WE'RE ALL MANCHURIAN NOW: Spanish boots of pundit leather!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016

Part 3—Even dumber than Trump: Today, before leaving the coffee joint, we decided to reread Chapter 4 of a current book. There would be no skimming this time!

The book in question is the recent volume, A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for the Origin of Life. In it, Mesler and Cleaves describe the efforts of our self-described human race to explain how life began on this planet—essentially, to explain how we got from rocks and water to life forms like bacteria and protozoa and even Joe and Mika.

We planned to reread Chapter 4, but only managed one paragraph. This is what it said:

MESLER AND CLEAVES (page 45): On July 1, 1766, in the small French town of Abbeville, a young man named Jean-Francois de la Barre was taken from a prison cell and brought to a room where his legs were placed in a torture device known as a "Spanish boot." For the next hour, his jailors methodically crushed de la Barre's legs and feet before, according to some accounts, removing his tongue. When they were finished, they lifted him up and placed his body in the cart that would carry him to his place of execution. Around his neck, they hung a sign on which they had written "impious, sacrilegious and hateful blasphemer."

As recently as 1766, that's the way our species "reasoned." How different are we today?

To answer that question, consider a wonderful horrible moment from Monday's Morning Joe.

Heatedly, Joe Scarborough was trying to prove that he himself isn't impious, sacrilegious and a hateful blasphemer. In part, the project is required because of the way he and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, had pandered and fawned and made goo-goo eyes at Candidate Trump over the previous year.

To their very minor credit, the ludicrous pair had performed a 180 back in March, after Candidate Trump failed his David Duke/Ku Klux Klan test. (This was five years after Trump began his King of All Birthers disgrace.) All this week, they've continued denouncing their former paramour as impious, sacrilegious and a hateful blasphemer, in the way we alleged humans do.

On Monday, Scarborough was denouncing Trump's impious statements about a federal judge. The wonderful moment occurred when he tried to explain that the judge in question, Gonzalo Curiel, is just as American as anyone else, even including Candidate Trump!

Make no mistake—Judge Curiel is just as American as anyone else. (That doesn't speak to the question of his allegedly biased rulings in the "Trump University" case.) That said, the wonderful moment occurred when the irate multimillionaire pundit showed how little attention he has actually paid to this case.

In the most ancient tradition, Mika decided to take a poll. In this way, everyone could affirm his view of Trump's impious behavior.

Inevitably, Joe jumped in with a factual error, an error which showed how little attention he's actually paid to this case:

MIKA (6/6/16): Can I just do a poll? Nicolle? Is that racism?

WALLACE: Yes.

MIKA: OK. Joe? Is that racism?

JOE: It's completely racist.

MIKA: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: It's completely racist. Here you have a guy that is from Indiana—from Indiana! I think his family, if I'm not mistaken, had been in the country of America longer than Trump's grandmother.

MIKA: Reverend Al, is that racism?

SHARPTON: Oh, it's absolutely, unequivocally racist.

MIKA: Just checking.

"Just checking," the instinctive Inquisitor said. To watch this exchange, click here.

This is the way our species once denounced the impious and, in Salem, the witches. In this country of America, we moved on to Communists in the last century. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've been needing a new central demon.

On Monday morning, everyone agreed on the diagnosis, as everyone always does. As often happens in pundit discussions, the pundits could only distinguish themselves by jacking the uniform accusation up to a higher level.

The accused wasn't simply racist. His conduct became completely racist, then absolutely, unequivocally so.

In this way, Candidate Gore's demonic three-button suits were once given a fourth button by the pandering Arianna Huffington. George Bush ended up in the White House. Along with the fourth button on his suit, Candidate Gore was forced to wear that season's Spanish boot.

The wonderful moment in this exchange involved the lack of knowledge by the furious Scarborough, who had blatantly fawned to Candidate Trump for the bulk of the previous year. Our analysts were reduced to sullen thousand-yard stares when the fraudulent fellow spoke thusly about Judge Curiel:

"I think his family, if I'm not mistaken, had been in the country of America longer than Trump's grandmother."

As usual, the fraudulent fellow was mistaken. His error showed how little attention he has actually paid to this case, concerning which he displayed such depth of feeling.

Do these life forms ever know what they're talking about? In fact, it's Trump's mother, Mary MacLeod Trump, who came to "this country of America" at a later date than Judge Curiel's father.

None of this has a thing to do with any issues involved in this matter. But Trump's Scottish-born mother came to this country of America in 1930. Judge Curiel's Mexican-born father was already here.
On Tuesday, Scarborough corrected his story without noting Monday's mistake.

None of this has a thing to do with any of the actual issues involved in this matter. It does help us see how little attention Scarborough has actually paid to this case, about which he pretends to have such strong feelings.

Errors like these are wonderfully common among the creatures who roam through Punditstan. To cite another example, such errors have been made all week as pundits pretend to have deep feelings about the death of Muhammad Ali.

(Some pundits do have such feelings about Ali. Others rush off to pretend.)

Our favorite astonishing error of this type was made by Chris Matthews. He made his astonishing error in December 2007, after he had spent a whole year promoting Candidate Obama.

To refresh yourself, click here. These people are phony all the way down. Such errors help us see this fact—if we have eyes to see.

Many times, we don't have such eyes; it's in the nature of the species. We've always been eager to slip those Spanish boots onto the feet of the impious. We've always been eager to stand in line to state our whole-hearted consent.

At such moments of mandated tribal agreement, our rationality flies away, possibly on a broomstick. We've experienced such a glorious moment in the Curiel affair this week.

Let's be clear: We don't know a single bad thing about Judge Curiel. At the same time, we think Candidate Trump seems deranged, disordered, presumably diagnosable.

He has been making crazy, disordered comments dating at least to 2011. Joe and Mika feign horror now. They pimped him all last year.

Back in 1766, the life of Jean-Francois de la Barre ended extremely badly. In our view, the denizens of Punditstan have staged a somewhat similar episode this week.

How much have we changed since 1766? Tomorrow, we'll look at what Dahlia Lithwick wrote about Candidate Trump's latest claims. (Overtly racist, she said.) And we'll review what we were finally able to learn from watching Megyn Kelly.

From Joe and Mika on to Lithwick, we think the work by pundits this week has made them seem even dumber than Trump. It's very hard to get dumber than Trump. This week, chasing the impious down, our pundits have actually done it.

Tomorrow: Lithwick fails to inform

Live and direct from the California of 1964: Spanish boots of Spanish leather! Back in the day, in real time, it was one of our favorite songs.

Dylan's official recorded version doesn't seem to be available on YouTube. This is the closest approximation; it comes fairly close.

We've always felt that Dylan and Ali were, in some sense, the same person. Each man chose to change his name. Each man kept evolving.

Update: Even better, how about this live version from April 1963?

What a wonderful composition! She keeps saying she won't be returning. He keeps refusing to hear her.

Maddow watch: Cable clown hangs McAuliffe high!

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2016

On May 25, it got worse: Did Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe receive unlawful campaign contributions? Did he do something else that was wrong?

Everything is always possible! That includes the obvious possibility that murky claims about an FBI probe of McAuliffe represent the latest ginned-up, campaign-year attack on Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

The murky claim of the fuzzy probe surfaced on May 23. Needless to say, the murky claim was based on anonymous sources.

A decent, mature and responsible journalist would want to be extremely careful about this sort of fuzzy campaign-year claim. A halfway intelligent liberal journalist would be especially wary, given the history of ginned up probes of Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

That's how a responsible person would act. Instead, we got the gruesome reaction of Rachel Maddow, corporate cable TV's self-adoring clown.

Maddow is frequently called "The Nun" because of her silly faux prudishness and her desire to punish. To Maddow, accusation equals conviction—and the rumor of a possible probe is equal to an accusation.

On the ridiculous Maddow Show, it's been this way for years.

Maddow has been "hanging them high" on her program for years. On May 23, she leaped into action, hanging McAuliffe high with a set of snarky insinuations of his obvious guilt.

Two nights later, she staged a segment about McAuliffe which was even dumber and worse.

Maddow's presentation on May 23 was, in itself, bad enough. Snarkily, she implied that the new report meant that the state of Virginia is just as corrupt as Illinois! To review our prior report, click here.

That was more than bad enough. But after Maddow's insinuations were done, she spoke with the Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky. Arguably, the young Post scribe was even worse than Maddow had been.

The interview started like this. So far, nothing was awful:

MADDOW (5/23/16): Joining us now is Matt Zapotosky, who covers the Justice Department for the Washington Post national security team...

So do we know anything more specific about why the FBI started this investigation or what specifically it is that they're looking into with McAuliffe?

ZAPOTOSKY: There's a lot we don't know. We know they started this investigation over a year ago, which is quite a long time. And what they're looking at is a series, not just that one contribution you mentioned, but a series of campaign contributions that Governor McAuliffe got. They're also looking at his personal finances.

My understanding of the investigation is they're looking to see if there was any kind of public corruption, that there was a quid pro quo that he got something, whether it was money on a personal account or a campaign contribution and then specifically related to that, he did something official for somebody. It's a tough thing to prove, but that's my understanding of what they're looking at.

"There's a lot we don't know," Zapotosky said. He proceeded to describe his "understanding of the investigation."

Let's just say that his understanding didn't seem extensive.

A sensible journalist would want to be careful with something as fuzzy as this. Rachel Maddow isn't that kind of person. Instead, as she routinely does, she continued hanging him high:

MADDOW (continuing directly): And that in Virginia screams Bob McDonnell, who is currently appealing his conviction to the Supreme Court.

Truly, that's pathetic. Although she knew nothing about this alleged probe, she quickly linked McAuliffe to another governor who had been convicted of a crime. This extended the insinuations Maddow had offered before Zapotosky came on.

McDonnell's conviction may yet get overturned. Even that didn't inspire Maddow to be a bit careful in her insinuations about this new alleged murky probe.

Having said that, let's be fair! As she continued, Maddow noted that Zapotosky's report for the Post said "there's skepticism among prosecutors among whether this is ultimately going to lead to charges."
You'd almost think that might have kept Maddow from indulging in her earlier insinuations!

But Maddow doesn't work that way. Sadly enough, Zapotosky doesn't either.

His comments here are barely coherent. They're also highly insinuative:

MADDOW (continuing directly): Matt, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you tonight is that, in your report on this for the Washington Post, you said there's skepticism among prosecutors among whether this is ultimately going to lead to charges. What can you tell me about that?

ZAPOTOSKY: Well, look, Terry McAuliffe is a wealthy guy. He has a lot of financial transactions that have been reported on in the past. I think there's some skepticism among the people handling this investigation that there could be some type of quid pro quo.

You know, if you have a lot of money going into your campaign or into your personal bank accounts from a variety of sources, including foreign sources, I think that raises people's suspicions, particularly when you're in, you know, when you're in public office. But there is some skepticism, among the people who are kind of overseeing this investigation, as to whether there will be enough to substantiate criminal wrongdoing.

In the McDonnell case, they said that, in exchange for all this money from a businessman named Johnny Williams, the governor lended a lot of official help. That may be harder to prove with Terry McAuliffe.

Zapotosky's meaning was a bit hard to discern. That said, we were struck by his final construction:

McDonnell had been judged to have committed a crime, Zapotosky said. But "that may be harder to prove with Terry McAuliffe!"

It may be harder to prove? Is it possible that it will be "harder to prove" because it didn't happen? There was no sign that this possibility had entered these strivers' heads.

Zapotosky didn't seem to know a whole lot about this alleged investigation. Still, he used the insinuative language of the hanging judge.

In the final Q-and-A, the interview reached peak cluelessness. Here's how the twin ingenues left things:

MADDOW (continuing directly): One last question for you, Matt. In the terms of the way this story got to press today, obviously, it was a number of different news sources have been able to confirm it, including NBC News, including the Washington Post. Is there any story about why this has become public information?

Obviously, no charges have been filed. There's been no formal announcement from the FBI. It strikes me as interesting that the governor himself had never been notified that he was target of an investigation.
Anything unusual about this coming to light in the way it did today?

ZAPOTOSKY: You know, I think a lot of investigations come to light before people in the Justice Department or the FBI would want them to. And I don't know that there's anything really funny about this coming to light. If anything, it surprises me that they were able to keep things quiet for over a year.

MADDOW: Matt Zapotosky, a reporter with the Washington Post. Matt, thanks for helping us understand this ongoing story.

Imagining no evil, the Post scribe said he "didn't know that there's anything really funny about this coming to light." Neither of these clueless wonders imagined that the "investigation" might perhaps have anonymously "come to light" as a way to smear McAuliffe and, by extension, the Clinton presidential campaign.

All in all, this was an unfortunate presentation. Through her typical snarky asides, Maddow slimed the state of Virginia first, then slimed McAuliffe himself.

Virginia was just like Illinois! McAuliffe was just like McDonnell!

Maddow was too clueless to imagine nefarious motives for the leak of the alleged probe, which doesn't seem to have gotten very far. In her standard role as a hanging judge, "The Nun" doesn't think that way.

Aside from Fox's Megyn Kelly, Maddow led all cable purveyors in pimping this extremely murky story this night. CNN and the rest of Fox barely mentioned this topic at all. If anything, Kelly was more fair to McAuliffe—and Maddow's worst was yet to come.

Tomorrow, we'll review the ridiculous clowning Maddow aimed at McAuliffe two nights later. Especially from a "liberal" corporate news star, Maddow's clowning on May 25 was a gong-show and a disgrace.

The First Amendment protects such clowns. On the bright side, The Nun has gotten very rich hanging the evildoers high and flashing her big orange shoes.

Tomorrow: May 25. No, we aren't making this up

WE'RE ALL MANCHURIAN NOW: Lithwick discusses what Donald Trump said!

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2016

Part 2—Does anything ever make sense: Are we all Manchurian now?

Before we consider what Candidate Donald J. Trump has been saying, consider a scene from the classic 1962 film which inspires our question.

Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) has been brainwashed in Manchuria, just like his superior officer, "poor, friendless Raymond Shaw." Unfortunately, though, in Sinatra's case, the brainwashing hasn't quite held.

Sinatra has been having nightmares. In these nightmares, he recalls what actually happened when Shaw's platoon was captured in the Korean War, then taken to Manchuria.

Sinatra reports his nightmares to his military superiors in Washington; they decide he's suffering from combat stress. In the scene to which we refer, a highly sympathetic Colonel Milt comes to Sinatra's home to tell him that he's been placed on leave.

Upon arrival, the colonel asks Sinatra where he gets his piles of books. As Sinatra fixes a drink for the colonel, this strange conversation occurs:

COLONEL: My God, where do you get all the books?

MARCO: Oh, I, uh— I got a guy picks 'em out for me. At random. Water all right?

COLONEL: Fine.

MARCO: He's in, uh, San Francisco. A little bookstore out there and, uh, he ships 'em to me wherever I happen to be stationed.

COLONEL: You've read them all?

MARCO: Yeah. They also make great insulation against an enemy attack.

But the truth of the matter is that I'm just interested, you know, in, uh, principles of modern banking and history of piracy, paintings of Orozco, modern French theatre, the jurisprudential factors of Mafia administration, diseases of horses and novels of Joyce Cary and ethnic choices of the Arabs—things like that.

The Sinatra character seems a bit off-kilter in his general demeanor. And of course, his rambling comments don't seem to make too much sense.

On its primary level, The Manchurian Candidate revolves around a literal act of brainwashing—an act of brainwashing which produces a state of homicidal hypnosis. On the secondary level, the film is stuffed with surreal conversations and decisions which suggest that a type of secondary hypnosis and/or self-hypnosis is marbled all through our waking lives.

These weird conversations and chains of events are most striking in a pair of romances—the romance between Sinatra and Janet Leigh, and the romance between poor Raymond (Laurence Harvey) and the lovely, highly peculiar young Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish).

But the air of hypnosis is also there as Sinatra explains where he gets his information. As it turns out, Sinatra gets his information from "a guy"—from a guy who selects his books for him, at random, from three thousand miles away.

The guy mails the books to Sinatra. Hypnotically, Sinatra reads them—even though they cover a bewildering array of topics which seem to betray no internal connection or coherence.

"Things like that," Sinatra says, referring to an array of topics which display no apparent connection.

After Sinatra's weird explanation, the colonel stresses that he's been ordered to go on leave. The modern viewer may be left with a further thought, in which Sinatra's disordered discussion of his source of information is reminiscent of the disordered stream of random, incoherent assertions and claims which comprise the modern American discourse.

Last night, we thought of the Sinatra character midway through the 9 PM Eastern hour. We clicked through the programs which were airing on the three "cable news" channels. As we did, we found an inane discussion being conducted on each one.

Don't get us wrong! The three discussions were quite unique; each was inane in its own special way. But good lord! We thought of the random flow of information which was reaching Major Marco as we pondered the stream of corporate-licensed misdirection and distraction emerging from our "TV machine thingy," as one of the three cable news purveyors might entertainingly have said.

We found a random flow of inanity being offered to voters last night. In fairness to Cooper, Kelly and Maddow, we have to say that we had the same reaction to Dahlia Lithwick's new essay about Candidate Donald J. Trump for Slate.

Donald J. Trump has been making a series of claims about a federal district judge. These claims have provoked a wave of outrage across the realm of Punditstan.

For ourselves, we've been struck by the difficulty pundits and reporters have had in merely describing what Candidate Donald J. Trump has said about this federal judge. But then, incoherence is a basic part of the culture in this hypnotic realm.

Last night, on one of those three cable shows, we finally saw a journalist evaluate the specific claims Donald J. Trump and his spokespersons have been making. That journalist was Megyn Kelly. Tomorrow, we'll show you the rubble that was left on the ground after she finished shredding the Trump camp's basic claims.

Later in her program, Kelly was peddling inanity, as described above. But in one segment, she actually did what Lithwick didn't seem able to do—what very few journos have bothered to do in the surreal, hypnotic state which now passes for a national discourse.

Lithwick's essay makes little sense, but neither do the accounts of Trump's remarks which have appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Are we all Manchurian now? Are we all immersed in semi-hypnotic states as we receive the blizzard of reactions and claims which pose as our national discourse?

Frank Sinatra's Major Marco would have felt right at home reading the accounts of Trump's remarks offered by Lithwick and the Times. He could have moved on to a blizzard of claims about diseases of horses and novels of Joyce Cary—"things like that."

Our public discourse rarely makes sense in these highly Manchurian times, in which disordered players like Mika and Joe are shipping the public its books. To judge from that one surreal scene, Major Marco had already made his peace with this highly disordered game.

This game was all over cable last night. Is it possible, could it be, that we're all Manchurian now?

Tomorrow: Lithwick v. Kelly

McAuliffe watch: Murky report of a fuzzy probe!

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

It happens every spring: We've promised that we'd finish critiquing Rachel Maddow's ludicrous discussions of Governor Terry McAuliffe, which she pursued on Monday, May 23 and Wednesday, May 25.

It's depressing to review Maddow's clown-car conduct. For today, let's simply review the New York Times' May 25 news report about the apparent probe, or semi-probe, or possible probe, of McAuliffe's past campaign fundraising.

On Monday, May 23, an anonymous source said that McAuliffe was, or might be, under investigation by the FBI. As she typically does, Maddow rushed into action with a segment which seemed to assume his guilt.

(For Maddow, an accusation equals guilt. The anonymous hint of a possible probe equals an accusation.)

Maddow's own presentation that night was bad enough; see our prior report. When she interviewed the Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky that same night, his performance was even worse.

Two days later, the New York Times presented its news report about the apparent, alleged or possible FBI probe. Like everyone else, the Times was working on claims by a pair of anonymous sources.

It was apparent from the Times report that the claims were rather murky. According to Confessore and Saul, the alleged probe involves conduct by the Dandong Port Group, "one of China's leading agricultural importers:"

CONFESSORE AND SAUL (5/25/16): [T]he company's widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong's wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013.

A federal law enforcement official said the inquiry included $120,000 in contributions that a New Jersey construction firm controlled by Mr. Wang made to Mr. McAuliffe's 2013 campaign and inaugural committee. That official and a second law enforcement official, both of whom asked for anonymity to discuss the matter, said it was a preliminary inquiry of Mr. McAuliffe's campaign donations, and they provided no detail about the nature and scope of any potential violations being scrutinized.

Though Mr. Wang is a Chinese citizen, he is also a legal permanent resident of the United States, according to a spokeswoman for him, which entitles him to make campaign contributions.

That is murky stuff. Did we mention the fact that it comes from two anonymous sources?

Meanwhile, certain aspects of this report ought to ring every warning bell inside the heads of our top cable news clowns. As they continued, Confessore and Saul rang the bells in question:

CONFESSORE AND SAUL (continuing directly): The inquiry was first reported on Monday by CNN, which said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department's public integrity unit were involved in the review. The inquiry also encompasses Mr. McAuliffe's role as a board member of the Clinton Foundation, to which another company linked to Mr. Wang pledged a $2 million contribution in 2013. The foundation has raised millions of dollars from companies and wealthy individuals overseas as well as from foreign governments.

Representatives for Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Wang said they had not been contacted by the Justice Department or the F.B.I. A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation also said it had not been contacted by law enforcement officials.

Speaking to reporters in Virginia on Tuesday, Mr. McAuliffe said he was shocked by reports of an inquiry. He had played no role in soliciting Mr. Wang's pledge to the Clinton Foundation and said the contributions to his campaign from by Mr. Wang's company were legitimate.

''I'm very confident this gentleman had been fully vetted,'' Mr. McAuliffe said of Mr. Wang.

But the federal inquiry throws a cloud over Mr. McAuliffe at a critical time: He is a top fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton, a close confidant of her and her husband, and the governor of a swing state critical to her chances of becoming president. On Sunday, Mr. McAuliffe headlined a $5,000-a-head Virginia fund-raising event for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

How many warning signs have to exist before the nation's cable news clowns stop their incessant clowning?

For all we know, McAuliffe may be robbing banks on a regular basis—perhaps with Maddow's help! But good God! Probes like these always start inside the bowels of the federal government when someone named Clinton or Gore runs for office.

All the familiar hooks are there! We start with the classic shadowy Chinese businessman, then jump to the evil-doing Clinton Foundation. If you've been alive on the planet in recent decades, you've been to this movie before!

McAuliffe makes the perfect target for a nest of rumors. As noted by Confessore and Saul, he's the governor of an important swing state, and he's a top fund-raiser for Candidate Clinton! Why, the night before the possible news was leaked, he had "headlined a $5,000-a-head Virginia fund-raising event for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign!"

Has McAuliffe been robbing banks, perhaps with Maddow's help? Everything is possible! But for anyone who has been alive in the past twenty-five years, a million warning signs are found in that Times report.

On the basis of simple fairness, a journalist should want to be very careful in her reactions to such a murky report. Given the circumstances of the past twenty-five years, a liberal journalist would likely be especially suspicious of such a familiar old, heavily fraught, alleged apparent anonymous report.

Maddow, our leading cable clown, simply isn't that person! Tomorrow, we'll show you what happened on May 23 when she interviewed Zapotosky.

Two days later, the Confessore/Saul report appeared, and Maddow did a second report on this topic. This new report was even more pathetic than the one she'd already done.

The analysts howled, writhed and groaned as they watched the cable clown perform on those two evenings. In fairness, her orange shoes were very large. But what have we liberals ever done to deserve this corporate-funded, self-adoring brand of top-flight entertainment?

Tomorrow: Verdict first! What a gong-show looks like

WE'RE ALL MANCHURIAN NOW: A taxonomy of the pundit class!

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

Part 1—The creatures on the ark: In yesterday's Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Paul Farhi finally went there.

Farhi wrote an introductory essay, an essay which should have been written long ago. He discussed the taxonomy and the culture of Washington's pundit class.

As always, taxonomy first! Farhi sketched it thusly, even including pay scales:

FARHI (6/5/16): After the campaign started and the pundits started yakking, ratings for all three cable networks, once in seemingly terminal decline, rebounded to nearly Iraq-War levels. There are now so many cable pundits—CNN has about 100 on its payroll, while MSNBC and Fox declined to provide numbers—that it’s hard to tell them apart.

Some pundits are “contributors.” Some are “analysts.” Still others are “commentators” or “strategists.”

The secret pundit decoder works like this: A “contributor” (such as Meghan McCain) is an exclusive network hireling who gets paid for his or her sound bites. He or she earns a fee for each appearance or a flat amount for being on call, like a firefighter, whenever his or her services are required. The amounts can range from around $150 per “hit” to the mid-six figures for a marquee name such as Karl Rove or David Axelrod, both former campaign savants and presidential advisers. An “analyst” (such as CNN’s David Gergen or David Gregory, the former host of “Meet the Press”) is a salaried or contract employee who is expected to analyze the day’s Narrative rather than opine about it like a contributor. A “strategist” is usually a part-timer and a partisan hired for his or her political experience and insight.

Not that these rules really matter. Analysts contribute opinions, contributors analyze and strategists do both.

Then there are “guests,” Punditstan’s temporary-worker class. Guests typically aren’t paid, and often aren’t even identified as guests.

Farhi notes that he has occasionally appeared as a cable news "guest." So have we, long ago, when we did, among other spots, one Crossfire, six O'Reillys, one Diane Rehm and three separate hours on C-Span's Washington Journal, including the time when a window-washer suddenly appeared directly behind us, swinging erratically on a board precariously held by ropes.

("It only would happen on Bob Somerby's program," Brian Lamb appreciatively said at the 41-minute mark. Later, we kicked ourselves for our slow reaction. Covering our notes, we should have said this: "Do you really think that's a window-washer?")

Just to be completely clear: Presumably, Farhi meant that pundit pay ranges from "$150 per hit" (per appearance) to "mid-six figures" as an annual salary.

Not that it really matters. As Farhi notes, nothing we'd normally think of as rules seems to apply within this highly Manchurian realm.

Farhi hadn't yet completed his basic pundit taxonomy. A bit later, he continued to name the various beasts of the field who file up the ramp and onto the cable news ark:

FARHI: CNN has pioneered another variation on the theme during this election season: the “supporter.” Last year, it hired two commentators to defend Trump, Jeffrey Lord and Kayleigh McEnany (Scottie Hughes, another Trump supporter, is a frequent CNN guest). It has also had a Bernie Sanders booster (Jonathan Tasini), one for Ted Cruz (Amanda Carpenter), one for Jeb Bush (Ana Navarro) and multiple ones for Hillary Clinton. Poor John Kasich; no one on CNN was paid to spin for him.

The taxonomy of punditry can be further subdivided by background and personality. There are former campaign operatives and party hacks (Nicolle Wallace and Rick Tyler on MSNBC, Paul Begala and Donna Brazile on CNN, Rove on Fox), lifelong journalists (The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson on MSNBC) and even a lapsed politician or two (Michael Steele and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC). Yes, there’s a certain credentialism at work; the average dentist or truck driver, no matter how brilliant or witty his or her opinions, has no chance of ever moving to Punditstan. And there are, of course, degrees of temperament and vehemence: A rigorously nonpartisan analyst such as CNN’s Gloria Borger rarely throws bombs while others (think Fox News’s Andrea Tantaros) have crafted a career out of lobbing them.

In that passage, Farhi names our current favorite "supporter," Kayleigh McEnany. We like her for what seems to be a genuinely mellow disposition and for the reason why she's so frequently on the air.

In naming Scarborough, he even flirts with extending his taxonomy to the realm of cable news hosts. Our guess:

That is a place to which no paid journalist, not even Farhi, will ever be willing to go. You will never see a paid journalist discuss the work of Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper. As we've told you again and again, it simply isn't done.

(In the case of Matthews, that bit of law has been demonstrated by the silence extended to his routinely crazy work down through the past twenty years—the same silence which has been extended to the work of Maureen Dowd. By their silence, the press corps has made it clear that they observe a professional code of silence. In turn, we liberals have made it clear that we're too hypnotized, and too compliant, to see through this ongoing scam.)

There's more of interest in Farhi's piece than we've mentioned today. For ourselves, we were most amused by his report that CNN now "has about 100 [pundits] on its payroll."

No one who has watched that channel could be surprised by that census count. CNN now features extremely large pundit panels—and these panels will change in the course of an hour, in the manner of an NHL team changing lines on the fly.

We've mentioned hypnosis, and Manchuria, for a reason.

This morning, we watched what may have been the worst segment of Morning Joe we have ever seen. We actually thought we were seeing new peak Morning Joe.

To our ear, the phoniness exceeded past peak Morning Joe. The dumbness exceeded even Trump, who is now being savaged to an extent which surpasses the way he was fawned over, lionized, on that same ridiculous program not too long ago.

We've also marveled, over the weekend, at much of the punditry concerning the death of Muhammad Ali. For our money, Josh and Judis may have taken the cake, but the phony adherence to silly-bill script was widespread, sad, typical, faux.

(To state the obvious: As is routinely the case at such times, these script-readings are often designed to enhance the position and status of the pundit, not to inform people about the life and times of the historical figure in question—in this case, the life and times of the widely-admired Ali.)

For ourselves, we watched Chinatown over the weekend. We then returned to the first half of The Manchurian Candidate, with its relentless theme of hypnosis, brainwashing and self-hypnosis.

For our previous post on the 1962 film, just click here.

Are we all Manchurian now? Each film offers a portrait of massive political corruption and dysfunction. For our money, The Manchurian Candidate blew Chinatown away this weekend as a portrait of these ridiculous times.

We keep encountering ludicrous work from all parts of the pundit ark. Are we all Manchurian now? With brief returns to Farhi's text, we'll examine that question all week.

Tomorrow: A major pundit seems to loathe the so-called white working-class

Brainwash watch: Rachel Maddow gets it right!

SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 2016

By comparison, Chris Hayes doesn't: We're always pleased to note the occasions when Rachel Maddow gets something right.

Last night was one of those occasions. Maddow, a punishment lover, is sometimes unfairly mocked as "The Nun." Last night, her instinct for punishment actually served her well.

After some earlier silly piddle, Maddow denounced the violence in San Jose without recourse to tribal excuses. To her credit, this is the way the corporate star started her second segment:

MADDOW (6/3/16): There was a time this year when protests at Donald Trump for president events, those protests generally happened inside those events.

Demonstrators would show up, sometimes they would protest against Mr. Trump silently, sometimes they would stand and up hold a sign, sometimes they'd stand up and yell. And then those protesters would be escorted out by security, and sometimes those protesters would be confronted by angry Trump supporters, and sometimes there would be violence, and Donald Trump would incorporate these disturbances into his stump speech.

He'd yell, "Get 'em out!" "Get 'em out!" That became a regular thing he would scream from the podium.

We sort of almost got used to that as a Trump phenomenon. But over the past few weeks something different has started happening. The totally inappropriate, scary violence we used to see inside Trump events, sometimes egged on by the candidate himself, now that is happening with some regularity outside Trump events, and particularly after Trump events have ended, when some anti-Trump protesters are basically sticking around at the site of Trump events, outside those events, and then they are behaving abominably.

To watch this whole segment, click here.

For the record, we probably wouldn't use language that strong with regard to those who misbehaved in San Jose. But then, we aren't the punishment-loving faux prude who's sometimes mocked as "The Nun."

(As we've said before: we assume that nickname, which plays on a stereotype, is unfair to the vast bulk of nuns.)

Maddow chastised the anti-Trump forces in San Jose (and elsewhere) for "behaving abominably," for engaging in "totally inappropriate, scary violence." She played videotape of similar recent conduct in several other locations, then played tape from San Jose, "which was the worst yet."

After playing the videotape, she offered this further assessment:

MADDOW: As far as we can tell, those protests, and that violence, which is not a form of right to protest, that stuff at this Trump event last night in San Jose, it doesn't appear these were coordinated actions. It doesn't appear they were centrally led or directed in any way.

But this violence outside Trump rallies, this violence by anti-Trump demonstrators, this is now getting to be a regular occurrence. These clashes and these protests are in danger of becoming a new normal thing in this election landscape, which cannot stand.

This is a new political reality that is new, and that is scary. And we have a lot of weeks to go and many, many, many more political events until November. I want to know how this tide is going to turn.

Joining us is NBC News correspondent Jacob Rascon, who's been following the Trump campaign and has been at a bunch of these protests where violence has broken out, including yesterday in the thick of it in San Jose.

According to Rascon, the anti-Trump forces in San Jose went beyond previous acts of misconduct.

"Usually it doesn't happen like this where the protesters actually just walk up and beat somebody up," the fresh-faced reporter convincingly said. "It happened time after time [in San Jose]. "We saw it more than a dozen times, I think."

After a technical screw-up by her increasingly unprofessional, clown-inflected staff, Maddow played tape of "a strong statement tonight from Bernie Sanders speaking off the cuff, asked by reporters to respond to these ugly incidents that happened last night with anti-Trump protesters chasing down Trump supporters in the streets of San Jose outside that Trump event."

Maddow got it right! She offered no excuses for "the violence at the San Jose rally." As she has done in the past, she implied that this conduct is politically unconstructive. She said it "cannot stand."

Maddow offered no excuses for the violence in San Joe. One hour earlier, her colleague Chris Hayes took a markedly different approach to these same events.

Midway through his show, Hayes referred to the previous night's "assaults." Below, you see where he went next.

We apologize for the jumbled transcript. Because the Hayes show didn't post the videotape of this segment, we aren't able to proofread the official corporate transcript which is, as always, a bit of a corporate mess:

HAYES (6/3/16): Last night, we saw disturbing images out of Donald Trump's rally in San Jose, California, where some protesters gathered outside the event, assaulted Trump supporters.

Those attacks, of course, become the contest of a long campaign that has featured many incidents of violence at Trump rallies, much of it prior to this, by Trump supporters against anti-Trump protesters. Students being pushed around by a self-avowed white supremacist, to a young man being punched in the face at a rally in North Carolina.

The violence at times encouraged either explicitly or tacitly from the podium by Donald Trump himself:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

TRUMP: Get him out! Get him out, troublemaker. Get him out of here!

TRUMP: I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you. In the old days, they didn't come back, I can tell you that. They were gone. They were taken out, they were gone.

TRUMP: They realize that there are no consequences to protesting anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore.

TRUMP: So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

HAYES: Ahead, we'll show you one clip from last night that captures, I thought, the tensions running through Donald Trump's rallies.

This is classic tribal conduct. Rather than show you what happened in San Jose the night before, Hayes treated you to familiar old tape of familiar old incidents—familiar old incidents in which the misconduct came from The Other Tribe.

On a program which allegedly presents the "news," he showed you tape of months-old incidents in which The Others were wrong. He withheld tape of the many new incidents in recent weeks in which We have become the miscreants.

That's a form of brainwashing too. In accord with Hard Tribal Law, we viewers were allowed to see one type of incident only—the type of incident where the misconduct came from The Other Tribe.

Let's be fair! In the closing segment of his show, Hayes finally played that "one clip from last night," the clip that somehow "captures the tensions running through Donald Trump's rallies."

In fact, that clip didn't show any conduct inside "Donald Trump's rallies." It showed violence in the street of San Jose, violence which was being conducted by anti-Trump forces.

In our view, Christopher Hayes was frameworking hard. In the passage shown below, he describes that one piece of tape, and he builds a classic tribe-friendly framework around the violent incidents which have occurred in this year's campaign.

To watch this full segment, click here:

HAYES: Last night, outside of Donald Trump's rally in San Jose, we saw some really upsetting scenes of violence. Protesters, by the hundreds, anti-Trump protesters, gathered outside Trump's campaign rally.

Most of the demonstrations were peaceful. Things at times did turn violent.

Out of all the videos and images that came out last night, there was one that stood out to me in particular for the complexity and intensity of emotion it showed:

[VIDEOTAPE OF INCIDENT]

You see a man in a Trump hat with other men surrounding him, pushing him, while female anti-Trump protesters surround him, trying to intervene, yelling, "No violence, no violence." Another man taking him from behind and escorting him away from the folks that are trying to punch him.

it was a really bad scene, and yet, oddly, becoming a familiar one at Trump's rallies, even if the violence in the past has generally gone in the other direction.

Events have become cauldrons of hatred and reaction to that hatred, and speaks to the disturbing nature of what is being built around the Trump candidacy, around his rallies in particular.

Joining me now, Bob Garfield, co-host of WNYC's On the Media.

How odd! Rascon described "more than a dozen incidents" in which anti-Trump people "actually just walk up and beat somebody up."

Hayes played tape of only such incident—an incident where he can show us members of Our Team yelling, "No violence, no violence" and otherwise trying to help the man who is being attacked.
Hayes then built a wonderful framework around the relatively small number of violent incidents which have occurred in the past year.

According to Hayes, "events have become cauldrons of hatred and reaction to that hatred." Translation:

When They do it, it's "hatred." When We do it, it's "reaction to hatred." In accord with ancient tribal law, when We engage in violent conduct, complexity will be found!

Hayes played tape of several months-old events—events which make Their Team look bad.

He played tape of only one new event from the night before. In this tape, he noted the helpful members of Our Team yelling, "No violence, no violence."

This is a form of brainwashing too. On your corporate liberal channel, you're being restricted in what you can see. Hayes is helping you maintain a bogus idea, an idea that predates the human race:

The good people are all Over Here with Us. The bad people are all Over There.

That ancient belief is never true—and yes, this is a form of hypnosis. In this way, you're being dumbed way down, in service to the corporation, which exists now to please the tribe, whose members provide those good ratings and those high ad rates.

Maddow got it much more right! She actually featured the recent events. She built no dismissive frameworks.

Alas! On Monday, we'll return to her clownish behavior concerning Governor McAuliffe last week. On these occasions, the cable star's attraction to punishment and dimwitted scolding served the world very poorly.

Also this: On Hardball, Trump was blamed for the violence in San Jose in another way, a way which is getting familiar.

He shouldn't have been in San Jose at all! Because he went to San Jose, the violence was really his fault!

Exciting accusation watch: The New Yorker remembers Bill Clinton's affair!

FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016

This is brainwashing too: Could Candidate Trump actually get elected this fall?

We think he possibly could, largely because Candidate Clinton is so badly damaged. Given his apparent scorched-earth scandal strategy, his chances are helped by the passage shown below from The New Yorker's Amy Davidson.

The passage appears in the high-profile section, "The Talk of the Town," in the magazine's latest edition. Ironic headline included:

DAVIDSON (6/6/16): BILL PROBLEMS:
As Donald Trump attacks both Clintons, it’s like 1992 all over again.

“There is still time for both Clintons to solve the Hillary Problem,” the conservative columnist William Safire wrote in the Times in March, 1992, when Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas, was first running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Safire was referring to the manner in which Hillary, an accomplished lawyer, presented herself as someone who would reinvent the role of First Lady. Not everyone saw this as a problem. Indeed, Hillary had already proved a solution, appearing with her husband on “60 Minutes” after Gennifer Flowers, a former television reporter, had regaled a tabloid with stories of her affair with Bill.“I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Clinton said, adding that she loved her husband and respected him, and “if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.”

Did Bill Clinton have an affair with Gennifer Flowers? As far as we know, there is no evidence supporting that claim.

In that passage, Davidson says he did.

It's certainly true that Flowers "regaled a tabloid" (The Star) "with stories of her [alleged] affair." That said, the affair in question was alleged. And the stories, for which Flowers was paid $150,000, turned out to be embarrassingly false in certain embarrassing instances.

Were Gennifer Flowers' stories true? Did Bill Clinton have an affair? Davidson seems to be saying yes. Ironically, she goes on to say this in her second paragraph:

DAVIDSON: This time, Hillary is running for President, and Bill would be the mold-breaking First Spouse. As such, his record is back on the table, with all the triumphs (a booming economy) that are acknowledged even by his enemies and all the flaws (the personal misjudgments) that are too familiar even to his friends. Now it’s Hillary who has a Bill problem, both because the question of his possible future White House position is a fair one and because her presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, will certainly raise it in ways that are deeply unfair.

Davidson complains that Trump will be unfair. One paragraph earlier, she turned suspect allegations into established facts.

Might we offer a bit of background? In the later Clinton years, the press corps staged a torrid love affair with a group of Clinton accusers. (This love affair began in earnest in early 1998.)

Persistently, journalists disappeared arrays of facts which cast doubt on these accusers' accusations. Flowers, a prime example, authored a decade of crazy claims—crazy claims the mainstream press corps lovingly disappeared.

(Some of Flowers' other claims were less crazy than ugly. They got disappeared too. Keep accusers' reputations alive!)

Apparently, Candidate Trump plans to revive this stupid, ugly culture. Davidson says this will be unfair. Meanwhile, she vouches for some of the widely bruited claims behind which Trump will be surfing.

At some point in the next few weeks, we'll revisit the love affair the press corps conducted with some of these Clinton accusers. Back then, the press corps [HEARTED] these accusers in an appalling, embarrassing way.

Davidson seems to [HEART] Flowers still. "It’s like 1992 all over again," her headline says, with no apparent sense of irony.

Brainwashing works on repetition. As with Raymond Shaw, so here:

This is brainwashing too.

Credit where due: Let's give credit where due! At least Davidson didn't call Flowers "a model and actress," as Charles Blow excitingly did in his recent New York Times piece.

DILBERT KNOWS BEST: We're all poor friendless Raymond Shaw now!

FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016

Part 4—The Manchurian cable news stars: Last Friday night, Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, spoke with our old pal William Maher on the HBO program, Real Time.

Adams discussed the skills of Candidate Trump, who he views as "a master persuader." He began by noting a fact about himself:

ADAMS (5/27/16): First of all, I'm a trained hypnotist.

MAHER: A trained hypnotist!

ADAMS: Yes. I learned hypnosis in my 20s. Actually went to school for it. And I'm a—

MAHER: May we have a volunteer from the audience?

[LAUGHTER]

MAHER: Look at these people—

ADAMS: I've studied persuasion for decades. And when I saw Trump last summer using the tools of persuasion, I thought, "Oh my god, he's not a crazy clown. Everything he's doing, including his complete ignoring of the facts, is persuasion perfection."

To watch that discussion, click this.

We'll disagree with Adams on one point. In one fairly obvious sense, Candidate Trump plainly is a crazy clown.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean he can't be a master persuader too. Increasingly, our political/journalistic culture is in thrall to such performers.

Let's return to hypnosis, a fascinating and powerful tool.

We will guess that our brother Maher has seen comedian hypnotists in action. If he has, we'll guess that he noticed the power of this particular tool.

Good lord! People who are hypnotized can do things on a public stage they never could have done in their normal, pre-hypnotized state. Suddenly, they possess performance skills they couldn't have approached a half hour earlier.

Standard inhibitions are gone. They can act out characters and scenes in ways they could never have done.

Hypnosis is a mysterious tool. It helps us see that our human minds function in puzzling ways.

Adams never explained the connection of hypnosis to what he called "persuasion." That said, is Donald J. Trump a type of hypnotist?

Let's consider a famous movie we've been watching since last weekend. We refer to The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the widely-praised political thriller directed by John Frankenheimer.

In the film, "poor friendless, friendless Raymond" Shaw is captured during the Korean War and taken to Manchuria, where he and his whole platoon are "brainwashed" by Communist forces.

As a result of his brainwashing, Raymond becomes the hopeless tool of his Communist handlers, who include his crazy American mother. The Communists send poor Raymond back to her to serve as a ruthless, robotic killer.

Under the plan, Raymond will commit a political murder which elevates his mother's second husband to the White House. (In that sense, Raymond's stepfather is "the Manchurian candidate" of the film's title.) In the film, Raymond's brainwashing—in effect, his state of hypnosis—is so powerful that, when successfully triggered, he'll obey any command.

The film is masterfully done. In a brilliant scene which comes amazingly early, we see Raymond and his fellow soldiers in Manchuria, at a meeting designed to demonstrate the power of their brainwashing for their Communist masters.

We also see what Raymond and the other soldiers think is occurring. They've have been programmed to believe that they're at a ladies garden society meeting in New Jersey, where they've been trapped by a storm.

Masterfully, that early scene establishes a motif which appears throughout the film. Again and again, a type of question is suggested:

What do we humans think is occurring in various circumstances, as opposed to what's actually happening? To what extent do our perceptions conform to objective reality?

This motif arises again and again in the film, especially in the surreal events of two romances, one of which involves poor friendless Raymond. Again and again, the film asks a set of questions as it presents, or seems to present, sets of surreal events:

To what extent do we function "rationally?" To what extent are we the victims of forces beyond our conscious understanding?

To what extent do we see the world clearly? To what extent are we walking through a series of virtual dreamscapes?

Right from that garden society scene, the film just rips along. Watching it again last weekend, it made us think of our society's current state in a way it had never done before.

The film suggests that we humans move through our lives in varied "hypnotic" states. Last Friday, Adams said that Candidate Trump possesses the tools of a master persuader—of a hypnotist, a brainwasher, a person who can manipulate our most basic understandings of the world.

We think that idea has great merit. That said, acts of hypnosis and self-hypnosis have been on the rise in recent decades, driven by the "master persuaders" who now populate our degraded media landscape.

In our view, these players were thrown at conservatives first. Rush Limbaugh went national in 1988. He was followed by a wave of imitators.

In our view, the results have not been good. If we might borrow the words of Adams, "Everything Rush has done, including his complete ignoring of the facts, has been persuasion perfection." We'd even suggest that Rush's listeners have almost been hypnotized, or perhaps even "brainwashed" in the manner of poor Raymond Shaw.

On talk radio, then on cable, this type of brainwashing became big business during the Limbaugh years. We liberals loved to complain about this, although we've shown a total lack of skill and resolve in our attempts to address this unhealthy phenomenon.

As for today, it must be said that we liberals increasingly have our own master persuaders. Corporate interests are now building media worlds designed to brainwash us too.

They worked their skills on conservatives first, but now they're clowning us too. We have our own "Manchurian cable stars!" They feed us porridge and propaganda every night of the week.

They mug and clown and dumb us down, just as Rush and Sean have long done. Because they're skillful at their work and because we're self-hypnotized, we liberals can't even begin to see that this occurring.

We're at that garden club too!

"Poor, friendless, friendless Raymond" Shaw thought he was at a garden club meeting somewhere in New Jersey. If you watch The Manchurian Candidate, you'll be able to see where he actually was.

Every night, a million liberals think we're watching a "cable news" program at 9 PM Eastern. We'll suggest that's not what they're doing, and that their programming during that hour is very bad for the country.

To what extent are we the liberals now self-hypnotized too? Consider something that happened last night, along with something that didn't.

Last night, cable channels broadcast the latest scenes in which fiery progressives and liberals assaulted Trump supporters in the streets of a major city.

Last night, the city was San Jose. In the last few weeks, similar scenes have been broadcast from other major cities.

A few months ago, scenes of violence sometimes occurred inside Trump campaign events. Instantly, we liberals knew what to do and how to react. We engaged in sweeping generalizations. We attributed the behavior of a small number of people to Trump supporters in general.

Last night, our reactions were different. On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin insisted that the people staging the San Jose assaults didn't represent the mass of liberals.

Toobin's statement was perfectly accurate. It was also quite new.

As of last week, a certain major cable news star began complaining about the assaults progressives have been conducting against Trump supporters. She, of course, has been building the dimwitted tribal culture which helps make such assaults occur.

She feeds us our pabulum every night, then complains when we overreact. She gets very rich playing this game. We viewers get stupid and ugly.

Are we all poor Raymond Shaw now? As corporate interests continue to train more Manchurian cable news stars, we'll suggest that the answer will keep moving toward yes.

Concerning those comedy hypnotists: If you've ever seen a skillful comedy hypnotist, you've had a chance to see mysterious powers of persuasion at work.

On the other hand:

No comedian does a worse show than the comedy hypnotist who can't get anyone hypnotized. We learned this fact—mercifully, through second-hand accounts—in the summer of 87 or 88.

No, we didn't rebook the performer, but he was a very good guy who went on to a lot of success. Years later, we saw him at the Washington Improv, where he had people doing things they never could have done in their normal state.

Hypnosis is a mysterious tool. If you want to be hypnotized too, just keep "watching that space!"

Maddow watch: As always, verdict first!

THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2016

Her latest gubernatorial target: Last Tuesday night, May 24, cable star Rachel Maddow closed her program by snarking at the dumbness of Governor Susana Martinez.

The next night, May 25, she opened her show with an attack on Candidate Trump. What had the candidate done this time?

The previous evening, Candidate Trump had mocked the dumbness of Governor Martinez! Maddow proceeded to savage Trump for doing the same thing she'd done! See yesterday's report.

This type of nonsense is par for the course on the current Maddow Show. Maddow has transformed her "cable news" program into one of the dumbest, and least disciplined, in the entire field.

Tribal porridge is served each night; the loss of brain cells is large. As in last night's amazing first twenty minutes, the waste of time on pointless trivia is routinely enormous.

Maddow flipped on Governor Martinez from the end of one night's show to the start of the next! We have no idea how other liberals can watch this show without wondering about the cable star's very strange nightly performance.

That said, Maddow's strangest work last week involved a second governor. We refer to Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton associate, the Democratic governor of Virginia.

Why was McAuliffe in the news? Right at the start of her show, Maddow teased the topic. In this ridiculous statement, you see the instinct to "hang em high" which typifies Maddow's performance:

MADDOW (6/23/16): We also learned this afternoon that the FBI is apparently investigating Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, which means Virginia is now officially turning into Illinois, with one of its governors appealing his conviction to the Supreme Court while at the same time, his successor in office comes under federal investigation.

Virginia has turned into Illinois? No, we aren't making that up.

Maddow didn't even seem to be sure that McAuliffe was being investigated. But just like that, the fact that he was "apparently" being investigated meant that he should be linked to the state's previous governor. It also triggered that snarky link to Illinois.

Was McAuliffe really under investigation? If so, for what? Given McAuliffe's ties to the Clintons, and given our recent political history, a sensible person might want to be careful about a leaked report of this type in an election year.

Alas! The leaked report of a ginned-up probe has been a regular feature of campaign seasons in the Clinton / Gore / Clinton years. That said, Maddow has never met an accusation she didn't treat as a conviction, except in the case of Candidate Clinton, whose current, actual FBI probe she has failed to examine at all.

Has anyone on cable news ever rushed-to-convict in the way Maddow does? Later in her cable show, she devoted a segment to this murky new topic—the first of two such segments last week.

Monday evening's segment was bad. Wednesday evening's segment was worse, as we'll see tomorrow.

In Monday evening's segment, Maddow offered a silly, short introduction to the general topic. This let her play videotape of herself, her number-one favorite pastime.

She then reported what little she knew about the apparent probe; she didn't know much at all. Needless to say, the seriousness of the topic, and her general ignorance, didn't keep her from snarking:

MADDOW: ...NBC News has now confirmed that the FBI is looking into whether or not Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe accepted illegal contributions during his 2013 campaign for governor. Specifically, the FBI looking, for the past several months, into whether his gubernatorial campaign accepted contributions that were illegal.

The FBI is reportedly particularly interested in contributions from a Chinese businessman, who once held political office in China, but who now has permanent resident status in the United States. A lawyer for the McAuliffe campaign tells NBC tonight, quote, "Neither the governor, nor his former campaign, has knowledge of this matter." The lawyer continued, quote, "The governor will certainly cooperate with the government if he is contacted about it."

If. If!

The lawyer implying that the governor himself hasn't even been told about this FBI investigation yet. But it's in the press now, thanks to somebody leaking that information.

This new FBI investigation is happening in the same state where Terry McAuliffe's predecessor, Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, is currently appealing a two-year prison sentence for public corruption.

Public affairs, indeed.

When Bob McDonnell got indicted, everybody in Virginia professed to be shocked, shocked that this could happen in that genteel state, which prides itself on its good governance, that never thought it even needed ethics laws. Bob McDonnell was the first Virginia governor indicted in that state's very, very, very long history. Now his successor is under FBI investigation as well.

We will let you know more when we learn more. But joining us now and Matt Zapotosky, who covers the Justice Department for the Washington Post national security team.

To watch this whole segment, click here.

Several parts of that report should have suggested caution. The history of leaked probes of Clinton associates would be one such element. Recent errors by the Washington Post and the New York Times would perhaps be another.

Normal decency keeps journalists from implying guilt on such a flimsy basis as this—on the basis of a vague report which some unknown person has leaked. That said, Maddow rarely executes normal decency when the slightest suggestion of wrongdoing lets her engage in her favorite types of conduct: playing videotape of herself and staging instant convictions.

Rather plainly, McAuliffe's lawyer said the governor was unaware of any such probe. Rather than react with caution, Maddow misstated what the lawyer had said as she authored a hint of disbelief.

She then got out a can of snark concerning the state of Virginia. Borrowing from Casablanca, she snarked about Governor McDonnell's conviction, which the Supreme Court is reconsidering, then linked McAuliffe to McDonnell in standard careless fashion.

Maddow then interviewed Zapotosky, a youngish reporter for the Post (Ohio U., class of 2008.) Zapotosky implied McAuliffe's guilt in a remarkably careless way.

Needless to say, his carelessness went unchallenged. Tomorrow, we'll start with his remarks.

Last Monday night, we thought this was a careless report of a familiar type. Maddow is a remarkably undisciplined hangin' judge. Except in the case of Candidate Clinton, she typically rushes to convict, no matter how little she knows about an investigation or charge. (In this instance, there was no report of a charge.)

In this instance, she knew almost nothing, but the snark had already begun. When she threw to Zapotosky, the rush to convict got worse.

That said, Monday's report was a breath of fresh air compared to Wednesday's sequel. Maddow is running a very poor show. Her basic judgment is very poor, and she no longer seems to be under any sort of editorial direction.

On the bright side, she's pulling in numbers and making huge bucks. That said, her TV show is a mess.

Casablanca suggests one possible answer. Can't somebody sing the Marseillaise to drown this clown show out?

Tomorrow: Zapotosky convicts, just as it ever was

DILBERT KNOWS BEST: He says we voters are "basically irrational!"

THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2016

Part 3—Just check our own love of cartoons: Yesterday, at a very chic luncheon, we were reliably told that Dilbert creator Scott Adams had appeared with our old pal Bill Maher on last Friday's Real Time.

It must be great to have HBO! You can watch the bulk of that interview here.

Adams was painfully persuasive when he discussed the skills of Candidate Trump. Adams predicted, months ago, that Trump will win this November's election. The Dilbert creator regards Trump as "a master persuader."

When the Washington Post's Michael Cavna summarized Adams' view of this matter, he listed six of the Dilbert creator's beliefs. The first two points were these:

CAVNA (3/21/16): 1. Trump knows people are basically irrational.

“If you see voters as rational you’ll be a terrible politician,” Adams writes on his blog. “People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.”

2. Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.

“The evidence is that Trump completely ignores reality and rational thinking in favor of emotional appeal,” Adams writes. “Sure, much of what Trump says makes sense to his supporters, but I assure you that is coincidence. Trump says whatever gets him the result he wants. He understands humans as 90-percent irrational and acts accordingly.”

Adams adds: “People vote based on emotion. Period.”

According to Cavna, Adams says we humans "are basically irrational." His other points about Trump's skill as a persuader follow along from there.

Adams says that we humans "are basically irrational!" Do you remember when we first raised this unfortunate point? It was January 2000, in an award-winning, three-part series. Watching Adams talk about Trump, we'd have to say we thought we saw chickens coming to roost.

Is it true? Are we the humans, and we the voters, "basically irrational?" If so, Trump would be the perfect preacher for our secular church.

As we noted yesterday, Trump's silly name-calling—"Crooked Hillary!"—is straight outta the world of Superman comic books. It's also straight outta the world of professional wrestling, a world within which Donald J. Trump has functioned quite well for years.

(Trump's a made man in gonzo-world. He's a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.)

In Cavna's report and in that tape from Real Time, you meet convincing claims about the power of Trump's persuasion. We say that for these reasons:

When Trump rails about "Crooked Hillary," he's working at the lowest level of our human intelligence. But as Adams explained to Maher, this is the level at which persuasion may be most effective.

Post-Enlightenment culture has always tried to eliminate such dumb-assed conduct from the public square. Slowly, though, in the past fifty years, commercialization of media has rolled back the prohibitions which kept our discourse less stupid.

Uh-oh! First they let Imus have a national show, then they opened the door to Howard Stern. Before very long, they accepted Rush. Olbermann came after that.

In the broader realm, the dumbing down of our society's intellectual content has been widely observed. The History Channel no longer does history. Bravo no longer does culture.

PBS makes its money from doo-wop revivals. Rachel Maddow mugs and clowns, treating us like the irrational players—the potential marks—we all potentially are.

Manifestly, most of our "reality TV" comes from the realm of the dumb. Unfortunately, though, we people seem to enjoy dumb shows—and this past year, along came Trump, who has also done quite well in this low-mental energy realm.

Traditionally, the two major parties would never have let a person like Trump to play as a candidate on the national stage. But as we've seen this year, "democratization" of the political process has now taken that power away.

Along has come Trump, the first major candidate to base his persuasion on the use of two-word schoolyard taunts. It's the dumbest level of persuasion—and as Adams predicts, in the hands of a skillful player, it could actually work this fall.

As a general matter, it's considered insulting to say that we the people are "basically irrational."

Long ago, Aristotle is said to have said that "man [sic] is the rational animal." Because we (irrationally) love to heap praise on ourselves, our broad self-portraits have long been built around that flattering appraisal.

Unfortunately, that flattering appraisal is highly misleading. If we want to rescue our failing culture, we need to move past our reflexive avoidance of this obvious fact.

Almost surely, it's too late to save this year's campaign from the sub-rational depths of the two-word taunt and insult. If we want to start rebuilding our culture, we need to start recognizing the ways we are inclined to be "basically irrational."

For us liberals, this means we have to understand the way our own tribe is "basically irrational." Consider 1) a recent interview with a Trump voter and 2) a range of irate liberal reactions to a recent post by Kevin Drum.

We liberals! For decades, we've built our tribal discourse around the same sorts of two-word denigrations now mainstreamed by Candidate Trump.

Candidate Trump is running against "Crooked Hillary." For decades, we liberals have built our internal discourse around the concept of the "Dumb / Racist Conservative."

There actually are a lot of conservatives who may tilt toward the dumb, especially when they're exposed to skillful, relentless persuasion. But good lord! What about our pitiful tribe, with our own two-word perceptions?

How "irrational" is our tribe? Let's start with that interview with that lone Trump voter.

The interview was conducted by the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf. He spoke with a 22-year-old Trump voter from the Bay Area. The voter offered a nuanced set of explanations for his support of Trump.

The voter expressed a range of views, many of which are "progressive." He seemed to say that he favors Trump because of so-called "political correctness."

We liberals know this can't be true, except as a mask for this voter's racism. But that's how denigration-based we modern liberals are.

How simple-minded are our own liberal frameworks? Consider those comments to Drum concerning his recent post.

Drum offered a thousand pre-apologies for the possible appearance of sexism in the post in question. His post appeared beneath this headline:

"Hillary Clinton Has a Shouting Problem"

Is it true? Does Candidate Clinton possibly "have a shouting problem?"

We'd say she possibly does. And by the way, just for the record, during the clownish coverage of Campaign 2000, Candidate Gore was widely savaged for his alleged shouting problem. We say this to note that this complaint can also be aimed at men.

(Click here, scroll down to "A tale of two speeches." We liberals don't recall that this occurred because we're too scripted and too unobservant to get outside the two-word frameworks within which we live our own mental lives.)

Let's return to that question. Does Candidate Clinton possibly have some type of "shouting problem?" In his post, Drum pre-apologized a hundred ways for the possible appearance that this question might possibly seem to perhaps be sexist.

This had little affect on Drum's readers. In comments, you'll see one liberal after another complaining about his obvious sexism, full stop. Again and again, this seems to be the only play we liberals know how to run.

As we read those comments to Drum's post, we thought about the complaints by that 22-year-old Trump voter. Today, we also think of Adams' analysis, in which we humans live our actual mental lives in the realm of the two-word insult.

We liberals are inclined that way too. Being human, we find it quite hard to see that.

We recommend that tape from Real Time. We think Adams' observations help explain the downward spiral of our political/journalistic culture.

Until now, a candidate like Candidate Trump wouldn't have been allowed to proceed by major party leaders. Voters wouldn't have been exposed to such acts of cartoonized persuasion.

Increasingly, though, the gatekeepers are gone. Increasingly, we're being exposed to the comic book, pro wrestling world of the cartoonized two-word putdown.

We liberals live by those cartoonized putdowns too. More and more, voters may be rejecting us for this "basically irrational" conduct.

If they are, they have a point. What will we do about it?

Tomorrow: Dilbert does Manchuria

Maddow watch: Star's four days in May continue!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016

Susana Martinez redeemed: Let's recall where matters stood when our story left off.

(For yesterday's post, click this.)

Last Tuesday night, May 24, Rachel Maddow ended her "cable news" show by snarking about Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico.

Martinez is a Republican governor who doesn't like Candidate Trump real well. Trump was doing a campaign event in Albuquerque that night. The day before, Martinez had said she wouldn't attend the event.

It's hard to know why a liberal TV star would mock Martinez for something like that, but Maddow feeds viewers silly partisan snark every night of the week. As we showed you yesterday, she snarked at Martinez this night, suggesting 1) that Martinez was dumb and 2) that Martinez was "hiding out" from Trump.

Maddow happily ended her show with this partisan snark. But uh-oh! That very same night, at his campaign event, Candidate Trump insulted Martinez in strikingly similar ways.

By the logic of our tribe, this meant that Martinez had been subjected to a racist/sexist attack. It could also seem to place Maddow on Trump's side!

Result? The very next evening, Maddow opened her cable news program with fawning praise for Martinez. The snark from the previous evening was gone now, completely forgotten. Now, Maddow simpered and fawned about the governor's greatness.

Is anyone more fake and faux than corporate star Rachel Maddow? Below, you see how she began her fawning to Martinez in the opening segment of her show last Wednesday night.

Maddow opened her program with tape of Clint Eastwood screwing up at the 2012 Republican National Convention. She then told us how awful Chris Christie and even Mitt Romney had been.

Such utterly pointless piddle is constant on Maddow's show. Then she turned to what's shown below.

To watch the whole segment, click here:

MADDOW (5/25/16): But there was one speech, one moment in primetime at the [2012 GOP convention] that was great. I mean, whether or not you like the politician in question, it was a great speech, brought the house down. If there was anybody who emerged as a star from that troubled convention it was a Republican governor from a western state who's not widely nationally known.

But whatever you think about her politics, whatever you think about the points that she's making here, watch how good this was just as a political moment, just hitting the notes right, bringing people along with you, bringing them to their feet.

Just watch this.

(VIDEO CLIP)

MARTINEZ: When I was a young prosecutor, I got called to testify against my boss. I could have backed down, but I didn't. I stood up to him and he fired me for it.

So, I took him on. Ran against him for district attorney and beat him by a landslide.

(APPLAUSE)

[...]

The tape of Martinez's speech continued. When it ended, Maddow continued her fawning about Martinez, whose dumbness she had snarked about exactly one night before:

MADDOW: Notice how she finishes that, she gets this huge applause. She doesn't even smile. She waits for it and then allows herself a slight smile to recognize the response she's getting. That was really good.

That was Governor Susana Martinez, Republican governor of New Mexico. She just brought the house down.

Susana Martinez is a two-term governor of new Mexico. I will tell you, my personal—my honest assessment of how she has done as governor, that she hasn't had that distinguished a tenure. She's had problems in that state, including embarrassing personal problems, personal moments that she wouldn't have wanted to be caught on tape that were.

But you can tell from the fact that she had the one star performance at the Republican convention in 2012, you can tell she has real talent as a politician. She did get elected twice statewide in New Mexico as a Republican. She's the only female governor that state has ever had. She's the only female Hispanic governor any U.S. state has ever had.

She's the highest profile Latina Republican, not just nationally now but maybe ever, and she also right now has a really important job in Republican politics. In addition to being the two-term governor of New Mexico, she's also chair of the Republican Governors Association.

Trust us. Maddow doesn't have the slightest idea "how Martinez has done as governor."

Despite this fact, Maddow shared her "personal, honest assessment" of Martinez's tenure. After that, she continued to fawn about various points for which Martinez had been mocked exactly one night before.

Maddow seemed to feel that none of her viewers would be struck by her odd change in tone. This is the way the game is now played on this highly tribal, low-IQ TV program.

From there, Maddow described the offense created by Candidate Trump the previous night. She described the ways the candidate had mocked Martinez, failing to note that she had snarked at Martinez in rather similar ways.

Maddow played tape of Candidate Trump as he criticized Martinez. She then pretended to puzzle about what Trump's statements seemed to convey.

The hideous Trump had seemed to be saying that Martinez was "slow," Maddow said, two separate times. The night before, Maddow had mockingly conveyed that impression herself.

In the past few years, Maddow has become one of the biggest fakes on the TV machine. If you watch the videotape of these segments from last Tuesday and Wednesday nights, you'll be seeing a sorry example of what we mean.

Here's something else we must warn you about. You can't believe a single thing you hear on the Maddow program. You have to double-check every fact. Consider where she went next.

As she discussed Trump's remarks about Martinez, Maddow conveyed her sense that Trump had launched a sexist and likely a racist attack on the governor. Then she reported what Trump had said about Elizabeth Warren.

Maddow's gorge was starting to rise. Inevitably, this led the major cable star to state some inaccurate facts.

Maddow played tape of Candidate Trump mocking Elizabeth Warren by calling her "Pocahontas." In response, she said this:

MADDOW: In New Mexico, Donald Trump mocking Elizabeth Warren for having Native American heritage.

Now, it's not that she doesn't have the heritage. She does. She's part Native American. Donald Trump just finding that disgusting and hilarious and worthy of derisively calling her "Pocahontas" all the time.

[...]

Calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," mocking her specifically for being partly Native American, as if that's something she ought to be ashamed of.

It's not like he threw out a script and ended up backsliding into that kind of racist, sexist, name-calling at his political events again. This is how his events are structured now. This is how he's running.

"Pocahontas" is one more in Trump's endless list of derisive, insulting name-calls. But in fact, it isn't clear that Senator Warren has any Native American heritage.

Maddow may remember the story the way she told it this night. If so, her memory seems to be wrong. As a result, Maddow seemed to misdescribe what Trump was mocking Warren for. In the process, her viewers got misinformed.

It's a problem when Candidate Trump name-calls Senator Warren this way. That said, it's also a problem when multimillionaire corporate liberals go on the machine night after night and clown in the ways Maddow does.

In her closing segment last Tuesday, Maddow snarked at the dumbness of Governor Martinez. In her opening segment the very next night, she attacked Trump as a racist and sexist for doing the very same thing!

As a matter of tribal decorum, we liberals aren't supposed to notice when Maddow plays the game this way. That said, she plays it this way almost every night. Tomorrow, we'll move on to the appalling complaints she made last week about another governor.

Maddow merely snarked about Governor Martinez. Her complaints about Governor McAuliffe were so dumb and so politically clueless that they constituted a case of political and journalistic malpractice.

At this point, is anyone dumber than Rachel Maddow? The cable star has become a ginormous corporate clown. Thanks to the power of tribal script, we liberals seem disinclined to notice.

Tomorrow: Four days in May continue

Videotape of both segments: In her closing segment on May 24, Maddow snarked at Martinez, specifically noting her dumbness. To watch the segment, click here.

The very next night, in her opening segment, Maddow fawned about the governor's greatness. As good liberals, we weren't supposed to notice the switch.

To watch that tape, click this.

DILBERT KNOWS BEST: Details the methods of Donald J. Trump!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016

Part 2—Narrative all the way down: Yesterday, we thought we saw something troubling at the new Salon, a relentlessly dumbed-down site.

What we saw speaks to the general spread of the political culture sometimes described as Trumpism. The troubling manifestation appeared in one of the new Salon's patented gong-show headlines:

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2016 03:30 PM EDT
TV ad blasts “Debt Trap Debbie” Wasserman Schultz for supporting predatory payday lenders
Allied Progress campaign condemns the DNC chair for "sabotaging" federal regulation of payday lenders, who fund her
BEN NORTON

As usual, the new Salon's headline was misleading. In a break with current practice, it was only slightly so.

The new TV ad in question doesn't specifically refer to Wasserman Schultz as "Debt Trap Debbie," at least not in its spoken content. That said, the low-information ad does direct viewers to a site, DebtTrapDebbie.com, through its use of a chyron.

The ad and the site come from a "progressive" group supporting Wasserman Schultz's opponent. To our mind, this suggests that the low-IQ culture called Trumpism is growing and spreading quite fast.

At present, Candidate Trump is running against an opponent he persistently describes as "Crooked Hillary." This follows his use of similar simple-minded references against his primary opponents.

Is Hillary Clinton actually "crooked?" In the end, inevitably, that's a matter of judgment.

But as a matter of political argument and reasoning, no major party nominee has ever adopted such simple-minded rhetoric as the rhetoric Trump employs when he throws darts in this manner.

The technique comes straight from the cartoon culture of Superman comic books, where Metropolis was constantly under threat from cartoonized comic book villains. Its logic comes from the low-IQ world of professional wrestling, a world with which Candidate Trump has a long association.

Candidate Obama was the first black major-party nominee. Candidate Trump will be the first major-party nominee who is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, he speaks and "reasons" exactly like such a candidate.

As the general election approaches, Candidate Trump rails against the person called "Crooked Hillary." In Florida, a progressive group now rails against "Debt Trap Debbie." As we see this rhetoric spread, we see a quantum leap in the dumbing of our nation's political discourse.

According to the creator of Dilbert, this dumbing of the public discourse explains why Trump will win in November.

Will Donald J. Trump get elected this fall? We have no way of knowing. But we do think it's a possibility, and we think Dilbert's line of reasoning is very much worth a review.

Dilbert's creator is Scott Adams; he has a background in hypnosis, which can be a handy tool. According to the Washington Post's Michael Cavna, Adams thinks Trump will win for the following reasons:

According to Dilbert, six reasons why Trump will win
1. Trump knows people are basically irrational.
2. Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.
3. By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.
4. If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”
5. With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.
6. To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics—and identity is the strongest persuader.

In his profile of Adams' thinking, Cavna briefly explains, or attempts to explain, each of those points. Cavna's explanations aren't great, but those basic points deserve full consideration.

Might we note one more basic point? Cavna is describing a process we've long discussed at this site.

This process didn't start with Candidate Trump. We've discussed the decades-long growth of this process—of this intellectual culture—within the work of the professional guild and social club still described as "the mainstream press corps."

We've endlessly described this culture in the following way:

Increasingly, facts and logic have come to play almost no role in the work of the mainstream press. Facts are no longer a part of the game. It's narrative all the way down.

Essentially, that's the culture Adams describes as he analyzes the work of Candidate Trump.

When Trump reduces the discourse to fact-free, wildly embellished accounts of the depredations of "Crooked Hillary," he is dumbing the discourse all the way down. But he's following a model which has long been established within the mainstream press corps.

"Al Gore is willing to say and do anything" isn't much different from "Crooked Hillary." But these silly, cartoonized portraits have been the basic stuff of "the mainstream press" at least from 1992 on.

Tomorrow, we'll revisit The Manchurian Candidate. For today, let's stress a few more key points:

The dumbness of this cartoon culture represents the death of the Enlightenment ideal of the democratic process. When the public discourse gets this dumb, that process has ceased to exist.

That said, it's important to understand these points:

The spread of that culture through the mainstream press has been tolerated by the liberal world every step of the way. Beyond that, the silly cartooning which Trump employs is increasingly an artifact of our own "liberal" culture.

Rachel Maddow now sells us cartoons every night of the week. She has been getting rich and famous as part of this low-IQ process.

We liberals seem to be too dumb to spot this process when it occurs within our own tents. Now we rush to play the same game, inveighing against Debt Trap Debbie.

The use of such lingo is pure Trumpism; it's Trumpism all the way down. So is the cartooning and clowning in which Maddow routinely engages.

We liberals! We can't seem to spot the Trumpism being performed within our own tribe. Have we been hypnotized in some way? Are we hypnotized all the way down?

Tomorrow: Maddow and Trump in Manchuria