TUESDAY: What sacred Melville did for whales...

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2025

...we'll do for the president's groaners: Our recent reference to sacred Melville pleased a certain Tonight show comedian of the Leno era. With that fact in mind:

In this morning's report, we started to create a taxonomy of ridiculous public misstatements by the sitting president. As the leading authority on the topic reminds us, sacred Melville also labored in this general field:

Cetology of Moby-Dick

The cetology in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, is a running theme that appears most importantly in Ishmael's zoological classification of whales in Chapter 32, "Cetology." The purpose of that chapter, the narrator says, is "to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow." Further descriptions of whales and their anatomy occur in seventeen other chapters, including "The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View" (Chapter 74) and "The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View" (Chapter 75).

Although writing a work of fiction, Melville included extensive material that presents the properties of whales in a seemingly scientific form. Many of the observations are taken from Melville's reading in whaling sources in addition to his own experiences in whaling in the 1840s. They include descriptions of a range of species in the infraorder of Cetacea. The detailed descriptions are a digression from the storyline, but critics argue that their objectivity and encyclopedic form balance the spiritual elements of the novel and ground its cosmic speculations. Although Melville "keenly parodies nonsense statistics, rigid hierarchies, and the arbitrarily definitive taxonomies characteristic of antebellum natural science," Melville also "showed the elasticity of cataloguing: how it could be used as a literary device, stylistic trait, and even function as an argument . . . the list is offered as vehicle of thought and argumentation, and for its ability to plainly display information in a systematic and exhaustive manner."

And so on from there. But let the word go forth to the nations:

If Melville "keenly parodied nonsense statistics, rigid hierarchies, and the arbitrarily definitive taxonomies characteristic of [his era's] natural science," he might have found himself hot to trot with respect to the dying national discourse of the present day.

He offered taxonomies of the whale. This morning, we started to compile a taxonomy of the leviathanic public misstatements made by the sitting president. 

We called attention to three such monsters from the shallows and the sandbars. Let us start to count the ways:

Varieties of clownish misstatement by the sitting president:

Statements or claims which are "glaringly false"
In this morning's report, we quoted an obvious example of this type of howler. The statement in question was quoted by the New York Times, then dismissed as "glaringly false."

Go ahead! Go back and check it out.

Statements or claims which are unsupported by any attempt at evidence
In groaners of this familiar type, the sitting president makes a poisonous claim which could be true, at least in theory, while offering no evidence in support of his poisonous statement. We offered an ongoing example is this morning's report. 

Many of the sitting president's most frequently recited groaners are memorized, shopworn claims of this maddening type.

Statements or claims which are so imprecise that it's unclear what's being alleged
"The Russia, Russia, Russia hoax was a terrible made-up fictional thing," the sitting president recently said. But then, when has he ever gargled or even brushed his teeth without emitting this shopworn cri de coeur.

This is a favorite memorized chestnut among all those who perform on Fox News Channel programs. But what exactly is being denounced as "a hoax?" 

The president, and the performers on Fox, never quite remember to say. It sounds like they are making a claim, but the claim is really a pseudo-claim. No one knows what the president means, most likely including him.

Our taxonomy of groaning misstatements will start with those varieties. Misstatements aren't all made alike, although they're all equally harmful.

We leave you today with a question:

Fourteen years into this mess, why haven't you seen any professors or journalists creating a taxonomy of the various ways this man misleads the public? 

On this campus, we've suggested a possible reason for the president's endless misstatements. We ask this about those other parties:

What's supposed to be wrong with them?

THE SQUALOR(S): There he keeps going, again and again!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2025

We'd call it Squalor Red: It's one more example of "the problem we all [currently] live with."

We can't find it in today's New York Times. But as reported by Mediaite, there he went again:

Trump Drops All-Time Whopper About Israeli Hostages...

President Donald Trump falsely took credit for all Israeli hostages being released, even though more than 100 were freed during the presidency of Joe Biden.

[...]

“Every hostage, just about, that’s been released was released because of me, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, my whole team, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth,” Trump replied. “They were all released because of us. None were released in the Biden administration. None. They were all released because of us.”

It was an absurdly inaccurate claim. Appearing yesterday with Bibi, he made it two separate times.

Full disclosure! On this campus, we're inclined to think that the president may even believe his various crazy claims.

Presumably, medical specialists could offer some perspective on that possibility. But, for better or worse, major news orgs have agreed that such discussions must never happen.

We've turned to Mediaite for that absurdly inaccurate claim. In fairness to the New York Times, they were at least reporting another such misstatement, right there on the front page of today's print editions:

Families of Murder Victims in Washington Say Trump Is Ignoring Them

[...]

“We haven’t had a murder in six months,” Mr. Trump said of Washington.

It was the kind of glaringly false claim about crime in the capital that Mr. Trump has made repeatedly since August, when he deployed the National Guard and took federal control of the police force...D.C. police have recorded 127 murders through Dec. 26, including 28 since Mr. Trump announced his federal takeover.

The president's claim is "glaringly false"—but he's been "repeatedly" making it.

We've started with a pair of claims which are crazily inaccurate. In this morning's print editions, the Times is also reporting a different kind of presidential misstatement:

Russia Threatens to Toughen Its Stance on Ending the War in Ukraine

With talks on ending the Ukraine war making little progress on the toughest issues, Russia issued a dramatic threat on Monday to harden its stance, linking the potential change to what the Kremlin called a failed Ukrainian drone attack overnight targeting a rural residence of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Ukraine immediately denied any such attack...

[...]

Mr. Trump said that he heard about the alleged attack from Mr. Putin himself during a previously scheduled phone call early Monday to discuss the peace talks. “I was very angry about it,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, though he conceded that he had no independent confirmation that it had occurred.

Can we talk? Aside from what Putin had said, he didn't even claim to know some such (alleged) attack had actually occurred! But so what? In the absence of any evidence—in the absence of anything resembling knowledge--the president went on and on, seeming to assume that Putin's statement was true.

In short, there are various kinds of public misstatements. There are claims which are plainly false, but there are also claims for which there seems to be no evidence.

Under current arrangements, these claims emerge from the sitting president on a regular basis—but does any of this really make any difference? 

Uh-oh! On page A12 of this morning's Times, this profoundly unfortunate news report suggests that the answer is yes:

Suspect Confessed to Planting Pipe Bombs Near the Capitol Before Jan. 6

The Virginia man arrested this month on charges of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the night before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has given a detailed confession, according to court papers released on Sunday night.

In the public first hint at a motive in the case, the documents said that the man, Brian J. Cole Jr., felt he needed to “speak up” after he began to suspect that the 2020 election, in which President Trump was defeated, had been “tampered with.”

Fortunately, those pipe bombs failed to detonate. But according to his confession, Cole decided to plant the bombs because he had come to believe that the 2020 election had been "tampered with"—in more familiar parlance, had been stolen.

Five years later, the sitting president was still making that inflammatory claim when he held a press event this Sunday, right there at Mar-a-Lago. 

He appeared there with President Zelensky. Inevitably, he was soon saying this:

TRUMP (12/28/25): I've said, and nobody has disputed it, that if the election weren't rigged and stolen, 2020, you wouldn't have had this war. It would have never happened. And it didn't happen for four years. Never was even thought to happen.

And I spoke with President Putin. I got along with him very well despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which was a total hoax. He used to say, "What is going on over there?" But it was a total hoax, as he knew and as I knew. 

[...]

Don't forget, we went through the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax together. And he'd call me, I'd call him. I said, can you believe the stuff that they're making up? And it turned out we were right. They made it all up...

But the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which was a terrible made-up fictional thing by Crooked Hillary and by Adam Shifty Schiff and bad people, sick people, they made it up. It was all a made-up hoax. 

For starters, the election "was rigged and stolen!" There he went again!

This sitting president has now had more than five years to present a white paper in which he could attempt to justify that inflammatory statement. No such presentation has been made. 

He just keeps repeating the statement. People like Cole believe what he says and may even decide to react.

Such people may also believe the other ludicrous claims the president made in that same press event. That includes the endless (and endlessly vague) assertion about "the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax," which was "a total hoax," the sitting president once again said.

What exactly was "the Russia hoax?" As far as we know, the president has never tried to say. He just keeps making his fuzzy claim concerning that undefined "hoax."

That said, the wonderfully useful, imprecise claim gets repeated all day and all night by the messenger children at the Fox News Channel. All across the fruited plain, people like Cole hear the vague claim, and they may not realize that the claim is so poorly defined as to be basically meaningless.

Also, "Russia wants Ukraine to succeed!" 

Yes, he actually said it! But so it goes, day after day, as we the people deal with the pernicious effects of "the problem we all currently live with."

Let us count the ways:

Some of his statements are "glaringly false." But no matter how many times this gets pointed out, he just continues to make them.

Some of his bogus statements could be true, at least in theory—but he makes no attempt to offer evidence in support of his inflammatory claims. Also, some of his claims are so vague, so poorly defined, that no one can really say what they actually mean.

This situation has continued, day after day, dating back to the four or five years when he kept appearing on The Fox News Channel to claim that Barack Obama, who was then the sitting president, had been born in Kenya. His willing enabler during those years was Greta Van Susteren, who's now employed as a news anchor by Newsmax TV. 

More on that matter will follow. For today, we call your attention to this:

Dating back to 2011, our nation has suffered under the reign of misstatement authored by the sitting president. We would describe this reign of misstatement as the principal component of (moral and intellectual) "Squalor Red."

The president's remarkable conduct qualifies as Squalor Red. As we noted yesterday, it took a remarkable squalid form on August 10, 2019—on the day when Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell.

The squalor was general over the next several days as the president messaged his gullible followers concerning Epstein's death. As you may recall, here are two of the things this (colloquial) madman did:

Trump retweets conspiracy theory tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death

President Trump used his Twitter account Saturday to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy and politically connected financier who had been facing multiple charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.

Trump’s Justice Department announced that Epstein, who was being held in a federal corrections facility, died by “apparent suicide.”

But Trump appeared to disregard his administration’s statement, instead retweeting a message from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams, who suggested that Epstein’s death might be tied to former president Bill Clinton...

The claim is completely unsubstantiated...

On the day that Epstein died, that's the way the squalor started. Three days later, this:

Trump defends sharing Clinton-Epstein conspiracy theory

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to share a tweet suggesting Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in financier Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, and stoked speculation about the former president’s relationship with the deceased convicted sex offender.

“The retweet—which is what it was, just a retweet—was from somebody that’s a very respected conservative pundit, so I think that was fine,” Trump told reporters, referring to a conspiratorial message by comedian and commentator Terrence K. Williams, which he re-posted Saturday.

Trump, who has been criticized for promulgating the unfounded theory that the Clintons had a hand in Epstein’s death, said on Tuesday that he had “no idea” whether they played a role in the high-profile prisoner’s demise.

On that same August 10, he messaged his poisonous claim about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Three days later, he acknowledged that he "had no idea" if the "theory" he messaged was true.

Even today, the creepy host of the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! program repeatedly reinforces the astonishing claim that Hillary Clinton is a person who murders her opponents. But even back in August 2019, the sitting president was messaging a second accusation about Bill Clinton—an accusation based on bungled data, an accusation which is almost certainly false.

He returned to that poisonous messaging this summer, then again in recent weeks. The hacks who amplify his disorder were happy to repeat his various claims on the Fox News Channel. This is the problem we've all been living with over the past fifteen years.

We would regard this as Squalor Red. No large modern nation can expect to function under such a squalid regime.

We regard that as Squalor Red, but what in the world is Squalor Blue? We'll tell you that in our first report of the new year. 

Tomorrow, we'll review the other claim being peddled about concerning President Clinton.

Once again, a bit of disclosure:

In our view, he may even believe the various things he says. In our view, the refusal to come to terms with that possibility is part of Squalor Blue.

Tomorrow: Facts and fact checks are utterly useless in the face of these Squalor(s).

MONDAY: What did Candidate Trump really say?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025

Endless dispute resolved: We didn't see today's exchange ourselves. But over at Mediaite, Isaac Schorr has captured the latest exchange in an ongoing dispute about last year's White House campaign.

The endless dispute to which we refer goes like this:

Last year, did Candidate Trump say he would execute "mass deportations" when he returned to the White House? Or did he actually say that he was only going to deport "the worst of the worst?"

For starters, let us say this:

It seems to us that Schorr begins today's report by mischaracterizing something Karen Bass said to Wolf Blitzer on last Friday's Situation Room. In fairness to Schorr, that's almost inevitable when Tomi Lahren is hosting a Fox News Channel show, the messaging service she provided on today's Outnumbered program.

Schorr provides videotape from today's Outnumbered. If you watch that videotape, you'll see Lahren executing her most prominent "journalistic" skill. You'll see her offering a jaundiced "translation" of an extremely short remark by Mayor Bass—a short remark from which a much wider context has been completely disappeared.

Along with her mastery of sarcasm and snark, such "translations" constitute Lahren's number one skill. Soon, though, the dispute about last year's election broke out between Marie Harf, a former Obama/Biden official, and Kaylee McGhee White, a thoroughly reliable pro-MAGA Fox News contributor.

Schorr transcribes what the combatants said. Here's part of his transcription:

HARF (12/29/25): I remember before the election when everyone said, "He’s going to go after the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists." That’s not what’s happening.

They’re going into a lot of primarily Hispanic communities, rounding up people, elderly people, young kids who’ve been here, you know, elderly people who’ve been here for decades, and Hispanic supporters of Trump are like, "Wait a second, this isn’t what we bargained for." ... I’m looking to Hispanic voters who supported Trump who say, "Wait a second, this isn’t what we were told ICE was going to do." And they’re now having some buyer’s remorse. I think that’s interesting.

WHITE: Which part of "Mass Deportations Now" were Hispanic voters not aware of when they voted for Donald Trump? He was pretty explicit on the campaign trail.

HARF: He did say though, Kaylee, and he did say, "We’re going to focus on the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, people charged with crimes—"

WHITE: Which is what he’s doing, but you want to keep them here too.

[...] 

They’re here illegally, they’re still criminals.

HARF: That’s not murderers, rapists—that’s not what he said!

For the record, many people who are being deported are not "here illegally." (Many others are.) But let's leave that state of affairs for another day. 

For today, this basic dispute goes on and on, with no end in sight. We're pleased to make the following announcement: 

In the current case, it's possible that Harf and White were each telling the truth! 

We think we can settle this matter right here! Assiduous research demonstrates this:

During the last campaign, the candidate promised "Mass deportation" on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, he thoughtfully said that he would target only "the worst of the worst."

For extra credit only: To evaluate what Mayor Bass said, you'd have to consider a lengthy CNN news report on which she'd been asked to comment.

To peruse the relevant CNN transcript from last Friday's Situation Room, first you have to click here, then you have to click this. On today's Outnumbered program, Lahren played tape of a tiny part of what Bass said, shorn of any context.

Lahren then provided her "translation" of what Bass had said. This is a standard part of the endless clowning performed on Fox News Channel programs. 

Videotape of Lahren's "translation" is included as part of the Mediaite report.

THE SQUALOR(S): Squalor Red and Squalor Blue!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025

Our nation's dueling squalors: Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, right there in New York City. He was found dead in his prison cell on Saturday, August 10, 2019.

Given the squalor of the time, what happened next was inevitable. In fact, it happened before the day was through. Inevitably, this is what came next:

The sitting president, Donald J. Trump, "used his Twitter account to spread a baseless conspiracy theory" about Epstein's death. Or at least, so said the Washington Post in an August 11 news report.

Instantly, the sitting president had chosen to spread a baseless "conspiracy theory!" According to that poisonous "theory," former president Clinton had somehow caused, or had somehow been involved in, Jeffrey Epstein's death.

Inevitably, that's what the sitting president had decided to suggest. That was the squalid behavior he instantly chose to engage in.

As usual, President Trump was drenched in moral and intellectual squalor as he performed this familiar task. As usual, one of his aides slithered out, working to justify his morally squalid behavior, even as she worked to spread another claim about former president Clinton, a claim which was plainly false.

In the passage we've posted above, we've quoted from that August 11 news report in the Washington Post. Headline included, here's the start of that report:

Trump retweets conspiracy theory tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death

President Trump used his Twitter account Saturday to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy and politically connected financier who had been facing multiple charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.

Trump’s Justice Department announced that Epstein, who was being held in a federal corrections facility, died by “apparent suicide.”

But Trump appeared to disregard his administration’s statement, instead retweeting a message from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams, who suggested that Epstein’s death might be tied to former president Bill Clinton...

The claim is completely unsubstantiated, and federal officials say Epstein was not on suicide watch at the time of his death.

So began the Post's report about the sitting president's conduct. Later, the report described what Kellyanne Fitzpatrick had said about the president's conduct in an appearance on the Fox News Channel.

For the record, the headline in the Post report refers to "the Clintons" (plural), a reference which went unexplained in the body of the report. Perhaps for sound journalistic reasons, the Post's report never quoted the baseless claim the president chose to retweet. 

In its own new report, the New York Times was perhaps a bit less circumspect. Headline included, the August 11 report in the Times started off like this:

Trump Shares Unfounded Fringe Theory About Epstein and Clintons

President Trump used Twitter on Saturday to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about how Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of sex trafficking, died in a federal jail, even as the administration faced questions about why Mr. Epstein had not been more closely monitored.

For years Mr. Trump has brashly—and baselessly—promoted suspicion as fact and peddled secret plots by powerful interests as a way to broadcast his own version of reality. Those include the lie that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that millions of votes were illegally cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Hours after Mr. Epstein was found to have hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell, Mr. Trump retweeted a post from the comedian Terrence Williams linking the Clintons to the death. Mr. Epstein “had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead,” wrote Mr. Williams, a Trump supporter. In an accompanying two-minute video, Mr. Williams noted that “for some odd reason, people that have information on the Clintons end up dead.”

There is no evidence to substantiate the claim, which derives from groundless speculation on the far right, dating to Mr. Clinton’s early days as president, that multiple deaths can be traced to the Clintons and explained by their supposed efforts to cover up wrongdoing.

So began the New York Times' report. In short: a flyweight comedian / blogger had offered a baseless (and poisonous) speculation about Epstein's death. The sitting president, Donald J. Trump, had rushed to move the morally / intellectually squalid messaging along.

Now for a bit of perspective:

As the New York Times' report correctly noted, President Trump had been engaged in this sort of conduct "for years" as of August 2019. His repeated baseless claims about President Obama's birth had begun in 2011. Through repeated appearances on the Fox News Channel over the course of four or five years, those absurdly disingenuous claims had been peddled to Red America over that period.

Now it was 2019,  and the president was peddling this claim. Soon thereafter, he was asked to explain or justify what he had done. On August 13, Politico reported what he said:

Trump defends sharing Clinton-Epstein conspiracy theory

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to share a tweet suggesting Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in financier Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, and stoked speculation about the former president’s relationship with the deceased convicted sex offender.

“The retweet—which is what it was, just a retweet—was from somebody that’s a very respected conservative pundit, so I think that was fine,” Trump told reporters, referring to a conspiratorial message by comedian and commentator Terrence K. Williams, which he re-posted Saturday.

Trump, who has been criticized for promulgating the unfounded theory that the Clintons had a hand in Epstein’s death, said on Tuesday that he had “no idea” whether they played a role in the high-profile prisoner’s demise, and accused former President Bill Clinton of lying about the extent of his air travel on Epstein’s planes.

It was just a retweet, the president said. What could be wrong with that?

He said that he had "no idea" if the insinuation in question was accurate! He had simply decided to retweet the flyweight comedian's poisonous tweet:

So what was the big freaking deal?

As noted, this squalid behavior by this president occurred in August 2019. The final part of the excerpt from the Times report explains why we're discussing it today.

Even then, the Times reported, the sitting president had been "accusing former President Bill Clinton of lying about the extent of his air travel on Epstein’s planes." In the endless hurly-burly which passes for the American discourse, this squalid behavior by President Trump re-emerged with a vengeance this past summer, but then again in the past few weeks.

The moral squalor of this president's conduct would seem to speak for itself. For the purposes of this week's reports, we'll refer to that as Squalor Red.

Unfortunately, Squalor Red has been enabled by Squalor Blue over a period of at least fifteen years. Sadly, the New York Times is deeply committed to that second type of squalid behavior.

A nation is sinking beneath the seas of these dueling acts of squalor. President Trump in deeply sunk in Squalor Red—but what the heck is Squalor Blue, and will it ever end?

Tomorrow: The ubiquity of the whale

Important fuller disclosure: Neither one of these Squalors is ever going to change. This week's reports are being offered for informational purposes only.

SATURDAY: "He's still supremely dangerous!"

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2025

Or so Michelle Goldberg has said: In yesterday morning's report, we focused on a Truth Social post which appeared, late in the night, on Christmas Eve. In that post, the president said this might be the last "Merry Christmas" our nation's many "sleazebags," all of them Democrats, will be able to enjoy.

It struck us as a somewhat threatening post. We wondered how some disordered person might react to such a post.

As it turned out, that was just one of the many Truth Social posts the president issued on Christmas Eve / Christmas morning. To its credit, NBC News ran a news report about the president's blizzard of posts. Its news report appeared beneath this dual headline:

Trump rings in Christmas Day with a flurry of posts denouncing perceived foes and casting doubt on the 2020 election
The president posted on Truth Social over 100 times overnight, also touting his own economic policies and efforts to end foreign wars.

Say what? According to NBC News, the president had posted more than 100 times on that one sacred night! And he hadn't just been denouncing his foes. He'd also been pushing his favorite lunatic claim—the lunatic claim he never stops making about the 2020 election.

So said NBC News, politely describing a blizzard of posts as a mere late December "flurry."

More than a hundred posts, advancing the same old lunatic claims? Could something be (tragically) wrong with this vastly powerful man?

That strikes us as an obvious question at this point in time. Meanwhile, some news orgs continued to count the president's posts, even after NBC News and several other news orgs gave up in exhaustion.  

Some news orgs kept counting! At news orgs which treated the peculiar spree as an actual news event, the headlines blared as shown:

Mother Jones:
Trump Spent Christmas Posting Over 100 Times on Truth Social

The Hollywood Reporter:
Trump’s Christmas of Chaos: Hosting a Rebranded Kennedy Center Honors, Over 100 Angry Truth Social Posts

The Daily Beast:
Trump Posts Nearly 150 Times in Unhinged Christmas Day Spree

The New Republic:
Trump Descends Into Paranoid Spiral on Christmas Day: Donald Trump posted more than 150 times—including about Jeffrey Epstein.

Time:
Trump Posted More Than 160 Times on Truth Social in Late-Night Blitz. That’s Not Even His Record

Time said the president had produced more than 160 posts! The Daily Beast and The New Republic stopped counting at 150, then headlined words like "paranoid" and "unhinged" with respect to the president's spree.

(Full disclosure! "Unhinged" is one of the words our journalists use to suggest that something is (tragically) wrong with this man—to suggest that something is wrong without directly saying so, and without asking medical specialists to offer their assessments.)

Is something wrong with President Trump? All along the watchtower, the biggest news orgs in Blue America have agreed that they must never ask.

Regarding this latest explosion of strangeness, The Hollywood Reporter reported this news. The New York Times has not.

As best we can tell, readers of the New York Times haven't been told what the president did. This is part of a "see no illness" approach this newspaper has adopted all along with respect to the apparent madness of this unending behavior.

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, that's a human tragedy, as is always true in such situations—but the story doesn't end there.

President Trump is the most powerful person in the world! Presumably with that in mind, Michelle Goldberg ends her new column for the New York Times with a sobering comment in her penultimate paragraph:

Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger

[...]

Much of the credit for the reinvigoration of the resistance belongs to Trump himself. Had he focused his deportation campaign on criminals or refrained from injuring the economy with haphazard tariffs while mocking concerns about affordability, he would probably have remained a more formidable figure. He’s still a supremely dangerous one, especially as he comes to feel increasingly cornered and aggrieved. After all, by the time you read this, we could well be at war with Venezuela, though no one in the administration has bothered to articulate a plausible rationale for the escalating conflict.

Goldberg believes that President Trump has lost his struggle for control of the nation's politics. She believes that he's on the way down and that he won't be rising back up.

In that, she may be right. But crazy people sometimes do crazy things when their crazy efforts have finally failed—when they "come to feel increasingly cornered and aggrieved."

The president is still "supremely dangerous," Goldberg says—and that could be the case. Meanwhile, her newspaper's news division is still refusing to report this president's extremely strange conduct.

They do the same thing on the Fox News Channel! If he really does shoot a man on Fifth Avenue, will the timorous New York Times report that unfortunate fact?

EMPATHY AND ILLNESS: Sitting president threatens the sleazebags!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2025

What would Jesus have done? For now, but only briefly, let's set the military strike in Nigeria off to the side.

Let's consider the highly unusual person who's able to order such strikes. Last night, in what has become his typical holiday style, he offered this Christmas message:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to “drop him like a dog” when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him, said he was a disgusting person, and then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so. When their names get brought out in the ongoing Radical Left Witch Hunt (plus one lowlife “Republican,” Massie!), and it is revealed that they are Democrats all, there will be a lot of explaining to do, much like there was when it was made public that the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax was a fictitious story—a total Scam—and had nothing to do with “TRUMP.” The Failing New York Times, among many others, was forced to apologize for their bad and faulty Election “Reporting,” even to the point of losing many subscribers due to their highly inaccurate (FAKE!) coverage. Now the same losers are at it again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished. But sadly, that’s the way it is in the World of Corrupt Democrat Politics!!! Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas! President Donald J. Trump

Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas! 

That was the holiday message sent to "the many Sleazebags" addressed in this Christmas Day post. The rest of us are left to wonder how repeated messaging of this type might sound to some (sadly) disordered person who might decide that it may be time to act on such presentations.

We've been asking, in the past week, if it might be "dangerous" to have this particular person in a position of vast unchecked power. Also, if it might be dangerous to proceed ahead without considering the possibility that some "mental illness" might be involved in such repetitive behavior, possibly driven along at the present time by some sort of cognitive decline.

Somewhere ages and ages hence, we the people will be able to discuss such possibilities in our public forums (if such forums still exist). As of today, we haven't yet evolved to the point where we're even willing to conduct such discussions, or where we would know how to do so if we decided to give it a try.

Heightening the possibility of danger is the power possessed by this person—power expressed yesterday in these military strikes:

U.S. Strikes ISIS in Nigeria After Trump Warned of Attacks on Christians

The United States launched a number of strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria, President Trump announced on Thursday, the latest American military campaign against a nonstate adversary—in this case, Islamic jihadis who the president asserts have been slaughtering Christians.

Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”

The strike involved more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles fired off a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, hitting insurgents in two ISIS camps in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the official said.

In a statement, U.S. Africa Command said its initial assessment concluded that “multiple” ISIS terrorists were killed in the strike.

So begins the news report in the New York Times. 

As a matter of basic fairness, we take note of the assertion that yesterday's operation "was done in coordination with the Nigerian military." At any rate, the president took out the scum yesterday, even as he may have seemed to be threatening the sleazebags. 

There's much, much more to say about the ways newspapers like the New York Times have agreed to normalize such unusual public behavior. Forget the fact that such newspapers refuse to interview medical specialists about the possibility of some sort of (unfortunate) "mental disorder," possibly accompanied by some degree of (unfortunate) cognitive decline.

(Or not.)

Forget about that! In the days ahead, we'll try to detail the moral squalor involved in the various claims this president has made, and in the various accusations he has advanced, with respect to the Jeffrey Epstein matter. 

Forget about (possible) issues of "mental illness" or "mental disorder!" Such newspapers have even refused to treat his endless promulgation of flagrantly false statements and blatantly unfounded accusations as a major news hook—as a feature of this man's bizarre behavior which should be pursued, as a front-page topic, every time it presents.

Simply put, we humans weren't built for this line of work. Something seems to be wrong with the world's most powerful man, but salaries are still quite good in other precincts, and people who still enjoy those salaries just keep averting their gaze from his bizarre public conduct. 

From his ugly unfounded accusations. From his endless flaming misstatements.

Do you believe that the sitting president may be in the grip of an actual "illness?" If so, we've suggested that you "pity the child." 

Are our journalists in the grip of some illness? We report the basic facts, and then we let you decide!

Don't read all about it: Regarding that warning to the sleazebags, you can read about it at Mediaite. 

Will it be reported by the New York Times? We don't have the answer to that!

 

EMPATHY AND ILLNESS: He's a moral pygmy, one analyst said!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2025

The moral over the medical: Oof—but also, world without end! Last evening, sure enough, there he went again:

Trump Lashes Out at ‘Dead Man Walking’ Stephen Colbert, Demands CBS ‘Put Him to Sleep NOW’

President Donald Trump lashed out at Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening, branding Colbert a “dead man walking” and urging CBS to “put him to sleep.”

“Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post. “Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings.”

He continued, “Stephen is running on hatred and fumes—a dead man walking! CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!”

And so on from there, again and again. World without end, amen!

In the face of this endless conduct, we've been suggesting that you pity the child. But what could we mean by that?

Let's return to Monday, December 15—one day after the murder of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner. President Trump took to Truth Social and voiced his reaction in the unusual manner, as shown:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

That was the president's latest "truth." That afternoon, he doubled down on what he had said as he responded to a question right there in the Oval Office.

That was an extremely strange reaction to this vicious murder. That said, the reaction that night on MS NOW also struck us as strange. 

The president's peculiar behavior was almost wholly unmentioned on that network that night. But at 4 p.m., on Deadline: White House, Nicolle Wallace and a trio of guests stated their views about the president's conduct in a pair of opening segments.

We were struck by what they said. The four are all good, decent people—but none of the four suggested that the sitting president might seem to be mentally ill.

(Just our luck! Even as we type, the invaluable Internet Archive reports that it's "currently offline." For that reason, we can't give you clips of what each of these four people said. Later, you'll be able to watch their full discussion simply by clicking here. For today, we'll work from the notes we took in real time.)

We were struck, but not surprised, by what the four people said. They treated the president's bizarre behavior as a moral failure, not as the possible effect of an actual "illness."

"The man is a pygmy, unsuited for the office" / "He's morally vacuous, intellectually insipid," Michael Feinberg said. The four people didn't intend to "lower ourselves to Trump's level," Nicolle Wallace understandably said.

We were struck, but not surprised, by this approach to this extremely unusual conduct. It's been a rule for a very long time:

Our journalists will refer to "mental illness" when discussing types of violent street crime. But any such discussion must stop at the water's edge when it comes to the major figures who people our national politics.

Like many rules, this was a very good rule—until such time as it wasn't. In the case of the current president, two different best-selling books had put the word "dangerous" in their titles as medical specialists offered such assessments as this:

Prologue: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Mary L. Trump, 2020)

[...]

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

He could be a "sociopath," the president's adult niece said. She had known him when she was a child, but also as an adult. She had even worked with him on a book-writing project when she was 29 years old.

She was a doctorate-holding clinical psychologist, and she viewed her uncle as dangerous in the extreme. Along the way in her best-selling book, she noted the fact that so-called "sociopathy" can be bred in the blood—can be passed on from parent to child. 

According to current medical science, so it can go with tragic examples of body-based "mental illness"—with illnesses which rob the afflicted party of normal levels of human functioning.

Is President Trump "mentally ill" in some such way? Astoundingly yet not astoundingly, major journalists cling to the rule in which such questions can't be asked—in which bizarre behavior can be discussed by members of their own guild, but not by medical specialists.

It's often said that "sociopaths" are robbed of empathy by their illness. So it almost might seem to be when the sitting president engages in the peculiar behavior he now displays on a daily basis. 

We'll offer this small bit of context:

Under prevailing rules of assessment, those of us who qualify as "good, decent people" also have obvious limits on the extent of our empathy. Very, very few of us normal people ever decide to push our own power of empathy to the limit:

We don't venture off to save the world's suffering children, as a handful of highly unusual people actually do. We don't relocate to smaller houses so we can support our favorite charities to a greater extent.

That doesn't mean that we're bad people; it simply means that we're people people. And at present, when we normal people are confronted by someone who (plainly) seems to be "mentally ill," we're inclined to say so in certain contexts—but we'll doggedly stick to the rules of the guild in the most dangerous circumstances.

That's simply what we the people are like. Disastrously, those of us afflicted with ASPD will have access to even less empathy than that!

To our eye and to our ear, the president's conduct has been screaming "mental illness" for a very long time now. 

We don't mean that as an insult. We mean it as a tragic statement concerning the loss of human potential.

In 2017, then again in 2020, medical specialists in best-selling books offered warnings about this state of affairs. The key word "dangerous" sat right there in the title of each of these books.

Even in the face of those assessments, our overpaid corporate journalists have insisted on sticking to the long-standing rules of their guild:

The moral insults flow thick and fast. The possible or apparent medical perspective is uniformly disappeared.

In Mary L. Trump's book, she savaged the disordered conduct of her "dangerous" adult uncle. She also allowed us to "pity the child," through her account of the way she says he became the dangerous person he is.

In her book, Mary L. Trump cites the possibility that her uncle's possible "sociopathy" could have been bred in the bone—could have been passed down from his father, "a high-functioning sociopath." But she also tells us this:

Symptoms of sociopathy include a lack of empathy, a facility for lying, an indifference to right and wrong, abusive behavior, and a lack of interest in the rights of others. Having a sociopath as a parent, especially if there is no one else around to mitigate the effects, all but guarantees severe disruption in how children understand themselves, regulate their emotions, and engage with the world.

Children of sociopaths grow up in great danger. In the general area of mental health, the sitting president seems to have grown up with all the disadvantages found in a family like his.

For some time, we've suggested you "pity the child"—but with respect to a figure like President Trump, no such thing will occur in our lifetimes. Somewhere ages and ages hence, we Americans may have evolved to the point where we can conduct intelligent discussions of "mental illness," even when major public figures are involved.

At some point, we may be able to do so empathetically, even saying such things as this:

"There but for fortune! There but for fortune go we."

We aren't up to that task today. In the case of President Trump, our angry insults in Blue America—our attempts to criminalize his gruesome behavior; our attempts to get him locked up—may have greased his skid back into the Oval Office. 

We still refuse to give voice to a fairly obvious fact about his possible medical condition. Sadly, we'll tell you this:

History remembers the good and decent people—the people who knew how to forgive. History remembers Nelson Mandela, but also our own Dr. King. 

The families of Dylan Roof's murders in Charleston were admired all over the world.

President Trump is a pygmy, we Blues were told on Deadline: White House that day. It was a pleasing "cable news" moment—but is the president simply "ill?" And what exactly is keeping us from letting the old frameworks go?

Briefly, let's be honest. We the "good, decent people" aren't perfect fountains of empathy ourselves. We humans aren't built for that.

There's a limit on the amount of empathy which takes shape even within such people as us. Tragically, people afflicted with certain types of "mental illness" are built to be even worse!

Do you believe in mental illness? At this site, we continue to ask.

ADDENDUM: Professor Brabender's great anthropological finding helps explain the impulse under discussion:

"Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit."

Brabender voiced his finding all the way back in the 1960s. Anthropologically, it helps explain the history of the species:

War without end, amen.

 

TUESDAY: Mediaite touts a "shocking Trump mention!"

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2025

Reuters suggests it's a fraud: Did former president Bill Clinton ever visit the hellhole of Jeffrey's Epstein's private island?

Through his spokesperson(s) and in his own voice, Clinton has always said the answer is no. In this morning's report, we mentioned the hall of mirrors a person heads down in trying to answer that question, one way or the other, by means of traditional evidence. 

We also mentioned a very significant fact:

Except in rare cases, it will generally be extremely hard to demonstrate that some alleged event didn't happen. That's especially true if no alleged date is given for the alleged event.

Did Bill Clinton ever visit the island? We'll attempt to puzzle that out, at least to a modest extent, on Friday or Saturday. 

For today, sadly, this: 

We direct you to a new report from Mediaite. It appears beneath this headline:

The 5 Most Shocking Trump Mentions in the Latest Batch of Epstein Docs

The headline promises five (5) shocking mentions of Donald J. Trump—shocking mentions which have been found within a new batch of the "Epstein files." Sub-headline included, here's the full text of the first of the five shocking mentions: 

Epstein Pens Letter to Larry Nassar that Trump Also Loves “Young, Nubile Girls”

A letter addressed from Epstein to fellow sex criminal Larry Nassar—the former Team USA gymnastics coach—claimed “our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls.”

“When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system,” Epstein wrote.

The 2019 letter does not reference Trump by name, but it coincided with his first term in the White House and referenced the infamous “grab ’em by the p*ssy” comment he made in 2005.

Reuters pointed out:

"The postmark on its envelope is Virginia, not New York where Epstein was jailed, and indicates the envelope was processed three days after his death in August 2019. The return address on the envelope misidentifies the jail where Epstein was being held and does not include his inmate number, which the Bureau of Prisons policy manual requires be included on outgoing mail."

Gag us! That would indeed be a "shocking mention"—except for the unexplained account of what Reuters has "pointed out."

To read the full Reuters report, you can just click here. Below, you see the Reuters headline, which features one extremely significant word:

Justice Department releases card mentioning Trump, purportedly sent from Epstein to Nassar

The key word there is "purportedly." Dear citizen, read on!

Plainly, Reuters is suggesting—based on what seems like very substantial evidence—that this "purported" letter from Epstein to Nassar was, in fact, a forgery of some kind. That it was, in fact, a fraud.

We can't swear that it was a fraud, but that seems to be what Reuters is suggesting. At first glance, that suggestion seems to be based on what looks like significant evidence.

Sadly, our discourse has been working in similar ways for roughly the past forty years, ever since we decided that policy questions are boring and hard and it's more entertaining and much more fun to try to get politicians locked up, or impeached, on the basis of what we purport to be their badly flawed "character."

Health care policy is boring and hard; fake allegations are fun! We've been playing this game for decades now. Anthropologically, are we humans built for this game, or do humans just wanna have fun?

(Be sure to examine what Reuters wrote. Pending further investigation, we'd be slow to put our faith in this purported mention.)

EMPATHY AND ILLNESS: The New York Times has changed its stance!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2025

Planet of the Humans: Is President Trump a "sociopath?" Almost everything is possible, but a language problem intrudes:

As we've noted in the past, "sociopath" isn't a clinical term within the current realm of medical science. Adjusting for technical language, our question turns out to be this:

Is it possible hat President Trump is afflicted with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a type of condition which was once described as a "mental illness?"

(As we've also noted, the language of "mental illness" seems to be losing favor too.)

At any rate, is President Trump afflicted with ASPD? Almost everything is possible! And as we've noted in the past, his clinical psychologist niece asserted this in her 2020 best-seller:

Prologue: Too Much and Never Enough (2020)

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

Oof! Of course, as we've noted in the past, the fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. But just within the past week, the president has chosen to bigfoot the honored dead by sticking his name on the Kennedy Center, and he has now affixed his name to a new group of battleships.

At one time, he was restricted to naming nondescript entities like Trump Steaks and Wine. Also, to placing his name on the Donald J. Trump Foundation, an alleged charity venture which was "dissolved by court order in 2018 after various legal violations came to light." 

With his ascent in the realm of elective politics, the naming—and the ugly name-calling—moved to a  higher level. But why does he behave in these ways? More specifically, how should wonderful people like us understand his endlessly unfortunate conduct?

As part of the overall package, empathy seems to be missing here, some observers have said. But setting niceties of language to the side, is it possible that this man is actually in the grip of an actual illness—an illness which may have been passed on through the genes from his "high-functioning sociopath" father?

(We're quoting his niece again.)

Almost everything is possible! We'll try to finish these ruminations tomorrow—and given the date which now approaches, we'll even ask this question about President Trump:

WWJD? What would Jesus Christ (think and) do about this president's conduct?

We'll try to speed through this general topic tomorrow. For today, let's consider the latest turmoil at the New York Times, as conveyed by this "Political Memo" in today's print editions.

Lisa Lerer wrote the piece. We're inclined to regard her essay as an ill-advised, unbalanced attack on Bill Clinton.

That said, the issue on which we'll focus involves the inability of us the humans to handle the challenge of reporting known relevant facts. Inevitably, our story starts with the apparent sociopathy of the sitting president. 

We'll try to address the larger mess at the end of the week. But for today, let's focus on two different accounts concerning the aforementioned Clinton.

The first account was written by the New York Times' Annie Karni. It appeared in a news report in the December 15 print editions.

Did Bill Clinton ever visit Jeffrey Epstein's private island? Here's what Karni's news report said:

Inside the Clintons’ Fight to Avoid Testifying in the House Epstein Inquiry

[...]

Mr. Clinton was acquainted with Mr. Epstein—an association the former president described in his memoir—but never visited his private island and cut off contact with him two decades ago. Mr. Clinton took four international trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs, and an undated photograph of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Epstein signed by the former president was part of a batch of images released by House Democrats last week highlighting Mr. Epstein’s ties to powerful men.

Bill Clinton never visited Epstein's private island! So reported the New York Times, exactly eight days ago.

At this site, we'd be inclined to assume that Karni's statement is accurate. That said, it's famously hard to prove a negative—in this case, to prove that something never happened. 

For that reason, we were surprised to see that flat assertion in that news report. We were especially surprised given some irresponsible journalistic conduct in earlier New York Times reports on this general subject.

At any rate, Bill Clinton never visited Epstein's island! So said the New York Times, or so it said until this morning, when Lerer—in what strikes us as an unfortunate piece—offered this alternate account:

POLITICAL MEMO
Bill Clinton, a Main Character in the Epstein Drop, Just Can’t Escape Scandal

[...]

In 2019, hours after Mr. Epstein was found dead by suicide in his prison cell, Mr. Trump posted a conspiracy theory on social media claiming without evidence that Mr. Clinton had been connected to his death.

Since then, Mr. Trump has maintained a steady drumbeat of claims that Mr. Clinton spent significant time visiting Mr. Epstein on his private island—an accusation Mr. Clinton denies. Those claims have also been undercut by Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Ms. Maxwell.

As always, President Trump has been spouting inflammatory claims "without evidence." 

That was true about what he said back in 2019. It's also true about the claims he spouted this summer, in which he repeatedly claimed that Bill Clinton went to the island 27 or 28 times.

Back in the summer, we thought the Times refused to push back against those unfounded claims. But now, the Times can't seem to make up its mind:

Last week, it said those claims were false. Eight days later, the paper's not sure.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we humans simply weren't built for this type of work. Our anthropological finding is this:

As a species, we're surprisingly good at building buildings and at creating technologies. We're surprisingly good at those tasks—but we're poorly equipped for almost everything else.

What's the truth about the matter in question? Did Bill Clinton ever visit Epstein's island?

Through a spokesperson, and in his own voice, Clinton has said, again and again, that the actual answer is no. But it's famously hard to prove a negative, and there exists a blizzard of accusations and claims about this matter which will almost surely never be unscrambled by our tiny human minds.

On Friday or Saturday, we'll try to sort this mishegas out to some minor extent. For today, we almost thought we heard the voice of the old New York Times, the paper which created the poisonous Whitewater pseudo-scandal way back in the winter of 1992.

Mainly, though, we saw the Times contradicting itself—sliding away from an earlier claim. There's a dirty little secret lurking here—a secret the Times and its Timespeople aren't inclined to report. 

It concerns the basic question of human capability. As such, it's an anthropological secret. The dirty little secret is this:

We're fairly good at building things, unskilled at everything else!

Tomorrow: What goes through the head of a sociopath? Also, what goes through the heads of people more like us?