EMBRACE OF HATE: Amanda Marcotte explains The Others!

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

Part 4—"Blatant racism" decried: Near the end of last Friday's op-ed column, Anna Fels described the type of world which gets created by "people who hate."

In our view, there's a lot to ponder in her portrait. The professor says, correctly we think, that such conduct is "on the rise:"

FELS (4/14/17): The point is to hurt and humiliate. Those who hate want to make the objects of their hate suffer as they have. It is this that makes the attacks so personal and lends them their crude, violent and often sexual nature. The intent is not to challenge opposing beliefs but to destroy those who hold them.

[...]

People who hate can blame others for their losses, reducing doubts about their own inadequacies.

Hate converts a sense of helplessness into one of action. It can even be the impetus for the formation of new communities in which people share grievances and plans for retribution, relieving their sense of isolation or powerlessness. As a consequence, though, there’s a loss of empathy, and beliefs become simplified and rigid.

All this may help to explain why hate and its retributive punishments are on the rise. In a way, hate functions like a Geiger counter, signaling where there are serious disruptions of the social fabric or where cultural beliefs are under the most stress—whether it be from a new awareness of inequality, diversity or the radical redefining of gender.

Fels' portrait is well worth considering. First, though, let's consider two weaknesses in that passage.

Fels says her portrait "may help to explain why hate and its retributive punishments are on the rise." We don't know why she says that. We see Fels make no attempt to explain why political hate would be more attractive now than at some earlier point.

That strikes us as an obvious weakness in Fels' passage. For a second weakness, consider her examples of the places where "cultural beliefs are under the most stress," thus giving rise to political hate.

According to Fels, cultural beliefs are under the most stress in three areas. Cultural beliefs are being put under most stress by "a new awareness of inequality," by "diversity" and by "the radical redefining of gender."

Presumably, culturally beliefs are being put under stress in all three ways. But let's note an obvious point: in all three instances, Fels describes types of cultural stress which are being felt "on the right."

In all three instances, Fels thereby suggests that political hate is on the rise among Those People, the conservative folk Over There. She imagines no ways in which political hate might be on the rise among Us, the intelligent, well-meaning, wonderfully nuanced liberal folk Over Here.

Does this reflect a "bias" on Fels' part? It's hard to answer such questions. For today, let's restrict oursleves to a thought experiment, in which we ask such questions as these:

Is it possible that political hate is on the rise Over Here? Is it possible that we liberals have been identifying "objects of hate" against whom we launch "crude attacks?"

Is it possible that we've been involved in "the formation of new communities" in which we "share grievances" about our objects of hate? In which we experience "a loss of empathy" for such targets? In which our beliefes "become simplified and rigid?" In which we get to blame The Others for our political losses?

Could that be happening Over Here? Consider yesterday's piece by Amanda Marcotte at the new and improved Salon.

Marcotte's piece appeared beneath a punishing headline. Even as it cited a "new analysis," it told a tribally pleasing story—a story we liberals get served every day:

"New election analysis: Yes, it really was blatant racism that gave us President Donald Trump"

It wasn't just racism which gave us President Trump. It was blatant racism, the pleasing Salon headline said.

Briefly, let's be fair. Marcotte never refers to blatant racism in her actual text. We'll assume the extra word was added by an editor at the new Salon, making Marcotte's essay more "simplified" and more "crude."

That said, it would be hard to simplify Marcotte's text more than Marcotte did. And since everyone who writes for Salon will know that its headlines are tricked up this way, we'll have to grant Marcotte an authorship share in the exciting headline which sat atop her text.

That said, let's turn to that text-in-itself. Is it true? Did "blatant racism" give us President Donald J. Trump in some definable way? To what extent can racism be blamed for his status at all?

Asking Marcotte to address such questions is a bit like asking Donald J. Trump to analyze the Bolshoi Ballet. At one time, Marcotte specialized in issues involving gender. In the past few years, she has begun to wrote about pure politics.

Her work tends to be extremely poor. Consider the way she starts this latest pleasing piece:

MARCOTTE (4/19/17): It’s worth remembering, particularly when the Hillary Clinton recrimination news cycle is in full swing, that Donald Trump is president today because of a margin of fewer than 80,000 votes spread across three states.

“The most important states, though, were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” Philip Bump in The Washington Post wrote in December. “Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively—and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes.”

Those three states, however, had been comfortably won by Democrat Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Much of the recent shift, however tiny, was due to slightly more white working-class voters voting Republican than before. This, in turn, has prompted an ugly and ongoing fight between two progressive factions: those who believe those voters were primarily motivated by a sense of economic insecurity and people who think the shift occurred because racist appeals are prompting more white people to vote for Republicans.

As is often the case with Marcotte's work, she starts with a bit of puzzling logic. She says, correctly, that Obama won the three midwestern states in question by "comfortable" margins in 2012. She then says that Clinton's loss of these three states was occasioned by a "tiny shift" in votes, "due to slightly more white working-class voters voting Republican."

As almost anyone can see, those conjoined claims don't exactly seem to make sense. It's true that Candidate Clinton lost those three states by narrow margins. (She lost Ohio by 8.1 points.)

But though the margins were tiny, the shifts in votes were not, given the size of Obama's wins in 2012. Here's the breakdown on Michigan in those two elections:

Michigan 2012:
Obama 2,564,569 (54.2 percent)
Romney 2,115,256 (44.7 percent)

Obama won by 9.50 points
(4.731 million votes cast)

Michigan 2016:
Trump 2,279,543 (47.5 percent)
Clinton 2,268,839 (47.3 percent)

Clinton lost by 0.2 points
(4.799 million votes cast)

Where Obama won by almost ten points, Clinton narrowly lost. This involved substantial shifts in votes, whatever the explanation for those shifts may be.

As with Michigan, so too with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Candidate Clinton lost those states by narrow margins, but she lost a lot of votes as compared to Obama's comfortable wins four years before. Meanwhile, here's how Ohio went down:

Ohio 2012 versus Ohio 2016:
Obama 2012: 2,827,709 (50.7 percent)
Clinton 2016: 2,394,164 (43.6 percent)

Obama won Ohio by 3.0 points in 2012. Four years later, Clinton lost the state by 8.1 points.

Candidate Clinton lost a lot of votes in these midwestern states in 2016 as compared to Candidate Obama in 2012. This leads us to our second question: how did those votes get lost?

This is where the "blatant racism" theory comes in. The "new analysis" to which Marcotte refers belongs to Sean McElwee, a scrub-faced recent college grad (Kings College, 2013) who is becoming the liberal world's go-to guy for "blatant racism" analyses.

For ourselves, we would be slow to assume the competence of McElwee's analyses. That said, here's how he analyzed the vote changes in these decisive states, at least according to Marcotte:

MARCOTTE: For people who pay close attention to politics, McElwee argued, it’s been clear for decades that Democrats have been more progressive than Republicans on the issue of racial justice. But for the less informed voters, the “election of a black president, the reaction to that and then the Trump campaign” made race and racism more salient as electoral issues than they have been in recent political memory. The result is that people with racist attitudes are rapidly shifting toward becoming Republicans, and people with more progressive views on race are flocking to the Democrats.

This, in turn, helps explain the small number of voters who voted for Obama once and maybe even twice but then turned to Trump. They may have initially perceived Obama to be “post-racial” candidate whose color was not important. But after years of racist vitriol aimed at Obama, as well as the increase in racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter, those voters have turned to more racialized thinking and flocked to Trump. The constant complaining of Trump supporters about the pernicious influence of “political correctness” also suggests this reading.

Inevitably, we're told that the decisive changes in votes came from "less informed voters." According to Marcotte's account, McElwee attributes the changed votes of these dunderheads to "race and racism," to their "more racialized [current] thinking."

Please note the apparent oddness of this one-size-fits-all analysis:

In 2012, the Democratic candidate was socially defined as "black." In 2016, the Democratic candidate was socially defined as "white." Why did the white candidate get substantially fewer votes than the black candidate had? Because of race and racism—indeed, because of blatant racism—we are now being told!

On its face, that analysis doesn't quite seem to make sense. Remembering that this is Marcotte's account of McElwee's position, let's consider the factors which are said to have accounted for the switches in votes:

Factors causing Clinton to lose votes in 2016, as compared to Obama in 2012:
1) The election of a black president
2) These voters' reaction to the election of this black president
3) The Trump campaign, approval of which seems to be read as racism, no explanation required

Does this analysis make sense? Remember, that "election of a black president" actually happened in 2008. We're now told that it explains the switch of votes away from a white Democratic candidate in 2016.

We're even told that the election of that black president, and the reaction to it, explains the anti-Clinton votes of people who voted for the black president in 2012! Does this highly simplistic theory actually make good sense?

Has Marcotte discovered that all those votes were lost because of "blatant racism?" Has she discovered that the white candidate did substantially worse than the previous black candidate due to that "blatant" cause?

Forgive us for making an unpleasant suggestion. Forgive us for suggesting that this may be the "crude" and "simplified" way we humans tend to reason when we launch campaigns against objects of hate.

Is Marcote's explanation "crudely simplified?" Consider all the possible reasons for Candidate Clinton's loss of votes she doesn't even seem to consider:

Possible factors unmentioned by Marcotte:
1) The fact that Clinton ran a lousy campaign
2) Twenty-five years of demonization aimed at Clinton, both by the "right-wing noise machine" and by the upper-end mainstream press
3) The intervention of James B. Comey (starting in July 2016, not just in October)
4) The intervention of Vladimir Putin
5) The ridiculous assurances of the Professor Wangs and their pundit enablers (i.e., the claim that Candidate Clinton couldn't possibly lose)
6) The possible role of sexism/misogyny!

Amazing, isn't it? Marcotte is so eager to push the "blatant racism" line that she doesn't even mention the possibility that the female candidate did worse than the previous male candidate because of sexism/misogyny, the topic she rode in on.

(We're instructed in Marcotte's opening sentence that we mustn't even consider the "Clinton ran a lousy campaign" explanation. See text above. You're looking at pure propaganda.)

Let's return to Professor Fels' presentation. Is it possible that Marcotte's piece can be seen as an example of the way political hate is "on the rise" in this country? Can it be seen as an example of the way political groups offer "crude" and "simplified" story-lines to attack the people they loathe?

Ever since November, this crude attack about "blatant racism" has been peddled wherever liberal story-lines are sold. Is it possible that this simplified account represents an attempt by our own liberal tribe to "blame others for [our] losses, reducing doubts about [our] own inadequacies?"

Could it be that this rather crude story-line "converts a sense of helplessness into one of action"—that it "can even be the impetus for the formation of new communities in which people share grievances and plans for retribution?" Is it even possible that this crude story about "blatant racism" involves our tribe is a "loss of empathy" for the people we're sliming in such crude, reductionist ways?

We'd say that all those things are possible—indeed, that they're happening every day. This helps explain why we swallow the idea that the white candidate underperformed as compared to the black candidate because of the "blatant racism" found Over There among The Others. Full and complete freaking stop!

In a fairly typical way, Fels could only see hate on the rise Over There, on the right. That said, we liberals are human too—human, if only just barely.

Tomorrow: The loss of empathy, combined with the rise of our own music men

EMBRACE OF HATE: Fels describes hate aimed at woman and blacks!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017

Part 3—Leaves other Others alone: Is political hatred on the rise in the United States?

Professor Fels says it is. We're inclined to agree.

Professor Fels discussed this phenomenon in an intriguing if murky column in last Friday's New York Times. She built large parts of her discussion around the role evolution has and hasn't played in selecting for the impulse to hate in this manner.

Before long, Fels was discussing "altriusm punishments"—hate-fueled behaviors like suicide bombing, behaviors "that don’t provide a genetic benefit to the individual or even to his or her immediate gene pool." She says a wide array of eggheads "have all studied this puzzling impulse to extract revenge and have come up with a surprising theory: that such punitive actions may have evolved to protect the complex communities in which humans live."

Muddily, Fels proceeds to discuss the way political hatred can serve the interests of various "communities" and groups. She starts with the helpful role hatred can play at time of overt war:

FELS (4/14/17): In its most extreme form, hate motivates the altruistic punishment of organized warfare—a necessity for the defense of any society. In his trilogy on the Allies in World War II, the historian Rick Atkinson describes it as the emotional engine needed to drive troops into battle for that “just war.”

Allied officers were constantly fretting that the troops’ hate levels weren’t high enough. A memorandum urged commanders to “teach the men to hate the enemy—to want to kill them by any means.” George Patton’s aide praised him as “a great hate builder.” Dwight Eisenhower bragged, “I am not one who finds it difficult to hate my enemies.” In war, hate is celebrated.

In 1952, campaign buttons said "I Like Ike," and that candidate won. A few years earlier, at time of war, Ike had said he liked building hate!

It's obvious that hating The Others might be a boon during war. As she continued, Fels described a similar process which might obtain during peacetime:

FELS (continuing directly): But there is a more subtle aspect to the impulse for revenge. Researchers have found that it often arises to curb perceived infractions of cultural norms: It may help hold societies together by punishing those seen as breaking the social contract.

Altruistic punishment flares when there is an inequitable allocation of resources or a transgression of cultural traditions—all threats to social coherence. Such acts of retribution appear to activate the brain’s reward center, presumably generating a sense of satisfaction and even pleasure.

Fels writes a bit murkily here, but her prose can be dumbed down. Her stress on evolution has largely flown at this point, but she seems to be describing a fairly simple dynamic.

According to Fels, political hatred may serve to punish despised groups within a peacetime society. This political hatred inspires members of some aggrieved group to "punish those seen as breaking the social contract."

These acts of hatred may help hold the aggrieved group together. Such acts "appear to activate the brain’s reward center, presumably generating a sense of satisfaction and even pleasure."

This matter seems bone simple. For good or for ill, we humans are inclined toward hatred of other groups, even at times of peace and even within our own societies. According to Fels, hatred of this type is currently "on the rise."

As she continues, Fels is quick to state another obvious point. The fact that someone holds a hate-fueled sense of grievance doesn't mean that his or sense of grievance is justified or right.

Fels cites two examples of this type of misguided hatred drawn from our own recent history. The examples she cites are entirely obvious and perfectly right. We'll only suggest that you note the fact that other possible examples have maybe perhaps been left out:

FELS (continuing directly): This, of course, doesn’t mean the punishment is just or directed at any justified target. Dylann Roof, after opening fire on a group of African-Americans during Bible study, said, “I have to do this, because you’re raping our women and y’all taking over the world.” In his mind, his community was the one being victimized.

A feminist journalist I know sent me some of the hate mail she routinely receives. Here are a few of the printable lines: “If you try telling a man what to do you’ll get punched across the face.” “I’ll go house to house shooting feminists like you.” One characterized her as an “omni-reptile-doglizard-piranha kin.”

The point is to hurt and humiliate. Those who hate want to make the objects of their hate suffer as they have. It is this that makes the attacks so personal and lends them their crude, violent and often sexual nature. The intent is not to challenge opposing beliefs but to destroy those who hold them.

The men who wrote these emails undoubtedly feel threatened by the changing role of women, and their hatred of feminists provides an organizing principle and an outside focus.

In that passage, Fels describes political hatred as directed against African-Americans and against women.

She describes the killings in South Carolina, in which a person who was deranged murdered nine people who very much weren't. She describes the types of heinous conduct which is routinely directed at women on line.

(Fels says the people who behave in these ways "want to make the objects of their hate suffer as they have." We'll suggest that she should change that "as they think or claim they have.")

By now, this is blindingly obvious stuff. People who succumb to political hatred are likely to behave in heinous ways toward the groups they loathe.

Still, their behavior may provide internal rewards, Fels says. Their hate "converts a sense of helplessness into one of action," Fels writes. "It can even be the impetus for the formation of new communities in which people share grievances and plans for retribution, relieving their sense of isolation or powerlessness."

Fels also notes the psychic and intellectual downsides of their group hatred. "As a consequence, though, there’s a loss of empathy," she writes, "and beliefs become simplified and rigid."

By now, what started as a search for deep knowledge has become a recitation of the obvious. Hatred of Others can be a powerful force, not just during time of war, but also within a peacetime society.

We'll only ask you to notice one thing about Fels' formulation. She correctly identifies two targeted groups. Is it possible that there are other targeted groups she has neglected to name?

Everything Fels says about Dylann Roof is correct. So too for her comments about men who hate women on line.

That said, these examples form a powerful part of the current liberal worldview. Fels is describing political hatred which, at least within the liberal framework, comes from the "conservative" world, from Those People, the ones Over There.

We'll leave today with a set of questions:

Is it possible that political hatred is also being sytirred up within our own liberal world? With political hatred "on the rise," is it possible that liberals are being encouraged to "relieve their sense of isolation or powerlessness" by loathing some otherized groups?

Is it possible that we liberals are being encouraged to surrender our "sense of empathy" at the current time? Is it possible that we're being handed types of hatred as a way to "provide an organizing principle and an outside focus?" Is it possible that our sense of empathy left us a longtime ago?

Are we being given "a sense of satisfaction and even pleasure" by the hate-fueled things we're told? Can it happen Over Here?

We agree with Profesor Fels; political hatred seems to be on the rise. The loss of empathy is manifest too. Tomorrow, though, we'll return to that question:

Can this sort of unfortunate conduct also be found Over Here?

Tomorrow: Empathy abandoned

Krugman softens his tone on the white working class!

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2017

Rampell refuses to budge: We were intrigued by a line near the end of Paul Krugman's column in yesterday's New York Times.

"I don’t want to sound unsympathetic to miners and industrial workers," Krugman said at the start of his final paragraph. We were struck by that because we already thought he did sound a bit unsympathetic to Those People, the lesser breed.

That doesn't mean that what he was saying in his column was "wrong." It means that he may have had just a bit of a tone.

What did Krugman say in Monday's column? He seemed to say that "the public discussion of job loss" focuses on mining and manufacturing to an excessive degree, "while virtually ignoring the big declines in some service [industry] sectors."

Krugman provided job loss numbers for various sectors. "All jobs matter," he cheekily said.

Was Krugman "wrong" in his basic claims? Presumably, no—he was not. Having said that, we'll also say this:

If you're going to say that you don't want to sound unsympathetic to someone, it might be better to say it at the start of your column, before the unwanted impression may have been spread.

In his column, Krugman offers some possible reasons for the emphasis on job loss in the manufacturing and mining sectors. Inevitably, he ended up saying that these jobs may get extra attention because they're disproportionately held by white men.

In the modern liberal world, such ruminations are required. Left unexamined was a related question: if that speculation is accurate, why has our liberal world made so little attempt to address the lack of emphasis on jobs in the service industries?

For ourselves, we don't know how much mining and manufacturing job loss has been over-emphasized down through the years. If those sectors have been over-emphasized, we can think of one explanation that Krugman skirted but missed.

Along the way, Krugman made an extremely important point—but wouldn't you know it? As he made his important point, he seemed to kick down at those People:

KRUGMAN: [W]hy aren’t promises to save service jobs as much a staple of political posturing as promises to save mining and manufacturing jobs?

One answer might be that mines and factories sometimes act as anchors of local economies, so that their closing can devastate a community in a way shutting a retail outlet won’t. And there’s something to that argument.

[...]

A different, less creditable reason mining and manufacturing have become political footballs, while services haven’t, involves the need for villains. Demagogues can tell coal miners that liberals took away their jobs with environmental regulations. They can tell industrial workers that their jobs were taken away by nasty foreigners. And they can promise to bring the jobs back by making America polluted again, by getting tough on trade, and so on. These are false promises, but they play well with some audiences.

In that passage, Krugman describes the conduct of demagogues, but then mainly seems to sneer at the regular people who believe their bogus statements and promises. It's the demagogues who are mainly at fault, but it's the regular people they misled who get snarked at in that passage.

When we liberals kick down in such ways, we give the impression that we enjoy kicking down at our lessers. We also create a world in which we have to say, at the end of our columns, that we don't want to sound unsympathetic.

The demagogues are the culprits here, not the people they mislead. Also at fault are the liberal leaders who have never quite bothered to address the dynamic Krugman describes.

Alas! We liberals often seem to enjoy kicking down at "some audiences!" It's long been a basic part of the way we play our (losing) game.

And sure enough! In this morning's Washington Post, Catherine Rampell continues to sneer at working-class women in rural Kentucky who can't afford to go to the doctor. As in this column from December, she finds it "puzzling" when such people are dissatisfied with this state of affairs.

Rampell is the Princeton-graduate child of two other Princeton graduates. Truth to tell, she sounds like the Princeton grad child of two Princeton grads in the passage shown below.

Four months later, she still doesn't get it! A super-privileged Princeton kid just can't be more clueless than this:

RAMPELL (4/18/17): Many of the stories in the booming “blue-state reporter ventures into Trump country” genre have featured Trump supporters with deep hostility toward Obamacare, among other government programs. Some of these Trump supporters are, perhaps puzzlingly, themselves Obamacare beneficiaries, receiving government subsidies for private insurance on the individual exchanges. But often what these Trump voters say they want is not a return to pre-Obamacare days; rather, they want in on the great insurance deal that they think their lazy, less-deserving neighbors are getting.

In fairness, the problem may be genetic. At any rate, Rampell is still unable to understand the situation described in late November, when Sarah Kliff interviewed white working-class women in rural Kentucky.

As in her earlier column, Rampell remains "puzzled" by the way one of Kliff's interview subjects views her Obamacare coverage. The 59-year-old woman in question was paying $3000 per year for an Obamacare policy. But uh-oh! Because of her high deductible and because of those high premiums, she couldn't afford to go to the doctor. At all!

This woman did have health insurance. But she couldn't afford health care! At the age of 59, she can't afford to go to the doctor. (This is a problem Catherine Rampell is never going to have.)

At the same time, this woman's neighbors, who were less well off, were receiving free health care through Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid. For reasons which are perfectly obvious, this woman thought that she was getting a rather terrible deal.

Who but the Princeton-grad child of two Princeton grads would find this matter "puzzling?" Let's review:

The 59-year-old woman in question was paying $3000 per year for her health insurance. Despite this, she was receiving no health care. By way of contrast, her less affluent neighbors were paying nothing at all, and they were receiving health care. The 59-year-old woman thought her neighbors had the better deal.

Only a kid who prepped at Andover would find it "puzzling" when the 59-year-old woman thought she was getting a lousy deal. For better or worse, our liberal team is crawling with people like this.

What makes Catherine Rampell seem to be so heartless? Whatever it is, it has long been part of our liberal world's standard approach to Those People, the rural white working class. This is one of the self-defeating, correctable ways we put Donald Trump where he is.

We thought Krugman flirted with condescension before he issued yesterday's last-minute disclaimer. One day later, Rampell plowed ahead with unvarnished class contempt. She's puzzled to think that a 59-year-old woman might want to go the doctor!

Earlier in her column, Rampell made us wonder why we send these brainiacs to Princeton at all. This involves her rather clear implication, early on, that the federal government "gives insurance to the elderly" through the "single-payer health care" program known as Medicare. (Emphasis on "gives.")

We'll leave that point for another day. But our team's condescension toward the lesser breed just keeps marching along.

EMBRACE OF HATE: The gods of evolution at work!

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2017

Part 2—Their treatment of love versus hate: Anna Fels wrote an intriguing column in last Friday's New York Times.

Her column bore an intriguing, somewhat fuzzy headline: "The Point of Hate." The column turned on an impression—an impression that's hard to quantify.

Fels is a psychiatrist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College. She has the impression that political hate—the hatred of targeted groups—is on the rise in the United States.

We have that impression too! In her column, Fels wonders why evolution has "preserved such a destructive emotion." Indeed, that was the boxed sub-headline of her piece as it appeared in hard copy:

"Why has evolution preserved such a destructive emotion?"

As we explained yesterday, we're puzzled by Fels' puzzlement concerning that basic question. It doesn't seem surprising to us that evolution has "preserved" the human instinct to hate certain targeted groups.

That said: as we look around the world, it does seem clear that the gods of evolution selected for this destructive instinct in the annals of prehistory.

Good lord! Everywhere we humans roam, we seem to display the instinct to split the world into Us and Them, and from there to start loathing The Others. We split the world into Us and Them in every conceivable way.

We split the world into Us and Them on the basis of "race," a concept invented for this particular task. We also split the world on the basis of ethnicity, geography, religion, social class, gender.

In her column, Fels specifically notes the hatred being directed at women in these highly cyberized times. She points to highly loathsome behavior, but political hatred/loathing/ridicule is currently being directed at a wide array of groups.

An impulse which is so widely displayed was surely "selected for." Presumably, we're all inclined to such reactions, to greater or lesser extent.

As a general matter, responsible people in high-profile positions ought to try to avoid triggering such destructive tendencies. Instead, the triggering of otherization has become a big business in recent decades. The impulse to create and hate The Others is currently being pursued for gain all through the political world.

Tomorrow, we'll return to such destructive corporate behavior in the (highly) present tense. We're thinking of a heinous bit of sleight-of-hand we saw on cable just last night!

For today, let's continue to examine the ways this kind of political hatred might have been selected for in prehistory. In particular, let's consider Fels' review of the way the gods of evolution treated love versus hate.

As a general matter, the gods of evolution have always wanted the individual to pass on his or her genes. Early in her column, Fels describes one result of this preference:

FELS (4/14/17): Lately it seems like hate is in the air, including in the United States, where hate crimes are reportedly on the rise...Clearly evolution has preserved hate as a powerful motivating force. Is there perhaps a benefit to experiencing hate?

A 2008 study of the human brain experiencing this emotion confirms that there is a distinct “hate circuit” of activated neurons. Several of the brain regions involved are known to generate aggression and to translate that aggression into action—in this case, revenge.

Strangely, other parts overlap with regions of the brain engaged by feelings of romantic love. Love is accompanied by the deactivation of areas that generate reasoning and judgment. As any poet can tell you, the critical faculties of an infatuated person are lost or at least attenuated.

Individuals experiencing hate, on the other hand, retain nearly all of their capacity for evaluating a situation. Neuroscientists have suggested that rational planning is maintained because “the hater may want to exercise judgment in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise extract revenge”—hardly an encouraging conclusion.

Doggone it! According to Fels, the gods of evolution have given the lover the impulse to swoon. At the same, they've let the hater retain the capacity to calculate.

Professor Fels calls this differential treatment "strange." To us, it doesn't seem strange at all.

The lover will be inclined to swoon, while the hater will calculate? Why would the gods have created that world? To us, it seems fairly basic:

When the lover swoons, he or she will move to pass on his or her genes. With reasoning power swept away, reproduction is likely to follow.

(We believe Shakespeare first said that.)

The lover who swoons passes on his genes. As a general matter, this is the outcome these gods consistently favor.

But uh-oh! In the annals of prehistory, the hater who swooned, who failed to calculate his behavior, might get himself killed by The Other tribe. AS a result of impulsive behavior, his or her genes wouldn't enter the gene pool at all.

As a general matter, these gods have always had just one thing on their minds. They wanted the individual to pass on his or her genes.

Presumably, they created the alternate wirings Fels describes to facilitate such outcomes. The lover would swoon and leap into action. The hater would be more careful.

None of this seems especially hard to us. Beyond that, it doesn't seem especially hard to understand why political hatred—hatred of targeted groups—seems to be on the rise.

Long ago, the gods of evolution created a world in which we're all so inclined. Giant industries now exist to encourage us in that direction.

We're all inclined to create and loathe The Others. In the past few decades, along have come the hustlers, the corporate suits and the music men.

We're all inclined to create The Others and loathe Them. Mugging and clowning and weirdly grinning, big corporate stars are only happy to push us in this direction.

Tomorrow: Hatred trumping truth

EMBRACE OF HATE: Hatred seems to be on the rise!

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2017

Part 1—Professor wonders why: According to the New York Times, Anna Fels is "a psychiatrist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College."

Last Friday, Fels published an intriguing column in the hard-copy Times. Her column appeared beneath this headline:

"The Point of Hate"

Fels began by describing two recent suicide bombings in Egypt. In her second paragraph, she stated a basic premise and posed her basic questions:

FELS (4/14/17): Lately it seems like hate is in the air, including in the United States, where hate crimes are reportedly on the rise. Like most people, I’m horrified by this outpouring of venom, but as a psychiatrist who tries to understand feelings, I also find myself asking: What is the underlying motivation? And what is it about hate that makes it different from other reactions like anger or frustration? Clearly evolution has preserved hate as a powerful motivating force. Is there perhaps a benefit to experiencing hate?

According to Fels, it seems that hatred, and hate crimes, are on the rise in the United States. She seems to be talking about political hatred—about the hatred of targeted groups, rather than the hatred of one's spouse or one's boss.

Is such hatred on the rise in the United States? As with Fels, so with us—it seems to us that it is.

Fels seeks "the underlying motivation" for such hatred and for such acts. More specifically, she wants to know why evolution has preserved this type of hate in our world.

(In hard copy, her boxed sub-headline said this: "Why has evolution preserved such a destructive emotion?")

To our mind, it doesn't seem hard to understand why hate of the type Fels describes is on the rise. Beyond that, we're puzzled by Fels' puzzlement concerning evolution.

Quickly, let's explain:

In our view, it's easy to see why the gods of evolution would have selected for this type of hatred during the vast sweep of prehistory. Consider the surroundings:

Your tribe lived in your mountain pass; our tribe lived in ours. There was no order of any kind. There were no laws, no policemen.

In that environment, fear of The Other might well have been a survival skill. If you feared (and therefore avoided) The Others, you would have lived long enough to pass on your genes.

Those who didn't fear The Others may have wandered over for a visit. These more trusting, less fearful souls may not have made it back.

In such a world, fear and loathing might well confer an evolutionary advantage. Today, such instincts tend to be less socially useful. Beyond that, these instincts confer no evolutionary advantage on the suicide bomber, who takes his own life in the pursuit of his hatred of The Others, who now live close at hand.

The suicide bomber removes himself from the gene pool. For this reason, Fels wonders why the gods of evolution have preserved this unhelpful emotion.

To us, that question seems puzzling. The answer seems fairly simple: evolution takes a long time!

Indeed, evolution typically takes a very long time. By removing themselves from the gene pool, suicide bombers may be tilting the evolutionary frame away from the love of hate. But changes like that only take place over a vast expanse of time.

Whatever! We're somewhat puzzled by Fels' puzzlement over evolution's preservation of this type of hate. Beyond that, it doesn't seem gigantically hard to speak to her other question, which is a bit more basic:

Why would hatred of this type be on the rise in the U.S.?

Is it true that this type of hatred is on the rise in the United States? We'll agree with Fels—that's how it seems. To us, though, this apparent rise in hatred of The Other doesn't seem real hard to explain.

We'll start with a possible meta-point—the loss of the Soviet Union as an object of hate. To the extent that we're all inclined to hate The Other, the Soviet Union tended to "bring us together," to use the Nixon-era phrase.

We all got to funnel our instinct for hatred Over There. When the Soviets went away, we lost a beloved hate object.

That strikes us as a relatively minor point. There's a more obvious reason for the (apparent) rise in this type of hate: the selling of this type of hate is now a very big business.

The selling of hate has become a big business! With the rise of talk radio, cable and the Internet, everybody can take part, and almost everyone does.

Back in the day, we had a half-hour of news every night. Basically, you could watch Walter Cronkite for this half-hour, or you could watch David Brinkley.

Lesser groups were peddling versions of hate at this time. But for the most past, it was fairly hard to access these groups. You had to go looking for the types of specialized hate which Walter and David weren't selling.

Today, the selling of hate is a 24-hour, seven-day per week business. For ourselves, we'd be inclined to say that this type of peddling mainly started on the right. But today, it's also being directed at us, Over Here in our own liberal tents.

Over and over and over again, we're being taught to loathe The Others, the very bad people found Over There. We're sold this product in various ways. This constant peddling is done for profit, for fame and for fun.

Important note to Professor Fels—the selling of hate tends to work! Prehistory wired us for it, and some of our biggest media stars have happily jumped in the game.

Tomorrow: Levels of hate

Our hatred may make us dissemble or lie!

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2017

Corporate star does it again: Anna Fels is a psychiatrist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College.

In yesterday's New York Times, she wrote an op-ed column about hatred and where it comes from, evolution-wise.

We expect to pursue the topic next week. For today, we'll merely say that hate and hatred may lead us to dissemble about some object of our hatred, possibly even to lie.

Possibly even to lie to millions of people! Consider Rachel Maddow's presentation about Jeff Sessions on Thursday night's TV show.

Perhaps because we'd been under the weather, we didn't know, when we watched Thursday's show, that a controversy already existed about What Jeff Sessions Had Said.

We didn't know that the Washington Post's Daniel Drenzer had already apologized for misrepresenting what Sessions had said. To Drezner's credit; click here.

We didn't know that Snopes.com had already shot down our liberal tribe's hatred-inflected account of What Sessions had said. For the Snopes fact-check, click this.

We didn't know about all that. We did know this:

We've been watching Maddow for years. Through those painful years of service, we've developed a fairly good ear for her "Maddow moments."

As we watched her declaim on Thursday night, we suspected that we'd encountered another such "Maddow moment." Our ears perked up when we heard her say that Sessions had written a speech "around the idea that people crossing the border are seen by the United States as 'filth.' "

Knowing Maddow as we do, we suspected that Sessions hadn't done that. As usual with these "Maddow moments," it turned out that we were right.

Maddow was discussing an April 11 speech by Sessions, an object of liberal hatred. Two nights after Sessions delivered his speech, this is what Maddow said:

MADDOW (4/13/17): So Jeff Sessions went to [the southern border] this year, went there this week...What he planned to do was denounce the "filth" coming across the border from Mexico into the United States.

You might have seen headlines this week about Jeff Sessions planning on giving what some people were calling a full-blown white nationalist scary speech on the border. Part of the reason people thought it was a scary speech is because of the use of the word "filth."

Here was part of his prepared remarks: quote, "It is here on this sliver of land where we first take our stand against this filth." That was his prepared remarks.

Here's what happened when he came to that part of the speech in real life:

SESSIONS (videotape): It is here on this sliver of land, on this border, where the first—we first take our stand.

MADDOW: Jeff Sessions writes a speech and crafts policies around the idea that people crossing the border are seen by the United States as "filth." But then he chickens out, when it comes time to actually say it in front of real people.

We need a better term than "chickening out" to explain what he's doing here...

Credit where due! Maddow didn't claim that Sessions had actually said the word "filth" when he delivered his speech.

She said that he had written the word. According to Maddow, he "chickened out" when it came time to say it out loud.

Did Sessions write the original speech? We'll guess that he did not. That said, the real problem here involved Maddow's blatant misrepresentation of what the original speech really said.

According to Maddow, Sessions had written a speech which referred to unauthorized immigrants as "filth." But uh-oh! Whoever may have written the speech, that rather plainly isn't what the text of the speech actually said, as Drezner and Snopes (and quite a few others) had noted on April 12.

Who was described as "filth" in the original text of the speech? More precisely, was that rather ugly term meant to describe typical unauthorized immigrants?

Rather plainly, no—and surely, Maddow and her staff must have known that. Below, you see the start of the speech which Sessions delivered that day. This excerpt ends with the tiny sliver of text Maddow was willing to share with her viewers:

SESSIONS (4/11/17): Good morning. It's a pleasure for me to be with you and I want to thank our superb, brave men and women of the Customs and Border Protection for their hospitality. Their ICE officers, our HSI officers, who work every day to restore a lawful system of immigration that we can be proud of.

I appreciate Secretary Kelly for his leadership and his willingness to have his people host me today. I appreciate that, and all of Homeland Security.

Our men and women who are securing our border are making astounding progress. Here, along our nation's Southwest border, ground zero in the fight. Here, under the Arizona sun, ranchers work each day to make an honest living and law-abiding citizens seek to provide for their families.

But it's also here along this border that transnational gangs, like MS-13, and international cartels flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake. And it is here that criminal aliens and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overthrow our lawful system of immigration.

So let's stop here for a moment. When we talk about— When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean?

We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent civilians, and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders.

Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks, even beheadings. They threaten the very integrity of our nations in our hemisphere. It is here on this sliver of land, on this border, where the first—we first take our stand.

For whatever reason, Sessions dropped the term "filth" from his remarks when he delivered the speech. (Even in the face of his real subject matter, we think he showed good judgment.)

For whatever reason, Sessions dropped the term "filth" from his actual speech. But even as the speech had been written, the term wasn't directed at unauthorized immigrants, as Maddow claimed in an attempt to help us hate Sessions more fully.

Rather plainly, Sessions was talking about "transnational gangs, like MS-13, and international cartels [which] flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake" in that part of his speech. Rather plainly, that's who the original speech writer had referred to as "filth."

As of April 12, many people had noted this fact. On April 11, a report by the Wall Street Journal had spread the misimpression that Sessions' speech had referred to unauthorized immigrants as "filth."

On April 12, Drezner apologized for repeating that claim. That same day, Snopes explained why that claim had been wrong. So did quite a few others.

That said, so what? Hatred makes us do many things. On the evening of April 13, Maddow persisted with the bogus claim, exhorting wildly as she did, trying to help us learn to hate Sessions as much as her own broken soul does.

(To watch Maddow's segment, just click here. Note the highly dramatic, overwrought way she keeps saying the thrilling word "filth.")

We'd have to say that Maddow came extremely close to lying on this occasion. She did something very similar on April 3 when she excitingly said that Carter Page had been "successfully recruited" as a Russkie spy back in 2013.

That said, Maddow does this sort of thing quite a lot. She covers for herself with her constant chuckling and her weird grinning. But in the midst of all that corporate fun, her dissembling seems to grow.

Just for the record, let's discuss the workings of MS-13, the "transnational gang" Sessions was explicitly discussing in his speech. Just yesterday, the New York Times discussed their work in a featured news report which appeared beneath this hard-copy headline:

"Four Bodies Are Discovered on Long Island, and a Brutal Gang Looms"

According to the Times report, police said the four victims in question "had been killed in a manner 'consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13,' the transnational gang with roots in Los Angeles and El Salvador that was responsible for 11 deaths in Suffolk County in 2016."

It isn't just the Times. In the past month, the Washington Post has offered an array of reports about the rapes and murders linked to this gang's resurgence in in the D.C. area. For an overview, click here.

These are the murders and rapes to which Sessions referred that day. Maddow was eager to make you think he meant something different. For that reason, she disappeared the bulk of his speech. What we liberals don't know may help us learn to hate more!

Maddow does this sort of thing all the time. She's giggles and smiles as she does. In this way, she disguises the tribal hatred she insists on peddling.

In this latest remarkable instance, a substantial array of reliable people had already debunked the notion that Sessions was sliming regular unauthorized immigrants with the word he chose not to say that day.

As of April 12, everyone knew that this claim had been wrong. On the evening of April 13, Maddow pimped it anyway. It's hard to distinguish this conduct from outright lying.

Do you mind if we close with a note about one part of Maddow's play? Consider again this slippery part of what she said:

MADDOW: You might have seen headlines this week about Jeff Sessions planning on giving what some people were calling a full-blown white nationalist scary speech on the border. Part of the reason people thought it was a scary speech is because of the use of the word "filth."

Do you see what this strange hater did? As people of this type will do, she slithered ahead with words she took from the mouths of others!

"Some people" had called Sessions' speech "a full-blown white nationalist speech," she said. They had based that assessment on the use of the word "filth."

Do you see how she hid behind others' skirts to pimp the ideas she wants you to share? "Some people" had referred to the speech that way! She hadn't done that herself!

Assuming minimal competence, Maddow and her gruesome, laughing-off-camera staff lost their way a long time back. We wouldn't pick Sessions for attorney general ourselves—but Maddow shouldn't be on the air.

Maddow seems to be trying to teach you to hate. Does that seem like a good idea?

What makes people want to hate? Anna Fels raised the question this week. Maddow supplied the example.

For misinformation, watch that space!

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2017

Rachel does it again: For years, we've told you that tribal darling Rachel Maddow "just isn't obsessively honest."

Her performance last night was worse.

Last night, Rachel pleasured the tribe with her scathing account of a recent speech by Jeff Sessions. Assuming minimal competence, we'd have to say that her presentation was baldly dishonest.

Sessions wouldn't have been our choice for attorney general. Then again, we didn't favor the way Maddow mugged and clowned her way through last year's election—a lazy, self-protective performance which helped send Trump to the White House.

Sessions wouldn't have been our choice for high office. But Maddow's performance last night went several miles over the line.

Maddow's program and performance have been spiraling downward for years. Last night's presentation was hard to distinguish from lying.

We'll run you through the whole story tomorrow. Liberal brain cells die in droves, each night, when this strange corporate hustler performs.

THE WAY WE LOOK: They way we looked in 2009!

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2017

Part 4—The start of the current cycle: All too often, we liberals are skilled at taking offense.

We're often insulted by The Others. We're sometimes skilled at finding offense where no such offense has been given.

Consider this one example:

We've remained struck, in the past few years, by the opening episode in Ta-Nehisi Coates' award-winning book, Between The World and Me. Coates describes a dispiriting experience he underwent on a Sunday morning show—the fruit of a dispiriting set of events which, by any normal standard, plainly didn't occur.

The incident was easily fact-checked, but it seems that no one bothered or dared. (The unnamed program was Face the Nation. The unnamed moderator was Norah O'Donnell.) Adding to the oddness of this episode, Coates' book is written as a heartfelt, truth-telling letter from Coates to his teen-aged son.

According to Coates' book, Coates was thrown into despair by the offensive incident in question, which rather plainly didn't occur. How did our liberal world respond to this odd performance?

No one fact-checked Coates' account, which is impossible to square with the tape and transcript of the program. Instead, Coates' book received the National Book Award, a very high liberal-ish honor.

Overall, did Coates' book deserve that award? We don't have a view on that. But that opening episode is quite odd, as is our liberal culture.

At present, our liberal culture is heavily built around the skill of taking offense. We constantly see that Those People, the ones Over There, are giving offense through their inveterate racism, misogyny, homophobia, bigotry and xenophobia—and of course their ridiculous voting behavior.

We're highly skilled at taking offense. Do we ever give offense? Consider what the young novelist Willie Davis said about Samantha Bee's above-ground swimming pool joke.

Bee offered the joke last November 9, the night after Donald Trump won. Months later, Davis wrote the following passage in Salon, part of a longer rumination about contemporary liberalism:

DAVIS (2/25/17): On her first show after the election, Samantha Bee, the comedic equivalent of a Facebook “share if you agree” post, said, “America has done the diplomatic equivalent of installing an above-ground pool. Even in the best case scenario and it doesn’t seep into the foundation, our neighbors will never look at us in the same way again.”

Who has above-ground pools? Poor people of all races. Rural people with yards. The joke is simply “Poor people who try to act rich are tacky. People who don’t have the money to get a proper pool are an embarrassment, and they should be more concerned with the judgment of neighbors than their own happiness.”

Does that attitude matter to people? One of my best friends—a woman from West Virginia who organizes labor unions and has received commendations from the Obama White House—said when she heard Bee’s above-ground pool joke, she instantly felt like “the poorest kid in class.” She organizes unions and had everything at stake in Clinton winning, but to Bee she was just the stupid, poor kid from a stupid, poor state. That is the flip side of identity politics. It doesn’t matter what she does—only who she is.

Should Davis' friend have felt that way? Not necessarily, no.

Did others hear Bee's joke that way? Quite possibly, yes. That said, we liberals often give severe offense, in ways which nobody misses.

Whatever her intention may have been, Rebecca Solnit's attitude was clear in the recent comments we quoted yesterday. No one would have missed it—no one, that is, except Us.

That said, sneering condescension toward the white working class has been a basic part of liberal culture since the 1960s. Our big stars have long been skilled at giving offense, to tens of millions of voters, in the standard old highly enjoyable ways.

In Solnit's case, a Berkeley crowd was encouraged to chuckle at the thought of Those (ridiculous) People out there "in America" amidst their kids' rural drug addiction. Also in their "bleak suburbs!"

Our attitude at such times is clear. This is one of the obvious ways in which we sent Trump to the White House.

Would Solnit deliberately give offense? We will assume that she wouldn't. When Frank Rich rails about the nation's "hillbillies," we feel a bit less sure.

(Rich, of course, was trashing Al Gore all through the 2000 campaign—and well beyond, even as Gore opposed the war in Iraq and wrote an Oscar-winning film about climate change. Gore, of course, was from Tennessee, just as Bill Clinton had been from Arkansas. If you think those facts are unrelated, you're an easier tribal sell than we are. Our mindless tribal condescension has often hurt us badly.)

Again and again in the past decade, we've sneered at the white working class. Solnit mocked their rural drug addiction. But at the start of the current era, we had Rachel's dick bombs.

Barack Obama had been elected; a "tea party" movement had started. Out in America, many people were being misled by powerful right-wing and Republican figures.

Maddow decided to kick way down, a practice our tribe adores.

You may remember the episode. Night after night, through the course of two weeks, she invited Ana Marie Cox onto her TV show to lob dick jokes at the "tea-baggers." They weren't as culturally hip as Us! This made them ripe for discard.

(Maddow pretended, night after night, that she was embarrassed by Cox's jokes. In this way, she also displayed her contempt for Us. We just sat there and took it.)

Maddow bombed the ridiculous baggers. Eight years later, Solnit snarked about their rural addict sons.

We displayed our uglier, less wise sides. Everyone sees this out "in America." Everyone sees this but Us.

We liberals tend to believe, and to say, that we're just extremely bright. The numbskulls are all found Over There! Within our tribe, we actually tend to believe this.

The truth of the matter is quite different. Everyone knows this but Us.

In part through our massive arrogance, we keep electing people like Bush, even leading to Donald J. Trump. Even now, we can't quite see that some of the problem may lie Over Here, with Us.

We're angered and puzzled by the idea that we should stop insulting The Others (and sneering about their misfortunes). Insulting The Others is our tribe's greatest joy. It lies at the heart of our culture.

We liberals love to take offense; through our unkindness and our indecency, we're also quite good at giving it. We've walked away from Rose of Sharon. When we hear about older women who can't afford to see a doctor, our intellectual leaders angrily say that it's their own dumb fault.

(Why didn't they read Paul Krugman last year? As Krugman himself seemed to say last week, you can't help people like that!)

We snark about people "in America" with their comically addicted sons. When we behave in these time-honored ways, everyone in America can see the way we look.

Everyone can see who we are. Everybody but Us!

Another day at the New York Times!

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2017

"Love Gov" v. incoherence: In her column today for the New York Times, Gail Collins offers readers a bit of perspective—if they read all the way to paragraph 14.

If you read to graf 14, you're offered this bit of perspective:

COLLINS (4/13/17): On occasion we are reminded that the worst things that happen in this world are generally not about consensual sex.

Interesting! The worst things that happen are not about consensual sex!

Unfortunately, the rest of Collins' column today is about consensual sex, or at least it concerns a near-relative. The columnist couldn't help herself. The headline on her column says this:

"Trump Versus The Love Gov"

Collins burns her column rummaging through ex-governor Bentley's underwear drawer, comparing it to the underwear drawer of President Donald J. Trump. In fairness, you do get that one brief bit of perspective.

Collins' column struck us as a bad old New York Times moment. We'll suggest that you pair it with Amanda Taub's puzzling Upshot report.

Taub's lengthy piece tops today's National section. It seems to be an attempt to explain the rise in political partisanship. Hard-copy headline included, it starts off like this:

TAUB (4/13/17): Partisanship as a Tribal Identity: Voting Against One's Economic Interests

Working-class Americans who voted for Donald J. Trump continue to approve of him as president, even though he supported a health care bill that would disproportionately hurt them.

Highly educated professionals tend to lean Democratic, even though Republican tax policies would probably leave more money in their pockets.

Why do people vote against their economic interests?

The answer, experts say, is partisanship. Party affiliation has become an all-encompassing identity that outweighs the details of specific policies.

As you can see, that's an inauspicious start.

Taub starts by asking why (some) people "vote against their economic interests." One possible answer is fairly obvious:

They vote against their economic interests because they have other types of "interests!"

Taub doesn't waste time on that. In her taxonomy, you have your economic interests—and after that, you have "partisanship." Or so the experts say!

We recommend the Taub piece as a reading challenge. The piece strikes us as wonderfully incoherent, in a wonderfully challenging way.

Through the bulk of the piece, the expert on whom Taub relies is Lilliana Mason, a youngish assistant professor at the University of Maryland. Our guess would be that the incoherence comes more from Taub than from Mason. But for today, your assignment will be to see how much of Taub's presentation, if any, you feel you can puzzle out.

Upshot pieces are supposed to represent the New York Times' brainiest work. We hope to return to this piece in the next few days to try to puzzle it out.

For today, we'll recommend the intellectual challenge presented by this work. In case the strain becomes too great, you can always enjoy the Love Gov, or turn to A2 and A3.

We've been a bit under the weather in the past week. For that reason, we haven't yet discussed the new format the Times has adopted on pages A2 and A3. (Hard-copy editions only.)

On those new pages, the Times is talking way down to its readers. Today, Taub adds a puzzle to the mix, and Collins throws in the fun.

Warning:

Seamus the dog isn't mentioned today. Neither is the "21-year-old intern," the icon who didn't exist.

THE WAY WE LOOK: When we seem to sneer!

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2017

Part 3—We explain things to Those People: E. J. Dionne starts his new column with a familiar but sensible claim about Donald J. Trump. In the world of Donald J. Trump, it's never Donald Trump's fault:

DIONNE (4/13/17): President Trump rose to power on a combination of meanness, incoherence and falsehoods. His strategy depended almost entirely on playing off the unpopularity and weaknesses of others.

Every aspect of his approach has blown up on him since he took office, but as is always the case with Trump, he will not take any personal responsibility for what’s going wrong. He must find a scapegoat.

A failure is never Trump's doing or fault. Blame must be cast somewhere else.

That's a familiar observation about Donald J. Trump. That said, it seems to us that our own liberal tribe tends to behave the same way.

We just managed to lose an election to the worst candidate ever. But we tend to direct all the blame Over There.

We tend to dump all the blame on Those People, the stupid racists who live Over There. Very little responsibility, imperfection, error or blame gets attributed to Us.

To the contrary! In the months since Trump was elected, we've created a heroic tale about our tribe's noble push-back. We're staging a "resistance," we keep telling ourselves. In this way, we compare our glorious selves to the greatest political heroes of the past century.

(To be flattered this way, just watch Rachel.)

Could there be something that we did wrong on our way to November's election? Could it be that some part of our liberal team's game needs to be discarded or improved?

We'd suggest that we abandon the way we look when we liberalsplain to Those People, the rubes who live out there "in America." And yes, we put those words in quotes for a reason.

We liberals! We've spent a fair amount of time insulting the very stupid people who voted for Donald J. Trump. That said, we've played it this way for a very long time. The perception that The Others are dumb is a long-standing part of our culture.

We rarely seem to notice the standard types of dumbness which often emerge from Us. As an example of one such practice, consider the way a recent book event started in Berkeley.

The book event was taped and broadcast by C-Span. It concerned Rebecca Solnit's new book, The Mother of All Questions.

Solnit may be best know for her earlier book, Men Explain Things to Me. She didn't use the term "mansplain" in the book, but the book is generally thought of as the text which describes the phenomenon most clearly.

Solnit's new book is one of quite a few; she also does a column for Harper's. At the Berkeley event, she was interview by Jeffrey Chang, who tended to fawn too much for our taste while dropping a few high liberal names on one or two occasions.

We have no view on Solnit's overall work. We were amazed by the way the interview started. If you want to know the way we liberal will often appear to The Others, we'd suggest that you consider the way this discussion began.

Do we seem to look down on The Others? Do we seem to condescend? We'll not suggest that Solnit meant to convey such attitudes. But the analysts started to wail and moan at an early point in the colloquy.

As the discussion started, Chang said he'd last spoken to Solnit after she returned, last September, from a visit to the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota. Loud alarms began to sound as soon as Solnit said this:

CHANG (3/16/17): If I remember correctly, when you were coming back from North Dakota, you were sitting next to a Trump supporter, yeah?

SOLNIT: Yeah, this is what happens when you're from San Francisco. I've had two conversations with Trump supporters.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

You know, my friends in Nevada and New Mexico and such I think have had a few more. I was kind of fascinating about both. I don't know what you remember.

The Berkeley crowd enjoyed a long laugh when Solnit said she's spoken to just two Trump supporters. To our ear, it didn't sound like friendly laughter.

Beyond that, as you know, there's a bit of a history here:

Long ago and far away, in December 1972, New York Times film critic Pauline Kael made a famous comment. She was quoted by her own newspaper. Here's what the Times said she said:

“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

For the record, President Nixon had just won a massive re-election. The popular vote had gone exactly like this:

Nixon: 60.7 percent
McGovern: 37.5 percent

Oof! One month before, almost 61 percent of the electorate had voted for Nixon. Kael said she knew only one such person—though she could smell or otherwise sense their presence when she sat in a large darkened room.

Kael's statement became quite famous. It has long been taken as a marker of liberal hauteur and condescension. It's hard to see why such a strange statement shouldn't be taken that way.

Because Kael's statement is so famous, the analysts began to wail when Solnit headed down that same road. In fairness, she got a good laugh from the crowd—though to our ear, it didn't sound like friendly or self-deprecatory laughter.

To our ear, it didn't sound like the joke was on us Berkeley types, encased in our liberal bubble. As Solnit continued, the drift of the humor became a bit more clear:

SOLNIT (continuing directly): What I found fascinating was that both of them were voting for a man who was, you know, completely fictitious. It wasn't even official Trump propaganda. It was their imaginary ideal Trump. Their Platonic Trump.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

CHANG: So what were they—who was this Platonic Trump to them?

Last November, 63 million people voted for Trump; Solnit had spoken to two of them. On the basis of that research, the audience was enjoying a good solid laugh at their ridiculous dumbness.

Already, the analysts had lapsed into a cataonic silence. They'd seen this type of unwise, unkind condescension many times in the past.

Solnit almost seemed to be offering an anthropology of Those People. And now, as she answered Chang's question, good God!

Her hauteur became massively worse:

SOLNIT: Well, I was—on the way back from Standing Rock, I sat next to an evangelical wheat and soybean farmer, whose sons both had addiction problems, which is how you know you're in America. And uh—

The kind of agrarian junkie scene. And uh—

CHANG: Hmm.

SOLNIT: You know, and he was like—and this was right around—was it before the "grab them by the pussy?" He just thought, he thought all those sort of scandals were just sort of fabricated and that wasn't really who—he thought he was a much better man—he basically thought Trump was a lot more like him than any of the evidence would possibly suggest.

To watch the entire tape, click here. Solnit's discussion with Chang starts eight minutes in.

Credit where due! Solnit seemed to "pause for laugh" on two occasions as she described the addiction problems of the evangelical farmer's two sons, who were part of "the kind of agrarian junkie scene."

To their credit, the audience balked—and to our ear, Chang's "Hmm" almost seemed to suggest disapproval of Solnit's remark. But good grief! The analysts especially tore their hair over this rank formulation:

"I sat next to an evangelical wheat and soybean farmer, whose sons both had addiction problems, which is how you know you're in America."

"Which is how you know you're in America?" Where in the world does Solnit think that she and her followers live?

Did Solnit want to come across the way she so plainly did? We'll guess that wasn't her intention, but everyone out there "in America" would instantly sense the hauteur her words so plainly conveyed.

Solnit had spoken to one of Those People—to one of Those People out there "in America!" We liberals have been presenting ourselves to the public this way for a very long time.

The punishment wasn't over. Having described the evangelical farmer whose addicted sons live in America, Solnit started telling Chang about the second Trump voter she had encountered.

Here's where the two women met:

SOLNIT (continuing directly): And then, every four years with my amazing friend Paul Polkerson, who's organized this radical progressive coalition for the state of Nevada, I go do "get-out-the-vote." It's my sacrifice on the altar of democracy to try and ward off evil.

And you know, and I was in like this kind of like bleak suburb about ten miles north of downtown Reno doing get-out-the-vote, and this South Asian woman started really badgering me, because she was there to do get-out-the-vote for Trump. And I just wanted to figure out why she liked Trump.

And she had two things she was really committed to and that there was no arguing with her about...

Solnit encountered this second Trump voter due to her own amazing friend, with whom she was sacrificing on the altar of democracy, as she does every four years.

Solnit had encountered this woman "in like this kind of like bleak suburb about ten miles north of downtown Reno." We will guess that that "bleak suburb" is found "in America" too.

We'll guess that Solnit didn't intend to come across in the way she so plainly did. But her condescension and her hauteur were familiar and unmistakable.

What did we think as we watched that last statement? People live in that suburb, we thought. And guess what?

Those people are people too!

Solnit spoke to a Berkeley crowd. On the whole, her hour-long discussion struck us as rather light, but she plainly has fans in the area.

That said, everyone in that bleak Reno suburb would have understood what they were hearing that day:

We liberals explain things about our lessers. Last fall, those voters spoke.

Tomorrow: Sources of hauteur

For the record: For the record, Solnit's conversation with that deluded American farmer would have preceded Trump's "grab them" remark.

The rise of a very exciting word!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2017

Explosiveness watch: As we watch the nation's press corps, we've been struck by the ongoing rise in the use of a very exciting word.

The exciting word is in wide use. Today, this usage at TPM seems to mark an era:

KIRKLAND (4/12/17): Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say the classified intelligence reports that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) explosively surfaced in March press conference show no evidence that the Obama administration improperly surveilled the Trump transition team, CNN reported Wednesday.

Nunes "explosively" surfaced those reports!

Sometimes, we get the impression that excitement is, to borrow from the old TV ad, their product—their only product.

Along with: Along with the headlined use of the catchy, explosive and excitingly sexy term, "Luv Guv."

Us being more like Them!

Was Carter Page a Russkie spy?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2017

The concept of super-secret: Was Carter Page a Russkie spy last year?

We have no idea. This morning, the Washington Post offers a front-page report which turns on one key word.

That word doesn't appear until paragraph 16. We'll print the word in bold:

NAKASHIMA (4/12/17): The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.

That one key word is "knowingly." According to that one key word, unnamed officials have now said this:

Investigators believed that Page knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow! Or so "officials" have said.

You have to wait till graf 16, but "knowingly" is a powerful word. If you believe in fundamental fairness, the following question is important too:

In what sorts of "clandestine activities" could Page have engaged? He wasn't the head of some government agency. He seems to have been a minor, rather flaky figure who was connected in some way to the Trump campaign.

In what sorts of "clandestine activities" could Page have engaged? It's a weakness of this report that this basic question isn't pondered in any way.

Absent that paragraph 16, the revelations in this report seem to be fairly weak. The whole thing turns on "knowingly." And the Post does little from there.

In what kinds of "clandestine activities" might Page have "knowingly" engaged? We'd like to see that point discussed. If you believe in fundamental fairness, you should want that too.

By our lights, Rachel Maddow isn't huge on fundamental fairness. Last night, she pretty much had Page convicted of this latest crime. That said, Maddow tends to tilt toward sending people to jail.

When Maddow described the Post's report, she repeatedly made a somewhat ironic point. There was a FISA warrant for Page, she said. And warrants of that type are just extremely secret.

Indeed, they're super-secret, she said. It formed a key part of her narrative:

MADDOW (4/11/17): We have to start with a little breaking news which has just been published by the Washington Post. And I want to say from the outset that the source of this news is very unusual.

this is a breaking news story about the Trump campaign and Russia. And this story springs from a very unusual leak. It's a leak of something that really doesn't usually leak.

And The Washington Post goes out of their way tonight to point out in their reporting that what is the source of this scoop that they've got, this is not a typical, you know, "people talking to the press" sort of leak. This is not something that usually gets leaked to the press. I'll just quote the way the Washington Post describes it.

This is about a FISA warrant. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They have been leaked the contents of a FISA warrant. As the Washington Post explains, quote, "The judges who rule on FISA requests, on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests, those judges oversee the most sensitive national security cases and their warrants are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence gathering."

Nevertheless, the content of one of those warrants is what appears to have leaked tonight. At least what the Washington Post says they have obtained tonight in the Trump Russia story. That is a very unusual thing. FISA warrants don't leak.

[...]

So this is— If what the Washington Post has reported turns out to be true, this is a big advance in the story, right? It is worth, though—I can't stress this enough.

It's worth keeping in mind that FISA warrants are super-secret. First rule of FISA is, you don't talk about FISA. I mean, the existence of the court, the existence of these types of warrants often itself is treated as classified information.

"FISA warrants are super-secret," Maddow kept saying, in various ways, failing to see that the current case suggests that this simply ain't so.

Who provided this leak to the Washington Post? People, who didn't provide this leak to the Post? Below, you see the way the Post's report began.

Warning: there will be a quiz. Some math will be involved:

NAKASHIMA: The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

Question:

"Law enforcement and other U.S. officials said?" Does that mean the Post has at least four different sources?

To our ear, there are at least two law enforcement officials involved in the leak, and at least two other U.S. officials. If that's true, that would mean that at least four different people were involved in leaking this matter.

How "super-secret" is that?

Maddow typically seems inclined to send people to jail. We're inclined to recommend fundamental fairness. As excitement builds around Page, we'll recommend our approach, not hers.

Final point—the Post could have identified the number of sources had they written with greater clarity. They could have written the phrase which is shown below, but they didn't bother:

"Law enforcement officials and other U.S. officials said."

Did at least four officials leak a matter which is super-secret? To us, that suggests that a bit of a jihad is on.

We'd like to see the Post, and perhaps even Maddow, behave in ways which are fundamentally fair. More likely, on TV at least, you'll see a lot of excitement.

Final point: "If what the Washington Post has reported turns out to be true?"

"If" is an important word too. Sources can be wrong. They can have their thumbs on the scale.

THE WAY WE LOOK: Some say we misread Petri's piece!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2017

Interlude—Harvard kid reconsidered: We may owe Alexandra Petri an apology and a restatement.

Or maybe not. We aren't exactly sure.

At issue is yesterday's fiery report about Petri's most recent weekly column in the Washington Post. When we read her column last Saturday morning, we took her to be mocking Trump supporters.

We've been told that other people have spied a different point of view in the satirical "ComPost" piece.

Who was Petri satirizing, parodying, commenting upon or mocking? Was she mocking Trump supporters? Or was she actually satirizing some of her colleagues, the ones who mock Trump supporters?

Even today, we aren't really sure. That said, we would have noted that second possibility if its existence had entered our heads.

Who was Petri satirizing in last Saturday's column? Before the body of the piece, she offered this italicized overview:

Since President Trump's approval rating now looks like something that got stuck to the bottom of my shoe, I joined the flood of journalists who went to Real America to gloat-see how the Trump supporters are getting along.

(Groan! We're transcribing that passage as it appeared in the hard-copy Post, and as it appears at Nexis. On line at the Post, the term "gloat-see" is rendered differently.)

Does that overview mean that Petri was satirizing, perhaps criticizing, her fellow journalists? That may be what that means. Except perhaps for this:

Is that premise accurate? Has a "flood of journalists" ventured to Real America to "gloat-see," or gloat about, Trump supporters? We're not aware of that.

It's true that many journalists have gone to Appalachia and/or the Rust Belt to interview Trump supporters. This has occurred at the Washington Post and pretty much everywhere else.

Generally, though, these reporters have been respectful toward Trump supporters. This has occasioned repeated push-back from us liberals, who have complained about their lack of disrespect.

Most recent example:

On Sunday, April 2, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof described some interviews he did with Trump voters in Oklahoma. Kristof adopted a reportorial tone; we didn't see any gloating. At one point, he noted these Oklahomans' "resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots."

On April 6, Kristof published a second column, noting "the torrent of venom" directed at these Trump voters by liberal readers. He complained that "Democratic anger" is causing people like us to "stereotype a vast and contradictory group of 63 million people."

On April 7, Paul Krugman wrote a column in which he seemed to snipe at Kristof's soft-hearted type. On April 8, Petri's column appeared.

By now, that reaction to Kristof's column constitutes part of a pattern. Back in December, Vox's Sarah Kliff went to Kentucky to interview Trump voters who, despite their votes for Trump, held insurance policies through Obamacare.

Kliff described the serious problems these people faced despite their Obamacare policies. Many liberals reacted by mocking the dumbness of the Trump voters, saying they should have known not to vote for Trump.

We can't think of any reporters or broadcasters who have gone to Real America to gloat about the situations faced by Trump voters. To the contrary! There has actually been a lot of complaining about the courtesy extended to Trump voters.

More examples:

Last month, Chris Hayes took Bernie Sanders to McDowell County, West Virginia for a town hall meeting. Hayes and Sanders were highly respectful of the situations faced by that county's Trump voters.

A few weeks later, Frank Rich published an angry screed in New York Magazine. "No Sympathy for the Hillbilly!" So read the headline on the essay by one of our tribe's biggest stars.

What "flood of journalists" has gone to "Real America" to "gloat-see" Trump supporters? We have no idea. For that reason, we're willing to admit it:

When we read Petri's column, it didn't even occur to us that she was satirizing a "flood of journalists" who were going to Real America and disrespecting Trump voters. We don't even know who those journalists are.

It seems to us that journalists have been unfailingly respectful toward Trump voters in these reporting trips. By way of contrast, repeated push-back has come from us liberals. In the rank and file and in the leadership, we have complained that these journalists haven't gloated enough.

Did Petri mean to satirize, indeed criticize, her fellow journalists for gloating? It's hard to satirize a phenomenon which isn't occurring. But if that's what Petri intended by her column, we greatly regret the alternate interpretation we placed upon it.

Who or what was Petri satirizing or burlesquing? We can't say we're real sure.

Having said that, we'll also say this. As a general matter, it tends to be a bad idea to play with racial and ethnic stereotypes in satirical attempts to support some stereotyped group.

We'll guess that many people read Petri's column in roughly the way we did—as the latest mocking discussion of those stupid Trump voters, with all their tobacco juice and their stupid ridiculous comments.

One day before, Krugman had basically said that Those People are stupid. So had Rich, not long before, in his "hillbilly" monologue.

This stereotype has been widely voiced within the liberal world. As a general matter, it's unwise to fight a stereotype by repeating its various totems. People will hear the familiar old sneers and that's pretty much all they will hear.

White working-class Trump supporters have been subjected to mountains of ridicule. This has often come from high-fallutin' "coastal elites" who seem unable to respect the people who have, to cite one example, gone down into the mines.

We don't seem able to care about people who, despite their expensive insurance policies, can't afford to see a doctor. It's just Those People, after all. Why should we blue-staters care?

What was the point of Petri's piece? We can't say we know. We think the Post should likely have put something else into print, where the point of view was more clear and the familiar old stereotypes weren't being tossed around.

That said, we hugely regret the interpretation we put on Petri's piece. Had we realized that another interpretation was possible, we would have noted that fact, or skipped the piece altogether.

We assume that Petri's a good, decent person. In our experience, most people are. Presumably, that includes the bulk of the people who go down into the mines.

(Bernie Sanders called them "heroes." We prefer that to calling them dopes.)

Presumably, that also includes the bulk of the women in rural Kentucky who can't afford to see a doctor despite their Obamacare.

In our experience, most people are good decent people. We're willing to say that a few of our tribe's most famous leaders could possibly use some more work.

Tomorrow: Do we liberals look condescending? Do we seem to privilegesplain?

THE WAY WE LOOK: Our open contempt!

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2017

Part 2—Harvard child's rank condescension: In recent weeks, we liberals have kept ourselves busy looking down at the white working class.

Some of our conduct seems to betray condescension. Some of our conduct seems to betray an attitude more like contempt.

Some of this condescension/contempt has come from our liberal rank and file. But a lot of it comes from our "liberal elite," from our high-profile liberal "thought leaders."

Quickly, let's be fair. This open contempt for the white working class has come, in fairly even measures, from the three major branches of our leadership class—from graduates of Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Last Saturday morning, Alexandra Petri chimed in. For today, let't consider the type of contempt she displayed in her weekly column in the Washington Post. Let''s consider the types of moral and intellectual blindness involved in behavior like hers.

As we noted in this award-winning preview, Petri grew up as a member of the "Eastern elite." She lived in Georgetown, right there in D.C., and she prepped at National Cathedral.

Her father was a congressman. She graduated from Harvard in 2010.

The youngster took these enormous advantages and good God how she ran! Last Saturday, she published the latest column in which members of her elite class displayed their unattractive, unintelligent contempt for the white working class, apparently full stop.

Before we continue, let's stress a key point: members of the white working class can see us when we do this. We liberals are the only people who can't see our unattractive, unintelligent behavior for what it actually is.

Everyone else is able to see who and what we actually are. Only we liberals are clueless!

Petri's weekly column for the Post appears on Saturday mornings. Her columns carry an identity tag which says she writes the paper's "ComPost blog."

Presumably, the "Com" is a shortened form of "comedy." Sometimes, the wonderfully whimsical name of Petri's wonderful blog seems more directly descriptive.

Last Saturday, Petri's column appeared beneath this hard-copy headline:

"Every recent story I have read about Trump supporters"

"Story" is a childish term our journalists use to refer to news reports and analysis pieces. According to Petri's headline, she was summarizing the things she has read about the 63 million people who voted for Donald J. Trump.

We were struck by the things this massively over-privileged child hadn't been able to spot in the various "stories" she's read. Plainly, though, Petri believed she had harvested a few key points from those "stories" about Trump supporters. She seemed to have read that Trump supporters are very dumb. She also seemed to have read that Trump supporters have funny white ethnic surnames.

In her wonderfully comical way, she mocked two Trump supporters whose last name was Blarnik; she mocked a third whose name was Slabornik. Lydia Borkle was one of the comical idiots too. Trump supporters have funny last names! This seemed to be one of the basic points she had gleaned from those "stories."

Apparently, Petri had also read that Trump supporters are thin-skinned idiots from the backwoods regions of the country which had supplied her with her own vast set of advantages. In this passage, she tells us about Linda Blarnik:

PETRI (4/8/17): Like the rusty hubcaps hanging on the wall behind her, she was made in America 50 years ago, back when this town made things, a time she still remembers fondly. She says she has had just enough of the "coastal elitist media who keep showing up to write mean things about my town and my life, like that thing just now where you said I was like a hubcap, yes you, stop writing, I can see over your shoulder." Mournfully, a whistle blows behind her, the whistle of a train that does not stop in this America any longer.

Saying that Blarnik was "made in America," Petri wittily compared her to a rusty hubcap. She then lets us laugh at how touchy the Linda Blarniks can be about such upper-class humor.

Those Trump supporters are so stupid! As she describes another Blarnik, Petri helps us see how stupid their basic complaints seem to be:

PETRI: Linda's sister, Carla Blarnik, is married to an undocumented immigrant yet voted for Trump, who has vowed an increase in deportations. Asked to explain this contradiction, she shrugs. "Do not tell Bert this," she says, "but I have been trying to find an unobtrusive way to break up the marriage for years." Huh. Okay.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Good God, those Blarniks are clowns! Nor do they have real complaints!

As Petri continued, she further signaled who These People are. Say hello to Herm Slabornik:

PETRI: In the corner, under a picture of George Washington that is cracked and stained with tobacco juice, lies Herm Slabornik. Herm is encased in a cryogenic tube that will be unplugged if Trump gets his way. According to a note on his cryo tube, he knows what Trump said about unplugging tubes but he does not think Trump would unplug him personally. He will vote for Trump again in 2020, provided he is not unplugged. Also, he hates Obamacare.

It isn't just that Slabornik is dumb. As with the reference to the hub caps, that reference to the tobacco juice tells us why he's so dumb. It signals his membership, as part of a lesser breed, in our one true lower class.

According to Petri, these wonderfully humorous portraits represent "every recent story I have read about Trump supporters." We thought of some of the things we have encountered in recent reports about Trump supporters. This included some important things a vastly privileged young "coastal elitist" may be unable to hear.

Quickly, let's review a few things which have stuck in our mind from recent press events exploring the situations and outlooks of some Trump supporters.

We recall many exchanges from the Chris Hayes/Bernie Sanders town hall event in McDowell County, West Virginia. No tobacco juice was on the wall, but at one point, a woman younger than the Blarniks offered this:

HAYES (3/13/17): Sabrina, what happens to a place when jobs go away, the way they've gone away in McDowell? What have— What have you seen in your lifetime, if you had to tell someone the story of the trajectory of this place that you call home? What would you tell them?

SABRINA: I never saw the jobs. I never saw what could be. I still don't know what-all is out there. I'm trying to figure it out, that you're born in a generational poverty, where you don't know people who can get houses, or can get cars, or if you do, it's like 10 percent of people. I mean, it's not that many. So you think you're really rich if you can get a house and a car, and compared to some people, you are. But for all the coal that has came out of our mountains, and the whole country and all, half of the world got electricity because of my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my uncles, my cousins—we really, we really got bread crumbs out of it. So I was, I was born—

[APPLAUSE]

HAYES: Do you agree with that, Senator?

SANDERS: Yes. Of course I do. I mean, you know, these guys are heroes...

Sanders saw heroes sitting around him. Petri was eager to tell Post readers that she has only seen clowns.

Earlier in that program, Hayes had spoken to various people about the difficulties of life in McDowell County. He had spoken to Philip Lucion, a youngish man who had already worked ten years in the mines.

Lucion described the "harsh environment" one finds down in the mines. Late in the program, he explained why he voted for Trump:

LUCION: I don't know a lot of about politics and I don't know what Donald Trump is going to do for the rest of the country, but as far as West Virginia, that's what he promised us. You know, that's what matters to me, because I'm a West Virginian. I'm proud to be a West Virginian. And what the man— I voted for him only solely because what he said he was going to help us. He was going to put the coal miners back to work and we're going to have health care, and this and that.

We need health care. Everybody in this room needs free health care.

HAYES: Now, are you expect—I mean, when you think about him, he made those promises to you. You're looking for him to deliver on those promises, particularly on health care?

LUCION: Absolutely! On health care, yes. Definitely. Because I mean, some people are elderly. They have no way to work. They have no way—if they can't work, like Mr. Evans said, they can't eat.

Lucion said he didn't know much about politics. Then again, he didn't go to an elite prep school, then on to four years at Harvard.

Lucion was already down in the mines while Petri lounged by the Charles. After all those years among the elite, Petri seems unable to empathize with, or even respect, lesser beings like him.

Lucion believed or hoped that Candidate Trump would follow through on his pledges. We'll guess he made a bad judgment on that.

Then again, he didn't have all the advantages. Throughout this hour, we saw him, and several others, describing great human need. Petri saw a bunch of clowns spitting tobacco juice.

Here's something else we've remembered from a "story" about Trump voters. We've remembered that 59-year-old woman in Kentucky who was paying $3000 per year for an Obamacare insurance policy, but couldn't afford to go to the doctor due to her high deductible.

She too had voted for Candidate Trump because he said he would fix that.

We remember being able to see that this woman was facing a serious problem. There is no sign in Petri's piece that she has been able to hear anything like that in any of the "stories" she has encountered.

Petri swims in a sea of massive, gigantic advantage. She also displays contempt for those who are less than her kind.

The Riches, the Krugmans, the Rampells, the Petris—our intellectual leaders have been standing in line to voice this noxious outlook. They went to Harvard, to Princeton, to Yale. They have contempt for those who didn't. But then, remember Rachel, back in 2009? Remember all those dick jokes?

Others are able to see who We are when our tyros behave like this. Everyone else can see who We are.

The only dumb bunnies are Us.

Tomorrow: Rebecca Solnit advantagesplains about that "bleak little suburb"