TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2024
We Blues can be clueless too: If only apocryphally, the emperor Caligula made his favorite horse a Roman consul—possibly, even a priest.
On the rare occasion, we moderns tend to be wacky too. In what some see as a modern equivalent, Donald J. Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz to come out of retirement and serve as attorney general.
Gaetz retired at age 42—did so just last week! Some have said Gaetz is a crazy choice. In fairness to Trump, let's be fair:
In a point of departure from Caligula's horse, it isn't like Gaetz is unqualified for the high office in question. Starting at the age of 24, he enjoyed a two-year legal career—and before that, he attended law school!
Also, he has said he'd be willing to come out of retirement to serve as attorney general.
In our view, Gaetz doesn't quite qualify as the equal of Caligula's horse. Also, Donald Trump isn't Caligula yet—but there's no way to know where his current path is going to take the country and the world
In our view, Trump is a vastly disordered person. In our view, he has nominated a playroom full of broken toys to serve him during his new term. We've long recommended pity for the child, but we've also recommended stripping power from the disordered man.
That said, this:
Many other people disagree with our overall view. The votes are still being counted, but at least 76 million of our fellow citizens voted for Trump this year!
In our view, the incoming president has assembled a playroom full of broken toys to serve him during his tenure. Gaetz has been joined by such improbable figures as Kennedy, Gabbard and Hegseth, with Musk, Vance and Carlson also part of the mix.
These are highly unusual figures—but then, those of us in Blue America can be less than fully insightful on the rare occasion too. Consider the attempt at discussion which broke out yesterday on the ABC program, The View.
As a framework, we return to the ancient parable about the blind men and the elephant. As we noted last week, the parable teaches us this:
Blind men and an elephant
The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the animal based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows.
The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
Do we humans have a tendency to reason that way? It seems to us that we actually do—and that even seems to be true over here, in Blue America, where the adults are all above average!
Yesterday, it broke that way among the (anti-Trump) panelists on The View. Thanks to Mediaite, you can watch the videotape of their attempt at discussion simply by clicking this.
It started with (the anti-Trump) Whoopi Goldberg citing (the anti-Trump) Bill Maher. This was the start of an exchange in which a set of anti-Trumpers groped different parts of the 76 million people (or more) who voted for Candidate Trump.
At the start of the attempt at discussion, Goldberg played a heavily edited tape of something Maher had said on last Friday's Real Time. For better or worse, this is the way we the anti-Trumpers of The View kicked off their attempt at discussion:
GOLDBERG (11/18/24): Welcome back. The Wall Street Journal claims that the shift to the right in this election reveals that Americans view themselves as belonging to a particular economic class more than their race and gender. And Bill Maher said it's not the only thing Democrats got wrong. Take a look:
MAHER (videotape): Someone must tell the usual suspects on the far left that the saying is, "When you’re in a hole, stop digging." ... You just lost a crazy contest to an actual crazy person. ... What a shocker that the people who see everything through the lens of race and sex see their election loss as the result of racism and sexism. Yes, if only we weren't so irredeemably unenlightened, we would have elected a black president by now. Oh what—we [already] did? ... Asked if racism is built into our society, white progressives agreed with that—at higher levels than black and Hispanic people! ... They don't want your pity. And black people can't afford to indulger rich white peoples' need to endlessly flagellate themselves. They just want prices to go down and good jobs and the police when you call them.
GOLDBERG: If he's right, then why didn't people vote for the former prosecutor who actually had policy plans to help the working class? I mean—
[APPLAUSE]
Sad! But that's the way the attempt at discussion began, with the audience applauding an insinuation which didn't make any obvious sense.
As you can see if you watch the videotape, the attempt at discussion went downhill from there. In the course of the attempt at discission, two (anti-Trump) panelists, Sunny Hostin and Alyssah Farah Griffin, took turns feeling different parts of the contemporary elephant known as "the Trump voters."
Alas! As the attempt at discussion unfolded, Hostin seemed to be saying that the elephant in question was racist and sexist, full stop. In turn, Griffin seemed to be saying that the elephant in question only wanted "a good life and ability to pay for their family.”
That seemed to be what Maher had said about the elephant in question, or at least about the part of the elephant known as "black people." In fairness, Maher's lengthy monologue had been so heavily edited that we won't attempt to characterize it here.
Regarding the attempt at discussion which occurred on The View, we'll start by answering Goldberg's question. Our answer would start like this:
QUESTION: Why didn't people vote for the former prosecutor who actually had policy plans to help the working class?
INITIAL ANSWER: At least 74 million people did!
Moving on to Hostin and Griffin, we'd sadly offer this:
The elephant in question here—the elephant known as "Trump voters"—is actually more than 76 million different people.
Those people aren't all the same person. If you asked them why they voted for Trump, they wouldn't all say the same thing.
Almost surely, those people voted for Trump for an array of different reasons. Almost surely, their understandings, attitudes, frameworks and outlooks simply aren't all the same.
Trump voters aren't all just the same person! On its face, it's the simplest, most obvious point in the world:
Candidate Trump's 76 million voters aren't all exactly alike!
But this blindingly obvious fact is strongly inclined to disappear when we, the admittedly brilliant denizens of Blue America, start attempting to discuss this very basic question. All in all, we humans just aren't "the rational animal," not even over here.
With that, we return to Goldberg's question. Stripped down in the following way, it's a very important question:
Why didn't (more) people vote for Candidate Harris?
Why didn't (more) people vote for Harris? Last week, we started making a list of possible reasons.
Given decades of conduct here within our own Blue America, the list of such possible reasons goes on and on and on. But sad:
Given the way our brains are wired, we Blues are often completely unable to comprehend that fact. The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but we Blues simply aren't the kinds of creatures we keep insisting we are.
Why didn't more people vote for Harris? Why did so many people vote for Candidate Trump?
The list of possible reasons goes on and on. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we'll start to add to last week's list.
In our view, Donald J. Trump has come remarkably close to nominating Caligula's horse! That said:
We denizens of Blue America aren't always amazingly sharp ourselves!
Tomorrow: Why did people vote for Trump? Unfortunately, the list of possible reasons goes on and on and on.
No one claimed they were all the same person. They all had no qualms about voting for a grifter that incited a riot and watched as over 140 police were brutalized by his followers, and who logged in over 30,000 lies during his presidency. They had that in common. But there are many varieties of them, no doubt.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, you have to take the actions and words of Trump voters, and their response to the actions of Republican politicians into account.
ReplyDeleteSaying they are motivated by factors other than bigotry, will need to be backed-up by something other than "obviously".
We are indeed motivated by bigotry. Yours.
DeleteSomerby seems to have a poor understanding of the way humans behave and reason, a condition likely rising from Somerby preferring to glean his insights about humans from storytelling instead of science.
ReplyDeleteSomerby also seems unaware that turnout was low this election, particularly for Dems.
Indeed, we have a decent case study, where we can control for certain variables; the same candidate ran against three centrist/establishment Dems that are, self admittedly even, barely distinguishable, yet there are three notable differences: Biden won with universal mail in ballots (something Trump says will guarantee a Republican never winning again), Harris and Clinton identify as women - Harris as a woman of color, and Republican dirty tricks are getting more sophisticated and effective.
Yes, Somerby does grope around in the dark, then does seem to want to externalize his shortcomings onto everyone else; so surely we can pity Somerby, that poor lost soul.
Observe how the Washington Post applies the Vaseline so carefully.
ReplyDeleteAlthough changes to government spending typically require an act of Congress,
Translation: The Constitution fucking spells out in black and white that the Congress has the power of the purse.
Trump aides are exploring plans to challenge a 1974 budget law in a way that would give the White House the power to unilaterally adopt the Musk commission’s proposals, one of the people said.
Translation: Trump is a fucking fascist and is deleting the Constiution.
It is unclear if Trump will ask Congress to approve changes to the budget law or first appeal to the courts to do so, though aides have previously endorsed either approach. Ramaswamy, a former pharmaceutical executive who has said he would “stop funding agencies that waste money” and don’t operate on meritocratic principles, has publicly called on Congress to repeal the law and has suggested workarounds if it is not repealed.
Aint that some shit.
Yes, that is some shit ... according to two people with knowledge of the matter. ;)
Delete12:05,
DeleteSeriously. Unless Republicans are getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, we already have a solution to this "problem".
It'll never get done. Americans will line-up Trump and his Cabinet against a wall across from a firing squad, long before they allow a rapist to overthrow the Constitution.
DeleteI don't understand what you are afraid of.
DeleteThen you’re part of the problem, 12:48.
DeleteWhat exactly are you afraid of?
DeleteLet me guess: you can't give a straight answer to that question.
DeleteA President ruling without congressional checks and balances, discarding the constitution to force his will. That alone should be cause for concern for anyone who believes in the separation of powers and the rule of law. The fact that I needed to spell this out for you is a problem …. for you, 1:01.
DeleteThere are several reasons the Post article doesn't justify a fear that Trump will rule without congressional checks and balances or discard the Constitution to force his will.
DeleteYour fears are kind of cute in a way, but totally unwarranted.
"In our view, the incoming president has assembled a playroom full of broken toys to serve him during his tenure."
ReplyDeleteThis is not how a person talks about human beings. People are not toys, broken or otherwise. Our government is not a game, to Trump or to anyone else. It is not "playing" when Trump reduced Medicaid or deports an immigrant or shuts down the Dept of Education (which is the source of special ed funding for example and enforces Title IX and civil rights entitlements).
Somerby's language reveals his attitude.
Also, all of the funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act flows through the department of education.
Delete"but we Blues simply aren't the kinds of creatures we keep insisting we are. "
ReplyDeleteOf course we are. If we weren't, we would be Reds instead of Blues and we would have voted for Trump. That we did not, makes us very different from The Others who put a monster into office. Now we will all suffer for what they did.
Why does Somerby call Blue voters "creatures"?
DeleteCreature definition: "an animal, as distinct from a human being"
If i was ever hired to be TDH's editor, I'd edit out all references to the "woods [being dark] and deep; the Iliad; Eyes wide shut and Wittgenstein, among other references. Trump appointing Gaetz being compared to Caligula appointing his horse is kind of clever though (IMO).
ReplyDelete