NEW NORMALS: "The American people are pretty sharp!"

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

Except actually, no—we aren't: For at least a generation, it's been a standard bit of messaging from "highly educated," high-profile American pundits:

The American people are pretty sharp!

That has always made for excellent messaging. Whatever else may have been involved, repetition of this bromide helped pundits remain well liked.

The American people are pretty sharp? Actually no, we aren't! That includes this gaggle of "highly educated," high-end journalists—and who knows?

 In some cases, it's possible that some of those tribunes even believed what they said!

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolution—except to the extent that it may become one. Numbers changed in a limited way—in a way which makes total sense at a time when people feel, by a very wide margin, that the nation is on "the wrong track."

Tens of millions of neighbors and friends believe that we're on the wrong track. Having said that, so what?

In Blue America, we kept ignoring the still-unexplained, manifest strangeness which was allowed to transpire, for more than three years, at the southern border. To this day, we're still conflating the cost of living with the current inflation figure.

Our tribunes kept insisting that President Biden was sharp as a tack. Over on the Fox News Channel, they kept playing the pieces of videotape which seemed to debunk that claim.

Are we the people actually sharp? This morning, the C-Span web site has joined that of the Internet Archive. For a reason we can't explain, C-Span's website seems to be down. 

Has C=Span been hit by a cyberattack, like the Archive before it? We have no idea! But C-Span's failure to respond robs us of the chance to transcribe a trio of phone calls the network received during Sunday morning's broadcast. of Washington Journal.

How sharp are we the American people? Based upon our notes, the three calls were received, one after the other, starting at 8:55 a.m. Eastern.

The American people are pretty sharp? Here's what three callers said, one right after another:

Caller One: Caller One said that she would be voting for Candidate Harris. She cited the fact that Candidate Trump has had three wives as the defining point of concern.

Caller Two: Caller Two said that he would also be voting for Harris—and he was predicting a blowout. He noted the fact that Candidate Trump doesn't have a pet, while Candidate Harris has a dog.

Caller Three: Caller Three said she'd be voting for Candidate Trump.  Who was in office when the Dobbs decision was reached? "The Democrats," she sagaciously said, plainly suggesting that the Dobbs decision was therefore the Democrats' fault!

You'll think that we're inventing these calls. You'll think that, but we aren't.

To our ear, there was no sign that these callers were anything other than fully sincere. We can't link you to the audiotape of these calls because C-Span, like the Internet Archive, is now, for some reason, down.

When we listened to those phone calls, we heard America singing, if only in very small part. Rather, we were hearing the voices of three fellow citizens—three of the well over 100 million neighbors and friends who would be going out there to vote.

In all honesty, we the humans aren't especially sharp, and there's exactly zero sign that we ever were. That includes the class of experts who get dragged into Blue America's messaging venues to feed us the porridge we like.

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolution. Candidate Trump will almost surely end up winning the nationwide popular vote, but only by maybe three points.

That's a change from four years ago. On the other hand, it isn't a giant change, given the circumstances under which this campaign took place.

How did we Blues approach this election? Let us count (a few of) the ways:

For starters, we operated under an amazingly braindead bromide:

Don't ask, don't let them tell!

Please don't interview Trump voters, we said again and again. Please don't ask them how the world looks to them. Don't ask them why they're supporting Candidate Trump.

Any time a major news org dared to do some such thing, we Blues begged them to stop. It's hard to be much dumber than that, but we (highly educated) Blues were constantly willing to try.

We didn't leave things there. Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern each afternoon, Blue America's "cable news" channel focused its attention on this pleasing porridge:

Trump Trump Trump Trump jail!

Lock him up, our tribunes said, all day and then into the night. In the process, they completely ignored the facts of life which were driving the outlook of The Others.

They ignored the outlook of the deplorables who went out and voted yesterday, even possibly of the "garbage" out there.

(Once President Biden had blurted that latter term, we insisted that Red America had blown right past his implied apostrophe! It's hard to be more pathetic than that, but as a tribe, we've always been willing to try.)

In the end, one of those deplorables called C-Span with that ridiculous claim about the Dobbs decision. That said, this is who we the people are—and at some point, those of us in Blue America have to ask ourselves this basic question:

Do we like other people, or not?

All through the annals of human history, the general answer to that question has generally been no. We humans are wired to like our own, to refer to the Others as "trash."

That's where Candidate Vance just went, in the campaign's dying days. In part due to the landlocked nature of our own Blue American world, we are now looking ahead to rule by a gaggle like this:

The brain trust which has emerged: 
Donald J. Trump
Elon Musk
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
JD Vance
Tucker Carlson

Next in line will be fellows like Bannon. It was Bannon to whom Carlson made his latest confession—his claim that our problems with hurricanes stem from our many abortions. That followed his account of the way he was bloodied in bed by unseen demons, even as his wife and his four dogs soundly slept.

We've now purchased rule by that peculiar crew, and on downward from there. To us, those people all seem to be disordered—but the mental giants in Blue America all agreed, from beginning to end, that any such medical possibility must never be mentioned or discussed.

So it was decided by Us—by the plainly brighter class among us the rational animals.

Are we humans "the rational animal?" Is it possible that we ever were?

Isn't it pretty to think so! A decade ago, writing for the New York Times, Professor Horwich shot that notion down.

Interpreting the later Wittgenstein, the professor brought in the mail. The highest achievements of western world thought were really "the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking," the professor said that the later Wittgenstein had said.

We think the professor got it pretty much right! Over here in Blue America, we motored ahead into an era when we pleasingly wiped away the age-old distinction between misstatements and lies.

So it went with our own muddled thinking, with a thousand examples to follow. Over there in Red America, the others were routinely able to see what our tribunes kept choosing to do.

On our side, we wanted to lock him up. The business types inside our own tribe's "cable news" channel kept using that as the pretty idea which would keep us returning for more.

On and on and on we went. On our side, we're so dumb that we somehow managed to convince ourselves that Stormy Daniels was a "feminist hero," based on the way she struggled and strained to shake Trump down for cash.

It's hard to be much dumber than that; we were willing to try. Over there, in Red America, the lesser breed was persistently able to see what we, the finer people, were haplessly trying to do.

What will President Trump do this time around? We have no way of knowing.

If he goes ahead with his apparently lunatic tariff plan, the economy may get very bad. If that happens, it will take a lot of violent rhetoric and action, in other areas, to keep us the people in line.

(Or he may just dismiss Jack Smith, then go play golf for four years. We have no way of knowing what the fellow will do.)

That said, there will likely be a lot of new normals in the days ahead. Almost surely, there's one thing which will never change:

We Blues will never understand the way we look to Others. According to a handful of actual experts, our human wiring doesn't equip us for some such task.

We humans aren't built for that task! Is a new beast slouching toward Bethlehem now, as one anthropologist foretold?

We the humans just aren't super-sharp! At some point, we Blues may have to ask ourselves this. It's a question straight outta Bill Clinton:

Do we like other humans, or not?