Commenter makes sagacious remark!

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2024

TV giant doesn't: A commenter to Kevin Drum's most recent post makes a sagacious remark. Just for the record, Drum's headline says this:

Kamala Harris will poll as well as Biden by next week

For ourselves, we hope she'll be polling better than President Biden by next week and will continue upward from there. Given Trump's "unelectable" status, we can't say that such things are impossible.

That said, back to the sagacious remark:

The sagacious observation in question comes in the midst of a longer discussion. For current purposes, the larger context doesn't matter. The highlighted observation does:

COMMENTER (7/22/24): And we suffer their argument precisely because Democrats failed to make the case that Trump has long been lacking in cognitive capability, is a ranting, raving, usually incoherent person demonstrating his lunacy during all hours, but keeping amazingly ludicrous tweets going through the night into early-morning hours. He could not have managed the presidential duties these past four years.

It's true! Democrats have failed to make that case about the apparent cognitive state of former president Trump. So have Blue America's thought leaders, including those we see every day on Blue America's cable news channel.

Kids say the darnedest things, Art Linkletter famously said. For years, former president Trump has said—and has frequently seemed to believe—the stone-cold craziest things. He has said, and has possibly seemed to believe, such crazy things down through the years.

That was especially true in the aftermath of the November 2020 election, when he surrounded himself with the craziest people found on the planet, with many associates—including many former associates who had turned against him—insisting that, at best they could tell, he actually believed his various ludicrous claims.

Why have a variety of entities—upper-end mainstream press corps included—"failed to [examine the possibility] that Trump has long been lacking in cognitive capability?" 

You're asking an excellent question! To some extent, the answer may involve this:

Blue America has reveled in the decision to brand Trump a LIAR. When the upper-end press corps walked away from its previous (well-founded) restrictions of the use of such terms, they were praised for the courage of their (ill-advised) decision.

Here was one (and only one) of the problems with that decision:

If Trump is just telling a bunch of LIES, there's nothing wrong with his cognition. By definition, a LIAR knows what he's doing when he tells a LIE. 

He's saying something he knows is untrue in the belief that he can fool the people he's targeting. There's nothing wrong with a liar's cognition. There's something bad wrong with his ethics.

For many liberals, it has felt amazingly good to refer to Donald Trump's LIES. In our view, the decision to start trafficking in such claims was a very poor decision on the part of the upper-end press.

There are several reasons for that judgment, but the commenter's sagacious observation starts to hit upon one. Once you've decided to show your courage by branding crazy statements as LIES, you've much wiped away the possibility that the author of the crazy statements has gone crazy nuts in the head.

In our view, Trump's cognition has always been in question. Long ago, journalists should have interviewed (carefully selected) medical specialists with regard to the crazy claims Trump and his nuttier colleagues have persistently made.

In our view, also this:

Just from a political standpoint, it's much more effective to say that someone is making "absurd misstatements" that it is to say that he's LYING. That's especially true when the people making the accusation are quite routinely making inaccurate statements themselves.

Is something wrong with Donald J. Trump's cognition? If we remember correctly, some of the medical specialists in Dr. Bandy X. Lee's best-selling book questioned Trump's cognitive status as well as his apparent psychiatric disorders. 

That said, sad! Our journalists have insisted, to this very day, that subjects like these cannot be discussed. They decided to brandish their L-bombs instead.

In our view, that decision was unwise on the journalistic merits. Also, we'd say that it has been unhelpful on a political basis.

The commenter made a sagacious remark. Yesterday, in the New York Times, Aaron Sorkin didn't.

We'd say his suggestion was silly and sad. So was the fact that the New York Times decided to publish the column he offered. More, perhaps, on the morrow.