THE CRAZY: "We May Have Reached the Limit of Crazy!"

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Where did the red wave go? The colloquy appears on the OPINION page of this morning's New York Times, under a ROUND TABLE heading.

The headline gives voice to a cheerful possibility. That headline posits this:

‘We May Have Reached the Limit of Crazy That Will Be Tolerated’

The quotation comes from Michigan legislator Mallory McMorrow, one of four participants in the roundtable discussion. 

During the colloquy, Frank Bruni refers to the fact that Colorado crackpot Lauren Boebert is currently trailing, though by just a handful of votes, in her race for re-election to the House. 

At that point, Bruni posits a possibility. McMorrow replies as shown:

Bruni: They have not yet called the Boebert race. But even if she somehow squeaks through, the narrowness of that victory remains a huge shock, no? And, I don’t know, an answer to how much crazy Americans will tolerate?...

McMorrow: Exactly. That race alone, to me, signals we may have reached the limit of crazy that will be tolerated, Madison Cawthorn’s earlier loss in the Republican primary being a sign of that. 

Some proponents of The Crazy are being voted out of office. To the highly capable McMorrow, this signals that "we may have reached the limit of [The Crazy] that will be tolerated."

Needless to say, everything is possible! It's also true that our politics has been swimming in a sea of The Crazy over the past quite a few years.

It started with the idea that Bill and Hillary Clintons had murdered a wide array of people—a notion that was widely advanced by the Reverend Falwell, but also by Gennifer Flowers, who the lovesick boys of the mainstream press came to treat, by 1998, as an unassailable goddess of truth.

Twenty years later, with new technologies firmly in the saddle, The Crazy was much more widespread—and The Crazy was widely believed:

Barack Obama was born in Kenya! Hillary Clinton was trafficking children out of a D.C. pizza joint!

Also, the 2020 election was stolen! It was Antifa who raided the Capitol—and Paul Pelosi had been attacked as part of a lover's quarrel!

On a political basis, has The Crazy reached the point where it will no longer be tolerated? We can't answer that question, but we'll once again offer this point:

Tuesday's elections may well end with the GOP—the current source and enabler of The Crazy—in control of both the House and the Senate. If this is what deliverance looks like, our nation remains in a very large world of hurt.

We don't mean this as a criticism of Bruni or McMorrow. We do want to suggest an answer to a very hot current question:

Whatever happened to the red wave? Where did the red wave go?

Democratic candidates lost a lot of elections this week. Within our tribal redoubts, our corporate-paid tribunes have been loudly cheering the fact that we didn't lose even more.

Except from a "cable news" marketing standpoint, this strikes us as very unwise. But as to where that red wave went, we'll offer the following points:

We start in November 2008, when Barack Obama won his first White House election. By the standards of our electoral politics, turnout was fairly high.

According to the official count, 131 million people cast votes for president that year. Of that multitude, 122.5 million people cast votes for candidates in House races.

Two years later, a red wave plainly did occur—famously, "a shellacking." Democrats lost 63 House seats in the process—but here is one additional turnout figure:

Total votes cast in House elections:
2008: 122.5 million
2010:   87.1 million

Thirty-five million fewer people cast votes in House elections that year! Traditionally, this drop-off in turnout for midterm election helped explain where our recurrent "wave elections" came from.

In this morning's New York Times, Blake Hounsell explains the process. The headline on his report promises this:

Five Takeaways From a Red Wave That Didn’t Reach the Shore

One of Hounsell's takeaways is highly salient. Where did this year's "wave election" go? The gentleman offers this:

HOUNSELL (11/10/22): The biggest question hanging over Democrats all year was just who, exactly, would show up to vote for them. In a typical midterm election, like 2010 and 2014, turnout drops by about 20 percentage points from a presidential year.

But turnout smashed all records in [the midterm elections of] 2018, when voters repudiated Mr. Trump and Democrats retook the House. So far, preliminary research by the Democratic data firm Catalist suggests that this year looks much more like 2018 than it does the sleepy affairs that took place under former President Barack Obama. Many analysts now think the United States may have reached a new plateau of permanently high participation, stoked by each party’s fear of the other side.

Rave on! Almost surely—or at least possibly!—that passage explains where this year's "red wave" went. Pending numbers from this year's elections, the story would go like this:

By tradition, midterm elections were dominated by disgruntled voters from the party which didn't hold the White House. 

Those disgruntled voters would angrily turn out to cast their disgruntled votes. Satisfied voters from the party which did hold the White House were far more inclined to stay home.

Angry losers would show up and vote. Satisfied minds would relax. 

By now, that pattern may have disappeared. In this Age of The Crazy and Donald J. Trump—also, in this age of 24-hour propagandization—voters aligned with both major parties are on permanent high alert. 

There are very few satisfied minds. Far fewer people stay home.

Many Dems stayed home in 2010. A red tsunami occurred.

We Dems are now on perpetual high alert. Many fewer Dems stayed home this year, and the rumored red wave disappeared.

Does this mean that the nation has reached "the limit of crazy that will be tolerated?" To some extent, it may! Under the 2010 paradigm, Boebert would have won re-election by now. This time around, she may lose.

That said, Marjorie Taylor Greene has won re-election. It looks like Kari Lake will end up winning in Arizona. 

In New Hampshire, the guy who said that schools maintain litter boxes for kids who identify as cats got almost 45 percent of the vote! Anthropologically, it's amazing to see how wide a berth our species provides for those who spread The Crazy across the widely fruited plain.

As of last week, Kyrie Irving was being widely discussed on news and sports cable shows. What manner of crazy belief was involved in that complex, deeply tragic matter?

Tomorrow, we'll show you some of what Irving seemed to be recommending when he linked to that "documentary" film. The Crazy is deeply involved in this deeply tragic story—and then too, there are the peculiar things Irving said, four and five years ago, about the utterly pointless question of whether whether the earth is flat.

Have we started turning a corner in our national politics? It's rather clear that the current era of The Crazy leads straight back to Donald J. Trump.

Absent Trump, our recent epidemic of The Crazy would never have gotten so far. Meanwhile, everyone turned out this week—and when everyone did, it turned out that the party which has widely accepted The Crazy may still end up in charge.

That said, The Crazy is never that far away from the affairs of us "rational animals." It has always played a key role in human life. To some extent, that's even true over here, within our own infallible tribe.

Irving's link involves mountains of pain, historical and present-day. Our tribe is struggling, perhaps with little success, to know how to deal with such topics—with the questions which arise from the brutal history of our nation, our species, our world.

Tomorrow: Kyrie Irving's link—but also, the shape of the earth

Milbank quotes the Kari Lake crowd!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2022

This too is human nature: We weren't there last night, but Dana Milbank was.

He was in Scottsdale, at the Arizona GOP's presumptive victory party. Kari Lake still might win that state's gubernatorial race, but she was trailing slightly last night, and Blake Masters seemed to be losing his Senate race.

Milbank reports what happened:

MILBANK (11/8/22): Instead, Arizona’s MAGA Republican leaders brought fury and fanaticism on election night.

They eschewed basic decency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the crowd, joking about the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull—just as GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did a week earlier. The crowd laughed.

They stoked paranoia. “By attending this event you have increased your chance of an FBI raid by about 50 percent,” the emcee, Benny Johnson, said.

They hurled insults every which way. “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose.” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match.” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper.” Democrats are “lunatics.”

At a time that typically calls for magnanimity and reconciliation, they instead cried out for vengeance. When Anthony Fauci’s name was invoked, they chanted “Lock him up!” They vowed to be a “nightmare to Joe Biden” and to impeach his aides. “Sorry libs,” sneered the emcee. “Sucks to suck.”

"They hurled insults every which way"—tormented, gender-based insults. For members of our human race, gender has typically been very hard, pretty much all over the globe.

This is part of human nature too! Dylan described such angry, lost souls way back long ago:

I pity the poor immigrant
Who tramples through the mud
Who fills his mouth with laughing
But builds his town with blood 

Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass
I pity the poor immigrant
When his gladness comes to pass.

We assume that Milbank's reporting is accurate. 

Blue tribers shouldn't want to emulate such angry lost souls. Tomorrow, we may return to Kevin Drum's recent list.

Milbank quotes Lake herself: Finally, the star appeared, offering the fruits of her wisdom:

MILBANK: A few minutes after 10 p.m. local time, Kari Lake took the stage with a fresh stream of invective: “Corruption.” “Cheaters and crooks.” “BS and garbage.” “Incompetent people running the show in Arizona.” “Propagandists.” “Fake media.” “Incompetency.”

This too is part of human nature. How is it best approached?

THE CRAZY: Pundits hail "massive, massive" win!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2022

The memorized and the glib: We tuned in a few minutes early to today's Morning Joe. 

For that reason, we saw Jonathan Capehart—a good, decent person—offer this assessment of what happened in this year's elections:

The American people are a whole lot smarter than we give them credit for.

That's very close to an exact quotation. As we've noted down through the years. the children love saying that! 

In fairness, Capehart's comment didn't come from the realm of The Crazy. It came from a nearby neighborhood—from the realm of The Memorized, Pleasing and Glib.

The same was true of Claire McCaskill's later comment on Morning Joe. 

Why had Candidate Fetterman won Pennsylvania? According to McCaskill, Fetterman had been "the essence of authenticity, and comfortable in his own skin."

The essence of authenticity, and comfortable in his own skin! Those were the two key talking points of the Bill Bradley presidential campaign—in 1999! Mainstream pundits repeated them over and over again as they conducted their War Against Gore.

If we remember correctly, our research indicated that the pair of talking points had originated within the leadership theories of a highly-regarded USC business professor. But American pundits love those points, and they love to repeat them.

At any rate, there was McCaskill, still memorized after all these years! Regarding how smart we the people are, let us say this about that:

Simply put, we the people simply aren't especially smart. That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It means that we're people people.

Them the people in other nations aren't especially smart either. Being smart isn't the distinguishing characteristic of our war-inclined species, until you repair to the pleasing realm of The Memorized and the Glib.

Making matters that much worse, Morning Joe was performed today before a live studio audience. They applauded when Jonathan Lemire was introduced. As the 7 A.M. hour began, they applauded Mike Barnicle.

In the midst of all the applause, the pundits were acting as if the preferred blue tribe had enjoyed "a massive, massive night." 

That's the precise formulation Joe Scarborough used. Let us say this about that:

In fact, as we type this very report, the GOP could still win control of both the House and the Senate! Regarding the Senate, it would only take wins by Adam Laxalt in Nevada, and by Herschel Walker. Also, Kari Lake could still win!

(Full disclosure! Back in the late 1990s, we used to do syndicated radio on a regular basis with the Nevada candidate's mother. She was cast as the sane conservative, as opposed to us as the sane progressive. By our lights, a very nice person!)

The GOP could still win control of the Senate! Unless you were watching Morning Joe, where the children were happily cheering last night's results. 

Concerning how smart we the humans are, let us say these things about that:

Maggie Hassan was re-elected to the Senate from the state of New Hampshire. That said:

Concerning how smart we the people are, the guy who said that schools maintain litter boxes for kids who identify as cats got 44% of the Granite State vote!

Also this:

The Morning Joe gang was laughing about the way Dr. Oz had never lived in Pennsylvania. Also, about the way he gave himself away last weekend, with his bungled comment about a Steelers game when the Steelers had a bye.

Despite those facts, the carpetbagging candidate got 47% of the vote, in spite of the incredible authenticity of his opponent! How does that comport with triumphalist claims about how smart we the people are?

We the people aren't super smart, but that doesn't make us bad people. Meanwhile, the people you see on your TV shows are massively paid TV stars who are hired by corporate owners.

They've mugged and clowned for decades now. They were mugging and clowning on today's Morning Joe.

Here comes the sun, they seemed to be saying. in fact, to quote from sacred Chekhov:

And it seemed to them that in only a few more minutes a solution would be found and a new, beautiful life would begin; but both of them knew very well that the end was still a long, long way away and that the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning.

That's the end of The Lady with The Lapdog. It's also the current state of play in our dangerous national politics.

The Crazy is still at play in our lives. Some of it's found Over Here.

As frequently noted, this is all anthropology now. According to reams of major experts, the study of anthropology is pretty much all we have left!

Still coming: To what species of The Crazy did Kyrie Irving link? 

Also, what did Irving say, a few years back, when he was asked to explain his ideas about whether the earth is flat?

Highly performative tribal behaviors!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2022

In search of more wins at the polls: We lost a chunk of time today, Plus, Election Day is finally upon us.

For those reasons, we're going to start with the same list we posted yesterday. It's Kevin Drum's list of seven ways we liberals are supposedly seen by one specific group of Others.

As you may recall, Kevin's list goes exactly like this:

Things centrist voters don't like about us:

1) They think we're too lax on crime.

2) They think we're constantly making up stupid new rules.

3) They think we want to let in too many illegal immigrants.

4) They think we want to spend money endlessly and drive up the debt.

5) They were appalled by the looting and rioting during the BLM protests of 2020 and think Democrats should have denounced it more vigorously.

6) They think wokeness is ridiculous. They want us to stop talking like academics from another galaxy.

7) They do not like being called racist.

In Kevin's view, those are seven perceptions—admittedly, perceptions among a group of Others—which help our tribe lose at the polls.

As we noted yesterday, we don't know what kinds of "new rules" are contemplated in item #2. Of the other six perceptions, our scorecard would go something like this:

At present, we'd say that one of those perceptions—but only one—is basically off the wall. We'd say there's at least a bit of merit to the other five—and we'd say that two of those perceptions are extremely well founded and help explain why it's hard for our tribe to win elections.

(Jon Lovitz, 34 years ago: "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!")

In our view, the perceptions adumbrated by Drum are well worth discussing. That said, our tribe is routinely in love with the things we do, and we seem to have few plans to change.

Today could be a very bad day—or, of course, possibly not! Setting those known unknowns to the side, the basic question we're asking remains:

Why can't we win more at the polls? 

THE CRAZY: Senate hopeful limns litter boxes!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Plus, Motherless Child gone wild: According to more than a dozen experts, The Crazy has been a part of human life ever since our species came into existence.

At the present time, manifestations of The Crazy suffuse our nation's politics. As an example of what we mean, consider this exchange between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens in their newest Conversation at the New York Times:

Gail: In my rooting-for category, I’m going to bring up Senator Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire—just so I can mention her dreadful opponent, Don Bolduc. He’s long been known as an opponent of legal protections for transgender people. Last week, he claimed schools were giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats. Which is, um … not true.

Who’s your most-to-be-avoided?

Bret: I’m with you on Hassan, a conscientious and bipartisan legislator. Who—I am amazed to say—might lose on Tuesday...

Is that even possible? Did Candidate Bolduc really advance the crackpot claim that schools have been "giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats?"

Well yes, as a matter of fact, he did! Here's the Washington Times—not the Washington Post—reporting the crazy remarks:

HOWELL (11/2/22): Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc said he is “not backing down” from a claim that a New Hampshire school has litter boxes for kids who identify as cats.

Mr. Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general who is facing Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, said the burden of proof is on the school to prove it is untrue after a parent and a student talked to him about it at an event.

Audio posted by CNN depicted Mr. Bolduc telling a campaign audience there are people who identify as “furries and fuzzies” and act like cats in schools and they have litter boxes available to them.

Mr. Bolduc defended the comments when pressed on the source for his account.

More than a dozen experts shook their heads over Candidate Bolduc's remarks. But what Stephens said is also true. It's possible that Candidate Bolduc could win today's Granite State Senate election!

The capacity for crazy belief has been on wide display in our nation's politics over the past several decades. (In our view, certain types of crazy belief are widespread within our own blue tribe.)

That said, also this:

According to the American song book, "Motherless child sees a hard time when mother is gone." For fuller information on this phenomenon, you can just click here.

The Crazy is part of our natural history, but so are the difficulties sometimes faced by the motherless child. These phenomena joined forces last night on the Fox News Channel, as that station's official abandoned child continued to enact his ongoing psychodrama.

Tucker Carlson began his show with his standard sarcastic remarks—and with his trademark instant dissembling. Sarcastically, he said that there had been no problems with the conduct of the 2020 elections—absolutely no problems at all:

CARLSON (11/7/2022): Above all, in case you were wondering, voting machines around this country recorded the legitimate results [in 2020] with flawless precision. 

The machines counted each vote cast for each candidate and awarded those votes accordingly. Can you see the software that would prove that happened? Well, no, you can't. 

As with the bodycam footage from Nancy Pelosi's house, you don't have the necessary clearance to see it. But you can know that electronic voting machines are 100% safe and reliable and that's why government officials have told you again and again that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." 

Believe it! By the way, if you don't believe it, our advice is to shut the hell up unless you want to be sued into bankruptcy or have the FBI interrupt your breakfast. 

That, in summation, is the official media-approved view of our last election. It was perfect! Don't ask questions!

For transcript and tape, click here.

As you can see, Motherless Child feels badly beset when mother is gone! He can't (yet) see the bodycam footage from the violent attack on Paul Pelosi. Also, the FBI is very likely going to throw him in jail!

It was at this point that the abandoned child began to display his vaunted skills at selective quotation. Having sarcastically mocked the idea that the last election was free from fraud, he began to dissemble about a new report in Politico:

CARLSON (continuing directly): So given that, we were a little surprised when we pulled up Politico this morning. Politico is the publication that helps control the rest of the media on behalf of the Biden administration. We were surprised to discover that actually voting machines are not safe at all.

Electronic voting machines, Politico told us, are in fact easily hacked and manipulated, which is why real countries like France have banned them and use paper ballots instead. "There are real risks," Politico told us, "that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday's vote." 

According to Politico, that's entirely possible because many states "use wireless modems to transmit unofficial election night results to their central offices. These modems use telecommunications networks that are vulnerable to hackers, and malicious actors could exploit them to tamper with unofficial vote data, corrupt voting machines or compromise the computers used to tally official results." 

Rigged voting machines? Fake vote totals? Underground tunnels to subvert modems? Isn't this the release the Kraken talk? Well, it is. and as of yesterday, it would have been regarded as insane, possibly criminal. It would have been an assault on our democracy. 

But things have changed. Twenty-four hours before Democrats are expected to lose in the midterm elections, Politico is letting you know that elections are fake and not just because of rigged electronics voting machines, by the way. There's an even bigger problem.  

From there, Motherless Child went on to offer a deeply stupid compilation of edited comments about misinformation, most of them perfectly sensible, from people on CNN. 

For today, we'll focus on the way the motherless child described that report from Politico. Also, we'll note the ridiculous way he explained Politico's alleged motives.

As we've shown you, Motherless Child told Fox viewers the following:

He told them that Politico had published a report suggesting that this week's elections will be badly compromised. He said Politico was reporting this because Politico knows that the Democrats are about to get wiped out in this week's elections.

According to Motherless Child, that's why Politico is spreading the word that this week's elections "are fake!" Rather typically, Motherless Child forgot to cite this opening passage from the Politico essay in question:

GELLER (11/7/22): The midterms face a bevy of digital threats, from stolen Twitter accounts to hacked election websites, that could spark chaos, confusion and unrest that last long after the polls close.

The 2020 presidential election was rife with allegations of voting machine hacks that were later debunked. Yet there are real risks that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday’s vote.

The U.S. has many safeguards protecting voting equipment, so any actual hack would probably be localized, quickly detected and unlikely to affect final results. But as 2020 showed, even an attempt to change votes—or the mere allegation of tampering—could undermine faith in the outcome.

In fact, Politico was reporting that any attempt to hack voting equipment would likely be quickly detected—that outcomes wouldn't be affected at all. Motherless Child forgot to report this as he toyed with the people who watch him on Fox, as he does on a nightly basis.

From there, Motherless Child went on to offer a brain-damaged account of what has been said on CNN concerning mis- and disinformation. It's certainly true that CNN could do a better job with various topics, but no one turns our discourse into a clown show quite like the Motherless Child.

According to more than a dozen experts, Motherless Child seems to be involved in a lifelong psychodrama—a psychodrama not of his initial making. Experts say such people should be pitied, but not until they've been stopped from creating societal harm through their disordered behavior.  

By way of contrast, Candidate Bolduc is simply involved in The Crazy, these experts say. He's been giving voice to a crazy belief, but he may win all the same!

Given the way our species tends to regard itself, it's surprising to see that so many people can be susceptible to so many crazy beliefs. But The Crazy is all around us at present—and that returns us to the "documentary," and by extension the book, to which Kyrie Irving recently posted a link.

(For background, see yesterday's report.)

Man [sic] is the rational animal? Tomorrow, we'll turn to that recent report in RollingStone—the report which specifies which manifestations of The Crazy Irving was perhaps prepared to believe. These crazy beliefs have long bedeviled our struggling species, and they just won't go away.

When the New York Times reports this matter, it doesn't describe the crazy beliefs which are at issue here. We think RollingStone showed better judgment in explicitly describing the manifestations of The Crazy which have long dogged human life—in describing the crazy beliefs Irving seems unfazed by today.

Remember, it's all anthropology now! Our society is in a very bad state—and it's very hard to see an easy route of escape.

Tomorrow: RollingStone, willing to speak

Why doesn't our tribe win more elections?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Kevin Drum's seven ideas: Tomorrow night, we'll start to learn who won this year's elections.

For now, a quick review:

The Democratic Party's candidates have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. That dates back to Bill Clinton's first win in 1992. 

That said, the GOP may hold control of the Senate and the House by the time this year's elections are over. Part of the reason is this:

Under present conditions, quirks and anomalies of our electoral systems tend to favor Republican candidates on all three federal levels—presidential, Senate and congressional. 

In part, this helps explain why the GOP may emerge victorious this week. But it also raises an important question:

What sorts of things can our blue tribe do in search of better outcomes?

One way to get better outcomes is to win over centrist / swing / independent voters, or at least to stop driving them away. (That isn't the only way to get better outcomes, but it's certainly one of the possible routes to success.)

How can blue tribe members win over more of these voters? In a post he offered over the weekend, Kevin Drum listed seven "things centrist voters don't like about us liberals."

Drum identified seven such items. For the record, he was simply offering his view about what centrist voters think.

Here are Kevin's seven items. We'll replace his bullets points with numbers:

"Things centrist voters don't like about us"

1) They think we're too lax on crime.

2) They think we're constantly making up stupid new rules.

3) They think we want to let in too many illegal immigrants.

4) They think we want to spend money endlessly and drive up the debt.

5) They were appalled by the looting and rioting during the BLM protests of 2020 and think Democrats should have denounced it more vigorously.

6) They think wokeness is ridiculous. They want us to stop talking like academics from another galaxy.

7) They do not like being called racist.

Regarding point #2, we're not sure what kinds of "new rules" Kevin has in mind. That said, there are several items on that list we regard as extremely important—as tragic and unyielding routes to persistent tribal defeat.

Drum listed those seven perceived imperfections. Commenters began pushing back.

Some commenters offered the oldest reaction in our species' dog-eared book. More on this topic to follow.

THE CRAZY: The Crazy has always been with us!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Concerning Kyrie's link: Ignore the things you've always been told about "the rational animal."

Forget all that "rational animal" stuff! The Crazy has relentlessly played a leading role in our war-suffused human affairs. 

No one died in the Tulip Craze, though quite a few people went broke. (According to the leading authority on this "mania," an outbreak of the bubonic plague helped bring the affair to its end.)

Other times, The Crazy has led us humans to waves of murder and violence. That brings us to the film, and by extension the book, to which NBA star Kyrie Irving famously linked. 

For understandable reasons, major news orgs may not want to repeat the crazy claims found in such films and such books. As an example of what we mean, consider what the New York Times included—and what it omitted—in yesterday's front-page report.

In print editions, the report appeared on the Times' front page. Online, the report appears beneath this pair of headlines:

Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism
For American Jews, this fall has become increasingly worrisome. On Thursday alone, the F.B.I. warned of threats to New Jersey synagogues and the Nets suspended Kyrie Irving.

The Nets had suspended Kyrie Irving, that sub-headline declared. Eventually, Irving was mentioned in the body of the report, but this is all that was said:

PAULSON AND GRAHAM (11/6/22): For many Jewish people across the country, the sense that overtly antisemitic rhetoric is emanating from so many spheres simultaneously is unsettling.

Steve Rosenberg, a former executive at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, said he was put “over the edge” by an incident last weekend in which a prominent basketball player, Nets guard Kyrie Irving, defended his support of an antisemitic documentary (and garnered praise from [Kanye West] in the process). On Thursday, the Nets suspended Mr. Irving indefinitely, citing his “failure to disavow antisemitism.” He posted an apology on Instagram late Thursday night.

Readers were told that Irving had linked to an antisemitic documentary. But what had this documentary said? What was the nature of its alleged antisemitism?

Yesterday's report didn't say. Readers would have to trust the New York Times' assessment of the film.

Yesterday's report didn't describe the contents of the film—but there was nothing new about this. This pattern had been established in the paper's earlier reporting.

In print editions on October 31, the Times had published an initial report about Irving's link to the film. This is the way the report began, headline included:

Irving Stands by Postings About Antisemitic Documentary and Conspiracy Theory

Nets guard Kyrie Irving doubled down on his support of an antisemitic documentary and a “New World Order” conspiracy theory about secret societies during a testy news conference Saturday night, a day after his team’s owner chastised him for supporting the film.

The conspiracy theory, pushed by the Infowars host Alex Jones, falsely suggests that people in the government are working to enslave the human population by, among other methods, releasing viruses.

“History is not supposed to be hidden from anybody,” Irving said as he defended himself for posting a link on Twitter to the 2018 documentary “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which espouses several antisemitic tropes.

“Did I do anything illegal?” Irving said. “Did I hurt anybody? Did I harm anybody? Am I going out and saying that I hate one specific group of people?”

Irving posted about the documentary on Twitter and Instagram in the past week, and the Nets owner Joe Tsai rebuked him in a statement Friday, saying that he was “disappointed.”

According to Sopan Deb's report, Irving had supported a "New World Order conspiracy theory" promulgated by the lunatic Alex Jones. Also, Irving had supported "an antisemitic documentary," New York Times readers were told.

You'll note that Deb described the content of Jones' lunatic theory. But nowhere did Deb describe the content of the "several antisemitic tropes" allegedly found in the film.

It's understandable that major news orgs report such matters this way. News orgs may feel that describing the content of such material may serve to spread these antisemitic claims even further. Understandably, news orgs may be reluctant to play any such role in this latest manifestation of The Manifestly Insane. 

It's understandable that news orgs may adopt that point of view. In the end, it seems to us that this keeps us from grasping the extent of the role The Crazy plays in our human affairs.

What kinds of "antisemitic tropes" are present in the film to which Irving offered a link? How crazy would Irving have to be to put his faith in such claims?

Simply put, a reader can't answer such questions from reading the New York Times. Consider a second report in Sunday's Times about Irving's deranged behavior.

In print editions, this second report appeared inside the National section, on page A21. Online, Troy Closson's report appears beneath this headline: 

Kyrie Irving’s Links to Antisemitism Horrify His Many Jewish Fans.

Once again, the lengthy report makes no attempt to describe the content of the film to which Irving posted a link. Eventually, though, Closson wrote the following—and Closson himself provided a link in support of what he had said:

CLOSSON (11/6/22): Before last season, the guard declined to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, and played in just 29 of 82 regular-season games, missing many because of a New York City mandate requiring the vaccination of all private sector employees in the city that made him ineligible to compete at Barclays Center.

But many fans said that his prowess as one of the league’s most talented guards eclipsed his off-the-court controversies: When he played his first home game in March after more than nine months away, the crowd broke a turnout record for a Nets game, and Mr. Irving received the loudest cheers when starting lineups were announced.

But patience for his behavior has faltered this week, after his comments and what many fans saw as a slow and halfhearted attempt to walk them back. After facing backlash for posting the link to the 2018 documentary “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which espouses several antisemitic tropes, Mr. Irving said in a statement six days later, “I am aware of the negative impact of my post towards the Jewish community and I take responsibility.”

Again, readers were told that the film in question "espouses several antisemitic tropes." Once again, Closson made no attempt to report what those antisemitic tropes might be—but good Lord!

Under the words "which espouses several antisemitic tropes," Closson provided a link to a report which did describe those claims! Readers would finally get the chance to learn what this crackpot film said!

Closson provided a link—but his link didn't lead to some earlier report in the New York Times. Instead, Closson was forced to link to this derailed report from by Jon Blistein in RollingStone.

What sorts of "antisemitic tropes" does Irving seem to be supporting? You can't find out in the New York Times! You have to go that other source to understand the craziness of what Irving has done.

The Crazy suffuses our national discourse at the present time. It's also true that The Crazy has played a persistent role in our war-suffused human affairs.

How crazy are the crazy claims which Irving seems to be espousing? Tomorrow, we'll show you what RollingStone has reported, even as we marvel at the dainty ways the New York Times has been avoiding such content.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but our species is stalked by The Crazy. Whether with Donald J. Trump or Kyrie Irving, our upper-end mainstream press is often inclined to "walk on by" such manifestations. 

Such decisions may be understandable, but they keep us all in the dark. Tomorrow, we'll show you the extent of The Crazy which apparently seemed to make sense to this athletically talented, but very strange, major NBA star.

Tomorrow: RollingStone reports

Goblins of the New York Times!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2022

Werewolves of Gotham, ah-ooh: Is it true? Do suburban women hold the key to this year's elections?

That fuzzy claim appears, or possibly just seems to appear, on the front page of this morning's New York Times. Online, the headline on the report says this:

Suburban Women, No Longer ‘Soccer Moms,’ Hold Key to Midterms

A similar headline adorns the report in print editions. In print editions, the headline says this:

‘Soccer Moms’ No More, Suburban Women Hold Key to Midterms

These suburban women today! They're no longer soccer moms, but they somehow (seem to) "hold [the] key" to this year's elections.

Is it true that suburban women (somehow) hold the key? And while we're at it, how about this:

Does the report in the New York Times even make that claim? The headline seems to make that claim. But does that claim really exist within the body of the report?

We'd have to say that the answer is no—the report makes no such claim. For our money, the report is spectacularly fatuous, in the manner of many front-page Times reports.

That said, does the report actually claim that suburban women hold the key to this year's elections? Actually, no, it doesn't. Here's how the report begins:

GOLDSTEIN ET AL (11/5/22): The “soccer mom” was born a cliché.

Americans were introduced to her during the 1996 presidential race, when she was heralded by campaign consultants and the media as the new center of the American electorate—a white, married, minivan-steering, cleats-toting, home-owning swing voter, exhausted by culture wars and seeking optimistic, common-sense politics.

That year, so-called soccer moms broke for the Democratic incumbent, President Bill Clinton, over his Republican challenger, Bob Dole, a senator from Kansas. Mr. Clinton appealed to suburban women by signing a tough crime bill and promising to put reading tutors in schools.

A quarter century later, female suburban voters remain a key swing constituency and, amid the coronavirus pandemic, crime and education are again crucial concerns. But recent polls have shown that unlike in 1996, independent female voters are tilting toward Republicans.

In a word, sad! For starters, note this:

In fact, the report says that female suburban voters are "a" key swing constituency in this year's elections. 

Rather plainly, that implies that there are other "key swing constituencies." The genius who composed the Times' front-page headline seemed to make these women the key to this year's vote, not one key among others.

That problem lands on some headline writer. Also though, note this:

In the final paragraph which we've posted, Dana Goldstein and three colleagues execute a switch. 

First, they say that "female suburban voters" are a key swing constituency this year.  Then, they report a polling result among "independent female voters"—a substantially different group.

Sad! "Female suburban voters" are one thing; "independent female voters" are a quite different assemblage. To Goldstein and her legion of compatriots, this rather obvious distinction didn't seem to compute.

Meanwhile, along came a headline writer to make their report even dumber. We're left with a headline which seems to say that "suburban women" are the key to the whole shebang this year!

This work is very, very dumb, but it's basically par for the course. According to the Times report, these are the nine (9!) giants who joined forces to produce the body of the report:

Dana Goldstein is a national correspondent, writing about how education policies impact families, students and teachers across the country. She is the author of “The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession.” 

Robert Gebeloff is a reporter specializing in data analysis. He works on in-depth stories where numbers help augment traditional reporting

Allison McCann is a reporter and graphics editor covering civil rights, criminal justice and, occasionally, women’s soccer for The Times. She was previously based in London on the International desk.

Brent McDonald is a senior video journalist, based in Washington. He produces short documentaries, video news stories and visual investigations. 

Nailah Morgan, Julie Bosman and Jack Healy contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

This cast of thousands produced today's front-page report. 

Several went to the finest schools. (Goldstein graduated from Brown, McCann graduated from Stanford). 

For unknown reasons, Goldstein, an education reporter, is presented as the lead reporter on this rather different topic.

Occasionally, McCann covers women's soccer. Meanwhile, this is the way these highly educated national journalists assembled today's report:

GOLDSTEIN ET AL: In interviews with more than a dozen women in swing regions ahead of Election Day, many said they thought of themselves as apolitical. But they could not avoid the sense that politics were intruding on their lives. Notably, the women, who live in a variety of suburban settings, shared a sense of pessimism about the direction of the country. They were strained by the cost of housing and groceries, they said, and fearful of crime. Many felt freedom itself was under threat, whether the freedom they sought was the right to abortion or the right to shield their children from what they considered objectionable ideas on gender and race.

The nine (9) journalists spoke to "more than a dozen" (13) women! No one can say that this cast of thousands skimped on performing the leg work!

At any rate, nothing in the report explains or supports the headline beneath which it sits. Meanwhile, how about the actual claim in the report—the claim that "recent polls have shown that...independent female voters are tilting toward Republicans?"

That claim certainly could be true. But what is presented as evidence?

A lonely link in support of that claim leads to this earlier front-page report. That earlier report discussed results from the monthly NYT/Siena poll which was conducted in October. 

Here's the passage from that report on which the Goblin Nine rely. For a fairly obvious reason, this was remarkably shaky work:

GOLDMACHER (10/17/22): The biggest shift came from women who identified as independent voters. In September, they favored Democrats by 14 points. Now, independent women backed Republicans by 18 points—a striking swing given the polarization of the American electorate and how intensely Democrats have focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights.

Should anyone really believe that a shift that large—a giant shift of 32 points—had really occurred, in one month's time, among that particular group? Consider: 

That entire October survey had involved 792 likely voters. Presumably, the number of respondents who were "women who identified as independent voters" was quite small—and the margin of error within that group would have been correspondingly large.

That said, so what? Shane Goldmacher reported that statistical shift without comment or words of caution—and it was on the basis of that one poll that today's nine (9) reporters seem to have made their pronouncement about what "recent polls [plural] have [supposedly] shown."

In sum, today's reporters seem to have worked from one poll—from one poll with a very small N. Some headline writer then came along and goosed what they had said. But so it routinely goes at our nation's paper of record.

We'd planned to discuss something else today, but this front-page groaner carried us away. 

That said, before we read this morning's report, we perused this Kevin Drum post about a front-page report in yesterday's New York Times. 

That report dealt with crime, or with perceptions of crime; its reporting was horrible too. (We think Drum, who focused on Fox, was too kind concerning the Times.) 

That reporting was very weak, as Drum's data help show. But so is the reporting in today's front-page New York Times report concerning perceptions of crime!

Werewolves of Gotham, ah-ooh! The people who produced these reports went to the finest schools. By the norms of our society, these people are "highly educated." 

They're our highest ranking national journalists! They're pretty much all we have, as they were back in the day when they were focused on "soccer moms" and were inventing their endless claims about the various crazy things Candidate Gore had supposedly said.

We present today's report about their work as an anthropology lesson—as an anthropology lesson concerning human capability, which is remarkably limited. 

The later Wittgenstein took things ginormously farther. As we've noted in the past, everyone has agreed not to look!

(For Professor Horwich's account of that matter, you can just click here.)

Was Governor Youngkin one of the goblins?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022

We're disinclined to indict: In his new column for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie is talking about this past week's goblins.

Headline included, this is the way he starts:

This Is What Happens When Republicans Tear Off Their Masks

Even by the degraded standards of 2022, it has been shocking to watch Republican politicians and conservative media personalities respond to the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi—Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband—with lies, conspiracy mongering and gleeful disregard for the victim.

Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, made light of the assault—which left the 82-year-old Pelosi hospitalized with serious injuries—while campaigning for Yesli Vega, the Republican running to unseat Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic representative in Virginia’s 7th District.

“Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere,” Youngkin said, in what appeared to be a straightforward condemnation of the attack until he added, to the cheers of the crowd, that “we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

“That’s what we’re going to go do,” he continued. “That’s what we’re going to go do.”

Concerning the assault on Paul Pelosi, did Youngkin behave like one of the goblins? We can't really say that he did.

As you can see in the report to which Bouie links, Youngkin made his brief remarks about the assault at a political rally "just hours after it occurred." The seriousness of the assault wasn't yet widely known; indeed, it may not have been known at all. 

We'll guess that most of the people at the rally didn't even know that the assault had occurred.

At the rally, Youngkin offered standard-issue political talk about sending Nancy Pelosi home after November's election. (You can see videotape of Youngkin's remarks at the link we've provided.) 

That was standard-issue political talk. Our  tribe is captured by the widespread desire to make it into an outrage.

After naming Youngkin, Bouie moves on to someone who did behave like a goblin. This is what he writes:

BOUIE (continuing directly): Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, used the attack on Pelosi—who underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture after he was struck on the head with a hammer by his assailant—as fodder for a joke.

“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” According to Kate Sullivan, a CNN reporter, the joke landed: “The crowd burst into laughter and the interviewer was laughing so hard he covered his face with his notes.”

The ridiculous conduct by Lake and her allies occurred late Monday, three days after the assault. By then, everyone knew how serious the attack had been—but Lake behaved as a true goblin would. 

Her "interviewer" played the fool—behaved like a circus clown.

Within our tribe, pundits rushed to demonize Youngkin for his remarks that day. This conduct captures the essence of our tribe, whose current motto might be this:

No name-calling left behind.

Bouie is a good, decent person. It seems to us that he went along with the crowd, and with the crowd's script, this time.

Alas! As a group, we're dumb and we're frightened and nobody likes us. We're eager to call everyone names. There's little grace left in our tribe.

In summation:

Lake struck (and strikes) us as a goblin first class. Youngkin struck us as something different—as someone we wouldn't vote for.

GOBLINS AND US: Where do all these goblins come from?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Tucker and Trump (and Kari Lake), oh my: For those of us in the blue tribal camp, this headline in today's New York Times is asking the relevant question:

Why Aren’t the Democrats Trouncing These Guys

For us, that's the current relevant question. That said, we harken back to the iconic Saturday Night Live skit from October 1988 (!).

In that iconic SNL skit, Dana Carvey, playing Candidate Bush, offered an utterly vacuous statement during a mock presidential debate. Jon Lovitz, playing Candidate Dukakis, offered a famous reply to Jan Hooks, playing Diane Sawyer:

Diane Sawyer: You have fifty seconds left, Mr. Vice-President.

George Bush: Let me sum up. On track, stay the course. Thousand points of light.

Diane Sawyer: Governor Dukakis. Rebuttal?

Michael Dukakis: I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy!

That was 34 years ago, when SNL still had its moments. Today, members of the anti-Trump world are asking a related question.

To our ear, today's headline doesn't quite capture the essence of the David Brooks column it tops. At the end of his column, Brooks isn't wondering why Democrats seem to be losing. He ends by saying this:

BROOKS (11/4/22): [Today,] people don’t just see difference [between the red and the blue political tribes], they see menace. People have put up barricades and perceive the other class as a threat to what is beautiful, true and good. I don’t completely understand why this animosity has risen over the past couple of decades, but it makes it very hard to shift the ever more entrenched socio-economic-cultural-political coalitions.

Historians used to believe that while European societies were burdened by ferocious class antagonisms, Americans had relatively little class consciousness. That has changed.

Brooks says he doesn't quite understand the source of today's animosity. We would assume the following, which seems to be blindingly obvious: 

We would assume that the animosity stems from the rise of "culture war" marketing as a round-the-clock, very major big business. The animosity is sold as a product—by "cable news" and talk radio programs, but also all over the Internet, all over social media.

Then too, we've suffered the rise of the goblin class. Starting with Donald J. Trump, where have these goblins come from?

More specifically:

Within the past week, blue tribe pundits have marveled at a set of behaviors from figures on the right. In the wake of the vicious attack on Paul Pelosi, those major figures responded with jokes, and with crazy invented claims.

As always, our blue tribe pundits have been "shocked, shocked" by this disordered behavior. This is a script to which they return at all such moments as this.

What explains the behavior of these ghouls? Today, we'll return to two topics we've discussed in the past. We do so in an attempt to jog our failing tribe's [attempts at] thinking:

The goblin Donald J. Trump:

What makes Trump behave in the ways he does? How about Donald Trump Jr.?

What makes people like Kari Lake welcome this leadership style with such open arms? What explains the fact that certain tribal leaders behave in such transparently disordered ways?

There could, of course, be various answers to that question. Briefly, we'll return you to the basic question of psychiatric / psychologic disorder on the clinical level. 

Why do these goblins behave in these ways? According to modern medical science, a substantial percentage of American adults are fundamentally afflicted. 

Here's Bill Eddy, presenting some basic statistics in Psychology Today:

EDDY (4/30/18): Personality disorders are a significant, but barely recognized, public health problem in the United States and around the world. Two personality disorders, in particular, cause a great deal of disruption in the workplace, conflict in marital relationships, and are prevalent in criminal populations. And they appear to be increasing.

In 1994, the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published (the DSM-IV)...Regarding sociopaths (the DSM uses the equivalent term Antisocial Personality Disorder or ASPD), it said that overall prevalence “in community samples is about 3% in males and 1% in females.”

Between 2001 and 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the largest study ever done regarding the prevalence of personality disorders in the United States. Structured interviews were done with approximately 35,000 people who were randomly selected to be representative of the U.S. adult population in a variety of ways including age, income, gender and region. This study found that...3.7% would meet the criteria for ASPD (5.5% male and 1.9% female).

According to those studies, a not-insignificant percentage of people are diagnosable as "sociopaths." That's a very fuzzy term, but it isn't hard to connect the behaviors associated with that term to the behaviors of our current class of very high-profile goblins and ghouls.

(For additional background, click here.)

Many people in our public life behave in ways which comport with the outlines of this affliction. That said, our upper-end journalists agree that this state of affairs mustn't ever be discussed in the political context. 

Many of these famous stars went to the finest schools. Despite that fact, they agree that this (admittedly complex and imprecise) branch of modern science must be disappeared. 

They refuse to discuss this (complicated) state of affairs—but almost surely, this is where many of our current-day, high-profile goblins come from. Our journalists, and their corporate owners, have agreed: 

We the people must be shielded from such troubling thoughts.

The goblin Tucker Carlson: 

To our eye and ear, Tucker Carlson is becoming more unhinged with each passing unit of time. 

We aren't going to claim that he's a "sociopath." Instead, we'll suggest that you ponder this (tragic) report from the New York Times:

CONFESSORE (5/1/22): The talk-show host who rails against immigrants and the tech barons of a new Gilded Age is himself the descendant of a German immigrant who became one of the great ranching barons of the old Gilded Age. Henry Miller landed in New York in 1850 and built a successful butcher business in San Francisco; along with a partner, he went on to assemble a land empire spanning three states...

Over the years, the Miller fortune dispersed, as great fortunes often do, into a fractious array of family branches. Mr. Carlson’s mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, was born to a third-generation Miller heiress, debuted in San Francisco society and met Richard Carlson, a successful local television journalist, in the 1960s. They eloped to Reno, Nev., in 1967; Tucker McNear Carlson was born two years later, followed by his brother, Buckley. The family moved to the Los Angeles area, where Richard Carlson took a job at the local ABC affiliate, but the Carlsons’ marriage grew rocky and the station fired him a few years later. In early 1976, he moved to San Diego to take a new television job. The boys went with him—according to court records, their parents had agreed it would be temporary—and commuted to Los Angeles on weekends while he and Lisa tried to work out their differences.

But a few months later, just days after the boys returned from a Hawaii vacation with their mother, Richard began divorce proceedings and sought full custody of the children. In court filings, Lisa Carlson claimed he had blindsided her and left her virtually penniless. The couple separated and began fighting over custody and spousal support. Mr. Carlson alleged that his wife had “repeated difficulties with abuse of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines,” and that he had grown concerned about both her mental state and her treatment of the boys. On at least one occasion, he asserted, the boys had walked off the plane in San Diego without shoes; the mother’s own family members, he said, had urged him not to let her see the children unsupervised. He won custody when Tucker was 8, at a hearing Lisa did not attend: According to court records, she had left the country. She eventually settled in France, never to see her sons again. A few years later, Richard Carlson married Patricia Swanson, an heiress to the frozen-food fortune, who adopted both boys.

For many years, Tucker Carlson was tight-lipped about the rupture. In a New Yorker profile in 2017, not long after his show debuted, he described his mother’s departure as a “totally bizarre situation—which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all.” But as controversy and criticism engulfed his show, Mr. Carlson began to describe his early life in darker tones, painting the California of his youth as a countercultural dystopia and his mother as abusive and erratic. In 2019, speaking on a podcast with the right-leaning comedian Adam Carolla, Mr. Carlson said his mother had forced drugs on her children. “She was like, doing real drugs around us when we were little, and getting us to do it, and just like being a nut case,” Mr. Carlson said. By his account, his mother made clear to her two young sons that she had little affection for them. “When you realize your own mother doesn’t like you, when she says that, it’s like, oh gosh,” he told Mr. Carolla, adding that he “felt all kinds of rage about it.”

Mr. Carlson was a heavy drinker until his 30s, something he has attributed in part to his early childhood. But by his own account, his mother’s abandonment also provided him with a kind of pre-emptive defense against the attacks that have rained down on his Fox show. “Criticism from people who hate me doesn’t really mean anything to me,” Mr. Carlson told Megyn Kelly, the former Fox anchor, on her podcast last fall. He went on to say: “I’m not giving those people emotional control over me. I’ve been through that. I lived through that as a child.” One lesson from his youth, Mr. Carlson told one interviewer, was that “you should only care about the opinions of people who care about you.”

Carlson's abandonment by his mother wasn't part of his life, he once said. Later, he said he had "felt all kinds of rage about it"—possibly, the same weirdly disordered rage he currently vents on his nightly TV program.

Carlson has become increasingly disordered on his Fox News show. We can't help wondering if we're seeing the latest act in a lifelong psychodrama—a psychodrama one might describe as "the drama of the [abandoned] child."

We feel sorry at times for Donald J. Trump. By all accounts, he was raised by a deeply disordered father. That was the (bad) luck of the draw.

We're also struck by the terrible burden which may have been placed on the child who never saw his mother again—who was abandoned by his mother when he was 8 years old.

Having noted these facts, we'll also note these:

A substantial percentage of American adults are diagnosable as "sociopaths." Beyond that, a significant number of people may be living out psychodramas visited upon them when they were eight, or maybe even six.

If these people surface as goblins, they need to be stopped, above all else, from doing harm to others around them. But in a more rational world, that basic question—Where do all these goblins come from?—wouldn't be retained by cowardly journalists as an impenetrable mystery ride.

Donald J. Trump had an evil father. Carlson was abandoned by his mother—never saw her again.

As for our journalists, many went to the finest schools. On MSNBC, they cling to corporate, blue tribe stylings, for which they're paid millions of dollars.

They're paid to make us viewers feel good. They sign onto that deal on the bottom line. 

Regarding the question with which we started: Why aren't Democrats trouncing these guys? 

Our favorite TV stars, with their pathetically limited list of "issues," may not be providing much help.

These stars may be a bit disordered too. As with red tribals, so with us:

We tend to have a very hard time seeing this about them.

Still coming: Goblins of the disappeared past! A mainstream cable star came close to getting a journalist killed—in 1999!

Who lost Hispanic voters? And how?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Alberta breaks nation's heart: How will next week's elections turn out?

We have no idea! On TV shows, the children are busy with polls this week. If they'd simply wait one additional week, they could start to find out who won.

Along the way, one fact does seem fairly clear. Across the nation, Democrats have been losing ground with Hispanic voters.

No one knows where that process will end. But in his new report for The Atlantic, Tim Alberta starts as shown below, gloomy twin headlines included:

WHY DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING HISPANIC VOTERS
The left has alienated America’s fastest-growing group of voters just when they were supposed to give the party a foolproof majority.

Have you ever met someone who’s watching their life’s work—their very legacy—fall apart in front of their eyes? I’m talking to two of them right now.

Earl and Mary Rose Wilcox spent the morning juggling plates of chorizo and shouting orders in Spanish toward the kitchen behind them. Now they’re catching their breath in a corner booth at El Portal, the South Phoenix restaurant they’ve run for two decades. They point out the members of their family depicted in a mural on the nearby wall, retracing the mission that brought them to this place and wondering aloud how it all went wrong.

I came to Arizona looking to answer the question of why, over the past few years, so many Hispanics have fled the Democratic Party. This exodus is evident across numerous counties, congressional districts, and battleground states, but the stakes seem highest in Arizona, where Republicans are promoting a slate of extremist candidates and counting on Hispanic voters to help put them in office.

What I found is Earl and Mary Rose, a couple in their mid-70s and the twin bosses of a Phoenix political machine, reckoning with the same awful conclusion I have heard from so many Hispanics, both here and around the country. “The party doesn’t care about us,” Mary Rose tells me. “They pretend to care every two years.”

The gloomy report goes on from there, then on and on and on. 

Alberta's findings could be right, or they could always be wrong. That said, the numbers do seem to have been sliding, and the bad faith and bad judgment described in Alberta's report seem to come, live and direct, straight outta our blue tribal world.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but our failing tribe draws its leadership cadre from the ranks of the "highly educated." That cadre draws its ideas from the ranks of the assistant, associate and adjunct professors, and few groups are more reliably clueless. 

Who lost all those Hispanic votes? And how did they manage to do it?

Alberta goes into painful detail. He could always be wrong, of course.

GOBLINS AND US: Who's actually driving the GOP bus?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022

"[We're] looking at ghosts and empties:" This past Monday night, ghosts and goblins were reliably spotted in many American neighborhoods.

Last night, we even thought we spotted some goblins right there on cable TV!

To be honest, we also found ourselves thinking of Paul Simon's "ghosts and empties," the traveling companions he was hoping to lose as he journeyed towards a real and metaphorical Graceland. 

The lyrics appeared in 1986. To revisit the context, click here.

First up last night was Tucker Carlson, a reliable goblin on Fox. Ranting about Joe Biden's speech, he offered such comments as these:

CARLSON (11/2/22): I'm just fascinated by the president's speech tonight, in front of the slum that he created at Union Station in Washington. 

Why do you think, six days before an election in which his party is behind, he's yelling at American voters, attacking them? Why isn't he talking about why you should vote for him? Why is he browbeating the public, screaming at us again?

Viewers who hadn't watched the speech might have come to believe that Biden, standing in front of a slum, had been yelling and screaming at them again.

So it went at the start of this disordered program last night. Tomorrow, we'll offer a possible thought about "the drama of the [abandoned] child"—the psychodrama which is, perhaps, being played out as Carlson performs his nightly goblin routine.

One hour later, we saw an unusual exchange between Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes. At issue was an important question:

Who is driving the lunacy of the current "MAGA Republican" world?

Wagner introduced Hayes as "my dear friend." In doing so, she checked a corporate branding box. 

Wagner started by wondering "if there is actually a distinction to be made, as the president insists there is, between Republicans and MAGA Republicans." She was referring to that same speech, the speech in which the president had allegedly screamed and yelled at us again!

Let's return to what Wagner said:

It becomes more and more clear that Wagner thinks that Those People Are All Just Alike—that Biden and other are very silly in thinking that some distinction can be drawn between different groups of such Others.

In response, Hayes said that some Republican officeholders would accept an election defeat. Wagner now moved toward her real point—and as she did, she made a strange remark about who is leading the Republican Party:

WAGNER (11/2/22): I guess I should say, there is a distinction between, not only between MAGA Republican and regular, truth-accepting Republicans, but also, who are we talking about? There are the elected officials, and then there's the grassroots. 

And at this point, I truly feel like the grassroots are actually leading the party, right?

HAYES: Yes.

WAGNER: And in the numbers, if you look at who is in the Republican Party, 61% of them believe that the election was stolen for Joe Biden. 

Are the grassroots "actually leading the party," whatever that fuzzy phrase means? That's what Wagner said she believes, and Hayes seemed to say he agrees.

Wagner also seemed to say that a substantial chunk of GOP voters do not believe that the last election was stolen. Still and all, she continued as shown:

WAGNER (continuing directly): The president of the United States, Joe Biden, who won—I think he wants to believe that that number is smaller. Or he believes in the goodness of the country, and two-thirds of the Republican Party as it is—the people of the Republican Party—do not believe he is legitimate.

Moments before, Wagner had noted the way Donald J. Trump had said, in a recent post, that the United States is "evil." Now, she herself seemed to suggest that Biden is a bit naive when he believes in "the goodness of the country."

For the record, 61 percent isn't "two thirds," but it's a healthy three fifths! In Wagner's assessment, three-fifths of the GOP grassroots believe the election was stolen for Biden. 

Three fifth is a substantial chunk! Eventually, Hayes expressed this view about what that figure means:

HAYES: I think they're a majority, the majority dominant faction in the Republican Party, though not entirely, right? There's a minority which is not in that faction. 

It's the majority faction that runs one of the two major parties. It's a minority in the broad American populace, which still to this day retains a robust, pro-democracy majority, along the lines of 60 percent, I would say probably. But there is a dominance of this anti-democratic faction in the Republican Party, and that's really the whole issue.

The multimillionaire dear friends had agreed on several points:

They agreed that a majority of the Republican rank and file believe the last election was stolen. More significantly, they seemed to agree on this somewhat fuzzy point:

They seemed to agree that this belief means that these people are "anti-democratic"—that they aren't "pro-democracy." To what extent does that pleasing assertion actually seem to make sense?

Let's review the analysis offered by these ghosts:

In their assessment, three fifths of the GOP rank and file believe the election was stolen. We know of exactly zero evidence in support of that inflammatory claim about that election—but for some unstated reason, the dear friends agreed that people who hold this unfounded belief are "anti-democratic."

That's a highly simplistic claim. On a tribal basis, it's also a claim which is highly pleasing. But to what degree does it make clear sense? 

Consider:

Voter X believes the last election was stolen, Also, Voter X is very angry about that.

On what basis does this make Voter X an opponent of democracy? Wouldn't you be angry if you thought an election had been stolen from the candidate you prefer?

For ourselves, we don't agree with voters who think that the least election was stolen. Two years have passed, and Donald J. Trump has presented exactly zero evidence in support of this poisonous claim.

That said, we also don't approve of the underwhelming work routinely done by the corporate-selected ghosts and empties we're offered on MSNBC. Let's return to this foundational point:

We think Wagner is out of her mind when she says that this dominant faction of Others is "leading the [Republican] Party." 

In making that claim, she satisfies an ancient tribal desire—the desire to savage the Others, millions at a time. But in our view, she's also making zero sense.

Dear God! Does anyone think that the lunacies driving the GOP are emerging from the GOP's grassroots—from the Republican rank and file? Whatever became of this fairly obvious observation:

The lunacies driving the GOP bus are largely coming from Donald J. Trump and the people assembled around him.

The lunacies are coming from other high-profile players in addition to Trump. But are these lunacies really coming from the rank and file? 

Starting with "Barack Obama was born in Kenya," the rank and file have largely believed the various claims they've been handed. As experts have noted, this teaches a major anthropology lesson concerning the limits of human discernment.

But did these claims emerge from the rank and file? Are they the leaders of the pack? In what way are the rank and file playing the leadership role in the ongoing lunacy which is taking the nation apart?

How empty the ghosts of cable news can turn out to be! Watching Wagner, it's fairly clear that she holds the most ancient instinct of the species:

You simply can't talk to these Others, this multimillionaire Brown graduate says. You shouldn't even try!

She said as much to Tim Ryan on her program Tuesday night. (Why had he been willing to talk to Those People at Monday evening's Fox News Town Hall?)

She was saying as much in her colloquy with her dear friend last night. Astoundingly, she even rolled her eyes at Biden's belief that "Amerika is a good country.".

We think the GOP rank and file has been stunningly gullible as they've come to believe the various things they've been told. That said, we think it has reflected poorly on our own blue tribe as we have come to ape the flyweight work we keep getting handed by our own corporate-selected tribunes. 

Carlson was crazy as always last night. He performed his Standard Goblin routine, as he increasingly does on a nightly basis.

One hour later, Simon's line popped into our heads, his line about "ghosts and empties." We also thought we were looking at the route our failing blue tribe has taken on its way toward tribal defeat.

Tomorrow: Tucker and Trump and Lake oh my! Where do these goblins come from?

GOBLINS AND US: We just keep churning out those results...

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2022

...even on a day off: We lost a large chunk of time this morning. For that reason, it's almost like we're going to take the day off.

That said, your incomparable DAILY HOWLER just keeps banging out those results!

Yesterday, we asked the world's most obvious question. Our question concerns a minor but obvious part of last Friday's violent attack on Paul Pelosi.

We asked the world's most obvious question! Today, an attempt at an answer arrives at the end of the featured front-page report in the Washington Post's print editions.

The lengthy report includes 35 paragraphs. Here are the final five:

DAVIS ET AL (11/2/22): Officials with the San Francisco Police Department repeatedly declined to comment on security measures around Pelosi’s house in the city’s posh Pacific Heights neighborhood, including whether there was an alarm system at the residence that would have triggered an alert with the department.

San Francisco police officials also are facing growing questions nationally and locally, including from Pelosi’s neighbors, about why there wasn’t a more consistent presence outside the speaker’s home, given the intensity of the threats that she and other lawmakers have faced as well as previous incidents at the residence. Since Friday, neighbors said, at least three San Francisco police squad cars have been positioned outside the residence, along with unmarked black SUVs and plain-clothed security officers—often signals that the speaker is at home.

Pelosi’s house is also protected by a private security system, two people said. When tripped, that alarm is supposed to notify San Francisco police and, secondarily, the Capitol Police, one of them added.

On Friday, the Capitol Police never received an alert from the home security company, that person added. It was unclear if the system was armed at the time of the break-in.

Officials with the San Francisco Police Department repeatedly declined to comment on whether there was an alarm system at the house and if the department received an alert about the break-in besides the 911 call.

Five days later, the Washington Post has begun to address the world's most obvious question.

The question may not be hugely important, but it's been an obvious question for five days. Regarding the matters at issue here, our assumptions would be these:

Assuming the obvious, we would assume that the Pelosis' house does in fact have an alarm system. 

Further, we would be inclined to assume that the alarm system hadn't been activated (hadn't been "armed") when Paul Pelosi retired last Thursday night.

Those would be our best guesses. That said, this has been the world's most obvious question for the past five days. 

We're always impressed when our nation's journalists, as a group, fail to take note of such bone-simple matters. The question would occur to anyone—or at least, so it once may have seemed.

Tomorrow and Friday: How many goblins are there?

 

How quickly they forget!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Online Post drops Pelosi: In print editions, it's on the front page of today's Washington Post, appearing beneath these headlines:

Suspect charged in attack on Paul Pelosi
Man said he wanted to break speaker’s knees, according to court filing

It was right there, on the front page, as of 6 A.M.

But that was then, and this is now! As of 11 A.M., that news report isn't available on the nearly endless front page of the online Washington Post. 

That report just isn't there! Apparently, the online Post had to make room on its endless front page for such pressing reports as these:

It’s true, Martin Luther King Jr. paid the hospital bill when actress Julia Roberts was born

Taylor Swift claims every spot in the Billboard Top 10, making music history

Are 1 in 6 Zoomers really doing nothing with their lives? Plus, other reader questions!

Bono’s memoir is as rambling, fascinating and maddening as he is

Real-life ‘White Lotus’: Workers share rich guests’ wildest demands

Carolyn Hax: Stepdaughter wears same outfit daily, prompting concerns

Ask Sahaj: I was raised to compare myself to others. Now I can’t stop.

We’re upset about the custody arrangement. What are our options?

Miss Manners: I overheard my best friend say horrible things about me

Ask Amy: My son physically assaulted my daughter

How to support your sober friends when everyone is drinking

Just 11 extra pounds can ruin healthy knees

Ask a Doctor: Is animal protein easier to absorb than plant protein?

How to survive a crowd crush and why they can become deadly

If your phone needs fixing, make sure your secrets are safe first

That customer service number could be a scam. Here’s how to sniff out a fake.

The Washington Post tried to get suppressed on TikTok. Here’s what happened.

She declined Brando’s ‘Godfather’ Oscar. Now recently deceased Sacheen Littlefeather has her own controversy.

I tried the new seaplane flight from D.C. to New York

How to choose a throw blanket that will keep you warm all winter

Ken Jennings broke ‘Jeopardy!’ in 2004. In 2022, he helped save it.

As of 11 A.M., those reports all appeared on the nearly endless front page of the online Post. The report about the attack on Paul Pelosi didn't.

We decided to see if the report could be found anywhere at all. When we clicked over to the POLITICS page of the online Post, we did find the print edition's front-page report—but Good Lord!

It was seventeenth on the list of reports on the POLITICS page! It was positioned well below this evergreen survivor:

4 Takeaways from the Fetterman-Oz debate

So it goes at the online Washington Post, thye dumbest publication in town. 

In closing, let's review:

At 6 A.M., it sat on the front page of the print edition of the Washington Post. It was right there on A1!

Five hours later, it lay on the junkheap. At the braindead online Washington Post, someone thought it was more important to teach you "how to survive a crowd crush and why they can become deadly," as if you actually need to know such things.

Also, how to choose a throw blanket! Very, very key!

Th billionaires are eating our nation's brains. On the brighter side, they're making additional money!

Are you sharper than an American journalist?

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022

The question we haven't seen asked: Briefly, we were elated.

At New York Magazine, Prater and Danner were apparently offering updates under this promising headline:

Pelosi Attacker Allegedly Planned to Kidnap and Torture Speaker: Updates

As we scrolled down their list of topics, we quickly came upon a promising sub-headline:

"Where was security?" the journalists were asking. Briefly, we were elated. Sadly, though, all they had was this:

Where Was Security?

The home was apparently not under guard at the time of the attack. Paul Pelosi does not receive protection from the U.S. Capitol Police when unaccompanied by the Speaker, according to the Washington Post, and Nancy Pelosi and her security detail were in D.C. at the time. Capitol Police said agents from its California field office “quickly arrived on scene” following the attack.

Concerns about security for members of Congress have significantly increased over the years...

Sad! In this "update," the journalists simply repeated the things everyone else has said:

The home was not under guard at the time. Also, Paul Pelosi doesn't receive a security detail when Nancy Pelosi's not there.

Everyone had already established those points! Here's the fairly obvious question which, to this very day, we've seen no journalist ask:

Is the Pelosi house equipped with a security system? Why did Paul Pelosi have to sneak a call to 911 to alert the outside world?

According to official reports, David DePape smashed a glass door at roughly 2:25 A.M. to gain entry into the house. Shouldn't that have activated the house's security system? Is the very large, very expensive house so equipped?

To us, that seems like the world's most obvious question. Four days later, providing an "update," Prater and Danner still didn't wonder or ask!

Did Paul Pelosi neglect to activate the house's security system that night? Uninquiring journalistic minds don't seem inclined to wonder or to ask!

GOBLINS: The goblins have been very active!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Here's what the goblins have said: The ghosts and goblins were out in force last night. 

That said, for several days, they had been active on Twitter. 

By Sunday afternoon, the Washington Post was reporting what the goblins had been saying. As reported by Isaac Stanley-Becker, here's part of what the goblins have said about the apparent / alleged / reported attack on Paul Pelosi:

STANLEY-BECKER (10/30/22): [Elon] Musk, who calls himself “Chief Twit,” also appeared unconvinced by the official story forming in the days after the attack. In response to a tweet from Hillary Clinton condemning the attack and claiming it resulted from “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” spread by Republican politicians, he pointed instead to a story in the Santa Monica Observer claiming without evidence that Paul Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” Musk, who later deleted the tweet, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The website of the Santa Monica Observer, described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility source favoring the extreme right, was offline Sunday morning. But an archived version of the story promised to explain “what really happened early Friday morning in San Francisco.”

It unspooled a lurid tale about nudists and a tryst gone terribly wrong. It also speculated about Pelosi’s medical condition and the security at the home he shares with the House speaker in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood...

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times has called the site “notorious for publishing false news,” highlighting its fantastical claim, in 2016, that [Hillary] Clinton had died and been replaced by a body double.

Similarly deluded claims filled social media over the weekend in response to the attack on Pelosi.

As of Sunday afternoon, the lengthy report by Stanley-Becker was providing important information about what was being said.

We'll guess that very few people saw the report. (We ourselves did not.) 

You see, the online Post is now cluttered with braindead pseudo-reports from such key departments as ADVICE, WELL + BEING, LIFESTYLE and HELP DESK. To appearances, the inanity is general over the online Post as owner Jeff Bezos seeks profits. 

Something else is true, of course:

For better or worse, news orgs are inclined to avoid reporting about apparent disinformation. For better or worse, and not without reason, they're inclined to fear that such reporting will only spread false, unfounded or crazy claims even further.

Those journalistic scruples make a definite type of sense. They also help create a system in which crazy claims make their way around the world before official reports can get their pants on—also, before the bulk of the population knows what else is being said.

We'll note an important point about Stanley-Becker's report. (In our view, this brings a variant of Arnold's "eternal note of sadness" in.) 

The important point is this:

In the end, Stanley-Becker can't actually prove that the "lurid tale" being shopped on the web is "deluded." Indeed, he can't even prove that it's wrong!

In the end, proof comes close to being impossible. In the end, it all depends on who you choose to believe.

On this morning's Morning Joe, Mika and her guests were beginning to acknowledge the existence of this widespread lurid tale. They sought to undermine the claims by referring to the official FBI report about the attack on Pelosi.

That said, alas! For many Americans, the FBI has long since been abandoned as a reliable source of information about alleged attacks. 

In recent years, the organization has been fashioned as part of the "Deep State." For many Americans, the fact that the FBI says that Paul Pelosi was attacked now means that he surely wasn't.

Sad but true! In the end, this is the way information works:

We weren't there to see what happened that night. You're weren't present on the evening in question either.

For that reason, we're forced to rely on official reports to let us form our idea of what happened. But in a form of silent secession, many Americans—we have no idea how many—have long since stopped placing their trust in "official reports."

Those official reports come from the Deep State. Those reports are laughed at, disregarded.

Instead, many Americans get their ideas from people like Tucker Carlson. Carlson was playing the Disbelief Card as he opened his program last night. 

Carlson was actively sowing doubt, perhaps in a rather selective fashion. For transcript and tape, just click here. 

Last evening, the insinuations were general over Tucker Carlson Tonight. In the end, it always comes down to a matter of trust as to whose account of some event a citizen will assume to be accurate.

We're speaking here of a silent secession—of a cleaving of a very large nation in two. Stanley-Becker's report describes the way that process has worked in the current circumstance, but it's going to be extremely hard to find our way back from this place.

The goblins have been general over Twitter in recent days. As always, responses from our blue tribe's tribunes haven't been especially timely, potent, intelligent, insightful, helpful or wise.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but the goblins have been out in force. In reply, our tribe has offered a tiny, tinny children's crusade, run by media personalities who just aren't especially impressive.

This sort of thing has been going on ever since Jerry Falwell toured the country with the Clinton Chronicles tape in the 1990s. Our self-impressed tribe slept through that era, and our corporate tribal leadership is still rather hapless today.

We've shown you what is being said. How strong is our own tribe's human discernment as we respond to this news?

This afternoon: When Mika threw to George [Conway]. Also, what Bret Stephens said