EARNED OUR WAY OUT: A playroom full of broken toys!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2024

How did we lose to this guy? In our view, the most interesting piece of journalism today is an editorial in the New York Post.

The Murdoch empire is divided today. Is the candidate who won the election filling his playroom with toys? Writing from the heart of th Murdoch empire, the editors start by saying this:

Putting RFK Jr. in charge of health breaks the first rule of medicine

The overriding rule of medicine is: First, do no harm.

We’re certain installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services breaks this rule.

Under the circumstances, the editors are taking a highly surprising position. A bit later, the editors pull no punches:

We sat down with RFK Jr. back in May 2023, when he was still challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination.

As we noted then, he’s an independent thinker who sees through a lot of bull, an incisive critic of some of Biden’s worst policies, who saw that “the Democratic Party lost its way most acutely in reaction to” Donald Trump’s first election.

But the insights we were impressed with had nothing to do with health.

When it came to that topic his views were a head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories, and not just on vaccines.

[...]

In fact, we came out thinking he’s nuts on a lot of fronts.

When they met with Kennedy Jr., the editors—these editors from the Mursdoch empire—"came out thinking he's nuts." The editors even took a shot at Kennedy's appeal to a "gullible conspiracy-hungry crowd."

Is this nominee "nuts?" Depending on what is meant by such a claim, we can't swear that he isn't—and in one province of Red America, the editors have now basically said that he is. 

That's what the editors have said. But over in a separate province, the pitiful children on Fox & Friends were offering the usual prattle this very morning. 

Reading off their sheets and their full-screen graphic, two of the friends offered this. It was now 6:10 a.m., and the Fox friends were reciting

AINSLEY (11/15/24): Look at his resume. Very impressive.

[...]

LAWRENCE: So this guy really has an agenda and he's been endorsed by the president-elect. He says he wants to combat the chronic disease epidemic, eliminate toxins from food, water and air. Supports sustainable—I'm sorry, farming and reducing chemical usage. Preserve and restore natural ecosystems. and ensure regulatory agencies act—

AINSLEY: Who's not for that?

Who's not for that, the one friend said. None of the friends mentioned any of the points of concern which have members of their own Red American empire declaring the nominee "nuts."

On Fox & Friends, the children were at play. You can watch their fuller pseudo-discussion simply by clicking here.

This is part of the childish, embarrassing mess we describe as our "national discourse." This part of that embarrassing mess operates under the sway of the organizational structure called "segregation by viewpoint," in which every participant in a pseudo-discussion will automatically agree, on every point, with everyone else on the set. 

On Fox & Friends, the children all agree with each other. They're paid to recite the company line every step of the way.

Elsewhere, the editors have gone rogue. But that's a very rare occurrence within our childish national discourse as our floundering, flailing nation continues to slide towards the sea.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the candidate who won in a rout continues to say their names. By now, the list of major nominees includes such names as these:

Major nominees:
Pete Hegseth
Matt Gaetz
Tulsi Gabbard
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Tucker Carlson is a close ally; JD Vance will serve in the role of vice president. This morning, as the editors at the Post rose to complain, the Stepfords on the Fox News Channel continued to read from their sheets.

The American people are pretty sharp? On balance, no—we basically aren't, though that doesn't make us bad people.

On balance, though, we simply aren't enormously sharp! And that's true over here in Blue America, not just among the Reds.

For ourselves, we're going to pull back to regroup, before we continue to explore a basic question next week. We'll restate that question below, but first, we'll post this material once again, as we did yesterday morning:

MARY TRUMP (pages 12-13): None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather's sociopathy and my grandmother's illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as "malignant narcissism" and "narcissistic personality disorder" in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

[Clinical] experiences showed me time and again that diagnosis doesn't exist in a vacuum. Does Donald have other symptoms we aren't aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for. 

Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist. She offered those assessments early in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Not Enough.

This Trump's a clinical psychologist. That doesn't necessarily mean that her assessments are accurate, correct or right.

Also this:

What exactly does it mean to say that someone's a "sociopath?" Does it mean anything at all?

We will guess that it probably does. But we'll suggest, once again, that you understand this basic fact about our faltering nation and our imitation of discourse:

Our public discourse is too immature to permit an exploration of any such claim. Indeed, our discourse is highly immature, in various ways, pretty much all the way down.

At this site, it almost seems to us that a disordered man is currently filling his playroom with an array of broken toys. Over at the New York Post, the editors spoke with one of those toys and came out thinking he's "nuts."

That said, our public discourse is too immature to allow for any such discussion. For today, we'll restate one more observation, and then we'll restate the question to which we'll return next week:

With Gabbard now added to the mix, a certain observation still obtains: 

Many of the incoming president's nominees and allies seem to have had highly unusual childhood experiences. 

In the case of Vance, the sane person in his vastly disordered family was the grandmother who once doused her sleeping husband with lighter fluid and then set him on fire. 

She was the stable family member. We've suggested that you should pity the child. 

At any rate, a certain pattern seems to be forming. It may build out from Mary Trump's assessments, but that's a matter of judgment.

We can't help seeing a certain pattern. The question to which we'll return next week is this:

How in the world did we lose to this guy? Is there something we in Blue America did, over the course of the past sixty years, which has played some significant role in bringing his gladness to pass?

How did we ever lose to this guy, even if by just a couple of points? It strikes us as an obvious question. We'll return to that question next week.