WEDNESDAY: Ukraine is said to have started the war!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2025

Except on Fox & Friends: The madness is back with a vengeance! For viewers of Blue America's cable news, it started yesterday afternoon, when the commander made the statement shown below.

In his statement, he's referring to President Zelensky's complaint about the U.S.-Russkie peace conference taking place without Ukraine being present.

In the view of Blue America, the undisguised madness started again when the commander said this:

TRUMP (2/18/24): I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, "Oh, we weren't invited." 

Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it—three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. 

(For a fuller transcript, see below.)

"You should have never started it," the commander said, plainly seeming to be scolding (and blaming) Zelensky. Over here in Blue America, that was widely taken to be an extremely strange remark.

This morning, on the Fox News Channel, the spotless minds of Red America were shielded from what Trump had said. In the full four hours of the Fox & Friends franchise, we can find no sign that the peculiar statement by the commander was quoted or discussed or played on videotape.

For viewers in Red America, the remark had never been made! The closest anyone came to reporting the statement came right at the start of the day—at 5:05 a.m. 

Even then, viewers were shielded from the plainly puzzling part of the commander's statement. At the start of Fox & Friends First, co-host Todd Piro offered a notably shortened version of what the commander had said:

PIRO (2/19/25): Secretary of State Marco Rubio, closing out his tour of the Middle East this morning with a meeting...It all comes after Rubio and other top Trump officials met with their Russian counterparts yesterday and agreed to work toward ending the war in Ukraine, something President Trump says should have happened years ago:

TRUUMP (videotape): I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, "Oh, we weren't invited." 

Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it—three years. 

At that point, the video ended, and co-host Piro moved on. The statement was clipped right before Trump seemed to say that Ukraine and Zelensky were the ones who had started the war!

If you were watching at 5:05 a.m., you saw that truncated statement. As best we can tell, Trump's statement was never mentioned in any way during the full three hours of the regular Fox & Friends broadcast, which started at 6 a.m.

So it went in the two Americas in the wake of Trump's remark:

In Blue America, the comment was aggressively discussed this morning, right from 5 o'clock forward. Over in Red America, the statement had never been made.

Was Blue America making a mistake—putting too much emphasis on a single offhand comment? Apparently not! Later this morning, on Truth Social, the commander lowered the boom on Ukraine, calling Zelensky a dictator and engaging in some absurdly inaccurate factual claims.  It remains to be seen how the workers at the Fox News Channel are going to handle that.

Under current planning, Canada is destined to be America's 51st state. After this morning's angry remarks, is that expanded polity possibly destined to become Putin's newest republic?

Slightly fuller transcript: Here's a slightly fuller transcript of what the commander said:

TRUMP (2/18/24): I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, "Oh, we weren't invited." 

Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it—three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. 

I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.

This morning, the commander went whole hog, with insults and wild misstatements thrown into the mix.

Above, you see what the commander said yesterday—unless you were watching Fox.

SOCIOPATHY: The commander made an odd remark!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2025

And we don't mean about Ukraine: We start today with a news report in the New York Times. At issue is the mental / cognitive / intellectual functioning of the whole human race—of "the whole wide universe."

In fairness, everybody makes mistakes! Remarkably, it sounds like the "super geniuses" at DOGE may even have made a mistake:

DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.

The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.

Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But it appears that the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.

Dual headline included, that's the way the report begins. For the record, and speaking of various kinds of mistakes:

The principal headline says that DOGE did make a mistake. The sub-headline says it only may have.

At any rate, whatever! DOGE was claiming that it had saved $8 billion by canceling a project it didn't think was worthwhile. In fact, the actual figure may be only $8 million! That would be one one-thousandth of the reported amount. 

Later, the Times report notes that $2.5 million of the $8 million has already been spent on the disfavored project. That means that the actual saving would be only $5.5 million—roughly one twelve-hundredth of the total claimed.

Meanwhile, and for the record: Is it possible that the canceled project was actually worthwhile? That, of course, is a matter of judgment! Sometimes, money can be saved in ways which may not be wise.

Was $8 billion saved by DOGE—or was it really $5.5 million? At this point, only The Shadow knows! 

The Shadow knows, plus every poor soul in "the whole wide universe" who watched The Five last evening. Not to mention the things which were said on the Gutfeld! program a mere five hours later.

Sad! Yesterday, at 5 p.m., the most watched program in American "cable news" started by heralding the claim that $55 billion had been saved by the "super geniuses" at DOGE. 

(DOGE "estimates they have saved taxpayers $55 billion and counting." That was enthusiastically said in the program's opening minute.)

Moments later, Harold Ford—an appalling shell of his former self now that the commander has been elected—went ahead and acted like that "estimate" was an established fact. As you may know, Ford is cast as the liberal in the group—as the one who's supposed to push back!

(For the record, Ford has become an utter embarrassment with President Trump back in office. It's long past time to frog-march him away from the set of this imitation "news" show.)

At any rate, sad! That estimate became an established fact for those who were watching The Five. Five hours later, the gruesome host of the Gutfeld! program opened his show with an astonishing array of unfounded claims attributed to the same outfit.

Has DOGE really saved $55 billion? If so, has it done so by terminating contracts for programs which may actually be worthwhile? 

No such questions will ever be asked on Fox News Channel programs. Also, the New York Times will never report or discuss this fact about this powerful "cable news" channel. Within the dueling madnesses of our discourse, it simply isn't done.

Bob Dylan was hot a month ago. We think today of the lines he wrote when he was still very young:

And for every strung-out person in the whole wide universe
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'.

One of those freedoms has become the unfettered freedom to play remarkably fast and loose with the most elementary facts! Yesterday, we saw the commander make an extremely odd factual claim—and at this point, we aren't even discussing what he said about Ukraine!

What did the commander say on last night's Hannity program? The program was taped late last week. What did the commander say?

Before we show you what he said, we want to show you some established facts. These facts concern a matter no one actually cares about. We refer to the performance by American students in the most recent administrations of the two major international testing programs, the PISA and the TIMSS. 

How did American kids stack up against the rest of the world in those testing programs? We'll let the NCES tell you. Here are the basic scorecards from those most recent tests:

Performance by U.S. students, 2023 TIMSS:
In 2023, U.S. 4th-graders’ average score on the TIMSS mathematics scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 28 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 21 education systems.

In 2023, U.S. 8th-graders' average score on the TIMSS mathematics scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 18 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 19 education systems.

In 2023, U.S. 4th-graders’ average score on the TIMSS science scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 39 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 11 education systems.

In 2023, U.S. 8th-graders' average score on the TIMSS science scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 27 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 11 education systems.

That's the way it went on the TIMSS.  As always happens on these major international tests, American students outperformed their peers from some other nations, were outperformed by some others. 

In the dying realm of actual fact, it went the same way on the most recent PISA:

Performance by U.S. students, 2022 PISA:
Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average reading literacy score was higher than the average in 68 education systems, lower than the average in 5 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 7 education systems.

Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average mathematics literacy score was lower than the average in 25 education systems, higher than the average in 43 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 12 education systems.

Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average science literacy score was higher than the average in 56 education systems, lower than the average in 9 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 15 education systems.

For the record, U.S. students always rate most poorly on the PISA math exam. Here's the way their scores shook out in 2022 when compared to OECD nations only:

Compared to the 36 other participating OECD members, the U.S. average in mathematics literacy was lower than the average in 21 education systems, higher than in 6, and not significantly different from 9.

Our students were outscored by 21 of the other 36 nations. On every other PISA / TIMSS test, U.S. students ranked substantially better than that.

That brings us to what we saw the commander say on last night's Hannity program. Determined to fix our American schools, he authored these puzzling comments:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (2/18/25): School! I want to bring school back to the states so that Iowa, Indiana—all these places—Idaho, New Hampshire—there's so many places and states. 

I figure 35 really run well. And right now, it's Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, China—China, can you imagine, has top schools! We are last! 

So they have a list of forty countries. We're number 40. Usually, we're 38, 39. And the last time, we were number 40.

Hannity just sat there and took it! He probably knew that what was being said seemed to be crazily wrong.

"Usually, we're 38, 39. And the last time, we were number 40?" Where in the world did those numbers come from? No one will ever ask! 

Meanwhile, and just for the record:

The four states mentioned by the commander don't stand out, in any particular way, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the gold standard of domestic public school testing. (White kids in three of those states score below the national average for that demographic.)

Also, if 35 of the fifty states are "running really well," it's hard to figure how we could have ended up dead last around the world. 

(As far as we know, when China participates in these programs, it still tests only in a small set of high-end jurisdictions. But so these pseudo-discussions go.)

None of this made any sense, but this is who and what we are. Also, this is who and what the commander unmistakably seems to be at this point in time. 

This is a function of who and what our very primitive "public discourse" has been down through the years. No one actually cares about this general topic, and no one ever has.

Yesterday, alas! Viewers of The Five were offered that claim by DOGE as an established fact. 

Also, viewers of Gutfeld! saw the program's astonishing host rattle off an array of utterly bogus claims, right at the start of his program. None of his guests voiced a peep of complaint. None of his guests ever do.

Viewers of Hannity saw the commander make a set of very strange claims about American students. Then too, we come to what the commander seemed to say about who started the war in Ukraine!

This is the business we have chosen, in part through the failure of our major news orgs in Blue America. We that, we offer a question: 

Is any form of "mental disorder" involved in any of these claims or previous practices? In a way, we're sorry we headed down that long and winding road this week. We say that for two basic reasons:

For starters, our journalists are never going to consider possible mental illness ("mental disorder") in their discussions of political figures. Also, it's as we told you yesterday: 

"Mental illness" is hard! Conceptually, mental illness is very hard—hard but fascinating.

We'd love to see the fascinating topic discussed at substantial length. Is there even such a thing as clinical "mental illness?" (Some professors have said there isn't.) Assuming that there is, what does some such diagnosis actually tell us about the person in question?

We'd love to see that discussion, but it's never going to happen. Despite the praise we heap on ourselves, our public discourse is too primitive to handle any such topic.

Simply put, we humans aren't especially sharp, and we never have been. That's even true in the Lake Wobegon of our flawless Blue America, where the journalists are all above average.

Early in his first term in office, claims were made about the alleged mental illness of President Trump. Tomorrow, we'll return to what was said at that time—and those claims were made in the clinical sense, not in a colloquial manner.

Is something wrong with the gentleman's mental health? How about with our own? How about with "every strung-out person in the whole wide universe?"

Over here in Blue America, our own failures to deal with reality have helped bring us to the current dangerous place. In our view, those failures became extreme over the past several years, as a Democratic president seemed to be in a fairly obvious state of decline.

With respect to the person who played a key role in the prior discussion of the commander, no one could possibly call her a slouch! But the woods, though lovely, are dark and deep, and we the people have wandered about in a state of incomprehension.

Did Ukraine really start the war with Russia? It sounds like that's what the commander has now said! 

As for us, we're going to take the rare earth metals! Russia will take some land.

Is this the world we've somehow chosen? Have we been like the fictional townsfolk of Oran? Has "mental health," or the lack of same, somehow been involved?

Tomorrow: No one could call her a slouch

TUESDAY: The latest crazy statement by Musk!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2025

News orgs avert their gaze: Late yesterday afternoon, we linked you to Alex Griffing's report for Mediaite.

It concerned the latest crazy remark. Shortened headline include, the report started as shown:

Musk Says 60 Minutes Staffers ‘Deserve a Long Prison Sentence’

Elon Musk accused the staff of CBS’s 60 Minutes of being the “biggest liars in the world” on Sunday and declared they “deserve a long prison sentence.”

Musk made the chilling post on X in reply to a 60 Minutes tweet promoting its latest episode.

Those are the things Musk said. We'll start with he obvious question:

Are staffers at 60 Minutes "the biggest liars in the world?" Especially under the circumstances, we're going to guess that they aren't. 

Quickly, it gets worse. Under the circumstances, Musk's second assertion—his statement that the staffers “deserve a long prison sentence”—is essentially insane.

These are overtly crazy remarks, made by an extremely powerful person. Within the context of western world reckoning, he seems to be out of his mind.

That said, we can all be glad that Griffing reported these latest bizarre remarks. Elsewhere, news orgs have largely agreed to act like they never were made.

How crazy was this post by Musk, who may need a lot of help? You have to consider the circumstances which led him to fashion his post.

As he directly continued his report, Griffing described those circumstances. This is truly remarkable stuff:

“President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that ‘utter nonsense.’ Natsios says USAID is ‘the most accountable aid agency in the world,’” read the 60 Minutes post, which linked to a clip from the show’s interview with Natsios. Natsios has been a prominent defender of USAID as a key national security tool around the world and has publicly refuted Musk’s claim that DOGE needed to shutter the agency to stop widespread fraud and wasteful spending.

Musk replied and wrote, “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”

According to Musk, why do staff members at 60 Minutes "deserve a long prison sentence?” The gentleman cited two reasons:

First, the program allowed Natsios, a deeply experienced (Republican) former director of USAID, to contradict one of the infallible statements made by Pope Donald J. Trump.

Also, 60 Minutes had allegedly "engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election." This was a reference to the way the program had edited one small part of its interview with Candidate Harris—an absurd complaint the Wall Street Journal has dismissed as inconsequential.

There was nothing wrong with the edit in question—but according to Musk, staffers at 60 Minutes should be frog-marched off to prison because of what they did. Even more crazily, Trump has described the utterly pointless edit as “quite simply, Election Fraud" and “the biggest Broadcasting SCANDAL in History!!!” 

No, we aren't making that up. To peruse the Journal's dismissal of this apparent insanity, you can just click here.

Transparently, Elon Musk seems to be out of his mind. Once again, we cite last year's lengthy report in that same Wall Street Journal about the concerns expressed by Musk's business partners with respect to his alleged drug use. (For last Wednesday's report on that matter, click here.)

For ourselves, we don't have the slightest idea why Musk says the things he does. But by any normal manner of reckoning, this latest statement would seem to qualify as the work of a transparent nut.

Is something wrong with this powerful person? Also, is something wrong with the high-end reporters and editors who refuse to discuss the apparent madness involved in the things he says?

It's time to lock the staffers up! They let an extremely well-informed man contradict Donald J. Trump! 

Musk's second complaint was even dumber. This is the divorce from reality into which we've all been thrown.

In our view, attention must be paid to this free-range meltdown. Luckily, Griffing did. Most others keep looking away—keep refusing to wonder or ask about this modern Samson.

SOCIOPATHY: What the heck is sociopathy?

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2025

The Mayo Clinic speaks: We'll never forget our one-on-one luncheon with MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

It was post-election 1996, or it might have been post-election 1998. No one ever explained to us why the event had been arranged, though we came away with a speculation.

Inevitably, we lunched at The Palm. Inevitably, the other guy paid.

This morning, Chris appeared on Morning Joe, during the 7 o'clock hour. At 7:15 a.m., he used some suggestive language. 

He spoke about the way the commander has removed federal protection from Dr. Fauci, but also from General Milley (and others). Suggestively, Matthews said this:

The idea that Milley, with all those stars on his shoulder, has to protect himself? It's crazy!

"It's crazy," the gentleman said. We'll assume he was speaking colloquially.

That said, we've been asking a basic question for a very long time. Is something "wrong" with Elon Musk? How about with President Trump?

No really—is something actually wrong with these guys? Could something be "clinically" wrong?

As we noted yesterday, the very concept of "mental illness" can be a bit complex. 

Physical illness is relatively easy; mental illness can be hard. For example, here's some of what the leading authority says about the late Professor Szasz:

Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1920–2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry...

[...]

Szasz was a strong critic of institutional psychiatry and was a prolific writer. According to psychiatrist Tony B. Benning, there were "three major themes in Szasz's writings: his contention that there is no such thing as mental illness, his contention that individual responsibility is never compromised in those suffering from what is generally considered as mental illness, and his perennial interest in calling attention to the political nature of psychiatric diagnosis." According to Williams and Caplan, Szasz is "best known for his view that without a diagnosis of neurological disease or damage, a psychiatric diagnosis was meaningless." Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.

His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.

Mental illness is a myth

In Szasz's view, people who are said to have a mental illness only have "problems in living." Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" are passed off as scientific...He argued that psychiatry is a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by using medical-sounding words...

("Without a diagnosis of neurological disease or damage"—we'd say those are key words.)

For the record, we're not saying that Szasz was right in his beliefs and claims.  We are saying that the basic conceptual premises of "mental illness" can at times perhaps be challenging.

That said, is it possible that something is clinically wrong with the gentlemen we've mentioned? As of late yesterday afternoon, it seemed to us that one of these fellows had come close to answering our question. 

(We'll offer more this afternoon concerning what he said.)

Questions like these are being avoided, even disappeared, within the mainstream press. That said, we recently re-explored the nature of a well-known (clinical / diagnostic) "personality disorder"—a form of "mental illness." 

Inquiring minds on our campus wanted to know! When we googled the relevant term, the very fine people at AI Overview instantly started with this:

AI Overview

Sociopathy, also known as antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), is a mental health condition characterized by a persistent pattern of disregard for social norms, laws, and the rights and feelings of others. 

Symptoms: 

• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow emotions or inability to empathize
• Manipulative and deceitful behavior
• Impulsivity and aggression
• Irresponsibility and disregard for consequences
• Violation of social rules and laws 

Causes: 

The exact causes of sociopathy are complex and not fully understood. Factors that may contribute include: 

Genetics, early childhood trauma or abuse, brain abnormalities, and neurochemical imbalances. 

The report continued from there. To our ear, the symptoms sounded extremely familiar, though we're not entirely sure what that means.

In fairness, the gang at AI Overview is quite new to the game. We also checked with the Mayo Clinic. Here's what we found there:

Mayo Clinic

Antisocial personality disorder

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior.

People with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. They have difficulty consistently meeting responsibilities related to family, work or school.

Symptoms

Symptoms of antisocial personality disorder include repeatedly:

⦁ Ignoring right and wrong.
⦁ Telling lies to take advantage of others.
⦁ Not being sensitive to or respectful of others.
⦁ Using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or pleasure.
⦁ Having a sense of superiority and being extremely opinionated.
⦁ Having problems with the law, including criminal behavior.
⦁ Being hostile, aggressive, violent or threatening to others.
⦁ Feeling no guilt about harming others.
⦁ Doing dangerous things with no regard for the safety of self or others.
⦁ Being irresponsible and failing to fulfill work or financial responsibilities.

Adults with antisocial personality disorder usually show symptoms of conduct disorder before the age of 15...

Such people "lack remorse or do not regret their behavior?" That sounded even more familiar! But what might such familiarity turn out to mean? 

At this point, we turned to the leading authority on every such condition. Here's what we were told:

Wikipedia

Antisocial personality disorder

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behavior that disregards the rights and well-being of others. People with ASPD often exhibit behavior that conflicts with social norms, leading to issues with interpersonal relationships, employment, and legal matters. The condition generally manifests in childhood or early adolescence...

[...]

Although behaviors vary by degree, individuals with this personality disorder have been known to exploit others in harmful ways for their own gain or pleasure, and frequently manipulate and deceive other people. While some do so with a façade of superficial charm, others do so through intimidation and violence. Individuals with antisocial personality disorder may deliberately show irresponsibility, have difficulty acknowledging their faults and/or attempt to redirect attention away from harmful behaviors.

That sounded extremely familiar. To see what the Cleveland Clinic said, you can just click here.

These description of this (clinical) "personality disorder" sounded very familiar. But what might such points of familiarity mean? 

As we understand it, the conceptual question breaks down something like this:

If a person is diagnosed with "ASPD," are we simply offering a capsule account of the way that person behaves? (Of the way that person chooses to behave?) 

Are we just describing the way the person in question behaves? Or is that person in the grip of some condition over which he has no control, as would uniformly be said of the children down in Texas who have now come down with the measles?

As best we understand it, that's the basic question. That said, you'll never see such questions explored within our nation's "public discourse," a relatively childish endeavor which hides behind the torrents of praise our elites tend to heap on themselves.

Putting it a different way, is "mental illness" perhaps a bit like color blindness? (Technically, "color vision deficiency—CVD.") 

No one thinks that people with CVD are simply choosing to fail to distinguish between certain colors. Is "antisocial personality disorder" a bit like that? Or is it somehow different?

You'll never see such questions explored within our public discourse. That said, is something just flat-out wrong with Elon Musk? Is something possibly wrong (unusual; different from the norm) with the wiring inside his head?

It seems to us that the gentleman keeps providing something resembling an answer. As he does, the leading actors on our academic and journalistic stages just keep averting their gaze from the strangeness of the behaviors and statements to which we refer.

What the heck is "sociopathy?" The Mayo Clinic has spoken, but what exactly did they say? 

What should their statements be taken to mean? What might our flailing nation be dealing with at this time? Is anyone planning to ask?

Tomorrow: Plainly, she's no slouch

This afternoon: His latest crazy statement

BREAKING: We've been asking the world's most obvious question!

 MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2025

We now have the obvious answer: Over the course of the past several weeks, we've been asking the world's most obvious question:

Is it possible that something is "wrong" with Elon Musk?

We now have the world's most obvious answer. For Alex Griffing's report, you can just click here. (Though you won't to move past the headline.)

We now have the world's most obvious answer. Only one question remains:

Do our high-end journalists have the language which will let them report and discuss this new fact?

 Presumably, more on this tomorrow.

MONDAY: The "night assault" (and the madness) continue!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2025

What Dagen McDowell said: There's a reason why we keep citing the "night assault" which destroyed sacred Troy—the assault described by Professor Knox way back in 1990.

We do so because, at times like these, we humans are wired for incomprehension. Our wiring may keep us from being able to see what's actually happening all around us. An external comparison, perhaps from literature, may better equip us to see.

As described by Professor Knox, that ancient night assault was ugly and it was vast. It was a sweeping assault on every aspect of decency.

It was accompanied by unmistakable human madness. But so perhaps, is the situation being described in this new report from the New York Times:

Musk Team Seeks Access to I.R.S. System With Taxpayers’ Records

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer data, people familiar with the matter said.

The systems at the I.R.S. contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, Social Security numbers, addresses, banking details and employment information.

[...]

Gavin Kliger, a young software engineer who was brought into the Office of Personnel Management as part of the DOGE effort, worked at I.R.S. headquarters on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. He will be assigned to the I.R.S. as a senior adviser to the acting commissioner. The tax agency is still working out the exact terms of his work at the I.R.S., though he is expected to have broad access to its systems, according to the two people.

As of Sunday evening, he had not yet gained access to sensitive I.R.S. data, the two people said.

Is this a form of madness? Here's the dope on Gavin Kliger, according to the leading authority on this "young engineer:"

Gavin Kliger

Attended UC Berkeley, graduating in 2020. Problematic tweets and Substack post.

According to the leading authority, a young engineer is about to become a senior adviser! He's only four years out of college—and just for the record, just how "problematic" were those tweets and that post?

You can judge that for yourself! As one of its sources, the authority links to this brand-new report at Mother Jones:

DOGE Worker Says He Was Radicalized by Reading Writer Who Later Denied Holocaust

In a since-deleted Substack post, an engineer working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote about his radicalization, noting a key influence was an essay by Ron Unz—an infamous figure who has written about race science; donated money to the white nationalist website VDare, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a hate group; and has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League of “hardcore antisemitism,” including Holocaust denial.

The Substack post, titled “Why I Joined DOGE,” was written by DOGE engineer Gavin Kliger.

Kliger has already been in hot water. He also reportedly reposted white nationalist Nick Fuentes disparaging a Black child on his now-private X account. (On the account, Kliger called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a slur and demanded military tribunals and executions of undocumented migrants who commit crimes, according to Rolling Stone.)

The post was published Friday and was still available online Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. ET. It was deleted on Sunday... 

If the Mother Jones reporting is accurate, this youngster may sound a bit shaky. The authority link to a second source—this report at Wired:

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

[...]

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

We haven't read the Substack post. Question:

If Kliger is given the kind of access described by the New York Times, could that be part of a "night assault" in the sense of Professor Knox's use of the term? 

Things are moving very quickly. Also, things are stunningly dumb. At long last, that brings us to the question of what Dagen McDowell said on the February 7 Gutfeld!

As we noted last week, the program's host had made an array of remarkable statements about the past conduct of USAID. The agency had been toppling foreign governments, he said, without providing any evidence. He then said that USAID had also tried to undermine the MAGA revolution here at home.

After delivering his "monologue," Gutfeld let each of his four stooges comment. He came to McDowell second. 

As always, McDowell was furious. She seemed to say she doesn't believe that USAID does any humanitarian work around the world at all. 

She seemed to say that the claim is fake. This is what was said:

GUTFELD (2/7/25): It makes you wonder. Was the humanitarian stuff just done so they could do these other things?

MCDOWELL: I don't even believe the humanitarian work actually happens. Because if you look at, say, Afghanistan—because USAID worked in all these war-torn areas to rebuild, say, Iraq and Afghanistan. What happens— 

You only get— 

It's the cheerleaders back here at home. They never track how the money is spent. Because you just spent the money. You don't detail where it went, because if you report on the outcomes, your budget's not going to get replenished. 

So in Afghanistan, for example, you would hear, "Ohhhh, the hospitals we built!" But you didn't hear—there weren't any doctors, or drugs, or even patients, in the hospital.

Or, "This school that we built!" But there weren't any teachers or students in the [struggles to suppress an F-bomb] school.

GUTFELD: [LAUGHTER]

MCDOWELL: But I have to stop you with the western North Carolina thing since I am one-sixteenth hillbilly—the rest is redneck tobacco farmer.

I wish they had gone to western North Carolina and for every USAID worker, the weepy con artists, they had gotten a flag-wavin', God-fearin' patriot hillbilly and let that man or that woman fire that worker and filmed it. Showing them the business end of what America really looks like—I mean, that would be the best TV series ever.

GUTFELD: Yes!

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

For the record, the previous guest had referred to hurricane recovery efforts in western North Carolina. This explains the second part of McDowell's explosion.

McDowell hails from south central Virginia. She said she's one-sixteenth hillbilly. The rest is redneck tobacco farmer, she said.

At age 53, she's also co-host of several shows on Fox Business. Her remarkable fury is routinely apparent when she guests on the Gutfeld! show. Under current arrangements. this is part of what makes her such an enjoyable guest.

On this occasion, she made some typically strange accusations. She seemed to say that USAID constructs Potemkin projects around the world—schools which don't have any students, hospitals which don't have any doctors or patients.

No one asked her for the basis on which she would make such claims. Questions like that are no longer asked within the culture of "cable news" as performed on the fully Potemkin enterprise known as the Fox News Channel.

The fury took a different form as McDowell continued. She said she longed for the chance to see each of the "weepy con artists" at USAIDS fired, for later viewing on TV, by "a flag-wavin', God-fearin' patriot hillbilly." That's what she'd like to see. 

(Also, she said she knows what America really looks like. According to McDowell, America looks like her!)

Beyond that, we call your attention to her apparent struggle to suppress the F-bomb which she longed to let loose on the world.

In the transcript we've provided, you can see where the apparent struggle occurred. Due to a twist of fate at the Internet Archive, the struggle may not be quite as obvious there as it is in watching a full videotape.

In the famous Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove struggled to keep himself from issuing a certain salute. To our eye and ear, McDowell struggled to keep herself from emitting an F-bomb as she furiously described the USAID schools—the schools which aren't actually there.

We're routinely amazed by McDowell's fury when she guests on Gutfeld! In our view, this sort of thing is obvious madness, and it's part of a "night assault."

The assault at Troy was an assault of The Late Bronze Age. The current assault is an assault of The Information Age.

This assault is happening around the clock. In large part due to Blue America's self-satisfaction and endless delusions, the assault by the Gutfelds, the Musks and McDowells will be hard to defeat.

SOCIOPATHY: Masha Gessen used a key term!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2025

Also, could Musk be the world's dumbest person? It didn't take long for Masha Gessen to make use of a key term.

We're referring to something Gessen says in the new column which appears in this morning's New York Times. Presumably, Gessen was speaking colloquially—but here's what was quickly said:

The Barrage of Trump’s Awful Ideas Is Doing Exactly What It’s Supposed To

The first month of the second Trump presidency has put the lie to the widespread wisdom that Donald Trump has no ideology and no ideas, only an insatiable thirst for power and money. Trump has shown that he has ideas. So many ideas. They are just really bad ideas:

The United States can own, ethnically cleanse and redevelop Gaza as a luxury resort. The U.S. will buy Greenland and take possession of the Panama Canal. The government will become more efficient by cutting the Department of Education, U.S.A.I.D., medical and science research and many many jobs. D.E.I. caused the collision of an Army helicopter and a passenger plane in the air near Washington, D.C. Immigrants and transgender people are an existential threat to Americans. The president can and should rule by decree. These are all ideas, in the sense that they are opinions, beliefs or expressions of a possible course of action.

Some of these ideas would have seemed unthinkable just weeks ago. But now that they have been thought and uttered by the man in possession of the world’s biggest megaphone, all of us are forced to engage with them. Otherwise sane people start debating questions like: Could the U.S. really take over Gaza? ...

And so on from there. Gessen offers a list of the questions which are now being debated.

In paragraph 2, Gessen lists some of the commander's ideas, describing them as "just really bad." At that point, Gessen employs a key term, offering this formulation:

Otherwise sane people are forced to debate such ideas.

Borrowing from Camus, the question of "sanity" had just been raised for the first time! 

For the record, we'll assume that Gessen is speaking colloquially with respect to this key medical / psychological / psychiatric term. We'll assume there is no reference to some array of clinical diagnoses.

In that second paragraph, Gessen lists some of the commander's "really bad ideas." Also included is one of the commander's amazingly bogus claims / suggestions / assertions:

D.E.I. caused the collision of an Army helicopter and a passenger plane in the air near Washington, D.C. 

When the commander launched that suggestion, there was no apparent reason to believe that it was an accurate claim. It joined the long list of crazy claims the commander has made through the years.

Colloquially, so many crazy claims!  It started in 2011, when he began his reign as king of the crackpot birthers. It extended through his crazy claim, posted last fall, that no one was actually present at a jam-packed airport rally staged by Candidate Harris.

Why would someone make such a crazy statement? Should inquiring minds want to know?

Down through the years, the commander has made an astonishingly long list of extremely strange factual claims. Recently, he's been joined in this practice by Elon Musk, who might almost seem, at the present time, to be the world's dumbest known person.

As with Trump, so too with Musk! That said, the leading lights of Blue America's journalism seem to be playing the slacker role with respect to this array of gonzo misstatements by this pair of warfighters. Consider the latest gonzo assertion by the person who might almost seem, at times, to be quite possibly the world's dumbest known human:

MUSK (2/11/25): You know, there's crazy things, like, just a cursory examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't. OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. they're missing out.

So, you know, that's the case where, like, I think they're probably dead! That's my guess. Or they should be very famous. One of the two.

Yes, he actually said it. Speaking colloquially, he seemed to say that he himself had spotted something crazy! He said it in the Oval Office, as the commander babysat his four-year-old son. 

Many journalists reported the fact that the youngster's name is X. You can score that report as technically accurate—but for the record, we'll note today that the youngster's full name seems to be this:

X Æ A-Xii Musk

That's the youngster's full name, according to this report by Forbes. On the other hand, according to this report by People magazine, his full name is actually this:

X Æ A-12 Musk

Needless to say, there's no single perfect way to confer a name on a child. We're simply reporting the fuller name the world's possibly dumbest person chose to confer on one of his many children.

The youngster has an unusual name. That said, his father keeps making highly unusual statements, few of which turn out to be accurate. 

For example:

It's being widely claimed, though not by anyone at the New York Times, that Musk's claim about the 150-year-old Social Security recipients stems from his cluelessness about certain aspects of COBOL On that basis, it's being widely said that Musk's insinuation about the 150-year-old recipients was just clownishly wrong, like so many other things he has, for some reason, said.

We're going to guess that this debunking is accurate, though our biggest news orgs have largely walked away from the task of examining Musk's array of possibly crazy claims. 

To see Paul Krugman suggest the possible explanation-via-COBOL, you can just click here. This explanation is general over the web, but newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have walked away from the duty of reporting such possible divergences from the related realms of sanity and fact.

Is something "wrong" with Donald J. Trump? How about with Musk?

No, really! Is something actually wrong with these guys? 

Could something be clinically wrong? Also, if something is clinically wrong, should the public be told?

We've long recommended compassion, sympathy, empathy, "pity" for people who are severely afflicted in the way some people are. Long ago and far away, the newly resurgent Bob Dylan framed the matter that way in the unexplained song which carries this title:

I Pity the Poor Immigrant

"Immigrant" is metaphorical there. The song was written in 1968. Its description of the "poor immigrant" seems to be drawn, with remarkable accuracy, from the headlines of the present day.

Could something be wrong with Trump and Musk? Could something be clinically wrong? Intellectual leaders in Blue America have agreed that this complex question must never be discussed!  

We refer to Blue America's academics, as well as to Blue America's journalists. Silence has thus invaded the suburbs of our spotless Blue American minds. 

That said, and in fairness, the conceptual landscape of "mental illness" is actually rather complex. 

Some leading figures have even insisted that there's no such thing as "mental illness." According to this minority view, cancer and measles are real things. Mental illnesses are not.

The conceptual landscape is hard. That said, Gessen turned directly to a key term in this morning's column. By paragraph 3, questions concerning the issue of "sanity" seem to be floating there.

The New York Times will disappear any such thought or suggestion. Tomorrow, we'll start to explore the landscape of a widely discussed "disorder."

For today, the youngster's name is X Æ A-Xii Musk! With that in mind, is it even imaginable? Could a form of madness perhaps be lurking here? 

Is the father of this youngster possibly just the world's dumbest person? Or could something beyond that be wrong?

Could something be "wrong" with the youngster's father? If so, should the public be told?

Tomorrow: AI Overview speaks!

This afternoon: What Dagen McDowell said