Vox Sentences: The day the alt-right went mainstream

Colombia signs the peace deal that ends its 52-year civil war; the alt-right, explained; Donald Trump's latest immigration wriggling, inexplicable.

Finally, officially over

AFP / Luis Robayo

• The Colombian government has officially signed a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). [NYT / Nicholas Casey]
• The deal puts an end to 52 years of war... [The Guardian / Alan Yuhas]
• ...and nearly six years of negotiations, many of them hosted in Cuba. [USA Today / Alan Gomez]
• The deal goes way beyond a simple ceasefire. It includes political accommodations that will give the FARC's political wing guaranteed representation in the legislature — as well as create new districts to increase the power of underrepresented rural areas. [Fusion / Manuel Rueda]
• It can't answer all the questions facing Colombia going forward. (For example, what happens to the global cocaine trade — 40 percent of which was controlled by FARC — is a big open question.) [InSight Crime / Jeremy McDermott]
• More importantly, it's not even guaranteed to stick. Colombia's voters have to decide, in a referendum in November, whether to accept the deal. [AFP via Twitter / Reportedly]
• And voters have soured on it over the summer. Many are worried that it gave away too much to the rebels. [Washington Post / Nick Miroff]
• Ironically, the fact that the deal would have to come up to a public vote probably gave the Colombian government better leverage — it could tell the FARC that if it gave too much away, the deal would be voted down. [Council on Foreign Relations / Matthew Taylor]

Shedding light on the internet's dankest places

Wikimedia Commons / Gabido13

• Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Reno, Nevada, today tying Donald Trump and his campaign to a long record of racism, insensitivity, and white supremacy. [Vox / Jeff Stein]
• But the speech will probably be remembered as the first time mainstream political discourse acknowledged the "alt-right" movement. [Washington Post / Abby Ohlhiser, Caitlin Dewey, and staff]
• The "alt-right" isn't just white supremacism remixed with meme culture. But that is not a terrible starting point for understanding it. [Vox / Dylan Matthews]
• It encompasses racial "realist" think tankers and provocateurs (like Milo Yiannopoulos). [Washington Post / David Weigel]
• It also includes a lot of Nazi frog memes. (The frog is named Pepe. Olivia Nuzzi explains what he has to do with all this.) [The Daily Beast / Olivia Nuzzi]
• The alt-right's rise and Trump's are hard to separate. And Clinton deliberately made the choice not to tie the alt-right to the broader GOP; if anything, her speech offered "reasonable Republicans" a way off the Trump train. [Vox / Tara Golshan]
• (There's still an argument that by denouncing it, Clinton was simply giving its members the attention they craved: feeding the trolls.) [TNR / Jeet Heer]
• But it's likely here to stay. Alt-right humor and loyalty have made it onto a Cartoon Network show, for Pete's sake (okay, Adult Swim). [BuzzFeed News / Joseph Bernstein]

Hey, Donald Trump, what's your immigration position?

Getty / Scott Olson

• Donald Trump, meanwhile, has spent the week taking the one issue on which it looked like he actually had a position and a following — immigration — and demolishing it. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• Trump has been weirdly vague on his immigration policy all week. It culminated last night in his literally polling the audience at a Texas town hall (hosted by Sean Hannity) about whether unauthorized immigrants who've been in the US for 20 years should be deported. [RealClearPolitics / Ian Schwartz]
• A lot of people have concluded Trump has adopted the positions of, say, Jeb Bush on immigration. That doesn't appear to be true: As of Thursday, he was still saying immigrants wouldn't be eligible for legal status. [Zeke J. Miller via Twitter]
• But the waffling has annoyed basically everybody, from Trump's most stalwart supporters to his most steadfast opponents (not to mention poor immigration reporters like your correspondent). [NYT / Maggie Haberman and Michael D. Shear]
• Ann Coulter — who picked the wrong week to release a book called In Trump We Trust — has tried to put on a happy face by comparing Trump favorably to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. [TPM / Tierney Sneed]
• Mark Krikorian, the foremost immigration restrictionist in intellectual circles, is finding the silver lining that at least if Trump loses, it can't now be because he was too harsh on immigration. [National Review / Mark Krikorian]
• NeverTrump Republicans, on the other hand, are gleefully drinking the metaphorical tears of betrayal they imagine Trump's alt-right supporters are crying. (Yes, this is a Downfall video.) [RedState / Susan Wright]
• The NeverTrump Republicans maybe shouldn't celebrate so soon. The future of the GOP after Trump — even if he loses — is still very much up in the air. [NBC News / Leigh Ann Caldwell and Benjy Sarlin]

Miscellaneous

• How activists can use Star Wars, the Hunger Games, and other variations on the Hero's Journey. [Civic Hall / Andrew Slack]
• Frank Ocean's long-delayed but finally released album wasn't an act of procrastination. It was a power move against the record industry. [Billboard / Dan Rys]
• Players of wind instruments: Beware "bagpipe lung"! [BBC]
• From the Department of Weirdly Apt Microgenerational Distinctions: "'Fumbling-DVD-Menu-Sex' Millennials." [NYMag / Max Read]
• This article on "superfamilies" strikes me (Dara) as vaguely uncanny and anxiety-inducing, but it was recommended to me by an actual parent, so maybe I'm weird. [Time / Charlotte Alter]

Verbatim

• "The cows were the first to go because cows are big, and killing them was easy." [The Verge / Ryan Bradley]
• "The air conditioning shut off and the screaming passengers were all stuck inside the sweltering car with the woman, who then treated them to antics for half an hour as the crickets jumped on passengers." [NY Post / Danielle Furfaro and Melkorka Licea]
• "Here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they're waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they'll set you up." [NY Daily News / Keri Blakinger]
• "Many of us can relate to the horror of the deep like." [Wired / Mary H.K. Choi]
• "Colonel Sanders then said gently to the nowstunned manager, 'Well, it's not your fault. You're just working for company that doesn't know what it's doing.'" [NYT / Mimi Sheraton]

Watch this: How technology has changed the definition of death

[YouTube / Nadja Oertelt]

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