THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025
Some disorder is not: At present, it seems to us that the United States may be locked in the grip of several disorders.
One would be a clinical "mental disorder," one which would involve the sitting president. (According to the leading authority, the term "mental illness" is no longer preferred.)
If some such (medical) disorder really does exist, it may raise such questions as these:
Is it possible that President Trump really believes some of the crazier things he says? Does he really believe that his approval numbers are the highest they've ever been?
Does he really believe that the 2020 election was stolen? Does he believe the things he constantly says about the working of tariffs?
What was going through his mind when he decided to level one part of the White House? When he decided to picture himself dropping excrement on the heads of us the people? Did it even occur to him that these behaviors, as judged by conventional norms of behavior, were highly unusual—strange?
What may be happening in the mind of a person who is gripped by that (diagnosable) "mental disorder?"
Our press corps has decided that questions like those must never be asked. We'd also refer to the type of cultural change within Red America which Ross Douthat recently described in a column in the New York Times.
Whatever happened to "family values?" For better or for worse, the public discourse of Red America has now transitioned to this:
Taylor Swift’s Latest Reinvention Is Both Coarse and Conservative
[...]
The latest exercise in Swiftiana combines bawdiness with a certain impulse toward conservatism, as the singer embraces suburban dreams of marriage and white-picket fences while rhapsodizing about her fiancé’s reproductive organ. In that sense it’s an appropriate text for the Trump era, when coarseness and right-wing politics have been married in a distinctive way...
So now let’s consider how conservatism and coarseness fit together—because at the very least they share a coalition now. The portions of America that rebelled against progressivism and voted for Donald Trump include some of the country’s most religious precincts but also representatives of all kinds of varieties of libertinism, from raunchy bro-culture “Barstool conservatives” to the polyamory-curious libertarians of Silicon Valley. The Trump administration is stuffed with traditionally inclined Catholics and evangelicals, but its leader is a much-married heathen, his on-again-off-again Silicon Valley ally is a Promethean tycoon with a harem, and the public language of Trump-era conservatism defaults to the scatological without even a residue of puritanism.
This transition—this move from "family values" to the coarse, the bawdy and the bizarrely scatological—is on full display at the Fox News Channel, where the pied piper of this nut-ball transition sits each day, at 5 p.m. and then at 10, weirdly perched behind his "poop mug."
(He's 61 years old!)
Yesterday afternoon on The Five, this channel's imitation of discourse was highlighted by chatter about "golden showers" and about who's getting "peed on." This strange transition has been underway for more than a decade, wed to the wider decision within the culture to turn the American public discourse over to an assembly of D-list comedians armed with know-nothing podcasts.
These transitions involve a vast array of disordered thinking, powered by the stupidifying practice known as "segregation by viewpoint." That type of intellectual "disorder" may not be linked to a formal medical diagnosis, but over here in Blue America, our heralded news orgs and major pundits have also agreed that we mustn't report or discuss any of this claptrap.
At Fox, the fluids which spill from the can at 10 p.m. are dripping down into the 5 p.m. slot—and that imitation of life at 5 p.m. is this nation's most-watched "cable news" program. (The Fox News Channel is, by far, the most watched of these "cable news" channels.)
We Blue have agreed not to discuss the president's possible (clinical) disorder. We've also agreed not to discuss what happens over at Fox.
As with human tribes of all types, we Blues have a hard time seeing these decisions and practices as signs of our own tribal failure—as signs of our own (colloquial) spiritual / intellectual disorder. We persist in our tribal belief that we are the brilliant, ethical people—that the problems all lie Over There.
With respect to this tribal illusion, sacred Nietzsche called his shot, if only in translation, in The Birth of Tragedy:
We cam imagine the dreamer as he calls out to himself, still caught in the illusion of his dream and without disturbing it, "This is a dream, and I want to go on dreaming."
Within the last week, an unusual thing occurred. A pair of major Democrats suggested that we the Blues should start to look with a clearer eye at our tribe's role in our society's dysfunction. Then too, we still owe you a reaction to Michelle Goldberg's recent column, in which she stated her reaction to the image of the mounds of excrement the president dumped on our heads.
At this site, we aren't sure that the government, such as it was, is ever going to open again. We aren't completely sure that a fundamental act of secession hasn't already occurred.
That said, we'll start tomorrow with Lis Smith, speaking to MSNBC's Jen Psaki. Also, what did Goldberg perhaps get wrong in her column? (And what did she get right?)
We'll opine about that matter too. The ghosts and goblins will be about, and we'll be praising ornamental pumpkins as the day moves along.
Tomorrow: Those of us who align and vote Blue
Somerby is crazy, perhaps with the same mental disorder as Trump.
ReplyDelete"We Blue have agreed not to discuss the president's possible (clinical) disorder. We've also agreed not to discuss what happens over at Fox."
This is a complete and total lie. "We Blue" (whatever that means) have discussed Trump up and down the street. We know and have repeatedly described what happens over at Fox. We do that without quoting Gutfeld word-for-word because we have a word that describes him: propaganda.
Somerby is a useless waste of everyone's time these days. He has nothing useful to suggest about defeating Trump and resisting tyranny. He needs to stop this farce of a blog now. It is an imitation of life, in his sense that it is going through the motions, has no clue what will help in these times, pretends to be liberal (Blue?) without being anything like it, and advances right wing talking points without IDing them in order to fool gullable readers who used to read him back in 1999-2000 when he was defending Al Gore.
Meanwhile, Michelle Goldberg describes herself as a left-leaning feminist. On what basis is Somerby going to criticize her today? Because there isn't enough criticism of left-wing pundits? Is that why Somerby chooses them for his targets? Or is it because he is a right-leaning asshole pretending to be liberal? When was the last time he advanced a lefty talking point?
“Somerby is a useless waste of everyone’s time these days.”
DeleteI can assure you this is wrong. He’s not a waste of my time, and I’m in a better position to assess whether he is than you are.
“He needs to stop this farce of a blog now.”
DeletePerhaps you’re not aware that you don’t have to read the blog.
Is this comment an example of the dreaded “cancel culture” which has been demonized by the Right and exploited by them for electoral gain?
DeleteAnd is "cancel culture" one of the ways that liberals "earn their way out"?
DeleteRight wingers are such snowflakes, the second they encounter any criticism they fold and cry "cancel culture", meanwhile they have been engaging in White identity politics forever, happily cancelling women and people of color whenever they have the power to do so.
Delete@12:54: Yes, George, it's bred in the bone. Just ask Agamemnon
Delete"Cancel culture". We used to call it "criticism".
DeleteThe Right are the snowflakes they warned us of.
Trump has dementia these days. Somerby won't mention it.
ReplyDeleteTrump is corrupt and a criminal. Somerby won't mention it.
DeleteOnly Nazis call Nietzsche "sacred".
ReplyDeleteThis.
DeleteNietzsche is much admired by many non-Nazis.
DeleteSo, we can add "Nazi" to the list. Somerby is a racist, sexist, pedophilic, treasonous Nazi paid by Putin to pretend to be a liberal in order to promote Trump and his right-wing views. Do I have that right?
DeleteOh, I forgot: He's also mentally disordered and demented.
DeleteAnd you forgot George Soros.
DeleteNietzsche appeals to more than just Nazis, but his appeal is primarily limited to right wingers.
Delete11:11 is accurate.
Furthermore, Nietzsche, with his misguided notions about will to power and radical individualism, was an armchair philosopher whose work has been superseded and made irrelevant (other than in a historical sense) by science, which has demonstrated his ideas are bunk.
2:08 - Wikipedia doesn't seem to agree with you: "Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture."
Delete"Nietzsche appeals to more than just Nazis, but his appeal is primarily limited to right wingers."
DeleteSource?
"Somerby is a racist, sexist, pedophilic, treasonous Nazi ..."
DeleteNext to JD Vance, Somerby is all that AND an altar boy.
"At this site, we aren't sure that the government, such as it was, is ever going to open again. "
ReplyDeleteThe way you can tell whether the government plans to open again is that Johnson refuses to swear in Grijalva. If they were just going to disband the House, it wouldn't matter whether she was sworn in or not. So, this is Somerby histrionics.
Did he perhaps forget to take his morning pill?
Delete@11:13: When do you think the government will reopen?
DeleteWhen it dawns on Republicans that shutting off food and medical care for millions of Americans is deeply unpopular.
DeleteIt is also deeply immoral, but a fundamental feature of Republicans is that they lack any sense of integrity.
Jimmy Kimmel is planning to test Jasmine Crockett's IQ using the Montreal Cognitive test that Trump took. We won't know Trump's score -- he says he got 30 out of 30 right, but we will see how Crockett does. The test is designed to be easy for adults with normal cognition but Trump says it got hard toward the end (the part where they ask you what day of the week it is and what month it is). If Crockett gets 30/30 too, Trump will have to admit that she is not as low IQ as he pretends. Then she should challenge Trump to something like the Wonderlic Test, a quick IQ measure used by businesses to test job applicants. I'll bet Crockett tests twice as high as Trump on that one, but he'll never take it. He has too much to lose, being beaten by a black woman who he keeps calling "low IQ".
ReplyDeleteSomerby is an idiot. He should stay far away from all such tests. He found out at Harvard that nearly every other student was smarter than himself, so he stopped trying to learn, avoided going to class, predictably flunked tests (but with the excuse that he didn't do the reading) but protected his ego from the discovery that he wasn't the smartest guy in the room. Then he went on to make a living by mocking people who must choose between brands of corn flakes (because that's the way companies package food, not because they want something different).
Somerby's own campaign against Rachel Maddow is a lot like Trump's campaign against low IQ black women (Trump's words, not mine). This is how guys with little tiny weenies try to make themselves feel better. In Somerby's case, he went on to say "They're laughing because I said something funny, I want them to laugh, not because I am a big fat jerk." I'm sure Trump says the same thing to himself when he dances on stage pretending to be cool.
@11:24 makes it sound like Trump thinks black women are low IQ. But, "low IQ black women" was not describing blacks in general or women in general. It was aimed at two particular black women who Trump believes are not very smart.
DeleteI might add that many of us appreciate Trump's straightforward honesty. We think these two particular black women are unintelligent. We appreciate Trump saying what we believe, even though his comment opens him up to unfair accusations of sexism and racism. (BTW Trump will criticize some white men just as harshly,)
Those two women were singled out for being black and female. I'm sure that if he were just seeking some low IQ person to malign, he could have found some a lot closer to home.
DeleteI get it that you are a bigot too. You don't know either woman, you might have assumed it took some smarts to be elected in a man's world, but you chose to demean them with the word "unintelligent" because they are female and black and Democrats. That is ugly thinking of the kind you keep trying to deny, but here it is again, blatant and unapologetic.
You should try taking the Montreal Test yourself, David. There is a copy available on the internet.
And yes, there is no doubt Trump is sexist and racist. There is a lot of other proof of that besides this latest outrage. (If someone really were low IQ as Trump claims, why would anyone point it out to them? Bad manners, at the least.)
Please name two white men who Trump has called low IQ.
It’s just past noon and there are ten thousand words as to Bob’s utter unworthiness and he’s not even a black female politician.
Delete"If Crockett gets 30/30 too, Trump will have to admit that she is not as low IQ as he pretends."
DeleteNo, he won't. He'll say "They gave her the questions in advance, just like they did with Crooked Hillary before the debate."
"This is how guys with little tiny weenies try to make themselves feel better."
DeleteYou know, you denied being Somerby's spurned ex, but now that you say you have personal knowledge of the size of his Johnson, I'm beginning to wonder.
The test is readily available, Trump too had the questions in advance (he has already taken the test several times), so that supposed pushback will fall flat.
Delete11:24, spot on! This is how you do it, you do not respond to trolls, you trigger them. Well done, keep it up!
..straightforward honesty...
Deleteif that corrupt lying sack of shit was any more crooked he'd screw himself into the floor
Somerby didn't realize Maddow was a lesbian until after he tried to ask her out and she shot him down?
DeleteThe things you learn on the internet.
We need to do everything we can to get women out of politics. At the presidential level we are 0 for 2. People expect certain things of their president and having a vagina is not one of them. People want presidents with penises. That's the way it's always been and that's the way it always will be.
DeleteJasmine Crockett would never come close to getting that far of course but still has the ability to do nothing but repel voters. The Grand Wizards in the Republican Party could not dream up a hotter mess than her. She's trouble with a capital T. Somebody ship her ass to a Diddy freak off where she belongs.
P.S. IQ tests are pseudoscientific
claptrap.
I think Crockett is funny. She knows how to get to the point of righty vulnerabilities in a colorful way.
DeleteOrnamental pumpkins?
ReplyDeleteThe Exorcist is staged in Georgetown and it has scenes of people walking thru those streets in the fall weather wth autumn leaves rattling and jack-a-lanterns flickering as a bit of foreboding.
DeleteBaltimore is close to DC, so we TDH readers can imagine Bob strolling thru those old neighborhoods in a raincoat and lace-up workboots, admiring the carved pumpkins. Life is good!
Everyday is Halloween for Cecelia, the man that pretends he is a woman, while reveling in other people suffering as a way to deflect from their own trauma-borne emotional pain.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:27pm, I’ve got you as my Sigmund Fraud. I’ve no complaints.
DeleteJeez Cecelia, I can here the squeak as you squirm in your chair, riled up by 1:27, who is a troll trying to trigger you, and for some reason you fell for it.
DeleteAt the direction of Somerby, I shall pity you.
Anonymouse 2:12pm, by all means, pity me if you wis. After all I do have a witless anonymouse typing at me.
DeleteLet's all recognize Cecelia's feelings of hurt and the resultant relational distancing.
DeletePsychologists analyze this behavior as a form of deflection, where the individual redirects attention away from their own perceived shortcomings by attacking the critic instead. This response can stem from a fear of vulnerability or a desire to protect self-esteem, often indicating deeper issues related to self-acceptance and emotional regulation.
Thanks for the psychological rigamarole but it would be far more helpful if you could explain why some weirdo keeps insisting, for no apparent reason, that Cecilia is a man.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:31pm, Dr. Fraud, how am I directing attention away from my “*own perceived* shortcomings” when the shortcomings were all merely accusations from you? I suggest your pretense at any knowledge of psychoanalysis is just a cover for your plodding humorlessness. You’re stuck with that.
DeleteHector - Weirdos are going to do what weirdos are going to do. What is more surprising to me is that we have several resident Anons who are quick to pounce on the slightest sniff of sexist behavior, but then become oddly quiet when it's a conservative woman who gets gender-slimed.
DeleteIt doesn’t bother me and the only reason I can think of as to why it would matter to an anonymouse is the fear that some male commenter might pull their punches with me. I can’t think of a time that has happened and if this anonymouse is that insecure she can take it up with her analyst - Dr. Corby.
DeleteYou'd think the use of a name would clear things up, if you didn't understand the internet.
DeleteI am Corby.
DeletePretending to be female on the internet is gender misappropriation.
DeleteWe know "what was going through his mind when he decided to level one part of the White House?" It was that he need to level an old part of the White House to make room for a new part.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, my intent is to mock Bob for referring to a useful improvement only in terms of what's lost. Whether the ballroom has greater value than the part of the East Wing it replaces is a valid question. But, it's wrong to discuss the project ONLY in terms of what's lost.
There was a way to preserve the historical value of the East Wing but Trump ignored that. His focus was on tearing down the wing before anyone could stop him, not preserving anything about the structure. As noted previously, he has a history of doing that -- look at the promises he made about saving historical remnants of Bonwit Teller, totally ignored by Trump -- a promise broken was a lie when he said it.
DeleteWhat is lost? The integrity of the president and any regard he might have had for the public will. Historical preservation of the efforts of a string of first ladies in both parties. What is gained? A place to sell tickets and receive bribes from business and foreign leaders while pretending to dine and dance.
Most of all, Trump has thrown away any pretense that he is a man of the people. He shit on the wishes of the governed in an obvious and humiliating way, rubbing our noses in his asserted right to do whatever he wants. Yes, that was lost when he was elected, but he didn't have to publicly humiliate those of us who care about historic buildings.
And this cannot be undone, although I hope the next person elected president will try to restore our previous historic legacy. It belongs to the people, not Trump.
12:09 If you think Trump has ever had any integrity to be lost, you haven’t been paying attention. There is a reason he attached himself to Roy Cohn as a mentor and Jeffrey Epstein as his best friend. He is trash and the fact that a third of the country likes the smell of human garbage explains their location in the deplorables basket.
DeleteIt's not his house.
DeleteSome of us are grateful for a major improvement in OUR house at no cost to us. I wish someone would donate money to build an extension on MY house at no cost to me.
DeleteDiC - Are you really so naive that you believe that the donors are doing this without expectation of future considerations?
DeleteYou're such a good little fascist Jew, Dickhead in Cal.
Delete"Are you really so naive that you believe that the donors are doing this without expectation of future considerations?"
DeleteDiC is naive about the things he wants to be naive about.
"He is trash and the fact that a third of the country likes the smell of human garbage explains their location in the deplorables basket."
DeleteWell said.
"I wish someone would donate money to build an extension on MY house at no cost to me."
DeleteAnd if we show up unannounced to begin demolition? You're fine with that?
This project needs to be discussed primarily in terms of corruption, which is the driving force behind most of Trump's actions. The second point to discuss is his sense of entitlement, where he thinks that he can make decisions like that without proper input.
DeleteI wonder what happened to all the historical collectibles taken out of the East Wing. Haha, just kidding, I am Uday and Qusay are taking good care of them.
DeleteI wonder what happened to all the historical collectibles taken out of the East Wing.
DeleteThey have been de-collectivized and are now in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.
When the monstrosity that dwarfs the White House is completed, Trump will call it the Trump wing. That is what this is all about. Any donors with business before this administration will be well paid for their efforts.
DeleteSomerby is an old prude from way back. But when did so-called family values become political? There are prudes on the left and right, and Taylor Swift's desire to get married and raise a family has nothing to do with her politics. This is a Republican attempt to claim a major star (who endorsed the Democratic candidate) for their own. She wouldn't want that and it is dishonest to attempt it.
ReplyDelete"When did family values become political?"
DeleteWelcome. When did you arrive?
Delete"Somerby is an old prude from way back."
I don't believe that is true. In fact, I believe the opposite is true. Whether it was Clinton with Monica or Trump with Stormy, Somerby was telling the prudes to get over it.
I agree, when it comes to male culpability, Somerby is less of a prude, but he becomes suddenly prudish when the supposed perpetrator is female and the supposed victims are male.
DeleteSwift is anti Trump, so Republicans have nothing to gain there. She can sing about whatever she wants - Dems do not care, male singers have been rhapsodizing about female body parts forever with nary a peep.
But when did so-called family values become political?
DeleteIn the 80's. Where hucksters like Falwell, with his Moral Majority, and Dobson, with his Focus on the Family. They were embraced by right wing politicians. It's common knowledge.
Come on David, take the next step. Defend President Trump’s poop video.
ReplyDeleteSince you’ve been begging for it, how about this- the poop video became the big story and it upstaged and stole attention and discussion away from the politics and issues that begat the protest and from the agenda of the protesters.
DeleteYou’re doing well, Cecelia. You’re showing David that it can be done. Next, you should both praise it, not just because it changed the discussion, but because it’s good in its technique and in its message.
DeletePoop does not have any biological sex markers, you can not tell if a poop was generated by a male or female, and this suits Cecelia fine as he is a man pretending to be woman.
DeleteUnfortunately for Cecelia, his narrative is not borne out by the facts; the result of Trump's poop video was not to distract from the protest, but was a self-own, a manifestation of Trump's cruel nature for all to witness. And indeed polls now indicate that Trump is currently the least popular president in modern history - that is the big story from Trump's poop video.
The poop video illustrates Trump's bigotry. Where is the female poop? The gay poop? The poop of color? The trans pee that identifies as poop?
DeleteAnonymouse 1:44pm, there’s nothing the media has said about Trump that hasn’t been aired to the public a million times. By taking the bait and making it a thing the media overplayed it, as usual and they sidelined the protest’s objectives and the good behavior of the protesters. The poop video will long outlive any details of the protests and nothing will change as to Trump.
Delete2:03 that is the kind of head in the sand thinking that will lose Republican votes.
DeleteThe protest has had a much larger impact than Trump's weird posting, which did not serve to memory hole the protest (there are more coming that are likely even larger), but did serve to make Trump appear cringe-y. Democrats have moved on from the poop thing but many Republicans are still clinging to it, likely because they thought it would be a big win but it did not turn out that way. We need to learn how to cut our losses, otherwise we keep shooting ourselves in the foot.
1:44 is correct, Trump has been losing in the polls, and the protests are making it worse as well as embarrassing responses like the poop post.
If Republicans want to keep voters, we need to do better than endorsing Trump's weirder inclinations, and do better than ignoring what is a huge protest movement. In fact, this seems to be Bob's project with TDH, to wake Republicans up to the fact that the grade school toilet humor of Trump/Gutfeld will harm us in the end.
Poop today, poop tomorrow, poop forever!
DeleteAnonymouse 2:25pm, the protests have been upstaged by the media’s attention to the poop video and the WH construction brouhaha. Different day, same channel. It doesn’t much matter if any of this stuff has energized your base, when you can’t get the media off the subject of the poop video and the ballroom fracas. THAT most certainly overran the No Kings protest. NOW the shutdown is looming large now, as is the SNAP card crackdown, let’s see how long it before Trump waves a string of yarn and you and the media go running after that.
DeleteCecilia, you come to me with the beef and bean.
DeletePoop has DNA. Cells slough from a person’s intestines. Poop also has red blood cells in it. So you can identify an individual’s poop and tell if they were male or female.
DeleteThere are also a lot of bacteria in poop.
Delete"A pair of major Democrats suggested that we the Blues should start to look with a clearer eye at our tribe's role in our society's dysfunction. "
ReplyDeleteWas Fetterman one of them? 'Cause if he was, I'm not taking advice from that guy.
Also, Douthat's take of "She's getting married, what a slut!" is perplexing.
ReplyDeleteSwift's lyrics in The Life of a Showgirl are a tad raunchier than we've come to expect from her.
DeleteAs always, follow the money:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wired.com/story/ice-is-building-a-24-7-shadow-transportation-network-across-texas/
I still love David and Cecelia.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete