CULTURES: An extremely well-constructed address!

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2024

A remarkable pundit moment: After last evening's (delightfully) pugnacious address, is there any way President Biden could lose?

In our view, yes—there actually is. In our view, this year's challenge won't be over until it's actually over.

In our view, last night's address was extremely well-written—was extremely well composed.

The speech was pugnacious in a way we don't recall from past State of the Union addresses. We thought the tone was fully appropriate. In various ways, we thought the president was finally appearing on the field of battle after a very long delay.

At times, we didn't think the speech was pugnacious enough! When the president discussed the events of January 6, it seemed to us that he should have stressed the fact that the some o  the events in question had happened right there in this very room, as members of the House from both parties correctly feared for their lives.

We felt he should have mentioned the fact that, quite literally, a gallows had been constructed outside the Capitol building—a gallows constructed by invaders who wanted to take Vice President Pence's life.

Why should the newly arrived candidate for re-election have been that specific? Here's why:

Voters who watch the Fox News Channel are never told about such events. They're never shown the actual footage of police officers being beaten that day. 

They're never told about the gallows which was constructed outside the Capitol building. For them, such information, along with such video footage, has long since been disappeared.

(Red tribe viewers are never told or shown such things. By way of contrast, we blue tribe viewers are never told or shown much of anything else!)

We thought last evening's address speech was extremely well constructed. If President Biden was 61 years old, we'd consider him an overwhelming favorite for re-election. 

That said:

In our view, the fact that he's 81 years old remains as an unresolved possible problem. When he went off prompter last night, it seemed to us that a sense of diminishment still exists. 

Will he be able to campaign in unscripted settings? Will he be able to debate?

We think those questions are still unanswered. Then again, the crazy behavior continued last night from Candidate Donald J. Trump:

Disaster for Trump as Truth Social Crashes at Critical SOTU Moment

Donald Trump may have rage-posted his way through President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Truth Social, but his social media site crashed for many before Biden even entered the House chamber, with technical issues lingering for at least an hour before and into his remarks.

Beginning shortly before 9 p.m. EST Thursday, outages numbered in the thousands, according to Downdetector. The outages peaked an hour later and then began to slowly resume back to normal, according to the monitor.

Around the same time, users on X reported not being able to access Trump’s feed, with some—including former Trump White House Press Secretary Alyssa Farah Griffin—mocking him for it.

“Trump said he’d be live fact-checking Biden’s SOTU but Truth Social appears to be down. Sad!” she wrote on X.

Thus spake William Vaillancourt. at the start of this report for the Daily Beast. The former president had been "rage-posting" again, at least when his site wasn't down.

We were struck by that somewhat unusual term. In the Robert Fagles translation, Book One of The Iliad bears this title:

The Rage of Achilles

Roughly three thousand years later, the rage-posting of Donald J. Trump still helps define the political and journalistic culture within which the red tribe's siege of the Biden White House will be conducted this year.

It's hard to believe that this rage-posting challenger could possibly win in November.  But in the western world's first war poem, Achilles' rage in fact prevails—and rage remains a powerful force in human affairs, all these millennia later.

We regard Candidate Trump as being badly disordered. That said, tens of millions of neighbors and friends simply don't see him that way.

We disagree with their assessment—but they disagree with ours! Meanwhile, it seems to us that Candidate Biden, when he wasn't reading from prompter last night, continued to signal a possible type of diminishment at his famously advanced age.  

All in all, we don't know where this confrontation will end. On balance, we thought last night's address was superb—but will the candidate be able to keep it up when he campaigns off the cuff?

We thought the prepared address was superb. Then too, there was a remarkable pundit moment after last evening's address. 

For those who are prepared to take The Blue Tribe Challenge, it struck us as highly instructive.

The moment occurred at 2:47 a.m. this morning, as live coverage of the address continued on MSNBC. Presumably, nothing will turn on what was said in this fleeting moment—but the moment strikes us as extremely instructive.

Even in the 2 a.m. hour, a panel of three MSNBC contributors were still discussing the speech. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) was on set as their guest.

It may seem hard to believe. But after Rep. Garcia praised Biden's focus on "kitchen table" issues, MSNBC's Symone Sanders-Townsend said this:

SANDERS-TOWNSEND (3/8/24): There were some other things in the speech that were not, I think, written down. You talked about—

We talked off-camera about Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, and the buttons that she had and the outfit that was a violation. 

She—when the president came down the aisle and was greeting folks, she greeted him, gave him a button. There was a point in the speech where he pulls out the button. 

Literally, this speech had everything. It had props.

He pulls out the button and says the name of the young man who was killed in Georgia. I think Marjorie Taylor-Greene and other Republicans were going to use this as a foil. He was killed by an undocumented woman. And so—

But the president used the term "illegal" when he was responding in the heat of the moment. I heard the term "illegal:" There were people in my text messages who heard the term "illegal."

I wonder what you thought about that moment.

Sanders-Townsend was concerned about Biden's use of the term "illegal"—more specifically, about his use of the term as a noun.

She didn't seem to be concerned about the actual killing itself. Beyond that, she didn't seem to know the basic facts about the killing in question, in which a 22-year-old (female) nursing student was allegedly killed by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally, then had been allowed to stay under a type of "parole."

As he responded, Rep. Garcia called Taylor-Greene a disgrace. He talked about the slogan-festooned outfit she'd worn as if in tribute to NASCAR drivers. He then started to discuss the president's use of the term "illegal,"

Only then did Sanders-Townsen break in to correct her misstatement about the killing in Georgia. To our eye and ear, it appeared that she'd been prompted by someone speaking to her through the button in her ear.

At the age of 34, Sanders-Townsend is a very capable high achiever. Is it possible that she didn't know even the most elementary facts about the killing which took place in Georgia last week—about the killing which had set red tribe networks on fire?

Two nights earlier, a panel of five MSNBC hosts had laughed about the fact that Republican voters in Virginia considered the border to be the most important current issue. 

Within the red tribe world, their laughter had gone viral. In part, the five were blasted for the way they'd laughed about the topic without even mentioning the recent murder in Georgia.

Their laughter in the face of the previous week's killing was widely cited. We aren't sure about this next point, but we think we saw some red tribe critics say that our blue tribe's pundits care about the use of appropriate language more than about life itself. 

At any rate, is it possible that our corporate blue tribe tribunes pay so little attention to matters like this that one of them didn't know even the simplest facts about the murder of Laken Riley, age 22?

That's the way Sanders-Townsend's presentation read to us. It seems to us that this mere possibility teaches us something about our contemporary world, and about the corporate pundits in whom we tend to place our trust.

 We thought last night's address was extremely well-composed. As we contemplate the red tribe's ongoing siege of the White House, we also thought that this morning's brief pundit exchange was a strong teachable moment.

Could Donald J. Trump still capture the White House? In our view, in spite or perhaps because of his rage, imaginably, he still could.

There's still a whole lot more to learn about our blue tribe's corporate pundits—about the role these people have played in getting us where we now are. 

This story dates back more than thirty years. Thanks to decades of group silence, the story has rarely been told.

Red tribe voters never see the videotape from January 6. Blue tribe voters don't see the footage from the southern border—and our blue tribe pundits don't ask us to hear about the killing of Laken Riley, or about the policy breakdowns which apparently led to her death.

Trump was rage-posting again last night. Why are many red tribe voters also enraged?  Also, is it possible that their rage, like the rage of mighty Achilles, could somehow win out in the end?

Yet to come: The role of rage; the attraction to war; the subjugation of women. 

Also, the constant absence of clarity—the never-ending inclination to avoid the pursuit of mere facts.

Tonight is the start of The Year That Was!

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2024

Why not take The Scarborough Challenge? Tonight is the start of The Year That Was. It's the start of a campaign year which will presumably send President Biden or Candidate Trump to the White House.

In large part, the outcome will likely turn on President Biden's ability to run a competent, vigorous campaign. Tonight involves a scripted speech, but it's the start of the chance to make a type of assessment.

Meanwhile, could Donald J. Trump get elected again? Presumably, he could! 

For what it's worth, the only trial he will face may turn out to be the Stormy Daniels trial. There's no way of knowing how that somewhat unusual trial will turn out, or how it will seem to American voters.

(It could defeat Trump, of course. Or that again, possibly not.)

Can President Biden run a competent campaign? Can Candidate Trump steer clear of self-destruction?

Tonight, we get our first look at Candidate Biden. Concerning Candidate Trump, we wanted to make a suggestion about the way our blue tribe's major tribunes are currently performing their tasks.

Last Friday morning, March 1, we were asked and told these things as we watched Morning Joe:

Can you imagine voting for that guy? How stupid would you have to be?

He can't. complete. a sentence. He can't. complete. a thought.

That was Joe Scarborough, at 7:07 last Friday morning, developing the "early onset dementia" hypothesis concerning Candidate Trump.

"He can't complete a sentence," the gentleman said, pausing for emphasis as he did. "He can't complete a thought." 

We were surprised to hear that! The night before, we had seen Trump do the full hour on the Hannity cable news show. In the course of that hour, we'd seen him complete a very large number of sentences and a very large number of thoughts.

Quite a few of the thoughts were off the wall; some of the thoughts were not. But in the course of an entire hour, the candidate betrayed no trouble completing sentences. He had been surprisingly calm, and he had somehow managed to complete every sentence and thought.

Warning! If you watch the Morning Joe segment, you'll see Joe and Mika taking advantage of a doctored "edit"—of a piece of videotape which has been clipped so abruptly as to give the impression that Trump's statement hadn't made sense.

You'll then see Joe and Mika histrionically acting out a bit of a scam. After that, you'll see Scarborough make the statements we've posted above.

We offer this suggestion:

Why not go ahead and take The Joe Scarborough Challenge? To see the start of Trump's appearance with Hannity, you just have to click here. 

As you will see if you take the challenge, the first segment of the interview ran for sixteen minutes. If you choose to take the challenge, you'll see the candidate complete a very large number of sentences and a very large number of thoughts.

At this point, Scarborough rarely makes a statement about Trump which hasn't been embellished. For ourselves, we've long regarded Trump as severely disordered, but the behavior of our blue tribe's panicking tribunes offers a picture of a slightly different, but quite familiar, type of human disorder.

We regard Trump as severely disordered, but he can complete a sentence. Scarborough is very smart and highly experienced, with a very good sense of humor, but he's becoming a familiar type of figure from the annals of public distortion.

Who will win November's election? We don't have the slightest idea, but tonight is almost surely the night which starts us down that road.

Presumably, Nestor's speech to the troops would be premature: Tonight's the night that rip our ranks to shreds or that pulls us through.

Also this: If you watch that Hannity tape, you'll see what's actually being said on red tribe cable about the problems at the border, as opposed to the characterizations we blues are currently sold.

CULTURES: Reid and Psaki and Maddow oh my!

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2024

But also, Watters and Gutfeld: On one major cultural point, the two cable channels agree.

There must never be heard a discouraging word! Tribal viewers must never be exposed to any hint of nuance or complexity.

It's stunning to see the level of dumbness which results from this cultural practice. To cite one example, here's the way Jesse Watters began one segment on his prime-time Fox News Channel program last night:

WATTERS (3/6/24): The House passed a half a trillion-dollar spending bill today. Thousands of pages. No one had time to read it.

We didn't even know about it and we just opened it up and here's what we found: $850,000 for "bus stop equity" in California.

We don't know what that means. We don't know if they're going to put a bus stop in a rich neighborhood or a poor neighborhood, but a bus stop is just a small thing that keeps you dry in the rain and a sign that says "Bus Stop." 

Eight hundred fifty grand? What!? 

Please don't ask us to catalogue the various aspects of the dumbness displayed in that passage by this silliest primetime child. For a recent report about this general topic, you can just click here.

At any rate, that's how dumb our "journalism" can get when practitioners know that nothing they say will ever be questioned, critiqued or challenged—when they know that their pronouncements, however dumb, will be swallowed as gospel. 

In our view, the first eighteen minutes of last evening's Gutfeld! was pretty much equally dumb. Surrounded by the usual gaggle of flyweight pseudo-commentators, the program's host yakked right up to 10:18 p.m., working from this premise:

GUTFELD (3/8/24): All right, let's do a monologue. 

So with Trump cruising to victory in the primaries and Biden's slow implosion, we should once again get used to the media's curiously timed stories that will bash the Don. This week's comes from Rolling Stone...

As it turned out, Gutfeld said the curious timing in this matter dates back to "a report released in January by the Defense Department." According to Gutfeld, that report "detail[ed] how the White House Medical Unit managed drugs during the Trump administration."

Here's the January report by NBC News about that study by the Defense Department's Inspector General. (Just so you'll know, the White House Medical Unit is staffed by military and civilian employees, but is overseen by the Defense Department.)

Gutfeld and his acolytes burned the first 18 minutes of last night's prime time program assuring viewers that the Defense Department report was the latest attempt by the Deep State to get President Biden re-elected. Most simply, we'd say this:

Within a journalistic culture defined by "segregation by viewpoint," there will be nothing so dumb or so improbable that it can't be pleasingly flogged.  

Viewers will see no one raise an objection to whatever statement or claim has been advanced. Given that circumstance, it may not occur to the casual viewer that what he is being told is improbable, silly or wrong. Unyielding true belief may tend to emerge from such presentations.

At this site, we're trying to find a way to approach the misogyny-adjacent material which regularly flows from the Watters and Gutfeld programs. (Bronze Age Pervert, come on down!) For now, we're planning to go there tomorrow, building upon some recent soul-draining conduct by Watters. 

For today, let's consider something offered to blue tribe viewers this past Tuesday night. The brief exchange in question occurred during the interminable, largely pointless coverage of that evening's Super Tuesday primary results. 

Especially on MSNBC, analysts tend to fill the long, useless hours on such evenings with examples of their matchless comedy stylings. So it went when a panel of five MSNBC hosts laughed about a silly idea advanced by many Republican voters in the great state of Virginia.

Many Republican voters had reported, as part of the day's exit polling, that immigration and the situation at the southern border seemed like the current top issue to them. 

This produced several minutes of eye-rolling and laughter from the MSNBC panel—several minutes of mockery which have now gone viral within the red tribe world. 

Was anything "wrong" with what was said? As you can see by clicking here, the exchange began with Joy-Ann Reid offering a sweeping assessment of the way red tribe voters vote:

REID (3/5/24): Republican voters don't vote that way. They don't vote on economics or things they're getting economically from the president. They're increasingly, from the Tea Party on, they're voting on race, on this idea of an invasion of brown people over the border, the idea that they can’t get whatever job they want. 

A black person got it? Therefore, drive all the blacks out of the colleges! Get rid of DEI! That is what they’re voting on. They’re just voting specifically on racial animus at this stage. It isn’t about economics.

That was a remarkably sweeping assessment of the basis on which such voters vote. Jen Psaki took it from there, and she turned to those exit polls:

PSAKI (continuing directly): No, which is why Trump killed the immigration bill. That's why! And because otherwise, he can’t run against The Other, and brown people, and people who don’t look like him, like his supporters, his base of supporters, coming across the border and scaring people, and killing people, or whatever he’s threatening out there.

I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls— I mean, I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue.

By now, the chuckling had started. Inevitably, Rachel Maddow jumped in with a joke:

MADDOW: Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia. It's a very congested area!

VOICE OFF-CAMERA: Build a wall!

By now, the laughter was general. As she continued, Psaki seemed to marvel at the fact that she'd heard people in New Hampshire expressing concerns about the northern border. Mercifully, a commercial break now intruded.

This brief exchange between these thought leaders has gone viral across the red tribe universe. It doesn't seem to have been discussed by mainstream outlets, except for this scolding presentation at Mediaite.

(Operating more from the left, The Young Turks also scold the panelists in this YouTube presentation.)

Was something wrong with the MSNBC presentation? Can it, in any way, be compared to the steady-state dumbness emitted by Gutfeld and Watters?

That, of course, is a matter of judgment. We'd be inclined to say this:

First, to consider the problems, and the deaths, occurring at the northern border, you can see this February 11 news report in the New York Times. The dual headlines say this:

Migrants Face Cold, Perilous Crossing From Canada to New York
Increasingly, migrants from Latin America are risking their lives to cross illegally into the United States along the northern border.

The northern border can be a scene of peril too. That said:

In our view, Reid's sweeping assessment of the motives of pro-Trump voters is extremely unwise as a matter of politics and is basically indefensible on anything resembling "the merits." Concerning the way the ensuing exchange seemed to mock the voters in question, we would only add this:

Tonight, President Biden will likely speak about the bipartisan border bill which was recently killed by Donald J. Trump and the House GOP.  It has also been widely reported that President Biden hopes to issue executive orders to address the situation at the southern border.

It's hard to know why President Biden would be doing such things if there was no serious problem at the southern border. Mainly, though, it's the sheer enjoyment of these cable news thought leaders—the group laughter they enjoy, all through the night—which helps make election night programs like this unwatchable as a matter of basic journalism and basic public discourse.

That short exchange on Tuesday night strikes us as profoundly unwise. It may not strike you that way. In our view, this is all part of the ongoing task of taking The Blue Tribe Challenge!

In our view, it's pretty much Watters and Gutfeld and Reid and Psaki oh my! More generally, it's amazing to see the fruits that emerge from "segregation by viewpoint." 

In our view, that's especially striking in the emerging case of Psaki, a person who is much more experienced and sophisticated than the fellows who are currently hosting primetime "cable news" programs as they toil in the vineyards at Fox.

Reasonably or otherwise, that mocking exchange from Tuesday night has gone very viral. Just yesterday, we quoted Bret Stephens, who was still puzzled as to why red tribe voters are still supporting Trump.

At any rate:

As a matter of journalistic culture, two major "cable news" channels agree on one basic point:

Let a single set of flowers bloom! Viewers will only hear one point of view, and they'll hear it repeated all night!

Tomorrow: Glorious Hector, hero of Troy, seized female captives too!

Can Candidate Biden turn it around?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2024

Also, what's up with Trump voters? Presumably, it starts tomorrow night, with the State of the Union address.

Can Candidate Biden turn it around? In this recent post, Kevin Drum outlines one reason to think that he can. 

Kevin cites numbers from a recent YouGov survey—numbers which illustrate general voter ignorance. Here's where those numbers lead him:

DRUM (3/5/24): Hell, only 34% [said they] had heard [a lot] about the Hur report. Only 24% knew we were striking back against the Houthis. And the fact that a star witness had lied about bribes paid to Hunter and Joe Biden? Only 22%.

Most people don't know anything about anything. In fact, I'll bet that even these numbers are inflated, with lots of respondents saying they've heard a lot about these things because they watched a segment on the evening news or got pointed to a Facebook post.

This is why I think Biden has a fair amount of upside in the presidential race. In September, when people start paying attention, what are they going to learn? Mostly bad stuff about Trump and good stuff about Biden's little-known positive accomplishments. That's where the greatest ignorance is right now, so it's also where there's the greatest potential for change.

At this site, we're amazed to see that 22% of respondents said they had heard that we were striking back against the Houthis!

That fact doesn't get mentioned on Fox—and it certainly doesn't get mentioned on MSNBC, where nothing interferes with round-the-clock speculations about Trump getting frog-marched to jail.

As a general matter, it's almost always true that "most [of us] people don't know anything about anything." As to what people will start to hear in September, that will depend on where they're getting their soundbites.

Remember, though, an intelligent campaign doesn't try to win every voter; an intelligent campaign tries to win some voters. More specifically, it will try to win the most persuadable voters—not the ones we tend to picture when we say that you simply can't reason with Those People Over There.

In our view, Candidate Trump is unelectable, but so is Candidate Biden. In our view, this will still turn on Biden's ability to campaign in a vigorous fashion. We strongly doubt that he'll be able to do that, but we're also prepared to be wrong.

From there, we move to the weekly colloquy between Bret Stephens and Gail Collins. We were intrigued by this part of this week's exchange:

STEPHENS (3/5/24): I’ve always thought that Trump’s obstruction of a subpoena in the documents case is the strongest of the indictments against him. Unfortunately, a Florida courtroom is not an ideal jurisdiction for getting a guilty verdict, and it doesn’t look like the case will be tried anytime soon.

COLLINS: More than the idea of seeing Trump marched off to jail, I love the idea of a bankrupt Trump spending his 80s doing podcasts from a motel room in Tampa or Bridgeport. But when it comes to punishment, no bad deed is more important than trying to subvert the democratic process in such a big-time manner.

STEPHENS: It’s horrible. But not quite as horrible as the idea that tens of millions of Americans are willing to vote him right back into office. Serious question: Why?

At this very late date, Stephens is still wondering why tens of millions of people are eager to vote for Trump.

First suggestion—a person might start by asking people why they plan to do that. That said, Stephens ended up offering one idea about why Trump voters are like that:

COLLINS: But hey, you’re in charge of understanding Republicans. What’s the bottom line?

STEPHENS: He’s a raised middle finger at all the people whom his supporters see as a self-satisfied, self-dealing cultural elite. The more that elite despises him, the more they love him.

That’s why any good analysis of the Trump phenomenon has to begin with an analysis of the Us phenomenon, if you will: Where did those of us who were supposed to represent the sensible center of the country go so wrong that people were willing to turn to a charlatan like Trump in the first place? 

I have endless theories, but here’s another one: We tried to change the way people are instead of meeting them where they are. Neocons (like me) tried to bend distant cultures in places like Afghanistan to accept certain Western values. Didn’t work. Progressives tried to push Americans to accept new values on issues like identity, equity, pronouns and so on. That isn’t working, either.

Again, it seems to us that Stephens would be better off asking Trump voters to explain their preference.  But when he does mindread a general answer, he partially blames his own behavior, and the behavior of other elites:

He says that red tribe elites—people like himself—engaged in deeply unwise behavior on the international front. And he says that progressives—blue tribe figures who aren't like himself—"tried to push Americans to accept new values on [a wide array of] issues."

Is it possible that some of us within the blue world have pushed a lot of new values very hard, perhaps before their time? Over here within our blue tribe, we tend to reject the very premise of that idea. There's no such things as "woke," we frequently say. The term can't even be defined!

There actually is such a thing as "woke," and our tribe has routinely advanced new values and ideas which fly in the face of traditional "common sense" understandings. There's nothing morally wrong with doing that, but it also isn't a surefire way to win national elections.

Collins reacted as shown:

COLLINS: It’s true that the Trump folk find progressives irritating, but we’re going to have to discuss how you avoid making people feel like they’re being lectured to while simultaneously standing up for critical principles like gay rights.

In the meantime, we march forward. Sigh.

STEPHENS: Gail, this is so depressing. Let’s switch gears. 

How do you "stand up for critical principles like gay rights" without "making people feel like they’re being lectured to?" 

One possibility: Stop lecturing to people! Also, stop calling people names.

Sigh! Some extremely impressive public spokespersons did such things in (let's say) the 1990s as public acceptance of gay rights slowly began coming into its own.

They absorbed a lot of undisguised guff on cable programs like Hardball. In the process, they showed the way such things can (sometimes) be done. Some of our journalistic elites don't seem to know that this happened.

Eventually, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton came out in favor of marriage rights. Biden got there first, but the groundwork had been laid, by patient and persistent people, several decades earlier. 

We admired their forbearance. Slowly, attitudes started to change.

CULTURES: O'Donnell uncorks ridiculous howler!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2024

Maddow pleases the tribe: We're so old that we can remember when the Supreme Court's Colorado ballot decision was a very big thing.

Checking our calendar, we see that we're referring to this past Monday night, and also to yesterday morning. In this morning's New York Times, one remnant of this era washes ashore in the form of this slightly odd letter:

Supreme Court: Trump Stays on the Ballot

To the Editor:

Re “States Must Keep Trump on Ballot, Justices Rule 9-0” (front page, March 5):

Despite the stunning clarity of the 14th Amendment and the well-documented historical record of its intent, the votes of the three Trump-appointed justices and that of Justice Clarence Thomas to allow an insurrectionist to remain on the ballot were a foregone conclusion.

The only surprise was the unanimous vote.

D— F— / Beverly Hills, Calif.

For this well-intentioned letter writer, the Supreme Court's unanimous vote was the lone surprise. That said:

As we chronicled yesterday, a unanimous vote had been widely predicted ever since the court heard oral arguments back on February 8. 

It isn't odd when one letter writer finds that outcome surprising. That said, why would a newspaper start its letters section with a letter to that effect? 

We can't answer that question! Nor can we explain the passage in the Washington Post's February 9 news report which we highlight below.

Even now, four weeks later, we can't explain what that news report said:

Supreme Court poised to allow Trump to remain on Colorado ballot

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed poised to allow former president Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot, expressing deep concerns about permitting a single state to disqualify the leading Republican candidate from seeking national office.

Justices from across the ideological spectrum warned of troubling political ramifications if they do not reverse a ruling from Colorado’s top court that ordered Trump off the ballot after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The court was considering the unprecedented and consequential question of whether a state court can enforce a rarely invoked, post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to disqualify Trump from returning to the White House.

During more than two hours of argument, the justices asked questions that suggested their often divided bench could reach a unanimous or near-unanimous decision to reject the challenge to Trump’s eligibility brought by six Colorado voters...

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly questioned whether one state should be allowed to decide whether a presidential candidate is disqualified. “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?” she asked, adding, “That seems quite extraordinary, doesn’t it?”

Right there in paragraph 5, the Post's next-day news report featured Justice Kagan asking a peculiar question. Our puzzlement went like this:

Suppose Colorado had been allowed to bar Trump from its ballot. In what way would the state have been making this decision "not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?"

Four weeks later, we still don't have the slightest idea what Justice Kagan meant. That said, the New York Times also featured that puzzling question from Kagan in its February 9 news report, quoting her in a bit more detail:

Supreme Court Seems Likely to Reject Challenge to Trump’s Eligibility

[...]

Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, also expressed concern about granting individual states too much power over national elections.

“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” she told Jason C. Murray, a lawyer for the Colorado voters challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility. She added, “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?”

In what way would Colorado have been "deciding who gets to be president of the United States?" In what way would Colorado have been making that determination "not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?”

Even now, four weeks later, we have no real idea.

Kagan's puzzling question got a lot of play in the days after the February 8 hearing. We've never seen anyone explain what Kagan could have meant. But so it goes—so it repeatedly goes, generally with no one noticing—in this least coherent of all possible highly-educated worlds.

When we were 28, we once journeyed to Washington to visit a college roommate who had just been elected to Congress. At one point, we walked from his office to the House chamber itself so he could cast his vote on a bill creating a weight limit for trucks on interstate highways.

We asked him how he could possibly know what the correct vote would be. Chuckling, he said something to us which went a great deal like this:

"You have to understand, the basic facts of every matter are always in doubt."

The basic facts are never clear! And so it continues to be in this best of all possible tribal worlds.

This very morning, tribunes of our own blue tribe were pounding away on Morning Joe, examining the parameters of Candidate Donald J. Trump's "early onset dementia."

That quotation comes from Joe Scarborough at 6:26 a.m. It reflects the Full Tilt Tribal aspect of our nation's contemporary journalistic culture—a culture which obtains within our own blue tribe as well as among the red.

In the pages of The Iliad, a modern reader is exposed to the dueling cultures which obtained among the poem's two warring tribes. 

The Achaeans (the Greeks) have been staging a nine- or ten-year siege of Troy as the poem starts. Within their camp, a Bronze Age male warrior culture obtains—a culture marked by rage and male aggression, in which the defining argument turns on the question of which of the warriors gets to maintain the services of which stolen woman.

Inside the towering walls of Troy, a domestic culture obtains. In the famous scene in question, Hector delights in his "darling son" before he goes off to battle, and he comforts Andromache, his "generous wife:"

In the same breath, shining Hector reached down
for his son—but the boy recoiled,
cringing against his nurse's full breast,
screaming out at the sight of his own father,
terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest, 
the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror—
so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed,
his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector,
quickly lifting the helmet from his head,
set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight,
and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms,
lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods...

Before Hector goes off, expecting to die, he shares a laugh with his generous wife and kisses his darling son.

We'll continue to suggest that members of our own blue tribe should take The Blue Tribe Challenge. We'll continue to suggest that we take a step back from the daily events of our own tribal war and, possibly scrunching our eyes just a bit, that we try to see ourselves a bit more clearly through the intervention of works of ancient literature.

Concerning our modern blue tribe culture, we can tell you this:

Our own Blue America has joined Red America in accepting one aspect of modern journalistic culture. Each tribe has adopted a deeply unintelligent culture shaped by the practice of "segregation by viewpoint."

We refer to a practice in which tribal tribunes are never asked to interact with people who disagree, in any way, with their own mandated tribal frameworks, viewpoints and claims. Thought leaders interact with people who will echo their views—and with no one else. 

So it went at the start of today's Morning Joe as participants took turns echoing (and embellishing) each other's basic claims. So it was going on Fox & Friends as red tribe tribunes disappeared certain facts and claims and kept asserting others.

Our own blue tribe has come to accept the wages of this culture. On Monday evening, it gifted us with Lawrence O'Donnell's absurd claim, a claim he repeated several times, that the court's three liberal justices had "called [Donald Trump] an oath-breaking insurrectionist" in the separate concurrence they filed.

You've heard no one else make that claim because it's baldly inaccurate—but there's no such thing as correction within this devolving form of tribal culture. Nor is there any mechanism by which Rachel Maddow's 25-minute opening segment could be subject to challenge that night.

We refer to a 25-minute opening monologue whose absurdly selective, resentful ending started with Maddow saying this at 9:16 p.m.:

MADDOW (3/4/24): The United States Supreme Court ruled today, as expected, that the part of the 14th amendment that says you can't hold federal office ever again if you took part in trying to overthrow the government of the United States, the court ruled today that Donald Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection isn't enough on its own to trigger that constitutional protection. Perhaps nothing is!

And so even though states can keep candidates off the ballot for lots of other constitutional reasons like being too young or not being a citizen or whatever, with this one, with the trying to overthrow the government and being banned for life from federal office because of it, like the constitution says in its plain language, on this one he's fine.

That's what the Supreme Court said today. Because of course they did.

If you're a Trump fan, if you're a Republican, if you are hoping for a return to power for Donald Trump in this Republican Party, today's Supreme Court ruling was of course great news. The bad news, on the other side of it, is that everyone can see what the Republican Party is like right now under Donald Trump. And he doesn't just get the presidency thanks to the court trying to help him get it.

That's what the Supreme Court said today because of course they did? 

Trump doesn't just get the presidency thanks to the court trying to help him get it?

That's the way Maddow's resentful conclusion began. Please don't ask us to tick off the various absurdities just in that opening part of her pseudo-analysis. 

Maddow's resentful ending got dumber as it went. She never explained why the three liberal justices would have joined the other six in "trying to help him get it." 

Indeed, she never did her viewers the favor of reminding them that the three liberal justices did in fact agree with the other six in the day's principal ruling—in finding that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to ban Trump from the ballot. 

Did the three liberal justices say that because of course they did? Thanks to the fact that they were trying to help Trump get elected?

As Maddow's nine-minute ending rolled on, it just got dumber and dumber. By 9:18 p.m., her viewers were hearing this newly issued tribal bromide about Candidate Trump:

MADDOW: He also slipped into admitting or thinking or positing once again that he is running against President Obama rather than President Biden. He does this all the time...

If we want to be honest just once, Trump doesn't do that "all the time. " That said, he has explained, correctly or otherwise, why he sometimes does that. 

Because we've watched a lot of red tribe cable, in which it's routinely said that the Obamas—Barack and Michelle—are still the ones who are calling the shots, we find Trump's explanation plausible. That said, being part of today's blue tribe means that you'll never be subjected to the complication of hearing what Trump has said. about something like that. 

You'll never hear what he has said. Under new messaging protocols, you'll instead get to hear that Trump's "early onset dementia" is even worse than Biden's!

As a piece of analysis, the nine-minute conclusion to Maddow's monologue was an undisguised hot mess. If this is the best our tribe can expect from the person initially branded as Our Own Rhodes Scholar, you wonder why our society still bothers with higher education at all.

But so it goes when overpaid tribunes are allowed to voice their resentments without any possibility of critique, correction of challenge. Human nature leads us down the path to the gong-show pseudo-discussions now seen on both major channels. 

American carnage, the newly inaugurated President Trump once said. Had he referred to American intellectual carnage, we might have called him a seer. 

These are the wages of the culture of segregation by viewpoint—a culture which, under current arrangements, is lustily practiced and enjoyed by red and blue tribals alike.

Tomorrow: Red tribe "Bronze Age" culture

Candidate Trump spoke for almost three hours!

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2024

Morning Joe flogged four meaningless clips: Citizens, can we talk?

Donald J. Trump has been making lunatic statements ever since he and Melania descended the escalator in June of 2015.

Strike that! At that time, he'd already been making crazy statements for something like four years. We refer to his years of unsupported, unsupportable claims concerning the place of President Obama's birth—the four years he spent on the Fox News Channel, establishing himself as king of the nation's birthers.

Trump has been making ludicrous statements for roughly a dozen years! For whatever reason, our own blue tribe has never been able to convince tens of millions of neighbors and friends that these ludicrous statements might be a reason keep him out of the White House.

In some ways, it's even worse than that! In the case of Trump's years of Fox-based birtherism, an amazingly large percentage of American voters actually came to believe his unsupported, unsupportable claims. Or at least so it seemed, based upon large numbers of nationwide surveys.

Here within our own blue tribe, we've never made much of an effort to determine why we can't persuade a larger number of voters to see Trump's lunatic statements as a reason to reject him. 

Also this:

It has never seemed to cross our minds that some of this disconnect may lie, in some way and to some extent, with behaviors coming from us. As is always the case with our species' tribes, the problem can only lie with The Others. 

Almost by definition, the problem cannot lie with us.

Now our tribe is involved in a great civil war—a great civil war in which our stars have decided to take a new tack. Instead of complaining about Trump's ludicrous, unsupportable statements, we've decided to pretend that his mental acuity is somehow coming undone right before our eyes.

For many voters, President Biden's mental acuity has now come into question. Increasingly, our blue tribe's reaction is to claim that Trump's mental acuity is on the way out too.

And so it happened that, yesterday morning, Joe Scarborough and the Morning Joe gang spent the first thirty-two minutes of their show pretending that a very short set of video clips shows that Trump is a giant hot mess, mental acuity-wise. 

The four (4) extremely short clips were drawn from a pair of speeches Trump gave at a pair of weekend rallies. Just so you'll know, here are links to the videotape of those (lengthy) speeches:

Saturday, March 2
Greensboro, North Carolina
Approximate length of speech: One hour, 23 minutes

Saturday, March 2
Richmond, Virginia
Approximate length of speech: One hour, 31 minutes

In other words, Trump gave a pair of lengthy speeches, totaling almost three hours. Out of that sandstorm of crazy misstatements, the Morning Joe gang extracted four (4) extremely short video clips in which Trump is supposedly committing the "gaffes" which defined his allegedly "gaffe-filled weekend."

Two of the alleged "gaffes" seem to involve a slurring of, or a stumbling over, a pair of words. In the case of the other two "gaffes," it isn't entirely clear what the nature of the "gaffe" is even supposed to be.

If you choose to click this link, you can see Scarborough playing the video of these alleged "gaffes" at 6:12 yesterday morning. Believe it or not, you can then see him and the rest of the gang go on to spend the next twenty minutes pretending that these alleged "gaffes" show that Trump is losing his mental acuity in a way which goes beyond the public perception concerning President Biden.

From 6:12 through 6:32, with no commercial breaks, Joe and Mika and four useful helpmates flog the alleged meaning of these alleged "gaffes." For the record, we would guess that two of the alleged gaffes are actually teleprompter errors, with Trump suddenly forced to halt what he's saying until the prompter can catch up.

The alleged slips are wholly inconsequential. In the case of the fourth alleged gaffe, the video clip is "edited" so tightly that we automatically suspected what we later discovered to be the case—Trump instantly corrected the alleged verbal slip, presumably as soon as the teleprompter caught up.

Donald Trump has been making ludicrous misstatements for the past dozen years. The Morning Joe gang has now come close to going him one better, pretending to diagnose tiny slips which show that he is losing his marbles in a way designed to rival the public perception concerning President Biden.

Trump has been loco for a very long time. Does anyone think it's going to work on a political basis when Scarborough and his gang of acolytes play the fool in this way?

In fairness, we can't tell you that it won't work to some degree. But our tribe has spent a very long time failing to make a larger connection with tens of millions of red tribe voters, and we've never shown an inclination to wonder if our own behaviors could possibly be playing a role in this dangerous and destructive disconnect.

Is it possible that the problem lies in part with us? If you start watching here, at 6:12 a.m., and you're willing to let the good times roll, you'll soon see Scarborough wondering why the red tribe's voters are so "stupid."

Increasingly, he likes to affect a comical southern accent as he mocks the stupid Trump voters. He also enjoys name-calling Rep. Comer (R-Ky.) as the southern-accented sitcom figure, "Arnold the Pig."

Just a thought:

This may not be the best way to influence friends and neighbors. That said, our tribe has been inclined to behave this way for an extremely long time, and it never seems to enter our heads that we possibly ought to stop.

Donald Trump spoke for almost three hours this weekend. His speeches were filled with ludicrous misstatements. The Morning Joe gang somehow managed to come up with four utterly meaningless clips.

That was the best the gang could manage, but so what? They clucked about it all morning!

The Fox News Channel is losing its mind. Have you watched our channel lately?

CULTURES: Blue tribe stars seemed to be shocked...

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2024

...by the Court's (unsurprising) decision: Yesterday morning, at 10 a.m., a new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation.

That new arrival was the Supreme Court's decision in the Colorado ballot removal case. Dual headlines included, the leading news report in today's Washington Post (print edition) starts exactly as shown:

Supreme Court keeps Trump on ballots nationwide
UNANIMOUSLY REVERSES COLORADO RULING

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously sided with former president Donald Trump, allowing the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner to remain on the election ballot and reversing a Colorado ruling that disqualified him from returning to office because of his conduct around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The justices said the Constitution does not permit a single state to disqualify a presidential candidate from national office. The court warned of disruption and a chaotic state-by-state patchwork if a candidate for nationwide office could be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct.

The decision was "unanimous," the front-page news report said. 

A front-page report in the New York Times used that very same word. "Though the justices provided different reasons, the decision’s bottom line was unanimous," Adam Liptak wrote in the second paragraph of his own report.

Rightly or wrong, wisely or not, all nine justices had decided that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to bar Donald J. Trump from the ballot. Not should this decision—a decision reached by all nine justices—have come as some sort of surprise.

Consider what happened on the evening of February 8, when Rachel Maddow joined her "beloved colleagues" in telling us, her "beloved viewers," about that day's Supreme Court hearing on this very matter.

As we noted yesterday, Maddow started, rather weirdly, by telling us that we were her "beloved viewers." She then offered her own reactions to the day's hearing, which had been broadcast live, though in audio only.

Eventually, Maddow turned to Ari Melber, the legal analyst among her collection of colleagues—and when Maddow threw to Melber, he straight-up told her this:

MELBER (2/8/24): It speaks to how bipartisan this was, based on the different Justices appointed by different parties. Based on the questioning, which is all we have to go on, I would give you eight or nine votes likely against the Colorado Trump ballot ban. 

And that's not because all eight or nine of those people are soft on insurrection. It's because of the things you raised and that we heard some in the questioning about.

Could Candidate Trump be banned from the ballot? As Melber finished a fairly lengthy initial statement, he offered this assessment:

MELBER: I think that the justices, including the Democratic appointees, basically said, "Yes, but not at the state level."

So Melber said, all the way back on the evening of February 8. 

The whole fandango had been quite bipartisan, Melber said. Even "the Democratic appointees" seemed to be down with the idea that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to remove Trump from the ballot.

That was Melber's assessment, based on that day's hearing. Nor was Melber's analysis some sort of outlier at this point in time. 

The next morning, front-page reports in the Post and the Times offered the same assessment. In the self-same Washington Post, a February 9 report said this:

Supreme Court poised to allow Trump to remain on Colorado ballot

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed poised to allow former president Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot, expressing deep concerns about permitting a single state to disqualify the leading Republican candidate from seeking national office.

Justices from across the ideological spectrum warned of troubling political ramifications if they do not reverse a ruling from Colorado’s top court that ordered Trump off the ballot after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The court was considering the unprecedented and consequential question of whether a state court can enforce a rarely invoked, post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to disqualify Trump from returning to the White House.

During more than two hours of argument, the justices asked questions that suggested their often divided bench could reach a unanimous or near-unanimous decision to reject the challenge to Trump’s eligibility brought by six Colorado voters...

It was instant conventional wisdom—conventional wisdom which turned out to be thoroughly accurate! Yesterday morning, the court ruled in precisely the way Melber had predicted to his beloved colleague four weeks before:

As it turned out, all nine justices agreed. For better or worse, the state of Colorado did not have the right to bar Candidate Trump from the ballot. So said all nine justices, including the three from our own blue tribe.

Back on February 8, it had been conventional wisdom: 

The ruling was likely to be unanimous. The ruling would go against Colorado, and it would favor Trump.

In that sense, there was zero reason for surprise when the court issued its ruling yesterday morning. And yet, starting at 4 p.m., the major stars on the blue tribe "cable news" channel expressed their outrage—and their apparent surprise—about the heinous ruling the court had shockingly issued.

At 4 p.m., Nicolle Wallace seemed to be shocked by what the court had done. At 9 p.m., we ourselves were somewhat shocked by the way Maddow presented this widely anticipated ruling.

That said, we're not sure we can remember a time when our nation's two warring tribes disintegrated into so much bad faith—or perhaps, into so much furious true belief, furious tribal true belief which serves to overwhelm sound journalistic judgment.

(Or into so much baldly mercantile conduct? We can't tell you that.)

In some ways, the cultures of our two warring tribes are strikingly different. We know of no one in the world of blue tribe cable news who behaves in the way Greg Gutfeld behaved last night on his eponymous primetime program on the red tribe's channel.

In our view, Gutfeld—a 59-year-old man—is a little bit nutty and a whole lot more than a little bit smutty. We know of no one in the blue tribe orb who behaves in anything resembling the way he and his gang of flyweight guests routinely behave, on a nightly basis.

On the other hand, this:

In recent days, we've frequently thought of the poisonous culture outlined by Robert Graves in his acclaimed 1934 novel, I, Claudius. 

In that historical novel, the reader sees the way the Roman public was routinely deceived about the workings of their republican institutions. These repeated deceptions took place as central figures behind the throne engaged in ongoing behavior which was literally poisonous.

We've often thought of that acclaimed novel—and of the subsequent, highly acclaimed BBC/PBS series—as we've watched our own blue tribe match much of the more unfortunate conduct of its red tribe rival of late.

We were struck by Maddow's behavior as she railed against the court's unanimous assessment last night. One hour later, we were struck by a claim advanced by Lawrence O'Donnell—a tribally pleasing claim which strikes us as simply false.

The furious Maddow seemed to be shocked by the Court's (unanimous) assessment. As we thought back to the events of February 8, her reaction struck us as perhaps a bit strange—but also as an artifact of the deeply flawed human nature which was developed long ago, in our imperfect species' prehistoric past.

Can we blue tribe denizens learn to see ourselves as we secretly are? Might we be willing to take The Blue Tribe Challenge? 

History suggests that the answer is no! That said, we'll continue to look at the cultures displayed in certain works of high-end literature as we fruitlessly continue to suggest that we blues might strive, like the famous physician of old, to learn how to heal ourselves at this time of peril. 

Tomorrow: What Maddow, O'Donnell said

Suddenly aware of Bronze Age Pervert!

MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2024

We arrive on the scene a bit late: Yesterday afternoon, as the Celtics pulled away from the Warriors, we switched over to the C-Span book event which appeared beneath this byline:

Anne Applebaum and Ezra Klein on the Future of Democracy

The month-old discussion took place in Rancho Mirage. A name like Rancho Mirage makes us wonder if the gods are possibly having some fun, but at least it's better than watching an event from Rancho Cucamonga. 

We arrived at the discussion midway through. At the 39-minute mark on the C-Span videotape, Klein can be seen saying this:

KLEIN (2/2/24): One thing I'm a litle, I'm more attentive to these days is what it looks like to be a young person coming up in Republican Party politics. I mean, what kinds of things are you reading? What kinds of—

The fact that you had all these young campaign staffers who had to get fired this year because of what turned out to Nazi imagery in the meme videos they were making for Ron DeSantis and people like that, that was worrying. Because I don't think they knew what that imagery was. But it was in the world they were inhabiting online. 

The kinds of thinkers who have become more salient on the Republican side, people like this online writer Bronze Age Pervert? 

Like that's a real thing. You can look it up. 

[GESTURING TOWARD APPLEBAUM]

The Atlantic has done a great profile of Bronze Age Pervert. Because we are all demeaned now, having to describe reality.

[LAUGHTER OFF-CAMERA]

I'm not sure— For a long time, I thought Trump was an isolated kind of threat, and as a politician, in a way, I think he is. But what he is has kind of spread more broadly.

And so, I don't know. I don't know if this is kind of a temporary threat that America navigates its way past or not. I don't know what Gen Z's politics ends up looking like. 

Klein went on from there. But who in the world is "Bronze Age Pervert?" And how did we manage to miss that great profile of this "online writer" in The Atlantic?

The Atlantic profile is here. It was written by Graeme Wood, who has apparently known the online figure in question for something like twenty years.

Politico Magazine offered a second profile, with no paywall. You can read that profile here.

These profiles appeared last summer when we were locked away in a "skilled nursing facility," receiving ten minutes of bandaging per day for a brand-new surgical wound. We had little access to the Internet. That's when the profiles appeared, which would explain why we missed them. 

The Atlantic profile strikes us as massively illuminating. For example, what's up with the peculiar impulses of a figure like Steve Bannon? Without mentioning Bannon by name, it seems to us that the profile by Wood may make that conundrum quite clear.

We expect to return to these profiles of Bronze Age Pervert at some point. For today, we'll offer this one passage from The Atlantic, print edition headline included:

The Rise of Bronze Age Pervert

[...]

Last year, at a conference of political philosophers at Michigan State University, a Yale professor named Bryan Garsten told his colleagues that they were in trouble. The topic of the conference was liberalism—not Ted Kennedy liberalism, but the classical version that predates the modern Democratic Party and indeed America itself. Liberalism is the view that individuals have rights and beliefs, and that politics involves safeguarding rights and making compromises when beliefs conflict. It has existed for only a few centuries and is by some measures the most successful idea in history. Just look where people want to live: the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, all liberal places that people will risk their life to reach.

But Garsten said liberalism had some of his best students hopping into rafts and paddling in other intellectual directions. He said they had been “captured” by the belief “that to be morally serious, one faces a choice.” The choice, he said, is not between liberalism and illiberalism. Liberalism had already lost. Its greatest champion, the United States, had run aground after pointless wars, terminal decadence, and bureaucratic takeover by activists and special interests. Garsten said his best students were choosing between the protofascism of Nietzsche and a neomedieval, quasi-theocratic version of Catholicism opposed to Enlightenment liberalism. These students considered liberal democracy an exhausted joke, and they hinted—and sometimes did more than hint—that the past few centuries had been a mistake, and that the mistake should now be corrected.

Some of his best students had given up on classical liberalism, Professor Garsten said. Among the writers to whom they were drawn was the follow called Bronze Age Pervert.

In that passage, Wood describes classical liberalism as "the most successful idea in history," though only "by some measures." We'll flip the lens, focusing on the fact that this most successful idea "has existed for only a few centuries."

Translation:

For many members of our war-inclined humans, classical liberalism is a very recent layer of ideation laid down upon a much older set of impulses and reactions. For people like the online writer whose thinking Wood describes, that new layer of ideation doesn't seem to be establishing itself as a successful transplant.

Our own surgical wound still hasn't healed. For the online writer Bronze Age Pervert—Wood supplies his actual name—it looks late that recent set of new ideas hasn't really gained purchase.

Until yesterday, we'd never heard of Bronze Age Pervert. We had heard of Steve Bannon, and of quite a few others like him.

What in the world did Bannon have in mind when he said he wanted to deconstruct the administrative state? Wood's profile of this online writer may start to offer an answer, without necessarily reassuring us that the center will know how to hold.

Wood's profile of this online writer may start to help us see why our existing blue tribe elites have shown so little skill at the task of holding back the pro-Trump wave. As for Ezra, we think he ought to make an attempt to "demean himself" more thoroughly. It seems to us that Wood's profile may start to light the way down many dark corridors and paths.

What is driving a person like Bannon, and possibly a person like Trump? Thinking about the popular online writer BAP may be a good way to find out.

CULTURES: On Fox, viewers are given the status of friends!

MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2024

At MSNBC, we viewers are now "beloved:" Last Friday, Ainsley Earhardt was helping tease the 7 o'clock hour of the long-running morning program, Fox & Friends.

Earhardt's co-hosts had started the tease. At 7:02, she ended the tease with this:

EARHARDT (3/1/24): The second hour of Fox & Friends starts right now, and remember:

Mornings are better with friends!

"Mornings are better with friends?"

We've heard the slogan several times in the past few weeks. Is it a long-standing branding / marketing message? We have no idea.

As we've noted in the past, Fox & Friends is one of the longest-running programs on the red tribe's Fox News Channel. The program premiered on February 1, 1998. The two principal male co-hosts—Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade—have remained in place to this day.

The idea that you're starting the day with friends is presumably offered as part of the program's appeal. It's an especially friendly branding message in an era in which our American nation, such as it was, has split into two rival nations—Red America and Blue.

Mornings are better with friends? For many viewers, the message may be reassuring.

If you're starting the day with friends, you as a viewer know that you will never be confronted with material that challenges you—material you may dislike. You'll hear one set of facts, frameworks and viewpoints—full stop. 

Every guest on the friendly program will reinforce your pre-existing point of view!

Presumably, your friends will always service your needs and your tribal desires. So it goes as red tribe viewers are told that they'll be happier if they start the day with friends.

This implicit reassurance is a long-standing part of red tribe culture. That said, let's recall a bit of advice we blue tribe viewers received as we watched The Rachel Maddow Show on Monday evening, February 5.

Midway through the hour, Maddow began calling her viewers' attention to an upcoming event. Directly out of a commercial break, she began her new segment with a somewhat unusual suggestion:

MADDOW (2/5/28): So if you can change your schedule around this week—your school schedule, your work schedule or childcare, whatever you need to do—if you can make time for it on Thursday morning, this week, you will have the opportunity to hear American history being made, live and in real time.

That Thursday morning, at 10 a.m. Eastern, the Supreme Court was going to hear oral arguments in the Colorado ballot case. This was the case that would decide whether "states can keep Donald Trump off the ballot under the provisions of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Maddow correctly said.

The case would be argued that Thursday morning. Maddow was suggesting that viewers might want to change their schedule around so they could listen to the oral arguments, which were going to be broadcast live—audio only—on MSNBC.

A ten-minute segment followed. As she continued, Maddow listed the three main questions the Court would likely be exploring, then she offered this:

MADDOW: Anything can happen. The whole country is going to be listening in Thursday morning. Luckily for us, people who are experts at these things can help us understand what we should be listening for.

"The whole country is going to be listening?" Excitement about the hearing was running high on this cable news channel.

To our ear, it seemed a bit odd when this major media figure suggested that viewers should rearrange their school, work or childcare arrangements so they could listen on Thursday morning as American history was being made. 

By now, it wasn't entirely clear that any major history actually would be made. Also, Supreme Court hearings are famously hard to follow, especially so since videotape isn't allowed.

To our ear, Maddow's suggestions seemed a bit overheated—but, on balance, so what? Then, at the end of her hour, Maddow returned to the topic as she threw to Lawrence O'Donnell. 

She started by saying this:

MADDOW: Just a little note for your calendar before we go. 

This Thursday, 10 a.m. Eastern, the Supreme Court is going to livestream the oral arguments on whether Donald Trump is disqualified from holding federal office in the United States. Here at MSNBC, we will have that audio live and in full...

Then Thursday night, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, I'll be here with all my beloved colleagues. We will have a primetime recap of those oral arguments. I'll see you then.

That does it for us tonight. Now it's time for The Last Word with the great Lawrence O'Donnell.

There followed a discussion with the great O'Donnell. During that throw, Maddow reported that she had just readjusted her own Thursday morning schedule—that she'd done so rather frantically.

She had done so "in a panic," she told O'Donnell—later, she called it "a moral panic"—so that she would be able to listen to the livestream that Thursday morning.

Had Maddow really been in "a moral panic" as she adjusted her schedule? We would assume that the answer is no—that Maddow was simply telling us, as she is inclined to do, that her all-around state of being is more dramatic than ours.

That said, we were most struck by the reference to the people with whom she would recap the events on Thursday night:

Those people are her "beloved" colleagues? We didn't think we'd ever heard that characterization before.

Let's be clear! Presumably as a branding and marketing mechanism, hosts of MSNBC programs have long since begun describing their colleagues and guests as "friends."  Before too long, the inevitable embellishment began creeping into the messaging, with colleagues being described as "dear friends," even as "dear, dear friends."

So it has gone as "cable news" channels convince their viewers that they will be safe within a network of friends if they watch the channel in question. Now, those "dear, dear friends" had been bumped up another notch, attaining the peculiar status of being "beloved."

For us, the oddness of this presentation lingered when Maddow appeared with her colleagues on that  Thursday evening broadcast. 

In truth, the oral arguments hadn't seemed to proceed in the way our blue tribe had hoped. But as Maddow called the roll of the colleagues who would be part of the evening's two-hour broadcast, she referred to them as her "beloved colleagues" again.

We were struck by the hint of desperation involved in this marketing device. She then brought the analysts right out of their beanbag chairs when she offered this:

MADDOW (2/8/24): In the 1970s, Watergate hearings were also broadcast live during the workday. Recognizing how consequential, how important those hearings were, news networks during that time started recapping each day's Watregate hearings at night, on TV, in prime time, so no one would miss out on that incredibly important history in the making.

We then did the same during the daytime hearings of the January 6 investigation in Congress in 2022. We know from what we heard from you, our beloved viewers, that that was valuable, that was a useful thing. 

And so here we are, together again, tonight, with basically the same approach.

The analysts came right out of their chairs! Quickly, let's summarize:

By now, it seemed likely that no incredibly important history in the manner of Watergate was going to emerge from Monday's oral arguments. (We may find out today.)

Still and all, Maddow showered MSNBC with praise, comparing its recaps of the January 6 hearings to what had happened during that famous era.

As Maddow offered this introduction, she referred to the people sitting around her as "beloved colleagues" once again. But she brought the analysts right off their futon mats with that reference to us out here in TV land:

We were now the "beloved viewers" of our blue tribe's channel! We were the beloved viewers she and her beloved colleagues were working so hard to serve!

Over on the Fox News Channel, red tribe viewers have merely been told that they've attained the status of friends. On our own blue tribe channel, we've been bumped up to "beloved!"

To our ear, this was very strange journalistic behavior by a very major media figure. Maddow's formulations struck us as very strange. As always, your assessments may differ.

Our assessment? As in The Iliad, so too here:

As we've split into two separate nations, the cultures of our red and blue nations have sometimes grown quite different. Sometimes, though, those failing cultures are startlingly the same.

Tomorrow: The wages of "segregation"

SUNDAY: The YouGov survey has Biden, Trump tied!

SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 2024

Do polls at this point really matter? Do polls at this point really matter?

By that, we mean general election polls—nationwide surveys of the type we cited in yesterday's report.

We ask for an obvious reason. In yesterday's report, we cited the new poll by the New York Times / Siena College—and that survey has Candidate Trump ahead of Candidate Biden by five points nationwide.

Oof! This morning, the three co-hosts on Fox & Friends Weekend started their day with that survey. Last night, the routinely unwatchable Saturday Night Live cited the Times survey too.

That said, how much attention should be paid to any such survey this far from November? Before we try to answer that question, let's note the new survey by The Economist / YouGov, which Kevin Drum recommends in this new post.

That new survey has Biden and Trump in a dead heat, at 44 points apiece. Kevin cites this organization's "excellent reputation for accuracy," though it's worth noting that, under current arrangements, a Democratic candidate still seems to be unlikely to win in the Electoral College if the nationwide popular vote ends up being tied.

That said, should anyone pay any attention to nationwide polls at this point?  It has been our general impression that polling at this stage of the game generally tends to hold up. That said:

Early this morning, we found this Gallup report from June 2000. It cites four previous presidential campaigns—1968, 1980, 1988 and 1992—in which nationwide polling from June of the election year failed to hold up in November.

Beyond that, we remember the way one Democratic nominee staged a massive comeback win in the nationwide popular vote, even as he allegedly ran the worst campaign in presidential history! We refer to Candidate Gore's comeback win over Candidate Bush in Campaign 2000. 

How reliable are early surveys? Here's a Gallup report on the Bush/Gore polling from November 1999—exactly one year out:

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE (11/11/99): George W. Bush is also maintaining a healthy lead among voters when they are asked to vote in hypothetical general election ballots. In the most recent poll, Bush leads Gore by a 55% to 40% margin. Gore's 40% now is actually smaller than the percentage he received in May of 1998, when he got 47% of the vote against Bush. Gore did best in that May 1998 poll and in an early January poll this year (he came close to tying Bush in each), but since February Gore has dropped to roughly his current levels.

Oof! One year out, Gallup had Candidate Bush with a 15-point lead in the nationwide popular vote. By this stage in that campaign, Gallup still had Bush with a 9-point lead, as you can see in this Gallup report.

Candidate Gore went on to win the nationwide popular vote, though by a slender margin. Somehow, he managed to do that while running the worst campaign in American history, a judgment which was widely rendered within a mainstream press corps cadre which was working to ensure his defeat.

Was Candidate Gore ever behind by 15 points? There's no way to answer such questions. We mention the conduct of the mainstream press because it constitutes an astonishing historical episode—an episode very few blue tribe voters have ever heard about.

What happens within the mainstream press tends to stay within the mainstream press! Journalists and academics alike have known that no one should ever discuss the remarkable historical episode which almost surely determined the outcome of that campaign.

That said, many nationwide surveys had Candidate Bush well ahead of Candidate Gore as of March 1999. Somehow, those surveys all turned out to be "wrong," though Bush still won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

A final note about that 15-point lead in November 1999:

It was during that month that the mainstream press corps relentlessly savaged Candidate Gore for his heinous wardrobe selections:

His suits, his boots, his polo shirts? The number of buttons (three) on the jackets of his suits?

The height at which he hemmed his pants? The "earth tone" color of that one suit? 

The fact that his boots were too shiny? Also, the person who had allegedly directed him to wear such heinous clothing? 

According to a group assessment, this whole fandango showed that the candidate had "hired a woman to teach him how to be a man!" 

That fact, along with the three-button suit, established Candidate Gore as "today's man-woman" (Chris Matthews).  According to the press corps' many psychiatrists, it also showed that the candidate "doesn't know who he is" (every mainstream pundit on the face of the earth.).

 So it went, night after night, within the much more concentrated world of that era's cable establishment.

During that month, there was no part of the candidate's wardrobe which didn't come in for a withering assessment—and this was from the mainstream press corps, not from "the right-wing machine." Very few liberal voters have ever heard about this astonishing press corps conduct, but this onslaught almost surely contributed to that month's 15-point deficit.

People are dead all over Iraq because those people behaved that way. Academics and journalists alike have understood that this astonishing group behavior must never be memorialized or discussed. 

This studied group silence makes us think of Robert Graves' acclaimed 1934 novel, I, Claudius—much less so of The Iliad.

As for today's nationwide surveys, should Democrats pay them any mind? We'll repeat an earlier assessment:

It seems to us that, assessed by any traditional standard, Candidate Biden and Candidate Trump are both pretty much unelectable. 

According to the rules of the game, one will have to get elected! In our view, it largely comes down to this:

Will President Biden be able to run a vigorous campaign? At this point, we can't answer that question.

 That said, we mention the YouGov numbers today because the numbers are there.

SATURDAY: Kilgore reported some new swing state polls!

SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 2024

Then, up jumped the New York Times: In Wednesday morning's report, we ran through some recent results from some recent "swing state" polls.

Those surveys were conducted by Emerson College / The Hill. As we noted, the gloomy results were being happily bruited on Fox, but they were going unmentioned on our blue tribe's cable news channel.

This morning, at New York magazine, Ed Kilgore has made the current situation look just that much worse.

He starts by noting that a Democrat can easily lose the Electoral College while winning the nationwide popular vote. Then, he reports some newer "swing state" results, results drawn from new surveys conducted by Bloomberg–Morning Consult.

Headline included, Kilgore reports this:

Biden vs. Trump Polls: Joe’s Battleground Problem

[...]

In the most recent batch of battleground state polls, from Bloomberg–Morning Consult, Biden trailed Trump in a head-to-head matchup by nine points in North Carolina, six points in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, four points in Wisconsin, and two points in Pennsylvania. In a five-way trial heat including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein, Trump’s lead ballooned to ten points in North Carolina, nine points in Arizona and (shockingly) Pennsylvania, seven points in Georgia and Nevada, and six points in Wisconsin.

At least in theory, it's a long way from here to November. That said, those are horrible results, especially when that trio of third-party attention addicts are included in the hypothetical race.

From there, Kilgore proceeds to note the "slightly less dire picture for Biden" in those earlier Emerson College polls. The picture was "slightly less dire" in those earlier surveys, but Kilgore also says this:

"Again, the indicators [were] that even in a close national race, the president is trailing significantly in the states likely to determine the Electoral College winner."

"The president is trailing significantly!" So wrote Kilgore, earlier today. 

(At the risk of creating a bit of confusion, this link takes you to a report in The Hill about those new Bloomberg surveys.)

Kilgore reported those gloomy results. Then, up jumped the New York Times, with a report about the results of its own new national survey. 

Headline included, the Times report starts like this:

Voters Doubt Biden’s Leadership and Favor Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds

President Biden is struggling to overcome doubts about his leadership inside his own party and broad dissatisfaction over the nation’s direction, leaving him trailing behind Donald J. Trump just as their general-election contest is about to begin, a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College has found.

With eight months left until the November election, Mr. Biden’s 43 percent support lags behind Mr. Trump’s 48 percent in the national survey of registered voters.

Only one in four voters think the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them as believe his policies have helped them. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of his job has reached 47 percent, higher than in Times/Siena polls at any point in his presidency.

No doubt this is all a mistake! Can't we just get Trump thrown in jail?

It's still a long way from here to November. That said, we report these gloomy statistics in line with the old "Why did you climb Mount Everest?" bromide.

Why do we report these depressing statistics? In line with traditional journalistic practice, we report them because they're there!

What we have here is [an inability] to communicate!

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024

We badly need new language: We thought we'd go ahead and offer a footnote to this morning's report.

In that report, we discussed the latest silly statements, and the latest silly topic selection, by the press corps' silliest boy.

Also, we touched on the ridiculous conduct on daily display on the Fox News Channel program, The Five, with a special point of emphasis on the perpetually irate finger-wagger, the furious Judge Jeanine.

In recent weeks, we've mentioned the fact that this daily nonsense transpires with nary a word from the upper-class, high-end press:

In part, that represents a form of "professional courtesy," wed to a strong desire to avoid getting into a conflict with Fox. On the other hand, it also represents an inability to communicate, due to a lack of acceptable language.

Here's what we mean by that:

Our journalists are familiar with the idea of challenging a statement for being "false" or "misleading." 

Given the conceptual limitations of our journalists, any such statement is now routinely denounced as a "lie." That said, our mainstream journalists do know how to challenge a statement as "false." 

They know how to lodge such a challenge; such critiques are an accepted part of the game.  At present, though, they have no acceptable way to critique a network news show for being spectacularly silly or stupid.

"False" and "misleading" are widely accepted terms of art. At present, there is no acceptable way to say that Watters, Pirro and their ilk are just mind-blowingly stupid on a daily basis.

There's no simple way to report such an obvious fact. What we have in an inability to communicate, thanks in part to a lack of will, but also thanks to a paucity of (acceptable) professional language.

Something we've been withholding has been making us weak! The refusal to come to terms with this daily nonsense is part of what that is.

BLUES: Silly child recommends Stars and Bars!

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024

Then too, there's our own tribe's culture: Last evening, American journalism's silliest boy made one of his silliest statements.

In fairness, everyone can make a mistake. Last night, at 8:46 p.m., the silliest child offered this:

WATTERS (2/28/24): No "DEI Thursday" is complete without a Primetime victory. The Tennessee House just passed a bill that would ban the display of Pride flags in public schools.

Liberals aren't happy. But we believe the only flags that should be flown in the classroom are your state's flag and the Stars and Bars. 

So, happy DEI Thursday, everybody!

Everyone can make a mistake. In this case, the silliest child said this:

Unlike liberals, he believes that the Stars and Bars should by flying in public school classrooms! He authored the endorsement on Jesse Watters Primetime, his eponymous nightly clown show.

For the record, this silliest child is 45 years old! Last June, the corporate suits at the Fox News Channel selected him to anchor that "cable news" channel's weeknight lineup, replacing Tucker Carlson.

Each week, the silly child authors a "DEI Thursday" in which he puts his childish understandings on full display. Last night, he delighted the world with that groaning recommendation concerning classroom flags.

Fill disclosure! The silliest child issued this latest groaner at 8:46 p.m. Eastern.  Seven minutes later, after a commercial break, he explained what he actually meant, then moved to his next silly topic:

WATTERS: Just a little clarification. Stars and stripes, not stars and bars.

Earlier this week, Joe Biden was licking ice cream cones and talking about the border and about the Mideast war. You can't take anyone seriously with their tongue hanging out and ice cream dripping from it.

The White House should agree with that...

You've heard of the movie Dumb and Dumber. This silliest youngster comes next.

The silliest child went on from there to continue his endless, and endlessly silly, ice cream monologues. As noted, this silliest boy is a weirdly old child. the corporate suits thought he would perfect as the face of their "cable news" efforts.

In fairness:

Yesterday, the stupidity was general during prime time over this "cable news" channel. 

This red tribe's prime time lineup starts at 5 p.m. with its highly rated program, The Five. 

In truth, the program should be called "The Four Against One"—and so it went again yesterday, as four red tribe panelists began interrupting the program's one liberal as she attempted to respond to the screeching comments of "Judge Jeanine" regarding violent crime.

Who the Sam Hill is Judge Jeanine? You're asking a challenging question. At Fox, we'd have to say that' she is cast in a recurrent role as The Known World's Loudest Loudmouth.

That doesn't mean that "Judge Jeanine" is always wrong on the general merits. Our own blue world has performed so poorly regarding certain high-profile issues that even someone like Judge Jeanine will often get to be right on the (general) merits.

Yesterday, we saw no sign that thar was the case. First though, we offer a thumbnail account of who this typecast performer is. We direct you to the world's leading authority on her life and times:

Jeanine Pirro

Jeanine Ferris Pirro (born June 2, 1951) is an American television host and author, and is also a former judge, prosecutor, and politician in the state of New York.

Pirro was elected as a judge of the Westchester County (N.Y.) Court in 1990. In 1993, she was elected to the position of Westchester County district attorney. She is the first woman to be elected to either of those positions. 

[...]

From 2008 to 2011, Pirro hosted a weekday television show [on the CW network] entitled Judge Jeanine Pirro. From 2011 to 2022, she hosted Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News Channel. 

Pirro has authored six books, including Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy (2018). 

Following the 2020 presidential election, Pirro made false claims of voting machine fraud. In 2022, Pirro became a co-host of The Five.

[...]

Pirro was among the hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines that Fox News settled for $787.5 million and required Fox News to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.

She made false claims of voting machine fraud, then became host of The Five! As a TV performer, she'd started out on the CW, engaged in this stupid shit:

Judge Jeanine Pirro

Judge Jeanine Pirro (known simply as Judge Pirro since the premiere of its second season) [was] an American arbitration-based reality court show, presided over by retired Westchester County, New York, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. The series debuted on The CW on September 22, 2008 and ended in May 2011.

As with other court shows, such as Judge Mathis and Judge Judy, a former judge serves as neutral arbitrator, and awards the litigants monetary judgments, of up to $5000, which is paid in full by the program's producers. However, this program dealt more with the emotional aspect of each case, which was one of the show's benchmarks.

[...]

Some reality television stars, along with a wrestler, appeared on the show during its run.

That's where the TV stardom began. Yesterday, Judge Jeanine led the onslaught on Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on The Five, as Tarlov tried to report the fact that violent crime statistics are actually down nationwide.

(For our money, Tarlov didn't do her usual outstanding job with this somewhat technical topic. It's generally accepted that homicide is the violent crime for which the data are most reliable. That said, homicide figures seem to be substantially down, on a nationwide basis, despite what the TV judge and her three accomplices said. For two links, see below. Many other reports can be found.)

On yesterday's broadcast of The Five, Jesse Watters, the silliest child, was one of the judge's accomplices. Three hours later, the silliest child endorsed the Stars and Bars, then moved on to the vanilla ice cream dispute. 

This is the type of idiocy which gets peddled each day on this red tribe "cable news" channel. Is it possible that the journalistic culture of our own blue tribe could somehow be thought of as worse?

We'd start with the way our major blue orgs let this red tribe idiocy go without any serious attempt at reporting or criticism or comment. Our general impression would be this:

Big news orgs don't want to tangle with the bombastics at Fox. Our blue news orgs are willing to avert their gaze—to let this inanity go.

That said, our own assessment of the situation goes a bit beyond that. We were struck by the dumbness of our own blue stars as we watched blue cable last night—as blue stars continued to declare the new observation, that we'll probably have to resort to voting against Donald J. Trump to keep him out of the Oval.

Our stars have prayed for Trump to be stopped by an outside event over the course of the past few years. Starting on Monday, we'll tell you why we almost think that our blue tribe's journalistic culture has been almost as bad as theirs.

This rumination will take us back through the different cultures described in The Iliad. For a quick observation, try this:

As the famous poem of war begins, the Achaeans (the Greeks) have conducted a ten-year siege of the towering walls of Troy. Start-ng right in Book One of the poem, their all-male cast is driven by rage and by a prevailing culture in which the taking of sexual slaves is regarded as fully normal.

Inside the towering walls of Troy, a different culture obtains. In Book Six, Hector, the hero of Troy, is about to return to a battle from which he doesn't expect to return. On his way to an expected death, a scene like this obtains:

At that, Hector spun and rushed from his house,
back by the same way down the wide, well-paved streets
throughout the city until he reached the Scaean Gates,
the last point he would pass to gain the field of battle.
There his warm, generous wife came running up to meet him,
Andromache the daughter of gallant-hearted Eetion 

[...] 

She joined him now, and following in her steps
a servant holding the boy against her breast,
in the first flush of life, only a baby,
Hector's son, the darling of his eyes
and radiant as a star.

Inside the walls of Troy, Hector's son is the darling of his eyes and radiant as a star. 

The husband comforts his warm and generous wife. Then, this famous, deeply human moment occurs:

In the same breath, shining Hector reached down

for his son—but the boy recoiled,

cringing against his nurse's full breast,

screaming out at the sight of his own father,

terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest, 

the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror—

so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed,

his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector,

quickly lifting the helmet from his head,

set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight,

and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms,

lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods.

Briefly, the husband and wife—the mother and father—share  delight in their darling son as Hector approaches the House of Death.

As it turns out, Hector's prayer to Zeus and the deathless gods reflects the values of Late Bronze Age warrior culture. But inside the walls of Troy, this highly domestic family culture is repeatedly seen to obtain.

At present, the culture of our own blue tribe and its leadership cadres differs from the ridiculous culture routinely found Over There. 

That said, our own blue culture is deeply flawed, and has been for a very long time. 

Next week, we'll briefly start with one major star's peculiar shout-out to her "beloved colleagues." From there, we'll move ahead to her shout-out to her "beloved viewers."

In our view, something seems to be weirdly wrong inside that cultural realm. It's very hard for us blues to see the faults of our own culture, but that will be the very large set of flaws we'll flawlessly explain.

The silliest child endorsed the Stars and Bars, then moved ahead to the ice cream.  As we look ahead to November, has the stumblebum culture of our own blue tribe actually served us well?

Reports concerning homicide rate: For reports concerning the apparent drop in the homicide rate, you can click one of these links:

From Axios: 

Homicides in U.S. set to drop by record numbers this year

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Did US homicide rate rise or fall in 2023? The answer might surprise you.

Many similar reports exist, except inside the very loud world of Fox News star Judge Jeanine.