Al Gore won, we're told today!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2021

How Maddow and Gore are alike: Very early today, Kevin Drum's new post returned us to happier times.

His post appears beneath the headline shown below. We're incline to call the headline's claim perhaps a bit overstated:

Yes, Al Gore won Florida

Is it true? Is it true that Candidate Gore really won Florida in November 2000? It all depends on what the meaning of "really won Florida" is!

In his post, Kevin focuses on one of the findings from one of the (three) major reviews of the Florida election. 

That review was called The Florida Ballots Project; its findings were released in November 2001. Kevin quotes a retrospective report from CNN explaining how it worked:

PAYSON-DENNEY (10/31/15): A national media consortium—composed of CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, and The Palm Beach Post—paid for the National Opinion Research Center, or NORC, at the University of Chicago to review 175,010 disputed Florida ballots—61,190 undervotes and 113,820 overvotes.

After examining those 175,010 ballots, NORC found that Gore would have won Florida by 60 to 171 votes if those ballots had been carefully examined by hand. 

That may or may not be true; it all depends on how official teams of ballot examiners would have evaluated those ballots. For the record, there's little chance that any such review, involving undervotes and overvotes, would have resulted from the political procedures and laws which prevailed in Florida in real time.

That said, in the review of those ballots conducted by NORC, Gore ended up winning the state, by an extremely tiny margin. This takes us back to the happier times when the worst the liberal world had to fear was the presidency of George W. Bush!

Kevin's headline isn't exactly "wrong," though we'd say it may oversimply the situation a bit. For ourselves, we'd move past the narrow focus on those "disputed ballots" to consider two other factors which ended up delivering Florida to Bush.

One such factor was the bungled ballot design in several Florida jurisdictions. Almost surely, Gore lost several thousand votes in Palm Beach County alone due to that jurisdiction's confusing ballot design. 

This was simple human error at its most consequential. Almost surely, if Palm Beach County had designed a less confusing ballot, Candidate Gore would have won the state, and the United States of America might not have gone into Iraq.

This was basic human error at its most consequential. History changed on a badly flawed ballot design! We're told that the unfeeling gods on Olympus held their sides as they laughed.

That ballot design—that unintentional human error—changed the course of world history. Of course, a second factor allowed Bush to squeak by with a very narrow official win, thereby changing the course of world history:

We refer to the way the liberal world sat around and sucked its thumbs as the mainstream press corps—not the right-wing noise machine—conducted a journalistic war against Gore from March 1999 right through to Election Day.

(And years beyond. When Gore gave a major speech in September 2002 warning against going into Iraq, leading hacks of the liberal press firmament called him every name in the book. All the other timorous careerists else kept their careerist traps shut.)

We liberals! We sat around and sucked out thumbs as this press corps war proceeded. The history went like this:

In February 1999 Bill Clinton escaped removal from office. In the following month, the angry mainstream press corps launched its War Against Gore. 

At the time, it looked like this would be their last possible shot at Clinton, and they eagerly took it. Our deeply self-impressed liberal world was too dumb to see this happening and/or too compliant to complain. 

Sixteen years later, this war was still being played out in some of the puzzling journalism aimed at Candidate Hillary Clinton. One example was the New York Times' maniacal pursuit of "emailgate," a maniacism which Drum often cited and railed against.

There too, our tribe was still too dumb to see this for what it was, or was perhaps too compliant to howl in complaint. For the most part, this can be scored as unintentional human error too. 

In this case, our unintentional human error gave us the presidency of Donald J. Trump. And, as everybody knows, it's entirely possible that Donald J. Trump will run again in 2024, and he may even win.

Our point here is simple. In 1999 and 2000, our highly self-impressed liberal tribe was unable or unwilling to see what the mainstream press corps was doing. In truth, our tribe has never caught up with that remarkable story—a story whose extension through 2016 ended up giving us Trump.

Our tribe is very self-impressed. We constantly inform the world that we're the very smart ones. We've been this way forever.

That said, we weren't able to see what was happening then. Also, we've been unable, in the past thirteen years, to see how ridiculous Rachel Maddow's journalistic performance has been.

It isn't Maddow's fault that we've been unable to see this. It isn't her fault that her corporate owners put her on the air and paid her millions of dollars per year to entertain and dumbnify us.

"Honey, please stop your cooking," the Eternal Child said last Wednesday night. As a group, we're so dumb that we still think this gargantuan self-involvement and sense of entitlement is entertaining, endearing, amusing.

In fact. it's the ridiculous work of an absurdly ill-suited Eternal Child, one who didn't put herself on the air.

Human error rules the world—and error is unintentional. The fact that we couldn't see through this manifest nonsense doesn't mean that we're bad people, or that Maddow is. 

It does mean that we're a badly flawed group of people who ought to get over ourselves.

In 1999 and 2000, we were too dumb to push back against what the press corps was doing. From 2008 right through last week, we were too dumb to see how childish, uninsightful, unhelpful Maddow's journalistic behavior has been.

Our human error has been widespread, and that isn't Maddow's fault. On the other hand, people are dead all over world because we keep making these errors.

We have a standard explanation for what has happened in recent years, as human tribes often do. Amerika is full of racists, we like to say. No part of the ongoing political problem could possibly start with Us.

If we don't shape up, could Trump win again? Plainly, yes, he could. This makes us think of the good old days, when we had nothing to fear but the war in Iraq itself.

As Maddow continues to gambol and play, are we on our way to something far worse? We'll offer more of these musings next week, but the short answer would be a "yes."

We're often amazed by the New York Times!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2021

Letters regarding the stalemate: We're often amazed by the letters the New York Times chooses to publish. 

We're sometimes amazed by the way the Times chooses to package these letters. Consider the letters in yesterday's Times about the current stalemate in Congress.

The Times published two such letters. (They were accompanied by a third letter about the federal debt limit.) The first of these letters made no sense at all, and yet the Times chose to fashion this condescending headline from it:

Memo to Democrats: ‘Grow Up. Do Your Job.’

That sneering headline sat above the package of three letters. The headline had been fashioned from this, the first letter in the bunch:

To the Editor: 

How is it that Republicans can remain united on almost all issues, even a treasonous assault on national elections, and still win elections, and Democrats can’t compromise with themselves to get their bills passed?

Democrats seem to think that having “guts” means taking your ball and going home if you don’t get everything you want. Two words: Grow up.

Do your job. Which means you must compromise and play well with others (as you should have learned in kindergarten).

Give and take and get the best you can for the American people. You remember, the people who elected you!

Under the circumstances, does the sneering tone of that headline (and of that letter) actually make sense? Consider:

In the current circumstance, Democrats have only fifty senators. In the matter which is still in dispute, they must acquire the votes of all fifty to get anything passed under reconciliation rules.

Any one senator can completely scuttle the process. Given that circumstance, does it really make sense to scold "Democrats" (plural) for not knowing how to play well with others, something they should have learned in kindergarten?

We can't see why a newspaper would even want to publish this letter. Inevitably, the Times took things one step farther, fashioning a sneering headline from the letter's tenuous logic.

We have a somewhat difficult time following the logic of the second letter too. Consider:

In that letter, the writer says the $3.5 trillion proposal "is long overdue." Beyond that, he correctly notes that F.D.R. and L.B.J. were able to pass bold programs "because both had whopping big majorities in Congress," while today's Democrats are stuck with a 50-50 Senate.

From there, he goes on to say that "progressive Democrats will have to make a deal with Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema." That's (obviously) true as far as it goes, but what if one of the two solons he names refuses to agree to any deal? This second writer doesn't seem to have considered that possibility.

Hypothetically, if Sinema refuses to make a deal, the Democrats won't be able to pass a reconciliation bill at all! How are progressive Democrats supposed to "make a deal" then? Meanwhile, how are the other Democrats, in the Senate and in the House, supposed to "grow up" and "do their job" in a circumstance like that?

Surely, the New York Times received various letters which made cogent points concerning the current stalemate. In this instance, the paper chose to publish a pair of letters which didn't exactly make sense, and they chose to fashion a stereotypical, scolding headline from the first letter's bungled logic.

The Times does this sort of thing remarkably often. It brands itself as a very bright newspaper. The reality is often quite different.

STOPPED MAKING SENSE: "Stop cooking, Honey," Rachel said!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2021

Also, quoting Kagan: Late last evening, consumed by gloom, Kevin Drum issued a semi-prediction. Our chronicle today will touch several bases.But we'll start right there.

Drum in autumn

It was 9:28 P.M. out in the Golden State. Drum's gloomy headline said this:

Liberals are blowing the chance of a generation

In his post, Kevin imagined a situation in which Democrats "end up passing nothing"—not even the $1.2 million infrastructure bill, which has already passed in the Senate with the help of Republican votes.

It seems to us that Kevin was possibly being too gloomy. That said, when he started his post, he quoted a piece by Li Zhou at Vox—but he failed to include the part of her piece which may have occasioned his gloom.  

How badly could the current stalemate end? As she started her piece at Vox, Zhou said this:

ZHOU (9/30/21): For years, progressives have floated the idea of acting as a bloc and using their power to shape the Democratic agenda, a tactic levied by several of the most influential congressional caucuses.

On Thursday, they finally did: Progressives stood by a threat they issued this summer, when they promised to vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill if it was considered in the House without a concurrent vote on a much larger reconciliation bill (which contains a vast investment in social programs and measures to address climate change). Effectively, they argued, the [$1.2 trillion] infrastructure bill wouldn’t pass unless a broader $3.5 trillion package did first.

By holding their ground and pursuing a course of action that could derail both bills, progressives hope to force moderates in their own party to offer some type of commitment on the reconciliation measure.

Aarrgh! Right at the start of her piece, Zhou imagined the possibility that the progressives' current course of action could end up "derailing both bills"—could lead to no bills getting passed. 

No $3.5 trillion reconciliation measure. Indeed, not even the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill!

Is that possible? Is it possible that the current stalemate will end with no bill getting passed—not even the smaller measure, which has already passed the Senate? 

Everything is possible! Indeed, Weisman and Cochrane offer an account of the situation in this morning's New York Times which is much gloomier than anything you heard last night on CNN or MSNBC, whose corporate stars  labored to put the best face on everything we heard before we drank our glass of warm milk and tucked ourselves into bed.

That's the way partisan corporate "cable news" works. Consider these final days of the nightly "cable news" behemoth known as Rachel Maddow, Our Own Eternal Child.

For starters, it isn't her fault

Just for the record, The Problem The Blue-Voting World Is Facing isn't Maddow's fault. Basically, the situation would be the same if she'd never been put on the air by her corporate bosses.

For the record, the problem is this:

Even after four years of The Crazy under Trump, Democrats were barely able to win a majority in the House last November.

Thanks to Trump's crazy behavior in Georgia, Democrats did end up with 50 Senators, and thereby with procedural control of the Senate. But Democrats have done so poorly at winning elections that, in order to get to 50, they have to rely 1) on a Democrat from a state (West Virginia) which overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and 2) on a free-floating senator from Arizona who has seemed, for quite some time, to be perhaps largely a nut.

Putting it another way, Democrats haven't been very good at winning elections in the past ten years. On cable news, we're constantly pleasured with an explanation for this: 

Amerika is full of racists, we are constantly told. (To Maddow's credit, she pushes this line with less frequency than most of our major "thought leaders.")

Amerika is full of racists, we constantly tell ourselves. We never imagine the possibility that some of the problem may resides with Us.

This is Standard Tribal Thinking, major experts say. At any rate, Democratic failure to win elections isn't Maddow's fault. 

We Democrats would have lost that many elections without Maddow's help. But can we tell the truth just once?

Maddow has been a (highly visible) part of the problem all through her journalistically ridiculous "cable news" career. 

That doesn't mean that she's a "bad person." It does mean that she never should have been put on the air in the way she was.

"Honey, please stop cooking"

How ridiculous has Maddow's performance been just in the past week? 

It would take a book to explore all the examples. For today, let's mention a few minor points. Let's start with the massive self-involvement which has characterized her frequently ridiculous years on the air.

As we've noted in the past, Maddow seems to love nothing so much as talking about herself. Consider what happened Wednesday night, halfway through a 15-minute exploration of a local crime.

In the local crime in question, someone tried to firebomb the Democratic Party Headquarters in Austin this past Tuesday night. Obviously, that's a serious type of crime. Unfortunately, such behavior has to be investigated and charged, with perpetrators going to prison.

It was also a local crime. To appearances, it involved one young male perpetrator whose (masked) behavior was captured on surveillance videotape. 

In the course of her lengthy segment, Maddow persistently referred to the perpetrator as "the dude" or simply as "Dude." She very much wants him locked up; punishment has long been her thing.

Armed with the videotape, Maddow devoted a full fifteen minutes to this event. As part of the deal, she concocted a ridiculous novelized theory about why the event had occurred.

Forget the way she burned fifteen uninterrupted minutes on her novelized tale concerning a local crime. Instead,  consider the sheer stupidity of the various  types of behavior one constantly meets on her show.

In this case, we aren't referring to the insultingly stupid exchanges between herself and Lawrence which we reviewed two days ago. In this case, Maddow's absurd self-involvement prevailed as she interrupted her concocted tale at one point to, in effect, "phone home."

Maddow was about to start showing the videotape of the late-night attempt at a firebombing. But before the tape began to roll, she interrupted herself to say this:

MADDOW (9/29/21): I can now show you something that you should see that happened last night, and I will tell you, if you are listening to me and not watching me—

I'm saying this because my partner, Susan, is often cooking dinner or doing other house things and listening to me and not watching me live when the show is on.

So Honey, this is me telling you this is one of those things for which you actually want to sit down and watch. This is a visual. It's not going to work just listening to it. I'm just saying. This is a visual and you will want to see it. 

It's remarkable that we have this. But what I`m going to show you is something that all takes place over a period of about 12 minutes...

In this way, The Eternal Child interrupted her concocted tale to tell Susan to stop her cooking (or her other "house things") and to sit down to watch the show. Has anyone ever been so in love with talking about herself? 

Lawrence likes to kiss her keister; she's happy to respond. For herself, she very much enjoys engaging in self-involved bullshit like this. 

In our Blue Towns, where we blue voters live, it's long been clear that we enjoy this stupid shit from our self-involved Eternal Child. That doesn't mean that we're bad people, but our dumbness is one of the many reasons why we can't win more elections—why we have to rely on an apparent nutcase like Sinema to fashion a tie in the Senate.

We're eager to blame the whole thing on Them. But the problem is also Us.

Maddow quotes Robert Kagan

Last Friday night, Maddow actually did something constructive on her persistently dimwitted program. She quoted from Robert Kagan's lengthy essay in the Washington Post—a widely-cited essay warning about the vast danger the nation is in.

She'd opened the show that night with a typical entertainment feature—with an endless segment in which she mugged and clowned and laughed and snarked about the way the GOP had committed an "own goal" with its Arizona Cyber Ninjas report.

(She should know about "own goals," one of the analysts cried. She's the biggest "own goal" we have over here on our own side!)

Kagan's essay describes the vast danger the republic is currently in. Even in the face of this danger, Lawrence continues to kiss Maddow's ascot, and Maddow continues to use her national platform to tell Susan when to stop cooking and cleaning and to just sit down and watch.

(How ridiculous has Maddow been down through the years? Way back, she explained how she bought her first TV set. She and Susan got blackout drunk and ordered it online! This concocted story extended the a certain egocentric tale—the Storyline in which Rachel was the TV star who didn't own a TV set, not that she thinks she's smarter than you are. In response to an inquiry from a journalist, the network actually backed her up on this apparently ludicrous tale.) 

For one brief shining moment, Maddow actually read, at some length, from a serious journalistic essay last Friday night. That said, she'd opened the show that night with a typical entertainment feature about how "hilarious" the Cyber Ninjas project had turned out to be.

She had been too dumb to see that the Arizona report would only further Trump World's claims that more such "audits" were needed. Instead, our Eternal Child pleasured herself with a lengthy opening segment about how "hilarious" the episode had been.

This was a classic example of Standard Maddow Product. It was Tribal Entertainment Product, product in which we're told how unbelievably dumb The Others are, but also how smart We are. 

In fairness, The Others are amazingly dumb, but then again, so are We. You can tell this by the way we've tolerated the unintelligent mugging and clowning of this nut-adjacent child.

At any rate, she burned the start of her program away with this standard Entertainment / Tribal Ego Product. Later, she actually read, at some length, from a serious journalistic document—but not before indulging her vast egocentricity by stressing a dull-witted claim:

MADDOW (9/24/21): On the eve of the audit release, the conservative commentator, very conservative intellectual Robert Kagan, somebody with whom I disagree on everything, Robert Kagan wrote a piece for "The Washington Post," the most widely read and shared thing on the Washington Post web page. And he`s writing this as a conservative.

But it's titled, "Our constitutional crisis is already here." I want to read you the lead of this because, as hilarious as this was and as much as schadenfreude as there was today about this failure in Arizona, this own goal, the embarrassing step-on-a-rake failure, this is also a very dark day. 

And this is a dark thing we are going through. I'll read you what Kagan said today.

Lurking there, you can see the priorities of this Eternal Child. 

This is a very dark day, she said. But before she asked us to contemplate that, we got to laugh, in a lengthy opening segment, about the hilarious step-on-a-rake failure in Arizona, and we got to enjoy our schadenfreude.

We're facing constitutional crisis. But first, let's gambol and play!

In large part, Maddow's show has always been an entertainment program. It has also been a program which serves to create a sense of isolated tribal identity. Note the way she described Kagan, even as she read from his essay at length.

According to Maddow, the very conservative Kagan is someone whom she "disagrees on everything!"

Stating the obvious, that isn't true. If the claim was true, why was she reading his essay on the air, at some length, in plainly approving fashion?

Sadly, Maddow isn't simply committed to entertainment. She's also committed to "the myth of fingerprints"—to the eternal human insistence that Our Tribe is wholly unlike Their Tribe. That Our Tribe is the good pure tribe, the tribe which has nothing in common with what The Others are like.

Because she will always find a way to discuss herself, she said she agrees with Kagan on nothing, even as she approvingly read his essay. After she read from his essay at length, she returned to her basic point:

MADDOW: And that's from Robert Kagan. He was a very conservative thinker, somebody with whom I agree on basically nothing. But who has put a point on this moment.

Maddow loves to talk about herself. She also loves to advance the perception that Our Tribe has nothing in common with Their Tribe, that never the twain shall meet. 

This helps explain why our tribe has had so much trouble attracting non-aligned or weakly-aligned "Middle American" voters. Meanwhile, let's gambol and play! Honey, I shrunk the tribe!

There's much more to say about Maddow's program last Friday night. That includes the corporate branding involved in the way she told us, three separate times, that former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, now an MSNBC employee, is unlike Kagan "her friend."

That is mandated corporate branding, Maddow never stops selling the corporation, just as she never stops selling the car. We liberal voters fail to notice. Everybody else does.

There's much more to say about each of Maddow's shows in the past week. But no such effort would do any good, Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, has told us it's much too late.

Will Democrats end up passing some bills? We can't answer that question. That said, the liberal world is forced to rely on an apparent nutcase like Sinema to get anything through the Senate, and on a guy who has managed to hang on in West Virginia. 

How did we manage to reach this point? Go ahead and continue your house things! We'll address that question next week.

Next week: How We Got Here

STOPPED MAKING SENSE: Exciting behavior by the Post!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

What we've been talking about: We believe we've referred, in recent weeks, to the devolving nature of the Washington Post.

We've been especially struck by the strange, developing contrast between its still-traditional print edition and its increasingly tabloidized web site. That said, a report the Post is pushing today brings this devolution center stage.

As we type, the report in question is the Post's MOST READ. Its exciting headline says this:

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem dismisses conservative website’s claims of extramarital affair with former Trump adviser

Yum! Governor Noem has been accused of conducting an extramarital affair! Dearest darlings it's so delicious!

We're embarrassed for Felicia Sonmez and Josh Dawsey, who agreed to write this report. Lip-smacking headline included, their delicious report starts like this:

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem dismisses conservative website’s claims of extramarital affair with former Trump adviser

South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) on Wednesday dismissed a conservative media outlet’s claim that she is having an extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump adviser who is also advising Noem.

“These rumors are total garbage and a disgusting lie,” Noem said in a tweet. “These old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can’t achieve anything without a man’s help. I love Bryon. I’m proud of the God-fearing family we’ve raised together. Now I’m getting back to work.”

A conservative website, American Greatness, published a piece Tuesday claiming that, according to “multiple” sources, Noem has been having an affair with Lewandowski “for months.” The website did not identify any of the sources.

Lewandowski was Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign manager. He was fired by the campaign in 2016 but remains part of the former president’s inner circle and ran the pro-Trump Make America Great Again Action super PAC.

Is Noem conducting an affair? We don't have the slightest idea. If she is, we wouldn't consider it newsworthy.

That said, consider the journalistic standard which now prevails at this sliding newspaper:

In the current instance, the Post links to, and cites, a report from a conservative website—a report which claims "multiple" sources while naming exactly none.

That means that, by traditional standards, Sonmez and Dawsey don't have any sources! They write for the paper which became famous, long ago, for requiring two credible sources before a report could appear. 

In this case, it isn't just that Sonmez and Dawsey have no sources for the claim they're advancing. Their claim has them sniffing around in the bedroom again—the place where a recent quarter century of deeply destructive gong-show journalism began.

And yes, their exciting report is the Post's MOST READ. Our failing culture runs on such fuel, and apparently always will.

In our view, the Post has been sliding in this direction, especially online. Let's make a long story simple:

In its print edition, the Washington Post remains a traditional newspaper:

Its front section covers the traditional news of the nation and the world.  It also prints a daily Metro section, covering news of the Washington area, plus a daily Sports section and the iconic daily section called Style.

From time to time, a fair amount of silliness may appear in Style. Over the years, Style has published a fair amount of nonsense, trash and twaddle.

But in print, the Post is still built around traditional "news." Online, perhaps not quite so much.

Online, the Post's site does start with links to traditional news reports, but it often moves on rather quickly. The reader is soon bombarded with a bewildering array of offerings built around human interest, lifestyle and opinion, plus a great deal of undisguised dumbness. 

All too often, the online motto seems to be No Foolishness Left Behind.

In various ways, the online Post seems to be weirdly discontinuous with the print edition, in ways which may seem contradictory. 

As best we can tell, the iconic Style section doesn't exist online. Neither does the weekly, content-heavy Outlook section, a major building block of the Sunday print edition.

Somewhat comically, the online Post doesn't even offer National news as one of its featured sections. Here's what we mean by that:

At the very top of the site, the Post offer links to "World" news and to "Local" news (to news from "D.C., Md., and Va.").  But it offers no link to National news. There's no such link at all!

Perhaps somewhat comically, there is a link to "Race & Reckoning." So the culture goes as the upper end poses, performs and pretends.

For the record:

If you scroll down far enough at the Post's site, you will hit a National section. But what does this increasingly silly newspaper think of as National news? 

This morning, at the top of the National section, the top three reports were these, listed in order of prominence of display. And no, we aren't making this up. These were the top three listings:

Army to investigate spate of suspected suicides by N.Y. base soldiers

A man awoke to a bat on his neck and declined a vaccine. Weeks later, he died of rabies.

Florida man wrangles alligator his ‘own way’—with a trash bin

Judged by traditional norms, one of those reports was news. The other two were tabloid dreck. In summary, we offer this:

According to this morning's Post, a man awoke with a bat on his neck. Also, a Florida man wrangled an alligator.

And also this, in the MOST READ slot: Governor Noem is getting it on, according to multiple unknown alleged parties!

In fairness, we ought to say this:

The Post will say that it only reported this matter because Noem denied the claim in a tweet. But how about this? How about Noem denying the claim in a tweet and letting it end right there?

At any rate, this is the way a society dies. Or so Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba, now rather constantly tells us.

Tomorrow: When Maddow quoted Kagan

For deep reflection only: Noem has been floated as a possibility as Trump's next running-mate. Our question would be this:

Have you ever wondered if Kyrsten Sinema is thinking about that slot?

We've been reading Rachel's transcript!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Please get this child off the air: MSNBC has posted its transcripts for last night's programs.

We've been scrolling through the Maddow Show transcript. We'd call it unfortunate all the way down, right from its opening topic.

This isn't because Rachel Maddow is some sort of "bad person." Unfortunately, we would say that her political / cultural judgment is very poor at this point in time, and has been all along.

Our assessment:

Maddow is extremely skilled at the practice known as "selling the car," but at heart she's a highly tribal true believer. To wit:

Last night, she opened with the suggestion that federal prosecutors are going too easy on the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. She offered a highly selective account of one alleged example.

She moved on to snark about the latest crazy statements by Rep. Paul Gosar, who seems to be mentally ill. In so doing, she stressed the claim that she wasn't engaging in snark. 

She was too childish to use the grown-up language at which she was plainly hinting—the language of "mental illness," a set of unfortunate conditions which should be discussed in adult terms.  It's time for this eternal child to become a grown-up and say what she actually means.

(Maddow: "I should tell you—and I don't mean this with any snark—there has been some reporting in the Arizona press that it is possible that he is not well, there may be something health-wise going on with Congressman Gosar. We have no reason to believe that's true, and I should let you know that the congressman has said in response to that reporting that he's fine health-wise."  Full disclosure: We'd describe that presentation as childish, silly and sad.)

Before too long, she was quoting the latest transcripts involving past bullshit from Rudy Giuliani. 

Something's been wrong with Giuliani for years; every sane person knows this. There is no need to keep wasting everyone's time pretending to convince cable news viewers of what everyone already knows.  

The question is what we should do about the deeply disordered situation at hand. Concerning that seminal question, Our Silly Child lacks the first hint of the faintest clue.

From there, it was on to this pitiful nonsense:

MADDOW (9/28/21): This is the scene today in Chicago with former President Barack Obama when he picked the spot on which this would happen today. He was actually still president. It was July of 2016 when President Barack Obama chose this site, Jackson Park in Chicago, to be the official home for his post-presidential library.

Today, Chicago was the official groundbreaking, officially kicking off construction on the project—you see the former president the former first lady there. And a new presidential library is always a cool thing. You know, it's a research center, a museum, a monument to history for the public to engage with.

This one though is also a reminder that our immediate past president after President Obama who has been out of office the better part of a year now, he hasn't done anything to start planning his own presidential library. He hasn`t even announced where he would like it to be. Not in general terms, not in specific terms, in fact no terms at all have been announced for his library.

And you know, these things do take a long time to get off the ground. Barack Obama selected the location for his presidential center more than five years ago. They just started putting shovels into the dirt today.

Why is it that there's no Trump presidential library being cited as we speak? Well, for Donald Trump to start planning his post-presidential library, that would require him to acknowledge that he is post his presidency and apparently, we are not there yet. The animating life force in the Republican Party right now means that their last president thinks he is still the rightful president and three-quarters of the Republican Party`s voters agree with him.

Personally, we were disappointed to see the Obamas engaging in this upper-end showboating at such a perilous time. But that's right, Rachel, you silly child: 

Donald J. Trump may run again, and he may win if he does! There's no reason to beat around the bush about this painfully obvious fact, or to go around pretending that you've managed to sniff out some clues. 

For the record, if Trump does run again and wins, Rachel will be one of the multimillionaire corporate entertainers through whose hapless performance his success will have been accomplished.

After she got through with that, she turned to this manifest nonsense:

MADDOW: President Biden tonight cancelled his own planned trip to Chicago tomorrow so he can stay in Washington and keep working on negotiations to try to keep the government from shutting down, to try to avert the debt ceiling crisis, to try to pass his infrastructure bill and his budget. Again, all the Beltway press looking at this fight in Washington is thinking about two parties that have two different ideas about what the governing principles of the country ought to be and how much money we ought to be spending versus raising in terms of revenue.

Widen the aperture from the Beltway press stuff, look around. What`s going on in the Republican Party has nothing to do with governing the country. What's going on in the Republican Party more than ever has to do with overthrowing elections, overthrowing small D democracy and getting stuff done by force. Ignoring that when you`re looking at the rational negotiation—negotiating positions of the two parties in Washington is to put your head in the sand.

As usual, this failing child generalizes about what "the Beltway press" is doing without offering a single example of the alleged offense she attributes to them as a group. 

In fact, the Beltway press has widely presented the image of the GOP Maddow claims they are suppressing. Paranoia is overcoming Our Eternal Child as she makes this silly sweeping suggestion without offering a single example of the work she has in mind.

Maddow was never the right person for this job. That said, Our Own Blue Tribe has always loved her mugging and clowning, and we've long succumbed to her substantial skills at the task called "selling the car."

Starting with the early two weeks of "tea bagger" dick jokes, Maddow has been bad at this job every step of the way. In her apparent mounting frustration and paranoia, she now thinks that federal prosecutors aren't doing their job, and that the Beltway press is propping up the GOP as a group.

Meanwhile, she keeps trying to get the same old people—disordered people like Giuliani—shipped off to the same old jails. Singlehandedly, corporate-paid leaders of this type may very well end up getting Trump elected again.

Reportedly, Rachel will be leaving nightly "cable news" fairly soon, on a $30 million contract. If we hope to escape our current peril, it can't happen soon enough.

Later in the show: Later, she spent an entire segment letting us know that fewer Republicans are vaccinated, as compared to Democrats. (It stands at 58% to 90%, according to Kaiser.)

Everybody already knows that! Maddow just keeps trying to pound the loathing into her viewers' heads. Simply put, it isn't enough. We'd all be much, much better off if the ridiculous channel for which she works simply went off the air.

STOPPED MAKING SENSE: Lawrence and Rachel could hardly be dumber!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Our Corporate Clowns, all the way down: Who's the dumbest major figure in the history of "cable news?"

We're not asking who's most diabolical. We asking who's the dumbest.

For ourselves, we'd have to throw Rachel Maddow into the list of contenders. Her performance last night was steady-state Dumb from beginning to end, with a bit of her persistent Revulsion for The Others thrown in as she began.

(That revulsion is always disguised.)

Maddow would do quite well on an IQ test. As a cable news star, she's just endlessly dumb.

Her political instincts are constantly lacking. She's also a full-blown loather of Others, though she works  to disguise this fact.

Last night, her various segments were so dumb that it would take a book to chronicle them. In Ulysses, Joyce built a lengthy if largely unreadable classic out of a single day in the life. 

You could build a primer on Political / Journalistic Dumbness out of last night's single hour.

Maddow's dumbness has been visible for a long time. From the beginning, it's been joined to her truly massive egotism—her massive self-involvement. 

Over the years, she has produced one ridiculous incident or episode after another, but none of these episodes get discussed. Maddow is too popular here within Our Own Hapless and Failing Blue Tribe.

Members of the Red Tribe have been unable to see through a succession of failed public figures, up to and including the deeply disordered Donald J. Trump. Over here in our own Blue Tribe, we've been completely unable to see the shortcomings and failures of Maddow.

Maddow is one of the (many) reasons why the republic's in peril. For today, though, let's focus on a simple question:

Just how dumb can "cable news" get in matters involving Our Scholar?

Our nation finds itself in a time of great peril. Many people have noticed this fact and have said so. 

But even as the state of peril advances, the people we love on Our own Cable News can't seem to quit The Dumbness.

How dumb can it get where Maddow's involved—Maddow, Our Own Eternal Child? For starters, consider the insulting lunacy from last Thursday night, when Lawrence went there again.

The program started in a familiar way. Rachel was talking about herself, as she incessantly does:

MADDOW (9/23/21): And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.

Man, when it rains, it pours. We've got news to break on a few different fronts tonight. There is a lot going on.

Today started out as a normal Thursday and we had sort of a normal Thursday day planned. And as we got closer and closer to show time, it turned into leak time. It turned into like "leak Christmas." 

"Leak," not as potatoes and leeks, but like leaks, newsworthy leaks. And then it turned into "subpoena Christmas."

So we threw out in its entirety everything we planned on doing tonight and started a whole new series of stories. So I will tell you in advance, there may be a little more hurly burly than usual, because so many of these stories are breaking at the last minute and developing as we're reporting them

But let's just get into it. Forgive me any straying into the margins and veering out of the lanes a little bit. But let me tell you what we`ve been working on. First, we`re going to start with Arizona...

Quickly, a bit of background:

Increasingly, Maddow has been starting her program with complaints about the way "breaking news" has forced her to discard the program she'd planned to do that night 

For someone being paid millions of corporate dollars per year to supervise a staff of twenty, you'd think such irritations might be seen as par for the course—as "part of the business we've chosen." 

Increasingly, Maddow has complained about this point of annoyance at the start of her hour-long programs. On this occasion, though, Maddow wasn't complaining. 

Instead, she was chuckling about the "hilarious" news emerging from Arizona. Somewhat oddly, she was chuckling about some hilarious news she wasn't willing to describe.

For perhaps the ten millionth time, she described the way the ridiculous group called Cyber Ninjas had been conducting a review of Arizona election results. At that point, she told us this:

MADDOW: Well, I can tell you tonight that there has been a document circulating all day today in Arizona journalism circles. It is a document that purports to be a near final draft of the Arizona audit report, the results of the Arizona so-called audit. 

Now, in addition to this circulating in Arizona journalism circles tonight, I have to tell you that we have reviewed it. I have reviewed it.

It's three whole volumes—how best to put this—other than to tell you that its purported conclusions are objectively hilarious. 

We are not going to report on the contents of that purported draft tonight because, even though multiple sources have told us that it is legit, we tracked down many sources today who all confirmed today that that is a close to final draft of the results that are going to be released tomorrow, we frankly, despite that multiple source confirmation, we just do not trust anything, anything, anything that has come from anywhere near this clown show process in Arizona.

So even though I can report to you with confidence and with personal knowledge that there is widely circulating in Arizona a draft of the purported results, we will wait. They will release their supposed results tomorrow, 1 P.M. local time, 4 P.M. Eastern time. Trump world will lose their minds regardless of what it is they are going to report, but we will wait to see what they actually say. So, there's that.

I will tell you, once the final results, such as they are, are released, one of the things that will be interesting to see is whether or not they revised those results from what appears to be the near final draft once it starts circulating in journalist circles and gives people a chance to laugh at it.

Anyway, like I said, when it rains it pours and news has been developing over the course of the day and into tonight...

That didn't exactly make sense. She wasn't willing to vouch for the contents of the draft report. She left open the possibility that the draft report would be changed.

On the other hand, she was willing to say that, when the final report was released on Friday, it would be "objectively hilarious." People would have the chance "to laugh at it," she entertainingly said.

We'll take a guess. We'll guess that the network hadn't given permission for the contents of the draft report to be described on the air.. 

We'll also guess that Maddow felt sure that the official report would say what it actually did the next day—that Biden had indeed beaten Trump in Maricopa County. That finding is what was going to be "objectively hilarious."

On Friday night, Maddow went on and on—then on and on—about how "hilarious" that outcome actually was. On balance, she failed to have enough savvy to see that TrumpWorld would simply misstate what the Ninjas had found—or that the Ninjas would include all sorts of suggestive claims which would serve to reinforce TrumpWorld's claim that "election reform" is needed, along with many more "audits."

On Friday night, Our Eternal Child indulged herself in this latest source of hilarity. We liberals turn to Rachel for entertainment as much as for anything else.

As dumb as Friday night's performance was, that isn't the Dumbness to which we want to call your attention today. We want to call your attention to the dumbness which ensued when Rachel performed the "handover" to Lawrence at 10 P.M. Thursday night. 

The astonishing dumbness of this event began in a reasonably innocent way. After Maddow's program ended, the handover started with a promise that Friday would also be "nuts." For Lawrence's transcript, click here:

MADDOW: That is going to do it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow night, which I have a feeling is going to be just as nuts.

Now, it's time for The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.

O'DONNELL: Good evening, Rachel. We have Congressman Schiff joining us on the subpoenas from the January 6 committee, fascinating, hard-hitting fast subpoena schedule. You've got two weeks to give us the documents. A week after that we're going to do your deposition, really stacking them up fast. We're eager to get to that.

As Thursday's program ended, Rachel said that Friday night would also be "nuts." Translation: 

Silly Children that we are, we'd get to have a lot of fun on Friday night's program too!

Lawrence responded by citing his upcoming interview with Rep. Schiff. But then the Monster Truck Dumbness began, started, as it's done many times in the past:

O'DONNELL (continuing directly): But, Rachel, I just want to—I have the most—

The most common question I get out there in the world about MSNBC is, "How does Rachel do it?" And I always say, "She's the hardest working person I know."

But tonight I don't know how she did it, okay? Because, because I am aware, let's say half-aware, of how hard you were working today on the Arizona story and how much—how far down that road into the Arizona story you were, and how late in the game you were on that road.

MADDOW: Uh-huh.

O'DONNELL: And then your show comes on, and somewhere you have—you've made the judgment, the news judgment that you can't use what you found. We`re going to wait 24 hours or less and—wise judgment. 

But you then pull this other show out from somewhere that fills—that's a whole hour of a TV show that as far as I know didn't exist about an half and a hour before you went on TV.

So now I officially do not know. I have no idea how Rachel does it. I just don't know.

This familiar "fawning over Rachel" exchange has become rather familiar during the last year or so. We've puzzled over why Lawrence does it. The fact is, we still don't know.

It's always possible that he means it—that he isn't slyly mocking Rachel's egotism, or simply trying to extend his own career. 

But of one thing we can be sure—Rachel is ready to go there. Last Thursday, she gave this response:

MADDOW (continuing directly): You know, you're very kind. I had no idea where this was going when you started this line of inquiry. 

I will say, for close watchers of MSNBC, if you go back to the handover between Chris Hayes and me, you will note that at the very beginning of the show, I'm going like this. And I'm off screen still typing what's going to be on the show in the A block, because everything, we did have an entire show completely unrelated to what was on the air.

And then all of that stuff broke, including the Steven Hatfill stuff that broke about the coronavirus response. Luckily we were able to get Jamie Raskin here to talk about both the breaking news from the January 6 investigation and the breaking news from the COVID investigation, because he is on both. And the Arizona stuff has been Mr. Toad`s wild ride all day today. You are absolutely correct about that.

I am—I'm going to go sleep in my car. I don't think I can even make it home. I'm just a mess.

Just for the record, "the Steven Hatfill stuff" couldn't have been more trivial, except in the part of Rachel's mind which wants to Lock Everyone Up and Talk About Nothing Else.

 Meanwhile, though, poor Rachel! She was going to have to sleep in her car, she'd worked so hard all day! Truly, Rachel was a mess. By her own account!

For the record, Rachel has played similar cards since she first went on the air. By her own admission, she frequently admits that she  couldn't get to sleep at night, she was so concerned about some major topic.

By her own admission, Rachel is always a little more caring than everyone else. On this night, if they go back to the 8 P.M. handover from Hayes, historians will note that, at the very beginning of the show, she was still offscreen typing that night's actual program!

We've wondered, for some time, if Lawrence is mocking Rachel's self-involvement when  he triggers responses like this. Whatever the answer, Rachel is always ready to talk about herself, and about her giant kampf.

The sheer stupidity of this exchange already had our analysts crying and tearing their hair. But the familiar foolishness wasn't over yet. The clowning continued from there as Lawrence continued to bait his more popular colleague:

O'DONNELL (continuing directly): If I had a whole show planned and it got kind of we made the judgment that we can't do that at the last minute, I'd be sitting here reading weather reports or something. I don`t have another show. Rachel, there is no another show. I don`t have another one in my back pocket. I don`t. You`re walking around with a couple of shows ready to go at all times?

MADDOW: No. This is—this is an occupational hazard. You make it happen. Luckily when the news proceeds this fast, you kick something to the curb and let the rest of the traffic hit you. Any way, you are very kind, my friend. Thank you very much.

Rachel took the bait again, discussing the obvious greatness of her sprawling sacrifice. Unmentioned was the staff of twenty with whom she prepares her show.

Meanwhile, full disclosure! For mandated reasons of corporate branding, we're supposed to believe that Lawrence is Rachel's "friend!" For mandated reasons of corporate branding, everyone on this corporate channel extends this appellation to everyone else. It's part of the way we rubes get conned!

At this point, you'd almost think the bullshit had to be over. Actually, no—it wasn't:

O'DONNELL (continuing directly): By the way, we're going to be joined by Senator Rebecca Rios, the Democratic leader of the Senate in Arizona to—

MADDOW: Oh, good.

O'DONNELL: —give her preview of what she is expecting tomorrow when the results of this thing that has been called a "fraudit" in Arizona is released. So we`ll see what she can tell us.

MADDOW: I can—you can tell—

Regardless of what they say, you know that the Trump world is going to light itself on proverbial fire over whatever the results are in Arizona, whether they match these purported draft documents that were circulating today that we obtained and that other news organizations obtained, whether they're something totally unrelated, whether they match all the fraud hysteria and all the conspiracy theories and wildest dreams or whether they wet blanket the whole thing. Either way, Trump World is going to be absolutely bananas tomorrow, which is why I have to figure out some way to sleep tonight, because we got to be ready for that.

O'DONNELL: Rachel "I Don't Know How She Does It" Maddow. Thank you very much.

MADDOW: Thank you, Lawrence.

O'DONNELL: See you tomorrow, Rachel. Thank you.

Lawrence's fawning knows no bounds. We've never been able to figure if he could actually be sincere.

At any rate, the foolishness finally stopped. By her own admission, Rachel was going to "have to figure out some way to sleep tonight," difficult though that would be.

(This is all part of the process known as "selling the car." Rachel tends to present herself as Just Like Us except A Million Times More.)

When corporate cable stars play us that way, we're being treated like fools. We still can't tell you why Lawrence does it, but on Monday night, there he went again.

At Rachel handed off at 10, he played tape from eleven years back. It had been his program's first night,  his first handover from Rachel. 

After the pair of cable stars noted how great they both still look, Lawrence started the fawning all over again, with Rachel joining in:

O'DONNELL (9/27/21): So suddenly, there was a live show at 10 P.M., and you had a little job to do at the end. And Rachel, because you say "Good evening" to me in this show every night, you have kept this show here for 11 years, because we wouldn't be here without the strongest, greatest lead-in we could possibly have.

MADDOW: That is very kind of you to say. It's also crazy talk. You have been here for these 11 years because you`re freaking fantastic. And—listen, getting to three years in cable news means that you`re a senior citizen. Getting to eleven years in cable news means, you are an institution and an icon. And you and The Last Word deserve it, and another eleven after this. And I just want you to stay exactly where you are.

According to Rachel, because he's been on the air eleven years, Lawrence is an icon.

She's been on the air thirteen years! You can probably take it from there.

We've skipped the bulk of the bullshit from Monday night. But this is a type of multimillionaire corporate bullshit which simply never stops.

None of this explains the dumbness which ran all through Maddow's program last night. Having said that, we'll add this:

Last Friday night, Maddow actually quoted at length from Robert Kagan's guest essay in the Washington Post. Quite correctly, that lengthy essay describes the massive peril this nation is in.

In fact, Kagan understates the degree of peril. For today, our statement is this:

When people persist, in the face of such peril, in the kind of stupidity we've shown you above, these people need to be taken off the air. 

In our assessment, it's too late for us to hope for a decent resolution of our current peril. 

It's entirely possible that Donald J. Trump will end up in the White House again. If that occurs, the endless mugging and clowning of Maddow—along with her horrible journalistic judgment—will be one of the ways Our Failing Blue Tribe helped bring the American experiment, such as it was, to its disastrous end.

Full disclosure! We're being consulted by Cassandra, daughter of Priam, as we make our gloomy projections. But the sheer stupidity of the "corporate cable" wing of our tribe has never been more clear.

You see it from Rachel every night. It doesn't mean that she's a "bad person." It simply means that she shouldn't be on the air.

You see it from Rachel every night, but by now, it pops up everywhere blue voters might look. Our tribe stopped making sense long ago, assuming it ever did.

Tomorrow: Conspiracy? Hotel Rwanda?

McConnell's position on government shutdown!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

Unmentioned by Rachel last night: There's no better way for a liberal to become underinformed than by watching Rachel Maddow. Last evening's hapless, then embarrassing outing provides a case in point.

The embarrassment started at 10 P.M., when Rachel and Lawrence staged the latest of their embarrassing "handover" conversations—conversations in which  Lawrence kisses Rachel's keister as her program ends and his program begins.

We'll review a few of those spectacles later in the week. For now, let's forget the embarrassment, turning instead to the lack of information emanating from last night's Maddow Show.

We refer to Our Own Rhodes Scholar's failure to explain the funding deadline which approaches this week. On the front page of today's Washington Post, Tony Romm explained this matter rather clearly, drawing  a crucial distinction which Rachel blew right past all during last night's dimwitted imitation of a "cable news" program.

In fact, two different funding deadlines are approaching. Romm explained the difference between them, then described Mitch McConnell's position on the two deadlines:

ROMM (9/28/21): The most urgent deadline is midnight Thursday, at which point Congress must adopt a measure to fund the government or some federal agencies and operations will shutter starting Friday morning. And lawmakers also must act before mid-October to raise the debt ceiling, or they could risk a first-ever default, potentially destabilizing global markets.

In the hours before the Monday evening vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) staked his party’s position—that Republicans are not willing to vote for any measure that raises or suspends the debt ceiling, even if they have no intentions of shutting down the government in the process. GOP lawmakers say raising the borrowing limit, which allows the country to pay its bills, would enable Biden and his Democratic allies to pursue trillions in additional spending and other policy changes they do not support.

“We will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown,” said McConnell, who has called on Democrats to use their narrow but potent majorities to address the debt ceiling on their own. “We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit.”

Romm is able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Thanks to this skill, he was able to describe the two different deadlines which are approaching:

Deadline this Thursday at midnight: By midnight Thursday, Congress must adopt a measure to fund the government or some federal agencies and operations will shutter starting Friday morning. 

That's one of the approaching deadlines. The other deadline is this:

Deadline in mid-October: By mid-October, Congress must act to raise the debt ceiling, or they could risk a first-ever default, potentially destabilizing global markets.

The second deadline is more consequential. The first arrives this week. 

Regarding McConnell's position on these (two) approaching deadlines, Romm reports the distinction which Rachel blew past in the forty minutes she devoted to budget issues last night:

McConnell has said that Senate Republicans will "support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown" this week. He has also said that Senate Republicans won't vote to raise the debt ceiling—to address the deadline which comes due next month.

We aren't telling you that this is good policy on McConnell's part. We're merely telling you that these are the positions he has stated.

Yesterday's "no" votes by Senate Republicans reflected the fact that the bill under consideration addressed both approaching deadlines. McConnell has said that Republicans will support a "clean" bill to address this week's deadline. 

(In this context, a "clean" bill would be a bill which addresses this week's deadline and nothing else.)

This brings us to Maddow's latest imitation of journalism. Last night, she idiocized and propagandized her way through her program's first forty minutes, focused entirely on budget issues, including the two we've cited.

That said, she never managed to draw the distinction between these two approaching deadlines. Most specifically, she never explained that McConnell has expressed support for addressing the deadline which approaches this week.

Was Rachel being dishonest / disingenuous, or was she simply uninformed? She mugged and clowned in various ways as her latest imitation of journalism proceeded, but we can't tell you what she knew as her latest failed effort proceeded.

Rachel will soon be leaving nightly journalism. This will serve as a major gift to any honest liberal. 

Such people got underinformed by Rachel again last night. Sadly, there's absolutely nothing new about such failed performance.

At 10 P.M., the latest embarrassment with Lawrence began. At some point,  this pseudo-journalistic clown show is slated to reach its end.

Concerning the timing: When did McConnell state his position on the two impending deadlines?

We can't say with precision. That said, Romm's report was filed at 6:57 P.M., two hours before Maddow's show went on the air. 

(She opened with a standard six minutes designed to reassure viewers that The Others Are Much, Much Dumber Than We Are and that Nancy Is Just Extremely Smart. We'll guess that market research has shown that her viewers enjoy this type of twaddle.)

Meanwhile, the distinction between the impending deadlines was clearly explained on Anderson Cooper's 8 P.M. program, even as Cooper raced to finish his opening segment so he could transition to endless, pointless chatter about the death of Gabby Petito. Everyone knows about the difference between the two deadlines—everyone but the unfortunate people who watch the Maddow Show.

Maddow didn't seem to know much; Cooper wanted to talk about young woman who was a widely-discussed missing person, even though there was nothing new to say about the ongoing case. This is the pablum we viewers are served by anti-Trump corporate cable as our failing society wheezes and groans toward its appointed end.

Hat tip concerning impending demise: Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba and fraternal twin sister of Helenus

STOPPED MAKING SENSE: Our own tribe's discourse has stopped making sense!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

Crazy, daft all the way down: An un-funny thing happened in Saturday's Washington Post.

We're referring to the famous newspaper's print editions. On page A2, a news report described the situation involving Haitian migrants near Del Rio, Texas. In paragraphs 5-7, this account was offered:

SONMEZ AND MIROFF (9/25/21): The deportations of Black Haitians seeking asylum—and the viral images and videos of White Border Patrol agents grabbing and shouting at them—drew sharp rebukes from Black Democrats, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Earlier in the day, Biden decried the migrants’ treatment. Agents were photographed and filmed by news crews cursing at the Haitians and attempting to force them back across the river to Mexico, at times charging with their horses and swinging their leather reins.

There has been no evidence that agents stuck [sic] any of the migrants or used “whips” as some claimed.

A peculiar claim can be seen lurking in that passage. Weirdly, Sonmez and Miroff reported that some Democrats were angry about the fact that border patrol agents had "shouted at" some of the migrants.

Some of the border patrol agents had shouted at some of the migrants! According to the news report, this shouting had drawn sharp rebukes from some Democratic pols.

That said, there had been "no evidence that agents struck any of the migrants," the Post was now reporting.  Also, there had been no evidence that agents had used "whips," as some people had claimed.

There was no evidence that migrants had been struck. There was no evidence that agents had used whips.

Correction! There was no evidence of such behaviors until you turned to page A19 of those same print editions. On that page, columnist Colbert King could be found saying this:

KING (9/25/21): Who would have thought, on Inauguration Day, that a mere eight months down the road President Biden would be faced with: a Haitian migrant crisis on the southern border; schisms in his party that threaten his plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and improve health, education and safety-net programs; a rupture with the French over a new U.S.-Australia defense pact...

[...]

The United States’ relations with France will endure. However, in the handling of Haitian migrants, the administration is coming across as its own worst enemy. What kind of government would tolerate for one second mounted Border Patrol agents using horse reins like whips to control Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Tex.?

On page A2, there was no evidence that any migrants had been struck at all, let alone struck with whips. 

But so what? On page A19, mounted Border Patrol agents had been "using horse reins like whips" to control the migrants, and King was strongly suggesting that the Biden administration had somehow "tolerated" this.

So it went on Saturday morning in the Washington Post. For what it's worth, a news report in that morning's New York Times also suggested that earlier reports about the use of whips had been erroneous.

"A photographer on the scene had said publicly that agents had not been using their reins to whip migrants, as had been widely speculated," the Times reporters reported. For the record, this was a change from the original version of their report, which has now been formally corrected.

Meanwhile, the corrected New York Times report still included the fact that Vice President Harris "had likened the pictures of agents on horseback to slavery." Without explanation, a photo caption offered this nugget:

President Biden vowed to hold the agents accountable who chased Haitian migrants on horseback as they tried to cross the Rio Grande into Texas from Mexico on Saturday.

Aren't border agents supposed to "chase" migrants if they're crossing the Rio Grande into Texas without authorization? Such questions went unexplained in the Times' news report—and as the Post's report continued, President Biden was quoted saying this:

SONMEZ AND MIROFF (continuing directly from above): “It was horrible,” the president said. “To see people treated like they did? Horses running them over and people being strapped? It's outrageous and I promise you, those people will pay.”

Had migrants been run over by horses and strapped? That's what the president was quoted saying in the Post report, even as Colbert King seemed to suggest that Biden, or at least his administration, had tolerated such conduct.

Welcome to the wonderful world of a rapidly failing culture! By now, efforts have been made to sift through the thrilling tribal excitement concerning the alleged use of whips, or the alleged use or reins as whip, or the claim that people had been run over by horses, or had even been shouted at.

Yesterday, Max Boot attempted to sort these matters out in the Washington Post, though his column has only appeared online. Kevin Drum offered a substantial excerpt from Boot's column while offering this assessment:

DRUM (9/27/21): I doubt that an investigation will show that CBP officers did anything wrong in their treatment of Haitian immigrants. It made a big impact thanks to a single picture that gave a seriously mistaken impression, but video suggests there was nothing very unusual about the situation.

Did officers do anything wrong in their treatment of the migrants? Was there anything "very unusual" about the isolated events at the border which had been captured in a single viral photograph—a single photograph which our own flailing and failing anti-Trump tribe found especially thrilling?

People can judge such matters for themselves. For now, we'll briefly return to Saturday's Washington Post:

On page A2, readers were told that there was no evidence that migrants had been struck at all, let alone that any agents had been using whips. 

But on page A19, on that very same day, a leading figure at the Post was telling readers something quite different—and he angrily suggested that the Biden Admin had tolerated the whipping of migrants.

Two days later, there was Charles Blow, in Monday's New York Times. Blow was still howling about "the outrageous images of agents on horseback herding the migrants like cattle." 

Using the private language of our failing, barely-competent tribe, Blow referred to the migrants as "Black bodies" rather than as people. According to experts, this is the way we humans behave as our societies die.

In fairness, awkward juxtapositions can occur as information emerges about some incident. Perhaps it isn't "very unusual" that Colbert King was saying one thing on Saturday morning, even as his own newspaper's news report was saying something quite different.

That said, something has been "very unusual" about this event, or at least that would be the case in a dimly rational world. We refer to the lunatic way the liberal / progressive / anti-Trump world reacted to that one photograph involving that one border patrol agent. 

Beyond that,  we refer to the slippery, disingenuous was our liberal thought leaders are still pimping their original impressions concerning this incident.

As we learn that no one was actually whipped, we're asked to be upset to think that unauthorized migrants were "chased," even "shouted at." At New York magazine, Sarah Jones—she once inspired so much hope!—offered this as our silly and failing progressive world emitted its many death rattles:

JONES (9/23/21): Some images burn themselves into the brain. In this one, a U.S. Border Patrol agent on horseback lashes a whip near the face of a Haitian migrant; Reuters reports he later grabbed a man by the shirt. The migrants on our border are fleeing poverty and political chaos; they seek the same future we all want for ourselves. They have found a violent welcome in Joe Biden’s America. Asked to comment on the use of whips by border agents, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she did not think “anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”

Jones included the photo of the (one) agent on horseback—the photo which launched a thousand breakdowns.

In fairness to Jones, it may be that she still believed, at that point, that "agents" (plural) were lashing "whips" (plural) in the incident which had generated that one photograph of that one border agent—that agents (plural) were doing this "in Joe Biden's America."

That said, we offer this to note the insanity which grips human populations as their societies come to an end—the insanity involved when Jones complains about that Reuters report, in which it was said that a border patrol agent had grabbed someone's shirt.

Reportedly, a law enforcement officer had grabbed someone's shirt! As our failing tribe slides toward the sea, that's the sort of thing our thought leaders rail against—"in Joe Biden's America," no less.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our tribe is now nearly insane. In the particular matter under review, we're commenting on our tribe's crazy reactions to an incident which might seem to involve a matter of race. 

That said, the dimwitted nuttiness of our upper-end tribal discourse is all around us now, if we're just willing to look. Our discourse stopped making sense long ago. Our behavior rapidly is spiraling downwards, if we're just willing to look.

We'll offer examples this week. We hope to move, with deliberate speed, to the increasingly nutty conversations between Rachel and Lawrence, and to the studied lunacy of Our Own Rhodes Scholar herself.

As we do, we'll also make reference to Robert Kagan's lengthy, widely-cited essay in Sunday's Washington Post. We're on the eve of destruction, Kagan said—and we'd have to say that he understated the nature and sweep of the challenge.

Our own vastly self-impressed tribe is failing very fast. The Crazy is quite widespread among the pro-Trump population, but the behaviors on display in Our Town are increasingly dim, addled, silly, near-hysterical, "very unusual," daft.

It's all right there if we're willing to see it. Anthropologists insist that we aren't.

Coming: As Kagan paints a frightening picture, Rachel and Lawrence cavort

STARTING TOMORROW: Rachel, Donald and Robert (Kagan)!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

But appearing today, Charles Blow: A troubling fact has become fairly clear within, let's say, the past decade:

Enlightenment values are extremely "last millennium" within our failing culture, even within our own  blue tribe. 

This fact becomes more and more evident as the days tick by. For one more example, consider Charles Blow's new column. Also, consider what two commenters said.

What should President Biden, and the Biden Administration, have done? What should they have done  in response to the recent, rather sudden arrival of a large number of Haitian migrants at the Southwest border near Del Rio, Texas?

We can't answer that very good question. In our view, reporting of this sudden event has been remarkably fuzzy, even by prevailing norms.

We do know this:

At the start of the coverage of this incident. a photograph was widely misreported and misunderstood. This produced enormous amounts of outrage. For Kevin Drum's presentation of this matter, including the relevant videotape, you can just click here.

We also know this:

Once the misunderstanding was clarified, a wide range of liberal and progressive "thought leaders" cleaned the cupboard of slippery language as they worked, around the clock, to keep misperception and outrage alive.

Inevitably, Blow follows suit in this morning's column. His slippery, misleading, emotional language appears in this passage:

BLOW (9/27/21): Yes, there were the outrageous images of agents on horseback herding the migrants like cattle, and there was also the administration aggressively deporting the migrants back to Haiti.

In Blow's emotionally-charged rendition, immigration officers were "herding the migrants like cattle." In such ways, tribal beings—humans like us—strain to keep outrage alive.

Full disclosure:

We weren't shocked to learn that law enforcement officials on the Southwest border sometimes work on horseback. 

Mounted police have routinely operated in northeastern cities. In our experience, this dates all the way to the street-fighting 1960s, when mounted police would be used to disperse crowds of (overwhelmingly "white") antiwar protesters.

It's hardly surprising to think that law enforcement would also work on horseback in the desert Southwest. To us, it doesn't seem like a "racial" play—but our tribe's various human beings have stripped the cupboard of emotionally-charged and deceptive language as they fight to perform their Storyline in the current circumstance.

In Blow's rendition, the mounted police were "herding the migrants like cattle." This is the sort of thing it may take to keep tribal outrage alive.

As for Blow, he's deeply upset, as he always is. 

His headline says this: "Joe Biden's mendacity." Soon, he's offering this account of his reaction to those "outrageous images:":

BLOW: Yes, there were the outrageous images of agents on horseback herding the migrants like cattle, and there was also the administration aggressively deporting the migrants back to Haiti.

When I see those Black bodies at the border, I am unable to separate them from myself, or my family, or my friends. They are us. There is a collective consciousness in blackness, born of the white supremacist erasure of our individuality.

Your accomplishment is never your own, but a credit to the race. Your sins are never your own, but a stain on the race. In America, and throughout the diaspora, all Black people are linked together like a chain of paper dolls.

So it has been incredibly painful to witness the treatment of the Haitians, and it has been impossible not to recoil in disgust or burn with outrage. And to think, “This is happening on Joe Biden’s watch.”

When Blow sees those "outrageous images" of the "herding" of those "Black bodies" (Tribal Private Language alert!),  he reports that he is "unable to separate [the Haitian migrants] from himself or from his family and friends."

We're supposed to admire this inability. We'll report a different reaction.

In fact, those unfortunate migrants aren't the deeply "privileged" Blow, his family or his friends. They're a very different group, a group of very unfortunate people, in a very different type of situation. 

That said, Blow is "unable to" keep this distinction in mind. For this reason, he says "it has been impossible not to burn with outrage" at the images in question—images he isn't willing to describe in a reasonably straightforward way.

It isn't clear that those mounted police did anything wrong in the incident which was photographed and videotaped. If they did do something wrong, Blow doesn't explain what it was. At times like these, why bother!

One (highly selective) photograph inspired a great deal of rage. And, at times of tribal war, we burn to keep rage alive.

Even as he keeps pretending that those officers treated the migrants like cattle, Blow seems to blame Biden for their alleged offence. In the larger sense, what should the Biden administration have done with respect to this large group of migrants?

You're asking a very good question! Below, you see the outraged Blow's (lack of) response:

BLOW: It seems to me that Biden tried to simultaneously eliminate the horrible optics the migrants present, and to do so as quickly as possible, and at the same time blunt the already loud criticism from Republicans that he is mishandling immigration and has an open-borders policy. (No wonder, then, that the migrant encampment beneath the Del Rio bridge has already been cleared.)

But those Republicans cannot be appeased. No matter what direction Biden takes they will condemn it. So why not take the moral path, the righteous path, the ethical path?

According to Blow, Biden and his administration should have "take[n] the moral path, the righteous path, the ethical path." 

That said, what was the moral, righteous and ethical path? Married to his sacred outrage, Blow never bothers to say!

At times like these, the center cannot hold. The worst are full of passionate intensity, but so is almost everyone else.

The deep emotions Blow reports are one of the many poisoned fruits of this nation's brutal racial history. That said, his self-reported fact—the fact that he can't see past his emotional reactions—explains why Enlightenment values have ceased to exist for him, as for almost everyone else.

Our own blue tribe has lost its way. There's no sign that we'll be finding our way back, or that the nation's center will be able to hold.

Inevitably, one early commenter to Blow's column said this. This is The Crazy on stilts:

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK CITY: You know you are in trouble when a liberal progressive like Charles Blow is against you.  Is Joe Biden now a friend or foe to black people?  I would guess the latter. But, of course, only a black person can answer this honestly.

The highlighted statement is crazy. It's also a tribute to our tribe's sole surviving God—to the jealous god, Identity.

A second commenter offers this. Reactions like these have lost the war within our own blue tribe:

COMMENTER FROM CALIFORNIA: Perhaps Charles Blow needs to stop focusing so much on identity. We’ve been shipping non-black migrants home in their thousands for decades. But suddenly a bunch of black migrants, and he gets up in arms. The problem with this issue is, people don’t try to come here unless they think they can get in. If you let them think they’re getting in as long as they show up, what happened last week is inevitable. There’s no shortage of migrants—most seeking the same economic opportunities my great grandparents did—who would undertake this dangerous journey, with limited understanding of the risks and the ultimate (lack of) rewards, if the barrier for entry was dropped. I’m not sure what people want on the left—political suicide by just letting people in, encouraging more to come? I just don’t know how this could be dealt with other than how it was.

The commenter says he doesn’t know "how this could be dealt with other than how it was."

Nowhere in his column, as he flips out, does Blow attempt to address that obvious question. As is often true as we humans move to war, it's outrage all the way down.

The Times should have given Blow a rest a long time ago. His emotions may be understandable, but they defeat the journalistic purpose.

That said, Our Own Blue Tribe seems unable to grasp the danger of the moment. Starting tomorrow, we'll examine that problem all week. We'll focus on Rachel Maddow, plus a Donald and a Robert

The Donald will be Donald J. Trump, a deeply disordered figure. The Robert will be the man who wrote this widely cited essay, an essay which actually understates the problem we're all facing.

Tomorrow: We'll start last Thursday night

Even as the Times gets it right...

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2021

...Rachel entertains us: In our view, Epstein and Corasaniti did an excellent job with yesterday's Arizona / Cyber Ninjas "election audit" presentation.

Their news report appears in this morning's New York Times. As they start, they note that the ridiculous group with the stupid name reported / acknowledged a basic fact:

Joe Biden really did defeat Donald J. Trump in Maricopa County!

They start their news report with that basic fact. Quickly, though, they move to the deeply troubling place where the rubber is meeting the road. This is the current problem we're all living with:

EPSTEIN AND CORASANITI (9/25/21): Significant parts of the right treated the completion of the Arizona review as a vindication—offering a fresh canard to justify an accelerated push for new voting limits and measures to give Republican state lawmakers greater control over elections. It also provided additional fuel for the older lie that is now central to Mr. Trump’s political identity: that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

“The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over,” Mr. Trump said in a statement early Friday evening, one of seven he had issued about Arizona since late Thursday. “There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!”

For Mr. Trump, Republican candidates vying to appeal to voters in primary races, and conservative activists agitating for election reviews in their own states, the 91-page document served as something of a choose-your-own-adventure guide. These leaders encouraged their supporters to avert their eyes from the conclusion that Mr. Biden had indeed won legitimately, and to instead focus on fodder for a new set of conspiracy theories.

Sad but true—and also, extremely important. According to this news report, "significant parts of the right," including the aforementioned Mr. Trump, are now "treat[ing] the completion of the Arizona review as a vindication."

Trump is saying it proves his case—and vast numbers of people are going to believe him!

In such ways, The Other Tribe is engaging in a type of "epistemic secession." It's very, very hard to see how the American experiment, such as it is, will find a way to survive this ongoing mess.

The Other Tribe is deeply involved in an "epistemic secession." This bizarre behavior is largely enabled by the rise of modern technologies and modes of interaction—talk radio; cable news; the Internet; social media—but its ongoing success reflects the deepest realms of pre-rational, highly tribal human mental impulse.

That tribal imperative is now in the saddle among The Other Tribe. That said, Our Own Tribe is bowing to those same human impulses. This was evident as we watched Rachel Maddow mug and clown and reassure / entertain our own failing tribe last night

Maddow is Our Own Rhodes Scholar and Our Eternal Child. For her, the release of the Arizona report was mainly a cause for hilarity last night. 

The Times reporters quickly stressed the disturbing underside of this event. By way of contrast, Maddow opened her program with a very large dose of her standard clowning and tribal reassurance. 

Fourteen minutes into this performance, she summed it up as shown:

MADDOW (9/24/21): But we're back to where this started. Which is that it is hilarious.

[PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER] 

And you can't take that away from me.

Maddow's performance continued from there. But no one will rob Our Eternal Child of her sense that matters like this are mainly hilarious.

No one is going to take that away from her! Jon Stewart told her to stop doing this long ago—that her job was more important than this. She told him that she wouldn't.

We expect to focus on last night's performance in our reports next week. We'll also mention the parts of Maddow's performance in which she mentioned the troubling side of the Cyber Ninjas report.

With that in mind, we'll leave it here for now. But even as The Other Tribe bows to Trump's reign of crazy misstatement, Our Own Tribe has never been able to quit this Eternal Child.

Meanwhile, we have our own sprawling performance of epistemic secession, a performance which largely concerns deeply important matters of gender and race. Again and again, our devotion to this regime leaves us saying the darnedest things. 

This helps harden the epistemic secession underway in The Other Tribe. The Others think our statements are nutty or even dishonest. All too often, it's hard to say that The Others are wrong.

More on these tribal secessions next week. These dueling secessions are very dangerous.

"Hilarious," Our Own Scholar said!

WE CALL IT READING A BOOK: In dumbness is the end of the world!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Norman O. Brown got it right: It was our former neighbor Thoreau who said it, though it's sometimes misquoted:

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

No, he didn't say "wilderness." But that tiny misquotation is certainly close enough.

Our neighbor Thoreau made this remark in his lecture-turned-essay, Walking. As part of the essay, he also made the highlighted remark, as was his perhaps unfortunate wont:

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. 

Our neighbor had a tendency to extend such left-handed sympathy to those who worked for a living. In Walden, this tendency produced one of his most widely-quoted remarks:

"The mass of men [sic] lead lives of quiet desperation."

Do you ever wonder how such statements may have sounded to that "mass of men" as they led their lives of desperation? As they received a type of credit for not having taken their own lives?

We don't know how our neighbor's statements sounded to the masses of his own time. That said, we've thought of these statements in the past few days as we've reviewed the way the elites of Our Own Blue Tribe are conducting themselves in public.

"In wildness is the preservation of the world," our neighbor once said. Unfortunately, in cluelessness is its possible termination. 

Each morning this week, often as we peruse the devolving on-line version of the Washington Post, we've been stunned by the overpowering dumbness. We refer to the dumbness which currently sits in the saddle and rides the  humankind which almost seems to be working, around the clock, to ensure that Trumpism triumphs.

To our ear, the cluelessness of our current blue elite is widespread and ever-present. For those who wonder how a person like Trump could possibly have received so many votes, we'll only say that the answer may be easier to see for those who are willing to look.

To our ear, the cluelessness to which we refer is cluelessness all the way down.  Each day, it's more haughty and more potent, and we'll guess it's more counterproductive.

After perusing the on-line Post and a few of Our Town's other journals, we've been finding it hard to proceed with the project we've been planning. We'd planned to proceed with the reading of a "most important" book—a book whose author said this in his preface:

"I should have liked to produce a good book. That has not come about."

After perusing Our Town's journals, we keep finding it impossible to proceed with that task.

A number of years ago, we began quoting Norman O. Brown from the street-fighting 1960s. Brown was very hot at the time. At one point, he offered this:

BROWN (1966): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...And so there comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

We can't say that we understand what Brown was talking about in that passage. That said, he plainly was saying this:

Absent the discovery of "new mysteries," he said we might be at the point when our society is going to "end in exhaustion." Reading the efforts of Our Town's thought leaders, we keep suspecting that Brown, a classicist by training, may have had it right.

About a decade ago, this statement began showing up in our dreams, and so we began to cite it. We don't think it's ever been so clear that those new mysteries haven't been discovered, and most likely aren't going to be.

In wildness is the preservation of the world? Possibly so, but in tribal cluelessness may lie a society's termination.

We'll try to return to our project next week. Perhaps we need to stop perusing Our Blue Town's journals in the morning. To our ear, the cluelessness we keep encountering in those places is making a mockery of everything else. It's newly surprising each day.

Why aren't we posting examples today? Simple! We can hear the tribals responding! We know what the tribals will say!

As The Others show the world every day, there's no way to talk a true believer out of a tribal true belief. Also, we can hear the experts and scholars as they keep telling us this:

As humans, we're wired to produce tribal dogmas as we make our way towards our latest war. And when we blue voters produce our own (unintelligent) dogmas, we harden The Others in theirs.

In fairness, our brains are wired this way, or so the top experts have said. It's painful to read the present-day Post. To our ear, the tribal dumbness being churned within Our Town just keeps getting worse and worse.

The tribal dumbness, how it burns! Their tribal dumbness, and ours!