DEAD SOULS: The deadened souls of Blue America...

FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2025

...can't see what's already occurred: Quite famously, "The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day."

As of yesterday afternoon, the outlook also didn't seem all that great for the current administration. The people at Gallup had surveyed the nation. As we noted yesterday afternoon, here's what they said they had found:

Independents Drive Trump's Approval to 37% Second-Term Low

Six months into his second term, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating has dipped to 37%, the lowest of this term and just slightly higher than his all-time worst rating of 34% at the end of his first term. Trump’s rating has fallen 10 percentage points among U.S. adults since he began his second term in January, including a 17-point decline among independents...

And so on from there, according to Gallup's report.

Possibly making matters worse, the polling had been conducted from July 7 through July 21. Much of the polling thereby predated any possible hit to the president's standing which may (or may not) he taking place due to the Epstein affair.

Polls can be wrong in many ways. That said, the outlook didn't seem to be brilliant for the MAGA squad—until Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) showed up on CNN in the 9 o'clock hour and told Kaitlan Collins this about the Epstein matter:

MORENO (7/24/25): No matter how much is disclosed at this point, there's going to be a small segment of the population, fueled primarily by media and the Democrats, that are never going to be satisfied with what's out there. So look, my point—

COLLINS: Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer are not fueled by the media and Democrats. I think they would probably take offense to that.

MORENO: I said, I said—I said a small population of Republicans. President Trump's approval rating has never—

COLLINS: Yes, but that's the president's base.

MORENO: President Trump has never been more popular than he is right now. Almost 94 percent of Republicans—compare that to Democrats, by the way. 

"President Trump has never been more popular than he is right now!" So said the Buckeye solon. 

He then cited a very high approval number—a number which included the stated opinion of Republican citizens only. His number may have been (slightly) enhanced—but a certain type of suggestion may have loomed.

Hours after that Gallup poll dropped, CNN viewers were told that the sitting president "has never been more popular!" They were told this by a Republican senator who now seems to consider the views of Red America only.

In such ways, we nominal Americans continue to divide into two separate countries. As such, the American experiment, imperfect as it always was, may already have come to an end.

Over here in Blue America, do we have sufficient imagination to see where the current drift may be headed? On balance, we'd say that we quite possibly don't—that we may resemble the fictional citizens of the fictional Oran in the famous novel by Camus.

They failed to see that a literal plague was already underway. Even Dr. Rieux couldn't quite manage to see it:

Albert Camus, The Plague

The word “plague” had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor’s uncertainty and surprise—since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that come crashing down on our heads from a blue sky. 

[...]

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views? They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. 

The fictional citizens of Oran couldn't see what was already happening. One thinks of such failures when one watches a TV program like last night's Gutfeld! show.

As always, the Fox News Channel had booked a four-member panel, all of whom had agreed to agree with the claims of the program's host. Three of the four couldn't even pretend to have subject matter competence

As for the host of this prime time "cable news" show, his factual claims this night were astounding, possibly even for him. Those claims were offered to a cheering studio audience, but also to millions of viewers across Red America—to millions of people across the country who didn't know they were being clownishly misinformed.

Way back at the start of the week, we alluded to Gogol's Dead Souls. The novelist had come down hard on certain elements of Russian society back in the 1840s. 

We also marveled at the claims Director Gabbard had spread all over the Fox News Channel over the course of the weekend. As she had accused President Obama of engaging in treason, gaggles of Fox News Channel corporate messengers had agreed to cheer her on.

Everyone agreed with everyone else! Then too, we also cited this highly instructive profile:

Greg Gutfeld’s Disruptive Rise: How a Fox News Prankster Broke Late-Night

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is over, and while the official reason has yet to be confirmed, reports suggest CBS was hemorrhaging money to the tune of $40 million a year. The show reportedly employed more than 220 staffers and cost an eye-popping $100 million annually to produce... In an age of media belt-tightening and digital fragmentation, that model may simply no longer be sustainable.

Which brings us to Greg Gutfeld.

Yes, Gutfeld—the often smirking, occasionally cringeworthy Fox News host who somehow emerged as a legit force in late-night-style comedy...

Colby Hall is a good, decent person. In spite of that fact, he seems to think that the Fox News Channel's baldly disordered Greg Gutfeld can sensibly be viewed as a "prankster."

Remarkably, Hall even said this in that profile for Mediaite:

Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, deserves credit for greenlighting the 10 p.m. shift that let Gutfeld own a bold new time slot—a gamble that paid off big. Launching a late-night show on a cable news network was risky, but she recognized the post-pandemic appetite for smart, fun, non-lecturey comedy.

Throughout his profile, Hall said that he himself isn't inclined to favor Gutfeld's "comedy." But he never quite got around to telling his readers why.

We think we see a certain resemblance here. A bit like the denizens of the fictional Oran, Hall seems to be blind to the dangerous events already underway all around him.

For starters, Hall seems to think that, when he's watching the Gutfeld! program, he's watching a comedy show. For remarkably, he's even willing to describe that "comedy" as smart!

As we noted on Monday, Hall's profile echoes the profile of Gutfeld! which appeared in Variety in February of this year. Like the citizens of Oran, we seem to be unable to recognize the event which has already wormed its way into our lives through our nation's infested back alleys.

Colby Hall is not a "dead soul." That said, Greg Gutfeld and the corporate entity he fronts have already devoured the established norms of the former American nation. It seems to us that Hall's inability to see that fact deserves a long, detailed look.

In his opening monologue last night, Gutfeld dissembled in astonishing ways in support of Tulsi Gabbard's astonishing claim—her that President Obama engaged in a "treasonous conspiracy" as his second term eared its end. 

A studio audience cheered him on—and so did last night's conclave of stooges. At this point, let's say their names:

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: owner, Joanne's Trattoria
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

With a furious incel heading the cast, it was the perfect "populist" assembly of world-class major know-nothings!

Millions of people were watching this prime time show on the nation's most-watched "news channel"—and as with Variety, so too with Hall. He seems to think those millions of people were watching a "prankster" offering "comedy"—offering a brand of comedy he was even prepared to call "smart!"

In fact, the program in question specializes in the delivery of propaganda—in the use of the weapons of the Information Age—and the program isn't even dimly smart. That said, the people of sacred Troy had perhaps resembled the unwitting people of Oran in their innocent inability to save themselves from ruin. 

Here's what Professor Knox said about the fall of Troy in his introduction to Professor Fagles' 1990 translation of the Iliad. On a brutal evening, long ago, this is the way Troy fell:

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history, immortalized in lyric poetry, in tragedy, on temple pediments and painted vases, to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

In fairness, it isn't just the Gutfeld! program. Bizarre behavior is the norm all over the Fox News Channel. Its endless array of corporate Stepfords gather to broadcast the poisonous claims generated at the top of the MAGA movement. 

Barack Obama engaged in treason, stooges like these will insist. They conduct their modern night assault with the tools of the Information Age, with Colby Hall waving them on.

Do those of us in Blue America understand what's going to happen as MAGA keeps coming over the walls? It seems to us that our Blue elites still aren't able to see what's likely to come. Indeed, they still aren't willing to report and discuss what's already here!

Next week, we'll look at Hall's piece in more detail, and at Gutfeld's behavior.  We'll also say the names of the many dead souls, within the palaces of us Blues, who insist on looking away.

Where will the president's anger take him? How bad might it possibly get?

It's very hard to answer that question. That said, the president has never been more popular! We know that because a dead soul said it last night, on CNN, during the nine o'clock hour.

In the ten o'clock hour, Gutfeld appeared with his gaggle of stooges. The assault became much, much worse. 

Tomorrow: Starvation