NEW NORMALS: Candidate Harris is "trash," he said!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Did Yeats get it right? No one can say that this incomparable site isn't shaping the national discourse.

This very morning, Morning Joe began with a reading from The Making of the President 1960, the iconic book by Theodore White. We're forced to tell you this:

Inevitably, the reading came from the very first page of the famous book—from White's account of the voting that year in Hart's Location, the Dixville Notch of that day.

The leading authority tells us this about that northern hamlet:

Hart's Location, New Hampshire

Hart's Location is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. Since 1948, the town has frequently been one of the first places to declare its results for the New Hampshire presidential primary and U.S. presidential elections.

The population was 68 in the 2020 census. It was incorporated in 1795.

[...]

New Hampshire law allows towns with fewer than 100 residents to open the polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots...The tradition of first-in-the-nation voting in Hart's Location dates back to 1948.

That's how it's done in the Granite State. You may recall the famous old saying: 

As goes the state of New Hampshire, so goes no one else!

Fuller disclosure! According to that same authority, the population of Hart's Location was actually 7 (seven!) back in 1960. 

This seems to mean that someone is confused or misinformed in some way. We say that because White's famous book begins with this passage, as read over patriotic music on today's Morning Joe:

The Making of the President, 1960

It was invisible, as always. 

They had begun to vote in the villages of New Hampshire at midnight, as they always do, seven and a half hours before the candidate rose. His men had canvassed Hart’s Location in New Hampshire days before, sending his autographed picture to each of the twelve registered voters in the village. They knew that they had five votes certain there, that Nixon had five votes certain—and that two were still undecided. Yet it was worth the effort, for Hart’s Location’s results would be the first flash of news on the wires to greet millions of voters as they opened their morning papers over coffee. But from there on it was unpredictable—invisible.

That's the way the book begins. The population of the village was seven—but according to White, Kennedy's men had managed to locate twelve voters there! 

(In the end, how did Hart's Location vote? White's book hurries on, doesn't say.)

We ourselves had planned to quote from White's famous book today. We had planned to focus on the ways we now live in a vastly changed nation—in a nation which is much larger, to cite one basic example.

Candidate Kennedy won Texas that year, but he did so quite narrowly. Meanwhile, Texas was a different critter at that point in time.

Below, you see population figures for three Sunbelt states, but also for the United States as a whole: 

Total population, then and now:

Texas 1960: 9,579,677
Texas 2023 (est): 30,503,301

Florida 1960: 4,951,560
Florida 2023 (est.): 22,610,726

California 1960: 15,717,204
California 2023 (est): 38,940,231

United States 1960: 179,323,175

United States 2024 (est): 335,893,238

There were many fewer Americans then. Except during spring training, the modern-day state of Florida was virtually uninhabited!

This year, Nevada is an important swing state. It was basically empty back then:

Nevada 1960: 285,278
Nevada 2023 (est): 3,194,176

We were a much smaller nation. We were also much less "diverse," and given the way our brains are wired—given the way we humans are built—running a diverse democracy tends to be a challenging task. 

(Something else is true, and it's quite important in the current circumstance. Given the limits of human discernment, there is no well-intentioned impulse which can't be unwisely pursued. We'll expound on this fact in the days ahead—and that fact is even true over here in our own Blue America.)

Time moved slower in 1960, Harper Lee once almost said. Also, with a potent, shoe-banging external enemy inspiring everyone to cohere, it was somewhat easier to run a "democracy" then.

It was also easier because we didn't have national talk radio. Also because we didn't have "cable news." 

We didn't have any 24-hour imitations of news. We didn't have the Internet, and we didn't have social media. 

Huey Long had said that every man (sic) should be a royal. Thanks to the democratization of media, the watchword today is this:

Every nutcase a king! Also, every flyweight comedian!

Every nutcase, but also every "beast?" We'll offer examples below.

Candidate Kennedy squeaked out a win in 1960. Candidate Nixon narrowly lost. 

Last night, Dixville Notch split its vote—three votes for Candidate Harris, three votes for Candidate Trump. Meanwhile, is a beast slouching toward Bethlenem? We refer to the gloomy Yeats.

In the wake of the First World War, Yeats was perhaps a bit gloomy. His famous poem, The Second Coming, was written in 1919. The leading authority on the poem offers this overview:

The Second Coming (poem)

“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920...The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to describe allegorically the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry...

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, and before the British government had decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.

To understand Yeats′s cosmology it is essential to read his book A Vision, where he explained his views on history and how it informed his poetry. Yeats saw human history as a series of epochs, what he called "gyres." He saw the age of classical antiquity as beginning with the Trojan War and then that thousand year cycle was overtaken by the Christian era, which is coming to a close. And that is the basis of the final line of the poem: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

According to Yeats, a beast was slouching toward Bethlehem. Today, more than a century later, we can't quite say he was wrong.

Are beasts advancing on our own culture, such as it is? In this, our vastly changed semi-nation, we will start with this:

Yesterday, during a rally in Atlanta, a candidate who was severely mistreated as a child and as a youth gave voice to his pain in this way:

VANCE (11/4/2024): The citizens of this country are not garbage for wanting to afford groceries and a nice place to live. But in two days, we're going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C. And the trash's name is Kamala Harris.

AUDIENCE: [Cheers, applause]

VANCE: All right. So let me leave you with one final thought...

"In a clearing stands a boxer?" Fuller lyrics below.

For now, to see the candidate call his opponent "trash," click here for the C-Span videotape. Then, move ahead to minute 55.

For better or worse, none of the candidates called anyone "trash" during the 1960 campaign. Regarding Vance, we've made this suggestion before:

A child who is mistreated in the remarkable ways he describes in his own famous book may show the effects of such abuse at later points in his life. This seems to be another way we humans are built. It isn't the fault of the child.

Candidate Vance was calling her trash. During the now-famous Garden Party, she was portrayed as a prostitute. Also, the persistently thoughtful Hulk Hogan seemed to portray her engaging in oral sex.

In Blue America, our tribunes quickly disappeared this array of gender-based insults. This instant abandonment of the woman also seems to be part of the way we human beings are wired.

As of yesterday, Candidate Vance was calling her trash! Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is now offering this account of our problems with stormy weather:

Tucker Carlson Says Abortions Cause Hurricanes in Election Eve Broadcast

Tucker Carlson, a top surrogate for former President Donald J. Trump who spoke at the Republican National Convention this summer and made racist claims at a Trump rally last week at Madison Square Garden, said on Monday that the increased occurrence of hurricanes in the United States was a consequence of abortion—which he characterized as “human sacrifice.”

Appearing on a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a right-wing political strategist and Trump ally who was just released from prison, Mr. Carlson repeatedly portrayed abortion—a medical procedure—as a kind of religious human sacrifice. He dismissed scientific research that links global warming to the increased potency and frequency of hurricanes, saying instead that “it’s probably abortion, actually.”

“I’m sure I’ll be attacked for saying this, but I really believe it,” Mr. Carlson said, adding, “You can’t participate in human sacrifice without consequences.”

Throughout his 25-minute appearance on Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Mr. Carlson described himself as a secular person but spoke of politics in starkly religious terms.

Mr. Carlson also described nuclear weapons as “demonic,” adding that they were created by “not-human forces,” and asserted that the U.S. military had “consistently” targeted and killed Christian populations since the end of World War II.

The account of this fellow's "bizarre remarks" in the past few years continues on from there. 

For better or worse, the Times still hasn't reported Carlson's recent bombshell disclosure—his revelation that he was attacked and bloodied by demons in the middle of the night while his wife and his four dogs continued to sleep, without awakening, right there in the same bed.

Trump and Vance and Carlson oh my? Let's throw in Elon Musk, who has become a major player in the ongoing "democratization of media"—in the process designed to make every fruitcake a king.

Stating the obvious, there's no perfect way to run a "national discourse." The discourse wasn't perfect in 1960. Grudgingly, White seems to acknowledge this fact at one point in his book.

Today, the discourse is an unmistakable joke. (Frequently, it's a "dirty" joke.) Part of the joke involves the way the finer elements in the news business have agreed to avert their gaze from the encroachment of the possible beasts.

Trump and Vance and Carlson oh my! Are beasts slouching toward our own Bethlehem as we go to the polls?

On Morning Joe, Joe was reading a passage about a village during a simpler time. 

White's book describes the start of a political era. Is that major political era slouching toward a very dangerous end?

This afternoon: Unreported far and wide! Gutfeld and Watters edition

Fuller lyrics: Fuller lyrics, from Paul Simon (1968):

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the remainders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains...

 Simon's song is deeply humane. We've suggested that you pity the child but strip the adult of power.