FRIDAY: We recognize what Lawrence said!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2025

So went sacred Troy: This has been an exhausting week over here in the pea patch. 

In the metaphorical language we've developed in the past few years, the Achaeans are rather plainly coming over the walls. It may simply be their turn. 

It may be their turn! But we know of no obvious way to stop them—or to soothe their unregulated fury and their astonishing sense of entitlement.

(We're speaking here of office holders and pseudo-journalists, not of citizen/voters.)

Unregulated as their fury may be, it's often based on valid complaints. It's the size of the fury, and the new nihilism, which makes their assault so exhausting.

Last evening, on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell described the challenge presented by this assault as it has affected him. 

Click here, then move to minute 5. We've felt much the same way all week:

O'DONNELL (10/2/25): The New York Times simply doesn't know how to handle what Donald Trump says and does. I don't know how to handle it, either. 

I feel my way through the Trump mud every day. I don't confidently know what to ignore or what not to ignore.

But I do know I have to think about it. I have to think about it all the time. I have to think about it every day. I have to face it, and I have to decide what aspect of the Trump poison we should examine in the hour we have on this program.

In our view, O'Donnell has been the go-to guy on this topic over the past few months. We recognize the sentiments found in that declaration. 

For the record, Lawrence is paid good money to "think about it every day." It's possible that the counting of blessings might help him continue to push his way through.

We differ from Lawrence in at least one major way. We do believe that we the Blues have relentlessly earned our way out. 

In our view, many of the people coming over the walls are quite reminiscent of "madmen." (We're not talking about regular citizens/voters.) That said, many of the complaints which have spawned their unregulated fury strike us as valid and real. 

It's their inability to regulate their fury which makes their conduct so exhausting. And make no mistake:

Within the Fox News Channel realm—a realm which Lawrence doesn't discuss—the Achaeans are paid extremely good corporate money to behave in the ways they do.

We'd also tell you this:

Plainly, Lawrence feels that President Trump is some version of (seriously) "mentally ill." We've tried to suggest that you consider this possibility:

Someone who is (severely) "mentally ill" is someone who is ill.

In her probing best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough, the president's niece described the way her uncle came to be the way he is. In her assessment, he got a bad break at birth, and things spiraled downward from there, starting with his mother's disabling medical crisis when he was two and a half.

The president's niece has little use for the man he became. She did know how to suggest that we might want to pity the child.

She also noted that sociopathy ("antisocial personality disorder") is widely believed to be heritable, at least in part. Are some people born with a wire hanging loose? If so, they didn't ask to be born that way, or to be born to a father who was, in the opinion of the clinical therapist niece, himself a high-functioning sociopath. 

Beyond that, we'd have to say that we Blues have often dealt with this situation unwisely, if only due to the limitations which are part of the human condition. In the larger sense, we've earned our way out for the past sixty years. Suddenly, it seems that a bill has come due. 

In our view, we've earned our way out in various ways. (That doesn't mean that we're bad people—it means that we're people people.)

Is it true? Have we somehow earned our way out?  We've learned one thing in the past thirty years:

As a general matter, the human brain isn't built to sign on to assessments like that.

Still coming: The New York Times pretends to profile a Gutfeld enabler. Also, who was, or who may have been, the late Charlie Kirk?

Afternoon update: From Mediaite, here's a fuller transcript than we've provided of Lawrence's monologue last night.