VOTERS: Mosura should get it good and hard!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2024

Skidmarks in methland dismissed: Why did Lori Mosura, age 55, decide to vote for Candidate Trump after all these years?

We can't exactly tell you. In a recent report for the Washington Post, Tim Craig offered this limited explanation:

After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits

Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.

The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.

It was all that penny-pinching that drove the part-time tax consultant to abandon the Democratic Party this fall and vote for Donald Trump.

According to Craig's account, it was "all that penny-pinching" which turned Mosura into a Trump voter—and into a registered Republican at the age of 55. Given the apparent state of the final vote count, Mosura joined 77.3 million others in deciding to vote as she did. 

We voted the other way ourselves. It never crossed our minds to vote for Candidate Trump.

That said, we can think of a million reasons why a decent person might have decided to vote for Trump—or might have decided to vote against Candidate Biden, and/or against Candidate Harris, his successor when he finally left the race of late July. 

In our view, the Democratic Party did in fact stage a clown show over the course of the past several years. We'll always be the first to admit that no one else will ever be as smart, or as morally decent, as we Democratic voters are. But we can think of a million reasons why a person like Mosura might have decided to bail on the Dems this year.

Many people in Blue America can't seem to think of a single reason why a voter might have done that. This moral and intellectual blindness strikes us as one of the major facts about our failing civilization to emerge from the carnage this year.

More than 77 million people chose to vote for Candidate Trump. Lori Mosura, age 55, was one of the 77. 

When Craig reported that Mosura had voted that way, other voters attacked. These attacks were launched in a series of strikes from deep inside our own Blue America. 

They tell a story about us the humans. But they also tell a certain long-standing story about our own Blue America, such as it actually is.

In his report for the Post, Craig made only a glancing attempt to explain Mosura's vote for Trump. In his report, he mainly focused on statements by four lower-income voters, Mosura included, who said they don't believe that the reinstated President Trump will act against the interests of lower-income people like them.

We can't tell you how that will turn out. But when we read about Mosura's situation, this one thought came to mind.

Life for her ain't been no crystal stair.

Life for her [and for her 17-year-old son] ain't been no crystal stair! Elsewhere, other voters in Blue America seemed to have different reactions. 

Kevin Drum had offered a perfectly sensible post about Tim Craig's report. "The delusion here is painful," he said—and that assessment may well turn out to be accurate.

Then the hounds from Hell got busy, offering comments from Blue America's zone in the netherworld. Life for her ain't been no crystal stair? This was the first commenter's reaction to Mosura's plight:

FIRST COMMENTER: Let 'em suffer and die. I'm long out of give-a-damn for these yokels.

[...]

At some point one has to concede that the sub-room temperature (in Celsius) IQ contingent needs to be culled from the herd.

Mosura needs to be culled from the herd. So the very first commenter said. His comment provoked this response:

FIRST RESPONDER: I'm not for anyone dying, but it does seem these people need to experience some the "pain and sacrifice" that co-president Musk says is coming. 

[...]

I expect to be hurt, but as a retired upper middle class white male in a solidly blue state I expect I will do a lot better than the sad deplorables in New Castle.

There we went again! To this initial responder, Mosura is a sad deplorable. 

So it was said by two (2) of us here in our own Blue America. Along the way, Commenter One added this:

FIRST COMMENTER: I'm fully in touch with my inner Scrooge 1.0. Let 'em die and decrease the surplus population. Any pain and/or sacrifice will be blamed on the Democrats and these skidmarks will believe it.

So we the finer people now said. Mosura was now seen as a skidmark who needs to be culled from the herd.

Why might people have voted for Candidate Trump? We can think of a million reasons, these two commenters possibly numbered among them.

That said, these first two Harris voters were hardly alone. From the heart of darkness in our own Blue America, this brand of comment continued:

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER ONE: The fault is primarily on stupid and supremely ignorant voters like the ones described here. With a big assist to the prestige media who have been unrelenting negative in their coverage of Democrats for decades.

[...]

The most appropriate comment I could make is to quote my favorite line from the great character actor Strother Martin: "Morons. I've got morons on my team."

Truthfully, that came from the milder stream of Blue American comments. Other moral and intellectual giants offered such astonishing comments as this  

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER TWO: The lack of self-awareness here is infuriating. Hope they get exactly what they voted for, good and hard.

[...]

Some children will not listen to wise advice from others and need to actually touch the hot stove to learn that it burns. Some adults apparently never left childhood. Democrats need to let them get burned, and maybe some of them will learn a lesson.

That commenter hopes that Mosura, and her son, "get it good and hard." Messaging from the heart of darkness, other Blues agreed:

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER THREE: I see some serious FAFO [delivery of what they deserve] coming for those who voted for Trump. Of course you need a functioning brain to notice, so they won't ever know or understand the truth. But they are going to be hurt—bad.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER FOUR: Republican voters have been fucking around for 40+ years, and the only thing that is going to change their minds is letting them find the fuck out. I am 100% OK with this.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER FIVE: The person in my life who is my moral arbiter (an ISFP) would hate to hear me say this, but do you really want these guys on your team? Even the Bible says that not everyone can be saved.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER SIX: Highly educated elitists, like the rest of us, sneer at the "word salads" tossed out by folks like the Felon and Sara Palin, as lacking in "coherency" and "logical consistency." Their flocks don't care about those things! They just pick out the tasty nuggets that they like best and swallow them whole.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER SEVEN: They really are not worthy of my compassion, concern or charity. If the social safety net and benefits fail to garner political support of the beneficiaries, then perhaps it is time to let Republicans cut them.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER EIGHT: How can you persuade people who say things like [this]?..."Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. 'I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.'” You can't. Delusions like this are impossible to argue with. Their idea of who Trump is is nothing like what he really is. I'd like to think they'll realize this sooner or later, but delusions this strong aren't easily broken.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER NINE: There is no help for the ignorant delusional I’m afraid.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER TEN: So many here in favor of letting these idiots get it good and hard. But these idiots will never get it. However hard it gets, it will only justify their resentment of anyone they think isn't getting it as hard as they are, and then they'll vote for whoever gives them confidence in their opinion, especially someone who sounds as informed as they are and whose detailed thought is mostly insult and vulgarity.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER ELEVEN: I have no explanation for the stupidity of these people beyond the monopoly that Fox and AM hate radio have in methland, and the inexplicable identification with Trump as "one of us."

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER TWELVE: They hear "Fuck immigrants and trans people!" and think "I'm gonna help poor white people!" These people are so goddamn fleecable, your head spins.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER THIRTEEN: Some people are just morons completely unreachable by any kind of message, policy, or fact. Each one of these idiots deserves every bit of pain and suffering Trump inflicts on them. The only downside is that because of their stupidity, the pain and suffering will be inflicted on everyone and not just them.

So the Blue comments proceeded. According to Commenter 11, Mosura is living in methland!

Eventually, this exchange occurred. Over here in our own methland, this is frequently all we have:

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER FOURTEEN: This prompts me to ask a question that I asked myself so many times: why did these people really vote for Trump? Nothing Trump says or does supports the beliefs they express, but they want to believe it very badly. What is motivating that reasoning? I just wonder. Probably version of cognitive dissonance, but I still can't figure it out

RESPONDER: Racism. He gives them permission to say out loud what they really think, and he's going to keep the negroes in their place.

Eventually, we Blues tend to end up here, in comment threads and on cable. As she rides her bicycle to the grocery story, Lori Mosura, age 55, is dreaming of the way Donald J. Trump will be keeping the negroes in their place.

Along the way, the occasional flashes of decency surfaced. One commenter offered this

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER: ...So how should I feel when I see people like the ones in the linked article have their lives crushed by Trump’s policies? Schadenfreude? Should I smirk and say, “I told you so?" It is tempting, I admit. But in the end that would make me just another Trumpian asshole, wouldn’t it? So I’ll continue to follow my liberal beliefs and oppose Trump and his MAGAts. And I’ll hope that those who voted for him don’t suffer in the same way I hope others who make what I think are bad choices don’t suffer. And I will support liberal policies that will help the people Trump hurts.

So one commenter said, though he couldn't resist the play on words which seemed to have him referring to Trump's unspecified assortment of "maggots."

That commenter will continue to support "liberal policies." He explicitly hopes that Donald Trump's voters won't suffer.

With respect to those liberal policies, one other commenter offered what was possibly the most intriguing comment of all:

ADDITIONAL COMMENTER: Forget the triumphalism. As they say, some people never learn. Don't call for suffering. It just debases the intelligence that much further. Rather, call for the MSM to translate something as wonderful as Bidenomics into the terms it has earned of accomplishment and hope.

[...] 

It's not just that some people's understanding has failed. It's that disinformation has succeeded.

It's certainly true that disinformation (and misinformation) have succeeded. But disinformation (and misperception) may adapt a wide array of forms.

"Some people's understanding has failed!" So the commenter said.  

Also, this commenter wants the mainstream press (remember them?) to deal more successfully with "something as wonderful as Bidenomics." As she rides her bike to the grocery store, that's what Mosura should be thinking. 

In our view, our own Blue American world is currently full of delusions. But our own Blue America is also prone to tribal hatred and to otherization.

Are we humans wired for this kind of work? On Thursday, we'll suggest the possible problem with that assessment concerning the wonders of Bidenomics.

At any rate, Craig had interviewed four lower-income voters in one lower-income town. When he did, quite a few voters in Blue America decided it was time to attack.

Lori Mosura's a skidmark, they said. She needs to be culled from the herd!

On Thursday: Delusion can be where you find it

MONDAY: Carter edged Ford by a mere two points!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2024

Donald Trump won in a landslide: Jimmy Carter was elected president in November 1976. 

In terms of Red/Blue party politics, the United States was a different nation then. 

Candidate Carter swept "the solid South," winning every state from North Carolina on over to (and including) Texas. Meanwhile, as with Candidate Nixon in 1960, so too here:

Gerald Ford swept the west coast, winning Washington, Oregon and California. He won Illinois—and he won Vermont! Nationwide, the popular vote ended up looking like this:

Nationwide popular vote, 1976
Jimmy Carter (D): 40,831,881 (50.1%)
Gerald Ford (R): 39,148,634 (48.0%)

He won by a little bit more than two points. Last night, on the Fox News Channel, Bret Baier described this matter correctly, as you can see by clicking here:

BAIER (12/29/24): When he announced plans to run for president in 1974, Carter was largely an unknown. But he managed to win his party's nomination and edge out incumbent President Gerald Ford by just two percent of the popular vote, one of the closest margins in recent history.

He started as a complete unknown. He ended up defeating President Ford, the incumbent. 

We'd say that Baier's account of President Carter's victory margin was accurate. More on that matter below.

As for the current state of affairs, one part of Tyler Pager's report on President Biden's leadership style is being widely cited. Pager covers a lot of ground in his essay for the Washington Post. Here's the part people are citing:

Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy

[...]

Biden’s aides, in praising his tenure, often contend that history will remember him kindly, an assertion that provides little comfort to Democrats now staring at an additional four years of Trump. Some Biden allies point to a recent survey of historians that ranked Biden the 14th-best president in American history while putting Trump last. Yet it is Trump, not Biden, who is preparing for his second inauguration on Jan. 20.

“He accomplished a hell of a lot in a very difficult situation,” Kaufman said in an interview, noting that Biden pushed through several monumental bills at a time when the Senate was split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking tie votes. “Coming in after Trump with a bad economy, he still pulled people together. He did all this on infrastructure, and all the stuff he did with a one-vote majority in the Senate. Joe Biden did it with one vote.”

Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race, despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out. Biden and these aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Aides say the president has been careful not to place blame on Harris or her campaign.

Could President Biden have won this year if he had stayed in the race? According to Pager's report, Biden and some of his aides have been saying they believe that.

Everything is always possible, at least until it's tried. But whatever you may think of President Biden's accomplishments in office, that reported belief strikes us as an apparent delusion.

Because of the obvious decline in his public presentations, we find it extremely hard to believe that President Biden could have won this year. That said, we managed to chuckle when we heard Baier describe President Carter's victory margin in 1976.

In fact, it actually was a narrow win—a win by just over two points. That said, Candidate Trump's recent win over Candidate Harris is constantly being described as "a landslide" on the Fox News Channel from which Baier hails—and Trump vanquished Candidate Harris by less than 1.5 points!

Full disclosure! In our current American Babel, it's propaganda around the clock and pretty much all the way down. 

On Fox, they're even decided to accept the new math. Two points makes for a narrow win. 1.5 points is much bigger.

Less is more, the Stepfords now say. Can this be the discourse we've chosen? 

VOTERS: When the Washington Post quoted four voters...

MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2024

...other voters attacked: Based on Tim Craig's report in the Washington Post, life for Lori Mosura, age 55, "ain't been no crystal stair."

(We're quoting Langston Hughes, Mother to Son. For the full text of the poem, click here.) 

Mosura lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania with her 17-year-old son. Craig describes her situation at the start of his report for the Post, then again a bit later:

Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.

The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.

[...]

“People are struggling now more than ever, in this city especially,” said Mosura, who pays $375 a month for her apartment. She said she’s “prayed more in the past year than ever before” because of her mounting bills.

Mosura says she’s “prayed more in the past year" than she's ever prayed before. Long ago and far away, Woody Guthrie described a similar state of affairs. In one of his greatest songs, a struggling man says this:

Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world any more

Today, Mosura prays like she never did before. So reported Craig in the Post.

Mosura is featured in the Post's report because of the way she voted in this year's election. We ourselves voted the other way—but with the Post's headline now included, here's where Mosura came down:

After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits

Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.

The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.

It was all that penny-pinching that drove the part-time tax consultant to abandon the Democratic Party this fall and vote for Donald Trump.

“He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”

[...]

Some longtime Democrats like Mosura said they initially struggled over whether to vote for Trump. They had believed Democrats were the most likely to help the poor and disagreed with Republicans on issues like abortion. But Mosura said she kept coming back to the conclusion that Trump would put Americans like her first and improve her economic prospects.

Mosura said she has been unable to find full-time work in her field and is planning to change her party affiliation to Republican. But she also gets anxious when she hears GOP politicians talk about reducing government spending.

Will the incoming president "put Americans like her first?" We'll be surprised if that turns out to be right—but in that passage, Mosura explains her decision to vote for Candidate Trump. 

She'd been a Democrat up until now. In this part of his report, Craig further reports the change in her thinking:

Milk or toilet paper

A decade ago, Mosura was a fervent supporter of the Clintons. She recalls meeting former president Bill Clinton in New Castle at a rally during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House.

But the single mother said she began to drift away from Democrats as the party’s promises to help people like herself began to ring hollow. She said she’s been “suffering a lot” because of rising prices. Groceries she once thought of as staples—like soda—are now luxuries.

“People are struggling now more than ever, in this city especially,” said Mosura, who pays $375 a month for her apartment. She said she’s “prayed more in the past year than ever before” because of her mounting bills.

New Castle was a bastion for Democratic votes up until this year. But in larger Lawrence County, the shift toward the GOP has been ongoing. White, working class Americans were increasingly drawn to Republican candidates, in part because of their messaging on security and immigration.

Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump? Many of us in Blue America—many of us in our ongoing state of tribal delusion—can't seem to think of a single possible reason. 

Why did Mosura vote for Trump? According to that passage, she voted for Trump, at least in part, because of rising prices. Apparently based on other interviews, Criag says that other white, working class voters in Mosura's county have been drawn to Republican candidates "because of their messaging on security and immigration."

In his report for the Post, Craig quotes four (4) lower-income New Castle residents who voted for Candidate Trump. Along the way, he describes a more general situation which seems to have emerged in this year's election:

Trump carried the Pennsylvania city of New Castle by about 400 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win here in nearly 70 years. More than 1 in 4 residents live in poverty, and the median income in this former steel and railroad hub ranks as one of the lowest in Pennsylvania.

New Castle’s poorest residents weren’t alone in putting their faith in Trump. Network exit polls suggest he erased the advantage Democrats had with low-income voters across the country.

Fifty percent of voters from families with an income of less than $50,000 a year cast their ballots for Trump, according to the data, compared with 48 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. Four years ago, President Joe Biden carried those voters by 11 percentage points; Hillary Clinton won them by 12 points in 2016 and former president Barack Obama by 22 points in 2012.

According to (imperfect) exit polls, lower-income voters narrowly favored Candidate Trump on a nationwide basis. In his report, Craig quotes three other such voters in New Castle, though he doesn't say if any of this other three were Democrats up until now.

Craig's report is bult around a decision by Lori Mosura, age 55. We're willing to guess that life for her, and for her teenage son, ain't been no crystal stair.

Craig quotes four (4) people who voted for Candidate Trump. Nationwide, there were more than 77 million others. (For a comparable passage from Guthrie's song, see below.)

In an informative report, Craig quoted four (4) lower-income people who voted for Candidate Trump. When he did, a bunch of voters in Blue America decided it was time to attack.

For ourselves, our plan this week will be this:

We're going to use Craig's report about Mosura as a starting point for our continuing search. We'll finally start to offer some of the blindingly obvious answers to this lingering question:

Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump?

Over here in Blue America, many of us seem proud of the fact that we can't even begin to imagine an answer to the question. 

Many of us in Blue America can't begin to figure it out! In our view, this manifest blindness—this tribal delusion—may at times almost seem to say a great deal about voters like Us.

Tomorrow:  Blue voters mock Mosura

Two versions of Guthrie's anthem: Guthrie recorded his song as part of the 1940 album, Dust Bowl Ballads. To hear that performance, click here. 

In 1988, Bruce Springsteen recorded the song as part of a Folkways tribute album. To hear that superb performance, we recommend clicking this. 

These are the closing lyrics to Guthrie's song as Springsteen sang it:

I Ain’t Got No Home

[...]

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been workin', Mister, since the day that I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world any more

Well now I just ramble 'round to see what I can see
It's a wide, wicked world, sure a funny place to be
Gamblin' man is rich and the workin' man is poor
I ain't got no home in this world any more

Well I'm stranded on this road that goes from sea to sea
A hundred thousand others are stranded here with me
A hundred thousand others, yes, a hundred thousand more
I ain't got no home in this world any more.

Sometimes, work can be hard to find. Given the way we humans are wired, empathy can sometimes be harder.

SUNDAY: Concerning that playroom of broken toys!

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2024

What does a broken toy sound like? Has an incoming American president assembled a playroom of broken toys?

If so, what does a broken toy sound like?

Using seasonal language, a broken toy can also be described as a nut-ball or as a fruitcake. By long-standing cultural agreement, we don't discuss the possibility that something may be clinically or diagnostically "wrong" when such fruitcakes appear on the scene and start announcing their possible state of disorder.

What are the sounds of a broken toy? On Friday, one such import announced himself all over again, on this occasion with this tweet about a certain type of immigration visa:

UNNAMED BROKEN TOY (12/27/24): The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.

Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.

So the thoughtful import said. The same toy has posted a strong of similar messages in recent days, denouncing (and cancelling) the "contemptible fools" who disagree with his viewpoint, while excusing the astonishing tweets of one of his employees.

This morning, a trio of Stepfords on Fox & Friends Weekend tried to chuckle their way past this fellow's suggestions that his critics should give themselves a facial. Shortly before the recent holiday, the same fellow had been featured in this news report in the New York Times:

[Broken Toy] Expresses Support for Far-Right Party in Germany’s Election

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, on Friday endorsed Germany’s far-right party, a group with ties to neo-Nazis whose youth wing has been classified as “confirmed extremist” by German domestic intelligence.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Mr. Musk posted to X, referring to the anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany, by its German initials.

In doing so, he is wading into German politics at a moment of acute turmoil, and at the very same time that he has wielded his influence in Washington to help blow up a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. The German government recently collapsed, resulting in early elections, which are planned for next year.

[...]

“Literally is a neo-Nazi party. Not even joking,” Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman from Illinois and longtime critic of Mr. Trump, posted on X.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview with CNN, ”This is not normal.” He added, “What Elon Musk thinks tends to eventually be what the president of the United States thinks. And if the United States takes an official position in favor of neo-Nazis in Germany, I mean, it is absolutely catastrophic.”

Are Kinzinger and Murphy correct in their assessments? We've reported, you can decide! 

("This is not normal," Murphy said. Under prevailing rules of the game, no explicitly clinical suggestions are allowed.)

For the record, only this particular toy could make Steve Bannon seem like a sensible moderate, but that's what Bannon has seemed to be in recent days. Other observers in Red America have said or suggested that the toy needs to get off the ketamine. 

Elsewhere, the conduct and the personal histories of this and other seasonal helpers are being sanded down in high-end mainstream descriptions. One minor example: 

As best we can tell, the New York Times has never reported Tucker Carlson's detailed account of the way he was attacked and bloodied by unseen demons as he slept in a giant pile with his wife and their four dogs, presumably under their buffalo hides. In fairness, the Times did report Carlson's claim that recent hurricanes were probably being caused by the nation's abortion policy.

For better or worse, an incoming Santa has assembled a playroom full of such helpers. By common agreement, vast amounts of material are being massaged as these nominees, appointees and fixers are described within the mainstream discourse.

As for the incoming president himself, the second page of his Christmas message thoughtfully went like this:

UNNAMED INCOMING PRESIDENT (12/25/24): ...Page 2: Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME. They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing. Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky “souls” but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL! We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

For better or worse, our Christmas messages sound like that at this point in time. For the record, that Greatest Election in the History of our Country is routinely described as "a landslide" on the Fox News Channel, with no actual numbers allowed. 

Under current arrangements, all the Stepfords agree to take part in the sifting of elementary facts.

For better or worse, many tribunes are nervously glancing about, trying to sand the edges of this change in this nation's weather. For better or worse, this has been a widespread strategy for a very long time.

Our question would be this:

Within the playroom, is it possible that some of these slightly unusual toys are starting to feel their oats? If you disagree in some way with these seers, should you get a facial too?

STORIES: These Women Today With Their Maiden Names!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2024

Plus, our own tribe's Angry Blue Males: Judging from the historical record, isn't easy being one of These Angry Male Comedians Today.

A few days ago, we noted the fact that we knew Rob Schneider a tiny tad in the summer of 85. We were in San Francisco for the annual Comedy Competition. We had a mutual friend, an excellent young guy we knew from the Boston comedy scene who has recently moved to that Baghdad.

Rob was very young at the time; he'd just turned 22. We don't think we knew it at the time, but we came close to sharing the old school system tie:

According to the leading authority on such origins, he was a Terra Nova High School grad. We were a graduate of Aragon High, right there in the very same San Mateo County.

Rob was a thoroughly OK guy at the time. We will assume he still is.

Last Sunday, Rob opened for incoming President Trump at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFestivus 2024.  According to the leading authority, getting there hasn't been easy.

Sometimes, the powers that be simply aren't willing to hear. As one example, the leading authority on such matters records this incident:

Rob Schneider

Schneider was born in San Francisco, California on October 31, 1963, and grew up in the nearby suburb of Pacifica. His parents were Pilar (née Monroe), a former kindergarten teacher and ex-school board president, and Marvin Schneider, a real estate broker...Schneider graduated from Terra Nova High School in 1982 and then attended San Francisco State University.

[...]

Schneider was spokesperson for State Farm Insurance but was dropped in 2014 due to his anti-vaccination views.

[...]

During the 2023 holiday season, Schneider was hired to perform a standup show at an event put on by the Senate Working Group. The performance was scheduled to last half an hour, but was cut short 10 minutes in due to offensive materials. Attendees were sent letters of apology after the performance.

Rob is entitled to his views in much the same way you are. For a report on the behavior of that Senate Working Group, you can just click this. 

At any rate, attendees were sent letters of apology! The leading authority provides this additional example of the reactions of These Humorless Groups Today:

In June 2024, Schneider performed in Saskatchewan at a fundraising event for the Hospitals of Regina Foundation fundraiser (a Canadian medical not-for-profit organization), where he told jokes about vaccines, women, and transgender people. He was removed from the stage in the middle of his set by event organizers, who later apologized for his behavior.

Removed from the stage again, with yet another apology! Here goes the background on that one. We'll also tell you this:

In 1996, Schneider established the Rob Schneider Music Foundation. The foundation returned music education to Pacifica's elementary schools by paying the teachers' salaries and providing funds for instruments and other equipment. Prior to Schneider's efforts, the school system had been without music education programs for years.

That sounds like a good thing to do. Still and all, the apologies seem to be following Rob around in these latter days. Inevitably, this may have led to his selection as Donald Trump's opening act.

What are Rob's "anti-vaccination views?" With respect to that question, we aren't fully informed. According to the leading authority, the history of his partisan affiliation goes exactly like this:

In 2013, Schneider switched political parties from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, explaining: "The state of California is a mess, and the super majority of Democrats is not working. I've been a lifelong Democrat and I have to switch over because it no longer serves the people of this great state." He endorsed Republican candidate Tim Donnelly for the 2014 California gubernatorial election.

In an interview on Larry King Now in 2017, Schneider said he was an independent but leaned more conservative.

In July 2023, Schneider endorsed candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In August 2024, following Kennedy's suspension of his campaign, Schneider endorsed candidate Donald Trump. Schneider was a headliner at the 2024 Moms for Liberty convention.

That doesn't track our own set of partisan assessments. But he probably isn't the only person who has decided, along the way, that California's Democratic Party may not have everything right. 

In Rob's case, this seems to have led to his recent presentation, where, according to our own lights, he showed imperfect judgment on at least several occasions, as for example when he pictured Candidate Harris getting herself beat up.

These angry male comedians today! Increasingly, the so-called "democratization of media" has created a world in which they've joined with former professional "wrestlers" and the like to drive our flailing American discourse, such as it ever has been.

In our view, this arrangement hasn't been working especially well. When we watched Die Hard the other night, we were struck by the backlash gender politics on display in this 1988 film, which performative males on the Fox News Chanel tend to hail as their favorite "Christmas film."

As we noted yesterday, the high-income wife of the Gotham cop has reverted to using her original name at the start of the film. By the end of the film, she was safely tucked back on his arm, and she'd gone back to using his name! 

(We haven't mentioned Deuce Bigalow once, nor are we planning to do so, though a certain amount of gender discomfort may seem to be lurking there. This may be the oldest wiring in the human playbook.)

At any rate, so it goes as These Angry Males Today may occasionally seem to pursue an angry throwback gender politics. On Fox, it's typically mixed with a supreme sense of confidence in the wisdom of their own assessments, which everyone else in the "panel discussion" is destined to agree with. 

Susan Faludi, come on down! The gender backlash was general over the presentations in Die Hard. According to the leading authority on the film, this fact has been mentioned along the way by various observers. Among many examples, we'll settle for this:

Die Hard

Die Hard has been critically re-evaluated and is now considered one of the greatest action films of all time...Retrospective commentators also identified and analyzed its thematic concerns, including vengeance, masculinity, gender roles, and American anxieties over foreign influences. Due to its Christmas setting, Die Hard is often named one of the best Christmas films of all time, although its status as a Christmas film is disputed.

[...]

To shape the McClanes' relationship, [screenwriter Jeb] Stuart also drew upon the marital problems of his peers, including divorces and ex-wives reverting to use their maiden name. 

Women using their original names, plus officious foreign nations! It's no wonder this frequently silly summer film lingers as a major hit among the self-assured males at Fox!

Then again, we may occasionally stumble across the angry offerings of the angry males over here in our own Blue America. For that, we direct you to the comments section accompanying this recent post by Kevin Drum.

We expect to start with those comments next week as we finally force ourselves to explain why (some) people (may have) voted for Candidate Trump. Though we ourselves voted for Candidate Harris, we think there's something like a million (possible) reasons for some such vote in the naked city. 

We can think of many such (possible) reasons. All too often, those of us in Blue America can't seem to imagine even one!

In his post, Kevin recorded some statements from a new report in the Washington Post—statements made by lower-income Trump voters in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Next week, we'll briefly comment on Kevin's reaction to those remarks by those four (4) people, but we expect to comment in more detail about a significant number of the comments to Kevin's post.

As we've often acknowledged, no one else will ever be as smart, or as morally perfect, as those of us in Blue America! Over here in Blue America, we've long been remarkably sure of that fact, and many remarks by Kevin's commenters help drive that basic fact home.

Why would a decent person ever have decided to vote for Candidate Trump? Dear physician, heal thyself? Dear commenters, look in the mirror?

STORIES: A "Christmas film" tells a political tale!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2024

Why Fox News [HEART] Die Hard: We haven't seen A Complete Unknown, but we can answer a question about the new film.

The question, which is perfectly sensible, appears in this review by Khari Taylor:

[This] brings me to A Complete Unknown’s biggest problem as a dramatic biopic: it's extremely light on conflict and fails to explain the larger stakes for a modern audience, one far removed from Dylan’s youthful era (including my middle-aged self). For instance, why was it so crucial to the American folk movement that Dylan remain a strictly acoustic singer and not “go electric?” What made acoustic folk so sacrosanct that electrically amplified instruments couldn’t be used? Why was it considered so controversial for Dylan to perform as a lead singer in a “rock band” rather than as a solo folk singer?

A Complete Unknown never provides answers to these questions, instead assuming the audience already knows and understands the divide between folk and rock in the 1960s and why it existed. Because of this, I found myself shrugging with indifference during A Complete Unknown’s climax, wondering if what I was watching was truly significant. There’s no question that the 1965 Newport Folk Festival incident was an iconic moment that altered the course of music history, but without being given a full emotional connection to what was at risk—particularly for the folk movement—it felt more like observing a tempest in a teacup.

What explains the era's animus against "going electric?" In part, the answer could perhaps be provided by the contents of the halftime show at yesterday's Ravens-Texans game. 

More specifically, the driving force, at that particular time, is suggested by the lyrics which introduce one of the songs on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the gentleman's amazingly early second album. 

The album appeared in May 1963. Dylan had turned 22 that very week, but he'd already written (and had now recorded) these remarkable songs:

Blowin' in the Wind
Masters of War
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Fifty-three years later, that third song was still astounding when Patti Smith performed it before Swedish royalty at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in 2016. 

The song was still astounding. Way back in 1963, a little-known songwriter said he'd seen such things as these when he was still 21:

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

The new song continued from there. Here's part of the cultural context:

In a spoken introduction to one of that album's throwaway songs, Dylan is heard saying what's shown below. The irony is general over these remarks:

Bob Dylan's Blues

Unlike most of the songs nowadays being written up in Tin Pan Alley
That's where most of the folk songs come from nowadays
This, this is a song, this wasn't written up there
This was written somewhere down in the United States

"That's where most of the folk songs come from nowadays?" The cultural context was this:

Sad! The album appeared in May 1963. By that time, much of the energy of 1950s rock-and-roll had been subsumed by the Frankie Avalon-Fabian school of pop, with teen films like Beach Blanket Bingo destined to follow.

That pop culture was, in fact, being "written up in Tin Pan Alley." We recall how amazingly fresh and new it already sounded when Peter Paul and Mary broke (fairly) big with Lemon Tree in 1962.

That trio had itself been assembled in Tin Pan Alley, but they sounded very different. Soon thereafter, along came Dylan, one of their Greenwich Village contemporaries—not to mention Joan Baez—and the rejection of a certain species of manufactured shlock was instant in certain parts of the land.

The insistence on staying acoustic functioned within that context. Even the Beatles were culturally suspect when they arrived on the scene, insisting that they wanted to hold some unnamed person's hand.

As coincidence would have it, A Complete Unknown is a Christmas film this year. We spent a bit of time, in the past few days, spelunking within the bowels of our flailing nation's current "revolt from below." 

We did so with reference to a certain affectation on the Fox News Channel concerning Christmas movies. The affectation in question operates like this:

What's your favorite Christmas movie, a panel of Stepfords will ask themselves on one of the channel's programs. The ladies will name some standard titles—and at some point, one of the angry males will defiantly name his own favorite Christmas film:

Die Hard!

In part, so goes the current revolt from below, a revolution which is clearly winning at the present time.

In the past few days, we spent a certain amount of time trying to establish the timeline of the widely revered Frank Capra film, It's A Wonderful Life. Our own unanswered question was this:

How many times was the Jimmy Stewart character forced to renounce his lifelong dream of leaving Bedford Falls?

How many times did circumstance make him abandon his dream? We've finally nailed the confusing timeline down. 

(The answer is anywhere from two to four times, depending on how you score a pair of double renunciations—first at the apparent age of 21 or 22, then again four years later. Going to college was abandoned twice. Also abandoned was a trip to Europe, along with a later honeymoon with the person he was lucky enough to marry.)

On the Fox News Channel, the ladies are permitted to cite It's A Wonderful Life as one of their favorite Christmas films. Eventually, one of the fellows will shock the world by stating his preference for the 1988 "gender roles anthem" we've already named.

Triggered by this affectation, we decided to watch Die Hard last night. Frequently, we were struck by what we saw.

Even in that 1988 film, we saw major elements of the current "revolt from below." In particular, the film is bookended by the marital problems of the Bruce Willis character and his estranged wife, who's played by Bonnie Bedelia.

He's a working-class New York City cop. She's a giant-salary corporate executive—one who has even started using her "maiden name!"

How did these two ever get together to start with? That question is never explained. At any rate, by the end of the film, the Bedelia character is once again blurting her married name. Also, she's huddled on and behind her husband's arm in much the way, it must be said, a young couple is posed on the famous cover of Dylan's Freewheelin' album.

In the 1988 film in question, we saw the basic elements of the "revolt from below" which is currently being staged at the Fox News Channel (and pretty much everywhere else). 

For better or worse, Die Hard tells a modern "Christmas story." We'll lay it out in a bit more detail tomorrow. We'll also mention this (inevitably) unexplored question about the early Dylan:

What happened to his earlier "sexual politics" as the years went by?

Why did the kinder, gentler earlier Dylan become so sour in his remarks about the people he thought of as women? This may be our species' oldest story—and not just at Christmas time. It's an (almost wholly) unexplored story pretty much all year round!

At any rate, what explains the fight, in the 1960s, against going electric? Very frankly, it goes like this:

The young Dylan had already seen "guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children." Elsewhere, Beach Blanket Bingo was being peddled as Frankie Avalon and Annette moved on to movie careers. 

At the time, "electric" was code for Tin Pan Alley! Yesterday, did our failing nation possibly see a Tin Pan halftime show?

Tomorrow: He'd seen 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken? At present, for better or worse, our most influential talkers are gaggles of angry male comedians, backed by former professional "wrestlers." 

Could it be that their tongues are all broken? That, of course, is a matter of judgment. Also, the Willis character's' "wife-beater" shirt! Plus, that Christmas film's "pin-up" shots!

STORIES: Fox News reports major revelation!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2024

The New York Times serves a kibosh: Right here, on this very morning, we the people are being offered our choice of stories again.

It all depends on where we turn! At the Fox News site, a giant presentation is offered today beneath these giant headlines:

Former defense official makes earth-shattering UFO revelation as unexplained drones leave millions on edge
Man camping alone in California reported bright, white oval light, completely silent, hovering above trees

In its principal news report, Fox News is offering an "earth-shattering revelation." 

On the front page of today's New York Times, a different story is being told about the same general topic:

How Drone Fever Spread Across New Jersey and Beyond
The first sighting was at a military site in New Jersey, then the phenomenon spread into neighboring states. Government assurances that most “drones” were not drones at all have not tamped down curiosity.

Fox News is all in on a huge revelation. On balance, the New York Times is serving a plate of kibosh.

It's all about the so-called "democratization of media!" Thanks to the spread of new media, we all have a special place to go—a place where we'll encounter the types of stories we may prefer to be told.

This very morning, C-Span's Washington Journal asked callers to address this point of concern:

WAYS TO BRIDGE THE POLITICAL DIVIDE

In our view, that will be extremely hard to do as long as very large corporations are earning money, hand over fist, through the anti-journalistic practice known as "segregation by viewpoint." 

In our assessment, Fox News is "all in" on this profoundly unhelpful practice. In our view, the Times is also somewhat involved in this way of life, though to a (much) lesser extent.

Finally, this:

As heralded in yesterday's report, Nicholas Kristof's Christmas Eve column generated angry pushback on the Fox News Channel. (Online, his column had appeared on December 21.)

You can watch the video here as Father Gerald Murray tells guest host Raymond Arroyo, "This is all nonsense and garbage...This is an assault on the entire structure of western civilization." 

At the Fox News site, the video is accompanied by this dual headline:

New York Times questions virgin birth of Jesus: Christianity is under ‘assault’
Father Gerald Murray joins ‘The Ingraham Angle’ to weigh in on a New York Times article raising questions about the birth of Jesus.

Arroyo's principal post is at EWTN—The Eternal Word Television Network. (There's no reason why it shouldn't be.)  As for the work of historian Elaine Pagels, Father Murray offered this:

Her work is "propaganda masquerading as history...All of these historians like Pagels, who try to destroy Christian theology by making it into mythology? No. They are agents and propagandists. They are certainly not historians."

People like Pagels are agents and propagandists for what? Father Murray didn't say. But so it went as Kristof—somewhat clumsily, in our own view—attempted to "bridge the God gap." 

We all get to hear our preferred stories now! In what may be a type of disfigured gift, we know where to go to find them.

STORIES: Matthew and Luke left different stories!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2024

So too with our tribunes today: Different chroniclers of the first Christmas have left different stories behind. Wisely and helpfully or possibly not, Nicholas Kristof writes about this matter in this morning's New York Times.

His column takes the form of an interview with historian Elaine Pagels. At the start of the column, Kristof describes it as "the latest in my occasional series of conversations about Christianity, aimed at bridging America’s God gulf."

Millenia have passed; different stories remain. Here's part of today's conversation, with Kristof's statements italicized:

A Conversation About the Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t

Merry Christmas! This is a time when Christianity celebrates miracles and wonder—and “Miracles and Wonder” is the title of your fascinating forthcoming book. It raises questions about the virgin birth of Jesus...

I love these stories from the Gospels. The skies opened up when I heard them. They picture human lives drawn into divine mystery: “God in man made manifest,” as one Christmas carol says. But at a certain point I had to ask: What do they mean? What really happened? They are not written simply as history; often they speak in metaphor. We can take them seriously without taking everything literally.

[...]

You note that Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark’s account but also seem embarrassed by elements of it, including the paternity question. Is your guess that they added the virgin birth to reduce that embarrassment?

Yes, but this is not just my guess. When Matthew and Luke set out to revise Mark, each added an elaborate birth story—two stories that differ in almost every detail... 

For the record, we admire Kristof's values. At any rate, Matthews and Luke told different stories, and these stories remain.

Today, our faltering nation's faltering discourse is a Babel of divergent representations. As a general matter, it all depends on where you go for your stories! 

(At this point, let's avoid such words as "information," "news" or "facts.")

Depending on where we go to hear our stories, we contemporary Americans will often hear completely different topics discussed. On occasions when members of different political tribes hear accounts of the same topic, we may hear completely different presentations about the topic at hand—completely different stories.

So it goes in this modern age, in the aftermath of the "democratization of media." First came the new technologies, then came the democratization! 

After that, the deluge, sometimes described as a Babel.

We're left with welters of contradictory stories. Sometimes, fruitcakes are charged with the task of dispensing these divergent tales, crackpots industrialists among them. 

How did it [ever] get this far? For amusement purposes only, we recall the story of Chatty Cathy, as told by the leading authority on the revolutionary talking toy. She was a cherished Christmas gift at an earlier point in time:

Chatty Cathy

Chatty Cathy was a pull-string "talking" doll...manufactured by the Mattel toy company from 1959 to 1965. The doll was first released in stores and appeared in television commercials beginning in 1960, with a suggested retail price of $18.00...

After the success of Chatty Cathy, Mattel introduced "Chatty Baby" in 1962 and "Tiny Chatty Baby," "Tiny Chatty Brother" and "Charmin' Chatty" in 1963. The last doll to have the word "chatty" in its name in the 1960s was "Singin' Chatty" in 1965.

[...]

The Chatty Cathy doll "spoke" one of eleven phrases at random when the "chatty ring" protruding from its upper back was pulled. The ring was attached to a string connected to a simple phonograph record inside the cavity behind the doll's abdomen. The record was driven by a metal coil wound by pulling the toy's string. The voice unit was designed by Jack Ryan, Mattel's head of research and development.

When it arrived on the market in 1960, the doll played eleven phrases, including "I love you," "I hurt myself!" and "Please take me with you." In 1963, seven more were added to the doll's repertoire, including "Let's play school" and "May I have a cookie?" for a total of 18 phrases...

The popularity of Chatty Cathy led to many pull-string talking dolls flooding the toy industry...

And so on from there. According to the leading authority, the Chatty Cathy doll "was a fanciful depiction of a human." 

So too, perhaps, today! 

Some experts now suggest that Chatty Cathy also led to the invention of the modern-day Fox News Channel contributor, a type of performer who is sometimes being compared to a pull-string talking doll. Such performers have the ability to repeat something like eleven phrases at any point in time, almost always after some other contributor has just emitted the same remark.

Similar arrangements appear elsewhere in the realm of "cable news," even in the mainstream press corps. Members of different tribal communities may be able to see this pattern among the contributors on one cable channel, though possibly not among the contributors on some other net. 

We Americans! We hear one set of stories in certain arenas, a whole different set somewhere else. In a December 1 guest essay in the New York Times, Olga Guralnik tried to explain why we may be inclined to assume that the only stories which are partially or wholly bogus are the stories the other tribe hears.

Dr. Guralnik "is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York." We thought her essay was insightful. Online, it appears beneath this lumbering headline:

As a Couples Therapist, I See the Same Destructive Patterns in Our Political Discourse

We expect to review this essay before our current search reaches its end. We endorse the use of the D-bomb—the use of the word "destructive."

Our current search involves a problem dogging many of us in Blue America. Many of us seem to have a very hard time answering these questions:

How did we ever lose to a person like Candidate Trump? Why would any decent person have decided to vote for him?

We think there are a boatload of answers to that second question. In our view, when we Blues can't think of even one, that may signal a problem with us. 

Dr. Guralnik explores that syndrome in her recent guest essay. In these letters, Times subscribers replied.

Last night, we Blues were being told about Gaetz and Trump and Elon Musk, whose steady stream of bogus claims and weird remarks never seems to end. 

Over on the Fox News Channel, viewers were offered stories, this very morning, about the way "this far-left Pope" directed the hapless President Biden to issue yesterday's commutations. It seemed to us that quite a bit of information was missing from the way this story was being told.

Different people hear different stories, sometimes laden with different ornaments cast in the role of the only relevant facts. This is the cultural arrangement we've chosen—or perhaps, this is the cultural arrangement which has now chosen us.

Last weekend, somewhat improbably, Rob Schneider opened for Donald J. Trump at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2024. As we noted yesterday, we knew Rob a tiny tad in the summer of 85.

He did a 15-minute set. You can see his performance here, starting at the six-minute mark.

As a general matter, we thought Rob's judgment wasn't especially great on this particular occasion. We refer to such unhelpful comments as this:

What an election! I haven't seen a man beat a woman that brutally since the Olympic Games.

Ha ha ha ha ha! That was an Olympics boxing reference, as Fest attendees knew.

We thought Rob's judgment wasn't especially great on quite a few such occasions. On the other hand, we'd say he touched on a couple of decent points in the part of his presentation where he said this:

The Democrats still seem confused as to why they lost the election...Let me clear it up.

In our view, he touched on a couple of decent points before veering back off the track.

As part of an ongoing revolt from below, American discourse is currently being commandeered by a gaggle of male comedians. This is true on the woeful Gutfeld! show, but also in other locales.

As a general matter, this strikes us as an amazingly bad idea. That doesn't mean that such observers may not, on occasion, say something which may possess a certain amount of merit.

Chatty Cathy started out with just eleven phrases. In the 1960 marketplace, that was more than enough. 

In the modern marketplace of ideas, a similar state of affairs seems to obtain. This is the cultural challenge our modern "nation" is facing.

Will our own Blue America have what it takes to rise to this cultural / corporate challenge? We know of no reason to think that we will. 

It seems to us that we the humans may not be wired for that work. It seems to us that Dr. Guralnik made a decent attempt to explain.

STORIES: Paul from Cornwall repeated a story!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2024

So had the pitiful Musk: Some of the western world's most treasured stories are told at this time of the year.

We humans are said to love our stories. It's said that we're inclined to gravitate to pleasing stores more than to verified facts.

So it can go with our stories! Yesterday morning, Paul from Cornwall, New York recited a newer story—a story many people across the fruited plain have now been condemned to hear.

Last week, to cite one example, celebrity circus clown Elon Musk recited this new (and inaccurate) story on the vehicle he purchased and renamed as X. For the background to that bit of storytelling, see Saturday's report.

Musk is widely said to be the richest person in the world. He often seems determined to reinforce an ancient claim—a statement drawn from one of the culture's oldest stories:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

David French repeats that ancient statement right in today's New York Times! The aforementioned clown frequently seems to be determined to reinforce this claim.

Back to Paul in Cornwall, New York, on the western shore of the Hudson! Yesterday morning, at 7:15, he spoke by phone with the moderator of C-Span's Washington Journal. 

Responding to the morning's key question, he said he was "very optimistic" about Donald J. Trump's second term. To watch the videotape of this call, you can just click here.

Paul from Cornwall is "very optimistic" about Trump's second term. He has every right to "think that a-way"—but along the way, he said this about the recent budget bill which averted a government shutdown:

PAUL IN CORNWALL (12/22/24): ...I want to thank [Trump] very much for noticing that 40 percent pay raise Congress wanted to give itself, and they put the kibosh on that. No way to a 40 percent increase! I mean—

These members of Congress today! According to the C-Span caller, they had initially tried to give themselves a 40 percent pay increase!

Trump had put the kibosh on that unholy attempt. So the widely told, and wildly inaccurate, political story now goes.

At any rate, so said Paul in Cornwall, New York on a chilly Sunday morning. C-Span moderators rarely challenge their callers' claims, but in this instance, the statement by Paul in Cornwall produced this initial response:

PAUL IN CORNWALL (12/22/24): ...I want to thank [Trump] very much for noticing that 40 percent pay raise Congress wanted to give itself, and he put the kibosh on that. No way to a 40 percent increase! I mean—

MODERATOR: I don't believe it was a 40 percent pay raise. If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was six. But let me pull up the exact detail so we can get that number right. But continue your point while I look for that.

Paul did in fact continue his point. Soon, though, the moderator spoke again.

As it turned out, she had been mistaken in her initial statement. She was now correcting even herself! This is the way she started:

MODERATOR: So Paul, before I let you go—before I let you go, Paul, I just want to read about that 40 percent number. So there is a fact-check on that in Reuters, saying that the bipartisan stopgap spending bill did not include a 40% pay raise for Congress. 

Uh-oh! She now read from the Reuters fact-check, which was visible on the screen. This is the part of the fact-check which she read.

A temporary spending bill scuttled by opposition from President-elect Donald Trump would have made U.S. Congress members eligible for a 3.8% salary increase, not 40%, as suggested in posts online that misinterpret a report on congressional salaries. The bill would have ended a longtime pay freeze, allowing lawmakers to be eligible for a 3.8% salary increase in January, which would have been equal to $6,600.

Oof! In fact, the proposed pay raise had been killed—but it had actually been a 3.8 percent pay increase. That would have been substantially less than Paul from Cornwall's 40 percent.

In short, Paul from Cornwall had been way off. Here's how the colloquy ended:

MODERATOR: So that is the detail on that there, Paul. Did you have any other points before I let you go?

PAUL FROM CORNWALL: No, and I'm glad you fact-checked me on that. I do appreciate that, But still, they don't even deserve that, because the working class in America isn't even getting that. So—have a merry Christmas, everybody and [indecipherable] next year!

Paul's factual claim had been crazily off. But as is said to be a common practice among us humans, his Storyline remained.

We'll advance several guesses about that exchange:

Paul from Cornwall is a good, decent person. When he called C-Span yesterday, he didn't know that the story he had heard was crazily, wildly inaccurate.

As we noted on Saturday, the circus clown Musk was one of the people who had blared that bullroar to the waiting world. Millions of people—not just Paul—had thereby been misinformed by what this badly bloated designer of clown-cars had said.

Long lay the world! In ancient times, the world in question was overrun with conquering Roman legions. The world in which we live today is overrun with wealthy people who have agreed to cast themselves in the role of the conquering clown.

The aforementioned fellow is one of those people. Or it may just be that "something is wrong" inside the fellow's head. 

In the ancient story, an occupied people sought a way to deal with their occupation. Today, our clown-car drivers include major industrialists. Increasingly, they're assisted by a healthy assortment of D-list comedians staging an assault from below.

Tomorrow, we'll review the recent work of Rob Schneider, who we knew a tiny tad way back in the summer of 85. As a general matter, we disagree with Rob's political assessments at this point in time. In fairness, that of course means that he disagrees with ours.

For today, we'll close with one last part of Sunday's story. That's the part where the Reuters fact-check amazingly says this:

Fact Check: Bipartisan stopgap spending bill did not include 40% pay raise for Congress

[...]

VERDICT

Misleading. The bipartisan temporary spending bill, if approved, would have given members of Congress a 3.8% pay raise in January 2025, not a 40% pay increase.

No, we aren't making that up! Reuters could have delivered a verdict of "False." Delivering the coup de grace within our own tale, it went with "Misleading" instead!

(Long lay the world, the story says, in sin and error pining!)

We're going to bring you some stories this week. Our species tends to run on that rocket fuel, and our stories are frequently wrong.

Tomorrow: Terra Nova High School grad opens for Donald J. Trump!

Concerning Cornwall, New York: What's it like in Cornwall, New York? The leading authority on the community starts by telling us this:

Cornwall, New York

Cornwall is a town in Orange County, New York, United States, approximately 50 miles north of New York City on the western shore of the Hudson River. As of the 2020 census, the population was at 12,884. Cornwall has become a bedroom community for area towns and cities including New York City...

Cornwall's Main Street includes gift shops, taverns, restaurants, coffeehouses, yoga studios and boutiques. Government offices, churches, parks, the riverfront, and St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital, a part of the Montefiore Health System, are situated within walking distance of downtown. The town is a designated Tree City.

Cornwall was the top selection to represent New York State in "The Best Places to Raise Kids 2013" by Bloomberg Business Week magazine.

It sounds a bit like Camus' Oran. Faithful readers of this site will know what happened there!

SATURDAY: What the Sam Hill is megalomania?

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2024

We decided to give it a look: Yesterday, we heard a throwaway comment about "megalomania"—a comment directed at Elon Musk.

That said, what the heck is megalomania? For example, is it an actual clinical term? We decided to give it a look.

Below, we'll start you on your search. First, though, some recent findings by the New York Times' Linda Qiu.

Qiu decided to fact-check Musk's claims about this past week's original budget bill—the bill which was voted down after Citizen Musk, and then Citizen Trump, complained about its contents. 

She decided to fact-check Citizen Musk! Regarding this intervention, an earlier report in the New York Times had asked us to believe such improbable claims as these: 

Elon Musk Flexes His Political Strength as Government Shutdown Looms

[...]

In more than 150 separate posts on X, starting before dawn on Wednesday, Mr. Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called Mr. Musk on Wednesday to ask that he stop posting about the bill.

Mr. Musk also shared misinformation about the bill, including false claims that it contained new aid for Ukraine or $3 billion in funds for a new stadium in Washington. By the end of Wednesday, Mr. Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”

It was a remarkable moment for Mr. Musk, who has never been elected to public office but now appears to be the largest megaphone for the man about to retake the Oval Office. Larger, in fact, than Mr. Trump himself, whose own vaunted social media presence is dwarfed by that of Mr. Musk. The president-elect has 96.2 million followers on X, while Mr. Musk has 207.9 million...

This week also marked the first time Mr. Musk has been able to use his website as a digital whip, driving lawmakers to support his desired outcome. 

[...]

One of Mr. Musk’s first posts about the spending bill came at 4:15 Wednesday morning in Washington.

“This bill should not pass,” the billionaire wrote on his social platform.

Between posts about his own video game antics and SpaceX’s satellite internet service, he used his X account to call the bill “criminal,” spread misinformation about its contents and issue a rallying cry to “stop the steal of your tax dollars!”

His posts followed a similar pattern of past activity on X, where he can become hyper-fixated on a single issue that bothers him.

[...]

On Wednesday, narrative eclipsed truth. “The terrible bill is dead,” Mr. Musk posted just before 4 p.m. in Washington, closing his post with the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

"More than 150 posts?" Does anyone believe such claims about this clear-headed industrial giant? 

Does anyone really believe the claims according to which Musk "can become hyper-fixated on a single issue" as he allegedly "posts about his own video game antics" while reporting the voice of God?

Also, does anyone really believe that the man who knows the voice of God could or would traffic in misinformation? These claims seemed bogus on their face—until we perused Qiu's report.

Qiu's report took the form of a journalistic "fact check." Online, her report appears beneath this triple heading:

FACT CHECK
Assessing Elon Musk’s Criticisms of the Government Spending Deal
The world’s richest man posted or amplified inaccurate claims about the bill’s provisions for congressional salaries, a football stadium and biological research.

We'll simplify it for you. According to Qiu's report, Musk tweeted that the original bill contained a 40 percent pay increase for members of Congress.

According to Qiu, his claim was remarkably close to correct. The actual number was 3.8 percent. 

(With this devotion to technical accuracy, it's no wonder his space flights work!)

Also according to Qiu's report, Musk had tweeted the claim that the original bill included a “$3 billion NFL stadium in Washington, D.C.” According to Qiu (and everyone else), that claim was just plain false.

According to Qiu, the industrial giant had also shared an earlier post which claimed that the bill contained "$60B to Ukraine" and "Mask/vaccine mandates." Those claims were also bogus, Qiu said, before moving on to Musk's inevitable but bogus claims about "bioweapons labs."

This, of course, is the Christmas season. It's a season of nutballs and fruitcakes, but also of broken toys. 

That said, on what meat doth this particular nutball feed—this extremely high-end toy? With those questions dancing like sugarplums, we return to the terms of our search:

Is "megalomania" a clinical term? Or is it simply a colloquial term of derision? 

These were the fruits of our search:

The leading authority on the term instantly clicked us ahead to its report on "narcissistic personality disorder." At its companion site, Simple English Wikipedia was willing to tell us this:

Megalomania

Megalomania is a mental illness. People with megalomania have delusional fantasies that they are more relevant (important) or powerful than they truly are. They have inflated self esteem and overestimate their powers and beliefs. People with megalomania tend to exhibit a disposition that is less inclined towards humbleness.

The word "megalomania" is no longer used in the mental health field, and is not mentioned in either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD). Instead, this condition is now called narcissistic personality disorder.

We take that to mean that "megalomania" is no longer regarded as a diagnostic clinical term. Regarding the apparent substitute diagnosis, the leading authority on the matter starts by telling us this:

Narcissistic personality disorder 

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathize with other people's feelings. Narcissistic personality disorder is one of the sub-types of the broader category known as personality disorders. It is often comorbid with other mental disorders and associated with significant functional impairment and psychosocial disability.

Personality disorders are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring and inflexible maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by any culture...Criteria for diagnosing personality disorders are listed in the sixth chapter of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

There is no standard treatment for NPD. Its high comorbidity with other mental disorders influences treatment choice and outcomes.

And so on, at length, from there. For the record, it isn't clear that Blue America's contemporary elites actually believe in this branch of modern medical science.

It's awkward to read about this particular clinical disorder. That's especially true for people who remember what the niece of the incoming president wrote about her uncle in a best-selling book whose specific assessments were almost wholly disappeared:

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.

Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist. That doesn't mean that her assessments are necessarily correct.

Her assessments could always be bogus! That's even true when she goes on to offer this:

...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. 

So the observer alleged. Full disclosure:

According to current rules of the game, you can't be exposed to such ruminations within the mainstream press corps. Within their pixels or pages or endless broadcast hours, issues of mental health and mental illness can and will be applied in a wide array of contexts, but not in a context like this.

Again, this is the season of discarded fruitcakes, but also of broken toys. At present, a large assortment of such toys can be found beneath one public figure's tree.

As happenstance has it, these broken toys emerged from a remarkable array of early childhood experiences. This seems to include membership in a father's apparent cult; abandonment at an early age by a mother who was never seen by the broken toy again; and lifelong devotion to a grandmother who (literally) set a drunken grandfather on fire one night while he slept. 

For the record, the collection of highly unusual stories doesn't end there. According to prevailing rules of the game, you aren't allowed to contemplate these matters under prevailing arrangements.

Under prevailing arrangements, Citizen Musk can be derided for his megalomania, but only in passing, colloquially. He sits beneath the other citizen's tree in what may be a broken state.

The anthropologist Cummings once wrote of these seasonal trees, inhabiting a child's perspective as he did. He penned his account in the form of a poem—a poem which starts like this:

little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see          i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid...

And so on from there. There are many different ways to describe the array of human experience.

With respect to Cummings' account, there seem to have been no broken toys beneath that particular tree. Within our plainly failing society, we've come a long way from there.

What the heck is "megalomania?" Breaking every rule in the book, we decided to conduct a search. We decided to take a quick look!

FRIDAY: The darkest evening of the year...

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2024

Arrival of the solstice: Tonight is a special night, NPR reports:

Saturday is the winter solstice. Make the most of the shortest day of the year

Saturday is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It's not only the shortest day of the year, but the official arrival of astronomical winter.

"At 4:20 a.m. EST, the solstice marks the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere," NASA says on its website.

That means from now until the end of June, each day will get a little bit longer...

The report continues from there. But what exactly makes this the solstice? The leading authority explains:

Winter solstice

The winter solstice, also called the hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, and when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky.

And so on from there.

"The winter solstice is the day with the longest night of the year." Was this the night Frost had in mind in one of his most famous poems?

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.  

In fairness, this may not be the darkest evening, but it's said to be the longest. We've been thinking about that line a lot in these recent short, gloomy days.

Metaphorically, we've been experiencing a great deal of darkness within our flailing nation's political affairs. The madness is visible all around us. But by law, it can't be discussed.

By way of contrast:

Here comes the sun, the Beatles once claimed. Any version of that song is good for the soul, but we especially like this rendition, by George and that other Paul.

Fellow citizens, Here comes the sun! At least as a matter of theory, that starts to happen, if slowly, tomorrow. 

In the alternate realm of lived events, it may be a long, unstable four years, a lengthy period driven along by the whims of a largely under-discussed collection of broken toys.

Frost's horse was between the woods and a lake. For us, it's a rock and a hard place!

THE SEARCH: Why did Harris lose to Trump?

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2024

Could the problem (in part) be Us? Why did Candidate Harris (narrowly) lose to Candidate Donald J. Trump?

The question deserves exploration. We restate a basic framework:

On the one hand, it's amazing that Harris came so close, given the ridiculous circumstance which thrust her into the campaign in late July. 

(We refer to President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign, roughly one month after his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate.)

No candidate had ever been asked to run a presidential campaign with such a late start. A person could imagine that Harris performed a political miracle by making the race so close.

On the other hand:

On the other hand, she may have lost by a narrow margin, but she lost by that margin to Trump. For many people in Blue America, this brings a few larger questions into play:

How could she, or anyone else, possibly have lost to him? 

Also, how could any decent person possibly have decided to vote for a person like Candidate Trump? 

Many people in Blue America can't seem to come up with an answer to those questions. In our view, that inability to compute points to a lingering problem over here within our own Blue American nation. 

Meanwhile, Van Jones has been conducting a search—a search which touches on those very same points. We think his search is worth reviewing. 

Last Saturday, Jones described his search, at some length, during a 53-minute discussion with Chris Cillizza. You can watch the videotape of that colloquy here. For Newsweek's report, click this.

Jones and Cillizza spoke at length. At the 19-minute mark, the slightly agitated Jones offers this assessment of his own political party:

JONES (12/14/24): The Democratic Party is in a ditch, upside down, with wheels spinning, going nowhere, on [BLEEPED]. 

Already, that doesn't sound good! But here's the fuller assessment:

JONES: The Democratic Party is in a ditch, upside down, with wheels spinning, going nowhere, on [BLEEPED]. And the people driving it are saying, "This is fine. This is fine."

So they can keep drinking their own pee water if they want to. I would be much more interested in having an honest conversation.

He wants to have an honest conversation. Or perhaps he's conducting a search.

For the record, the fact that Jones thinks X, Y or Z doesn't mean that those assessments are accurate. In our view, though, Jones has long been sharper than the average bear. We skip ahead to the part of the tape where he describes the fruit of his search.

At minute 27, the CNN commentator starts to describe a revolutionary fact. 

JONES: The mainstream media is now, by the numbers, the fringe. And the fringe, by the numbers, is now the mainstream...

If I'm sitting next to Anderson Cooper, I'm talking to a million people, maybe a million two. Down the road, on Fox, they're talking to three million people, maybe three point two.

Already, that sounds bad from the Blue American perspective. But here's the fuller assessment:

JONES: If I'm sitting next to Anderson Cooper, I'm talking to a million people, maybe a million two. Down the road, on Fox, they're talking to three million people, maybe three point two.

And there's some Twitstreamer—a Twitstreamer you've never heard of—talking to 14 million people!..[So] the fringe is now the mainstream, and the mainstream is now the fringe.

In that passage, Jones is describing an outcome which has been delivered by the "democratization of media." We're guessing that he doesn't intend for the term "Twitstreamer" to be viewed as a term of high praise.

Jones is describing the way our world now works "by the numbers." Under these new arrangements, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, as it says in a very old book! 

According to Jones, "We [Democrats] woke up in a body bag on Election Day" because we hadn't come to terms with this change in the way information (and its opposite) now gets delivered.

"We got beat on platforms I never heard of," he says as he continues. "Twitch, Kick, Rumble. All these platforms sound like symptoms of somebody in the hospital, OK? Twitch, Kick, Rumble? What is it?"

The numbers get even more overwhelming as Jones cites the 48 million people who watched part of Joe Rogan's session with Candidate Trump. And then, he turns to this, the essence of his search:

"So guys, get out of my face," he says. "We had the wrong analysis. We didn't even have the conceptual framework to understand what was happening to us." 

So Jones says, and at that point, Cillizza poses a question. When he does, Jones states the essence, at least to date, of his ongoing search:

CILLIZZA: How the hell did Donald Trump figure out the mainstream media is the fringe, and the fringe is now the mainstream?...How the hell was he, the 78-year-old guy who doesn't even have a computer and still like writes hand-written notes— How did he become the guy who cracked the code?

JONES: ...The problem is, you have a framework in your mind, "How can Donald Trump? How can Donald Trump? How can Donald Trump?" 

Guys, can we cut it out? Donald Trump is not an idiot! Donald Trump—Let me just be very clear. Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all of his critics.  You know how I know? Because he has the White House, the Senate, the House—

CILLIZZA: Totally agree.

JONES: —the Supreme Court, the popular vote. He has a massive media ecosystem bigger than the mainstream built around him and for him, and a religiously—a religious fervor in a political movement around him. And his best buddy is the richest person in the history of the world, and the most relevant Kennedy is with him.

This dude is a phenomenon. He is the most powerful human on earth and in our lifetime. And we're still saying, "Well, how is this guy?"

We look like idiots to ordinary people.

CILLIZZA: You're totally right.

Is Jones "totally right" in that assessment?  If you take him literally, we would largely say no. Otherwise, we'd  strongly recommend that you consider what he's saying. 

In some literal sense, is Donald J. Trump "smarter than all of his critics?" Taken in a literal sense, we wouldn't agree with anything resembling that assessment. 

Also, we don't know if Candidate Trump actually figured anything out in the way Cillizza's question might seem to imply.  It may be that someone else figured something out—or it may be that Trump simply stumbled into an approach which let him achieve a narrow win over an accidental candidate who was thrust into the race in late July of this very year.

We don't think of Candidate Trump as being "smart." At this site, we regard him principally as "disordered"—disordered in a way the mainstream press has agreed we must never discuss.

That said, does Jones really think that Donald J. Trump is smarter than everyone else? Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. It may just be his (visible) frustration speaking. We have no idea.

Whatever Jones may actually think, there's one more key part of the account he offers of his ongoing search. Around the 32-minute mark, we find him saying this:

JONES: Everything starts to come apart. All the old conventional ways of thinking and seeing have to be challenged. 

And what you have is, everybody's down on Trump. "He's a Big Dummy. He has a bunch of idiots around him." That's a lie! It's not true! 

He's not a Big Dummy. He doesn't have a bunch of idiots around him. And just because we don't understand it, that doesn't mean that he's dumb. If we don't understand it, that means that we're dumb!

The first thing we have to acknowledge is, we got beat by something we don't understand. And then all these liberals are wandering around, "Well, I just don't understand it."

Well, maybe because you're dumb and he's smart! Try that on! Because suddenly you're going to have lenses to say, "Well, how is he smart? How am I dumb?" Not, "I know he's dumb. Why are all these voters also dumb?" 

With that, the gents confront the poison in the piece. We refer to the reflexive explanation, widely seen inside Blue America, which holds that Candidate Trump's 77.3 million voters are just stupid—or perhaps are something worse.

For ourselves, we wouldn't describe Candidate Trump as being "smart." Eventually, though, Jones toys with the most significant fruit of his search—with the possibility that those of us in Blue America have met the real Big Dummy, and the real Big Dummy right now might possibly be Us.

Why did people vote for Trump? Imagining it a different way, why did so many people vote against our own candidate? Or possibly even this:

Why did so many people decide to vote against Us?

Why did so many people decide to vote the other way? We think the possible reasons go on and on and on. We think the story dates back many years, all the way back to its start in the autumn of 65. 

Why might decent people have voted for Candidate Trump? When we Blues can't name any possible reasons, could that suggest that we've met the problem, and the problem might include Us?

Next week: At long last, the (rather long) list