A WEEK: Are we trapped in a Week That Was?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2025

Inquiring minds want to know: Are we Americans trapped in a Week That Was—in a week which may change the world's history?

Inquiring minds now suspect that we are. They suspect that the week may have started last Friday with the Oval Office debacle.

Inquiring minds have long memories. They can even remember this part of a 1992 speech from a future American president:

Just remember what the Scripture says: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

I hope nobody in this great hall tonight, or in our beloved country, has to go through tomorrow without a vision. I hope no one ever tries to raise a child without a vision. I hope nobody ever starts a business or plants a crop in the ground without a vision. 

For where there is no vision, the people perish.

Inquiring minds are curious about these points:

Do we the alleged American people have a vision today? Also, do we still qualify as "a people?" Are we now "a people" at all?

Last night, the current president delivered an address to a joint session of Congress. We were struck by what we found when we perused the attempt by the New York Times to fact check the president's speech.

At this time, do we the people have enough skill to fashion an actual vision? Here's what we found when we fact-checked the New York Times' attempt at a fact-check:

For starters, eleven different writers were involved in the fact-check of the longest such speech ever delivered by an American president. We're going to say their names:

Writers involved in the New York Times fact-check:
Nicholas Nehamas, Colby Smith, Ana Swanson, Coral Davenport, Linda Qiu, Lisa Friedman, Apoorva Mandavilli, Eileen Sullivan, Jan Hoffman, Julian E. Barnes, Julian Barnes.

For the record, those are two different people named Julian Barnes. But as you can see by clicking this link, those eleven people fact-checked twenty-five different passages from the president's lengthy speech.

This president is known for his factual groaners—but good lord! Out of those twenty-five fact-checks, those writers declared only two (2) of the president's claims to be "False!"

Really? In a 100-minute address by the most disordered president in the nation's history, Blue America's leading publication found only two claims which were false?

Who knows? That may reflect some rules set down by the newspaper's editors. But as an organization, the New York Times has nuanced itself out of existence if eleven writers can watch this president speak for a hundred minutes and can find only two (2) statements which they're willing to score as "False."

Are we the people equipped for this task? Are we equipped for the assignment of creating a vision which can direct us in the challenging task of self-governance?

Given the size and the shape of our sprawling nation, we'd be inclined to say that the answer is no. As a people, we simply don't have the analytical skills to navigate the interactions which will exist within such a giant nation.

Only two statements were "False"—just two, over the course of a hundred minutes! The denatured scribes of the New York Times produced that somewhat peculiar result—but then, our own Blue America has been failing in its critical missions for a very long time now.

More on inquiring minds below. For now, let's turn to a more instructive bit of analysis, one which emerged from only three (3) writers at the HuffPost. 

Headline included, the passage in question reads like this:

Five Takeaways From Trump’s Joint Speech To Congress

[...]

Social Security Appears To Be In Trump’s Sights

Trump went on at great length about the supposed scourge of the Social Security Administration wrongly paying retirement benefits to people listed in the agency’s system as well over 100 years old. 

“A lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody―it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country,” Trump said. “1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159 and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought.”

The super elderly Social Security recipients myth got heavily debunked last month after Elon Musk misread a chart, prompting even Trump’s acting Social Security commissioner to say, “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits” in a statement on the SSA’s website. 

The fact that Trump still plowed ahead with the bogus story in his address to Congress and said Social Security is full of “probable fraud” could be a bad sign for the popular retirement program, which Trump has usually said he would never touch even as he calls for massive cuts to much of the rest of the government. 

Full disclosure! In that passage, the scribes misquote what Trump said. This afternoon, we'll post his full, extremely lengthy statement on this cockeyed topic.

At any rate, "Trump still plowed ahead with the bogus story," the three HuffPost writers said. To their credit, they were prepared to say bogus.

Over at the New York Times, Linda Qiu quoted part of the relevant passage from the president's speech. She ruled that his sprawling claims about very old people and Social Security "Need context."  

(In our view, the presumably well-intentioned Qiu seems to have disappeared into a cloud of nuance.)

By the way, is it true? Is it true that President Trump "has Social Security in his sights?" 

We can't answer that question! Regarding the error-plagued genius Musk, we can tell you this. In her official Democratic Party response, Senator Elissa Slotkin said this about Social Security:

SLOTKIN (3/4/25): [The president's] tariffs on allies like Canada will raise prices on energy, lumber, cars—and start a trade war that will hurt manufacturing and farmers.

Your premiums and prescriptions will cost more because the math on his proposals doesn’t work without going after your health care.

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, the national debt is going up, not down. And if he’s not careful, he could walk us right into a recession.

And one more thing: In order to pay for his plan, he could very well come after your retirement—the Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits you worked your whole life to earn. The President claims he won’t, but Elon Musk just called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

So said the error-plagued genius as he spoke with (who else?) Joe Rogan. Are we possibly trapped in a Week That Was—in a week which has signaled a set of changes, at home and abroad, which could go astoundingly wrong?

Inquiring minds want to know many things, but inquiring minds also feel sympathy for the members of suffering humanity. They know that severe mental illness, like severe physical illness, represents a tragic loss of human potential.

Is something "wrong" with President Trump and with the error-plagued Musk? An inquiring mind would want to know. By rule of law, the New York Times has agreed that questions of that type must never, ever be asked.

Where there is no vision, the people perish? In closing for this morning, we'll once again ask you to flash on the Oscar-nominated film, The Sixth Sense.

Our question would be this:

Is it possible that we as a people have already perished, but we just don't know it yet?

This afternoon: "Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old."

So said President Trump as part of a much longer presentation. 

This afternoon, we'll post the full text of his fuller statement.  If a people doesn't want to perish, how should such statements be scored?