FAILS: Columnist cops to epic fail!

MONDAY, JULY 8, 2024

That said, have the fails been general? The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne has long been a good, decent person.

In a column in today's paper, he cops to an "epic fail."

That unflattering term belongs to Dionne himself. As we type, his column is listed as the third MOST READ article in the whole of the Washington Post.

Dionne says he committed this epic fail in an earlier column. The earlier column was published on June 23, four days before the recent Biden-Trump debate. 

In that earlier column, Dionne submitted to the lure of prediction, a latter-day form of prophecy—of attempts to interpret the fight of birds. 

According to Dionne's assessment, his prediction in that column has turned out to be wrong. Headline included from June 23, Dionne's failed prediction went exactly like this:

Forget conventional wisdom. Trump needs the debate more than Biden

[...]

Debates are not about everyone watching. Many will absorb it the way I took in the glorious Boston Celtics playoff run: as partisans rooting unreservedly for victory, cheering every great moment and worrying about every mistake.

To the extent that partisans matter at all, they are likely to be Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail. This, along with the 78-year-old Trump’s months-long denigration of Biden’s capacities at age 81, sets a low bar for Biden’s performance. Given his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses, he is likely to meet or surpass it.

That was Dionne's prophecy in his earlier column, the one he published on June 23. In today's column, he quotes that specific passage, and he calls it an epic fail.

Dual headline included:

The words about Joe Biden I never wanted to write
It’s hard to acknowledge that those who worried about Biden’s age may have been right all along.

[...] 

Among the many words I have written over the years, these, offered a few days before the debate, may have aged worse—and certainly more quickly—than almost any others. I poked fun at “Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail.” I predicted confidently that given the “low bar for Biden’s performance” and “his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses,” he would [sic] “likely to meet or surpass” expectations.

I think the contemporary expression for that prediction is: epic fail.

Predicting the future is hard! In today's column, Dionne puckishly refers to his prediction as an "epic fail."

Basically, it's true! In the June 27 debate, it's obvious that President Biden didn't "meet or surpass expectations." In fact, his performance trailed expectations to such an extent that it has created a political crisis which has yet to be resolved.

To his credit, Dionne has copped to that bad prediction. For today, we'll offer two more observations about that June 23 column. After that, we'll cite a different part of that original column—a part of the column in which Dionne was basically right.

Concerning the earlier column:

Ugh! In that earlier column, even Dionne chose to denigrate the people whose concerns about President Biden have perhaps turned out to be right.

In fairness, he didn't describe those people as "bedwetters," the current term of denigration from major elements of Blue America's elite. He didn't use that unfortunate term, but his statement that such people "need constant hand-holding" did come fairly close.  

Given the powerful state of play which now prevails between the nation's Red and Blue tribes, even a decent person like Dionne felt the need to denigrate those with whom he disagreed. And not only that:

As shown above, the sub-headline to Dionne's new column makes this slightly odd statement:

"It’s hard to acknowledge that those who worried about Biden’s age may have been right all along."

That matches something Dionne says in the actual column. Question:

Why should it be "hard to acknowledge" an apparent fact which Dionne himself now seems to affirm? Why not offer a tip of the cap to those whose assessment may have been stronger than his, if only in this one instance—to those who may not have purchased the talking-points which were driving Blue America's "thought leaders" as the debate approached?

Dionne didn't see the debacle coming. Presumably, the same is true of President Biden's campaign staff, or they would have moved heaven and earth to keep the debate from occurring.

Presumably, Biden's performance on June 27 doesn't represent the way he seems to be on a typical, round-the-clock basis. That said, there were many episodes in the past year which should have suggested the possibility that the president might not hold up well in a 90-monite debate.

Why didn't Dionne (and others) heed these warning signs? We'll ponder that important question as the week proceeds.

For today, we'll call it quits after performing one more service—after showing you part of Dionne's original column in which Dionne pretty much got it right. We refer to the part of the June 23 column in which Dionne advanced the highlighted point:

To the extent that partisans matter at all, they are likely to be Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail. This, along with the 78-year-old Trump’s months-long denigration of Biden’s capacities at age 81, sets a low bar for Biden’s performance. Given his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses, he is likely to meet or surpass it.

But there is a trap here for Biden, too: Because the “age issue” has been raised relentlessly against him, the media have a tendency to overlook or downplay Trump’s many moments of incoherence and even lunacy. Biden and his lieutenants must turn this side-by-side performance into an opportunity to have the two men judged by the same standards.

After denigrating the worried hand-holders, Dionne raised an excellent point:

He suggested that "the media" might hold Candidate Trump to a lesser standard in the aftermath of the debate. Given how awful Trump's performance actually was, we'd say that Dionne called his shot when he advanced that warning.

President Biden was awful that night, but so was Candidate Trump. That said, Biden's performance is currently being frisked in a way which seems to exceed the attention paid to the gruesome performance by Trump.

Does that suggest the possibility that an array of "epic fails" might be involved in the matter at hand? For example, that the unflattering term might characterize the way this ersatz election campaign has been covered, in recent years, by our ersatz mainstream press? 

Dionne has copped to an epic fail. We can't say his specific confession is wrong. 

But has it been epic all the way down? Repulsive fails in Red America (though only of a certain type), but relentless, unacknowledged fails in our own Blue America too?

Tomorrow: Calling the roll of the possible fails

This afternoon: In our view, a rather strange fact-check

SUNDAY: CNN's Blackwell noticed something!

SUNDAY, JULY 7, 2024

Having noticed, he asked: To his credit, Victor Blackwell did his job—performed his role within our failing "democracy."

Victor Blackwell had noticed something. Having noticed, he asked!

Blackwell serves as host of CNN's early morning weekend program, First of All. To his great credit, he noticed something yesterday.

Such people rarely do.

Blackwell had noticed something when he listened to a pair of radio interviews—major market radio interviews with President Biden. 

According to the New York Times, this is what we the people learned because of what Blackwell noticed:

Biden Aides Provided Questions in Advance for His Radio Interviews

The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by members of Mr. Biden’s team, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.

Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said Biden officials had provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday.

“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” she told Victor Blackwell, the host of “First of All” on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that had sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was.

“I got several questions—eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”

Simply put, but rather plainly, this sort of thing never stops. It never stops with the Biden team. In our view, the other team, broadly defined, may be even worse.

Later in the news report, readers are told why Blackwell asked this radio host about her interview with President Biden. He was speaking with the two (2) radio hosts, from two different radio stations, who had been given the chance to interview the president:

Mr. Blackwell, interviewing the two radio hosts Saturday morning, appeared surprised by the answer about the preapproved questions.

He had asked Ms. Lawful-Sanders about her four questions because he said he had noticed that they were almost identical to the four that Mr. Ingram had asked in his interview with Mr. Biden the same day.

Mr. Ingram, who was on Mr. Blackwell’s show with Ms. Lawful-Sanders, did not dispute her description of how the questions were selected.

“The reason I ask is not a criticism of either of you,” Mr. Blackwell told the two anchors. “It’s just that if the White House is trying now to prove the vim, vigor, acuity of the president, I don’t know how they do that by sending questions first, before the interviews, so that the president knows what’s coming.”

For the full CNN transcript, you can just click here.

For the record, the campaign (not "the White House") had provided the questions to the two radio hosts. As the Times news report describes, President Biden stumbled at times as he tried to answer them.

You may agree with Blackwell's assessment of this practice. Then again, you may not. 

Without question, the gaslighting of us the people can (and does) get much, much worse. That said, Biden officials have now said that they won't engage in this practice again.

All in all, we the people continue to live inside a ball of fictitions. 

Our presidential candidates seem like a pair of fictitions. They aren't fictitions in the same way, but they both seem like fictitions nonetheless.

Our journalists, and our other thought leaders, often seem like fictitions too. 

Our candidates frequently make statements which are inaccurate or incoherent. Sometimes, the statements they make are transparently crazy—are the apparent sign of a badly disordered mind.

Recent example, from Candidate Trump: 

ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.

That statement was transparently crazy. Sometimes, our journalists and our news orgs take notice of such transparently crazy statements. Remarkably often, they don't.

We're returning today to the framework introduced by Michael Moore at the 2003 Oscars. As we noted a few weeks ago, Moore introduced the framework—a new paradigm, built around a new word—in these brief remarks:

I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to—they are here. They are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction.

We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. 

Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or the fictitions of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush.

Moore invented a new term—a term we plainly need. That new term was "fictition." In our view, it's a useful word.

At the time, that was a partisan speech. Today, the state of fictition strikes us as being "general over [the nation]."

Today, the culture of fictition is grotesquely widespread. The human message machines on the Fox News Channel reek of round-the-clock fictition—but are the message machines on MSNBC really that far behind?

We'll explore such questions in the week which lies ahead. That said, who could have predicted such an event? 

CNN's Blackwell noticed something. Having noticed, he asked!

SATURDAY: Three takeaways from those 22 minutes!

SATURDAY, JULY 6, 2024

How did we get to this place? For starters, a frank admission:

 We don't know which of these plans is more likely to produce a win in November:

Plan A: President Biden is nominated as the candidate again

Plan B: President Biden steps aside. Someone else becomes the candidate through a makeshift nomination process

Our guess would be that we denizens of Blue America have already earned our way out—that sacred Troy is destined to die this fall. 

That said, anything can happen! With that in mind, we sat and watched President Biden's twenty-two minutes last night.

For the full transcript, just click here. We'll offer three reactions. 

For starters, we'll go with this. This is what was said at one point—but did this actually happen?

PRESIDENT BIDEN (7/5/24): Well, look. After that debate, I did ten major events in a row, including until 2 in the morning after the debate. I did events in North Carolina. I did events in—in in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no— no— no slipping. 

And so, I just had a bad night. I don't know why.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And how— How quickly did it, did it come to you that you were having that "bad night?"

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, it came to me I was having a bad night when I realized that even when I was answering a question, even though they turned his mic off, he was still shouting. And I— 

I let it distract me. I— I'm not blaming it on that, but I realized that I just wasn't in control.

Even though they turned his mic off, Candidate Trump was still shouting? Did that actually happen? 

Frequently, CNN aired a split screen during the debate. At such times, Candidate Trump was visible when President Biden was speaking.

We never saw or heard any sign that Candidate Biden "was still shouting" as the president spoke. Nor had we seen anyone make any such claim until last night.

We'd never seen anyone say that! Eight days later, this became the latest explanation for the president's "bad night."

Did that actually happen? We don't know, and Stephanopoulos didn't ask.  Meanwhile, President Biden said he still doesn't know why he had that historic bad night. 

We were puzzled by the claim that Candidate Trump was shouting. We came close to being actively offended by this:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The number of Americans who think you're too old to serve has doubled since 2020. Wouldn't a clear-eyed political calculus tell you that it's gonna be much tougher to win in 2024?

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Not when you're running against a pathological liar. Not when he hadn't been challenged in a way that he's about to be challenged. 

Candidate Trump is "about to be challenged?" When exactly was President Biden actually planning to start?

To all appearances, President Biden was running behind Candidate Trump as he walked on the stage that night. He was going to have two major opportunities to challenge his vastly disordered opponent.

One of those two opportunities lay before him that night. But after a disastrous performance, we're now told that Candidate Trump is "about to be challenged!" 

Here is the fuller exchange to which we refer:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The number of Americans who think you're too old to serve has doubled since 2020. Wouldn't a clear-eyed political calculus tell you that it's gonna be much tougher to win in 2024?.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Not when you're running against a pathological liar. Not when he hadn't been challenged in a way that he's about to be challenged. Not when people—

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've had months to challenge him.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Oh, sure, I had months, but I was also doin' a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working—

Anyway. But look—

"You've had months to challenge [Candidate Trump]," his interlocutor accurately said. 

It's true that President Biden, like any incumbent president, had many other things on his plate. That said, we'd be inclined to add this to what Stephanopoulos said:

President Biden has also had months—indeed, he's had more than three years—to perform the fundamental presidential function of speaking to us the people. 

Over the course of the past year, the president has been massacred with respect to what is happening at the southern border. He's been massacred with respect to various aspects of the cost of living (as distinct from the narrow technical meaning of "the inflation rate").

The president has had months and years to conduct a fireside chat, or an Oval Office address, in which he could have explained what he was doing in those two important arenas—in which he could have made it clear that he understands why so many people are concerned.

Like the silence of the absent God in Bergman's blubbering film, The Seventh Seal, the president has taken a pass on that obligation of office. He too has performed a vast silence with respect to those major concerns.

We would assume he hasn't explained himself because, for reasons which may lie beyond his control, he hasn't been capable of doing so. 

Tragically, his ability to explain himself may lie beyond his control. But in the process on performing that silence, he has slid behind the most disordered presidential candidate in modern American history.

In our view, he's taken a pass on a major obligation of office. That said, we denizens of Blue America have been happy to stand in line to repeat unconvincing scripts about how amazingly great he has been.

We'll skip the early part of the interview in which the president said he "doesn't think" he "ever watched the debate afterwards."

Eight days later, he doesn't know if he has ever watched the tape of the debate? We found that answer weirdly hard to believe. Stephanopoulos let it go.

Completing the rule of three, we'll let you ponder this exchange as the discussion continued:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've had months to challenge him.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Oh, sure, I had months, but I was also doin' a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working—

Anyway. But look—

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you really believe you're not behind right now?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I think it's in— All the pollsters I talk to tell me it's a tossup. It's a tossup. And when I'm behind, there's only one poll I'm really far behind, CBS Poll and NBC, I mean, excuse me. And— uh—

STEPHANOPOULOS: New York—New York Times and NBC both have, have you about six points behind in the popular vote.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: That's exactly right. 

In fairness, it's conventional for a candidate who's running behind to say that he doesn't believe the polls are right.

That said, President Biden may be the only person in the country who believes the race is a tossup at this point. Beyond that, recent history suggests that the Democratic candidate has to win the popular vote by at least several points to squeak out a narrow win in the electoral college.

If that recent history holds, that means a tie goes to Candidate Trump! With that possible outcome in mind, might we talk Tom Turkey?

President Biden was never a major political talent on the national level. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were. Joe Biden never was.

That isn't a moral assessment. Almost no one qualifies as a major political talent on that scale. Almost no senators qualify. Also, almost no governors.

That isn't a moral assessment. But even when he was at his best, President Biden didn't possess those rare abilities. Almost no one does.

Today, we would assume that President Biden's abilities have been diminished to some degree by some undiagnosed medical problem. Obviously, that isn't a moral failure either—but the reaction of his inner circle to this unfortunate state of affairs pretty surely is.

Under Plan A, he stays in the race. Under Plan B, he doesn't.

Anything can still happen, of course. But it seems to us that sacred Troy is likely destined to die under either of those approaches. Also, it seems to us we denizens of Blue America have relentlessly earned our way out. 

In the coming week, we'll start to explain that assessment. On Monday, we'll start with the ridiculous performance by Candidate Trump at last Thursday's debate. 

Long ago and far away, "Candidate Dukakis" made this exasperated statement as part of a famous sketch on Saturday Night Live:

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"

Sacred Troy now seems to be losing to Trump. The question we need to ponder is this:

How did we get to this place?

The lonesome death of FDR!

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 2024

The things we the people aren't told: In his new column for the Washington Post, David Ignatius reviews some of the history of presidential health evets in the 20th century.

He starts with Woodrow Wilson:

IGNATIUS (7/5/24): Past presidents have struggled with problems of old age, but public discussion has usually been suppressed. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a pre-stroke breakdown in late September 1919 (“I don’t seem to realize it, but I seem to have gone to pieces,” he said). Then came a debilitating stroke on Oct. 2. But Wilson officially served out the last year of his term, largely invisible. His wife, Edith, took control, writing in her memoirs that she decided “what was important and what was not,” according to biographer August Heckscher.

For well over a year, so it went.

The lonesome death of Franklin Roosevelt is a sadder and richer story. In the middle of the war against the Third Reich, he successfully struggled to election for a fourth term. 

After serving only five weeks of that term, he died at 63 years of age:

IGNATIUS (continuing directly): President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s frailty was obvious a year before his death on April 12, 1945. But, again, it was shielded from public view. Biographer Jean Smith writes that by the early spring of 1944, “the president was slowing down: the dark circles under his eyes grew darker; his shoulders slumped; his hands shook more than ever when he lit his cigarette.”

A doctor examined FDR that spring. His heart was enlarged; his blood pressure was 186 over 108. He was slowly dying, but his wife, Eleanor, and his inner circle pulled the veil of privacy tight. As FDR grew weaker, he made one decisive move: He replaced Vice President Henry Wallace with Harry S. Truman. It was one of the wisest and most consequential decisions of his presidency, for Truman turned out to be a president who could safeguard the future.

This (relatively young) wartime president struggled forward in the face of vast health challenges, and in the face of impending death. The leading authority on this history offers this brief account:

When Roosevelt returned to the United States [in February 1945] from the Yalta Conference, many were shocked to see how old, thin and frail he looked. He spoke while seated in the well of the House, an unprecedented concession to his physical incapacity. During March 1945, he sent strongly worded messages to Stalin accusing him of breaking his Yalta commitments over Poland, Germany, prisoners of war and other issues...

On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations.

In the afternoon of April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia, while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, Roosevelt said: "I have a terrific headache." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom.

Continuing: 

"The president's attending cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive intracerebral hemorrhage. At 3:35 p.m., Roosevelt died at the age of 63."

What might this history suggest with respect to the matter at hand? Needless to say, you can teach it flat or you can teach it round. Our general impression would be this:

Here in Blue America, the people we're trained to trust have perhaps behaved rather poorly over the past year or so, and they continue to do so today. We know of no obvious way out of the current dilemma.

At any rate, we the people weren't aware of the medical situations involving Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt. Beyond that, a fair amount of secrecy was maintained about some of President Kennedy's health challenges—and, needless to say, about aspects of his personal conduct during his years in the White House.

(More on that below.)

Also, there's the case of former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), a major presidential candidate in the 1992 Democratic primaries and by all accounts a good, decent person. He died in January 1997, at age 55, two days before his first term as president would have ended. 

Due to a previous episode with cancer, he had worked quite hard, during Campaign 1992, to tell us the people that he had no serious health concerns. Needless to say, the press corps anointed him as the fearless truth-teller in the campaign, as opposed to the Big Liar Bill Clinton.

(As politicians so favored may tend to do, Candidate Tsongas sometimes seemed to agree with this standard bit of casting.)

It's our impression that the Biden team has perhaps behaved rather poorly in recent years. It's also our impression that it's too late to do anything about the situation which exists, and that Donald J. Trump is quite likely to end up back in the White House.

Many different groups have contributed to this situation down through the many long years. If it's the simple truth you want, we self-impressed denizens of Blue America have been one part of the problem, though the chances are slim that you'll ever convince us of any such fact.

That said, also this: We denizens of Blue America! (Most especially, we refer to the people who have scripted us, down through the years, from their roles within the upper-end mainstream press.)

We Blues! We still love Dear Jack and his glamorous wife! For that reason, we disappear the 19-year-old actual intern he crudely procured and assaulted during his term in the White House.

In fairness, it was a different time, and according to at least one major biographer, he and his brothers had been very poorly raised, with respect to such matters, by their lecherous father. That said, the appalling story was finally told in 2012, in an extremely well written memoir, and we're fairly sure that no one actually doubts the truth of what was described in that thoughtful, well-composed book.

That said, so what? We simply continue on preferred paths, as if Mimi Alford's story had never been told:

For example, we continue to be shocked at the thought of the fictitious "21-year-old intern" who was neither 21 nor an intern during the period in question. 

Most pathetically, we insist that we somehow needed to know if Donald J. Trump had consensual sex, on one occasion, ten years before he ran for president, with a fully grown adult woman who shockingly wasn't his wife.

We continue to love and revere Dear Jack. On the vastly other hand, we very, very strongly feel that we needed to know about that!

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our main impressions at present are these:

Cummings got his reporting right about the way "humanity" tends to behave. Also, it's possible that our flawed human race wasn't built for this line of work!

FRIDAY: Citizen Scarborough, back from camp!

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 2024

What New York's correspondent has said: When we awoke this morning, C-Span 2 was re-airing this broadcast from a twelve-part series last year:

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Books That Shaped America
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass  

In part four of Books that Shaped America, historian, author, and Howard University professor Edna Greene Medford explored the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the first autobiography of abolitionist Frederick Douglass after his escape from slavery, published in 1845...

We're going to go ahead and admit it. When the conduct of Edward Covey was described, it called Greg Gutfeld to mind. 

Yesterday, we spent a chunk of time attempting to research the peculiar claim which formed the basis for the second segment on Wednesday night's Gutfeld! program. 

The termagant—perhaps more accurately, the little chimp—and his usual assembly of hacks spent the segment making a joke of what's left of "our democracy." We'll have to postpone our report on the way they leaped about, flinging their poo, until tomorrow at best.

Today, there's only one report you should be reading online. We refer to the new post by Kevin Drum, a post which starts off like this:

The press and Joe Biden

Has the press been covering for Joe Biden over the past few months? Until now I've considered this to be little more than typical Fox News nonsense, but I'm beginning to wonder...

Why has Kevin started to wonder about what the (mainstream) press has been doing? At that point, he links to a lengthy report by New York magazine's Olivia Nuzzi—and he posts excruciating excerpts from her lengthy report.

Nuzzi's lengthy report sits behind a paywall. The excruciating excerpts which Drum has posted are available for all to see. 

As he starts, Kevin says he's beginning to wonder about the past conduct of the mainstream press. But if Nuzzi's detailed account is accurate, it's hard to believe that anyone would still have to wonder about President Biden—more specifically, about his fitness to continue to serve for almost five more years at this point.

For ourselves, we've always tended to place an asterisk next to Nuzzi's work. We've done so because of what we regard as the somewhat unattractive way she broke into the upper-end press, way back in the somewhat better old days.

That said, we agree with Kevin's assessment, except perhaps a bit more so:

DRUM: As Nuzzi acknowledges, she's been skeptical of Biden's stamina for years, and is hardly a Biden family favorite. Still, there's no reason to believe she's making this up.

"There's no reason to believe she's making this up?" For the record, Nuzzi's report takes us well beyond an assessment of "Biden's stamina." That said, we would tend to agree with what Kevin says.

For ourselves, we've seen footage of President Biden, again and again, in which he displays what we would regard as an unmistakable look. Such tape has been widely aired on the Fox News Channel, has been disappeared everywhere else.

We've been actively concerned about President Biden since last August. A few weeks later, major insider David Ignatius wrote the mild-mannered column in the Washington Post in which he suggested that President Biden shouldn't seek re-election.

(For the record: Even then, Ignatius was able to report this: "According to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll, 77 percent of the public, including 69 percent of Democrats, think he’s too old to be effective for four more years." That's what respondents were saying even way back then.) 

Few insiders stepped up to agree with that column by Ignatius. As the months went by, the president appeared in public less and less often.

He made few attempts to speak about the major issues which were dragging him and his party down. With respect to the cost of living, he chose to adopt a ludicrous focus on the evils of "shrinkflation."

Then came the amazing performance at last Thursday night's debate. The other candidate's performance was utterly ludicrous, though in a more familiar way.

Adding the little chimp into the mix, this is the state of "our democracy" on this Fifth of July. Regarding the workings of us the people, we'll direct you to two observable sources:

First, we'll suggest that you scroll through the comments to Kevin's post. It's filled with comments by angry partisans who insist that there's nothing to see here—that this phony point of concern has all been made up. 

Some don't seem prepared to believe their own lyin' eyes! Here are four of the first five original comments:

COMMENT 1: [This has] been going on for months and you're only now, just now, hearing about it, at this carefully choreographed, time-critical moment?

What this is they're trying to reflect back all the bad press Trump has been getting about his mental state, and there is nothing else here at all.

COMMENT 2: Or they all could be orchestrated anonymous GOP ratf*ckers. YOU make the call! PS: Remember how HRC was at death's door in 2016? Have we learned nothing?

COMMENT 4: Olivia Nuzzi was saying this in 2020, before Biden's impressive to very impressive accomplishments over the last three-plus years. And told in the first person? Who does she think she is, Hunter Thompson?

I'll give her gonzo points though for saying the President didn't know who she was, as if it was evidence of mental decline as opposed to evidence that she's extremely small potatoes, butt-hurt potatoes at that.

COMMENT 5: Sigh. Look, it MAY be that there really HAS been significant deterioration very recently. It hasn't been materially evident at other public events (deliberate barbering of things like video from the Normandy remembrances notwithstanding), but mmmmaybe so.

One thing that IS clear is the overt bias—hell, active favoritism—of much of the major media... I don't put ANY stock in what the Olivia Nuzzis of the world publish.

IF there is a "conversation" to be had, I have confidence in the people around Biden—Dr. Jill, Obama, his Three Wise Men, Schumer, et al.—to have it, and I have confidence in him to have the wisdom and self-awareness to listen to it—very much UNlike the Felon, I would add. And if it leads to action, we'll hear about it.

With respect to Commenter 1, are we hearing about this at a "carefully choreographed moment?"

For whatever it may be worth, the moment in question follows directly upon the most peculiar debate performance in modern political history.

Meanwhile, Olivia Nuzzi is small potatoes—butt-hurt potatoes at that! The commenters don't place any stock in what "the Nuzzis of the world" may report.

It could be that Nuzzi's just quoting GOP ratf*ckers! By way of contrast, we can trust the people around President Biden—and we can trust President Biden himself. If they decide to make a move, eventually we'll be told!

If we might borrow from Robert Frost at this point:

Trust us, The Voices said.

The fifth commenter has confidence in the people around the president. The commenter also has "confidence in him to have the wisdom and self-awareness" to do the right thing.

For better or worse, some people never stop trusting The Voices! Meanwhile, let's state a point which is blindingly obvious:

If President Biden has slipped around a type of bend, he now lacks the type of judgment required to make sound decisions. He would now lack that type of judgment, like Senator Feinstein before him.

Anthropologically speaking, it isn't clear that we the people—that our vastly limited species—is wired for this sort of work. The meltdowns which have brought us to this point have involved the conduct of many groups—but those of us in Blue America have been an active part of this process, dating back three or four decades, or possibly five or six.

Then too, there was this:

We were surprised to see Joe Scarborough back on today's Morning Joe. He'd been away, on what was described as "a vacation," all week. It was surprising to see him back on the air for just one show, on the Friday of a four-day holiday weekend no less.

To appearances, Scarborough was back from a successful stay in re-education camp, where he was taught to say different things about President Biden's performance. We'll offer examples of what we mean when the links become available.

Meanwhile, we human beings don't seem to be built for this type of work! In our view, the bitter and caustic E. E. Cummings pretty much had it right, though only in his reporting about humanity, not in his moral assessment.

Nuzzi's report is a kick in the pants, but it's one of many such reports emerging on this topic. We ourselves became actively concerned last August, based on something we saw right there on our TV machine as we watched a live event on CNN.

Along the way, Vladimir Putin seems to have placed a wager. He seems to have wagered that we won't be able to make this work.

The strongman seems to have paced a wager. As President Biden slides in the polls, is "Putin's wager" in the process of possibly paying off?

Tomorrow: What the chimp, and his court of baboons, offered this Wednesday night

WAGERS: There will (likely) be blood, we've been told!

THURSDAY, JULY 4, 2024

Blue America's wager: The Iliad describes one small slice of a fictional war between two civilizations.

The dueling forces are sharply distinct. In his introduction to the 1990 Fagles translation, Professor Knox lays it out:

The background of the rage of Achilles is a war between the assembled armies of the Achaean [Greek] cities and Troy, a rich, fortified city on the coast of Asia Minor near the Hellespont, the narrow western outlet of the long passage from the Black Sea to the Aegean. For the Greeks of later ages, the Iliad was history. 

[...]

The first city we hear of in Greek literature is Troy. It is characteristic of the Iliad's tragic viewpoint that this city, the literary prototype of all Greek cities, is to be destroyed. The poem ends before Troy falls, but we are left in no doubt about its fate. One of the deep sources of the tragic force of the Iliad is that the city of Troy is doomed, doomed go down in fire and slaughter under the assault of the Achaeans, whose cities are far away and half-forgotten in the long siege, whose home for ten years has been the raw world of tent shelters and beached ships.

Homer's Troy has been assigned a few traits that sound Oriental (or at any rate non-Greek)—Priam's fifty sons, for example—but it is still recognizably a Greek polis. It is a site chosen with an eye to defensive capabilities, with a high eminence that serves as a citadel, a sacred area for the temples and palaces. It is near the junction of two rivers, and it depends on the produce of the surrounding plain, which is rich plowland and grows wheat. It is fortified against attackers: it is well-walled and well-built. it has steep ramparts and gates. These fortifications enclose a vision of civilized life, the splendors of wealth and peace. 

[...]

Inside Troy the manners of civilized life are preserved; there are restraints on anger, there is courtesy to opponents, kindness to the weak—things that have no place in the armed camp on the shore. In the city, those who have most cause to blame, even to hate. Helen, the old men of Troy, members of the council. murmur to each other praise for her beauty—as they express their wish that she would go back to the Achaeans; and old Priam, who has lost sons because of her presence in Troy and will lose more—Hector above all, and all Troy with him—Priam too treats her with kindness and generous understanding.

Unfortunately for Troy, the Trojans have the defects of their qualities: they are not so much at home in the grim business of war as their opponents...

Troy is not at peace: it is under siege, and by men who mean to raze it from the face of the earth. The arts of peace are useless now. 

Hector is a brilliant warrior. But in the end, even he won't be able to hold off the furious men who have now been camped, for almost ten years, in their ships down by the shore.

All in all, it's hard to argue with Professor Knox's portrait. As we see it in the Iliad, Troy is a place of civilized values—but it's under siege by an armed camp of furious men who mean to raze it from the earth.

Decades later, on a different continent, a group of mainly wealthy men triggered a different real-life war. In a well-known document, they authored what they called a "pledge," though you might also call it a wager.

For reasons we've never understood or seen explained, they decided to declare a form of independence from the world's greatest military power. They gambled that, in the bloodshed which was sure to follow, they wouldn't be captured and hung.

We've never really understood why they wanted to do that—but now we're engaged in another great war. And as with Troy, so too perhaps here:

The small, tiny virtues of Blue America may not be enough to withstand the rage of this latest revolt. 

Over here in Blue America, we like to present ourselves as the highly civilized, wondrously admirable modern American demographic. In our own view, we Blues would be well-advised to just get over ourselves.

A large amount of self-deception is involved in that flattering self-portrait. But over the weekend, a major player from Red America—a major player from the camp by the shore—seemed to say that there will almost surely be blood.

The report appears deep inside this morning's New York Times. There may be blood, a major Achaean has now declared:

Heritage Foundation Head Refers to ‘Second American Revolution’

The president of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has developed a prominent series of policy plans to overhaul the federal government under a Republican president, said on Tuesday that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The group’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, made the comments in an interview on “The War Room,” the Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s show on the network Real America’s Voice. (Mr. Bannon himself did not host the show on Tuesday, because he reported to prison the day before to serve a sentence for contempt of Congress.)

Thus spake our own inflamed Agamemnon! What's coming "will remain bloodless," he said—but only if we modern-day Trojans submit.

The warrior Roberts is promising blood? So too with Candidate Trump.

He's been visibly disordered for years. Blue America's multimillionaire corporate tribunes have shown little sense, down through the years, of the way to bring that news to anyone who isn't already numbered among their "favorite reporters and friends."

As they keep preaching to the choir, a furious onslaught advances. Last Sunday, the former president reposted this proposition on his deranged social media site:

ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.

For CNN's report, just click here. In a second Truth Social post, the fellow in question presented photos of 15 former and current elected officials as he offered this further musing:

THEY SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL ON MONDAY NOT STEVE BANNON!

As for Bannon, his recent interview with David Brooks strikes us as highly instructive. For now, thought, back to Trump:

At present, this sadly disordered person is the odds-on favorite to be the next presdient. He wants a military tribunal for Liz Cheney—and, according to one wingman, there may not have to be blood!

Candidate Trump has been visibly crazy for a very long time. Those recent posts have resulted in very little mainstream news coverage. 

They will never be mentioned by the corporate hacks who beat the drums on the Fox News Channel. That channel's viewers are never told about the crazy things this visible nutcase says.

In Blue America, our big news orgs tend to avert their gaze from that manifest lunacy too. How have we Blues responded to this onrushing revolt from below? 

Sad!

Over on our own nation's channel, Rachel Maddow churned her way through two (2!) hours with Stormy Daniels this past Tuesday night. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our highly civilized tribe may be too clueless to survive.

We've pledged our lives and our sacred honor to the insights of people like this! Meanwhile, on the Fox News Channel, a certain furious termagant was at it again last night:

Astoundingly, he once again told millions of sweltering viewers that climate change is a hoax. Needless to say, he engaged in his usual badinage, in which President Biden is constantly said to be sh*tting his pants.

That garbage this furious fellow spews is featured on Fox every night. In Blue America, the finer people at our civilized sites ignore the garbage spewed by this furious man and by his nightly assembly of hacks.

We Blues! We've been dumb enough to swallow the Maddow line—to fall in line behind what Janet Malcolm admiringly described, in the New Yorker no less, as "her performance of the Rachel figure:" 

All in all, but overwhelmingly, we Blues have believed our own twaddle.

Result? There may well be blood, we've now been informed. Our cable stars would prefer to be listening to the latest guff from the woman who wanted to score a big sack of cash in lieu of "telling her [utterly pointless] story."

Troy was a deeply civilized place, but it was destined to fall. 

We tell ourselves that we're civilized too. We've purchased that porridge every step of the way, and there will likely be blood, we're now told.

We've based our wager on the joys of comically high self-regard. There will be blood, we've been told—but first, this just in! Two hours from the woman who, ten years later, wanted the big sack of cash!

Meanwhile, why has Donald J. Trump's madness gone unexplored? We'll be exploring that powerful question in the days and the weeks ahead.

Gutfeld and Watters are part of the answer, but so are the people we're taught to trust. We refer to the people we trust over here, behind Blue America's extremely high walls.

Winner of the debate is declared!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2024

Also, The Madness of [Our Own] King George: What might a medical assessment look like—a medical assessment concerning last Thursday's debate?

We're referring to a medical assessment of President Biden—and of Candidate Trump as well.

Last week, a few days before the debate, the New York Times published a guest essay which seemed to tackle that general question. The essay appeared beneath this headline. We assume the essay was well intentioned, but we'd call it par for the course:

I’m a Doctor and a Voter. Here’s How I’m Thinking About the Health of Trump and Biden.

We plan to walk you through that essay before the week is done. 

For today, a winner of last Thursday's debate has finally been declared. Also, Gail Collins has come around concerning the question of what President Biden should do.

It all happened in yesterday's version of her weekly Conversation with Bret Stephens. Headline included, here's the way the colloquy started:

Will One Bad Debate Night Mean One Bad Election Day?

Bret Stephens: Gail, in our last conversation I asked you whether you would join me in calling for Democrats to find a new nominee if Joe Biden had a disastrous debate performance. You replied that it would have to be “super disastrous.”

Did the president’s performance on Thursday night meet your definition of “super disastrous”?

Gail Collins: Bret, I was thinking about you all through the debate. You were worried Biden would “lose it with some obvious memory lapse, slurred sentence or troubling blank stare.”

I pretty much dismissed your concerns, and I was, um, sorta wrong. But I did say I’d join you “if the president suddenly goes blank and stares at the screen in silence or forgets where he’s speaking.”

But hey, it wasn’t that bad. Quite.

Bret: It wasn’t?

Gail: OK, I’m coming around to your way of thinking. Biden shouldn’t be the nominee... 

Collins goes on to say that it would be years before President Biden would be stepping down if he's able to stay on the ticket and win. Implied (we think) was the sense that his apparent condition, whatever it may be, would only be worse by that point.

At this point, we offer an aside. 

In all the discussions which have occurred since last Thursday night, we don't think we've seen a single person speak about what any of this may mean for President Biden's mortality, but also for his personal health in the years to come.

Many people say how much they love him. No one seems to say squat or squadoosh about that. 

Fellow citizens, we're just saying! As with so many other things, no one seems to care.

At any rate, Collins has now agreed that the president should step aside. As the conversation continues from above, Stephens names the winner of last Thursday's debate:

Gail: OK, I’m coming around to your way of thinking. Biden shouldn’t be the nominee. Even if he makes a comeback from the he’s-way-too-old moments of the debate, we’ve got months before the election. And years before he’d be stepping down for good, should he win.

Bret: Which, I am 99 percent convinced, he can’t.

What America saw last week wasn’t a guy having a bad debate night. It’s the man Robert Hur, the special counsel in the Biden documents case, described this year as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur is owed a public apology from every pompous pundit who dumped all over him for telling the truth. And Americans are owed better from the Democratic Party than a president tipping into senescence while his dishonest aides pretend that everything about the president’s health is hunky-dory.

Have dishonest aides been pretending that the president's health is O.K.? 

At present, that's a perfectly sensible question—a question we ourselves can't answer. Meanwhile, Stephens has named the winner of Thursday's debate:

In his assessment, the winner was Robert Hur!

Did President Biden's behavior with Hur resemble what happened last Thursday? At this site, we have no idea, and we don't think Stephens knows either.

That said, a lot remains to be sorted out concerning what happened last week. Beyond that, a very important question looms—a question concerning the vastly disordered person who retweeted the crazy posts we alluded to this morning.

There was only one madman on the stage last week. His name was Donald J. Trump. Judged by any normal standard, he's been visibly crazy for years.

Until last Thursday night's debacle, the mainstream press corps had largely ignored questions of President Biden's health. They've grossly ignored the endless evidence of the ongoing Madness of Our Own King George.

Why has the press corps behaved that way? 

There are many aspects to that extremely important question. They involve the behavior of the mainstream press, but also the behaviors of the "cable news" stars who serve each of our current countries, Red America and Blue.

What explains the way this madness has gone unaddressed? It's a very important question. We plan to frisk it here. 

WAGERS: Has "our democracy" already died?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2024

Madman, beloved hold forth: Yesterday, President Biden offered an account of what happened last Thursday night.

For ourselves, we don't know what happened that night! But according to a front-page report in today's New York Times, here's what the president said:

At a fund-raiser on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden blamed fatigue for his debate performance. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, I don’t know how many time zones.” He added: “I didn’t listen to my staff, and I came back and I fell asleep on the stage.”

For the record, the frenetic travel in question ended on June 16. Last Thursday's debate took place on June 27—a full eleven days later.

A cynic could say that implausible explanations for last Thursday night have continued to sprout. For ourselves, we can't explain what happened that night, but we can tell you this:

"Government of and by the people" was always a bit of gamble. In the wake of World War I, the developing poet named E. E. Cummings may not have been buying the premise. 

In our view, Cummings was wrong in the angry attitude he voiced at the end of the poem in question. But along the way, no one can say that his reporting was totally wrong. 

Yesterday, we offered you the bitter fruits of his observations. Here they are once again:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you 
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Briefly, the poem continues from there.

In the wake of World War I, Cummings was less than impressed with the instincts of us the people. Anthropologically, it's hard to say that his observations and assessments were completely and totally wrong.

Returning to the present day:

Metaphorically, the anthill was suddenly kicked apart last Thursday night. The ants have come spilling out of the hill in the wake of that unexpected disaster.

"Our democracy" depends on the good judgment of us the people. That said, our species doesn't reliably traffic in any such conduct.

It isn't just President Biden's slightly odd assessment. Humans like those listed below have come center stage in the past few days. 

Full disclosure. We're saving the most deranged for last:

Steve Bannon: In our view, David Brooks' "unsettling interview" with Bannon is highly instructive concerning the nature of the ongoing revolt from below. 

Some of Bannon's comments are crazy; some of his comments aren't. We expect to discuss the interview next week.

Greg Gutfeld: This extremely angry, extremely small man is the ranking star of "cable news," behind only Jesse Watters. This afternoon, we'll give you an overview of his latest gruesome conduct.

Warning—it won't be pretty! Borrowing from Ezra Pound, "Yet this is [him]"—and us.

Kevin's commenters: In this post, Kevin Drum links to that front-page report in the New York Times. The Times quotes a lot of unnamed sources. Kevin's headline says this:

Biden’s cognitive decline may be fairly recent

Kevin accepts the idea that "cognitive decline" has occurred. He suggests that it may be fairly recent.

For ourselves, our full-blown concern about President Biden dates to last August—to his first public statement in Hawaii in the wake of the Lahaina fires. 

We've seen plenty of footage since that time which has added to our concern, along with other behaviors. As we noted at the time, we were surprised when the campaign decided that he would be able to handle a 90-minute debate.

For ourselves, we can't say that we know what happened last Thursday night. We'd be slower to voice a speculation than Kevn has been, though it may be that his assessment is completely correct.

That said, many of Kevin's commenters swung into instant action. They're sure that this whole thing is some sort of conspiracy organized by sinister forces, including the New York Times—sinister forces who want to restore Donald J. Trump to power. 

Sad! Even here, within our own Blue America, we're often inclined to reason in the manner of Donald J. Trump! We Blues instinctively say how brilliant we are. And yet, this is [us]!

Brian Kilmeade: This very morning, on Fox & Friends, we saw Brian Kilmeade offer this observation about "the media:"

"They shouldn't be picking a horse in this race, but they are."

Kilmeade has spotted a conspiracy too. In his conspiracy, the (mainstream) media have been conspiring to keep President Biden in power.

Imagine! Imagine someone from the Fox News Channel complaining about the way some in "the media" are offering only one side of the story! You wouldn't think that such conduct was possible, but at Fox, it goes on all day long.

Rachel Maddow: We tried to watch Maddow last night—the two-hour (!) special broadcast in which she interviewed Stormy Daniels.

We had to quit roughly twenty minutes in; we'll try to make ourselves watch the whole thing at some later point. But the fact that our own Blue America fell in love with this "cable news" salesperson calls to mind the basic, insurmountable shortcomings the angry Cummings felt he had observed. 

(Update: We just saw an MSNBC promotional spot in which Maddow describes our democracy as "a divinely inspired gift of our forefathers." As we've long told you: Whatever her merits may be, Maddow is very savvy about how much of herself she reveals.)

Nicolle Wallace: We'll request a point of personal privilege here. 

Wallace has always been a superlative spokesperson. That was already true back in the day, when she was peddling the war in Iraq and state referendums designed to defeat same-sex marriage.

She's always been a superb salesperson, but her special skills end there. Yesterday afternoon, staring defeat in the face, she offered a pitiful cri de coeur. 

She'd already introduced "some of our favorite reporters sand friends," as she pathetically does on a daily basis. A few minutes later, she offered this, as she and her favorites pretended to discuss the Supreme Court's latest ruling: 

WALLACE (7/2/24): You know, David Jolly, a lot of people that I know, and people that I don't—beloved viewers of this program—I saw people expressing fear. I am afraid of what the Court ushered in, but my colleague Rachel Maddow, as she is beloved for doing, had—sort of cut right to the crux of this.

She then played tape of something the beloved Maddow had said. 

Wallace's viewers are beloved; Maddow's beloved too! This is the way a limited person starts to behave in the face of tribal defeat—in this case, in the face of the defeat her own blinkered behavior in the past five years has helped bring on.

Apparently by instinct, Wallace speaks to no one except her favorites and her friends. She thinks and cares about no one and nothing else. 

Her favorites and her friends are beloved. No one else exists.

This astoundingly limited, in-group behavior is part of what Cummings had observed at Boston's famous Old Howard. It has also been an obvious path to defeat.

In all those ways, we've heard America singing. Moving right along:

Thought of as a wager, "government of and by the people" was always a bit of a long shot. That Supreme Court ruling suggests the possibility that "our democracy," as widely conceived, has already ceased to exist.

That said, we've saved the most deranged for last. We refer to Donald J. Trump's recent contribution to the discourse—to the public discourse which lies at the heart of any attempt at "democracy."

Citizens, there he went again! Headline included, CNN reports:

Trump amplifies posts calling for televised military tribunal for Liz Cheney

Former President Donald Trump amplified posts on social media calling for a televised military tribunal for former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and the jailing of top elected officials, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” one post created by another user that Trump amplified on his social media website Truth Social on Sunday reads. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”

[...]

A separate post Trump amplified on Truth Social Sunday includes photos of 15 former and current elected officials and says, “THEY SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL ON MONDAY NOT STEVE BANNON!”

This madness will never be mentioned by Brian Kilmeade. It won't be mentioned by the furiously disordered Gutfeld, or by the hacks who surround him each night, or by anyone else on his "cable news" channel.

(Nor will that conduct be reported by the New York Times. No one in the civilized world wants to tangle with Fox.)

That madness won't be mentioned on Fox. Elsewhere, it hasn't been mentioned enough. Nor have people like Wallace and Maddow (and their other favorite beloved colleagues) ever shown the slightest sign of knowing how to approach the broad range of American voters with madness of that type.

Has "our democracy" already died? We started this site in 1998 because the dysfunction already seemed so apparent.

Has "our democracy" already died? As a matter of basic anthropology, it isn't clear that we the people are built that kind of work.

President Lincoln embarked on a wager concerning government of the people. Vladimir Putin seems to have made an equal but opposite wager. 

As we sit here this very day, with a madman drowning out the beloved and Bannon advancing from below, is it clear that "Putin's wager" will turn out to have been wrong?

That's just how old 81 years old looks!

TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2024

But also, Stormy Daniels Tonight: Friend, are you possibly being "gaslit" about what happened last week?

Are you being handed explanation which don't quite seem to make sense? 

We're speaking about President Biden's performance at last Thursday's debate. Do you believe that what you saw was the result of his having a cold? Do you think it was just his stutter? 

Do those explanations actually seem to make sense?

Last night, we heard the best one yet. It came from Rachel Maddow, at 9:06 p.m. It was her one fleeting reference to what happened last Thursday night.

As her weekly program began, she was talking—and talking and talking—about the July 11 court date in which Donald J. Trump will be sentenced for his 34 felonies. Along the way, fleetingly, she managed to offer this:

MADDOW (7/1/24): ...[Trump] himself might be sentenced to Rikers [Island], or to New York state prison, depending on what sentence he's about to get after his own conviction on nearly three dozen felony charges. 

Excellent job, Republican Party! Great choice!

I love how Democrats are, like, "Ohhh! How did we get into this mess?" 

[CHUCKLES]

It's true that not understanding how old 81 years old looks sometimes is maybe a Democratic Party mistake.  But Democrats are not the party that picked the guy whose charity was shut down as a fraud, whose fake university was shut down as a fraud, whose business was convicted of multiple felony fraud counts, whose CFO is quite literally in jail...

And so on. Then on and on.

It's true! Democrats aren't the party which nominated Donald J. Trump! At present, Democrats are the party which stands to lose the White House this year in a race against Donald J. Trump.

In our view, you're being gaslit when Maddow tells you what she told you in that highlighted passage. When she tells you that you just don't understand "how old 81 years old looks sometimes"—when she tells you that that explains what you thought you saw on your TV screen last Thursday night.

For ourselves, we'd like to see further reporting about what we all saw that night. On CNN, Carl Bernstein has said that meltdowns of the type we saw have been taking place for some time, though we ourselves don't know if that's true.

Also this:

For ourselves, we have no idea what the Democratic Party should do at this point. Unfortunately, our guess would be that the party is so sunk in sin—and perhaps in deception—that there's no good way forward from here.

(Though the party, of course, could still win.)

For ourselves, we don't know what the Democratic Party should do. We will say this:

We'll say that the party, and its acolytes, should stop with all the gaslighting. They should stop calling people "bedwetters." They should even stop saying things as blatantly stupid as the one thing Maddow deigned to say about this matter last night.

Moments later, Maddow reported tonight's really big event. She's going to stage a two-hour special broadcast tonight—a two-hour special devoted to her interview with Stormy Daniels!

Due to our moral and intellectual greatness, we're prepared to imagine the possibility that something of value might result from special this two-hour event. Or it may be what the Rolling Stones said:

Some people know what you need. But salespeople know what you want.

It could just be that! At any rate, you may want to keep hearing about the claim that Donald J. Trump engaged in consensual sex on one occasion in 2006. Tonight, you'll be allowed to keep on dreaming, as sacred Nietzsche once said.

We don't know what the Democratic Party should do at this point. We do think that people like Maddow should stop selling product like this.

WAGERS: Did staffers decide to take a chance?

TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2024

Who sent the president out there? Will history show that a Russian strongman engaged in a type of wager?

If so, historians—to the extent that such people still exist—may call it "Putin's wager." Such people will declare that Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, decided to put all his chips on this proposition:

Government of the people, by the people and for the people may indeed be induced to "perish from the earth."

At one time, President Lincoln was willing to bet that government of and by the people could in fact be preserved. Then again, one thinks of the wager someone decided to take leading up to last Thursday night:

Someone decided to let President Biden take part in an ersatz "debate." 

For ourselves, we had long come to believe that President Biden wouldn't be able to engage in some such event. For that reason, we were surprised when it was announced that the campaign had sought such an event, and had agreed to participate.

For a while, we kept thinking that the campaign might find a way to back out. When the event in question took place, we sat down and watched.

On what basis had we come to believe that such an event couldn't happen? We had seen a lot of tape in which the president seemed to display the unmistakable signs of a certain tragedy of advanced age—a tragedy which visits some people while sparing certain others.

We had seen a lot of tape in which the president seemed to convey that vibe. During that period, the invisible people behind the scenes apparently settled on their own wager:

They must have decided that President Biden actually could function well in some such event.

We don't know why they would have thought that; they may have had decent reasons. But after the debacle occurred, the dissembling followed.

The dissembling came thick and fast. Staffers and family members began to utter the ultimate cry:

Who are you going to believe, us or your own lying eyes?

Staffers stood in line to accuse us the people of being "bedwetters." They said the president had a cold that night. They even attributed what we'd seen to the president's stutter.

They pretended that other presidents have performed comparably in other presidential debates. This claim is baldly absurd, but staffers took numbers and stood in line, awaiting their chance to make it.

This too could be described as a type of wager. But as the staffers (and family members) engaged in this wager, Putin's wager advanced. 

Briefly, let's be honest. For reasons we'll start to outline below, "government of the people" has always been a somewhat unlikely wager.

Perhaps in line with such doubts, various citizens have fallen in line in the past few days, repeating the mandated talking-points in various comment sections.

That doesn't make them bad people; it doesn't even mean that they're "wrong." But as they repeated the mandated scripts, we thought again, as we often do, of the angry, unpleasant poem E. E. Cummings once published.

In this interview, Cummings said the poem's bitter outlook was generated by his arrest in France, where he was serving as a medic, during World War I. At any rate, the angry, bitter poem in question starts off exactly like this:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you 
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

The Old Howard was a Boston vaudeville / burlesque house which Cummings frequented as a Harvard undergraduate. The famous old house was a bit of a Boston cultural landmark.

In his well-written memoir, Harpo Speaks, Harpo Marx said he got his first laugh onstage at Boston's famous Old Howard. 

(The laugh in question had been unintentional. The boys were still performing as "The Nightingales" at that point in time.)

According to Susan Cheever, Cummings once said that he based his unconventional approach to poetry on the structure of his favorite joke at the Howard. 

(The joke in question would barely qualify as a "joke" today. But it apparently triggered Cummings' decision to alter the rules of his format.)

At any rate:

In the lines presented above, Cummings bitterly described the tendency of us the people to defer to patriotic script when war is coming on. As he continued, so did his unpleasant portrait of the ways of us the people:

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Oof! The portrait is not complimentary.

Rather plainly, Putin's wager aligns itself with the view Cummings expressed. Putin's wager is built upon such assumptions as these:

We the people just aren't especially sharp. In fact we're easily misled. 

According to Putin's wager, government for and by a collection like us is surely destined to fail, and especially so at complexified times like these.

(We need a strongman to lead the way. On our own, we the people will squabble and fight and fail.)

At any rate, a three-way clown show took place last Thursday night. At least fifty-one million people saw it happen, unless you're prepared to pawn your intelligence in favor of what the staffers and the family members are saying you actually saw.

(An historical aside: In September 1960, 65 million people watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. At the time, the nation's population was just a bit over half what it is today. The candidates delivered eight-minute opening statements.)

The Cummings poem continues along from there. It ends with a bitter denunciation of us the people writ large, of the ways of "humanity" in general. 

Yesterday, an assembly called "the Supreme Court" issued some sort of a ruling. Given the way our discourse works, warring groups of tribal elders swung into action, distributing alternate talking points concerning the ruling in question.

This afternoon, we'll briefly discuss that new debacle. For now, we'll end with this:

Someone seems to have made a wager about the president's ability to take part in a debate. Disastrously, the president crashed and burned last Thursday night. An obvious question might go something like this:

What sort of medical analysis might explain what happened? Also, what sort of medical analysis might explain the 90 minutes of crazy statements issued by the other candidate on the stage that night?

More broadly, what might a carefully selected medical specialist tell us about these guys? At present, our nation doesn't enjoy a discourse which addresses such obvious questions as these.

Instead, three days before last Thursday's debate, the New York Times published a guest essay beneath this promising headline:

I’m a Doctor and a Voter. Here’s How I’m Thinking About the Health of Trump and Biden.

We'd be inclined to describe that essay as an imitation of life. Putin's wager assumes that such tapioca is the best we the people can do.

As a general matter, our struggling nation's national discourse is an imitation of life. Tomorrow, we'll offer excerpts from the essay in question—an essay which comes to us, live and direct, from the general vicinity of Cumming's portrait of what we the people are like.

Did staffers decide to take a gamble last week? How about family members? Also, what explains the crazy statements the other guy has persistently made, down through the many long years?

(Are we sure this nutcase is "lying?" What makes us think we know that?)

With respect to President Biden, was Thursday's debacle some sort of unpredictable anomaly? Alternately, have staffers perhaps been whistling past a (metaphorical) graveyard? 

What explains what everyone thinks they saw last Thursday night? Inevitably, also this:

What happened last night was a major event. Whas the New York Times said?

Tomorrow: Also, Brooks interviews Steve Bannon

He just can't seem to quit this adviser!

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2024

The Weekend of the Hunter: We've never cared for the 1955 feature film, The Night of the Hunter. 

No one liked it—then everyone did. Here is the overview from the usual suspect:

The Night of the Hunter 

The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir thriller directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish...The plot involves a serial killer (Mitchum) who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.

The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The film's lyrical and expressionistic style, borrowing techniques from silent film, sets it apart from other Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s...

Despite receiving negative reviews upon its original release, it has been positively re-evaluated in later decades and is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1992. The influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time.... 

Those French! Inevitably, they decided that The Night of the Hunter was the second-best film ever made!

In large part, we don't especially care for the film because we see it as part of the counterproductive wave of anti-Southern films which emerged from Hollywood at this point in time. It joined films like Baby Doll and God's Little Acre in painting a portrait of the white South which has turned out to be politically counterproductive.

We've never cared for The Night of the Hunter. For all we know, Hunter Biden may be the world's nicest person, but we admire his endlessly counterproductive behavior even less.

Has anyone ever insisted on BLANKing up more than this later-day Hunter? It wasn't enough that he had his astonishing arrays of problems—he had to write a book about them! And so on, and so on, from there.

We don't recommend the search for villains, but Hunter Biden's endless squirreling really does take the cake. That said, President Biden can't seem to quit this determined cluck-up. Here's what the New York times has reported about the past weekend of the Hunter:

Biden’s Family Tells Him to Keep Fighting as They Huddle at Camp David

President Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite last week’s disastrous debate performance, even as some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how he was prepared for the event by his staff, people close to the situation said on Sunday.

Mr. Biden huddled with his wife, children and grandchildren at Camp David while he tried to figure out how to tamp down Democratic anxiety. While his relatives were acutely aware of how poorly he did against former President Donald J. Trump, they argued that he could still show the country that he remains capable of serving for another four years.

Mr. Biden has been soliciting ideas from advisers about how to proceed, and his staff has been discussing whether he should hold a news conference or sit for interviews to defend himself and change the narrative...

One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice, said one of the people informed about the discussions, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father that he knows—scrappy and in command of the facts—rather than the stumbling, aging president Americans saw on Thursday night.

According to an unnamed person whose name may rhyme with Hunter Biden, Hinter Biden wants Americans to see a version of his father which may no longer exist. 

He may also want his father to retain the power of pardons and commutations. At any rate, the president seems to be completely unable to quit this awful adviser.

In our view, President Biden has long had a strangely distorted set of ideas about the people he refers to as "the Bidens." In our view, it's insulting to see this creepy fark-up still sitting in a place of honor as "the Bidens" try to decide what to do with the current mess.

It's bad enough that our flailing nation suffers with such royal families as the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Rockefellers, and with the disordered behavior which frequently results from such royal status.

It's bad enough that we have to put up with the disorder emerging from such families. For some reason, President Biden has always seemed to think that his family represents some similar type of royal brood, working-class Scranton style.

Hunter Biden has been a rolling disaster for quite a few years at this time. His September trial—the trial which concerns his apparent grifting—will only make matters that much worse. 

Uncle James seems to have been a bit of a grifter too. Whatever a person may think of President Biden, we can't say that we'd widely recommend the group known as "the Bidens."

In our view, it's insulting to read that Hunter Biden is one of the people engineering events. Will anyone deliver us from this meddlesome hanger-on, who reportedly still has the ear of his prime enabler?

For extra credit only: Was Hunter Biden the source for Maureen Dowd's poisonous column during Campaign 2016? We refer to the poisonous column about Beau Biden's alleged disparaging final words about Candidate Hillary Clinton.

This was Dowd's unsourced copy, which became the source of an otherwise unsourced Sunday morning, front-page "news report:"

Joe Biden in 2016: What Would Beau Do?

[...]

When Beau realized he was not going to make it, he asked his father if he had a minute to sit down and talk.

“Of course, honey,” the vice president replied.

At the table, Beau told his dad he was worried about him.

My kid’s dying, an anguished Joe Biden thought to himself, and he’s making sure I’m O.K.

“Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money,” Beau told him, dismissing the idea that his father would take some sort of cushy job after the vice presidency to cash in.

Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run [in 2016], arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.

There somebody went again, citing those "Biden values!" Even today, the gaslighting continues, whatever you think the president should decide to do at this point.

President Biden has said that he himself wasn't the source of that account. We'll try to walk you back through this extended, ridiculous journalistic episode before the week is done.

For the record, this is part of the way Donald J. Trump initially reached the White House.

WAGERS: "Our democracy" hit rock bottom last week!

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2024

A boon for Putin's wager: Long ago and far away, Blaise Pascal, for better or worse, authored a famous wager.

Who the heck was Blaise Pascal? And what exactly was his "wager"—his gamble, his thesis, his bet?

We've never been hugely impressed with the gentleman's wager. That said, the leading authority on the topic thumbnails the matter as shown:

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian. This argument posits that individuals essentially engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God.

Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and [should] actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes: 

If God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries. However, if God does indeed exist, he or she stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.

"The original articulation of this wager can be found in Pascal's posthumously published work titled Pensées, which comprises a compilation of previously unpublished notes," the authority then reports.

So it went with Pascal's wager! Long story short, with the reasoning, such as it was, only slightly dumbed down:

Pascal didn't believe that anyone could prove the existence of [the conventional Judeo-Christian] God. But just in case that God does exist—just in case that God will punish nonbelievers with the torments of Hell—we should strive to convince ourselves that He [sic] does exist, and we should conform to his rules.

Dumbed down to a slightly greater extent, the wager went like this:

If God doesn't exist, you wasted your time at Mass each week, but the price you paid was minor. 

On the other hand, if God does exist and you thumbed your nose at religious requirements, you may end up burning in Hell.

The so-called "wager" went something like that. Those who seek complexification can immerse themselves in overthinking in Professor Hajek's treatment of the wager for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

People have been discussing Pascal's wager since the dawn of time. By way of contrast, the gamble we'll describe as "Putin's wager" seems to have come about in fairly recent times.

"Putin's wager" seems to go something like this:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian potentate, seems to believe that the future belongs to the autocrats, not to systems like the one we refer to as "our democracy." 

When it comes to systems like ours, he seems to be gambling that "the center [won't be able to] hold." 

We can't necessarily say that the Russian strongman is wrong in this apparent assessment! Consider:

In our view, "our democracy" has been placed under vastly increased levels of stress by the process known as "the democratization of media." 

Also, by the proliferation of "identity groups" within our struggling culture (though no specific "identity group" can be tagged as the source of the problem).

Also, by the punishing limits of human cogitation, a factor we'll survey all week.

Is it possible that Vladimir Putin's wager will pay off?  We would say it's entirely possible! Just consider what happened in Atlanta last Thursday night:

Last Thursday night, in Atlanta, our system was groaning under the strain of at least forty years of journalistic and academic devolution.

Two candidates stood on a stage, hoping to be our nation's next president. They interacted with a pair of major journalists who had agreed that they would question or challenge no misstatements, no matter how absurd.

Operating within this system, the one candidate produced absurd misstatements all night. The other candidate routinely struggled to complete a thought, delivering such statements as this:

MODERATOR (6/29/24): President Biden, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to this question about the national debt.

CANDIDATE:  He had the largest national debt of any president four-year period, number one.

Number two, he got $2 trillion tax cut, benefited the very wealthy. What I’m going to do is fix the tax system.  For example:

We have a thousand trillionaires in America–I mean, billionaires in America. 

And what’s happening, they’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent, 25 percent—either one of those numbers—they’d raise 500 million dollars–billion dollars, I should say—in a ten-year period.

We’d be able to right–wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do—childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system—making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, uh, the Covid—excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, uh—

[PAUSE]

Look—

[PAUSE]

If—

[PAUSE]

We finally beat Medicare.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, President Biden. President Trump?

"We finally beat Medicare?" After a set of pauses and self-corrections, as the culmination of an imponderable overall claim about the way the candidate plans to "fix the tax system," that bizarre statement was delivered at 9:12 p.m. 

(For a fuller assessment of that presentation, you can see Saturday's report.)

"We finally beat Medicare," the stumbling candidate finally said. The moderator simply plowed ahead, as if nothing had happened. 

Earlier, the moderators had done the same thing when the other candidate had grossly misrepresented the basic nature of tariffs.

Full disclosure:

Under current arrangements, the astonishing presentation we've transcribed came from the candidate we'll be voting for in November! By our own assessment, the other candidate would be a much worse bet for our struggling nation.

Fellow citizens, is there a halfway decent chance that Putin's wager will pay off? Please understand:

What we saw last Thursday night was the current functioning of "our democracy" under the strain of forty years of cultural devolution. 

In our view, the exchange we've transcribed involved the more capable of the two men who stood on the stage that night! Aso, it involved the conduct of a major mainstream journalist, who had agreed to "see no evil" all through the course of the evening.

Under this journalistic arrangement, the other candidate issued a string of ludicrous claims all through the course of the event. The candidate for whom we ourselves will vote showed little ability to counteract these crazy statements and claims.

The major journalists who served as moderators made no attempt to react to the other candidate's ludicrous claims. And sure enough:

In kneejerk fashion, many of Blue America's vastly limited "thought leaders" were soon describing these ludicrous statements as "lies." Among various problems with this childish approach, this framework implies that the other candidate isn't cognitively disordered.

Is Putin's wager likely to pay at the betting window? Consider:

By now, each of the candidates on the Atlanta stage has shown overwhelming signs of cognitive incapacitation. Beyond that, a wide range of medical specialists have said, rightly or wrongly, that the candidate for whom we won't be voting has shown unmistakable signs of major psychological / psychiatric disorder.

The people cast as major journalists in our nation's ongoing TV show have agreed that none of these factors should be reported, discussed or evaluated. Beyond that:

As we type this assessment this Monday morning, major thought leaders in Blue America are insisting that the candidate for whom we'll vote simply had "a bad night."

In the face of all this moral and intellectual dysfunction, Vladimir Putin seems to have made a private wager. In our view, Pascal's wager didn't make much sense—but Putin's wager certainly could end up paying off.

It isn't just Candidate Biden! "Our democracy," such as it is, has been visibly struggling for the past forty years. 

It isn't clear that our vastly limited species is built to address such systemic challenges. Reactions to last Thursday's debacle only serve to make the shape of this problem more clear.

"Our democracy" might seem to have hit rock bottom last Thursday night. Sadly enough, the situation could get worse, much worse.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, seems to have made a private wager. Even as our various "thought leaders" engage in their own unacknowledged wagers, it seems to us that Putin's wager may end up paying off.

"Our democracy," such as it ever was, has been rapidly moving from imperfect to worse. In the aftermath of last Thursday's debacle, we'll be discussing this matter all week.

An array of wagers are involved. We know of no safe bet.

This afternoon: Weekend of the Hunter