MADNESS: The silence was a part of the madness!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2025

Also, the Wall Street Journal gone wild: "Back out of all this now too much for us?"

So begins the poem Directive, a "wonderfully mysterious" later effort by Frost. 

You may find the poem "wonderfully mysterious." You may simply find it hard. 

We've cited Directive before. Agreeing to let you skip ahead, we'll show you more of the way it starts:

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it...

And so on from there.

"Back in a time made simple?" Here in our warring pair of Americas, whether we're Blue or whether we're Red, that time has now ended for us.

President Biden's endless silence has always been a part of the madness. For the record, the Rachels, the Joes, the Nicoles and the Lawrences chose to ignore that silence.

On the corporate channel designed to please us, they just kept serving this stew:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

We Blues! We kept disappearing the southern border. We kept disappearing the price of services and goods. 

There were no fireside chats—no explanations. We kept ignoring President Biden's apparent or possible decline. In a remarkable act of imperial arrogance, the silence went on and on, agreed to by many parties. 

Replacing the silence, we now have the bluster—the endless torrent of endless claims, most of them factually bogus in one major way or another. That said, when empires end and experiments fail, the silly stuff often comes first.

This very morning, Steve Doocy jumped out of the clown car at 6 o'clock sharp.  At 6:05, he was already pushing this pail of piddle as he spoke with the show's weatherwoman:

DOOCY (1/22/25): Janice [Dean], I saw something yesterday and it's brand new. The state of Florida put out a winter storm watch advisory about weather along the gulf? They referred to the gulf as "the Gulf of America!"

Which, you know, Donald Trump said he wanted people to start doing it. State of Florida, first to do it!

DEAN: It's amazing! 

Back in a time made simpler, how did that body of water come by its offensive name? For unknown reasons, the leading authority on the matter actually chose, at some point, to assemble this set of useless "facts:"

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico (Spanish: Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The coastal areas along the Southern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, which border the gulf on the north, are occasionally referred to as the "Third Coast" of the United States (in addition to its Atlantic and Pacific coasts), but more often as, "the Gulf Coast."

The Gulf of Mexico took shape approximately 300 million years ago (mya) as a result of plate tectonics. The Gulf of Mexico basin is roughly oval in shape and is approximately 810 nmi (1,500 kilometres; 930 miles) wide. Its floor consists of sedimentary rocks and recent sediments. It is connected to part of the Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Florida...

[...]

Name

The gulf as a whole is known as the Gulf of Mexico, ultimately deriving from Mexica, the Nahuatl term for the Aztecs. French Jesuits called the gulf the Gulf of Mexico (Golphe du Mexique) as early as 1672...

Sure enough! This naming debacle tracks back to the French! 

It was the French who gave it that name! But as a certain "guide" said in his inaugural speech, the day of "liberation" is here.

(Does this particular guide "have at heart [our] getting lost?" We'll report, then let you decide.)

The silly stuff often comes first! At 6:05 this very morning, a 25-year corporate tribune was hailing the great renaming by the great state of Florida. 

Should Wikipedia get locked up for refusing to drop the offensive name? In time, the aforementioned guide will decide.

That said, if Wikipedia has to go, a certain editorial board will have to go too. Over at the Wall Street Journal, the editors have already published this, dual headline included:

Trump Pardons the Jan. 6 Cop Beaters
Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that GOP?

Republicans are busy denouncing President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for his family and political allies, and deservedly so. But then it’s a shame you don’t hear many, if any, ruing President Trump’s proclamation to pardon unconditionally nearly all of the people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This includes those convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying, and electroshocking police to try to keep Mr. Trump in power. Now he’s springing them from prison.

This is a rotten message from a President about political violence done on his behalf, and it’s a bait and switch. Asked about Jan. 6 pardons in late November, Mr. Trump projected caution. “I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished,” he said. “We’re going to look at each individual case.”

Taking cues from the boss, last week Vice President JD Vance drew a clear line: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

So much for that. The President’s clemency proclamation commutes prison sentences to time served for 14 named people, including prominent leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were organized and ready for violence. Then Mr. Trump tries to wipe Jan. 6 clean, with “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals.” The conceit is that there are hundreds of polite Trump supporters who ended up in the wrong place that day and have since rotted in jail.

Out of roughly 1,600 cases filed by the feds, more than a third included accusations of “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement.” The U.S. Attorney’s office said it declined “hundreds” of prosecutions against people whose only offense was entering restricted grounds near the Capitol. Of the 1,100 sentences handed down by this year, more than a third didn’t involve prison time. The rioters who did get jail often were charged with brutal violence...

As they continue, the editors detail seven of the aggressively violent people who the guide has now released from jail. "There are more like this," the editors say, "which everyone understood on Jan. 6 and shortly afterward."

At this site, we recommend pity for sociopaths. We assume that such people never chose to be one of our species' many hosts for the severe personality disorder colloquially known as sociopathy.

That said, sociopaths—if such people really exist—may tend to be violent and dangerous. We're never happy to hear that someone has been locked up, but public safety sometimes requires the separation of such disordered people from the general public.

For the record, here's how the editors end the piece in question:

What happened that day [on January 6] is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.

Is it possible that our new guide is himself a sociopath? The "well educated" men and women who staff Blue America's corporate news orgs have agreed that we must never wonder or ask.

Rachel agreed, and Nicolle agreed. Joe and Mika agreed. On rare occasions, Lawrence broke ranks, but he then agreed to ignore what the medical specialists who served as guests had just said about the guide.

According to the largest study, something like 6 percent of adult American men can be diagnosed as (colloquially) "sociopaths." Could our new guide fit into that group? Or should the editorial board get locked up, to shield us from their heresies?

Could it be that they're the sociopaths? Sich matters are too complex for our nation's childish discourse—and that's especially true when we're lost inside the silence which produced the lack of explanation which has now led to the bluster.

Is our new guide a sociopath? Might he just be a gender throwback, a bit like the undisguised apparent misogynists who peddle their porridge on Fox News Channel programs? In this morning's New York Times, we learn about one of his instant moves, designed to protect the public:

Admiral Fagan Is Fired as Coast Guard Commandant

The Trump administration fired the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Linda L. Fagan, within 24 hours of President Trump’s inauguration. The admiral, who was sworn in as the service chief on June 1, 2022, was the first female officer to lead a branch of the American armed forces.

In a message sent to all Coast Guard units on Tuesday morning, the acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department, Benjamine C. Huffman, said he had relieved Admiral Fagan of her duties.

[...]

“She was terminated because of leadership deficiencies, operational failures and inability to advance the strategic objectives of the U.S. Coast Guard,” the statement said.

The statement offered a long list of reasons for Admiral Fagan’s removal from office, including what it called “failure to address border security threats”—specifically saying she had not adequately deployed Coast Guard assets to stop “fentanyl and other illicit substances” from entering the United States.

It also faulted her leadership in recruitment and retention of personnel, and accused her of mismanaging the acquisition of icebreakers and helicopters.

The statement claimed she had an “excessive focus” on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and accused her of failing to adequately address “systemic issues” related to sexual harassment at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.

She didn't manage the icebreakers well! It's mere coincidence that the fired commander was "the first female officer to lead a branch of the American armed forces."

Question:

Is it possible that the criticisms of Admiral Fagan are valid? Just as a matter of fact, did she “fail to address border security threats?” Also, did she overdo all the DEI stuff?

We the people will never know such things. Our discourse is now an overwhelming welter of signals, accusations and claims. There's no obvious way to get "back out of all this now too much for us"—to travel back out of the complexification which now dogs every topic, every pseudo-discission, every tribal claim and dispute.

The guide has released a gang of violent offenders. Adding to the possible air of riot, we offer this news report from The Hill:

‘QAnon Shaman’ says he’s buying ‘motha f‑‑‑in guns’ after Trump pardon

U.S. Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, otherwise known as the “QAnon Shaman,” said Monday that he’s going to buy some guns after being pardoned by President Trump.

“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER…I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Chansley, who was photographed inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a horned helmet, painted face and bare chest, wrote on X. “NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!”

“J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME…EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!” he added.

In fairness, we should all remember the ancient bromide: 

Guns don't kill people—disordered people kill people!

For the record, Chansley was sentenced to 41 months. Today, for better or worse, he may be out there buying more guns, which of course he may never use.

President Biden's years of silence was a part of this unfolding madness. Inevitably, the unfolding madness does recall the gruesome events which took place when sacred Troy finally fell, back at the dawn of the west:

PROFESSOR KNOX (1990): The whole poem [known as the Iliad] has been moving toward this duel between the two champions, but there has never been any doubt about the outcome...And the death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. 

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old [King] Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history....

So it went when sacred Troy died. That had all been angry gender politics too, perhaps like Admiral Fagan.

Luckily, that was all fiction. That said, those are the sorts of things which can occur when events become "now too much for us." As we'll discuss in future reports, President Biden's silence—we wouldn't say it was his fault—was a long-running part of this madness.

The people we Blues were trained to trust agreed to take part in that silence. The corporation served us their work. Thus pleasured, we gobbled it down.

As of this very day, the Journal's editors need to watch out. So too at Wikipedia.

A bunch of French Jesuits named the gulf! The state of Florida (Spanish for flowery) has already corrected this problem!

Tomorrow: Madness wherever you look!