THE DEAD: The Stupid is general over the culture!

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 usto 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?


42 comments:

  1. Make Polio Great Again

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  2. I don't care if you are a moron like David in Cal, or a mensch like Ilya, call your Congressman and implore them to impeach this fucking idjit. Fuck is wrong with Republicans?

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    1. (Talking about Kennedy being impeach, realize applies to more than one of the bastards.

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    2. @11:17 You seem to be new around here. Is there some reason you don't have any English skills? Even the Eastern European trolls at the troll farms are better than you.

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  3. We need to pay attention to the classics, man.

    "Former top aides from his first term in office famously made their views known to one another to describe their boss. Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly said Trump had the understanding of a “fifth- or sixth-grader,” while chief of staff John Kelly once called him an “idiot.”

    Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have called him a “moron,” which was clarified later as a “fucking moron.”"

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    1. "Morons" just figured out how to make $5 billion.
      https://www.benzinga.com/crypto/cryptocurrency/25/09/47445221/trump-familys-wealth-jumps-5-billion-after-wlfi-cryptos-robust-trading-debut-in-open-market-report

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    2. You're cheering for this corruption, you fucking fascist freak?

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    3. David in Cal is too busy denying the Holocaust to understand big numbers.

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    4. Sadly, DiC thinks he has refuted Kelly or tillerson. Clearly, those two were not talking about Trump’s ability for corrupt self-dealing. They were referring to his understanding of the issues needed to be a worthwhile leader.

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    5. Trump's latest crypto venture shares an important feature with his tariffs: He is careful to obscure where the money actually comes from. It doesn't appear out of thin air. Someone has to hand it over.

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    6. Morons just exposed themselves to losing billions to criminally convicted and lifelong repeatedly court fined moron fraudsters by investing in moron crypto scams. I hope you sent them your life savings moran DiChead.

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    7. "Fucking morons" FIFY Dichead.

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    8. Meanwhile: for the rest of us peons:

      "Dow falls 500 points to kick off September on tariff worries, rising bond yields."

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    9. This is the correct Mediate link to the "autopen controversy:"

      https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-mocks-bidens-autopen-with-a-portrait-in-the-white-house-this-is-going-to-be-very-controversial/

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    10. The grifter-moron is, in fact, practicing corruption quite openly -- as Anon@12:05 mentions -- including acquiring $100mil in bonds on the day of his inauguration. This explains why he's been so hell-bent on the Fed lowering the interest rates.
      Professional skills are probably the last cognitive ability to succumb to dementia. I am guessing that I'll still be able to write code long after I stop recognizing my children. In Trump's case, his professional skill are grifting, so that's proceeding apace, as vascular dementia due to his congestive heart failure, is making him less and less coherent.

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    11. It doesn't take intelligence to cheat and steal. Most crooks do it because they are too inept to succeed the normal ways. All it takes is a sociopathic personality completely lacking in empathy.

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    12. Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs

      All that said, it’s hard to imagine anything more emblematic of the Trump Era than what is for all intents and purposes still the Commerce Secretary’s company (yes, yes, arms length hand off to his twenty-something sons) making bets on something Lutnick himself has significant influence over. Indeed, far more important than whatever influence Lutnick has over tariff policy is that significant visibility he has into the bet’s probable outcome.

      Lutnick can’t be certain what’s in a judge’s mind any more than Trump can. But he’ll have lots of visibility into what the government’s lawyers think, how they rate their odds of success, what their arguments will be. On top of that, given the immense corruption of the current Supreme Court I would put say there’s at least a 50%-50% shot that Trump and that Trump and thus Lutnick will gets signals from one or more of the justices about how the Court will rule. Any way you look at this it’s corrupt as hell. And on a more metaphoric level it typifies the heads I win tails you lose rules the billionaire class and their sub-billionaire toadies live by.


      Sociopathic and connected.

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    13. It's alright, no more shoplifting in DC with the Marines present.

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    14. "Moran" is part of blog culture going back to idiot Shrub days of illegal endless wars and destroyed Us economy you Moran.

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    15. It comes from a misspelling of moron on the sign of a Bush supporter.

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    16. '"Morons" just figured out how to make $5 billion.'

      Yeah, everybody knows how smart you have to be to fleece people out of their money via crypto.

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    17. DicHead applauding the felon's open corruption and illegal troops deployments on his own citizens. Fucking fascist to the core that DiChead is.

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  4. "She may go on to become a truly outstanding journalist. Also, there's no law requiring her, or anyone else, to be anti-MAGA."

    Well, that dispels 2 strawmen.

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    1. Not that their shouldn't be laws banning Maga morons of course.

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    2. Whatever career a young female journalist pursues, she doesn't need Somerby's condescension. He got a couple of op-ed pieces published about school cheating on standardized tests and that's all. The woman he is patronizing knows more about journalism than Somerby.

      It may not be against the law to be MAGA, but it is a violation of journalistic ethics to let the writer's personal bias show, unless a piece is explicitly identified as opinion. Propaganda is not journalism at all. Somerby routinely confuses these different forms of writing, perhaps on purpose.

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  5. Hey DiChead, are you calling you Congressperson to tell them to impeach Jr. today. If not, please explain why?

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    1. I agree that Kennedy is a dreadful choice for his position

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    2. Why did the republicans vote to confirm?

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    3. Kennedy had a of public support, sad to say

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    4. That doesn’t justify the GOP cowardice in refusing to reject him. The senate is supposed to be wiser than the moronic masses.

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  6. "Is some collective paralysis of the spirit possibly here among us?"

    Paralysis, Bob? Are you nuts? American politics hasn't been as lively, as vigorous, as dynamic since at least the the Vietnam war, the 60s; probably even since the 1930s.

    This is the greatest time, greatest things are happening, swamp gets drained, America is made great again. Stop whining, brother; feel lucky, enjoy.

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    1. Mao, still a fucking moronic idiot.

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    2. The swamp runneth over.

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  7. When Somerby quoted Camus, he worried that Blue America was complacent, as the people of Oran were before the plague. Now he is saying we are paralyzed. By what? Who on the left isn't trying to do something about Trump et al.? And didn't he talk about a miasma last week? Somerby would do better to talk about specific events and not big sweeping generalizations about a left that is hardly unified and thus not all stuck in any condition.

    When Somerby goes on this kick about how all is woe (like Eeyore), doom and gloom and getting worse all the time. In the words of Eeyore (the best literature to talk about here): "The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would".

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    1. Didn't finish my thought -- veered off to think about how the second season of Fallout will start soon. Anyway, this kind of Somerby essay always makes me think that his family should have him evaluated for depression. Normal people don't focus so relentlessly on Seligman's predictors of depression: (1) things are bad, (2) there's nothing I can do about it, (3) thing will always be this way. Paralysis sums that up.

      Maybe Somerby is just trying to bore and depress Blue America into inactivity on Trump's behalf. Someone explain this new theory to AC/MA and DG.

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    2. The theory's easy to grasp, but doesn't make much sense.

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  8. Here is someone Not Dead, Neil Young and the lyrics of his new song:

    "No more great again
    No — no more great again
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House

    Don’t need no fascist rules
    Don’t want no fascist schools
    Don’t want soldiers on our streets
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House

    Got to get the fascists out
    got to Clean the white house out
    Don’t want soldiers on our streets
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House

    No more great again
    No — no more great again
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House

    No more money to the fascists
    the billionaire fascists
    TIME TO BLACKOUT THE SYSTEM
    no more great again
    No — no more great again
    TIME TO BLACKOUT THE SYSTEM
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House

    NO MORE GREAT AGAIN
    No — NO MORE GREAT AGAIN
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    There’s big crime in DC at THE White House
    NO MORE GREAT AGAIN
    NO NO MORE GREAT AGAIN"

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    1. Fucking commie Canadian. Past time to make the 51'st State, right after we impeach RFK Jr.

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  9. Via Digby:

    "James Madison wrote in 1822, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowlege will for ever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

    Men like Madison could not conceive that their grand experiment in popular sovereignty might be ended by a man so profoundly stupid and placed in office by people who’ve disarmed themselves of knowledge. All with chips on their shoulders the size of Manhattan."

    When I see Somerby pretend to have read literature and offer vacuous superficial links between those great works and non-specific properties of Blue America, I realize how stupid Somerby must be. He is aping intelligence not displaying any, and he has a set of idiot trolls to pretend to understand what he has said, even mind-reading what he must mean. This is what stupid people do when someone uses a word they don't understand and they don't want to appear ignorant -- they pretend to know something they obviously do not. That is Somerby's gig with these famous works. It is pathetic, just as it is pathetic when Trump misuses words and invents his own data. And these people who make up and cover up their own ignorance assume everyone else is doing the same thing -- that no one knows anything.

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  10. A log-winded candidate: Trump
    Was splendidly great on the stump
    But, his HHS choice
    Was disastrous or "woice"
    A guy who belongs in the dump

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  11. A log-winded actuary from Cali
    Thought commenting was right up his alley.
    Boy, was he wrong!
    He sang a sad song
    At a Magat rally.

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