staggering amount of CPU just to work.  But give it a decade or so and all that will be possible to package into a game you buy for $60.  Or heck, a bit less than that for cloud based AI.

The Flash (2014)

The Flash
Grade: C
Genre: Comic book, action adventure
IMDB

Having a kid makes you watch a lot of shows you normally wouldn't.  The Flash is one that turned out not to be awful.

Fitting into the continuity that DC and the CW already built with Arrow (about the Green Arrow, naturally) the Flash takes the Arrowverse more in the direction of DC comics by introducing metahumans, time travel, multiple universes, and so forth.

When I read comics, for whatever reason I drifted to Marvel first and never really paid much attention to DC, and as a result most of the villains they show on the Flash are newish to me.  I'm vaguely familiar with the DC universe from watching the old 1980's Justice League cartoon series and more recently Batman The Animated Series and Batman the Brave and the Bold with my son.

As a result, I came into the Flash with minimal expectations, and was pleasantly surprised when the first season turned out to be quite well done and the second season (so far) turns out not to suck too badly.  The writing team either changed or got worse in season two, but its still watchable.

The cast mostly does a credible job, but the real stars are Tom Cavanagh and Jesse L. Martin, who respectively play Dr. Harrison Wells and Detective Joe West.  In the first season, Tom Cavanagh brought a delightful air of subtle menace to his role, managing to seem amiable enough but threatening and keeping a dark secret as well.  Jesse L. Martin brings Joe West to life, taking a role that in less competent hands would be merely mawkish or cliche ridden and turning it into a rounded and interesting character.

One of the nicer aspects of the Flash is that it fits today's world so well, though it never really takes a closer look at what it portrays.  Joe West and his daughter Iris, Barry Allen's adoptive family, are black.  In the real world that sort of adoptive situation is rare because its actively discouraged.  Race is simply not discussed in the Flash, ever, which considering Joe West's position as a police detective is difficult to justify.  I don't demand that every show be The Wire, nor do I demand a deep examination of race in America from a show aimed mostly at teens and young adults.  But the total silence seems at first slightly odd and then almost oppressive.

So far two characters are acknowledged to be gay.  Police captain David Singh (who doesn't look Sikh to me) once grumpily justified a bacon cheese burger on the grounds that his boyfriend was trying to make him eat healthier, and later had wedding jitters as he prepared to marry his boyfriend.  It was handled well, Singh was established as a character before his sexuality was brought up.  He was always a hardass police captain who was gay, not a gay police captain.  And that is a sign of progress, even just five years ago the fact that he was gay would have needed a lot more explanation and would have been a much larger part of his character.

The other openly gay character is a brilliant supervillain, who like Singh is more than just a gay villain.

The Flash is a monster of the week type show, with a season long story arc that threads through all the individual episodes.  The characters are mostly well developed and interesting enough, and while most of the villains were one shot a few are recurring and become (as villains inevitably must) more interesting than the heroes.

Barry Allen isn't as angsty as a typical X-Man, but the writers try to wring every drop of pathos out of him that they can.  Ultimately he's sort of shallow, because superheros almost inevitably are.  He runs in circles around bad guys, discovers that he isn't fast enough, finds the inner willpower to go faster, and runs in faster circles around bad guys which defeats them.

But Wentworth Miller's Leonard Snart manages to rise above the constraints of being the guy in a parka with a cold ray, and become the sort of villain you can cheer for.  And considering how cheesy Captain Cold is in most other portrayals that's saying something.

Overall, the Flash is a solid TV show delivering an average amount of entertainment.

On Trump supporters

One of the constants in liberal politics is an unwillingness to take conservative voters at face value.  The book What's the Matter With Kansas is a near platonic example of this.  The basic thesis being that the voters in Kansas *should* have their own best financial interest at heart.  But they voted against their financial best interests so therefore they must have fallen victim to the lies and manipulations of the economic elites who are duping the average conservative voter into hurting themselves.

The conclusion is that conservative voters are basically misguided and if only they can be brought to see the truth (that they'd do better economically under a liberal government) they'd vote for liberals because that makes the most economic sense even if they don't like the liberal social agenda.  For a long time this view made sense to me and that was how I tended to think of conservative voters, as basically well meaning but misguided or duped individuals.

I've lately come to think of this viewpoint as being not merely bullshit, but paternalistic condescending bullshit.

If you actually listen to what conservative people say they're quite open about what they want and how they think and what they believe.  The supporters of Donald Trump may be the best example of this, but the Tea Party hasn't exactly been shy about their beliefs either.

And while they'd like to do better financially, it isn't the biggest item on the list, and moreover they see doing better financially via the sort of things liberals propose as cheating.  In fact, for many of them doing better financially, at least by liberal means, is an option they're willing to sacrifice in order to get what they actually want.

What Trump has done is simply rip off the veil of bullshit that conservative politicians have been trying to cover up the actual drives of conservative voters.  Lee Atwater, describing Nixon's Southern Strategy described the obscuring bullshit politicians found necessary to deploy rather than simply openly addressing the desires of their voters:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Race has always been one of the core issues of American politics, but since the 1960's it's an issue that conservative elites have been uncomfortable with.  But the conservative base has never really felt right about the need to obfuscate the racism.

A few years ago when a conservative complained about being silenced by "political correctness" they were almost always talking about liberals who they imagined would be annoyed at blatant racism or sexism.  These days when a conservative complains about "political correctness" they almost always mean conservative elites shushing the open racism and urging the use of dog whistle terms.

Trump is turning Atwater's advice on its head.  There is a hard core of conservatism in the USA that is not merely xenophobic, racist, and sexist, but is proudly xenophobic, racist, and sexist, and they're tired of being shushed, tired of being told to keep it away from the cameras, and tired in general of the politicians they vote for being embarrassed about who voted for them.

86.9% of Trump voters in one poll agreed with the statement "people like me don't have any say about what the government does".  Donald Trump is popular, in other words, largely because he sounds like your racist grandpa does when he spouts off about topics he knows nothing about.  Illegal immigration?  Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it!  Problems in the Middle East?  Bomb the shit out of 'em!  Complex matters with Muslim refugees, immigrants, and Muslims native to your nation?  Ban all Muslims!

The Trump supporters may also believe that implementing Trump's policies will benefit them economically, but that concern is a far distant second to the more important, more pressing, concerns they have.

Ultimately the desire is for a return to a status that never was, a desire for America to become like they imagine the 1950's were like.  A mythic time when American meant white, and everyone who wasn't white kept their heads down and didn't make waves if they knew what was good for them.  A mythic time when men worked and women stayed home to clean, cook, and care for the children.   A time, in short, when straight, white, Christian, men were unquestioned as the top of the heap and everyone else acknowledged it.

There's a reason why Trump's supporters are so overwhelmingly white, and a reason why people like David Duke and other white supremacists keep endorsing him.

The simple fact is that Trump is saying openly what Republicans have been urging their followers to say privately for decades.  He is the ultimate expression of Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the end product of years of Republican support for hate radio.  That this embarrasses the establishment Republicans who want to keep egging on white resentment for easy votes but don't want to be painted as racists, and especially don't want to actually implement programs that the resentful white voters want, is irrelevant.

To expect a Trump voter to reject him based on economics, or really facts of any sort, is to miss the point entirely.  Trump supporters are the product of resentment, they are not voting for a political agenda but for a tribal one.  It isn't about money, though the financial pinch they feel may well help amplify their resentments.  When they say they want their country back, when they say they represent Real America and by implication that anyone who isn't like them doesn't count as being really American, they mean it.  And that's how they'll vote.