REAFFIRMATION OF DISBELIEF: We speak in praise of doubting one's own!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2018

Interlude—With outrageous suggestions to follow: We humans! Sometimes, or so it can seem, if it weren't for all the bad ideas, we'd have no ideas at all!

If if weren't for our absurd misjudgments—well, you can see where this line of thought goes.

In fairness, ideas and judgments are different from factual claims, which can be flatly false. In the end, ideas and judgments are matters of opinion.

They can't, in the same way, be "wrong."

Ideas and judgments can't be "wrong"—but they can come amazingly close! We think some amazingly bad ideas have been going around—and they've come from players on our own infallible liberal team.

To wit:

In assessing Donald J. Trump, should we focus on the moral dimension of his alleged sexual conduct, as Sam Stein seemed to suggest? More precisely, on "the moral element" of his alleged sexual conduct from 2006?

We think that's a stunningly bad idea, for reasons which aren't worth discussing. They aren't worth discussing for a reason which has become quite clear:

Alas! We modern humans will always find a way to return to this bad idea. We'll always want to discuss the alleged sexual conduct, even from twelve years in the past, while deep-sixing everything else.

At one time, despite something Sam Stein said, this simply wasn't allowed. Journalists didn't discuss President Kennedy's sexual conduct. It was against the rules at the time.

In part for that reason, the "journalists" who chased President Clinton all over town simply adored their Dear Jack.

Kennedy's sexual conduct was truly appalling, but it has never been fully discussed. For that reason, the great apes who led the chase after Clinton never stopped loving their Jack.

They then transferred their loathing to Candidate Gore. By the current rules of the insider game, that conduct can't be discussed! So it goes on The Planet of the Chance Mutations!

Stein seems to want to focus on "the moral element" of Donald J. Trump's alleged past sexual conduct. In fairness to Stein, Trump is alleged to have had sex, on one occasion, with the disordered, ridiculous Stephanie Clifford—and not even for pay, which her fellow adult film stars demand!

Granted, this shows terrible judgment and a gruesome lack of aesthetics. But once we head down this peeping Tom road, it's unlikely that we'll ever find our way back. Nor will we ever get clear on the actual facts, as recent political history suggests:

In our recent political history, two alleged former lovers have interfered in White House campaigns—Gennifer Flowers and Stephanie Clifford. We would assume that Flowers was making her story up, while Clifford was telling the truth.

That said, apes like us just like the fun of rooting through underwear drawers! It's stunning to think that the New York Times began a front-page report in October 2016 in this remarkable manner:

TWOHEY (10/3/18): Hillary Clinton was campaigning for her husband in January 1992 when she learned of the race’s newest flare-up: Gennifer Flowers had just released tapes of phone calls with Bill Clinton to back up her claim they had had an affair.

Other candidates had been driven out of races by accusations of infidelity. But now, at a cold, dark airfield in South Dakota, Mrs. Clinton was questioning campaign aides by phone and vowing to fight back on behalf of her husband.

“Who’s tracking down all the research on Gennifer?” she asked, according to a journalist traveling with her at the time.

Five weeks before Donald J. Trump got elected, our most unintelligent national newspaper chose to begin a front-page report like that. It was the start of an amazingly selective, 2800-word report which never attempted to come to terms with the reasons why a sensible person might well doubt the dramatic claims which earned Flowers at least $500,000 over a couple of glorious years.

Did Gennifer Flowers have an affair with Bill Clinton? You'd think so from that opening sentence, and from all that followed.

In fact, Glowers claimed she had a torrid, twelve-year love affair with the fellow she called "my Bill." We would assume she was making her story up.

The reasons for doubting Flowers surfaced quickly, and turned out to be voluminous. But newspapers like the New York Times never came to terms with such matters, which we've detailed a million times. Not unlike a band of great apes who have developed the capacity for gossip, the Times reveled in the story for almost 25 years.

In the end, their relentless gong-shows sent Donald J. Trump to the White House.

This is the world in which we're choosing to live when we hail the fiery liberals who want to focus on the "moral element" of Donald J. Trump's twelve-year-old alleged sexual conduct. This is the world in which we live when silly pseudo-progressives are able to exercise such poor judgment that they can find ways to regard Clifford as a "hero"—as a "feminist hero" at that!

Long ago and far away, we didn't really understand the ape part of this story. After twenty years on our sprawling campus, we've come to see that nothing will ever displace the bad judgment which lies at the heart of our national discourse as we slide toward the sea:

Simply put, the children want to stampede—and they're simply upgraded great apes. Nothing is going to change that.

For these reasons, we'll be changing the focus of our musings after summer comes to an end this Labor Day weekend. For today, we'll suggest this:

You should stop assuming that people within your own liberal tribe exercise good judgment. You should stop suspending your disbelief when they insist on telling you our own tribe's damn-fool tales.

Professor Harari has opened our eyes! Tomorrow, we'll shock you to the core with other possibilities. For today, it's very warm, so we're letting the analysts slide a bit, at least for the rest of the morning.

That front-page report in the New York Times was classic "great ape" work. It was "great ape" work from a pseudo-progressive perspective.

You should stop assuming the validity of such work. People are dead all over the world because our tribe plays it this way.

Thanks to twenty-five years of such damn-fool gossip, Donald J. Trump is in the Oval Office. Don't discuss his possible mental illness, our greatest newspaper decreed!

Tomorrow: We don't assume this is wrong