SATURDAY: The very strange state the nation is in!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2025

Yesterday's report: The world isn't going to come to an end because the East Wing is no longer standing.

It's also possible that the replacement ballroom, if it really gets built, will come to bs seen as a valuable addition to the White House property.

This is also true:

Destroying the East Wing in the way the president did was a remarkably strange thing to do. Again, the reason for that assessment is obvious:

As president, he doesn't own the White House. Indeed, he doesn't even pay rent. The East Wing didn't belong to him, at least under current understandings. 

But then again, so what?

We still owe you a reaction to Michelle Goldberg's recent column for the New York Times. Headline included, the column started like this:

Trump Posted a Video of Himself Dumping Excrement on Our Cities. It’s a Glimpse of His Deepest Drives.

This weekend, I was surprised to learn that Donald Trump seems to see himself in the same way I do: as a would-be monarch spraying the citizenry with excrement.

On Saturday, perhaps stung by the enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests, Trump posted an A.I.-generated video on Truth Social that inadvertently captured his approach to governing. In it the president, wearing a crown, flies a “Top Gun”-style fighter plane labeled “King Trump” above American cities crowded with demonstrators, dumping gargantuan loads of feces on them. Amplifying it on social media, the White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”

That column principally concerned the videotape the president posted—the videotape in which he's dropping excrement on the heads of us the American people. We think she may have "taken the bait" in one way. We think she nailed something else.

First, the president posted that videotape. After that, the East Wing came down. Our advice to you would be this:

We advise you to look again at yesterday's report.

We'll have more on these topics next week. If the leading authority can be trusted, medical science has even identified the gene or genes by which this journalistically undiscussable state of affairs can be passed from parent to child.

PIECES OF WORK: At one time, he was two years old!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025

Howling into the void: President Trump has been on a bit of a jag of late.

First, he gave us the magic beds. Then he identified the Democrats as "the party of Satan."

Last weekend, he posted an AI videotape in which he himself is dumping mountains of excrement on the heads of his fellow Americans. Then he called the backhoe in and, as Bing Crosby once sang, "the walls came tumbling down."

At one point, he had been two years old—two and a half, to be more precise. Then, a terrible medical incident disabled his mother and made a bad situation worse.

Now, as sitting American president, he's dumping waste on the heads of the American people and, out in the literal realm, he has knocked a large chunk of the White House down. These last two behaviors were so peculiar that even our own major news orgs took note. But nothing is ever going to make these trusted elites in our own Blue America come to terms with what is sitting right there before them—with the apparent situation concerning which they've been warned.

In our view, it isn't surprising that the president is targeting iconic representatives of the country over which he presides. A familiar backstory may help explain the hostility which might imaginably be seem to be lurking in his devolving behaviors. But it was the book which was edited by the Yale psychiatrist which put Blue America's major journalists on a type of early notice.

The book was a New York Times best-seller, but it wasn't reviewed by the Times. It was published by MacMillan, but this page for the audiobook seems to be the only remaining official evidence of that connection:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump:
37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President — Updated and Expanded with New Essays

Author: Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div...

About This Book
As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount...

Has President Trump become "more erratic and dangerous?" Has he become dangerous at all?

That, of course, is a matter of judgement. But three years later, in the summer of 2020, the president's niece, a Ph.D.-wielding clinical therapist, published a second best-seller:

Mary L. Trump, PhD
Too Much and Never Enough:
How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

About The Book
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

Again, those judgments are matters of assessment, of personal and professional opinion. That said, the news orgs of Blue America had been issued a second warning. Their refusal to discuss such assessments has continued to the present say, with excrement raining down from the sky and the East Wing, all of a sudden, suddenly no longer there.

What might explain these manifestations? In the summer of 2020, the niece offered this:

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

"A case could be made," the doctorate-wielding niece now said. Just for the record, the leading authority on the syndrome in question presents the symptoms of that disorder in the following manner:

Antisocial personality disorder

[...]

DSM-5

The main text of fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) defines antisocial personality disorder as being characterized by at least three of the following traits:

• Failure to conform to social norms and laws, indicated by repeatedly engaging in illegal activities.
• Deceitfulness, indicated by continuously lying, using aliases, or conning others for personal gain and pleasure.
• Exhibiting impulsivity or failing to plan ahead.
• Irritability and aggressiveness, indicated by repeatedly getting into fights or physically assaulting others.
• Reckless behaviors that disregard the safety of others.
• Irresponsibility, indicated by repeatedly failing to consistently work or honor financial obligations.
• Lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another person.
• In order to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder under. the DSM-5, one must be at least 18 years old, show evidence of onset of conduct disorder before age 15, and antisocial behavior cannot be explained by schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

That stands as the basic (rather familiar) list. In simpler narrative fashion, the authority posits this:

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behavior that disregards the rights and well-being of others. People with ASPD often exhibit behavior that conflicts with social norms, leading to issues with interpersonal relationships, employment, and legal matters. The condition generally manifests in childhood or early adolescence, with a high rate of associated conduct problems and a tendency for symptoms to peak in late adolescence and early adulthood.

The prognosis for ASPD is complex, with high variability in outcomes...

[...]

People with ASPD may have a limited capacity for empathy and can be more interested in benefiting themselves than avoiding harm to others. They may have no regard for morals, social norms, or the rights of others. People with ASPD can have difficulty beginning or sustaining relationships. It is common for the interpersonal relationships of someone with ASPD to revolve around the exploitation and abuse of others. People with ASPD may display arrogance, think lowly and negatively of others, have limited remorse for their harmful actions, and have a callous attitude toward those they have harmed.

Just so you'll know, this branch of medical science holds that this syndrome—this unfortunate "mental disorder"—is perhaps more prevalent than one might suspect. Along the way in its lengthy presentation, the authority alleges this:

Prognosis

Boys are almost twice as likely to meet all of the diagnostic criteria for ASPD than girls and they will often start showing symptoms of the disorder much earlier in life. Children that do not show symptoms of the disease through age 15 will almost never develop ASPD later in life. If adults exhibit milder symptoms of ASPD, it is likely that they never met the criteria for the disorder in their childhood and were consequently never diagnosed. Overall, symptoms of ASPD tend to peak in late teens and early twenties but can often reduce or improve through age 40.

[...]

Epidemiology

The estimated lifetime prevalence of ASPD amongst the general population falls within 1% to 4%, skewed towards 6% men and 2% women.

The claim is something like a prevalence of six percent among men! Presumably, some afflictions of this "disease" (or this "disorder") are more substantial than others. But this is the general shape of the medical science which the major organs of our press corps have uniformly agreed to ignore.

For the record, medical science can always be wrong, and the very concept of "mental illness" (the term "mental disorder" is apparently now preferred) is much fuzzier—is much less clear—than is the concept of physical illness. When we say that someone is afflicted with a mental disorder, are we simply describing unusual conduct, or are we reporting a physiological impairment of some kind?

If our journalists would ever perform their function, we might see an informed discussion of an array of such points. Still, we already consider these assertions as made by the leading authority:

Causes

Personality disorders are generally believed to be caused by a combination and interaction of genetics and environmental influences. People with an antisocial or alcoholic parent are considered to be at higher risk of developing ASPD. Fire-setting and cruelty to animals during childhood are also linked to the development of an antisocial personality disorder, along with being more common in males...

[...]

Genetic

Research into genetic associations in antisocial personality disorder suggests that ASPD has some or even a strong genetic basis. The prevalence of ASPD is higher in people related to someone with the disorder. Twin studies, which are designed to discern between genetic and environmental effects, have reported significant genetic influences on antisocial behavior and conduct disorder.

In the specific genes that may be involved, one gene that has shown particular promise in its correlation with ASPD is the gene that encodes for monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), an enzyme that breaks down monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine. Various studies examining the gene's relationship to behavior have suggested that variants of the gene resulting in less MAO-A being produced (such as the 2R and 3R alleles of the promoter region) have associations with aggressive behavior in men.

This association is also influenced by negative experiences early in life, with children possessing a low-activity variant (MAOA-L) who have experienced negative circumstances being more likely to develop antisocial behavior than those with the high-activity variant (MAOA-H). Even when environmental interactions (e.g., emotional abuse) are taken out of the equation, a small association between MAOA-L and aggressive and antisocial behavior remains.

And on and on from there. In the case of the sitting president, some such "genetics" may have been contributed by his father, who is, rightly or wrongly, repeatedly described as a "sociopath" in Mary Trump's book. 

In this passage from that book, "Mary" and "Fred" are the president's parents:

Whereas Mary was needy, Fred seemed to have no emotional needs at all. In fact, he was a high-functioning sociopath. Although uncommon, sociopathy is not rare, afflicting as much as 3 percent of the population. Seventy-five percent of those diagnosed are men. Symptoms of sociopathy include a lack of empathy, a facility for lying, an indifference to right and wrong, abusive behavior, and a lack of interest in the rights of others. Having a sociopath as a parent, especially if there is no one else around to mitigate the effects, all but guarantees severe disruption in how children understand themselves, regulate their emotions, and engage with the world.

Children of sociopaths face a difficult road. So said the clinical therapist, and so says the leading authority, right there in paragraph 2 of its lengthy report:

The prognosis for ASPD is complex, with high variability in outcomes. Individuals with severe ASPD symptoms may have difficulty forming stable relationships, maintaining employment, and avoiding criminal behavior, resulting in higher rates of divorce, unemployment, homelessness, and incarceration. In extreme cases, ASPD may lead to violent or criminal behaviors, often escalating in early adulthood. Research indicates that individuals with ASPD have an elevated risk of suicide, particularly those who also engage in substance misuse or have a history of incarceration. Additionally, children raised by parents with ASPD may be at greater risk of delinquency and mental health issues themselves.

There's more, much more to the way the niece's account of the family history dovetails with the leading authority's lengthy account of the way this syndrome is born. That said, the American press corps has steadfastly refused to discuss this part of the niece's best-selling book. 

Today, the uncle is soiling and demolishing leading emblems of the American nation. As this continues, our news orgs will continue to be shocked, shocked by the puzzlingly "erratic" behavior the president puts on display.

Will he have to knock the whole White House down to shake these elites from their lethargy? The president's devolving behavior tracks the state of medical science, but what explains the endless refusal to perform exhibited by the biggest stars of our realm?

Is the sitting president "a real piece of work" at the present time?  Under the circumstances, we think possible danger is plainly suggested by his increasingly erratic personal conduct. 

As we say that, we remember to pity the child, but we also leap to say that the adult may in fact be a dangerous person, as those two best-selling books have asserted right in their titles.

Is the sitting president a real piece of work? You may or may not want to use that language. But if the president is a piece of work, what about the other people with whom he's now surrounded? And what can we say about our journalists, who will happily go over the cliff before they agree to report the state of our medical science?

In our view, his behavior is becoming stranger and stranger, but so perhaps is theirs. The state of the science, such as it is, is still being ignored—disappeared.

Tomorrow: Much, much more 

THURSDAY: A diatribe and a bogus claim...

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2025

Life at the Bezos Post: Opinion writers have been fleeing the Washington Post ever since Jeff Bezos began to submit. 

That process may have been hurried along when Bezos announced "that the newspaper's opinion section will focus on supporting 'personal liberties and free markets,' and pieces opposing those views will not be published."

In some ways, the paper seems changed. In other ways, it doesn't. In the past two days, we've read two submissions which seemed to come outta the new way of life.

We'll start with Becca Rothfeld's review of Karine Jean-Pierre's new book.

For the record, we don't assume that Jean-Pierre has written a useful or coherent book. We're a bit flummoxed just by its title:

Independent:
A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines
By Karine Jean-Pierre
Legacy Lit. 172 pp. $30

That subtitle strikes us as hard to parse. But then, Rothfeld swings into action, and we truly do start to feel lost:

In her new book, Biden’s former press secretary lets Democrats have it

Imagine parting ways with the Democratic Party not because of its unwavering support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he violated international law and waged a bloody campaign against civilians in Gaza; not because of its humiliating failure to mount meaningful opposition to the Trump administration’s assault on just about everything of value in the country; not because it continues to run candidates in their 70s and 80s, one of whom opted to die in office at 90 rather than cede her seat to someone younger; not because of its inability to expand access to health care, or protect immigrants, or tax the wealthy, or really get anything done at all; not because of its politely noncommittal affect and rhetoric of facile uplift, or its members’ tendency to address the public as if they are delivering the keynote at a corporate retreat; not because the Democrats have no political vision, something of a liability for a political party; but rather because of the single sensible—if very belated—thing they have done in recent memory, which was to usher a doddering Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race.

We fought our way through that opening pavement. In paragraph 2, things almost seemed to get worse:

These contortions are hard to imagine from anyone but the most devoted apparatchik, which is exactly what Karine Jean-Pierre is....

And so on from there, at remarkable length. 

According to the leading authority, we share a bit of the old school tie with the reviewer in question:

Becca Rothfeld
Becca Rothfeld (born 8 October 1991) is an American literary critic, and essayist. She won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and Silvers-Dudley Prize.

She attended Dartmouth College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Rothfeld later pursued a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Harvard University, but as of 2024 has not completed a dissertation. She is a book critic at The Washington Post.

We were once an undergraduate in that same department. The story we could tell!

Based upon her review, we'll guess that Rothfeld tilts toward Red, though that could always be wrong. We'll also guess that Jean-Pierre's book really isn't especially good—but based upon the tone of Rothfeld's review and based upon its ragged construction, we're inclined to agree with what AI Overview says about the roughly 600 comments:

AI Overview
The comments overwhelmingly criticize the article for being more of a political diatribe than a traditional book review. Many readers express dissatisfaction with the reviewer's perceived bias against the Democratic Party and Karine Jean-Pierre, arguing that the piece focuses too much on political opinions rather than the book's content...

We'll guess that the book may not be good. To our own refined ear, the review does read like a diatribe, and it just doesn't seem very good.

Yesterday, we fought our way through the book review. Today, we stumbled upon a bit of photo reporting, attributed to Amy B. Wang. Headline included, the report starts off like this:

Many presidents have renovated the White House. How Trump’s ballroom compares.

As construction is underway on President Donald Trump’s massive and extreme ballroom addition to the White House, images of part of the White House being torn down have caused a stir. It is not the first time the White House has undergone a major change in its more than 230-year history—nor the first time the changes have sparked controversy...

That almost sounds like someone may have been writing to spec. It sounds a lot like the official Trump Administration line—but as we clicked through the dozen captioned photographs portraying past changes to the White House, we found no claim that any of these relatively minor changes had actually been controversial, as the current demolition plainly is.

Our assessment? The woods are lovely, dark and deep, especially inside Harvard's Emerson Hall. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we the humans may not be built for this particular type of work.

PIECES OF WORK: Compagno is a piece of work!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2025

Sociopathy and the stupid: For starters, let the word go forth to the nations:

The world isn't going to come to an end because the sitting president has chosen to demolish the East Wing of the White House.

For whatever it may be worth, the behavior by the sitting president may not have been illegal. Given the endless complexification of all our American systems, that question will never be nailed down in any definitive way. But in this morning's New York Times, one experienced observer says this:

Architects Urged a Review of Trump’s Ballroom. Cue the Demolition Crew.

[...]

Edward Lengel, who served as chief historian of the White House Historical Association for two years until 2018, said he had been getting questions about the process. “People have asked me if this is illegal. I don’t think this is illegal,” he said. “I think this is a big loophole that has always been there. Previous presidents have observed precedent and not tried to exploit that loophole.”

Is Lengel right? We have no idea. But the president decided to have his way, and he tore that building down.

The world isn't going to come to an end, but the following ought to be said:

The White House doesn't belong to the sitting president. He doesn't even pay rent.

The White House, including each of its wings, is the property of the United States government. The complex belongs to the American people—or at least, that used to be the case, before the current regime came to town.

L'etat, c'est moi, the new monarch has said. This has produced dual headlines such as these, as found in today's New York Times:

Trump Is Wasting No Time in Tearing Down the East Wing
President Trump initially said the ballroom construction would not dismantle parts of the White House. His officials now say it is cheaper and more structurally sound to simply demolish the East Wing.

Trump Dismisses Another Inspector General, Fueling Oversight Concerns
With the firing of the Export-Import Bank’s inspector general, the president has sidelined around two dozen of the watchdogs who seek out fraud and mismanagement in federal agencies.

Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances
The president has placed proponents of his false claims into government jobs while dismantling systems built to secure voting, raising fears that he aims to seize authority over elections ahead of next year’s midterms.

The second and third of those headlines today may involve points of greater concern. But the president's decision to demolish the East Wing, absent any consultation and in the face of previous claim, suggest s a very important point:

If this president isn't a sociopath, he may be able to fill the bill until a real sociopath comes along.

Is something wrong with President Trump? With the people currently around him?

We've asked and we've asked and we've asked and we've asked. As we noted again, the finer people in Blue America aren't willing to go down that road. That said:

In recent weeks, he has given us a bizarre Truth Social post about those magic beds. He has told us that the Democratic Party is "the party of Satan."

He has posted a video in which he dumps barrels of human waste on his opponents' heads. And he has demolished the entire East Wing, in the face of previous statements of assurance.

Is something wrong with this man? To her credit, his niece was able to pity the child who was born to her own grandfather, who she describes as a sociopath.

That said, she speculated that her uncle may may also be a "sociopath." His demolition of property which wasn't his may seem to support some such tragic hypothesis.

Is something clinically wrong with President Trump? If so, that's a human tragedy—but your journalists have sworn not to ask.

That said, our rapidly failing society may be afflicted with something which even worse. Forget about the possible "sociopathy." Let's turn to the monstrously Stupid.

Last night's Gutfeld! program was worse. But for now, we're going to start with the opening segment of yesterday's The Five.

Thanks to the works of the Fox News Channel (and others), our society is awash in the artefacts of the astoundingly Stupid. Yesterday afternoon, at 5 o'clock sharp, guest co-host Emily Compagno, reciting obediently, introduced Segment One:

COMPAGNO (10/22/25): Hello, everyone. I'm Emily Compagno...It's 5 o'clock in New York City, and this is The Five.

The liberals are wokesing [sic] themselves into peak derangement over the construction of Trump's big, beautiful ballroom.

Hillary Clinton said, quote, "It's not his house. It's your house. And he's destroying it."

Compagno gave two more examples of deranged complaints by the libs. And then, she was even willing to read what follows. From the teleprompter to her lips to Red America's ears:

COMPAGNO: Never mind that Barack Obama built his basketball court, Richard Nixon rolled in a bowling alley, and plenty of other presidents did a little home renovation of their own. But President Trump adds a tax-payer free ballroom and suddenly the left is doing the meltdown mambo.

No, you can't get dumber. At 5:05, we got this:

COMPAGNO: I want to talk about the hypocrisy, for example, of Hillary Clinton chiming in. Her husband was one of those presidents. He, for example, brought the putting green closer to the Oval Office, so after he enjoys his cigars, he can take less steps?

She personally oversaw a complete renovation of the inside of the dining room. The list goes on. Are they going to exhume Woodrow Wilson for destroying the colonial garden?

No, you can't get dumber.

Bill Clinton moved the putting green, apparently to the original site of President Eisenhower's putting green. President Nixon installed a one-lane bowling alley in the White House basement.

To Compagno, demolishing the entire East Wing, absent any consultation and in the face of previous reassurance that the East Wing wouldn't even be touched, is an action on the order of such renovations as that.

The reference to President Clinton's cigars was the mandated bow to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. People like Compagno insist on playing these games in support of the president they revere—the president who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 28 women, the president who is refusing to release the Epstein files.

Also, and just for the record:

In 1913, it was apparently Mrs. Woodrow Wilson who "destroyed the colonial garden." Actually, she replaced the colonial garden with what came to be called the Rose Garden, as you can recall in this report from The White House Museum.

Thanks to the leading authority on the topic, the story of the putting green can be remembered here. The (one-lane) basement bowling alley can be seen in the photographs which accompany this report.

Bill Clinton moved the putting green from one spot to another! But so it goes what an inveterate nutcase like Compagno starts pushing the corporate line—and this tribalized hysteria is now a major part of the failing American discourse. 

This imitation of human life takes place on the Fox News Channel from 5 a.m. right on into the night. There are plenty of real complaints which can be made, in a serious way, about Democratic Party governance and Blue American cultural positions—but the CEO of the Fox News Channel is determined to send in the clowns.

"There's no way to spin this," Compagno finally said, as she threw to Jesse Watters. "He's doing this for the people," she confidently announced.

"You're very excited today, aren't you, Emily?" Watters surprisingly said. Soon, he was offering his own irrelevant presentation about "the East Wing, or whatever you call it"—and yes, that's what he said

Remarkably, the messenger children of the Fox News Channel maintained this level of inanity all through the long broadcast night. If Clinton could move a putting green fifty yards, why couldn't President Trump demolish an historical building?

The rolling performance culminated in what may have been the craziest 17 minutes we've ever seen on an American "cable news" broadcast. We refer to the first 17 minutes of last evening's Gutfeld! show, during which Kat Timpf—the New York Times recently portrayed her as a beleaguered feminist—provided a striking account of the source of the fury within this stupidified tribe of lost, highly paid boys and girls.

You can't get dumber than what Compagno said. Because we've seen her many times on Gutfeld! shows, we weren't surprised by her rapid-fire anger or by her apparent true belief.

Needless to say, the producers who had fashioned her opening had been working from script. The Trump White House had already fashioned this brain-dead account of the way President Wilson "demolished the colonial garden." 

The channel, a mouthpiece for Trump, cut and pasted from there.

That said, the siting president has knocked the walls down—and he keeps firing providers of oversight. Along with that, it's the magic bed, and the plane dumping feces on the public's heads, and the Dems as "the party of Satan."

This is where our rapidly failing culture currently stands. In the face of our own Blue American silence, will there be some coming back?

Tomorrow: What Michelle Goldberg says she saw as the feces came raining down