TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2025
Also, perhaps, the dead: Last week's endless "cabinet meeting" brought an earlier event to mind.
The "cabinet meeting" ran a full three hours and seventeen minutes. It opened with President Trump orating for 48 minutes.
At that point, the president threw to "Bobby"—to his frequently criticized Secretary of Health and Human Services. Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can peruse a transcript of all that transpired—of every word that was said.
A somewhat peculiar exchange between the president and the secretary brought the earlier event to mind. In this news report, the New York Times recalled the earlier incident:
How the Trump-Kennedy Alliance Is Pushing the Boundaries of Public Health
Before he began his remarks on health care policy at a White House event earlier this summer, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first felt the need to praise one of President Trump’s passion projects.
Mr. Kennedy said that Mr. Trump’s new Oval Office décor had “transformed” a White House that comparatively looked “drab” when his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, filled it. “Under your stewardship, it looks extraordinary today,” Mr. Kennedy said as Mr. Trump nodded in approval. “So thank you, Mr. President.”
During a three-hour cabinet meeting this week, it was Mr. Trump’s turn to support Mr. Kennedy’s endeavors: researching any link between vaccines and autism, a theory that many medical professionals and studies have debunked....
And so on from there.
For the record, the earlier White House event took place on July 30. Before discussing health care policy on that earlier occasion, Kennedy had apparently felt the need to blather on like this:
KENNEDY (7/30/25): Thank you very much, Mr. President and I just want to begin by making a comment that is irrelevant to what we're gathered here today to talk about.
But I've been coming to this building for 65 years and I have to say that it has never looked better. And I've spent some time—I've spent some time in the Oval Office, which really has—it's been transformed.
And I was looking at a picture of the Oval Office the other day when I was there, when I was a kid with my uncle and it was an extraordinary—it's always an extraordinary to go into that sacred space. But I have to say that it looked kind of drab in the pictures, and they were black and white pictures but looked drab, and it looks the opposite of drab today.
[Addressing reporters] And I think—I know all these portraits. I hope you get a chance to look at them when you go out there, that they were hand-picked by the president. And many of them hijacked from other agencies that were trying to keep them.
But I mean, you know, my uncle, my Aunt Jackie, who were deeply committed to design, to beauty and who understood that it's important to have our public buildings be beautiful because it inspires us, it elevates the human spirit. It's one of the—it's a template, it's an exemplar for democracy, the releasing through freedoms of the creativity of the human spirit and this building, of all buildings, should look beautiful.
And under your stewardship, it looks extraordinary today. So thank you, Mr. President, for that.
That earlier event had started with the president orating for more than ten minutes. When Kennedy was finally asked to speak, he burned away two additional minutes with that "irrelevant comment."
Even Aunt Jackie couldn't match the president's mastery of design and beauty, the admiring secretary admiringly said.
As he did, he enhanced his branding as a Trump-admiring Kennedy, while orating within an increasingly peculiar realm. Some observers have begun to think that the realm in question might be North Korea adjacent!
The spectacular dumbness of the secretary's remarks in July has become a bit of a trademark. Leaders from around the world seem to have decided that the only way to approach the sitting president is with words of fawning praise.
To appearances, Russian patriot Vladimir Putin has become a master of the technique. Today, he continues to add to the dead of Ukraine, weeks after President Trump applauded him as he disembarked from his plane at Alaska's subarctic summit.
The president applauded the strongman that day, back on August 15. In a recent interview, he now seems to have said he got fooled by his Russkie darling and friend during the ballyhooed meeting.
"I thought I had it done" that day, the president somewhat oddly said, during a lengthy interview with a very young journalist from the very pro-MAGA site, The Daily Caller.
The young journalist who conducted the lengthy interview is three years out of college (Hillsdale College, class of 2022). She may go on to become a truly outstanding journalist. Also, there's no law requiring her, or anyone else, to be anti-MAGA.
For now, rightly or wrongly, she may be very pro-MAGA. She seemed to enjoy the president's sense of humor when he "announced a new piece of art in the White House—a portrait of former President Joe Biden’s autopen."
The sheer stupidity of such events never ends at this point. Here's the start of Mediaite's report on that bit of news from the sitting president:
Trump Mocks Biden’s Autopen With a Portrait in the White House: ‘This Is Going To Be Very Controversial’
President Donald Trump has announced a new piece of art in the White House—a portrait of former President Joe Biden’s autopen.
The president shared the detail in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, which published the full transcript of Trump’s conversation with reporter Reagan Reese on Monday.
“We put up a picture of the autopen,” Trump told Reese, who responded, “Oh, that’s hilarious.”
It is not exactly clear where the portrait will hang. The Daily Caller’s transcript said Trump showed Reese multiple versions of the picture and what it “will look like in the Rose Garden,” but portraits are not typically displayed in the outdoor space. Either way, Trump said the painting will be unveiled in about two weeks.
And so on, oddly, from there. All in all, the beautification of the White House continues, as does the support of journalistic admirers. Under present arrangement, no matter what the president does, the troops are there to support him.
At this site, we regard that "portrait of the autopen" plan as an example of sheer stupidity. Others will assess it differently.
That said, the cheerleading conduct extends through the days at the Fox News Channel. Yesterday morning, we were struck, as we often are, by how quickly the spread of propaganda starts.
It was 6 o'clock on Labor Day morning. A trio of friends had been assembled to message on the weekday show, Fox & Friends.
Given that it was a holiday, two of the friends were substitute friends. The lineup looked like this:
Fox & Friends: Monday, September 1, 2025
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor
The propaganda—and the comical misstatements of fact—started with remarkable speed.
Given how way leads on to way, we may never be able to get back to the stream of silly remarks uttered by those corporate messenger children. That said:
At 6:07, the analysts came right out of the chairs when Compagno chided observers from the liberal world who like to weigh in with their views "in a siloed fashion." And yes, she actually said it!
There is no way to keep up with the steady stream of inanity which now defines the successor to the American national discourse. But as the aforementioned Russkie patriot continues to add to the ranks of the dead, you can be sure that you'll never see any friends on that "cable news" channel offer anything resembling fair and balanced coverage of our sitting president's exploits.
Long ago and far away, Joyce published a famous story—a story called The Dead. It was part of the collection called Dubliners.
Joyce had written all the stories by 1907, when he was just 25. It took him seven more years to get someone to publish the famous collection.
The Dead is the longest and the final story in Dubliners. According to the leading authority on the story, "T. S. Eliot called [it] one of the greatest short stories ever written in English." It may seem dry as dust to the contemporary reader, since most of us will have little idea of the context within which it was written.
As we recently noted, that leading authority says that The Dead "offers a critique of a society that has been gripped by a deadening paralysis of the spirit." In its treatment of the Dubliners collection, that same authority tells us this:
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, written from 1904 to 1907. First published in 1914, Dubliners presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early twentieth century.
The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. Joyce felt Irish nationalism, like Catholicism and British rule of Ireland, was responsible for a collective paralysis—a theme permeating much of the work. He conceived of Dubliners as a "nicely polished looking-glass" held up to the Irish and a "first step towards spiritual liberation."
The young Joyce felt that Ireland was in the grip of a deadening paralysis. He might have been right or he might have been wrong, but could that analysis possibly hold a mirror up to us—to the metaphorical dead of our own failing society?
It sems to us that we all need to step outside the "operation warp speed" of our current imitation of a national discourse. We may need to seek ourselves out with the help of various works of literature.
Is some collective paralysis of the spirit possibly here among us? Who among us, Red or Blue, might be part of the collective paralysis—might perhaps be identified as the walking and talking dead?
We need to put our warp speed away. The blinding speed of our imitation of discourse is only going to fail us.
Tomorrow: The paralysis is Us?
