WAGERS: Has "our democracy" already died?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2024

Madman, beloved hold forth: Yesterday, President Biden offered an account of what happened last Thursday night.

For ourselves, we don't know what happened that night! But according to a front-page report in today's New York Times, here's what the president said:

At a fund-raiser on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden blamed fatigue for his debate performance. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, I don’t know how many time zones.” He added: “I didn’t listen to my staff, and I came back and I fell asleep on the stage.”

For the record, the frenetic travel in question ended on June 16. Last Thursday's debate took place on June 27—a full eleven days later.

A cynic could say that implausible explanations for last Thursday night have continued to sprout. For ourselves, we can't explain what happened that night, but we can tell you this:

"Government of and by the people" was always a bit of gamble. In the wake of World War I, the developing poet named E. E. Cummings may not have been buying the premise. 

In our view, Cummings was wrong in the angry attitude he voiced at the end of the poem in question. But along the way, no one can say that his reporting was totally wrong. 

Yesterday, we offered you the bitter fruits of his observations. Here they are once again:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you 
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Briefly, the poem continues from there.

In the wake of World War I, Cummings was less than impressed with the instincts of us the people. Anthropologically, it's hard to say that his observations and assessments were completely and totally wrong.

Returning to the present day:

Metaphorically, the anthill was suddenly kicked apart last Thursday night. The ants have come spilling out of the hill in the wake of that unexpected disaster.

"Our democracy" depends on the good judgment of us the people. That said, our species doesn't reliably traffic in any such conduct.

It isn't just President Biden's slightly odd assessment. Humans like those listed below have come center stage in the past few days. 

Full disclosure. We're saving the most deranged for last:

Steve Bannon: In our view, David Brooks' "unsettling interview" with Bannon is highly instructive concerning the nature of the ongoing revolt from below. 

Some of Bannon's comments are crazy; some of his comments aren't. We expect to discuss the interview next week.

Greg Gutfeld: This extremely angry, extremely small man is the ranking star of "cable news," behind only Jesse Watters. This afternoon, we'll give you an overview of his latest gruesome conduct.

Warning—it won't be pretty! Borrowing from Ezra Pound, "Yet this is [him]"—and us.

Kevin's commenters: In this post, Kevin Drum links to that front-page report in the New York Times. The Times quotes a lot of unnamed sources. Kevin's headline says this:

Biden’s cognitive decline may be fairly recent

Kevin accepts the idea that "cognitive decline" has occurred. He suggests that it may be fairly recent.

For ourselves, our full-blown concern about President Biden dates to last August—to his first public statement in Hawaii in the wake of the Lahaina fires. 

We've seen plenty of footage since that time which has added to our concern, along with other behaviors. As we noted at the time, we were surprised when the campaign decided that he would be able to handle a 90-minute debate.

For ourselves, we can't say that we know what happened last Thursday night. We'd be slower to voice a speculation than Kevn has been, though it may be that his assessment is completely correct.

That said, many of Kevin's commenters swung into instant action. They're sure that this whole thing is some sort of conspiracy organized by sinister forces, including the New York Times—sinister forces who want to restore Donald J. Trump to power. 

Sad! Even here, within our own Blue America, we're often inclined to reason in the manner of Donald J. Trump! We Blues instinctively say how brilliant we are. And yet, this is [us]!

Brian Kilmeade: This very morning, on Fox & Friends, we saw Brian Kilmeade offer this observation about "the media:"

"They shouldn't be picking a horse in this race, but they are."

Kilmeade has spotted a conspiracy too. In his conspiracy, the (mainstream) media have been conspiring to keep President Biden in power.

Imagine! Imagine someone from the Fox News Channel complaining about the way some in "the media" are offering only one side of the story! You wouldn't think that such conduct was possible, but at Fox, it goes on all day long.

Rachel Maddow: We tried to watch Maddow last night—the two-hour (!) special broadcast in which she interviewed Stormy Daniels.

We had to quit roughly twenty minutes in; we'll try to make ourselves watch the whole thing at some later point. But the fact that our own Blue America fell in love with this "cable news" salesperson calls to mind the basic, insurmountable shortcomings the angry Cummings felt he had observed. 

(Update: We just saw an MSNBC promotional spot in which Maddow describes our democracy as "a divinely inspired gift of our forefathers." As we've long told you: Whatever her merits may be, Maddow is very savvy about how much of herself she reveals.)

Nicolle Wallace: We'll request a point of personal privilege here. 

Wallace has always been a superlative spokesperson. That was already true back in the day, when she was peddling the war in Iraq and state referendums designed to defeat same-sex marriage.

She's always been a superb salesperson, but her special skills end there. Yesterday afternoon, staring defeat in the face, she offered a pitiful cri de coeur. 

She'd already introduced "some of our favorite reporters sand friends," as she pathetically does on a daily basis. A few minutes later, she offered this, as she and her favorites pretended to discuss the Supreme Court's latest ruling: 

WALLACE (7/2/24): You know, David Jolly, a lot of people that I know, and people that I don't—beloved viewers of this program—I saw people expressing fear. I am afraid of what the Court ushered in, but my colleague Rachel Maddow, as she is beloved for doing, had—sort of cut right to the crux of this.

She then played tape of something the beloved Maddow had said. 

Wallace's viewers are beloved; Maddow's beloved too! This is the way a limited person starts to behave in the face of tribal defeat—in this case, in the face of the defeat her own blinkered behavior in the past five years has helped bring on.

Apparently by instinct, Wallace speaks to no one except her favorites and her friends. She thinks and cares about no one and nothing else. 

Her favorites and her friends are beloved. No one else exists.

This astoundingly limited, in-group behavior is part of what Cummings had observed at Boston's famous Old Howard. It has also been an obvious path to defeat.

In all those ways, we've heard America singing. Moving right along:

Thought of as a wager, "government of and by the people" was always a bit of a long shot. That Supreme Court ruling suggests the possibility that "our democracy," as widely conceived, has already ceased to exist.

That said, we've saved the most deranged for last. We refer to Donald J. Trump's recent contribution to the discourse—to the public discourse which lies at the heart of any attempt at "democracy."

Citizens, there he went again! Headline included, CNN reports:

Trump amplifies posts calling for televised military tribunal for Liz Cheney

Former President Donald Trump amplified posts on social media calling for a televised military tribunal for former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and the jailing of top elected officials, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” one post created by another user that Trump amplified on his social media website Truth Social on Sunday reads. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”

[...]

A separate post Trump amplified on Truth Social Sunday includes photos of 15 former and current elected officials and says, “THEY SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL ON MONDAY NOT STEVE BANNON!”

This madness will never be mentioned by Brian Kilmeade. It won't be mentioned by the furiously disordered Gutfeld, or by the hacks who surround him each night, or by anyone else on his "cable news" channel.

(Nor will that conduct be reported by the New York Times. No one in the civilized world wants to tangle with Fox.)

That madness won't be mentioned on Fox. Elsewhere, it hasn't been mentioned enough. Nor have people like Wallace and Maddow (and their other favorite beloved colleagues) ever shown the slightest sign of knowing how to approach the broad range of American voters with madness of that type.

Has "our democracy" already died? We started this site in 1998 because the dysfunction already seemed so apparent.

Has "our democracy" already died? As a matter of basic anthropology, it isn't clear that we the people are built that kind of work.

President Lincoln embarked on a wager concerning government of the people. Vladimir Putin seems to have made an equal but opposite wager. 

As we sit here this very day, with a madman drowning out the beloved and Bannon advancing from below, is it clear that "Putin's wager" will turn out to have been wrong?

That's just how old 81 years old looks!

TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2024

But also, Stormy Daniels Tonight: Friend, are you possibly being "gaslit" about what happened last week?

Are you being handed explanation which don't quite seem to make sense? 

We're speaking about President Biden's performance at last Thursday's debate. Do you believe that what you saw was the result of his having a cold? Do you think it was just his stutter? 

Do those explanations actually seem to make sense?

Last night, we heard the best one yet. It came from Rachel Maddow, at 9:06 p.m. It was her one fleeting reference to what happened last Thursday night.

As her weekly program began, she was talking—and talking and talking—about the July 11 court date in which Donald J. Trump will be sentenced for his 34 felonies. Along the way, fleetingly, she managed to offer this:

MADDOW (7/1/24): ...[Trump] himself might be sentenced to Rikers [Island], or to New York state prison, depending on what sentence he's about to get after his own conviction on nearly three dozen felony charges. 

Excellent job, Republican Party! Great choice!

I love how Democrats are, like, "Ohhh! How did we get into this mess?" 

[CHUCKLES]

It's true that not understanding how old 81 years old looks sometimes is maybe a Democratic Party mistake.  But Democrats are not the party that picked the guy whose charity was shut down as a fraud, whose fake university was shut down as a fraud, whose business was convicted of multiple felony fraud counts, whose CFO is quite literally in jail...

And so on. Then on and on.

It's true! Democrats aren't the party which nominated Donald J. Trump! At present, Democrats are the party which stands to lose the White House this year in a race against Donald J. Trump.

In our view, you're being gaslit when Maddow tells you what she told you in that highlighted passage. When she tells you that you just don't understand "how old 81 years old looks sometimes"—when she tells you that that explains what you thought you saw on your TV screen last Thursday night.

For ourselves, we'd like to see further reporting about what we all saw that night. On CNN, Carl Bernstein has said that meltdowns of the type we saw have been taking place for some time, though we ourselves don't know if that's true.

Also this:

For ourselves, we have no idea what the Democratic Party should do at this point. Unfortunately, our guess would be that the party is so sunk in sin—and perhaps in deception—that there's no good way forward from here.

(Though the party, of course, could still win.)

For ourselves, we don't know what the Democratic Party should do. We will say this:

We'll say that the party, and its acolytes, should stop with all the gaslighting. They should stop calling people "bedwetters." They should even stop saying things as blatantly stupid as the one thing Maddow deigned to say about this matter last night.

Moments later, Maddow reported tonight's really big event. She's going to stage a two-hour special broadcast tonight—a two-hour special devoted to her interview with Stormy Daniels!

Due to our moral and intellectual greatness, we're prepared to imagine the possibility that something of value might result from special this two-hour event. Or it may be what the Rolling Stones said:

Some people know what you need. But salespeople know what you want.

It could just be that! At any rate, you may want to keep hearing about the claim that Donald J. Trump engaged in consensual sex on one occasion in 2006. Tonight, you'll be allowed to keep on dreaming, as sacred Nietzsche once said.

We don't know what the Democratic Party should do at this point. We do think that people like Maddow should stop selling product like this.

WAGERS: Did staffers decide to take a chance?

TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2024

Who sent the president out there? Will history show that a Russian strongman engaged in a type of wager?

If so, historians—to the extent that such people still exist—may call it "Putin's wager." Such people will declare that Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, decided to put all his chips on this proposition:

Government of the people, by the people and for the people may indeed be induced to "perish from the earth."

At one time, President Lincoln was willing to bet that government of and by the people could in fact be preserved. Then again, one thinks of the wager someone decided to take leading up to last Thursday night:

Someone decided to let President Biden take part in an ersatz "debate." 

For ourselves, we had long come to believe that President Biden wouldn't be able to engage in some such event. For that reason, we were surprised when it was announced that the campaign had sought such an event, and had agreed to participate.

For a while, we kept thinking that the campaign might find a way to back out. When the event in question took place, we sat down and watched.

On what basis had we come to believe that such an event couldn't happen? We had seen a lot of tape in which the president seemed to display the unmistakable signs of a certain tragedy of advanced age—a tragedy which visits some people while sparing certain others.

We had seen a lot of tape in which the president seemed to convey that vibe. During that period, the invisible people behind the scenes apparently settled on their own wager:

They must have decided that President Biden actually could function well in some such event.

We don't know why they would have thought that; they may have had decent reasons. But after the debacle occurred, the dissembling followed.

The dissembling came thick and fast. Staffers and family members began to utter the ultimate cry:

Who are you going to believe, us or your own lying eyes?

Staffers stood in line to accuse us the people of being "bedwetters." They said the president had a cold that night. They even attributed what we'd seen to the president's stutter.

They pretended that other presidents have performed comparably in other presidential debates. This claim is baldly absurd, but staffers took numbers and stood in line, awaiting their chance to make it.

This too could be described as a type of wager. But as the staffers (and family members) engaged in this wager, Putin's wager advanced. 

Briefly, let's be honest. For reasons we'll start to outline below, "government of the people" has always been a somewhat unlikely wager.

Perhaps in line with such doubts, various citizens have fallen in line in the past few days, repeating the mandated talking-points in various comment sections.

That doesn't make them bad people; it doesn't even mean that they're "wrong." But as they repeated the mandated scripts, we thought again, as we often do, of the angry, unpleasant poem E. E. Cummings once published.

In this interview, Cummings said the poem's bitter outlook was generated by his arrest in France, where he was serving as a medic, during World War I. At any rate, the angry, bitter poem in question starts off exactly like this:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you 
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

The Old Howard was a Boston vaudeville / burlesque house which Cummings frequented as a Harvard undergraduate. The famous old house was a bit of a Boston cultural landmark.

In his well-written memoir, Harpo Speaks, Harpo Marx said he got his first laugh onstage at Boston's famous Old Howard. 

(The laugh in question had been unintentional. The boys were still performing as "The Nightingales" at that point in time.)

According to Susan Cheever, Cummings once said that he based his unconventional approach to poetry on the structure of his favorite joke at the Howard. 

(The joke in question would barely qualify as a "joke" today. But it apparently triggered Cummings' decision to alter the rules of his format.)

At any rate:

In the lines presented above, Cummings bitterly described the tendency of us the people to defer to patriotic script when war is coming on. As he continued, so did his unpleasant portrait of the ways of us the people:

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Oof! The portrait is not complimentary.

Rather plainly, Putin's wager aligns itself with the view Cummings expressed. Putin's wager is built upon such assumptions as these:

We the people just aren't especially sharp. In fact we're easily misled. 

According to Putin's wager, government for and by a collection like us is surely destined to fail, and especially so at complexified times like these.

(We need a strongman to lead the way. On our own, we the people will squabble and fight and fail.)

At any rate, a three-way clown show took place last Thursday night. At least fifty-one million people saw it happen, unless you're prepared to pawn your intelligence in favor of what the staffers and the family members are saying you actually saw.

(An historical aside: In September 1960, 65 million people watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. At the time, the nation's population was just a bit over half what it is today. The candidates delivered eight-minute opening statements.)

The Cummings poem continues along from there. It ends with a bitter denunciation of us the people writ large, of the ways of "humanity" in general. 

Yesterday, an assembly called "the Supreme Court" issued some sort of a ruling. Given the way our discourse works, warring groups of tribal elders swung into action, distributing alternate talking points concerning the ruling in question.

This afternoon, we'll briefly discuss that new debacle. For now, we'll end with this:

Someone seems to have made a wager about the president's ability to take part in a debate. Disastrously, the president crashed and burned last Thursday night. An obvious question might go something like this:

What sort of medical analysis might explain what happened? Also, what sort of medical analysis might explain the 90 minutes of crazy statements issued by the other candidate on the stage that night?

More broadly, what might a carefully selected medical specialist tell us about these guys? At present, our nation doesn't enjoy a discourse which addresses such obvious questions as these.

Instead, three days before last Thursday's debate, the New York Times published a guest essay beneath this promising headline:

I’m a Doctor and a Voter. Here’s How I’m Thinking About the Health of Trump and Biden.

We'd be inclined to describe that essay as an imitation of life. Putin's wager assumes that such tapioca is the best we the people can do.

As a general matter, our struggling nation's national discourse is an imitation of life. Tomorrow, we'll offer excerpts from the essay in question—an essay which comes to us, live and direct, from the general vicinity of Cumming's portrait of what we the people are like.

Did staffers decide to take a gamble last week? How about family members? Also, what explains the crazy statements the other guy has persistently made, down through the many long years?

(Are we sure this nutcase is "lying?" What makes us think we know that?)

With respect to President Biden, was Thursday's debacle some sort of unpredictable anomaly? Alternately, have staffers perhaps been whistling past a (metaphorical) graveyard? 

What explains what everyone thinks they saw last Thursday night? Inevitably, also this:

What happened last night was a major event. Whas the New York Times said?

Tomorrow: Also, Brooks interviews Steve Bannon

He just can't seem to quit this adviser!

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2024

The Weekend of the Hunter: We've never cared for the 1955 feature film, The Night of the Hunter. 

No one liked it—then everyone did. Here is the overview from the usual suspect:

The Night of the Hunter 

The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir thriller directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish...The plot involves a serial killer (Mitchum) who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.

The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The film's lyrical and expressionistic style, borrowing techniques from silent film, sets it apart from other Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s...

Despite receiving negative reviews upon its original release, it has been positively re-evaluated in later decades and is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1992. The influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time.... 

Those French! Inevitably, they decided that The Night of the Hunter was the second-best film ever made!

In large part, we don't especially care for the film because we see it as part of the counterproductive wave of anti-Southern films which emerged from Hollywood at this point in time. It joined films like Baby Doll and God's Little Acre in painting a portrait of the white South which has turned out to be politically counterproductive.

We've never cared for The Night of the Hunter. For all we know, Hunter Biden may be the world's nicest person, but we admire his endlessly counterproductive behavior even less.

Has anyone ever insisted on BLANKing up more than this later-day Hunter? It wasn't enough that he had his astonishing arrays of problems—he had to write a book about them! And so on, and so on, from there.

We don't recommend the search for villains, but Hunter Biden's endless squirreling really does take the cake. That said, President Biden can't seem to quit this determined cluck-up. Here's what the New York times has reported about the past weekend of the Hunter:

Biden’s Family Tells Him to Keep Fighting as They Huddle at Camp David

President Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite last week’s disastrous debate performance, even as some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how he was prepared for the event by his staff, people close to the situation said on Sunday.

Mr. Biden huddled with his wife, children and grandchildren at Camp David while he tried to figure out how to tamp down Democratic anxiety. While his relatives were acutely aware of how poorly he did against former President Donald J. Trump, they argued that he could still show the country that he remains capable of serving for another four years.

Mr. Biden has been soliciting ideas from advisers about how to proceed, and his staff has been discussing whether he should hold a news conference or sit for interviews to defend himself and change the narrative...

One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice, said one of the people informed about the discussions, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father that he knows—scrappy and in command of the facts—rather than the stumbling, aging president Americans saw on Thursday night.

According to an unnamed person whose name may rhyme with Hunter Biden, Hinter Biden wants Americans to see a version of his father which may no longer exist. 

He may also want his father to retain the power of pardons and commutations. At any rate, the president seems to be completely unable to quit this awful adviser.

In our view, President Biden has long had a strangely distorted set of ideas about the people he refers to as "the Bidens." In our view, it's insulting to see this creepy fark-up still sitting in a place of honor as "the Bidens" try to decide what to do with the current mess.

It's bad enough that our flailing nation suffers with such royal families as the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Rockefellers, and with the disordered behavior which frequently results from such royal status.

It's bad enough that we have to put up with the disorder emerging from such families. For some reason, President Biden has always seemed to think that his family represents some similar type of royal brood, working-class Scranton style.

Hunter Biden has been a rolling disaster for quite a few years at this time. His September trial—the trial which concerns his apparent grifting—will only make matters that much worse. 

Uncle James seems to have been a bit of a grifter too. Whatever a person may think of President Biden, we can't say that we'd widely recommend the group known as "the Bidens."

In our view, it's insulting to read that Hunter Biden is one of the people engineering events. Will anyone deliver us from this meddlesome hanger-on, who reportedly still has the ear of his prime enabler?

For extra credit only: Was Hunter Biden the source for Maureen Dowd's poisonous column during Campaign 2016? We refer to the poisonous column about Beau Biden's alleged disparaging final words about Candidate Hillary Clinton.

This was Dowd's unsourced copy, which became the source of an otherwise unsourced Sunday morning, front-page "news report:"

Joe Biden in 2016: What Would Beau Do?

[...]

When Beau realized he was not going to make it, he asked his father if he had a minute to sit down and talk.

“Of course, honey,” the vice president replied.

At the table, Beau told his dad he was worried about him.

My kid’s dying, an anguished Joe Biden thought to himself, and he’s making sure I’m O.K.

“Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money,” Beau told him, dismissing the idea that his father would take some sort of cushy job after the vice presidency to cash in.

Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run [in 2016], arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.

There somebody went again, citing those "Biden values!" Even today, the gaslighting continues, whatever you think the president should decide to do at this point.

President Biden has said that he himself wasn't the source of that account. We'll try to walk you back through this extended, ridiculous journalistic episode before the week is done.

For the record, this is part of the way Donald J. Trump initially reached the White House.

WAGERS: "Our democracy" hit rock bottom last week!

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2024

A boon for Putin's wager: Long ago and far away, Blaise Pascal, for better or worse, authored a famous wager.

Who the heck was Blaise Pascal? And what exactly was his "wager"—his gamble, his thesis, his bet?

We've never been hugely impressed with the gentleman's wager. That said, the leading authority on the topic thumbnails the matter as shown:

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian. This argument posits that individuals essentially engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God.

Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and [should] actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes: 

If God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries. However, if God does indeed exist, he or she stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.

"The original articulation of this wager can be found in Pascal's posthumously published work titled Pensées, which comprises a compilation of previously unpublished notes," the authority then reports.

So it went with Pascal's wager! Long story short, with the reasoning, such as it was, only slightly dumbed down:

Pascal didn't believe that anyone could prove the existence of [the conventional Judeo-Christian] God. But just in case that God does exist—just in case that God will punish nonbelievers with the torments of Hell—we should strive to convince ourselves that He [sic] does exist, and we should conform to his rules.

Dumbed down to a slightly greater extent, the wager went like this:

If God doesn't exist, you wasted your time at Mass each week, but the price you paid was minor. 

On the other hand, if God does exist and you thumbed your nose at religious requirements, you may end up burning in Hell.

The so-called "wager" went something like that. Those who seek complexification can immerse themselves in overthinking in Professor Hajek's treatment of the wager for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

People have been discussing Pascal's wager since the dawn of time. By way of contrast, the gamble we'll describe as "Putin's wager" seems to have come about in fairly recent times.

"Putin's wager" seems to go something like this:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian potentate, seems to believe that the future belongs to the autocrats, not to systems like the one we refer to as "our democracy." 

When it comes to systems like ours, he seems to be gambling that "the center [won't be able to] hold." 

We can't necessarily say that the Russian strongman is wrong in this apparent assessment! Consider:

In our view, "our democracy" has been placed under vastly increased levels of stress by the process known as "the democratization of media." 

Also, by the proliferation of "identity groups" within our struggling culture (though no specific "identity group" can be tagged as the source of the problem).

Also, by the punishing limits of human cogitation, a factor we'll survey all week.

Is it possible that Vladimir Putin's wager will pay off?  We would say it's entirely possible! Just consider what happened in Atlanta last Thursday night:

Last Thursday night, in Atlanta, our system was groaning under the strain of at least forty years of journalistic and academic devolution.

Two candidates stood on a stage, hoping to be our nation's next president. They interacted with a pair of major journalists who had agreed that they would question or challenge no misstatements, no matter how absurd.

Operating within this system, the one candidate produced absurd misstatements all night. The other candidate routinely struggled to complete a thought, delivering such statements as this:

MODERATOR (6/29/24): President Biden, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to this question about the national debt.

CANDIDATE:  He had the largest national debt of any president four-year period, number one.

Number two, he got $2 trillion tax cut, benefited the very wealthy. What I’m going to do is fix the tax system.  For example:

We have a thousand trillionaires in America–I mean, billionaires in America. 

And what’s happening, they’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent, 25 percent—either one of those numbers—they’d raise 500 million dollars–billion dollars, I should say—in a ten-year period.

We’d be able to right–wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do—childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system—making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, uh, the Covid—excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, uh—

[PAUSE]

Look—

[PAUSE]

If—

[PAUSE]

We finally beat Medicare.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, President Biden. President Trump?

"We finally beat Medicare?" After a set of pauses and self-corrections, as the culmination of an imponderable overall claim about the way the candidate plans to "fix the tax system," that bizarre statement was delivered at 9:12 p.m. 

(For a fuller assessment of that presentation, you can see Saturday's report.)

"We finally beat Medicare," the stumbling candidate finally said. The moderator simply plowed ahead, as if nothing had happened. 

Earlier, the moderators had done the same thing when the other candidate had grossly misrepresented the basic nature of tariffs.

Full disclosure:

Under current arrangements, the astonishing presentation we've transcribed came from the candidate we'll be voting for in November! By our own assessment, the other candidate would be a much worse bet for our struggling nation.

Fellow citizens, is there a halfway decent chance that Putin's wager will pay off? Please understand:

What we saw last Thursday night was the current functioning of "our democracy" under the strain of forty years of cultural devolution. 

In our view, the exchange we've transcribed involved the more capable of the two men who stood on the stage that night! Aso, it involved the conduct of a major mainstream journalist, who had agreed to "see no evil" all through the course of the evening.

Under this journalistic arrangement, the other candidate issued a string of ludicrous claims all through the course of the event. The candidate for whom we ourselves will vote showed little ability to counteract these crazy statements and claims.

The major journalists who served as moderators made no attempt to react to the other candidate's ludicrous claims. And sure enough:

In kneejerk fashion, many of Blue America's vastly limited "thought leaders" were soon describing these ludicrous statements as "lies." Among various problems with this childish approach, this framework implies that the other candidate isn't cognitively disordered.

Is Putin's wager likely to pay at the betting window? Consider:

By now, each of the candidates on the Atlanta stage has shown overwhelming signs of cognitive incapacitation. Beyond that, a wide range of medical specialists have said, rightly or wrongly, that the candidate for whom we won't be voting has shown unmistakable signs of major psychological / psychiatric disorder.

The people cast as major journalists in our nation's ongoing TV show have agreed that none of these factors should be reported, discussed or evaluated. Beyond that:

As we type this assessment this Monday morning, major thought leaders in Blue America are insisting that the candidate for whom we'll vote simply had "a bad night."

In the face of all this moral and intellectual dysfunction, Vladimir Putin seems to have made a private wager. In our view, Pascal's wager didn't make much sense—but Putin's wager certainly could end up paying off.

It isn't just Candidate Biden! "Our democracy," such as it is, has been visibly struggling for the past forty years. 

It isn't clear that our vastly limited species is built to address such systemic challenges. Reactions to last Thursday's debacle only serve to make the shape of this problem more clear.

"Our democracy" might seem to have hit rock bottom last Thursday night. Sadly enough, the situation could get worse, much worse.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, seems to have made a private wager. Even as our various "thought leaders" engage in their own unacknowledged wagers, it seems to us that Putin's wager may end up paying off.

"Our democracy," such as it ever was, has been rapidly moving from imperfect to worse. In the aftermath of last Thursday's debacle, we'll be discussing this matter all week.

An array of wagers are involved. We know of no safe bet.

This afternoon: Weekend of the Hunter