THE DISAPPEARED: What lunacy lies in the heart of man?

MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2025

We're now in a Week That Was: "What evil lurks in the heart of man? Only The Shadow knows!"

In fairness, that wasn't exactly the slogan. The slogan in question belonged to a long-running radio show, way back in the days before TV came along.

The radio show came to be called The Shadow. The leading authority on such shows offers a thumbnail backdrop:

The Shadow

The Shadow is a fictional character created by American magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by Gibson, The Shadow has been adapted into other forms of media...

The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the radio program Detective Story Hour, which was developed to boost sales of Street & Smith's monthly pulp Detective Story Magazine...

On September 26, 1937, The Shadow, a new radio drama based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story "The Death House Rescue", in which The Shadow was characterized as having "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." In the magazine stories, The Shadow did not become literally invisible.

The introductory line from the radio adaptation of The Shadow—"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"—spoken by actor Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh.

The radio show came to an end in December 1954. It sounds like it was good solid crackpot fun, a bit like our contemporary political / journalistic discourse.

At present, we Americans seem to be locked in what will turn out to be a major Week That Was. That turn of phrase comes from the name of a TV show, That Was the Week That Was, which was hot for a couple of years back in the mid-1960s.

This nation's current probable Week That Was got its start last Friday. On that occasion, President Zelensky's incessant eye-rolling, along with the way he sat in his chair, caused two major American officials to melt down as TV cameras rolled.

As we noted yesterday, that story was told by Karoline Leavitt, but also by an assortment of tools on the Fox News Channel. 

Full disclosure! When we examined the videotape, we couldn't see the many eyerolls. 

In fact, we didn't see even one! That only suggests how slippery President Zelensky was as he engaged in this conduct.

"What evil lurks in the heart of man?" For ourselves, we'd suggest staying away from such triggering terms as "evil." We'd suggest a transition to a slogan like this:

What sources of incomprehension lie in the hearts of us humans? What sources of possible mental dysfunction?

As it turns out. we humans aren't "the rational animal" at every turn of the wheel. Especially at times of vast tribal division, we may tend to believe the darnedest things, if we might be allowed to steal a phrase from that other old TV show:

House Party (radio and TV show)

[...]

The show's best-remembered segment was "Kids Say the Darndest Things," in which [Art] Linkletter interviewed schoolchildren between the ages of five and ten.

Five-year-olds used to say the darndest things. Today, we American adults are strongly inclined to believe such implausible statements!

We adults are inclined to believe the darndest things! As it turns out, that's even true in Red America, as it is over here with us Blues.

We Blues were sure that President Biden was still just as sharp as a tack. We didn't bat an eye when our leaders told us that the southern border was secure.

Those costs of living were all in our heads—or perhaps in the heads of The Others. We even managed to cruise right through the least plausible manifestations of the cultural impulse which came to be known by the unflattering term, "Woke."

Some of those manifestations proved an indisputable point:

There is no apparently good intention which can't be unwisely pursued.

Surely everyone understands that—but at the time, we plowed on through. We Blues couldn't see what everyone else was able to see. 

Last November, we paid the price, with Candidate Trump squeaking out a narrow win, despite his historic lack of popularity among the electorate.

Sources of incomprehension are widespread within the hearts and the heads of us humans! That doesn't mean that we're bad people. According to an array of experts, it means that we're people people, wired as humans are.

Last Friday, right there in the Oval, the latest episode flared. And sure enough, here's what happened next:

As of Saturday night, Joey Johnny Jones was willing to tell viewers of The Big Weekend Show that it was the incessant eye-rolling by Zelensky which triggered the meltdown by Trump and Vance.

Did Jones really believe what he was saying? When Lisa Boothe rushed to agree, did she believe what he'd said|?

We can't answer those questions! But millions of people will believe that the eyerolls did it, in part thanks to what they saw Jones say.

It used to be the butler who did it. Last Friday, to prove our larger point, it turned out that the eyerolls did!

Our larger point is this:

It isn't just we Blue Americans who believe the darnedest things. Over there in Red America, our enemies are inclined to traffic in apparent incomprehension too!

That brings us to the current apparent Week That Was, which got its start last Friday. It started with the meltdown caused by The Body Language Which Wasn't. 

Tomorrow night, right there in the House chamber, the week will continue along with President Trump's major address. It won't be called The State of the Union Address, but that's what it basically is. 

What's the president going to say at that time? Only The Shadow actually knows, but we'll guess that he may not play nice.

In the course of this week, we ourselves are going to focus on The Disappeared. By that, we refer to the disappeared possible explanations for the serial acts of apparent madness which now crowd the American scene.

To what acts of apparent incomprehension do we refer? We refer, of course, to reports about the eyerolls which didn't seem to occur, but also to such acts of apparent madness as these:

Sad! As reported by Mediaite, Joe Rogan has now suggested that CNN aired the speech by Candidate Trump in Butler, Pa. because CNN somehow knew that he would be shot at that day.

Yes, that's what he suggested. What impulse in favor of incomprehension lurks in the heads of us humans? This level of impulse:

This same musclebound flyweight is now one of the leading "influencers" on the American scene! And no, it doesn't end there:

When Rogan suggested that CNN knew, Elon Musk seemed to agree. After that, along came the perpetually furious and wealthy Bill Ackman, and he bought into it too!

These people are all extremely "successful." Beyond that, there seems to be very little they won't suggest or even believe.

In other words, it isn't just Us! The humans over in Red America believe the darnedest things too!

Many parts of the story from last Friday haven't yet appeared on the scene. For example, this:

What was actually in the (revised) minerals deal Zelensky and Trump were supposed to sign that day? 

That seems like an amazingly basic question. As is the norm in our highly sub-rational journalistic discourse, we've seen few attempts to spell that out. For a detailed report from one think tank, you can just click here.

That question has largely been disappeared and so has the possible answer. In our view, though, the principal disappearance involves the answer to the question Scott Pelley asked last night.

Hollywood was offering its annual low-IQ presentation as 60 Minutes aired. Some of Americans, Red and Blue, still watch that annual drivel.

At 7 p.m. in the east, 60 Minutes was competing with the preternatural childishness of Tinseltown itself. But here's one of the questions Pelley asked, along with what he was told:

PELLEY (3/2/25): In these last two weeks we've heard [President Trump] call Zelenskyy a dictator, we've heard him say it was Ukraine that started the war. What is going on?

MCMASTER: Well, President Trump, as we all know, has a tendency to say outlandish things. Sometimes that's to shake the situation up and create some sense of change. But often times what he doesn't consider is how his words could impede his own agenda, or how his words actually can cut against U.S. interests or be received abroad in a way that's much different from the way his political supporters will receive those words in the United States. And so those words were damaging, damaging to the psyche of the Ukrainians. You know, war really is a contest of wills, and I think what you're seeing is Donald Trump delivering a series of body blows to the Ukrainians in a way that could affect, you know, their will to continue to fight.

"What's going on?" Pelley asked. Marvin Gaye is no longer with us, but you can see the way McMaster answered Pelley's question.

For the record, not everyone will agree with that answer. But as Pelley had already explained, here's who he was speaking with:

PELLEY: H.R. McMaster knows. He was national security adviser in Trump's first term. He's a retired Army general, senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, and a CBS News contributor.

That's what Pelley said. In this case, it isn't just The Shadow.  According to Pelley, McMaster also knows!

You can see how General McMaster answered Pelley's question. All this week, we're going to muse on the basics of alleged modern medical science which were absent from what the general said.

We humans! We're actually rather primitive thinkers. All in all, in many arenas, we aren't "the rational animal."

What sources of possible incomprehension may lurk in the minds of us humans?

These sources seem to be widespread on the left and even on the right. These sources are routinely disappeared in our modern discourse, but we disappear them at our own peril.

For the record, none of this is going to change. It's much too late for that,

Meanwhile, w may have embarked on a Week That Was at the present moment. Everything you read and hear will have been edited so you won't be required to think about the possible factors which have been disappeared.

We humans believe the darnedest things. Some people may possibly understand why we do, but by common human agreement, those people have been disappeared.

"What's going on?" Scott Pelley asked. One perfectly plausible answer has been disappeared!

Tomorrow: Though later in the day: One caller to C-Span sounds off!