WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025
...tried to perform a fact check: It's increasingly painful to observe what sits in the place of our failed American discourse.
Last night, for example, Stephanie Ruhle was back from a late summer absence. Sadly enough, reality forced her to deal with these statement by the sitting American president:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (9/2/25): Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now...
We'll, we're going in [to Chicago with federal troops]. I didn't say when, but we're going in...
We have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country. And that includes Baltimore...
I’m very proud of Washington. It serves as a template. And we’re going to do it elsewhere. But Chicago is certainly going to be high.
Baltimore, "what they need is housing." No, they don’t need housing. They need is to get rid of the criminals.
We're showing you the snippets that Ruhle ran. "In the wickedness of the times" (Plato), we know of no place where a citizen can see a transcript of the president's full remarks.
In the next day or two, the invaluable Rev may produce such a transcript. Or then again, possibly not.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our discourse is barely breathing. Before we elaborate on that remark, we offer a minor aside:
We ourselves just spent a glorious weekend in one of the hellholes in question. The weather was astoundingly good, as was the glorious walking.
The longer weekend, mixed with the broadcast of several intriguing football games, produced a fugue-infested weekend here on the streets where we live. We recall what sacred Thoreau wrote in Walden, at the start of the chapter called Solitude:
Solitude
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath...
No, it wasn't quite that good. But we were out and about, in glorious weather, inside an American hellhole.
No hellhole is visible on the streets where we live. There may well be hellholes elsewhere in "fair Baltimore, the beautiful city"—in particular neighborhoods, on particular streets, within particular homes.
There may be hellholes elsewhere here. That said, the rantings and the rage of this disordered man won't likely be helpful at any point—and Ruhle was soon trying to fact-check his statements.
More specifically, she tried to offer a fact-check of this Truth Social post by the ranting commander in chief:
CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
In the end, such ranting won't likely be helpful.
It was still just 11:01 p.m. when Ruhle tried to perform a fact-check. The analysts groaned, then tore at their hair, when they saw her say this:
RUHLE (9/2/25): For fact's sake, Tijuana, Mexico has the highest homicide rate in the world. And despite Chicago being the third biggest city in America, its murder rate falls below red state cities like Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and St. Louis, Missouri.
Sad. According to FBI data, Chicago's murder rate is, in fact, far lower than the murder rates of quite a few American cities. But sad!
The size of a city isn't directly connected in any way to its murder rate! Please don't ask us to explain this remarkably bone-simple point.
Is Chicago "THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD," in the predictable way President All Caps decided to rant? This morning, we traveled across the pond to The Times of London in search of clarification.
As usual, the Times of New York is glossing—seems to be disappearing—President Trump's "hellhole" remarks. By way of contrast, The Times of London was actually willing to speak:
Trump to send National Guard to ‘hellhole cities’ in governor showdown
[...]
Trump has so far deployed members of the National Guard, a state-based reservist force, to Los Angeles and Washington, citing the high crime rates. On Tuesday morning, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!”
However, the three cities that had the highest murder rates in the US last year are all in Republican states, according to the latest FBI data. Birmingham in Alabama, St Louis in Missouri and Memphis in Tennessee recorded more than 40 murders per 100,000 people.
The next two cities with the highest murder rates in the US—Baltimore and Detroit—are in states with Democratic governors. Chicago recorded 17.5 murders per 100,000 people last year.
In fact, according to the FBI data, Chicago's murder rate is dwarfed by those in Birmingham and St. Louis. It's less than half the murder rate found in Memphis.
That said, none of this has much to do with the desire to address the horrors of violent crime. Neither does the incessant clowning of the clown-car sitting president.
The analysts screamed at the statistical illiteracy Ruhle introduced into her program. Soon, her producers were flashing her standard, embarrassing slogan as she introduced her first panel of guests:
LET'S GET SMARTER
By the time they were forced to see that silly slogan flash on the screen, the youthful analysts were openly weeping. In our minds, we returned to the themes of paralysis and (metaphorical) death found in the fifteen stories of Joyce's famous collection, Dubliners.
You may think we're picking nits when we complain about Ruhle's bungle. If you have some such reaction, we're forced to report that you're wrong.
With respect to the young Joyce's collection of stories, the question to which we return is this:
In some way, can we modern Americans see ourselves reflected somehow in his early stories? In the stories about the spiritual paralysis he though the saw within the Ireland of the early twentieth century?
Blinded by the flooding of the zone and by the speed of the modern news cycle, we Americans need to learn to see ourselves with more clarity. Can we possibly see ourselves in the early Joyce's first stories?
Was their "paralysis" our paralysis? Joyce described his intention in letters to the timorous publisher who kept refusing to publish Dubliners.
The publisher wanted certain parts of the stories to be softened, thrown away—disappeared. Joyce described his purpose thusly:
JOYCE (May 5, 1906): As for my part and share in the book I have already told all I have to tell. My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis...I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard. I cannot do any more than this. I cannot alter what I have written.
JOYCE (May 20, 1906): You cannot see anything impossible or unreasonable in my position. I have explained and argued everything at full length and, when argument and explanation were unavailing, I have perforce granted what you wished, and even when you didn’t ask, [sic] me to grant. The points on which I have not yielded are the points which rivet the book together. If I eliminate them, what becomes of the chapter of the moral history of my country? I fight to retain them because I believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country.
Joyce had just turned 24 when he wrote those letters. He believed that he had composed a "moral history of [his] country."
Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the Ireland of his youth was trapped is a form of "paralysis"—and the lengthy story which closed the collection bore this famous title:
The Dead
He believed he saw a type of paralysis gripping his nation back then. Is our own failing nation tapped in a type of paralysis now?
Unfortunately, there's little "paralysis" in the caterwauling emerging from the tribunes of Red America on a round-the-clock basis. If some such paralysis exists, it's found over here, with us Blues.
The analysts screamed when Stephanie Ruhle introduced that bone-simple bungle. The Times of London has already critiqued what the president said. As with other presidential screeds, it's being hushed up over here.
At any rate, the weather was beautiful, all weekend long, here in the heart of a hellhole. Children were attacking the sidewalks with chalk. Click here to enjoy a forgotten old song, the song called "The Baltimore Fire."
This afternoon: It came from the garbage can
Also, the lyrics: As sung by the New Lost City Ramblers:
"Fire, fire" I heard the cry
From every breeze that passes by
All the world was one sad cry of pity.
Strong men in anguish prayed
Calling out to heaven for aid
While the fire in ruins was laying
Fair Baltimore, the beautiful city.
