MENTAL STATES: Trump draws on the crackpot "Body Count!"

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

But so did big stars before him: The inanity of our own "poor immigrant" never flags or fails.

It's his basic mental state. In the wake of Jeffrey Epstein's death, he flew his "crazy flag" high once again. We quote from today's New York Times:

He also told reporters it was simply “a retweet” when he highlighted on Twitter an unfounded conspiracy theory that suggested that Bill and Hillary Clinton...were linked to the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile. Mr. Epstein was found dead on Saturday of an apparent suicide in a federal prison in Manhattan as he awaited new charges.

“I have no idea,” Mr. Trump said, when asked whether he truly believed that the Clintons had something to do with the death of Mr. Epstein, who was once a friend of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton.

So spoke Donald J. Trump, giving voice to the broken-souled inanity which has been his political trademark ever since he started his "birther" campaign in 2011.

"That man who with his fingers cheats/Who [misstates] with every breath?" So it has gone with President Trump—but in this latest emanation, he piggybacked on a long-standing crackpot story-line, one with many previous sponsors.

The president's latest emanation draws on a decades-old narrative. It's the tale of The Clinton Body Count—the crackpot claim that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been implicated in a long line of murders.

This story-line comes to us live and direct from the realm of the nation's broken souls and misfiring brains. Right through yesterday's lunacy, the narrative has belonged to Trump this week. But it belonged to many others before him, not excluding some of our favorite upper-end liberal press corps stars.

The mental states of many people have been put on display in the course of this long, stupid episode, whose history which stretches back at least to 1994. Because it's the anthropology we seek today, we'll tick through that history quickly:

In 1994, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, one of the nation's most pious figures, began to peddle his crackpot film, The Clinton Chronicles.

There was no real Internet at that time; there were no social media. If you wanted to peddle crackpot claims, you pretty much had to go door-to-door, and that's what Falwell did.

Along other things, the Falwell-affiliated film accused Bill Clinton—he was then the American president—of drug addiction, money-laundering and international drug smuggling, all conducted through Arkansas' Mena Airport.

It also accused him of covering up the real cause of the 1993 death of Vince Foster, a long-time Clinton adviser and friend.

Foster had committed suicide, as roughly three hundred official investigations all found. But given Falwell's mental state, the story wasn't allowed to end there, as the leading authority on the crackpot film explains:

The movie helped perpetuate a conspiracy theory known as the "Clinton Body Count" about a list of associates Clinton was purported to have had killed. The Los Angeles Times reported that Larry Nichols, who appears throughout the film and is the primary source for a number of the murder and mysterious death claims, was fired from his Arkansas state government job and once admitted to an Associated Press reporter to being motivated by spite. The fact checking site TruthOrFiction.com states that "There is no credible evidence that any of the deaths is related or can be attributed to Bill Clinton."

To promote the film, Falwell aired an interview with [crackpot director Patrick] Matrisciana, who was silhouetted to conceal his identity as he pretended to be a journalist who was afraid for his life. Matrisciana later acknowledged that he was not in any danger, but that the interview was staged for dramatic effect at Falwell's suggestion.

As far as we know, this was the start of The Clinton Body Count. Also in 1994, Rush Limbaugh played a leading role in spreading the crackpot belief that Foster had actually been murdered, and that Hillary Clinton had been involved.

So it went as some of the nation's leading crackpots spread crackpot claims around. As a general matter, major news orgs glanced away, bowing to commercial and political fears or perhaps to general lassitude and dumbness.

At any rate, from 1994 on, The Clinton Body Count was a basic part of the nation's underground Crazy. Big stars of the \ upper-end press basically kept their pretty traps shut about this growing debacle.

As of 1999, no less a figure than Gennifer Flowers had decided to climb aboard the Clinton Body Count train. She was now running a for-profit web site which was built around the crazy claims about the amazing number of murders committed by Clinton and Clinton.

You can guess what happened next! In August of that year, she was rewarded with a full half-hour segment on the crackpot cable show, Hardball.

When Flowers began discussing the many murders the Clintons had caused, her host, Chris Matthews, voiced surprise at her representations. There's no way to know if Matthews was actually caught by surprise by his guest's crackpot claims, of if he was just pretending. But Flowers' performance had been so absurd that she was rewarded again, in the obvious way:

She appeared for the full hour on the crackpot show, Hannity & Colmes. In that program's standard theater, Colmes feigned occasional concern about her claims while Hannity urged her on.

As you can see if you search through our archives, we've searched and searched for any sign that any media reporter in the country took note of the craziness of these crackpot "cable news" shows in August 1999.

We were never able to find any such presentation. By this time, "craziness culture" had taken deep hold with the pundit corps.

Indeed, even as Flowers tramped around making her crackpot murder claims, the nation's most august liberal voices were hailing her as a great truth-teller with respect to the highly implausible claims she had made about her alleged "love affair" with the man she liked to describe as "my Bill."

Flowers was a visible crackpot—a peddler of body count claims. But for more than a year, she had been hailed, far and wide, as a major truth-teller. No one did this more foolishly than—who else?—Frank Rich, then a columnist for the New York Times:

RICH (3/21/98): We now know that the Clintons also got away with exceedingly disingenuous image-mongering in their famous '92 appearance on [60 Minutes], during which the soon-to-be President responded to a question about a 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers by saying "That allegation is false." This year, in a sworn deposition, Mr. Clinton conceded having an affair with her, disputing only its duration.

Clinton had "conceded having an affair with Flowers, disputing only its duration?" In her ridiculous book, Passion and Betrayal, Flowers had claimed a torrid, 12-year love affair with her Bill. In his deposition, Clinton had confessed to one brief sexual interaction with Flowers, not involving intercourse.

Flowers said "the duration" had been twelve years; Clinton said it had been ten minutes. To Rich, this established Flowers as "the only female Presidential accuser we now know for certain to be telling the truth"—and as that year of impeachment wound on, Flowers was increasingly treated as a great truth-teller by major mainstream pundits.

One year later, their crackpot heroine was parading about on cable news promoting the Body Count. This is the basic shape of the long-running tale to which Donald J. Trump returned in the immediate aftermath of Jeffrey Epstein's death.

Within the world of crackpot culture, the notion that the Clintons murdered many people has festered and stewed for decades. As a general matter, the finer people and the finer news orgs simply chose to look away as this crackpot story gained purchase.

In various ways, finer people like Matthews and Rich helped establish this crackpot tale and its various offshoots. In the late 1990s, Geraldo Rivera, then a pro-Clinton, liberal cable news host, welcomed Falwell back into the realm of respected observers in spite of his years of crazy claims about those many murders.

Trump drew upon the body count in his latest assault on the nation's mental state. It's entirely possible that this particular long-running slander explains why he was able to edge past the widely reviled Hillary Clinton and find his way into the White House.

In the days before Epstein's death, Trump's behavior after the El Paso shootings had David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan describing hims as a sociopath. It may be that this correctly describes his mental state and explains his endless weird conduct.

That said, Trump is simply the craziest big player yet; many others came before him over the past thirty years. Major upper-end mainstream stars have displayed their own peculiar mental states as the nation has gone into headlong decline.

From March 1999 through 2008, Matthews was a leading example of the phenomenon known as "Trump before Trump." Other stars were unable to notice this fact, or they simply refused to speak up.

Is man [sic] really "the rational animal?" Or is some other basic framework more apt?

We think it's time for a new anthropology built around that basic question. That said, top anthropologists despondently tell us that any such reevaluation will be too little, too late.

Tomorrow: Some things we liberals believe

People in their tribe hear about this!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019

People in our tribe don't: Michael Brown was shot and killed on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

Four days ago, Candidate Harris posted this tweet:

“Michael Brown’s murder forever changed Ferguson and America. His tragic death sparked a desperately needed conversation and a nationwide movement. We must fight for stronger accountability and racial equity in our justice system.”

Harris remembered Brown's murder. Not long after, so did Candidate Warren:

“5 years ago Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael was unarmed yet he was shot 6 times. I stand with activists and organizers who continue the fight for justice for Michael. We must confront systemic racism and police violence head on.”

Here's the problem. The official Justice Department investigation found that Brown wasn't "murdered." Rightly or wrongly, the official report said that Officer Darren Wilson was justified in every shot he fired that day, due to Brown's threatening conduct.

That probe was conducted by the Justice Department of Barack Obama. The finding was explicitly endorsed by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Our liberal tribe was rarely told about the DOJ's findings. Presumably, though, Harris and Warren are familiar with the basic facts as the DOJ described them.

They proceeded with their tweets anyway, thereby endorsing tribal order and "Trumping" the tribal base. Or maybe they really don't know!

At the Washington Post Fact-Checker site, the candidates have been awarded four Pinocchios each. The Post's report is rich in detail about what happened in Ferguson that day.

We heard about this last night on Fox. Fox viewers are told about things like this, but "gaffes" of this type are withheld from us. We'll have more on matters like this a bit later on in the week.

Our question: Are we really the rational animal? Or are we perhaps more heavily tribal, wired to run on group fictions?

MENTAL STATES: Donald J. Trump let his crazy flag fly!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019

But so did everyone else: Is it even possible that Jeffrey Epstein actually killed himself?

After Epstein's death was announced, stampeding minds wanted to say and suggest that the answer just had to be no. But in this morning's editions, dear God:

In this morning's editions, the New York Times breaks every rule in the book. It publishes a letter from a specialist—from a person who actually seems to know what he's talking about!

We can't vouch for what the writer says. But if true, his statements are highly relevant concerning one of the topics which quickly swirled all around:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (8/13/19): The death by hanging of Jeffrey Epstein while in federal custody may have been preventable, but not by closer monitoring. By protocol Mr. Epstein was supposed to be checked every 30 minutes, but reportedly was not.

Although it is a standard protocol for inmates and inpatients deemed to be at suicide risk, close monitoring by observers every 30 minutes, or more typically every 15 minutes, cannot prevent a death by asphyxiation that takes a mere four to six minutes to occur. Studies have documented that a large percentage of individuals who died by suicide in institutional care (36 percent in one study, 51 percent in another) were on 15-minute checks or even one-to-one observation at the time of death.

Many suicides are preventable by a variety of other methods, but not by close or frequent monitoring.

LANNY BERMAN, CHEVY CHASE, MD.
The writer is past president of the American Association of Suicidology.

According to Berman, that 30-minute monitoring regime can't, and frequently doesn't, prevent suicides in these prison settings.

Berman's letter doesn't address every question which has arisen in the wake of Epstein's death. But he seems to know what he's talking about, and his letter does address one part of the puzzle.

Sadly but typically, Berman's letter plays third fiddle in this morning's Times. It appears beneath two other letters—letters which are perhaps a bit more "conspiratorial" in their outlook and tone.

At the top of its hard-copy letters page, the Times has published four letters under this heading: "Questions Raised by Epstein's Death." For unknown reasons, this is the letter the Times chose to place at the top of the page—the letter it chose to highlight:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (8/13/19): The death of Jeffrey Epstein is stirring up conspiracy theories on a vast scale. Consider the rich and powerful people, often of dubious character, who surrounded him; his inexplicable path to wealth and social connections; the strange miscarriage of justice in his 2008 nonprosecution agreement in Florida; the odd circumstances of his conveniently timed death; an attorney general tainted by unseemly fealty to President Trump in charge of investigation; and the countless sexually exploited children that touch all aspects of his story.

Any official conclusion is doomed to be unsatisfactory. You needn’t be paranoid, or subscribe to implausible scenarios, to believe that some people will escape justice and that the public will never know the full truth.

J— F—
PROVIDENCE, R.I.

This overwrought writer already seems sure that we the people "will never know the full truth" about the matters at hand.

Also, some people will escape justice! You don't have to be paranoid to leap to such conclusions, he says.

The second letter on the pile also tilts toward the joys of prejudgment. The writer puts scare quotes around the word "mistake," and he's quick to advance the pleasing idea that this was all William Barr's fault:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (8/13/19): Six days after his first suicide attempt, Jeffrey Epstein was “taken off the suicide watch for reasons that remained unclear on Saturday.” For one of the largest pedophile cases in history involving high-profile politicians and individuals of enormous wealth and power, this “mistake” is an insult to the victims, the public and the justice system of the United States. This is the ultimate in corruption at the highest levels of law enforcement, and if Attorney General William P. Barr is so “appalled to learn” about Mr. Epstein’s death in federal custody, why didn’t he do his job to make sure this never happened?

There has to be a thorough investigation that confirms that this was in fact a suicide by hanging, and not another nefarious event that has surrounded the Epstein criminal case from the beginning. The investigation must continue against him and his co-conspirators even if he did take the easy way out.

P— T— C—
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.

This writer asks a sensible question—why was Epstein taken off official "suicide watch," a regime which is much more stringent than the mere twice-hourly look-in. But instead of simply asking his question, he suggests that this was no mere "mistake," and he pleasingly singles out Barr.

This is the way the New York Times plays, at least on today's letters page, in the matter of Epstein's death. The paper starts with a pair of excited, know-nothing letters which shouldn't have been published at all. Only then do we see a letter from someone who seems to have something of value to offer—some actual information about one of the matters at hand.

Inside the paper, we actually move beyond speculation and excitement. A news report offers remarkable background information about the operation of the federal prison where Epstein died.

Ridiculously, the report is buried on page A17, inside the (local) New York section. Those excited letters were given a much more visible platform than this remarkable news report.

Why does the Epstein case seem to involved bad decision-making and procedures observed in the breach? Like those excited letter writers, we can't answer such questions at this point—but the information in this news report is stark and illuminating:

WATKINS, BENNER AND IVORY (8/13/19): One of the two people guarding Jeffrey Epstein when he apparently hanged himself in a federal jail cell was not a full-fledged correctional officer, and neither guard had checked on Mr. Epstein for several hours before he was discovered, prison and law-enforcement officials said.

[...]

No correctional officer had checked on Mr. Epstein for several hours before he was found, even though guards were supposed to look in on prisoners in the protective unit where he was housed every half-hour, a prison official and two law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the detention said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

In addition, only one of the two people guarding the Special Housing Unit—known as 9 South—normally worked as a correctional officer, according to three prison officials with knowledge of the case. The officials did not say what sort of job the other employee usually worked.

A New York Times investigation published last year detailed this practice, under which federal prisons are so strapped for correctional officers that they regularly compel teachers, nurses, secretaries and other support staff members to step in. The practice has grown at some prisons as the Trump administration has curtailed the hiring of correctional officers.

Many of these staff members only receive a few weeks’ training in correctional work, and, while required by contract to serve as substitutes, are often uncomfortable in the roles. Even workers who previously held correctional positions have said that the practice was unsettling because fewer colleagues were on hand to provide backup if things turned ugly.

[...]

Union officials said that for more than a year officials in Washington had been made aware of a severe staffing shortage at the facility in the wake of a federal hiring freeze. One of the guards on the unit where Mr. Epstein died had been working overtime for five straight days, while the other had been forced to work overtime that day, a union official said.

Why wasn't the 30-minute protocol followed by the two guards on duty?

Try this: One of the "guards" on duty that night wasn't an actual guard! He or she may have been a nurse or a secretary—one who'd been forced to work overtime in a position for which he or she lacked training.

Meanwhile, the guard who was an actual guard was working overtime for the fifth consecutive day (and night)!

Were either of these staffers awake when they should have been checking on Epstein? In this report in The Daily Beast, a union official describes the astonishing lay of the land:

DALY (8/12/19): “Things just didn’t change,” Serene Gregg, president of AFGE Local 3148, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “They just do not have enough officers in the facility.”

[...]

Gregg reported that officers often complete a double shift totaling 16 hours only to find that their relief has not yet arrived. They then have to work another hour or two, for a total of 17 or even 18.

“That is our normal,” she said.

Anybody who refuses what is termed “mandatory overtime” faces disciplinary action, whatever their responsibilities at home.

“You’re choosing to feed your family,” Gregg said.

She added, “At some point, people are going to break.”

She noted that fatigued officers have had traffic accidents coming to and from work. Sometimes they get off duty with so little time before the next shift that it does not make sense to go home only to turn around.

“We have employees who sleep in their cars,” she said.

Gregg is describing an astounding state of affairs. But so it went as two "guards" failed to keep their appointed rounds on the night Epstein died—and here's an additional question:

Do you feel sure that the official who took Epstein off suicide watch was qualified to make such judgments? Do you feel sure that that official was both alert and awake?

Michael Daly's report in The Daily Beast gets worse as it continues. With regard to the New York Times, it's amazing that the report we've quoted was buried inside the (local) New York section, while the high-profile Letters page opened with a pair of know-nothing missives from a pair of excitable readers.

Donald J. Trump let his crazy flag fly in the immediate wake of Epstein's death. He returned to "The Clinton Body Count," a place where many mainstream journalists have lingered down through the long, destructive years.

Those years ended with a person in the Oval who seems to be out of his mind. We'll review the history of that craziness tomorrow.

For today, we'll link you to another report in this morning's Times—a report in which a wide array of mainstream and liberal figures let their freak flags fly, raising obvious questions about their mental states.

Professor Tribe lets his freak flag fly; so does Rep. Al Green, advocate of impeachment. Mayor de Blasio is way out over his skis. So, of course, is Joe Scarborough, though he's still saying he isn't.

This report was also buried in the (local) New York section. It really belongs in today's Science Times, under a heading marked Anthropology—Mental States of the Human Race.

Aristotle is said to have said it: "Man [sic] is the rational animal." In a similar vein, "The American people are pretty sharp," star pundits constantly tell us.

Donald J. Trump went crazy again in the wake of Epstein's death—but the Clinton Body Count has been with us forever. Tomorrow, we'll review the history of that affair, which involves the pitiful mental states of top liberal stars.

We'll suggest again that it's long past time to experiment with the possibility of seeing the duck as a rabbit—to rethink the basic mental culture of our floundering human race.

Tomorrow: Trump is just the latest nutcase to play this crackpot game

Is Donald J. Trump a racist race-baiter?

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2019

We largely agree with Drum: Is Donald J. Trump a racist? A white supremacist? A race-baiter?

Kevin Drum says that he would go with the last of those three terms. In general, we'd agree with where Drum ends up, but we slightly disagree with a few points along the way.

More than anything else, we're inclined to say that Donald J. Trump seems to be mentally ill. We'd also agree that he seems to be a fairly obvious race-baiter—though we'd hasten to add that Trump's 63 million voters may not see his conduct that way.

Drum says he'd choose the "race-baiter" label over the other two terms. Along the way, he offers these definitions:

DRUM (8/12/19): A white supremacist is someone who believes as an ideology that the white race is inherently superior to and should dominate all other races. Adolf Hitler was a white supremacist. Jefferson Davis was a white supremacist. For that matter, pretty much everyone in Europe (or descended from European stock) before about 1900 was a white supremacist.

A racist is someone who believes different races have different inherent abilities but doesn’t have any consistent ideology to back it up. They just don’t like folks from other tribes (and they do like being top dog).

A race-baiter is someone who may or may not be personally racist but is perfectly happy to make money or win political office by appealing to racists.

We'd be inclined to disagree with that account of what "a racist" is. In truth, we think the term has been applied so promiscuously in recent years that it has largely ceased to have any meaning at all.

In our view, the term has become a largely meaningless tribal insult. As a general manner, Trump supporters simply roll their eyes at this point when they see us dropping this bomb.

Tucker Carlson gets plenty of segments from our tribe's love of instant invective. We're forced to say that, in many of these dismissive segments, Carlson's dismissive attitude isn't entirely wrong.

(Did you hear the one about AOC's chief of staff saying, among other remarkable things, that moderate House Democrats "seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s?" AOC showed him the door last week, but that's how extreme our dumbness can get when we deploy our bombs.)

In our view, our own tribe's love of instant invective has helped establish Gene Brabender as one of the greatest anthropologists of the post-war era. AS if in an outtake from Being There, the "Brabender doctrine" is this:

"Where I come from, we just talk for a little while. After that we start to hit."

So said Brabender, long ago, as quoted in the iconic book, Ball Four. This has largely become the way our own modern tribe plays.

Drum says he "definitely wouldn't call Trump a white supremacist." Presumably, he doesn't feel he has any evidence that Donald J. Trump actually believes the things a supremacist does.

We'll go one step beyond that. We wouldn't swear that Donald J. Trump has any beliefs at all.

We're inclined to agree with the diagnosis offered by Doctors Brooks and Sullivan last Friday. We'd guess that Trump is something resembling a "sociopath"—that he's a person with no particular beliefs or feelings at all.

"I probably wouldn’t call Trump a racist," Drum says. "I know I’m out of sync with leftist orthodoxy on this, but words and phrases have actual meanings and I think language works better when we respect their differences."

Words and phrases have actual meanings? We should respect their differences? How does someone as bright as Drum retain such old world beliefs?

A final question: What do various Trump voters think about these matters? We'd like to see cable hosts ask.

That said, modern cable news is a propaganda medium. In line with the search for corporate gain, such buzzkill just isn't allowed.

MENTAL STATES: Is Donald J. Trump a sociopath?

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2019

Inquiring minds don't want to know: Last Friday might, on the PBS NewsHour, David Brooks broke an embargo.

Brooks was participating in the program's regular Friday night "Brooks and Shields" pundit segment, with Capehart posing as Shields. At one point, moderator Anna Nawaz asked about Donald J. Trump's visit to El Paso, which had occurred two days before.

Nawaz fashioned a somewhat open-ended, somewhat fuzzy question. In his reply, Brooks sinned against a long-standing press corps rule:

NAWAZ (8/9/19): David, how do you look at this, really? He's such a divisive figure anyway. There is the standard of the "consoler-in-chief." He hasn't done it yet. It's not who he is, right?

BROOKS: Yes. Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit, where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, you know, "The Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?"

And I look at that photo, I think, "Well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy...

For transcript and tape, click here.

Brooks continued on from there; we'll post his full answer below. But he'd broken a basic press corps rule. He'd seemed to say that Donald J. Trump is in the grip of a serious psychiatric disorder.

Is Donald J. Trump a sociopath? As far as we know, "sociopathy" isn't sanctioned as a diagnostic term within modern psychiatry. That said, we've seen few discussions of such matters, because such discussions aren't permitted by the largely unspoken rules of our upper-end press corps establishment.

As far as we know, you can't get diagnosed as a "sociopath" by a sanctioned psychiatrist. That said, the term is in widespread informal use. The experts at Psychology Today explain the matter like this:

Sociopathy is an informal term that refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulative and deceitful behavior, often arising from environmental factors. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), sociopathy is most closely represented by Antisocial Personality Disorder. It is important to note that sociopathy is not a formal diagnosis, but is often invoked in discussing people who are on the antisocial spectrum, those who generally display callous behavior with little regard for others.

That's what Brooks was talking about—and he wasn't alone this day. At New York magazine, Andrew Sullivan had already broken the very same rules, in the following way:

SULLIVAN (8/9/19): [S]omehow, at 73, Trump’s psychological sickness gives him an edge: a gob-smacking drive to keep going and going and going, with no signs of flagging at all, and many signs of mania. Who in their 70s is crazy enough to keep up? Even as he claimed he was seeking healing and unity this week, Trump was still tweeting insults, filming a shameless campaign video, and comparing crowd sizes with Beto O’Rourke’s. The sheer sociopathic narcissism in the face of such grief and trauma beggars belief.

Looking at Trump that very same day, Sullivan saw a "sociopathic narcissism" in the chief executive's conduct. He saw a "psychological sickness" featuring "many signs of mania."

In offering these assessments, Brooks and Sullivan were breaking the rules. Ever since the 1960s, the press corps has, in theory if not always in practice, adhered to the so-called Goldwater Rule, which said that political journalism should avoid psychiatric diagnosis.

In theory, the Goldwater Rule has held sway. It's a very good journalistic rule—until you have a commander in chief who seems to be mentally ill. Inevitably, though, it happened:

In January 2018, the New York Times editorial board decreed that the press should continue adhering to the Goldwater Rule in the case of President Trump. Inevitably, the children fell in line. Speculations about the president's health have been conducted by samizdat from that time to this.

Bandy X. Lee was disappeared. Pundits agreed to be "shocked shocked," day after day after day after day, by the latest crazy thing the commander in chief had most recently said.

Brooks and Sullivan broke that embargo last week. They dared to voice their speculations about the commander in chief's mental state.

That said, peculiar mental states have been on display, for decades now, across the American landscape. You have the peculiar mental states displayed by the stars of the upper-end press. Beyond that, you have the peculiar mental states displayed within the American public—by wide ranges of people within both major tribes, the blue as well as the red.

We in the west have long adhered to the comically self-flattering "rational animal" framework. We insist on seeing ourselves as fundamentally rational players.

We're persistently shocked, and puzzled, by departures from this preconceived norm. "The American people are pretty sharp," major pundits have constantly told us.

It's long past time when we should be discussing Donald Trump's mental state. We could start by letting Dr. Lee return from the re-education camp to which she was frog-marched away.

As the week proceeds, we'll also discuss the metal states of the mainstream press—and even of us over here within our own self-impressed tribe. We'll suggest the radical move which lies at the heart of what is now being called The New Retroactive Anthropology, though only by top experts who live in a dystopian future:

We'll suggest a move which will break all the rules. We'll suggest that we experiment with seeing that famous duck-rabbit in the less flattering way.

Tomorrow: Return of the Clintons most foul

The fuller assessment: Brooks made a fuller statement about Trump. This was his fuller assessment:

BROOKS (8/9/19): Yes. Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit, where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, you know, "The Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?"

And I look at that photo, I think, "Well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved, and made himself unlovable, and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler-in-chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range. And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.

To Brooks, Donald J. Trump is unloved, and has made himself unlovable. Our questions:

Following Dylan, should we "pity the poor immigrant" in this case? Or should we continue to call him those names?

Compare and contrast. Discuss. You each get 15 seconds.

In Jackson, Mississippi, a young child speaks!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2019

Also, Cather's "immigrant girls:" Willa Cather's My Antonia describes the experiences of immigrant families in the Nebraska of the 1880s (and beyond).

She focuses on the girls and women within these immigrant families. These families often, though not always, encounter the distancing, disregard and disdain experienced by newcomers at all times in all parts of the world.

Part of the greatness of Cather's book lies in the unembarrassed way it describes conventional female beauty. It manages to does this without engaging in leering.

Meanwhile, how odd, given the modern American context! Some of the immigrant girls described in the book are among the "whitest" people found anywhere on the face of the earth.

The immigrants in this book are often extremely "white." In this passage from My Antonia, Cather's narrator describes "the Danish laundry girls:"

The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in their house behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hung out to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his girls well, looked out for them, and gave them a good home...His girls never looked so pretty at the dances as they did standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the fine pieces, their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat and curling in little damp spirals about their ears. They had not learned much English, and were not so ambitious as [Antonia] or Lena; but they were kind, simple girls and they were always happy.

Cather seems to have been a woman who loved other women. She reinvented herself as a man in the person of her narrator, Jim Burden—a male narrator who is mysteriously able to describe the physical beauty of the immigrant girls without tilting toward the more conventional "locker room talk."

Earlier, Burden has described the Danish girls in the manner shown below. In this passage, he describes the threat the vibrant immigrant girls, Scandinavian and Bohemian alike, presented to the existing order in their small Nebraska town:

The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background...

Our young man of position was like the son of a royal house; the boy who swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon might frolic with the jolly country girls, but he himself must sit all evening in a plush parlour where conversation dragged so perceptibly that the father often came in and made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere. On his way home from his dull call, he would perhaps meet [Antonia] and Lena, coming along the sidewalk whispering to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that only made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a travelling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats and their pink cheeks.

The four Danish girls were immigrant girls, but along with "Norwegian Anna" and Tiny Soderball (a Swede), they were extremely "white," not "brown."

The four Danish girls were "white!" Despite this somewhat nebulous fact, they were sometimes viewed by their native-born neighbors in the way Burden describes in this passage:

I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard’s grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn’t speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Antonia’s father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all ‘hired girls.’

Burden goes on to exult at the ultimate success of these immigrant girls and their families. "I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own, and I have," he says. "To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses."

It's the oldest girls in these immigrant families whom Burden most admires. In this passage, he describes the challenging circumstance which gave them their moral greatness:

Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had got little schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters, for whom they made such sacrifices and who have had ‘advantages,’ never seem to me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated. The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so much from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all, like Antonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new.

I can remember a score of these country girls who were in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.

The older girls had assumed the burden of helping their families emerge from crushing debt. In Burden's eyes, they stood apart from their younger, more advantaged siblings because they had learned so much "from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers."

"Physically they were almost a race apart," Burden says. Later, he describes Antonia Shimerda Cuzak, the eldest girl in a Bohemian immigrant family, as "a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races."

We've thought of these passages as we've watched an 11-year-old girl in Jackson, Mississippi crying bitter tears in the past day or two, in this case for her mother and her father.

English seems to be her second language; this makes her eloquence much more apparent. It's easy to see her heart and mind struggling to give voice to her soul as she assures us, among many other things, that her father isn't a criminal:

"Government, please put your heart—let my parents be free with everybody else, please...My dad didn't do nothing. He's not a criminal."

"The Hispanic people aren't doing nothing bad," this apparent immigrant girl says at another point. "They aren't stealing nothing. The immigrants just want jobs inside the company."

For fairly extensive videotape, you can just click here.

This immigrant girl is extremely eloquent in her second language. Just for the record, her family is here because both major parties have wanted them here, as have major business interests. Her parents were hired, and have now been arrested, as part of an ongoing upper-end scam.

"Purity of heart is to will one thing?" As with Black Hawk's oldest immigrant girls, so too here. The nation had a lot to gain from the purity of heart Cather described. So too from the "conspicuous" purity of heart on display as that young girl speaks.

Jackson, Mississippi is full of great kids! We "liberals" might make out better in life if we try to help people understand that important human fact, as opposed to doing what we instinctively prefer—as opposed to casting about for new, improved ways to call The Others names:

Deplorables? Racists? White supremacists? According to major top anthropologists, the instinct to disdain and insult the other tribe is deeply bred in the bone.

We humans are strongly inclined to regard others with disdain. Some will call Hispanics names. We liberals are wired to do the same with those people, the Trump voters.

Are we like the racists, or do we differ? Like President Johnson way back when, we can "teach it flat or round."

Is Donald J. Trump a white supremacist?

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019

The Times tries to puzzle it out: If someone asked us if we think that Donald J. Trump is a white supremacist, we know how we would answer.

The exchange would start as shown below. We don't know what would come next:

QUESTION: Do you think Donald J. Trump is a white supremacist?

ANSWER: We're not sure what you mean. What does a person have to do, or have to believe, to be a white supremacist?

We don't know where the exchange would go from there. But that's the way it would start.

This morning, the New York Times asked a new fact-check team to fact-check a variant of this question. We were struck by the sad-sack way they proceeded.

Taylor and Rueb are the new fact-checkers. They worked, somewhat loosely, from recent remarks by Tucker Carlson. But the first of their four fact-checks went exactly like this:

RUEB AND TAYLOR (8/9/19): WHAT MR. CARLSON SAID:

"[President Trump] never endorsed white supremacy, or came close to endorsing white supremacy. That’s just a lie."

In a speech on Monday, after the attacks in Texas and Ohio, Mr. Trump cited the threat of “racist hate” and denounced white supremacy.

“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”

Despite that call for unity, Mr. Trump’s critics say he is responsible for the rise in racial division in the country. Among their examples: his false claims that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States; his campaign statement that Mexican immigrants were “rapists”; his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a clash between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.; and, most notably, his recent tweets saying four minority congresswomen should “go back” to their countries. (All are United States citizens, and three of them were born in America.)

There you see the team's first fact-check of Carlson. Trump has "never endorsed white supremacy," Carlson recently said. In theory, Taylor and Rueb were fact-checking that statement by Carlson.

How did they fact-check Carlson's claim? This is what they did:

First, they spent two paragraphs quoting recent statements in which Trump denounced white supremacy. They never offered any statement in which Trump has endorsed this point of view or belief.

After that, they offered a longer paragraph, reporting that Trump's critics "say he is responsible for the rise in racial division in the country." It isn't especially hard to agree with Trump's critics on that point. But is that supposed to mean that he is a white supremacist? Taylor and Rueb didn't say.

Included in the incidents cited by Taylor and Rueb is a somewhat shaky account of Trump's famous statement about those “very fine people on both sides" of whatever it is he was talking about in the several days of chaos in Charlottesville. Just for what used to be known as the record, Trump explicitly said that he condemned white nationalists at several points during the post-Charlottesville press conference from which the quote is taken.

So there you have the fact-check! In fairness, it's hard to say that Taylor and Rueb ever quoted Donald J. Trump endorsing white supremacy. No one forced Taylor and Rueb to examine that particular statement by Carlson. But does the lack of contradiction mean that we're supposed to regard Carlson's statement as true?

A bit of background:

Many tribals became upset this week about a front-page New York Times headline. Many people thought, not unreasonably, that the headline gave a remarkably simple-minded account of a situation which was much more complex.

That said, the Times has been doing such work for decades. The Times often seems more like a fatuous upper-class social club than like a serious, competent newspaper.

The paper employs about three million writers. Again and again and again and again, they don't seem able to analyze or reezun reel gud. There are also some exceptions.

We pondered this state of affairs for the ten millionth times as we read this morning's fact-check. The work seemed under-cooked all the way through—but then, the work appeared in the New York Times, and they've functioned this way forever.

They graduate from the finest schools, then end up doing work like this. Our systems are failing from the top down. The Hamptons-based Times is an excellent place to see this process in action.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR: We human beings don't reezun reel gud!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019

Maddow limns mental health: Simply put, we human beings just don't reezun reel gud.

As one example among at least several, consider what happened when Albert Einstein wrote his own "Einstein made easy" book, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

The 87-page book appeared in 1916. At age 37, Einstein was already famous as the greatest genius since Newton.

A publisher suggested that he write a short book which would make his theory of relativity accessible to us general readers. To this day, the book which emerged is almost wholly incoherent, though Penguin describes it like this:

"An accessible version of Einstein’s masterpiece of theory, written by the genius himself."

We tried to reread the book up in Maine two weeks back, but abandoned the project as essentially pointless at this particular time.

Everyone agrees that Einstein was a genius, but his skills only extended so far. Nothing about his accessible book is actually accessible to general readers.

A century later, Penguin still doesn't seem aware of that fact, and neither is anyone else.

Though Einstein was an acknowledged genius, he didn't seem to possess the skills which lead to clear "popular writing." In his sprawling biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson tells the comical story of the way this allegedly accessible book came to be so incoherent:

ISAACSON (page 232): [In 1916], he produced an even more understandable version—a book for the lay reader, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. To make sure that the average person would fathom it, he read every page out loud to Elsa's daughter, Margot, pausing frequently to ask whether she indeed got it. "Yes, Albert," she invariably replied, even though (as she confided to others) she found the whole thing totally baffling.

Elsa was Einstein's cousin (later his wife). Margot was her 16-year-old daughter.

Margot was too much in awe of her Uncle Albert to tell him that she found his book baffling. Presumably, this helps explain the book's incoherence.

Einstein's Einstein-made-easy book isn't easy at all! But to this very day, Penguin apparently hasn't heard, and even as he tells this story, Isaacson tells us how "understandable" the resulting text actually was.

Einstein was one of human history's greatest geniuses—but his intellectual skill set only extended so far. This seems to bode ill for the rest of us humans. Consider the missive which tops this morning's letters page in the Washington Post:

LETTER TO THE WASHINGTON POST (8/9/19): Regarding the Aug. 6 front-page article “Trump condemns bigotry, not guns”:

Mass shootings in the United States tend to be committed by young, white men. Republican members of Congress and the president continue to talk about mental illness as the cause for such violence. But mental illness is more or less evenly distributed in the population as a whole. Few women and few people of color become mass shooters. There must be other reasons that young white men commit these mass shootings.

We need to call these acts what they are: domestic terrorism resulting from ascendant white nationalism. Our elected leaders have the duty to employ effective strategies. One of those strategies may, indeed, include control of high-capacity magazines and some weapons. The Second Amendment is fundamental, but it is not absolute.

This letter is an example of tribal dogma on the march. The writer doesn't seem to want to hear any talk about the possible role of mental illness in our endless mass shootings.

Instead, she seems to want to hear talk about "domestic terrorism resulting from ascendant white nationalism." She seems to want us to describe mass shootings that way. It seems that she doesn't want to hear anything else.

Statements like these have been quite common in the past four days. They exist in reaction to Donald J. Trump's claim that mental illness plays a role, perhaps a major role, in gruesome events of this type.

What role does, or might, mental illness play in our endless mass shootings? We can't answer that question in any serious way.

We can note the zeal with which the writer wants to eliminate any such idea, an idea she tracks to "Republican members of Congress and the president." In other words, she tracks that idea to the Others, to those in The Other Tribe.

How eager is this writer to banish all talk which comes from people like Them? How eager is the Washington Post to help spread her advice?

This eager! Her claim about the racial demographics of mass shooters seems to be wrong, but the Post ran her letter, and her claim, right at the top of its letters page. And might we make the following point?

Of the two mass shootings last weekend which have sparked the current pseudo-discussion, one of them—the mass shooting in Dayton—seems to have no connection to "domestic terrorism resulting from ascendant white nationalism" at all.

Is the following possible? Is it possible that white nationalism plays a role in some mass shootings, with mental illness playing a role in some others? Is it possible that mental illness and white nationalism could be commingled in some of these ghastly events?

Actually, no, that isn't possible—not in the current circumstance! According to the top anthropologists who report to us from the future through the mysterious nocturnal transmissions the haters glibly refer to as dreams, all hints of nuance would be disappeared whenever our floundering species, Homo sapiens, attempted to declaim its way through the types of events which defined tribal division during such highly fraught eras as this one.

"Simply put, the species was wired that way," these top future experts despondently say, gloomily speaking in the past tense, the troubling framework they constantly use when discussing the ways of our species.

Does mental illness play a role in our endless mass shootings? You'd almost think we'd want to know, but as soon as Mister Trump played the illness card this Monday, a furious push-back emerged from within our own unimpressive tribe.

Facts and logic disappeared as we tried to banish The Unacceptable Thing He Had Said. Consider the logic Our Own Rhodes Scholar spoon-fed us liberals this Tuesday.

The scholar seemed eager to banish ThumpThought. Midway through her eponymous TV show, she emerged from COMMERCIAL BREAK in the following manner:

MADDOW (8/6/19): In the aftermath of this weekend's mass shootings, the talking-point from President Trump and many Republicans, their central message, has been that the issue is not guns but mental illness. The president saying it's not guns that pull the trigger, it's mental illness that pulls the trigger.

Forgive me for saying this bluntly, but that's bull-pucky, and we can all prove it.

She could have quoted Trump precisely, but she didn't bother. She was eager to "prove" that the murky statement she attributed to the king of the Others was, in fact, "bull-pucky," just as she had now claimed.

The scholar proceeded to "prove" her point in the following manner:

MADDOW (continuing directly): First, obviously, we as a country do not have a monopoly on mental illness, and yet only in America do mass shootings happen anywhere near this often. Beyond that, though, all of the studies, all of the research, disproves the notion that mental illness is the thing you should blame for mass shootings in America.

Only a tiny fraction of violent crime is committed by people with mental illness. People who are mentally ill are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than its perpetrators. So claiming this is a mental illness problem that explains what's going on in America with gun violence is bull.

As you can see, the logical leaps in the scholar's short statement are remarkably numerous. We'll restrict ourselves to just one of her many full-gainers:

"All of the studies, all of the research, disproves the notion that mental illness is the thing you should blame for mass shootings in America?"

So said the massively overpaid scholar. But how about if mental illness is one of the things you should "blame" for mass shootings?

Just for the record, whoo but a child would instantly turn to the language of blame? More to the point, who but a child would instantly suggest that we should engage in a search for one lone causal factor?

If you want to read the fuller transcript, you'll see the scholar rush forward from there to the claim that "Republican lawmakers do not mean it and are not serious about this supposed problem of guns in the hands of the mentally ill." It's there that you see her essential stance, in which she reduces this to a battle between two tribal groups.

As always, so too here:

If the Others have said it, it has to be wrong. It has to be banished from discourse.

Einstein was one of the most brilliant people in all of human history. It's also true that he wrote a barely coherent book.

Maddow is a trillionaire corporate-paid true believer. On the whole, our species is extremely tribal and isn't especially "rational" or bright.

At times like these, the bull[shit] flows! And if Einstein thought his book made good clear sense, what hope is there for us?

"The horror, the horror," Conrad's Kurtz said. Not to be gloomy, but given the way the rest of us function, is there any chance our own Samson will exit the Oval without tearing some large pillars down?

Elizabeth Warren really takes it to Trump!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019

Draws even with Beto O'Rourke: Candidate Warren really took it to Donald J. Trump today.

According to the New York Times, she said that yes, he is a white supremacist. According to the Times, this brings her even with Candidate O'Rourke.

She said he is a white supremacist. She then explained why she says that:

KAPLAN (8/8/19): “He has given aid and comfort to white supremacists,” Ms. Warren said during a campaign swing in western Iowa. “He’s done the wink and a nod. He has talked about white supremacists as fine people. He’s done everything he can to stir up racial conflict and hatred in this country.”

"He has talked about white supremacists as fine people." Our team enjoys such claims.

Just for what was, at one time, naively described as "the record," Trump said this, among other things, at the Trump Tower press event on the day to which Warren refers:

"And you had people—and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally."

Trump said that, and several things like it, in the exchanges that day. We offer that for the sake of what was once known as "the record."

Especially at tribalized times like these, many things you hear again and again are embellished, novelized tales. That's true of things you hear on Fox. It's true of a few of the favorite things you hear over here in our tribe.

We regard Donald J. Trump as disordered and dangerous. We regard our floundering species as heavily fiction-based and reflexively tribal.

We split into tribes and create favored tales. That's just basic anthropology, almost all the way down.

Another basic example: To hear John McWhorter discuss the shooting of Michael Brown, you can just click here.

He speaks with Slate's Mary Harris. To read the transcript of their discussion, you can just click this.

THE VIOLENT URGES, THE TUMOR: The modern history starts with Charles Whitman!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019

Was he "mentally ill?" By most reckonings, the modern history of mass shootings starts on August 1, 1966.

This history starts with Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old engineering student at the University of Texas. Whitman stabbed his mother and his wife to death, then shot and killed thirteen people from the observation deck of that university's Main Building tower.

Eventually, Whitman was shot and killed that day by an Austin policeman. The modern history of mass shootings essentially starts with his astonishing acts.

Was Whitman suffering from some form of "mental illness?" The leading authority on these events offers this capsule account:

In the months prior to the attack, Whitman had sought professional help for "overwhelming, violent impulses," including fantasies about shooting people from the tower. An autopsy conducted after his death revealed a hypothalamic tumor.

Governor Connally commissioned a task force to study these astounding events, which seemed especially shocking due to the lack of recent precedent. In part, these judgments were offered in the commission's report:

Psychiatric contributors to the report concluded that "the relationship between the brain tumor and [...] Whitman's actions [...] cannot be established with clarity. However, the [...] tumor conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions," while the neurologists and neuropathologists concluded: "The application of existing knowledge of organic brain function does not enable us to explain the actions of Whitman on August first."

Forensic investigators have theorized that the tumor pressed against Whitman's amygdala, a part of the brain related to anxiety and fight-or-flight responses.

Why did Whitman do what he did? Beyond that, what explains the disturbing ideation for which he sought professional help in the months before his disastrous actions?

We can't answer those questions. Meanwhile, how about another pair of questions:

Had Whitman been suffering from some form of "mental illness?" Would catastrophic effects of a tumor be categorized in that way?

We can't answer those questions either. That said, a more clairvoyant professional screening might imaginably have spared Whitman, and his fifteen victims, from his subsequent conduct.

This speculation leads us to Donald J. Trump's latest manifesto. The presentation was offered on Monday, when the president offered these somewhat selective proposals in response to our recent mass shootings:

TRUMP (8/5/19): First, we must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs. I am directing the Department of Justice to work in partisan—partnership with local, state, and federal agencies, as well as social media companies, to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike.

[...]

Second, we must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately. Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life. That’s what we have to do.

Third, we must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement. Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.

Fourth, we must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms, and that, if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process. That is why I have called for red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders.

Today, I am also directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.

These are just a few of the areas of cooperation that we can pursue...

As presented, several of these proposals would seem to make perfect sense. For example, should people "judged to pose a grave risk to public safety" have access to firearms?

Proponents of gun control have always said they shouldn't. Trump's public statements concerning such matters are often written in disappearing ink. But in that passage, he seemed to be saying that dangerous people should be forbidden access to guns.

On their face, several of Trump's proposals seemed to make perfect sense. That said, these are highly tribal times, and at highly tribal times, tribal minds may function poorly across the political spectrum.

If Trump makes a proposal, anti-Trump tribal players may reflexively oppose it, even where the proposal in question may make perfect sense. It seems to us that this has been happening in the general area of mental illness.

Many mass shooters, from Whitman on, have seemed to be struggling with something resembling mental illness. But over here in the anti-Trump world, anti-Trumpers have risen in opposition to the president's remarks in this general area.

Two days ago, we described a remarkable news report in the Washington Post. Concerning the general phenomenon of mass shootings, the news report ran beneath this remarkable headline:

Studies: Mental illness isn’t to blame

A wide range of mass shooters, from Whitman on, have seemed to be struggling with syndromes resembling some form of "mental illness." But now the Post seemed to be saying that any such thought or speculation was pure silly-bill bunk.

We authored a shocking claim at that time. Our shocking claim went like this:

"Now that Trump has said that illness does play a role, [anti-Trump] tribals will be strongly inclined to say that it doesn't."

Is it possible that our human thinking could be so hopelessly tribal, even over here, within our own liberal tribe? Tomorrow, we'll show you what Rachel Maddow and Connie Schultz said about mental illness that very same night—and we'll review this new opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

Donald J. Trump strikes us as deeply disordered. His reactions and presentations rarely make rational sense.

Alas! Especially at times like these, we liberals may tilt in such directions too. Because "it's all anthropology now," we'll try to show you how that syndrome works when we continue tomorrow.

Tomorrow: If he says it, does that mean it's wrong?

Some human reactions go back a long way!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019

Teenaged girl shouldn't have come here: Willa Cather moved from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883. She made the move with her parents. She was 9 years old.

In her highly autobiographical novel, My Antonia, Cather transforms herself into Jim Burden, her novel's (male) narrator. He meets, and forms a lifelong attachment, to a Bohemian immigrant, Antonia Shimerda.

Some fundamental human stories tend not to change over time. The book appeared in 1928, telling a story which begins in the 1880s.

When Jim is 10 and Antonia is 14 when the following exchange occurs. As we start, Antonia is describing her father's unhappiness during her family's first year in this new, strange, difficult land:

‘My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance. Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days he take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the strings, like this, but never he make the music. He don’t like this kawntree.’

‘People who don’t like this country ought to stay at home,’ I said severely. ‘We don’t make them come here.’

‘He not want to come, never!’ she burst out. ‘My mamenka make him come. All the time she say: “America big country; much money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls.” My papa, he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the long horn like this’—she indicated a slide trombone. “They go to school together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be rich, with many cattle.”’

‘Your mama,’ I said angrily, ‘wants other people’s things.’

Did we mention the fact that Jim is 10 at this point in the story? By the time he's 20, Antonia is delivering one of the book's most memorable lines, summarizing the somewhat mysterious connection between herself and her native-born friend:

"Ain’t it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?"

As we reread the book last week, we were barely a week removed from Mister Trump's dimwitted suggestion that AOC and the rest of "the squad" should go back to the countries they came from.

Mister Trump's dimwitted statement was made in the year 2019. Jim, aged 10, was expressing a somewhat similar thought back in the 1880s.

The Nebraska of the 1880s was largely settled by immigrant families. In Cather's rendition, these largely European families were often viewed with a rather familiar type of disdain by their native-born neighbors.

We'll review Cather's account of this matter tomorrow. Her account will possibly sound familiar, especially to those of us who believe every word we hear on MSNBC, but one large irony will obtain:

The people being disregarded will be among the "whitest" people found anywhere on the earth. The "Danish girls" are so disregarded, and Cather convincingly describes their pink-cheeked beauty, along with their endless good cheer.

We humans may tend to demonize others quite freely. Such others don't have to be "brown."

Tomorrow: "I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid..."

THE SORROW, THE PITY: We've never heard voices in our head!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019

Punishment versus pity: We're going to start today with a pair of high-powered confessions:

We've never heard voices in our head. Also, we feel sorry for people who do.

It's hard to feel sorry for Donald J. Trump, so ruined a specimen has he long been. That said, we remember the ways our highest elites fed off his outwardly broken soul for all those long, soulless years.

Was sex with The Donald the best sex you ever had? So these broken-souled losers were willing to ask, on network TV no less. In such ways, they announced the emptiness of their own souls while lining their pockets with cash.

That was long the standard behavior of our exalted elites. It's hard to feel sorry for Donald J. Trump, but as part of a third confession, we'll admit again what we've said before:

We sometimes think of Bob Dylan's endorsement of pity when we observe the lost, ruined way this dangerous, disordered man plays:

I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would've stayed home
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone
That man whom with his fingers cheats
Who lies with every breath
Who passionately hates his life
And likewise fears his death

[...]

Who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me.

The song was published in 1968. We offer this assumption:

Dylan wasn't thinking of a literal "immigrant," a person who chooses, or is forced, to leave his homeland behind.

He was thinking of a figurative "immigrant"—a person who, through whatever procedure or means, has wandered away from human feeling, has left his soul behind.

Is Donald J. Trump a "sociopath?" (In theory, quite a few people are.)

In the parlance which has surfaced, is he in the grip of "antisocial personality disorder?" Here's how that disorder is characterized by the leading authority on the syndrome:

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD or APD) is a personality disorder characterized by a long term pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. A low moral sense or conscience is often apparent, as well as a history of crime, legal problems, or impulsive and aggressive behavior.

Antisocial personality disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Dissocial personality disorder (DPD), a similar or equivalent concept, is defined in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), which includes antisocial personality disorder in the diagnosis. Both manuals provide similar criteria for diagnosing the disorder. Both have also stated that their diagnoses have been referred to, or include what is referred to, as psychopathy or sociopathy, but distinctions have been made between the conceptualizations of antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy, with many researchers arguing that psychopathy is a disorder that overlaps with, but is distinguishable from, ASPD.

Is Donald J. Trump in the grip of that syndrome? If so, should that be seen as "his fault?"

Might this situation have stemmed from some organic cause—from something present at birth? Might the situation have occurred because of the way he was raised?

We submit those basic questions in the face of general disinterest. But beyond that:

If a young man starts hearing voices in his head, is that the fault or the doing of the young person in question? Should we regard such a situation as a manifestation of illness?

Questions like these aren't being discussed at the present time. With respect to Donald J. Trump, the mainstream press corps has decided, as a group, that questions of possible mental illness mustn't be discussed.

With respect to our ongoing parade of mass shooters, pundits have quickly fallen in line behind fuzzy variants of the implausible claim that mental illness plays no role in such gruesome events. We'll show you what Maddow said last night once the transcript appears.

Should we "pity the poor immigrant" when he behaves in the ways Dylan described? Our species rarely takes that approach. We're more strongly wired for punishment, anger and blame—and also, for group recitation.

Over the course of the past year, the recitation went like this: Mueller Mueller Mueller Mueller impeachment impeachment impeachment. We were pleasured that way every night.

Now our pundit corps had moved on, to racist racist racist. That's pretty much as far as the thinking goes.

For ourselves, we're disinclined to think that that's the best way to go. We remember the other lyrics we have occasionally cited:

It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe

And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?

One of our hopefuls is running on love, though he also likes to say racist.

For better or worse, our species is wired to break into tribes and to start reciting. All stories must be simplified—novelized, improved, dumbed down—when a tribe starts to repeat.

Beyond that, we're wired for accusation and blame much more than for sorrow and pity. Gene Brabender put it best many long years ago:

"Where I come from, we just talk for a little while. After that, we start to hit."

Brabender was a big rawboned right-hander—and, as quoted in Ball Four, an anthropological giant. He died at the age of 55, apparently of natural causes.

We've been thinking of [Name Withheld]: [Name Withheld] lived two houses down from us when we were a freshman, then a sophomore, in high school.

He was one year ahead of us in school; we didn't know him well. One day, our mother told us that his mother had asked her if we would be willing to be his friend.

He was a perfectly decent kid, but he apparently pretty much kept to himself. Our mother told us that his parents were worried about his behavior and felt that he needed some friends.

You really can't ask a sophomore in high school to serve as someone's psychiatrist. Beyond that, our mother didn't have the tools to insist that we try to help.

As far as we know, Name Withheld wasn't inclined to violence against other people—but one day, he took his own life. We don't think it was publicly mentioned at school. We don't know if other kids even knew.

Would anyone have been able to help this quiet, outwardly gentle kid? Name Withheld didn't grow up in the era of mass shootings. Today, though, our troubled kids do.

That includes the kids who hear voices, the ones who aren't mentally ill.

THE LIMITATIONS, THE LIMITATIONS: Are mass shooters mentally ill?

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019

Inquiring minds try to know: To what extent are members of Homo sapiens able to conduct a "national discourse?"

Experts who study this question are pointing to a pair of reports in today's Washington Post.

At the paper's "Today's print edition" site, the pair of articles appear quite close together; they're separated by only one other report. On that page, the reports are listed as shown:

Dayton gunman had dark thoughts, ex-girlfriend says
By Emily Davies, Tim Craig and Hannah Natanson

Studies: Mental illness isn’t to blame

For unknown reasons, no author's name was cited for the second report.

Does mental illness play a role in our endless mass shootings? Now that Trump has suggested it does, the question will likely be tribalized.

The red tribe will promote the claim; the blue tribe will be inclined to reject it. So it goes when our highly tribal, war-inclined species tries to conduct a discussion.

(Indeed, one Democratic candidate has already made a dramatic claim about this important question. For details, see below.)

Does mental illness play a role in these endless events? We're not equipped to answer that question, but consider some of the things we're told in that first Post report.

That first report concerns the late Connor Betts, the 24-year-old man who conducted the shootings in Dayton. The Post spoke to a former girl friend. The resulting report starts like this:

DAVIES, CRAIG AND NATANSON (8/6/19): During his senior year of high school, Connor Betts seemed to always have caffeine pills in one hand and an energy drink in another. He was unable to sleep, he told his then-girlfriend Lyndsi Doll, because of dark, animal-like shadows that tormented him at night.

Seven years after they dated, Doll recalls Betts as a serious and reserved kid who wrestled with hallucinations and menacing voices in his head.

While they were in high school, Betts told Doll that he had suffered from psychosis since he was young and feared developing schizophrenia.

“He would cry to me sometimes,” she said, “saying how he’s afraid of himself and afraid he was going to hurt someone one day. It’s haunting now.”

According to Doll, she and Betts became a couple in high school. She seems to have thought that her friend was some version of "mentally ill:"

DAVIES, CRAIG AND NATANSON: They connected over their shared mental health struggles—she suffered from anxiety and depression—often turning to each other for support.

But as their relationship progressed, Doll became increasingly concerned that Betts was far from normal and desperately in need of professional help. He talked a lot about the “dark, evil things” he heard in his head. He would sometimes check out midway through the conservation, when it seemed like his mind would drift elsewhere.

Doll isn't a clinician; neither are we. But to our layman's ear, it sounds like Betts may have been some version of "mentally ill."

Alas! Just two lines down its list of today's reports, the Post linked us to that second report, written by Wan and Bever.

"Mental illness isn't to blame," the Post's capsule description said. Experts say that this report highlights the lack of analytical skill which keeps our self-impressed human species from conducting serious public discussions.

Does mental illness play a role in our endless mass shootings? We'd just finished reading about the voices Betts used to hear in his head.

But so what? Hard-copy headline included, the Post's second report starts like this:

WAN AND BEVER (8/6/19): Studies: Mental illness isn’t to blame

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the country talks about mental health. Many politicians are quick to point to the shooters’ disturbed minds. News reporters probe for “loner” tendencies or signs of instability.

“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun,” said President Trump on Monday, after two mass shootings in less than 24 hours.

So is mental illness to blame for America’s mass shootings? Not according to research.

Just like that, Trump was refuted. But alas! As they continued, Wan and Bever fell victim to an array of logical fumbles. Their errors typify the work of the species, several top experts have said.

What sorts of logical errors do Wan and Bever commit? Consider what happens as they continue:

WAN AND BEVER (continuing directly): Some mass shooters have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis, but many do not. Most studies of mass shooters have found that only a small fraction have mental health issues. And researchers have noted a host of other factors that are stronger predictors of someone becoming a mass shooter: a strong sense of resentment, desire for infamy, copycat study of other shooters, past domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

Instantly, the reporters say that some mass shooters do in fact "have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis."

That doesn't mean that these conditions played a role in their subsequent conduct. But it seems to suggest that these types of mental illness may indeed play a role in some mass shootings, if not in all or most.

Some mass shooters do in fact "have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis!" That said, we're quickly told that "only a small fraction" of these offenders have been found to have had "mental health issues." (Apparently, narcissism isn't considered a "mental health issue" by Bever and Wan, though this point isn't explained.)

At any rate, "only a small fraction" of offenders have been found to have mental health issues. That said, just how small is that small fraction? A few paragraphs later, we're told this:

WAN AND BEVER: In a 2018 report on 63 active shooter assailants, the FBI found that 25 percent had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those, three had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. In a 2015 study that examined 226 men who committed or tried to commit mass killings, 22 percent could be considered mentally ill. A report from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation estimated that a majority of mass shooters have mental illness, based in part on looser definitions and retroactive assessments.

In a report whose headline declared that mental illness isn't to blame, we're now told that 25 percent of offenders "had been diagnosed with a mental illness." And that's only the start of the problem. At no point do Wan and Bever come to terms with an obvious logical point:

The fact that someone hasn't been diagnosed with an illness doesn't mean that he isn't mentally ill in point of actual fact.

This Post report by Wan and Bever is a logical muddle all the way through. That said, the New York Times doesn't do much better with this report by Benedict Carey, which appears beneath a sadly confident banner headline:

What Drives People to Mass Shootings? Scientists Have Some Answers

Carey succumbs to his own unique logical stumbles. Consider the bungle which occurs during this Q-and-A:

CAREY (8/6/19): How strong is the link between mental illness and mass shootings?

Tenuous, at best. People who blame mass shootings on “the mentally ill” are usually reasoning backward from the act itself: the person just shot 20 unarmed strangers, so he must be “crazy.”

In fact, scientists find that only a small fraction of people with persistent mental distress are more likely than average to commit violent acts: patients with paranoid schizophrenia, which is characterized by delusional thinking and often so-called command hallucinations—frightening voices identifying threats where none exist.

Alas, poor humanity! According to Carey, most people with persistent mental distress won't commit a violent act.

Presumably, that is true. But that doesn't speak to the relevant question—to the possibility that every single mass shooter has been severely mentally ill, whether he or she had been diagnosed or not.
.
What role does mental illness play in our endless mass shootings? We can't answer that question, but we can tell you this:

The inability to reason clearly plays a major role in all our attempts at public discourse. People from the finest schools get hired by our greatest newspapers, then quickly exhibit an endless array of logical lapses and blunders.

Experts say that this is the way our tribal, war-inclined species is equipped and wired. There's no known way to correct for this, several top experts have said.

The late Gene Brabender may have put it best, speaking to the late Jim Bouton out in the bullpen one day long ago:

"Where I come from, we just talk for a little while," the big raw-boned righthander said. "After that we start to hit."

Meanwhile, "The Horror! The Horror!" That's what Conrad's Kurtz said.

Candidate Warren speaks: Donald J. Trump has suggested that mental illness plays a role in these endless shootings—and let's face it, he ought to know!

At any rate, now that Trump has said that illness does play a role, tribals will be strongly inclined to say that it doesn't. Candidate Warren's fiery tweet is quoted in today's New York Times:

"White supremacy is not a mental illness. We need to call it what it is: Domestic terrorism. And we need to call out Donald Trump for amplifying these deadly ideologies."

"White supremacy is not a mental illness?" Are we sure we agree with that? And what would our answer have to do with the actual question at hand?

Our discussions always work this way. Compare, contrast and discuss.

What we read on our summer vacation!

MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019

Marpole warns about disease: On Saturday, July 27, we motored away from our sprawling campus in the heart of Maryland's 7th congressional district.

We motored away in a vehicle containing one niece; one husband to that niece; and two outstanding great nieces. The district was achieving notoriety as we departed that day. By the time of our return, Mister Trump had made it famous.

During our time away, we read and reread My Antonia. Because it's an autobiographical story about immigrant families, we were struck by certain echoes from the distant past.

The story begins in the 1880s. Its narrator, Jim Burden, starts his story like this:

I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the ‘hands’ on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake’s experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

So the story begins. A 10-year-old is crossing over to a new land. He's tended by a mountain boy who isn't a whole lot older.

They head for Nebraska by train. Along the way, Jake offers some advice to Jim—advice which almost seems to come from the Trump-inflected present day:

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a ‘Life of Jesse James,’ which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read...

Once when [the conductor] sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from ‘across the water’ whose destination was the same as ours.

‘They can’t any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is “We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.” She’s not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she’s as bright as a new dollar. Don’t you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She’s got the pretty brown eyes, too!’

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to ‘Jesse James.’ Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.

Through the person of her narrator, Willa Cather goes on to tell a highly autobiographical story. It's built around the life of that immigrant girl, who in real life turned out to be the "greatest artist" Cather ever knew.

As it turned out, Burden, and Cather, contracted no diseases from that immigrant family. As part of today's study guide, we offer these questions:

What should we think about Jake Marpole, who offered that instant warning? Should we think of him as a xenophobe? Was Jake Marpole a racist?

Above, you've seen the first five paragraphs of Cather's famous book. Right there in paragraph 5, we modern readers receive the first blast from the present day.

The book appeared in 1918. It emerges from a basic part of world-wide human experience, and from basic human wiring.

Further study questions:

What should we think about the ways some age-old fears may remain with us today? Should we loathe the modern humans who may be inclined to hold them?

Still coming: "I thought the attitude of the town people toward these [immigrant] girls very stupid..."

THE INCOMPETENCE, THE INCOMPETENCE: We recalled Kurtz's famous cry!

MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019

The human monologues: As late as this very morning, we didn't know where to begin.

We'd returned, late Thursday night, to our sprawling campus in the heart of Maryland's 7th congressional district.

Mister Trump had made the district famous during the time we were gone. During that same period, we'd witnessed an endless parade of human dumbness, not all of it during CNN's Democratic "debates."

Even this morning, we'd still didn't know where to start! Finally, we decided we'd start with the first new thing we'd read.

The column in question appears in this morning's Washington Post. Hard-copy headline included, the column starts like this:

JAYAPAL (8/5/19): The facts about Medicare-for-all

In the wake of the second Democratic presidential debate, it is clear that Medicare-for-all has become a defining issue of the 2020 election. Earlier this year, when I introduced our comprehensive, 120-page “Medicare for All Act of 2019,” I expected attacks from Big Pharma and for-profit insurance companies. But I did not expect misrepresentations from Democratic presidential candidates about what the bill is and is not.

Let’s be clear about the scale of this crisis. The United States currently spends an astronomical $3.6 trillion per year on health care—almost double what peer countries spend—and it is set to increase within 10 years to $6 trillion annually. Pharmaceuticals such as basic insulin cost up to 10 times less in Canada for the exact same drugs...

In what follows, you're going to think that we're picking nits. In thinking that, you'll be wrong.

The column was written by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who represents the 7th congressional district in the state of Washington. Nancy Pelosi has described her as "a rising star in the Democratic caucus."

Jayapal is seen with increasing frequency on cable news programs. It seems quite clear that she would do well on an IQ test.

For that reason, we were struck by her description of this nation's health care costs. You'll think we're picking nits about this, but in fact we aren't.

In the statement we have highlighted, Jayapal says the U.S. "spends an astronomical $3.6 trillion per year on health care." She says this is "almost double what peer countries spend," seeming to cite Canada as one such country.

Our question:

Why would anyone be surprised to hear that we spend twice as much on health care as Canada does? Most people will suspect—perhaps even know—that we have a much larger population than our frozen neighbor to the north.

We have way more people than they do! The numbers go something like this:

Estimated population, 2018/2019
United States: 327.2 million
Canada: 37.6 million

The United States has a much larger population than Canada! In terms of population, we're also substantially larger than other "peer countries" such as Germany, England, France.

Given these facts, why would anyone be surprised to hear that we spend substantially more on health care than these smaller countries do? Why wouldn't Jayapal's statement disappear into the air?

"But that isn't what Jayapal meant," you will hotly exclaim. We'll of course agree with you—but that is what she said!

Alas! Watching Democrats discuss health care is a bit like watching the apocryphal fish as they try to ride those bicycles. The same is true of mainstream journalists, of course. These depressing facts became clear once again during last week's "debates."

Why did Jayapal actually mean by her fuzzily stated remark? Presumably, she meant to describe the state of affairs laid out in the data shown below—data the public will never see, or see discussed, in the Post or the New York Times:

Per capita spending, health care, 2018
United States: $10,586
Germany: $5986
Canada: $4974
France: $4965
Japan: $4766
United Kingdom: $4070
(South) Korea: $3192

More detailed data are available from the OECD. But what difference does it make?

Presumably, Jayapal meant to say that we spend two to three times as much per person as comparable nations do. Answers to several major policy questions are lodged within that remarkable fact:

Why do we run such a large federal deficit? What keeps wages from growing? Why are so many people unable to afford health care at all?

Answers to all those questions are lodged within those remarkable data—remarkable data a rising star fails to describe with clarity in today's Washington Post.

The tribal impulse will urge you to think that we're just picking a nit. That tribal impulse will be wrong—but it's deeply bred in the bone, and it runs the world of human affairs.

It runs the part of the human world which acted in El Paso this weekend. It runs the part of the human world which determines the way this young Yazidi woman was treated after she was freed from slavery to ISIS.

(We strongly recommend that Washington Post news report.)

That tribal impulse also runs the part of the human world within which we liberals and progressives react to the others. For today, we'll only say this:

Subscribers to the Post and the Times never see the remarkable numbers we have posted above. For that reason, they're never exposed to a serious discussion of those remarkable numbers.

Where's all the extra money going in our health care spending? Members of our own self-impressed tribe rarely wonder about that. To all intents and purposes, the question is never raised for their perusal—not by major mainstream news orgs, not by rising political stars.

This isn't the only major topic where basic ignorance rules. Readers of the Post and the Times are never told about the size of the achievement gaps within our public schools. At the same time, they're never told about the large academic gains which have been recorded by all demographic groups.

When Flint became a major topic, our tribals were never shown the data about lead in the water of other American cities. We were never told about the gigantic blood lead levels which existed all over the country until recent years.

Our candidates recite all kinds of bullshit as they pretend to debate. Our major journalists don't utter a peep as they pretend to moderate these ersatz debates. But this is the basic human condition, as found in our own current world.

The fact is, we humans aren't wired to care about matters like these. We care about the tribal drives which tell us who to loathe.

The dumbness around you in the past ten days testifies to this fact about the human project. We'll be exploring that dumbness all week—a dumbness so ubiquitous in the past ten day that we didn't know where to begin as we rose this morning.

Jayapal's fuzzy characterization tells us something basic about ourselves, about our tribe, about the human project. So did those cattle call "debates." So does the truly pathetic New York magazine essay to which Maureen Dowd referred in yesterday's column.

As we watched the spreading darkness last week, we thought of the dying Kurtz, as quoted by Joseph Conrad:

"The horror! The horror!" the strange fellow said. Or at least, so we're told at the end of Conrad's famous report.

We're going to go with a different word—"incompetence." But it's all much the same in the end.

Tomorrow: To our eternal sorrow, we decided to click Dowd's link