Yesterday we learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.
How is this race even remotely close? We shouldn’t be in this mess. Convicted Felon Trump should not be able to run for president. If it’s true that Musk is paying people to vote for Trump, he should be confined pending bribery charges and his assets should be confiscated. I’m so tired of this. What is justice, exactly? Explain it to me like I’m challenged.
"Explain it to me like I’m challenged." Do... do you want me to actually do that? Okayyyy...
People are stupid. REALLY stupid. Most people are decent and are trying their best, but most people are not smart at all, and some of the people who are smart are mean. The amount of people who are smart and nice is not a majority, and never at any point has been, but neither are the people who are stupid and mean, so if you are nice and smart it is your lot in life to be working overtime forever to always be convincing the nice-but-not-smart people (who are in the middle and forever decide everything) by being louder in appealing to the nice part of them than the mean-and-stupid people are in appealing to the stupid part of them or the mean-but-smart people are in tricking them. There will be countless days where you want to just give up and let them suffer the consequences and see how they like it, but then you realize there is literally no way to do that without making things scary for you too, so you start trying again. You want to just once be able to point out how they are THIS CLOSE to ruining everything because they are so stupid, and could you just try a little harder please? But then the nice-but-stupids think that you aren't so nice and stop listening to you and only listen to the mean-but-smarts and mean-and-stupids, and then you are really in trouble, so you better not do that! Bit by bit we get a little nicer but the stupid is always there lurking. Lots of fancy people write a lot of fancy books and articles about how it isn't really that simple but all the books and articles just end up being hundreds of pages telling us what we already know: most people are quite stupid. But hey, they mean well.
No argument here Will. Ignorance can be educated, but stupid cannot. And there are a million ways that stupid can come about. One is to be taught religious magic from birth. One is to be traumatized from birth (more common than is presumed, I have met many parents who shouldn’t be around young children, including me on an off day). Sadly, hate is demonstrated way more than love. Humans rarely reach their potential. Yet, every day I hear of those who dedicate their lives, their intelligence to the future and the questions that make it better, or answer questions that help us all. But the intelligent stupids (not mutually exclusive) often have money and can overwhelm those focused on the betterment of mankind. At this juncture the trifecta of Putin, stupids, and powerful religious money seem to have a path to checkmate.
The country had a relatively stable eight years under Barack Obama, not perfect but there was economic growth. However the aftermath of the Bush wars opened the doors of hell and the laws of unintended consequences dominated.
And it came to pass that as a new election neared in 2016, a creature walked to the stage to suspend reality and make enough voters believe that he would lead the nation to wealth and weapons for all.
Cajoled by this socially mangled, misanthrope who has perfected the fine art of the lie, bigotry and unfair tax relief for the wealthy, they naively followed this most foul leader off the cliff.
Wait. What am I doing here? Am I trying to present a logical reason why someone would not vote for Trump? That’s totally insane. That’s almost as insane as voting for Trump! Plus, having to go through all that socio-economic, psychological, and historical crapola is about as interesting as a Xarelto commercial. So, I’m going to reveal the cause of the disease that I am dubbing, “Trump Voterism” or simply, “TV”: a vicious parasite, mutated by toxins now allowed into our air, water and food by Trump’s relentless attempt to kill all of us by loosening our environmental regulations.
Not only does that explain the phenomenon, it also sets the stage for an entirely new series of blockbuster movies, all based around these parasitic mutants. Think The Purge meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Citizen Kane meets Tremors.
There, can we move on to examining why people do other stupid things, like falling off a cliff while taking a selfie?
If you missed my comment The issue Trump gets away with things,I’ve copied it below.
You ask why Trump should not be disqualified as a candidate for president given this latest revelation. Well, the answer is very simple.
For the past 8 years, day in and day out 24 seven nonstop the Media has been repeating and repeating and repeating, and repeating all the lies and criminal activities of Trump to such a degree that it has Inspiration inured people to them. Nothing is shocking anymore. It’s just another Trump story..
I’ve written comments about this everywhere, including on your newsletter. The media is obsessed with Trump. In a country of 330 million people he’s the only News .
When Biden passed the most significant for the people legislation in decades the headlines in the newspapers was all about trump’s latest tweet. The Biden passing of legislation was a second and third story. Same thing in the Cable news media.
Trump’s Tweet in my estimation was quite deliberate to steal the show and he did.
Trump has been brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, in manipulating the media. He’s got them to talk about him 24/7.
I’ve heard him say this several times I don’t care what you say about me just talk about me. And the media obliges his request. Centre
Bill Katz, if one looks at the trump nightmare with eyes that can not see, how can one possibly comprehend reality. There are no real parasites involved, only Blind unsatisfied peopls.
Well...I think he is a smart entrepreneur. From a technical point of view and a developing market opportunity point of view - close to a genius.
But from a social and humane point of view he is wicked stupid. He is a king of "othering". He has more in common with Hitler than previous oligarchs.
Actually, in a fascinating twist of irony, he is acting worse than Henry Ford who was also a genius but a despicable anti-semite and bigot. Millions of people would NEVER buy a Ford as a result. How much market opportunity was missed because ole Henry was socially stupid?
I just bought an EV. It never occurred to me to even consider a Tesla. I would be too embarrassed to be seen in one. Millions of people feel the same way.
We have a Prius Prime which works quite well for us. We also have wall batteries to go with our solar panels, also not Tesla. At this point the brand Tesla has become anathema to us and many others.
I don’t like the word stupid. It lumps too many people together under an insulting heading—my grandchildren got a timeout for calling people stupid! HOWEVER, there are plenty of people who are not intellectually smart—I’m needing a word that I can’t think of to replace stupid. That said, those people are easily persuaded by people like Trump who says they will make their life better. They don’t seem to have the ability ty think deeply enough to see the bigger picture or understand an opposing view. People like Musk, though, are different. They are smart, but have no real moral compass and become so self-involved and greedy for power that they have lost their humanity and care only for power and things that benefit themselves. They have no empathy and consider the first group as people to be manipulated for their person benefit.
Like many successful people, Musk was extraordinarily lucky. Now, with his immense wealth, he has a massive platform. And there are plenty of people who latch onto nonsense to justify their fears and hatred. Anyone with even a bit of critical thinking can see that Trump and his allies are profoundly unfit for power.
Not too long ago, high-functioning autistic persons were called "Idiot-Savants," meaning stupid-smart. Autistic people often have insights and brilliance in one area of interest but are lacking in other areas, especially social skills; Musk fits the bill. As someone else mentioned, I have some doubts about his so-called genius. After all, he did not invent the concept of an electric car, but he has replicated the skills of private equity boys to pillage anything and everything for personal profit.
My 2 cents and it won’t get you on a subway…. Elon Musk is another rich trust fund brat just like Trump. Nothing special. I certainly would not consider him a Savant. I worked with and have first hand experience with Savants and trust me Musk does not fit the criteria.
I learned working in high school that low IQ kids were often happy and unconflicted, (disappointed parents could change that). High IQ disturbed kids were often conflicted and usually had some agenda percolating in their minds. Some like to be in-your-face, others like to orchestrate chaos from behind the scenes. Not hard and fast rules, but tendencies I noticed. I remember telling a colleague that a very smart but disturbed girl may not be the best girlfriend for her son. I think I mentioned Ted Kaczynski.
Jeri, way back over 50 years ago, I started high school. I was enrolled into an experimental program where about 40-50 of the predicted top scoring students were block programed into an intensive curriculum with the goal of pushing more students, especially the females into STEM careers--before that acronym even existed. This was not voluntary, we didn't even realize we were in this program till about a month into our freshman year, when we were all brought in an auditorium and told "have you noticed you all get up and go from one classroom to the next together" and explained what was up.
Now, 50 years later, I see some good and a lot of bad in that program, not for the education but the interpersonal impacts it caused. Now, highly competitive high schools are common, but it was not back then.
I mention this, because at the start of Sophomore year, the class ranks were announced. (I was unaware of what class rank even was). Two young ladies tied for the #1 spot of a class of over 715 students. One of them reported her father as being upset--not that she was #1, but that she shared that rank. (I wasn't either of them, I was tied with 15 others for #11) I recall the young lady who did end up valedictorian by a fraction as being a very high strung, anxious and worried girl. We all went out into our lives and I lost track of most of those in my program. Perhaps a decade after, in a strange coincidence, one of my college friends married a man who in an conversation, it came out he worked with the valedictorian. His take on her was a woman who was extremely unhappy and isolated, and who had difficulty relating to her coworkers. Who knows if he just didn't like her, or if she truly became that person--but I know the memory of her parent set a course for me. I had bright children, but I always told them to just do your best, whatever your best is, and be happy with your achievement.
Miselle, I had kids who were very pressured by their parents. They did not help their kids and probably embarrassed them. My own parents pressured me somewhat as i was expected to do well. Fortunately, I have always enjoyed learning and reading. I have always followed my own path which, when I became a D, did not make my dad happy. He and my second stepmother also decided that I was not always polite although they thought they could say anything to me, even if it was negative and hurtful. Sigh.
I was in a similar group, but it was because of Sputnik and we were in 7th grade when it started. More like 65 years ago.
For myself, the most valuable part was being with my peers. Oh, yes, we were an odd bunch, but we had friends who supported us and the jocks and socialites ignored us.
There wasn't a lot of interest in grades in my group, but there was one boy who was really dedicated to being first. I heard later that he committed suicide.
JD, lord, you mentioned Ted K! I hope that the colleague took your advice. My fav government class was the one that had no college preps in it, just ordinary kids, most of whom, at least wanted to graduate (it was a required class) and so we worked from there. They were also pretty apathetic about politics when they needed to vote to help themselves. Some kids in CP were grade grubbers, the worst sort of student in my mind. Not interested in learning of course. I also had some lovely intelligent students, some of whom are still friends. Talked (or rather mostly listened) to one for a couple hours yesterday. She needed to rant about the current situation. Her son and his family are also in Tampa and she got a report, so far that they were OK. She did tell me that Florida has strict building standards which surprised me. I also have an ex-student who lives on Sanibal Island. Don't know if she is OK. Have a couple ex h.s. classmates who live on the west coast of Florida and don't care what happens to them....intelligent, but rich, racist, and greedy.
Thanks, JD Chilcutt, for drawing attention to the really dangerous stupids -- the High IQ Stupids...
There are even, and there always have been, stupids of genius. Like John von Neumann, who wanted to nuke Kyoto in order to obliterate Japanese culture.
JD, "intelligent stupids" correlates with cognitive dissonance. Even when one of the MAGAs knows that Trump is lying or hateful, they deny it. If it is on video and every MSM media outlet has video or a transcript, "it just doesn't matter." (I digress to the scene from Meatballs).
All we can do at this point is target the undecideds. And who knows if they will even vote.
JD, what you are describing is people reacting emotionally to their environments, a reaction often far more potent than logic or reason. That’s why it takes so long to train really effective fighting forces to NOT react with fear or anger but with discipline.
So true, and personality disorders are set very early. Fortunately, I doubt that most MAGAts have personality disorders. Cult vulnerability is almost as ingrained, and can be triggered by God knows what.
I think that there is a strong correlation between cult vulnerability and a background in Christianity; when you learn from birth that the man in front of the church is the font of all that is good, some are programmed to both believe without questioning, and seek out that which fills whatever "spiritual" or "emotional" need they have.
That makes a great deal of sense, Ally - what cult DIDNT basically have some kind of religious context. Some people are just much more vulnerable to being indoctrinated. That certainly sounds like the maga bunch.
Trained for war and combat, Carole, and to take orders, but clearly not necessarily for politics or government or wisdom and apparently unable to recognize the con or sees something in it for himself.
Neither Elon nor Donald are intelligent. They are both members of the Lucky Sperm Club. That is, without Daddy's Money, both men would be nobodies in anonymous stations in life. Elon probably made better use of his educational opportunities, but it's his opportunistic craftiness that got him where he is. Donald's educational access and his grades were purchased for him by his daddy and he squandered that advantage. Without Fred's financial propulsion, Donald couldn't be a janitor in one of his own buildings. More likely, he'd be an errand boy for Bratva. In fact, that's what he is.
You bring up an interesting point regarding trauma. My wife grew up in a traumatic environment; her Mom was DiD (multiple personality) and her Dad was military. They married the day after she turned 18 (they were worried she was pregnant; she wasn't, but had two children before she was 20). Moved a lot. Her brother married, fathered two kids, one of whom has turned out fairly well, the other still lives with her mother. Her sister said that she had to teach herself how to be a loving parent who hugged her kids and told them they were loved. My wife wanted us to have kids when she was in grad school. It would have involved artificial insemination, and at the time, her insurance as a GTF would not have covered it. I had NO desire to be a mother, and told her I would gladly raise children with her, but would not birth them. We ultimately did not, and she has said many, many times she is glad that we did not pursue that route.
I love your last line; the "trifecta" does seem to have a path to checkmate.
Not if we vote for Harris/Walz and blue down the ticket. Don’t let these abstract explanations deter anyone. I like your idea of intelligent stupids, although the title “stupid” smacks of hate and some final judgement against people that are unfortunately neighbors.
And family. They are not intellectually stupid, but they are socially stupid. Sort of like racism, misogyny, and other learned social cliques that promote tribalism. I know them well.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we hear so little about intelligent, compassionate people who are still out there working to make our world a safer, saner place. A lot of this has to do with our adulation of extreme wealth which started in the 1980s. I read a book this summer that cited a speech Jack Welch made in which he told a bunch of business people that “greed was good.” It’s not. The folks at Faithful America recently installed a huge golden calf dressed as Trump in front of the White House. The Christian Nationalists denounced Faithful America as not being true Christians. We’ve been down this road before. Let’s find another path now.
JD ,another great laugh , thanks. 🫶..I thought of Maslow ‘s ‘triangle’ …good humor is intellectual challenge ..some won’t ever ‘get it’..and sometimes I still don’t but the lessons are more clear and some still regret.
I fevrently hope regret turns into those accountable held high …for the blind to see and the deaf to hear.👀🦻🤟
"stupid" in this context is inevitably mixed up with ignorant and misinformed. In my travels i am always amazed at how articulate and informed Europeans and Canadians are when discussing US politics. Young people are able to discuss political topics with a clear understanding that many of my middle aged friends are unable to. This has more to do with demographics and media consumption than it does with IQ in my opinion. Americans are being "raised stupid", to make us easier to manipulate. To be clear, most Trump voters would suffer more under a Trump administration than a Harris presidency, but would rather die than vote blue.
JD, the uneducated are apt to be willing to hear another side. The stupid usually are very stubborn in their unwillingness to consider any thing else once they decide something. The shinny object gets the most attention, and usually at best is iron pyrite.
Yep, chump is a shinny object, phony as any human can be. Adored by ignorant, stupid and crazy. And tolerated by deluded political greedy bastards who see power within their grasp.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, these two types of human ignorance are often not discriminated as separate issues and are often accordingly treated the same. Which leads to disaster.
Willfully ignorant and dangerously stupid (regardless of how one gets there) = evil.
What none of us can ever get our heads around is how the depraved republican party could put a convicted, treasonous traitor (who has said and done the most illegal and heinous things for most of his life) up as a presidential candidate for evil people to "vote" for is astounding and gut wrenching. What we have also learned over the years with this insanity is that democracy has no guardrails (rule of law keeps getting appealed or ignored).
I'll step away now before I go into another rant about the MSM and people like Mitt Romney who have helped to bring and nurture this horror show! Won't vote for trump but won't endorse democracy and Harris. Unlike Liz Cheney, Romney is a gutless POS who waffles endlessly and says nothing. Couldn't stand him as governor of MA and nothing has changed.
No. 1 lesson. Chump is not what made the Repub party lose its mind. I
Don’t know enough to pin it down, but might have been Coup of 1933, Joe McCarthy, 1964 Civil Rights, they were already off the rails with W. HCR’s “How the South Won The Civil War” may explore earlier times.
Agree and there are many reasons why the republican party lost its way. In decades past, it may have also been because reliable sources of information were not fluid. Today it seems that the ability to access real information is flooded with mis and disinformation and just plain craziness. People are inundated and have the attention of a gnat.
It has long been a complaint of teacher friends (now retired) that kids do not learn "executive/critical thinking", have no idea how to filter truth from fiction and as my husband (and I) often commiserated they have no idea how to put together a "backyard" baseball game - everything is programmed for the kids of the last 2 generations. I also think it fell apart when they eliminated cursive writing from the curriculum - a process that has been part of our brain, eye to hand coordination, and social development for a very long time! Developing brains need time to learn; not sound bites or flashing computer screens. Another podium, I'll step off as I have to plant 300 tulip bulbs :)
Janet.., baby, you covered it. And kudos for using my "POS" descriptor. But, right now 28 days away, we need to make sure we send #45 who epitomizes POS packing!
There is a group of woman MORMONS FOR ETHICAL GOVERNMENT that have some worthwhile reading. I am NOT LDS but know LDS people who walk their talk. Clumping a group into a stereotype is the same as saying "all blacks " " all Jews" . The exception would be all MAGAs are >>.
I knew a wonderful Mormon family and we spent a lot of time together since school age son was injured. But they tried to preach to me. I was immune, still am
The daughter of a neighbor married a follower of the Mormon church. Non Mormons, including the family of the bride, were not permitted to attend. The building of a very large temple was announced in 1995, started in 1997 and finished in Belmont, MA in 2000. The town was then the legal MA residence of Mitt Romney for the few days a year he spent in the state as governor! I don't include links but if you Google "when was the Mormon temple built in Belmont, MA" the page with the Latter Day Saints will provide the description.
Please reconsider voting for Harris. Reexamine your reasons. You seem very intelligent and should know not voting is as good as a vote for the enemies of democracy. Agree wholeheartedly about Romney
I suspect "tribal" ie group loyalties and biases has more to do with how the vote goes than "stupidity" as such. Eg Maga gets majorities from less educated, but there is a huge racial divide between whites and blacks or shades thereof. Family incomes works in the same way.
Tribalism and group loyalty is just another subcategory of stupid. Seeing yourself as different from other people over some arbitrary distinction is the cause of problems century in and century out on every continent. If someone is still participating in something that keeps not working for them because THE OTHERS might get closer otherwise, they are being stupid and need to knock it off. I get that this supposedly has deep and complex psychological and biological roots blah blah blah but honestly today I would just like for people to get over themselves and knock it off and the fact they aren't puts them in the "dumb" category for me right now LOL, thank you very much!
Ellen, that seems to be what drives the MAGAts I know. Not only does he tell them what they want to hear, but he flat-out encourages the outlandish and hateful behavior they just love to spout off with.
Monroe Morgret, yes. I’d like to add a few more adjectives to your Groper-in-Chief if that’s ok? ‘Traitorous’ is number one. ‘Psychopathic’ comes along with that like an evil twin.
I’m sure everyone on HCR’s excellent scathing post today can add their own
pinning the tail on his nonexistent vile heel spurs.
My parents both backed trump and they're both college educated as are both of my brothers. Showing me that intelligence isn't learned in university. I, as the least educated in our family saw trump for the vile charlatan he is back in the '80s.
Someone gave my Dad a set of 3 of George Carlin's books for his birthday when I was in middle school and I immediately claimed them as my own and gleefully let them warp my mind.
JD, when my wife entered Stanford as a freshman, there was a one page essay, asking them (as only a one page questionnaire can) to describe themselves. One was "using only one word, what word best describes you?" There were many "smart", "intelligent", replies, and a few like "creative" and "motivated" and a lot of "talented". There was one that used "irreverent." It was my wife.
The theory that there are this many people who are stupid plays into ignoring the powerful psychological and deliberate warfare against our democracy that has been carefully conducted and coordinated upon so many social media platforms and has now drifted fully into the mainstream media.
There is currently a glaring difference in how Kamala Harris is covered versus Trump. Or how Democrats are presented versus Republicans.
And that naturally makes people more doubtful. They aren't so much stupid as dreadfully misled and wary. It is very hard for even smart people to ignore the constant harping that is going on against Harris and the Democrats, these stories are so relentless.
Remember that bizarre and constant drumbeat about Biden's age? Well, now that Trump is the oldest candidate, do we hear even a whisper about Trump's dementia? Yes, there was a very late story in NY Times, but that's it--compare this to hundreds launched against Biden. It is not even close in terms of scale.
Then there is the constant whining about Harris not having enough policy, all while Trump is running away from the unpopular Project 2025 and Harris is in fact handing us major policy commitments every week that people really want and need. They literally pick away at the intelligent competent woman and give the stupid greedy man a free pass, every damn time.
Roy Cohn used such techniques heavily, and Roy Cohn trained Trump. Putin backs Trump with his trolls by surgically constructing and targeting 'alternative truths' at vulnerable groups in our voting population. Republicans heavily used Putin's strategy to infiltrate the Justice System and hollow it out from within to become an instrument of autocracy: that's on fine display in SCOTUS now. Foreign actors like MBS are funding a lot of Trump's campaign with dark money pumped through untraceable cybercurrency and shady real estate deals. These aren't 'conspiracy theories', they are fact. And they do have impact.
In short, Trump is getting a whole LOT of help from people who don't have America's interests at heart. And our 4th Estate is shamefully failing us even more than the 'stupid' people taken in by the propaganda.
Our democratic systems, particularly communications to counter disinformation, need shoring up. We need to change so the government is quickly and directly able to counterattack these assaults on the health of our elections, especially while those elections are going on.
Systemic Curiosity, you've hit the nail on the head. "...powerful psychological and deliberate warfare against our democracy that has been carefully conducted and coordinated upon so many social media platforms and has now drifted fully into the mainstream media." is 100% accurate.
Watching all the mis/disinformation regarding the FEMA response to the hurricanes march through my Facebook feed has been awful. I posted LFAA from a couple days ago, and had one guy say "this is dumb". No, Sarge, you are.
I wish your post could be on the front page of the few newspapers left and reported by pbs news hour. It’s brilliant, systematic. Glad you are out there.
Vulnerable people come in all stripes. We need to change quickly, go to it. Has been my albatross for years as I have watched institutions bend in the wind of propaganda.
Actually I think the Fourth Estate has done a pretty good job of collecting and documenting more than enough information about the defects and corruption of Donald Trump. The problem is that most people don't get that information. If they consume "news" from a dedicated propaganda source or through unchecked social media they are convinced of an alternate reality. This is why support for Trump is unyielding. There are other factors - reflexive tribalism and foreign interference, to name 2 - but information bubbles that distort reality are the key. It will be our downfall.
No, I don't think stupidity or evil, or indifference accounts for the MAGA followers. Insecurity, xenophobia, and tribal loyalty are basic but submersed in a civil society. What DJT has done is to bring these negative characteristics out into the open, played on them for his own benefit. He is evil and totally committed to his own needs.
Happily in our insane world, there are still enough lampposts to go around, some with names already on them. Trump. Musk. Vance. McConnell...... It's a long list and getting longer.
I truly believe that you are right, Will. And it has been this way since we were first able to stand on two legs.
But I also suspect (no facts yet, just supposition) that we have poisoned the population with lead, PFAs and microplastics. The popular misconception is that they simply cause physical ailments - like cancer. But as we know, lead has created learning disabilities and worse.
The Biden administration announced this past week a commitment to replace all the lead water pipes in the country. Good. Great. As a civilization, this is dollar short and a day late.
PFAs are in enormous swaths of our farm land. Which means it is on the shelves of every grocery store. Convince me that their impact is only "physical".
Every American is now filled with microplastics swimming around in their fluids looking for a place to settle and play games with our health. Convince me that they aren't finding a way into our nervous systems and brains.
There is naturally born stupid and there is stupidly created, self inflicted stupid.
Will, while it sounds clever, I fear your explanation does little to actually explain or allow useful action by talking about varieties of stupid. What seems more plausible and has more research supporting it is using the concepts of perceived self-interest, i.e.- where do people get their income, and where do people get their sense of identity, i.e.- what is their tribal affiliation. We know that for milllenia of human development humans suffered much greater risk from being isolated from their families, tribes and ethnic associations than from a lack of logic or “intelligence”, i.e.-"the stupids.” The core of our emotional lives, the amygdala (fight, flight, freeze), and hippocampus (strong memory associations) is centered in the deepest parts of our brains where they receive incoming information from the environment, both internal (spinal cord) and external. Our reasoning brains, the cerebral hemispheres are what grew out surrounding those core neurological structures which much later allowed us to reason and apply “the scientific method,” an ability to think analytically which only came to fruition as recently as the Renaissance. Those whom you label as “stupids” are most likely driven by perceived self-interest and/or the need to identify with and belong to a larger tribe where they can feel protected and defended.
Danny, your well stated comment was at a grad level audience. Will’s target audience can grasp what he said. Communication works when the audience can relate with what you’re saying without having an advanced degree. The masses can relate to “stupid”. Hypothalamus? Not so much
Damn, faint praise??? I imagine that most here know “hypothalamus” and most would agree that nothing about chump is funny. A little comic relief may be useful. Comics think so and I am grateful
Will, I am sad to agree with you, but from my senior vantage point there seems no other answer for the dangerous situation we find ourselves in.. I know well-educated people/many women who are Trump supporters. I have lost my ability to be discrete and now ask why? But it is quite scary to hear the response…all vague and based on Trump’s lies. These same people openly mock my postcard writing. Stupidity and cruelty does seem to win over logic!
But the general population cannot charge Elon Musk for paying for votes. Why is the DOJ not investigating him?
I know why Trump is allowed to run for the presidency....as the Supreme Court stopped States from taking him off the ballot...I just don't understand why the other stuff stands.
I'm mean, but smart enough to keep it reined in and act like a nice person. Which makes me BECOME a nice person. At least until I have another mean impulse! :D
It's the willful stupid that concern me. I saw an article yesterday where a singer (I think he is. Rapper? who married a Kardashian) has a daughter who turned 18 and is in the news because she said she won't vote. To her "credit" she says she doesn't know the issues and candidates----but she also said she doesn't care to educated herself. She's "just not interested." (My bad--I can't recall the names of these D list "celebrities" but in my defense, I'M just not that interested.)
Amazing, truly amazing, that you can live in such a bubble that you think NOTHING outside of it will impact you. Perhaps that is the wealthy, they know that they'll still get their abortions, their operations, their luxury and even necessities, while the rest of us fall short.
Another Thing To Worry About: "A US scientist who won the 2024 Nobel physics prize for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence said Tuesday he found recent advances in the technology "very unnerving" and warned of possible catastrophe if not kept in check. John Hopfield, a professor emeritus at Princeton, joined co-winner Geoffrey Hinton in calling for a deeper understanding of the inner workings of deep-learning systems to prevent them from spiraling out of control."... When You See Sam Altman, he appears to be as Serene as someone sitting on a Block of Ice in Hell... Let Hope For The Best...
To be frank, sometimes I wonder why people like the guy who just won the Nobel don't just freaking stop themselves while they are developing this insane new ability and go "Huh, what could unintentionally come of this? Might this not be worth it?" These are clearly some of the most intelligent people on the planet, so why can't any of them ask that ONE obvious question???
My stance is simple: no new computers until we cure cancer. And diabetes and asthma. We certainly need no new damn iPhones. The ones we have work just fine. Oh sure, the people who keep making the computers keep telling us that eventually the computers will be the ones to cure cancer, but that keeps not happening, and instead we keep getting more crap that we didn't ask for.
Also, where are my flying cars and jet packs? 10-year-old me wants to know. I don't need my phone to be able to make a picture of me look like a cat, that is lame! What I want is a damn jet pack! If you can turn me into a cat and send the image of that cat version of me to someone across the world in 2 seconds flat, I don't believe for a second you can't make me a jet pack instead!
Funny you mention the guy not thinking about the ramifications of his work.
Sometimes, they need someone around them to make them realize what they're doing and the consequences of their actions.
My husband worked for Sony Entertainment. They always had different challenges for the developers trying to come up with new products.
Don't remember the specific challenge, but my husband took the challenge to heart and came up with something he thought would be great for companies to use.
However, after doing his presentation and a lot of discussion about it, he was told to delete everything in regards to the program and forget that he ever came up with the idea. Because what he came up with could have had serious consequences if his program got into the hands of someone who had bad intentions.
My husband wasn't thinking about the bad things because he wasn't looking at it from that angle, he was looking at it from the helping side.
And maybe that's what the Nobel guy was thinking too?
Somehow I was bitten by the "science bug" before I was 5, when is started wiring simple circuits, wondering about fossils, and closely examining plants, before I knew that was a certain category of interest. I was henceforth THE science (and to some degree, art) nerd in my various schools. Up until about the "smartphone" era, I thought that, although any technology can be misused, the more tools in our toolbox the better, and that each new discovery and technology primarily benefited and empowered the public.
In recent years I detect a shift in who and how technology serves, and while the "dark side" of our technical endeavors was always apparent, it seems to me that increasingly, technologies are being built and purchased by people standing apart from the mass of society, who aim to control and exploit other people, not serve and empower them. I do not believe this is just old age resistance to change, or paranoia on my part; at least not entirely. In the nerdy days of computer use, the customer was king, and companies went to great lengths to cater to ad empower computer users. Now it seems increasingly set the rules for how the customer interacts with their product. Apple even made products irreparable with firmware that simply would not allow the device to work unless Apple does the repair. Software is increasingly rented rather than sold, and some mechanical devices (not just things that make sense, like phones, but accessories in cars) will not run without a monthly subscription. The scale to which new devices massively compromise user privacy is neither adequately appreciated nor sensibly regulated. Gov. Newsom just vetoed bill that would have regulated AI. This is to say nothing of despotic applications in places such as China.
This is part and parcel of the (for me) shocking degree we are passively allowing corporate interests to define and control our culture and our lives. There never were golden, generically "Good Old Days" when there were not severe problems social problems or glaring inequalities, but I think we are passively losing control of our own futures. The clear and present threat of Trumpism is just one of the more salient indicators. If we continue to drift, I fear the outcomes.
I was reading an amazing article recently on this new treatment for HIIV that these researchers had tried out in monkeys to astonishing success. It is an inoculation that instructs cells to mimic the virus in that it tricks the DNA of the immune system to reproduce strands and subsequently burst, sending the material exponentially out into the body, but somehow they were training the cells to copy the antidote so that if the virus entered, all cells would be immune? Like the Covid shots but even more crazy. I'm sure I'm butchering the explanation, but it was amazing. The researchers were pretty sure it will work in humans and could eradicate the virus. But... it would permanently effect everyone's DNA, so would be passed down generations. Being immune to HIV sounds like a great perk, but if decades later they found some unintended interaction then there is no reversing it. So THAT to me is an actual conundrum.
The whole AI thing on the other hand, doesn't seem like a tough call. Have these people never seem a scifi movie, not one, ever? Don't trust the robots! Don't turn yourself over to the robots! Especially if the only benefit we have so far is getting Google to awkwardly summarize itself, or creating whatever the heck this is: https://www.freepik.com/premium-ai-image/funny-realistic-food-item-smiling-face-ai-generated_56718168.htm
That genetic modification of which you speak is the same sort of thing that keeps a large portion of the population immune to sickle cell disease, which itself was a reaction to some tropical disease. Around in circles we go.
Inventors of nuclear fission should have had the same thought, but Hitler...
I read an article about a doctor or scientist in Japan who's spent his entire career figuring out how to get our bodies to regrow teeth, and he's been successful with mice. Sounded interesting to me.
As a cancer survivor, I love the idea of curing cancer. But that’s not where I think we should be putting our money. I think we should be putting our money into making sure kids have enough to eat, that folks can afford safe housing, that we do stuff to cope with climate change, that we have universal healthcare, that social security becomes, well, secure. If we do those things, we’ll probably have less cancer too. These things aren’t moonshots, they’re achievable now. So let’s achieve them.
Every study that has implemented Universal Basic Income, and there have been at least a dozen good ones, demonstrates that UBI results in better outcomes - people are happier, healthier, drink and smoke less, crime goes down and it costs more to deal with the social problems caused by poverty than it does to provide everyone with enough money for the basics. But every government that participates in a UBI study ends up ignoring the results. Why?
Of course they can make you a jet pack. They just don't want you to have one. For what its worth, the 10-year old me totally agrees with the 10-year old you.
Meanwhile, while some beat on their trumpets, on 10/9 at 7:05 PM Eastern NEWSWEEK confirmed that ex-CEO of Overstock, Patrick M. Byrne, has set up residence in Dubai.
Kudos to a journalist on 'X' in September 2024 who had posted Patrick M. Byrne " ... would not be coming back to the U.S. for the foreseeable future." 🎯
Update: Byrne is out of Trial judge's jurisdiction for the upcoming set Trial.
A Default judgment is dead ahead most likely with substantive law & money sanctions.
* We need to start tracking the Perp Exodus & related extradition treaties.
“why can't any of them ask that ONE obvious question???”
Because we have lost sight of the importance of teaching the liberal arts. Scientists are not trained to ask questions about the implications of what they do. That would require a grounding in philosophy. The ancient Greeks called them the “liberal arts” (philosophy, fine arts, music, etc.) because they liberate the mind to understand and make better use of the “servile arts” (the sciences), which don’t have value in themselves except to better the human condition. Today we’ve lost sight of that idea and have elevated the sciences to such a degree that we’ve forgotten that they are servile—that they have no value if not partnered with deeper insight and understanding.
I'm not a prolific commenter here, so no one will remember my previous reference to my self-assigned writing project, "Fifteen Times Fifteen." These discussions keep dredging up recollections of that project. To wit, two come to mind:
"Fortunately, creativity – effective problem-solving – is simple: unfortunately, the difficulty arises in identifying the problem."
"You are finished when you've decided something is good enough, and I am not finished ..."
I identify as a Creative. (There are more of us than realize it.) Creativity, whether artistic or scientific, is problem-solving. Effective problem-solving is achieved by people who are extremely focused ... sometimes to the exclusion of consequences. People who pursue the solution to a problem are unable to stop themselves. Because when you reach what looks like success, it's really just a milestone that unveils the next mile ahead. That's why you keep getting new iPhones you didn't ask for. It's the blessing/curse Creatives live with. Generally, we die unhappy.
like everyone communications wise, the technologies and businesses involved will be co-opted into the political processes willy nilly. I can't say how effective AI generated will be more effective than old fashioned outright lies and existing prejudices.
Exactly. We don’t have any effective regulation in social media and we end up with a Baffin in 2016. Now, enter A.I. with no regulation added to social media to an information illiterate and gullible public. What could go wrong?
This is one of the top questions that our commercially-obsessed society is skirting. It is insane to ignore it and hope for the best. Some of the few that acknowledge that that it could impact individual lives and society in unforeseen ways point to the historical precedent of industrialization, and assure that technology always makes things better, but machines that decide for themselves in a generalized way are unprecedented. We are potentially handing immense power to algorithms themselves and to irresponsible and/or malign human uses of that power.
Justice is Hurricane Milton coming for the state that elected Ron DeSantis. Unfortunately when it gets to that point the destroyer does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.
"does not distinguish" ... from what I've seen on the media, DeSantis and government are doing as much as anyone can from these storms. The bigger picture, he folds into the Republican denial syndone, continued now by Maga.
He wants to keep his job. Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson does what is required of him from time to time, passing funding bills, etc., however grudgingly. What they say and what they do are often at odds. Watch what they do-the ones that follow thru on hateful rhetoric are the dangerous true believers. Most Republican politicians are guys who are riding the train to the best of their ability, however lacking that might be.
Not excusing DeSantis- he is hurting Florida more than he is helping- just in this instance, his partisan line has yielded to acknowledgment of reality for a change.
Carla Childress: Yours is the only logical response -- Bewilderment.
Today's column truly paints how truly bizarre the American polity is today.
Stunning.
Circa 1958, at 10, I was old enough to watch Rod Sterling's "Twilight Zone." The actors were conventionally dressed 1950s persons; the surroundings, buildings, cities were conventionally mid-century; but the events were so very strange and bizarre, that the viewer was HOOKED.
Events, exactly as Professor Heather Cox Richardson describes them, could fill whole seasons of "Twilight Zone."
It is unreal.
Your reaction is the only logical one to a truly bizarre election.
It is like "The New York Times" were available in everybody's living room, but they would reach out to Alfred E. Neumann -- What me worry? -- and "Mad Magazine" for believable reporting.
I wonder the same thing.... Elon Musk has something to do with Pro-Trump , he has a massive younger male following on X ... so many celebrities, x-Republicans have come out pro-Harris. The polls leave the race seemingly tied with no one prepared to call a result.
I half wonder if the foreign influencers are also manipulating the news we see about polling. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, at some point in the future we will learn Putin, or perhaps more accurately his oligarch bros, have direct financial influence over Trump. They own him after bailing out his bumbling business failures over and over again. Some smoking gun will reveal this.
Carla, I’ll do my best to answer your great “what is justice” question in as few words as I can muster, but I’ll start by saying it’s not you that’s challenged, it’s our changeable but currently immature human culture.
I hate to say I agree with Vivek Ramaswamy about anything, but I agree with him about one thing, and that is fixing the root cause. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you can’t fix something you don’t understand.
Like it or not, our relationship with one another is not transactional (potentially useful, potentially a threat, and otherwise irrelevant). As MLK said in his letter from Birmingham City Jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” In other words, our relationship with one another is transformational (relevant regardless of context).
For an immature child, because a relationship with an individual outside the child’s (unconscious) circle of concern is transactional, a conflict with that individual is treated like a problem with a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over” solution. That relationship becomes transformational when the child’s circle of concern expands, aka when the child becomes sufficiently mature.
An immature child’s circle of concern is smaller than the child’s circle of influence. For example, the child’s circle of influence expands exponentially on the first day of preschool, and it takes time to adapt, but with a competent teacher, the entire class quickly matures. The competent teacher’s goal is a classroom-wide “all for one and one for all” circle of concern.
Vivek, Trump, Musk, Putin, Speaker Mike, etc. have a “me, myself, and I” circle of concern. In other words, they’re more immature than the child was on the first day of preschool. For all of us, every conflict with someone outside our circle of concern is unconsciously perceived as a problem with a one-step solution, and every conflict inside our circle of concern is perceived as a dilemma with a multi-step resolution (aka an adult conversation).
For people on the political right, it’s “us” against “them.” For people on the political left, it’s “us” against “them.” For people at the political center, it’s “all for one and one for all.”
Don’t get confused by the MSM’s definition of the political center. At the political center, there are difficult but adult conversations in which dilemmas are being resolved at the appropriate level. Note that dilemma resolution does not make for sensational headlines.
I think the Biden administration and the Harris-Walz ticket are in the vicinity of that center, aka 12 o’clock, and MAGA went to the dark side, aka 6 o’clock. Note that you can get to the dark side by going clockwise (too far to the right) or counterclockwise (too far to the left).
We will have justice when we resist the temptation to assign responsibility to people who are obviously insufficiently mature, and the only reason to do that is because the assigner is insufficiently mature.
For example, when you vote for a POTUS, don’t think “what’s in it for me?” Instead, think “what circle of concern is being expressed by the candidate?” Then vote for the candidate who promises to be a president for all Americans and hold them to that promise. Resisting the temptation to spend money that ends up in Musk’s pocket is another example.
In general, always treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot (aka transformational relationship) while recognizing that the only alternative is “do as I say and not as I do” (aka transactional relationship).
--The Old Guard Corporate Democrats ignored non-college educated white people to slant the system in favor of wealthy people and the corporate world. That would be Biden, Obama, the Clintons, Clyburn, Pelosi, Schumer and more. They've done this for at least thirty years.
Nafta, the repeal of Glass-Steagle, the insanely insufficient stimulus of 2009, (as recommended by the corporate shill Larry Summers)... In 2021 Biden refusing to even try to repeal, or modify, the filibuster. Or how about in 2005 when Biden was the key player in restructuring the bankruptcy law to benefit his corporate buddies and screw over students.
Or maybe it was in the last three years as Biden once again couldn't see the forest for the trees and totally missed that the problem is PRICES of items that matter. Maybe it's because Biden has done zero to recognize and attack the REAL problem - price gouging.
Maybe it's because voters watched his pathetic Super Bowl ad where he promised he would talk to the price gougers. Talk... that's what Biden and the Old Guard had to offer. Truly pathetic.
It's close because the Corporate Old Guard of the Democratic Party has ignored the middle class to leave them twisting slowly in the wind.
It's close because potential voters are desperate to dump the Corporate Old Guard. Look at the reaction to dumping Biden. Biden wasn't dumped because of his age. He was dumped because he's a terrible candidate. He has the charisma and presence of a wet mop. And the people that built the foundation of the Dump Biden movement were the rank and file of the party. Once it became blindingly obvious he was like a ball and chain the Corporate Old Guard showed up. They got him to pull his head out and see the exit door.
In addition there is the Corporate Media using terminology like "misinformation" and "disinformation" and 'falsehood". The "journalists" that have learned how NOT to talk to people. The folks that have convinced themselves that they are technically correct while regular people don't absorb a syllable being sent their way. An army of technocrats that haven't a clue when it comes to talking to everyday people. People with four and six year degrees and years of experience busy yammering to each other.
What ever happens in the next election the Corporate Old Guard needs to be dumped. Good bye to Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Clyburn, Schumer... time to move on.
Huh, I thought we were in this mess because many of us bowed out of engaging in keeping our democratic rights alive years ago, while many others were busy corrupting our systems. But whadduh I know...
Hey people. David makes some good points. The Democrats have indeed been asleep at the wheel for decades. How could they not have noticed the slow but steady packing of the federal judiciary with hard-right ideologues? Why didn’t Obama fight harder for Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court? Etc.,etc. Democrats always seem to be back on their heels playing defense. I frequently find myself angrier at them than Republicans. Frankly, I kind of admire the latter for knowing what they want and relentlessly pursuing it unlike Democrats who are frequently paralyzed by infighting and indecision.
Give it a rest. You’re on a weird pattern of thought. How has the party of trump helped anyone or anything but themselves. No one thinks democrats are perfect.
Easy on the filibuster issue! He was President then not a senator. Dems had two traitors in the senate besides all the magafied gop puppets like by Moscow Mitch which precluded any action on the filibuster!!!
Sorry but we need real change. I love VP Harris but let's face it, will she be able to change the power structure in this country where billionaires and corporations really rule not we the people? I'm just a regular person so I have no grand solution but I do see the grand problem...
Don't assume I'm not in - I donted $450 to VP Harris! So far. I can support her and be critical of a broken system at the same time! It's called intelligence.
The Bulwark discussed the election polls yesterday with the various ways one could interpret the continuous, no matter what 2+ points that Kamala has had over Trump for a while now, with no fluctuation.
The Bulwark is published by the head of Republican Voters Against Trump, but not all of the reporters are Republican, or even former Republicans, but they are more conservative. Gives me some balance in what I read, and a lot of them are really good. They can admit being wrong, and they do a lot of focus group surveying which is interesting.
I'm going to be honest: it is hilarious to me to see the ink being spilled over the polls NOT moving by the people who are usually paid to spill ink over why the polls are moving. It is Occam's Razor personified. All this big stuff has happened that would usually make the polls move, but nothing is happening? How could this BE???
It's reeeeeaaaaal freaking simple. We have been living in the same dynamic for 9 freaking years now: MAGA/anti-Democracy vs. anti-MAGA/pro-Democracy. Roughly 46% of voters are in a cult and absolutely nothing is moving them off, whereas roughly 49% of voters are voting against that nonsense whoever the candidate is. Biden running again made enough people grumpy to lose a few percent, the second it was Kamala instead she scooped up those people who had wandered literally in a matter of days. Good debate, bad debate, good interview bad interview, good economic data, bad economic data, hurricane or no hurricane, it is 46-49 until the last few days where the VERY SPECIAL 5% of people who never make up their mind until the last minute make it up, and who are most of them more likely gonna pick, the guy they already said NO to twice, or that other lady that seems nice on Howard Stern?
I agree. I cannot understand how this race can be so close. Will, from Cal is correct. People are stupid. My sister (a trumper) says Democrats are stupid. She needs to look in the mirror. :(
I’m grieving the loss of both of my once sane sisters. It’s a contagion of hatred and willful ignorance, imo. I do not understand how you can believe something with no fact base (the government is controlling the weather) and NOT believe the facts of climate change. That is willful ignorance.
Very well said, Carla. None of us understand. The Kavansugh revelations we all could “see” without knowing. Cheap crooks and rapists in our highest court! Despicable! All the inmates in America just nod, knowingly
Like they say in Brooklyn, “Woulda, coulda, shouda.” The time to answer your question starts on November 6th. Until then each of us needs to do all we can to beat the forces of evil.
This is why people will vote for Trump: Many people think they should have a house, a truck, a motorcycle, and a lake place, and if they don't, whose fault is it? IMMIGRANTS!
Another writer said this and I can't remember who it was, but this makes it clear to me.
I hesitate to comment about this because it’s personal. But I feel compelled to speak out, partially as I feel a responsibility for the ones who didn’t live. I got Covid19 in the spring of 2020. Where I live, there were no tests and barely any PPE for medical workers. I have insurance but I was unable to get tested, not for Covid and not for the ensuing suspected pneumonia. They wouldn’t allow me in the X-ray facility because if I was contagious, they would have to shut down for the day to disinfect the place. The single hospital was totally overrun, they were stacking patients in hallways and in tents in the parking lot. I stayed home and gutted it out, and after a near death experience where I woke, unable to breathe until I flung myself halfway off the bed, head down, and that gesture unstuck my lungs. I had brain damage and had to relearn how to read, do basic math, understand simple recipes. I still struggle, but at least I am alive. I will never forgive Trump for how he behaved, and how he incited his cult to behave toward people like me who have been to hell and back. This news about him sending the test equipment to Putin shouldn’t have shocked and gut punched me like it did, since I know his depravity and lack of decency, but I’m afraid it did. Again, I know I’m lucky, because I still live. Damaged as I am, I feel it’s my obligation to those who were so unnecessarily lost and to myself to keep fighting this monster until he is defeated.
Thank you for speaking out, MaryOMary. As a nurse I can picture the hell you went through and the purgatory you are left in, all of which should never have had to be. As a post-COVID patient I felt the same gut punch when I learned that Trump had sent diagnostic equipment for COVID to Putin before most Americans had access to testing. In the 2 years since I got sick, I have struggled with recipes (even for pies I have been rolling out for 61 years), calculations, and memory gapping, along with debilitating fatigue and anxiety attacks. All of that (and your horrific COVID experience and sequellae) could have been prevented if Trump had allowed our public health system to do it's job, and if he had not poisoned the public with his lies - and if he had not put Putin's health above ours.
Although I am a stranger, I am deeply, deeply sorry from the bottom of my heart that you went through such a horrifying ordeal and have suffered such an aftermath. Thank you for sharing your pain and experience, for bringing this all home to us in stark terms. My family was lucky to not get sick, but that was because my Dad and I could work from home and we all became a unit of hermits. I suffer from multiple anxiety disorders and the relapse that I experienced was so severe that it actually lasted up until very recently. The pandemic was a mass trauma we have yet to fully grieve and process. I truly think much of the existential gloom people seem to be clinging onto despite otherwise positive economic and political trends is left over from it, I really do. For you the effects are obviously much more physically acute. I agree that we have now reached the stage where nothing the treasonous former guy says or does can truly be counted as a surprise, but the recoiling I received from reading the Woodward bombshell about the Covid tests still hit me hard, as you described. I take it as I good sign that I am not too jaded. We must never, ever become that jaded.
What they are doing now to the hurricanes is the same as what they did to Covid: bald-faced lies about a natural disaster designed to exploit it regardless of who it hurts or how many people get literally left for dead in the process. If that isn't evil, nothing is. Anyone who says "Oh, but the economy..." after Covid, Jan 6, the indictments, etc. (especially considering the economy is great) gets none of my respect. None. Some things can't be forgiven and some things are disqualifying, and if someone thinks what happened to millions of Americans in the hospitals in 2020 is somehow an equal outrage to a can of soup being 50 cents more, then I'm sorry but your morals need some rescuing and we have nothing more to talk about.
And besides that, they’re wrong about the economy. It’s been better under Ds for my entire lifetime, and I’m in my 60s. That’s just an excuse to cover up the racism and misogyny.
It's not the economy writ large they're complaining about. It's the greedflation in the grocery store and that's hard to fix. See Gerald Ford's "Whip Inflation Now" program in the 70s.
I am preparing paperwork to send to the incoming Harris/Walz administration. I am nominating you for a role in the federal government. I am thinking along the lines of an advisor or communications director. Tell me which you would prefer.
I am so sorry that the first round hit you personally so hard Mary. I think you have every right to take this new layer of information about Trump’s reckless (malignant) disregard for the people he was meant to do everything possible to protect ..really he is morally guilty of manslaughter to my mind. This outrageous example is more of a sentencing enhancement.
It also illustrates a weakness in both authoritarian figureheads: they both proceed with such disdain for what they perceive as weakness in the public..be it illness or injury (thinking military personnel here) ..yet were both so very paranoid about their own susceptibility to the virus. Their duty to protect? …only themselves…
Thx for comment, Mary, and reminding us all about the impact of COVID and how it was handled. I was shocked that WaPo editorial board was silent today about Trump’s gift to Putin. Instead, it whined about Harris advocating Medicare coverage of home care in her comments on The View! Shame on them.
Thank you for sharing. It is stories like yours that need to - must - come to light. Just as the young mother in Georgia died because she could not get appropriate health care. You are a living example of what Trump did to this country. What would happen under a second Trump presdency is clear. And even worse if that is imaginable. I actually have the chills sitting here reading your story. Thank you again for your courage.
Hitting "like" seems inappropriate to you comment, Mary. Just know that I feel for you. I lost my brother to dementia which was accelerated by COVID isolation (he had aphasia and sunk into depression, he could neither understand what was happening nor ask questions) and finally COVID itself took him. I stopped to reply to you before reading further, and I am sure there will be others who share their stories as well. COVID itself was bad, but the attitudes have left a scar I will carry all my life.
Thank you for sharing your experience with COVID. The collective memory is short. We need to know these stories to remember the horror of the pandemic, especially in its early stages. I won’t address the blasphemous treason of the Republican candidate here, but may God bless you.
The collective memory is indeed short. I have several friends who had COVID before it was "announced" although the rumblings were there (they were all in a community choir that rehearsed in February and early March). My best friend and her Mom are both long covid victims (both in the choir) and at least 3 people in that choir have died from what were probably results of their early COVID infections.
Mary, thank you for sharing your awful story. I don't know where you are, but I have several friends who had "covid before covid" in early February. We thought one of them (elderly) was going to die, but she survived. Two of them suffer from long covid, and several more have died from likely complications from those early infections.
Your inability to be tested or receive appropriate treatment is unconscionable. I am so sorry, and very glad you're with us here to share your experiences.
Heavy news today, so how about something nerdy and off-topic? This community means something to me so I have spent my whole day off typing up the following and am going to share something special with you guys: I have been working on developing a predictive model for Senate races! I cannot divulge the details, because obviously it is proprietary knowledge and there has not yet been any binding agreement as to whether/how it shall begin to be published publicly. Yet I have the OK to share some of my research, which is of course based off of publicly available data. The research goes back for the last half-century, and so far the model has been tested on the last 400 Senate races. The current version has a 98.3% accuracy rate over those last 400 races, and the accuracy increases as we get closer to the present day. Yes, you read that right. Very exciting, and since I keep finding myself smacking down people in internet comments over the Senate races, I'd better bring some receipts and explanations, for anyone who is interested.
Here is what I have discovered in my research (that I am able to share):
1. The margin of victory for the Presidential candidate is massively overrated as a predictor, and the margins ARE NOT LINEAR. So if President X wins one state by 2%, another by 5%, and a third by 15%, that does NOT mean that is the order in which those states are competitive for Senate races. This is the BIGGEST MISTAKE people are making, BY FAR. It is one component regarding which candidate is favored, but only one. My research shows it takes up until the margin is something like 20% for a race to start getting truly out of reach. Senate races are viewed as state affairs by many voters, similar to governor's races, and they will vote party loyalty for President but are more likely to give a vote to an opposition candidate with a unique "brand."
2. The much more predictive way to think about each race is as a comparison of CANDIDATE STRENGTH. If people already voted for you, they have already indicated they like you enough to do so again, and each term someone gets elected to makes them stronger. Each large margin they win by makes them stronger. Candidate strength has to do with PRIOR RECOGNITION, and NOTHING to do with popularity, wealth, charisma, or military or business cred. A popular governor is a stronger challenger than another statewide official like an AG, who is a stronger challenger than a Congressperson, who is stronger than someone with no elected experience. Conversely, a challenger with a prior loss or gap in service is a weaker one.
3. Races with INCUMBENTS do NOT perform the same as OPEN races, and there are many notable instances of long-term incumbents greatly overperforming polling. An open race in a Presidential year almost always matches the top of the ticket, but a race with a long-time incumbent will still usually default to the incumbent regardless of the Presidential margin (even a large one), unless a strong enough challenger is presented. There is also evidence that a strong Senate candidate can bolster a Presidential candidate, rather than just the other way around.
4. PARTY UNITY and organization is also absolutely key. A competitive primary hurt the nominee's chances, as does a notable third-party candidate share. A margin of victory for a governor can matter just as much as a Presidential margin.
5. The "WAVES" that usually happen in MIDTERMS against the President's party are another very overrated canard. They only really impact the field if the generic loss is quite large AND the effect only serves to bring incumbents of the party in power down a notch, rather than bolstering open seats or opposition-party incumbents.
6. SCANDAL can seriously tank your chances, but the level it has to rise to is very selective. There must be actual investigations, indictments, or lawsuits. Outrageous comments or behavior do not make the cut unless there is bipartisan condemnation and continuous attention. If a candidate wins over a scandal-ridden opponent, they might be weaker than the typical incumbent next time.
7. As an aside, SMALL STATES often do not work under the same dynamics as larger states. States like Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, or Maine are the size of 1-2 Congressional districts apiece. PERSONAL CONNECTION with Senators from those states is far more possible than in large states, and someone who maintains it can defy way, way, way more gravity if the Presidential vote is against them compared to someone running in California or Texas or Illinois.
8. The above factors stay constantly predictive REGARDLESS OF any changes in political MOOD of the country. To anyone saying, "well, everything has changed in the post-2016 era and people are more partisan and just don't vote like they used to"... the factors I have listed have actually gotten MORE predictive post 2016. ***The current version of this model has has called every - yes, I said EVERY, as in 100% - of the Senate races from 2014 onward, all 233 of them.***
AS YOU CAN SEE, these considerations do not involve polling, approval ratings, funding for ads, fame/personality, or ratings from other "crystal ball" experts. These things have no predictive value at all, at least not in comparison to these fundamentals. When those more traditionally publicized measurements conflicted with the model I am working on, the model has been correct in calling the "surprise" almost every time.
Please ask any questions! I can’t share what the model says for this year’s races or the exact numbers (again, proprietary knowledge, yet to be copyrighted), but anything else, bring it on! Love you all!
Do we have a chance? My 4 am brain is interested but can draw no conclusions from what you say. I have a strategy for donating. Every time I get a “begging” email from Ted Cruz (God knows why), I donate to Allred. Three so far. Just got one from chump, so donation to Dem coming up. Wish I had Elon’s money, but retirement bucks will have to do. Thanks for using your considerable intellect to combat stupid. They would win by a landslide, I fear.
You affirm my beliefs for modeling good dialogue and I appreciate your presence here. I'm all for factoring in wildcards (like extreme weather events and mushroom clouds of disinformation) so I reread and am finding hope in #8. I keep hearing more about young men Trump voters who actually admire his successes, as well as laborers who think they'll feed their families better with Trump. Disinformation!?! (I believe so.) What's more or less predictive is not a capacity I have to think about well but I do have a universal and off-topic response to your nerdy and off-topic one; that is from relentlessly adaptable fungal networks, "Fungi don't let a good crisis go to waste." (Sorry I can't cite the source, possible from the Green Arts Lab Alliance.). Having read about fungal behavior when meeting glyphosate (Roundup), I have bouyant hope that as a democratic country, we can emerge stronger (ultimately).
But an interesting one. The “Fungi don’t let a good crisis go to waste.” Is definitely a keeper. Just like Covid and the “Spanish Flu, Fungi love our ignorance.
I can really feel this. It rings true in my gut because I have been aware viscerally that whatever the horserace type of political commentary is is just hype. Can you do this kind of analysis for other than politics? It would be so nice to have a tool for eliminating all of the hype. We really need to view things realistically.
WOW, Will! Your 7 Factors influencing senate races seems vastly more useful than just labelling varieties of stupid! THANK you! Is there a connection or interaction between the 7 Factors and the levels of stupid which lead to the 7 Factors' accuracy?
Thanks for this, Will. I'm going to send it to a couple friends with a similar bent (and who are far more intelligent than I am) and see what they think.
Will, many thanks for sharing. Looking forward to the release of your predictive model. A question: when I went to vote on the first day of early voting it was a brisk turnout of retirees (expected numbers) with several younger voters completing registration onsite, which is legal, in order to cast their vote (unexpected numbers). I am curious whether this increase in late registrations will have any impact on your model, or just amplify the predicted outcomes?
Will - For your consideration. I wonder if you have any predictions on the House races? Hopefully the appended letter I sent to the three WAPO authors of "The fight for the House and Senate: Where things stand: Will both chambers flip? Congress may once again have to work under the strain of divided government." peaks your interest.
I found your article, The fight for the House and Senate: Where things stand, very informative, well researched and well written.
I wonder if you have considered doing an article that examines the majorities of the state delegations? If the Rs execute Steve Bannon’s Precinct Strategy, HGA: TRUMP 2024:
do the Democrats have any chance of flipping enough state delegations to prevail if the POTUS election gets kicked to the House? Or have the Rs gerrymandered their way to minority rule?
This has happened before, Heather Cox Richardson’s 20 September 2024 Letter from an American https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-20-2024?r=5k7fz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email gives this example: “But almost immediately, the Electoral College caused a different crisis. In 1824, electors split their votes among four candidates—Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford—and none won a majority in the Electoral College. Although Jackson won the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, when the election went to the House, the state delegations chose Adams, the son of former president John Adams.”
I keep posting on MT Sheehy site Hcr letters & other info about how can a someone running on military service as a Navy seal support the Con? Emphasis on character & leadership.
Wow! This is awesome research Will! Thanks for sharing. Can you share just a little for this election , like if you feel good about the Democrats in the Senate?
It is no surprise that the MAGA gang are openly traitors to the Constitution and the country. What is shocking is that the Republican faithful are so supportive.
This has been existential for the GOP, now turned MAGA, and the amazing thing seems just how many Americans are going for it, and given electoral biases built into the system.
There should not be any doubt that MAGA cultists offer the criminal Trump unwavering support. While Putin has focused his military efforts on Ukraine, he has directed Russian intelligence efforts toward the creation of disinformation and propaganda, and its distribution through an array of American sources. Why commit an expensive missile or start a proxy or direct war with the United States when you can simply create a story about pedophilia at a pizza parlor and have MAGA cultists so hopelessly immersed that they follow such a story with violence.
The creation of disinformation and propaganda has rapidly evolved since the 2016 election cycle. Worse, the ability to distribute lies has exploded since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and turned it into a cesspool and megaphone to amplify his own ignorance and uninformed hatred.
I still do understand the generational despair that is felt by working families across the United States. Yes, the stock market is at record levels. Yes, the attributes in which we assess economic strength are surprisingly good. Yet the messaging must account for the multiple generations of wealth concentration which has caused key prices for housing, healthcare, transportation, groceries, and education to rise faster than salaries. This was all GOP/Heritage strategy and has led to today -a clearly unfit criminal in a close race for the Presidency, supported by the obscenely wealthy like Elon Musk, backed by what was once a political party transformed into an aiding and abetting criminal organization, and global adversaries like Putin.
One of our major political parties no longer believes in government of, for, and by the people and has been captured by a wannabe dictator who gets his support from billionaires and theocrats.
Trump’s support should crumble after these revelations, but his loyalists are blind to reality! What he did with those Covid tests is an act of treason!
It’s partly that they will never see these revelations - unless they are covered in detail on Fox News, etc. Which they will not be. Despite all the worry about the NYT not holding Kamala to the same standard as Donald, and giving him a pass on his wild and racist rants, I doubt many of the undecideds will be reading political coverage in the NYT.
As I said already, too many citizens (voters) take little personal responsibility to be informed on any issues. So much for the basis for democracy to work!!!!
maybe so, but most Americans will treat this as a blip. I doubt if it's a vote changer except for finely tuned voters still trying to make up their minds.
I’m in shock. No exaggeration. But since I heard the first word about Woodward’s book, I just want to know, when did he have this information? And why didn’t he speak up immediately?
Is the lure of a best seller so much that he basically sat on this critical story for… how long? While he worked on his book? What the hell?!
I read a good piece yesterday on this issue…journalist covering Trump who sit on nuggets in anticipation of if a book deal. Maggie Haberman of the NYT was another example. I
Exhibit 1: Maggie Haberman. Had rare access to the Trump presidency and plenty of information about how damaging Donald Trump was, and she held on to that information for months so that she could cash in on her best seller.
That’s the same refrain that I’ve been singing about most of his trump centered books. He knows stuff but waits to put it in a damn book! He had a great reputation back when but now he’s just a money hound in my book.
I remember news from MSNBC on Cavanaugh's appointment, it seemed there was a lot of suspicion or more that his sexual misconduct was not adequately investigated thanks to White House interference. What gobsmacked me was his televised tirade against the radical "left", it was oh so clear where his biases lay and still do.
I remember walking into class in community college and the teacher and a few girls were listening, completely agape, at Brat Cavanaugh sobbing like a little b!tch at his appointment hearing about how his only crime was liking beer and the liberals were destroying his life. A woman would never have been able to get away with that behavior without being excoriated. That level of "too emotional" would be disqualifying. Hell, if any of us guys in college had ever behaved that way in any context we would have never lived it down. I just sat and couldn't believe I was actually hearing this embarrassment in real time. The whole thing laid every bit of the privilege of the few utterly bare. I remember thinking that he could have just addressed it calmly, and the fact he couldn't do so proved he had nowhere near the temperament to be a judge of anything, whether he did what he was accused of or not.
Then I got on the bus later and put in my earbuds and watched Blasey Ford's testimony. I literally cried on the bus. I think people thought I was getting bad news from a loved one. I'm a staunch sanctity-of-the-system innocent-until-proven yadda yadda kind of person, but c'mon man. That lady was so terrified yet so poised. She didn't want to be there. She had everything to lose. He obviously did it. And those absolute assholes listened to her in person and then voted to put that guy in charge of our rights for the next couple decades. They could have chosen someone else. Anyone else. Nope! Disgraceful. I'm never forgiving it and none of us should. Those girls from my class certainly won't, I can tell you that.
Thanks for this vignette, Will. I was in a drive-through oil change place watching the testimony on my phone. I was freaking gobsmacked.
Later, as Ketanji Brown Jackson was in her confirmation hearings, and held herself to the utmost levels of emotional calm, I thought back to Kavanaugh and how his sniveling, crying self would have been crucified if he'd been female, or gods forbid, a Black female.
I remember at the time reporting of the knowledge that there were many un-investigated reports about his actions. I smelled a rat then, and it stinks even more now.
A friend of mine , who is vehemently anti-Trump, recently asked me, “What about Kamala’s father, wasn’t he a Communist?”
This conjures up the analogy using a choice of airline meals: the chicken or the shit with crushed glass.
The points made in tonight’s letter should be damning enough to bring him down. But here we are, less than four weeks from Election Day, and seemingly rational people are asking, “How’s the chicken cooked?”
Disinformation is like lead poisoning, and it’s killing our democracy.
This could be the Reason DJT is not reaching out to New Voters... He just needs to get close enough to Steal The Election... Then his Minions will implement Project 2025... That could be why DJT is nor cooperating with the Transition Teams... DJT doesn't Cooperate, DJT Dictates... Then as DJT said, We will not have to Vote again.... At that point, the American Democracy that We have known, will be Dead...
To be frank, this sort of thinking is really unhelpful in both tone and content. First, thinking this way just isn't good for anyone's personal health, and I like you, Apache! Don't do this to yourself! Second, it gives these Kremlin-wannabe morons a power they don't actually possess. This is still the m@therf#ck!ng USA. WE decide who is in charge of us. We have kicked these psychos out over and over again the last few years, and we are damn ready to do it again in a few weeks. They want you to think that they have something up their sleeve, but they don't. They couldn't get the whole coup thing done when Mango Mussolini was actually in the White House, so how would they get it done now, exactly? We vote like we did before, they lose, period. And this time we also get to have a kickass Lady Prez while they get to go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Yeah, Cal, it pisses me off and makes me want to put on my work boots and kick some traitorous butt—OK, I might not be able to kick that high anymore, but I could sure get ‘em in the shins! Reading HCR’s missive tonight, my first impression was that old saw that TFFFG won’t bend over backward for the American people, but he will bend over forward for Putin. Lousy joke for a toady of a “creature”, cuz he’s no “man” the way I see it.
I remember this one time when I was getting picked on a bit and my Dad was trying to teach me some attitude, he told me that when he was in school (wayyyy back) a popular thing for some of the kids to yell to get a rise out of others was "your mother wears combat boots!" He and his friends decided that the appropriate response was "That's so she can kick your wimpy father's BUTT!"
I remember it because I thought it was hilarious, so I told my Mom, who was appalled at him ("JAMES!") for "setting an example for such behavior," which made it even MORE hilarious to me, because it was so quaint to begin with. She suggested I just respond to everything with "So?" which admittedly was elegant and effective but kinda took the fun outta it.
Anyway, your image brought that memory back, so thanks for that.
This is part of a massive right wing effort to "re-set" government. I'd almost say, US is in the middle of a smouldering, so far non-shooting "civil war". Trump wins, batten down the hatches for what's to come. Vote blue, Ned, of course you already know that!
You know, Frank, I am part of several different majorities:
> the silent majority;
> the exhausted majority;
> the loyal majority;
> the rule-of-law majority; and,
> several others I can not think of.
How about the exasperated majority?
Frank, I am at the point with this election that I used to find myself when studying for an exam I dreaded in school. I would study away until I got to the point where I said to me that I did not care what grade I got.
Just get the damnable thing done, already!
Then I knew I was prepared, good or ill, for that test.
These days, I feel much the same way about this election. I believe President Biden would have won. I believe Vice President Harris will win by more.
I don't agree with thinking of it in this manner, considering 1) the threat is not a force of nature from space but a very earthly predicament and 2) we are IN NO WAY powerless to stop it, we have been stopping it pretty well, and acting powerless to affect the outcome is never the appropriate response to anything.
People are exiting his rallies, he’s finding fewer crowds than the VP, and all he has is the old hate and division song and dance. Vance’s open misogyny is alienating women voters, and I am embarrassed he is one of my senators, I did NOT vote for him.
America works by what my Mom and I like to call The Project Runway Rule (named after the fashion competition show). The rule is thus: It is better to be a mess than to be boring. When it came to the bottom two in most Project Runway episodes, it was usually between one outfit that was a monstrosity resembling a bunch of trash bags having intercourse with a bowl of mac-n-cheese, versus another that looked normal but (*gasp*!) boring and "frumpy." Frumpy was usually deemed the greater sin and eliminated, while monstrosity lived to see another day.
My point is that Cheeto is most likely going to go down again, not because America is properly horrified by his monstrousness, but because he has been a loud monstrosity for so long now that he's just... boring. It's painfully ironic, but are you gonna tell me I'm wrong? America HATES boring, and you can only top yourself with crazy lies and treason before people EXPECT crazy lies and treason, and what's the fun in that? Only so much shock factor before the shock wears off. Oh, look, more treason? YAWN.
This reality show has "jumped the shark." Kamala wants us to "turn the page," but what everyone is ready to do is change the channel.
I'm not sure how much to define Musk as nerd, or just a word the rhymes with it. Musk seems bright, but his main "ability" is to spend virtually unlimited cash for whatever he wants. What percentage of the population might accomplish even more, and more admirably with that kind of money available and more integrity? Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be Musky.
Remember that we've been expecting the election tampering, and the legal folks have been working on this for months. Bless Mark Elias and all who do this work.
1:40am Pacific Time I’m overwhelmed w info I have known was coming… Heritage is real. Russia & folks are real & effectively promoting the downfall of our democracy, our “experiment” in enlightened government. Disinformation is working just as projected in the 80’s in college courses at SSU & SFSU. The nightmare is Real. I wish I could say thank you to Heather Cox Richardson, my first Substack writer, my first living historian who I know has been telling the truth forever.
“ On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”‘
Now there’s a surefire way to tank the US economy. SS is a contract between income earners and the government. If you pay into the system for xx years, when you retire you get it back in a life supporting income stream.
Imagine, for a moment, some millions of elderly Americans with their EARNED SS income eliminated, forced to sell any assets they have to finance their standard of living. Imagine the housing market thrown into disarray as hundreds of thousands of homes are suddenly available for sale. Imagine the pain up and down the scale of younger homeowners who are now underwater on their home mortgages due to the crash in market values created by the surfeit of homes for sale.
Crash the housing market and the economy will crash. It’s not rocket science.
In the words of Donald Trump "You knew I was a snake when you took me in."
On November 5, Americans have the opportunity, if not obligation, to put that traitor in prison.
Anyway...
Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Suffice it to point out Donald Trump, during the last six months of his one term, executed THIRTEEN Federal prisoners, FIVE of those AFTER HE LOST the 2020 Election. This is a pattern. He took out full page ads to call for the executions of five boys who were falsely accused and convicted, and later exonerated - he has NEVER APOLOGIZED. He has consistently and repeated called for violence, particularly during his "rallies," and recently includes his plans to have law enforcement take action against civilians in what equates to "The Purge" or a modern-day "Kristallnacht." He indicated his desire to have the military fire upon protestors and anyone attempting to enter the country at the Southern Border. For years, he has expressed his plans to set up military tribunals, arrest and execute his perceived enemies, including elected officials, journalists, and judicial officers holding him to account for his actions. Now additional confirmation is in evidence of his ingratiating conduct to Putin while withdrawing support for allies such and NATO countries and nations based on democratic governance, such as Ukraine. In his words, he'd allow Putin to "do whatever the hell he wants."
It's time Trump is held accountable for his actions, through the rule of law, and the consequences determined by "a jury of his peers." He's not being persecuted, he's being prosecuted. His desperation makes him more dangerous, and without guardrails or any "bottom" to his depravity, lies and criminality.
Professor Richardson, thank you again for making sense of another tumultuous news cycle from just a single day! It's hard to know where to begin, but your top-line summary of Beth Reinhard's article about how the FBI's tips were kept under wraps to facilitate the so-called vetting process of Bret Kavanaugh caught my attention. Given these damning facts, is there a process to impeach a sitting Supreme Court Justice? If so, what is it? Perhaps we can start with Bret.
Yah, I wish that they had gone father in their promised follow-up and actually investigated the underlying accounts and not just the turn-a-blind-eye non-investigation. Collins should be called to account on her assertion that it was a legit investigation and her affirmative vote.
You are being generous to her. I used to work in the same building as her main Maine offices. I voted in her district. She is a strategist and, like Romney now, and has been trying to maintain a sheen of a moderate in the mold of Margaret Chase Smith while keeping the funds flowing from the RNC. I highly doubt she would have had the courage to risk it all and stand up to McCarthy. I think the facade of that Kavanaugh further FBI investigation was raised principally to give her and the others a cover.
There is a recent Lincoln Project video titled "Brutus." It raises interesting possibilities about the intent of many power-minded Republicans, and especially Vance.
I've been captive as much as anyone to the gloom Russia, Iran, and China have been sowing in the U.S.
Heather puts together here one story, really, on the orange felon 1) stroking his favorite murderous dictator, Putin, 2) protecting his like-himself-abuser of women Kavanaugh, and also-like-himself 3) feeding of contempt for U.S. institutions, Byrne.
Imagine a totally opposite single story. So let me remind Heather's good followers that we indeed have that, too -- and need it, need to celebrate it: Tom Hanks' "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece," a novel.
It's a fiction, but gloriously tells a fuller truth about the older America that the billionaires and dictators are now so trying to destroy.
It's a film crew, in a very small town in northern California. It is an expensive, major film they are dedicated to filming. But Tom Hanks' great contribution here is two-fold. One, it reminds us of the superb complexity Americans have mastered indeed to make many, many great films. Two, it shows us in rich detail the variety of characters in all sorts of roles -- persons technical, transport, make-up, stunts, sets, walk-ons, scheduling, acting, and provisioning of food that mesh all smoothly.
This is a litany to a tapestry of the American working classes. Races. Ethnicities. Ages. And especially the female gender in gloriously many capabilities. So many richly individual.
Daily we can see the criminality of those fully concerted to kill America, to stoop to new lows of contempt, deceit, lies, and vulgarity. But please, let's remember, things such as this great novel, "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece."
How is this race even remotely close? We shouldn’t be in this mess. Convicted Felon Trump should not be able to run for president. If it’s true that Musk is paying people to vote for Trump, he should be confined pending bribery charges and his assets should be confiscated. I’m so tired of this. What is justice, exactly? Explain it to me like I’m challenged.
"Explain it to me like I’m challenged." Do... do you want me to actually do that? Okayyyy...
People are stupid. REALLY stupid. Most people are decent and are trying their best, but most people are not smart at all, and some of the people who are smart are mean. The amount of people who are smart and nice is not a majority, and never at any point has been, but neither are the people who are stupid and mean, so if you are nice and smart it is your lot in life to be working overtime forever to always be convincing the nice-but-not-smart people (who are in the middle and forever decide everything) by being louder in appealing to the nice part of them than the mean-and-stupid people are in appealing to the stupid part of them or the mean-but-smart people are in tricking them. There will be countless days where you want to just give up and let them suffer the consequences and see how they like it, but then you realize there is literally no way to do that without making things scary for you too, so you start trying again. You want to just once be able to point out how they are THIS CLOSE to ruining everything because they are so stupid, and could you just try a little harder please? But then the nice-but-stupids think that you aren't so nice and stop listening to you and only listen to the mean-but-smarts and mean-and-stupids, and then you are really in trouble, so you better not do that! Bit by bit we get a little nicer but the stupid is always there lurking. Lots of fancy people write a lot of fancy books and articles about how it isn't really that simple but all the books and articles just end up being hundreds of pages telling us what we already know: most people are quite stupid. But hey, they mean well.
No argument here Will. Ignorance can be educated, but stupid cannot. And there are a million ways that stupid can come about. One is to be taught religious magic from birth. One is to be traumatized from birth (more common than is presumed, I have met many parents who shouldn’t be around young children, including me on an off day). Sadly, hate is demonstrated way more than love. Humans rarely reach their potential. Yet, every day I hear of those who dedicate their lives, their intelligence to the future and the questions that make it better, or answer questions that help us all. But the intelligent stupids (not mutually exclusive) often have money and can overwhelm those focused on the betterment of mankind. At this juncture the trifecta of Putin, stupids, and powerful religious money seem to have a path to checkmate.
Elon Musk, what a waste of intelligence on such a stupid person.
Do not ignore or forget about the word: EVIL!!!
Here is a story to tickle your toes from my book:
Falling into the Wrong Arms
The country had a relatively stable eight years under Barack Obama, not perfect but there was economic growth. However the aftermath of the Bush wars opened the doors of hell and the laws of unintended consequences dominated.
And it came to pass that as a new election neared in 2016, a creature walked to the stage to suspend reality and make enough voters believe that he would lead the nation to wealth and weapons for all.
Cajoled by this socially mangled, misanthrope who has perfected the fine art of the lie, bigotry and unfair tax relief for the wealthy, they naively followed this most foul leader off the cliff.
Wait. What am I doing here? Am I trying to present a logical reason why someone would not vote for Trump? That’s totally insane. That’s almost as insane as voting for Trump! Plus, having to go through all that socio-economic, psychological, and historical crapola is about as interesting as a Xarelto commercial. So, I’m going to reveal the cause of the disease that I am dubbing, “Trump Voterism” or simply, “TV”: a vicious parasite, mutated by toxins now allowed into our air, water and food by Trump’s relentless attempt to kill all of us by loosening our environmental regulations.
Not only does that explain the phenomenon, it also sets the stage for an entirely new series of blockbuster movies, all based around these parasitic mutants. Think The Purge meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Citizen Kane meets Tremors.
There, can we move on to examining why people do other stupid things, like falling off a cliff while taking a selfie?
If you missed my comment The issue Trump gets away with things,I’ve copied it below.
You ask why Trump should not be disqualified as a candidate for president given this latest revelation. Well, the answer is very simple.
For the past 8 years, day in and day out 24 seven nonstop the Media has been repeating and repeating and repeating, and repeating all the lies and criminal activities of Trump to such a degree that it has Inspiration inured people to them. Nothing is shocking anymore. It’s just another Trump story..
I’ve written comments about this everywhere, including on your newsletter. The media is obsessed with Trump. In a country of 330 million people he’s the only News .
When Biden passed the most significant for the people legislation in decades the headlines in the newspapers was all about trump’s latest tweet. The Biden passing of legislation was a second and third story. Same thing in the Cable news media.
Trump’s Tweet in my estimation was quite deliberate to steal the show and he did.
Trump has been brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, in manipulating the media. He’s got them to talk about him 24/7.
I’ve heard him say this several times I don’t care what you say about me just talk about me. And the media obliges his request. Centre
Bill Katz, if one looks at the trump nightmare with eyes that can not see, how can one possibly comprehend reality. There are no real parasites involved, only Blind unsatisfied peopls.
Musk is not stupid. He is greedy, he is extremely arrogant, and elitist.
Well...I think he is a smart entrepreneur. From a technical point of view and a developing market opportunity point of view - close to a genius.
But from a social and humane point of view he is wicked stupid. He is a king of "othering". He has more in common with Hitler than previous oligarchs.
Actually, in a fascinating twist of irony, he is acting worse than Henry Ford who was also a genius but a despicable anti-semite and bigot. Millions of people would NEVER buy a Ford as a result. How much market opportunity was missed because ole Henry was socially stupid?
I just bought an EV. It never occurred to me to even consider a Tesla. I would be too embarrassed to be seen in one. Millions of people feel the same way.
Now tell me he is not stupid.
Cunning is the word you're looking for Bill. Just as the failed insurrectionist is cunning when it comes to self-preservation.
We have a Prius Prime which works quite well for us. We also have wall batteries to go with our solar panels, also not Tesla. At this point the brand Tesla has become anathema to us and many others.
Intelligent stupid. Humans are so capable of the most bizarre juxtapositions
I don’t like the word stupid. It lumps too many people together under an insulting heading—my grandchildren got a timeout for calling people stupid! HOWEVER, there are plenty of people who are not intellectually smart—I’m needing a word that I can’t think of to replace stupid. That said, those people are easily persuaded by people like Trump who says they will make their life better. They don’t seem to have the ability ty think deeply enough to see the bigger picture or understand an opposing view. People like Musk, though, are different. They are smart, but have no real moral compass and become so self-involved and greedy for power that they have lost their humanity and care only for power and things that benefit themselves. They have no empathy and consider the first group as people to be manipulated for their person benefit.
Good comparison btwn Musk and Ford
Narcissistic and all that. He and chump are two peas in a pod, sharing characteristics that make crazy feel like home…
Yes. Narcissistic psychopaths should start their own political party
He is a perfect example of one's ability to F'n rationalize ANYTNING!!
Maybe he is emotionally stupid. Mean.
Like many successful people, Musk was extraordinarily lucky. Now, with his immense wealth, he has a massive platform. And there are plenty of people who latch onto nonsense to justify their fears and hatred. Anyone with even a bit of critical thinking can see that Trump and his allies are profoundly unfit for power.
Profoundly, exactly
The thing is - far too many people lump wealthy and rich to mean "better" just because it gives them more power.
Look at the reality shows or influencers on tv and cable. Very little "talent" or ability but influencing.
Not too long ago, high-functioning autistic persons were called "Idiot-Savants," meaning stupid-smart. Autistic people often have insights and brilliance in one area of interest but are lacking in other areas, especially social skills; Musk fits the bill. As someone else mentioned, I have some doubts about his so-called genius. After all, he did not invent the concept of an electric car, but he has replicated the skills of private equity boys to pillage anything and everything for personal profit.
My 2 cents and it won’t get you on a subway…. Elon Musk is another rich trust fund brat just like Trump. Nothing special. I certainly would not consider him a Savant. I worked with and have first hand experience with Savants and trust me Musk does not fit the criteria.
Thanks for the first-hand report. I have been told he is autistic, though. Is that true?
I learned working in high school that low IQ kids were often happy and unconflicted, (disappointed parents could change that). High IQ disturbed kids were often conflicted and usually had some agenda percolating in their minds. Some like to be in-your-face, others like to orchestrate chaos from behind the scenes. Not hard and fast rules, but tendencies I noticed. I remember telling a colleague that a very smart but disturbed girl may not be the best girlfriend for her son. I think I mentioned Ted Kaczynski.
Jeri, way back over 50 years ago, I started high school. I was enrolled into an experimental program where about 40-50 of the predicted top scoring students were block programed into an intensive curriculum with the goal of pushing more students, especially the females into STEM careers--before that acronym even existed. This was not voluntary, we didn't even realize we were in this program till about a month into our freshman year, when we were all brought in an auditorium and told "have you noticed you all get up and go from one classroom to the next together" and explained what was up.
Now, 50 years later, I see some good and a lot of bad in that program, not for the education but the interpersonal impacts it caused. Now, highly competitive high schools are common, but it was not back then.
I mention this, because at the start of Sophomore year, the class ranks were announced. (I was unaware of what class rank even was). Two young ladies tied for the #1 spot of a class of over 715 students. One of them reported her father as being upset--not that she was #1, but that she shared that rank. (I wasn't either of them, I was tied with 15 others for #11) I recall the young lady who did end up valedictorian by a fraction as being a very high strung, anxious and worried girl. We all went out into our lives and I lost track of most of those in my program. Perhaps a decade after, in a strange coincidence, one of my college friends married a man who in an conversation, it came out he worked with the valedictorian. His take on her was a woman who was extremely unhappy and isolated, and who had difficulty relating to her coworkers. Who knows if he just didn't like her, or if she truly became that person--but I know the memory of her parent set a course for me. I had bright children, but I always told them to just do your best, whatever your best is, and be happy with your achievement.
Miselle, I had kids who were very pressured by their parents. They did not help their kids and probably embarrassed them. My own parents pressured me somewhat as i was expected to do well. Fortunately, I have always enjoyed learning and reading. I have always followed my own path which, when I became a D, did not make my dad happy. He and my second stepmother also decided that I was not always polite although they thought they could say anything to me, even if it was negative and hurtful. Sigh.
I was in a similar group, but it was because of Sputnik and we were in 7th grade when it started. More like 65 years ago.
For myself, the most valuable part was being with my peers. Oh, yes, we were an odd bunch, but we had friends who supported us and the jocks and socialites ignored us.
There wasn't a lot of interest in grades in my group, but there was one boy who was really dedicated to being first. I heard later that he committed suicide.
JD, lord, you mentioned Ted K! I hope that the colleague took your advice. My fav government class was the one that had no college preps in it, just ordinary kids, most of whom, at least wanted to graduate (it was a required class) and so we worked from there. They were also pretty apathetic about politics when they needed to vote to help themselves. Some kids in CP were grade grubbers, the worst sort of student in my mind. Not interested in learning of course. I also had some lovely intelligent students, some of whom are still friends. Talked (or rather mostly listened) to one for a couple hours yesterday. She needed to rant about the current situation. Her son and his family are also in Tampa and she got a report, so far that they were OK. She did tell me that Florida has strict building standards which surprised me. I also have an ex-student who lives on Sanibal Island. Don't know if she is OK. Have a couple ex h.s. classmates who live on the west coast of Florida and don't care what happens to them....intelligent, but rich, racist, and greedy.
I think he's really not that intelligent. See JD's comment on abused as children.
South Pacific by Rogers and Hammerstein - these lyrics keep playing in my head:
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade—
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate—
So true, and my go to: carefully taught.
I have that in my quote file, my fav lyrics
I'm on an a Aimee Mann binge lately:
🎶 You're a perfect fit,
For a girl in need of a tourniquet 🎶
🎶 Save Me.
you could save me
From the ranks of the freaks ...
who could never love anyone. 🎶
Mark Twain for me at the moment
"INTELLIGENT STUPIDS".
Thanks, JD Chilcutt, for drawing attention to the really dangerous stupids -- the High IQ Stupids...
There are even, and there always have been, stupids of genius. Like John von Neumann, who wanted to nuke Kyoto in order to obliterate Japanese culture.
"The patient's diseased -- kill him!"
As above, humans are capable of the most bizarre juxtapositions. We often “see” the ones with resources
JD, "intelligent stupids" correlates with cognitive dissonance. Even when one of the MAGAs knows that Trump is lying or hateful, they deny it. If it is on video and every MSM media outlet has video or a transcript, "it just doesn't matter." (I digress to the scene from Meatballs).
All we can do at this point is target the undecideds. And who knows if they will even vote.
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t seem to bother some. Like my bro. Religious “faith” just beats it down. Very frustrating.
And yet everyone can see that Harris is both duplicitous and complicit… in the vernacular of the conversation intelligent but stupid!
JD, what you are describing is people reacting emotionally to their environments, a reaction often far more potent than logic or reason. That’s why it takes so long to train really effective fighting forces to NOT react with fear or anger but with discipline.
So true, and personality disorders are set very early. Fortunately, I doubt that most MAGAts have personality disorders. Cult vulnerability is almost as ingrained, and can be triggered by God knows what.
I think that there is a strong correlation between cult vulnerability and a background in Christianity; when you learn from birth that the man in front of the church is the font of all that is good, some are programmed to both believe without questioning, and seek out that which fills whatever "spiritual" or "emotional" need they have.
Worked that way with me til I was exposed to a different reality. Not “survivor”
That makes a great deal of sense, Ally - what cult DIDNT basically have some kind of religious context. Some people are just much more vulnerable to being indoctrinated. That certainly sounds like the maga bunch.
How does that explain Tim Sheehy touting his military services as a Navy Seal , running for the Senate, supporting Don the con
Trained for war and combat, Carole, and to take orders, but clearly not necessarily for politics or government or wisdom and apparently unable to recognize the con or sees something in it for himself.
Neither Elon nor Donald are intelligent. They are both members of the Lucky Sperm Club. That is, without Daddy's Money, both men would be nobodies in anonymous stations in life. Elon probably made better use of his educational opportunities, but it's his opportunistic craftiness that got him where he is. Donald's educational access and his grades were purchased for him by his daddy and he squandered that advantage. Without Fred's financial propulsion, Donald couldn't be a janitor in one of his own buildings. More likely, he'd be an errand boy for Bratva. In fact, that's what he is.
Both have a degree of mob smarts, having daddy’s that leaned in that direction. What you say is 109% true.
“Ignorance can be educated, but stupid cannot.”… you made me laugh this morning JD🤣Thanks!
I thought of my mother who would always invoke the “ignoranza invincibile” when she meant “STUPID
Love that. I stole mine from somebody. I think the quote was “Ignorance can be educated, crazy can be medicated, but no cure for stupid.”
Or as Bill Engvall would have said "heres your sign"!
If you cant tell, I really enjoy his humor.
You bring up an interesting point regarding trauma. My wife grew up in a traumatic environment; her Mom was DiD (multiple personality) and her Dad was military. They married the day after she turned 18 (they were worried she was pregnant; she wasn't, but had two children before she was 20). Moved a lot. Her brother married, fathered two kids, one of whom has turned out fairly well, the other still lives with her mother. Her sister said that she had to teach herself how to be a loving parent who hugged her kids and told them they were loved. My wife wanted us to have kids when she was in grad school. It would have involved artificial insemination, and at the time, her insurance as a GTF would not have covered it. I had NO desire to be a mother, and told her I would gladly raise children with her, but would not birth them. We ultimately did not, and she has said many, many times she is glad that we did not pursue that route.
I love your last line; the "trifecta" does seem to have a path to checkmate.
Not if we vote for Harris/Walz and blue down the ticket. Don’t let these abstract explanations deter anyone. I like your idea of intelligent stupids, although the title “stupid” smacks of hate and some final judgement against people that are unfortunately neighbors.
And family. They are not intellectually stupid, but they are socially stupid. Sort of like racism, misogyny, and other learned social cliques that promote tribalism. I know them well.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we hear so little about intelligent, compassionate people who are still out there working to make our world a safer, saner place. A lot of this has to do with our adulation of extreme wealth which started in the 1980s. I read a book this summer that cited a speech Jack Welch made in which he told a bunch of business people that “greed was good.” It’s not. The folks at Faithful America recently installed a huge golden calf dressed as Trump in front of the White House. The Christian Nationalists denounced Faithful America as not being true Christians. We’ve been down this road before. Let’s find another path now.
"Greed is good" - Was that Jack Welch, or was that Gordon Gekko (?), the character played by Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street"?
Unbelievable by any measure
JD. All so damn scary that We The People seem to be hitting our heads against a wall of STUPID PEOPLE
JD ,another great laugh , thanks. 🫶..I thought of Maslow ‘s ‘triangle’ …good humor is intellectual challenge ..some won’t ever ‘get it’..and sometimes I still don’t but the lessons are more clear and some still regret.
I fevrently hope regret turns into those accountable held high …for the blind to see and the deaf to hear.👀🦻🤟
Willfully blind and deaf is hard to get, especially for some whose eyes and ears still work.
"stupid" in this context is inevitably mixed up with ignorant and misinformed. In my travels i am always amazed at how articulate and informed Europeans and Canadians are when discussing US politics. Young people are able to discuss political topics with a clear understanding that many of my middle aged friends are unable to. This has more to do with demographics and media consumption than it does with IQ in my opinion. Americans are being "raised stupid", to make us easier to manipulate. To be clear, most Trump voters would suffer more under a Trump administration than a Harris presidency, but would rather die than vote blue.
Excellent points, this is not an IQ thing, it’s deliberate Weaponization of social demographics
Will from Cal nailed it. However your trifecta checkmate close terrifies me. FOX News could fix this by falling on its sword.
That's perfectly said.
JD, the uneducated are apt to be willing to hear another side. The stupid usually are very stubborn in their unwillingness to consider any thing else once they decide something. The shinny object gets the most attention, and usually at best is iron pyrite.
Yep, chump is a shinny object, phony as any human can be. Adored by ignorant, stupid and crazy. And tolerated by deluded political greedy bastards who see power within their grasp.
😹 Also, in other words: We are all of us guilty of being ignorant about some things until proven guilty.
It is the guilty wilfully ignorant we all need to find a way to unite against.🐈⬛
The thing about ignorance is, it can be cured by curiosity, an open mind and sources of new information. Willful ignorance, that is another problem.
...Is a fool. Shun him.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, these two types of human ignorance are often not discriminated as separate issues and are often accordingly treated the same. Which leads to disaster.
Willfully ignorant and dangerously stupid (regardless of how one gets there) = evil.
What none of us can ever get our heads around is how the depraved republican party could put a convicted, treasonous traitor (who has said and done the most illegal and heinous things for most of his life) up as a presidential candidate for evil people to "vote" for is astounding and gut wrenching. What we have also learned over the years with this insanity is that democracy has no guardrails (rule of law keeps getting appealed or ignored).
I'll step away now before I go into another rant about the MSM and people like Mitt Romney who have helped to bring and nurture this horror show! Won't vote for trump but won't endorse democracy and Harris. Unlike Liz Cheney, Romney is a gutless POS who waffles endlessly and says nothing. Couldn't stand him as governor of MA and nothing has changed.
No. 1 lesson. Chump is not what made the Repub party lose its mind. I
Don’t know enough to pin it down, but might have been Coup of 1933, Joe McCarthy, 1964 Civil Rights, they were already off the rails with W. HCR’s “How the South Won The Civil War” may explore earlier times.
Agree and there are many reasons why the republican party lost its way. In decades past, it may have also been because reliable sources of information were not fluid. Today it seems that the ability to access real information is flooded with mis and disinformation and just plain craziness. People are inundated and have the attention of a gnat.
It has long been a complaint of teacher friends (now retired) that kids do not learn "executive/critical thinking", have no idea how to filter truth from fiction and as my husband (and I) often commiserated they have no idea how to put together a "backyard" baseball game - everything is programmed for the kids of the last 2 generations. I also think it fell apart when they eliminated cursive writing from the curriculum - a process that has been part of our brain, eye to hand coordination, and social development for a very long time! Developing brains need time to learn; not sound bites or flashing computer screens. Another podium, I'll step off as I have to plant 300 tulip bulbs :)
Janet.., baby, you covered it. And kudos for using my "POS" descriptor. But, right now 28 days away, we need to make sure we send #45 who epitomizes POS packing!
Don't forget his misogynistic indoctrination. The idiot down the road with 4 dumoty signs and a huge flag is also Mormon,
Mormon is not synonymous with sanity in my experience, although the Mormon family I truly respected had wonderful family support, but still…
There is a group of woman MORMONS FOR ETHICAL GOVERNMENT that have some worthwhile reading. I am NOT LDS but know LDS people who walk their talk. Clumping a group into a stereotype is the same as saying "all blacks " " all Jews" . The exception would be all MAGAs are >>.
I knew a wonderful Mormon family and we spent a lot of time together since school age son was injured. But they tried to preach to me. I was immune, still am
The daughter of a neighbor married a follower of the Mormon church. Non Mormons, including the family of the bride, were not permitted to attend. The building of a very large temple was announced in 1995, started in 1997 and finished in Belmont, MA in 2000. The town was then the legal MA residence of Mitt Romney for the few days a year he spent in the state as governor! I don't include links but if you Google "when was the Mormon temple built in Belmont, MA" the page with the Latter Day Saints will provide the description.
Please reconsider voting for Harris. Reexamine your reasons. You seem very intelligent and should know not voting is as good as a vote for the enemies of democracy. Agree wholeheartedly about Romney
The only person not voting for Harris that Janet W. describes IS Romney. Not herself.
Well, you missed the point, Danny . . . . you think I would not vote or vote for trump?!!! That's hilarious except it is total misinformation!
I heard this quote in TV show last night, " The love of power is the demon of men."
I suspect "tribal" ie group loyalties and biases has more to do with how the vote goes than "stupidity" as such. Eg Maga gets majorities from less educated, but there is a huge racial divide between whites and blacks or shades thereof. Family incomes works in the same way.
Tribalism and group loyalty is just another subcategory of stupid. Seeing yourself as different from other people over some arbitrary distinction is the cause of problems century in and century out on every continent. If someone is still participating in something that keeps not working for them because THE OTHERS might get closer otherwise, they are being stupid and need to knock it off. I get that this supposedly has deep and complex psychological and biological roots blah blah blah but honestly today I would just like for people to get over themselves and knock it off and the fact they aren't puts them in the "dumb" category for me right now LOL, thank you very much!
Stupid doesn’t explain everything.
Weaponized stupidity explains most things.
Of course not. Nothing explains everything. But stupid explains so much!
Racism explains a lot of the support for TFG. He tells the racists what they want to hear.
Don't forget misogyny.
Ellen, that seems to be what drives the MAGAts I know. Not only does he tell them what they want to hear, but he flat-out encourages the outlandish and hateful behavior they just love to spout off with.
Exactly!! And no amount of factual reality is going to shrink the loyalty of the Make America White Again tribe to the Groper-in-Chief.
Monroe Morgret, yes. I’d like to add a few more adjectives to your Groper-in-Chief if that’s ok? ‘Traitorous’ is number one. ‘Psychopathic’ comes along with that like an evil twin.
I’m sure everyone on HCR’s excellent scathing post today can add their own
pinning the tail on his nonexistent vile heel spurs.
My parents both backed trump and they're both college educated as are both of my brothers. Showing me that intelligence isn't learned in university. I, as the least educated in our family saw trump for the vile charlatan he is back in the '80s.
You related to George Carlin, Cal? Seems to me you might be!🤣👍
Someone gave my Dad a set of 3 of George Carlin's books for his birthday when I was in middle school and I immediately claimed them as my own and gleefully let them warp my mind.
Man O man, I wish he were here now….so much material to work with!
… but he also left us with a lot that remains so very apropos today!!!
Kinda scary, Jim, that his comments seem to be timeless!
That would be a good thing. Irreverent has a place
JD, when my wife entered Stanford as a freshman, there was a one page essay, asking them (as only a one page questionnaire can) to describe themselves. One was "using only one word, what word best describes you?" There were many "smart", "intelligent", replies, and a few like "creative" and "motivated" and a lot of "talented". There was one that used "irreverent." It was my wife.
The theory that there are this many people who are stupid plays into ignoring the powerful psychological and deliberate warfare against our democracy that has been carefully conducted and coordinated upon so many social media platforms and has now drifted fully into the mainstream media.
There is currently a glaring difference in how Kamala Harris is covered versus Trump. Or how Democrats are presented versus Republicans.
And that naturally makes people more doubtful. They aren't so much stupid as dreadfully misled and wary. It is very hard for even smart people to ignore the constant harping that is going on against Harris and the Democrats, these stories are so relentless.
Remember that bizarre and constant drumbeat about Biden's age? Well, now that Trump is the oldest candidate, do we hear even a whisper about Trump's dementia? Yes, there was a very late story in NY Times, but that's it--compare this to hundreds launched against Biden. It is not even close in terms of scale.
Then there is the constant whining about Harris not having enough policy, all while Trump is running away from the unpopular Project 2025 and Harris is in fact handing us major policy commitments every week that people really want and need. They literally pick away at the intelligent competent woman and give the stupid greedy man a free pass, every damn time.
Roy Cohn used such techniques heavily, and Roy Cohn trained Trump. Putin backs Trump with his trolls by surgically constructing and targeting 'alternative truths' at vulnerable groups in our voting population. Republicans heavily used Putin's strategy to infiltrate the Justice System and hollow it out from within to become an instrument of autocracy: that's on fine display in SCOTUS now. Foreign actors like MBS are funding a lot of Trump's campaign with dark money pumped through untraceable cybercurrency and shady real estate deals. These aren't 'conspiracy theories', they are fact. And they do have impact.
In short, Trump is getting a whole LOT of help from people who don't have America's interests at heart. And our 4th Estate is shamefully failing us even more than the 'stupid' people taken in by the propaganda.
Our democratic systems, particularly communications to counter disinformation, need shoring up. We need to change so the government is quickly and directly able to counterattack these assaults on the health of our elections, especially while those elections are going on.
Systemic Curiosity, you've hit the nail on the head. "...powerful psychological and deliberate warfare against our democracy that has been carefully conducted and coordinated upon so many social media platforms and has now drifted fully into the mainstream media." is 100% accurate.
Watching all the mis/disinformation regarding the FEMA response to the hurricanes march through my Facebook feed has been awful. I posted LFAA from a couple days ago, and had one guy say "this is dumb". No, Sarge, you are.
I wish your post could be on the front page of the few newspapers left and reported by pbs news hour. It’s brilliant, systematic. Glad you are out there.
Vulnerable people come in all stripes. We need to change quickly, go to it. Has been my albatross for years as I have watched institutions bend in the wind of propaganda.
Actually I think the Fourth Estate has done a pretty good job of collecting and documenting more than enough information about the defects and corruption of Donald Trump. The problem is that most people don't get that information. If they consume "news" from a dedicated propaganda source or through unchecked social media they are convinced of an alternate reality. This is why support for Trump is unyielding. There are other factors - reflexive tribalism and foreign interference, to name 2 - but information bubbles that distort reality are the key. It will be our downfall.
What I’ve been saying for years now. The problem isn’t Trump. Nor Vance. Nor Republicans. It’s the roughly half of our fellow citizenry.
No, I don't think stupidity or evil, or indifference accounts for the MAGA followers. Insecurity, xenophobia, and tribal loyalty are basic but submersed in a civil society. What DJT has done is to bring these negative characteristics out into the open, played on them for his own benefit. He is evil and totally committed to his own needs.
Don't forget racism, George. MAGAs aren't xenophobic about white people from Europe.
But those descended from "good New England stock" were xenophobic about the Irish and the Germans who immigrated later on.
True. And they considered Italians, Slavs, and Jews inferior.
They walk among us which is why I spend so much time in my safe nest at home.
Great comment, Will, thanks for the chuckle.
Happily in our insane world, there are still enough lampposts to go around, some with names already on them. Trump. Musk. Vance. McConnell...... It's a long list and getting longer.
I truly believe that you are right, Will. And it has been this way since we were first able to stand on two legs.
But I also suspect (no facts yet, just supposition) that we have poisoned the population with lead, PFAs and microplastics. The popular misconception is that they simply cause physical ailments - like cancer. But as we know, lead has created learning disabilities and worse.
The Biden administration announced this past week a commitment to replace all the lead water pipes in the country. Good. Great. As a civilization, this is dollar short and a day late.
PFAs are in enormous swaths of our farm land. Which means it is on the shelves of every grocery store. Convince me that their impact is only "physical".
Every American is now filled with microplastics swimming around in their fluids looking for a place to settle and play games with our health. Convince me that they aren't finding a way into our nervous systems and brains.
There is naturally born stupid and there is stupidly created, self inflicted stupid.
Bill, this assessment is spot on. Wasn't it in "The Graduate" that Dustin Hoffman was told that "the future is in plastics". Now, plastics are in us.
First thing I learned after going to work in elementary school. Lead causes brain damage. Duh, we are indeed poisoning ourselves
I think you are on to something important
Will, while it sounds clever, I fear your explanation does little to actually explain or allow useful action by talking about varieties of stupid. What seems more plausible and has more research supporting it is using the concepts of perceived self-interest, i.e.- where do people get their income, and where do people get their sense of identity, i.e.- what is their tribal affiliation. We know that for milllenia of human development humans suffered much greater risk from being isolated from their families, tribes and ethnic associations than from a lack of logic or “intelligence”, i.e.-"the stupids.” The core of our emotional lives, the amygdala (fight, flight, freeze), and hippocampus (strong memory associations) is centered in the deepest parts of our brains where they receive incoming information from the environment, both internal (spinal cord) and external. Our reasoning brains, the cerebral hemispheres are what grew out surrounding those core neurological structures which much later allowed us to reason and apply “the scientific method,” an ability to think analytically which only came to fruition as recently as the Renaissance. Those whom you label as “stupids” are most likely driven by perceived self-interest and/or the need to identify with and belong to a larger tribe where they can feel protected and defended.
JohnM
But Will’s explanation was funnier
None of this is funny,
Danny, your well stated comment was at a grad level audience. Will’s target audience can grasp what he said. Communication works when the audience can relate with what you’re saying without having an advanced degree. The masses can relate to “stupid”. Hypothalamus? Not so much
Damn, faint praise??? I imagine that most here know “hypothalamus” and most would agree that nothing about chump is funny. A little comic relief may be useful. Comics think so and I am grateful
A very well reasoned line of thought and much better than stupid; even though the simplicity of “stupid” is tempting.
Thank you for the excellent insight that gives tribalism a scientific and psychological context.
Was stupid an evolved response to some threat, my 4 am brain seems to be back…
Wasn’t that the Wizard’s First Rule? “People are stupid.”
Will, I am sad to agree with you, but from my senior vantage point there seems no other answer for the dangerous situation we find ourselves in.. I know well-educated people/many women who are Trump supporters. I have lost my ability to be discrete and now ask why? But it is quite scary to hear the response…all vague and based on Trump’s lies. These same people openly mock my postcard writing. Stupidity and cruelty does seem to win over logic!
I’m old as well, Pam. Please don’t despair. Just keep on keep in’ on. I have felt what you describe, and know it’s debilitating
But the general population cannot charge Elon Musk for paying for votes. Why is the DOJ not investigating him?
I know why Trump is allowed to run for the presidency....as the Supreme Court stopped States from taking him off the ballot...I just don't understand why the other stuff stands.
I agree. We need an active DOJ. Biden’s biggest error, our “top cop.”
Its my lot in life to be nice and smart. Good to not be alone.
I'm mean, but smart enough to keep it reined in and act like a nice person. Which makes me BECOME a nice person. At least until I have another mean impulse! :D
Honest, and a common status, Karen. Thanks
Brilliant, Will. Thank you.
It's the willful stupid that concern me. I saw an article yesterday where a singer (I think he is. Rapper? who married a Kardashian) has a daughter who turned 18 and is in the news because she said she won't vote. To her "credit" she says she doesn't know the issues and candidates----but she also said she doesn't care to educated herself. She's "just not interested." (My bad--I can't recall the names of these D list "celebrities" but in my defense, I'M just not that interested.)
Amazing, truly amazing, that you can live in such a bubble that you think NOTHING outside of it will impact you. Perhaps that is the wealthy, they know that they'll still get their abortions, their operations, their luxury and even necessities, while the rest of us fall short.
Damn Will. Just at the point I think I couldn’t admire your insight abilities more, you prove me wrong AGAIN
It seems like it can't be real, yet there are historical precedents. Our clever and talented species seems to be it's own worst enemy.
Yeah, JL, like I’ve said here before, we’re now Hubris sapiens to me.
We strut and fret (me too).
Another Thing To Worry About: "A US scientist who won the 2024 Nobel physics prize for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence said Tuesday he found recent advances in the technology "very unnerving" and warned of possible catastrophe if not kept in check. John Hopfield, a professor emeritus at Princeton, joined co-winner Geoffrey Hinton in calling for a deeper understanding of the inner workings of deep-learning systems to prevent them from spiraling out of control."... When You See Sam Altman, he appears to be as Serene as someone sitting on a Block of Ice in Hell... Let Hope For The Best...
To be frank, sometimes I wonder why people like the guy who just won the Nobel don't just freaking stop themselves while they are developing this insane new ability and go "Huh, what could unintentionally come of this? Might this not be worth it?" These are clearly some of the most intelligent people on the planet, so why can't any of them ask that ONE obvious question???
My stance is simple: no new computers until we cure cancer. And diabetes and asthma. We certainly need no new damn iPhones. The ones we have work just fine. Oh sure, the people who keep making the computers keep telling us that eventually the computers will be the ones to cure cancer, but that keeps not happening, and instead we keep getting more crap that we didn't ask for.
Also, where are my flying cars and jet packs? 10-year-old me wants to know. I don't need my phone to be able to make a picture of me look like a cat, that is lame! What I want is a damn jet pack! If you can turn me into a cat and send the image of that cat version of me to someone across the world in 2 seconds flat, I don't believe for a second you can't make me a jet pack instead!
Ahem. Anyway...
Funny you mention the guy not thinking about the ramifications of his work.
Sometimes, they need someone around them to make them realize what they're doing and the consequences of their actions.
My husband worked for Sony Entertainment. They always had different challenges for the developers trying to come up with new products.
Don't remember the specific challenge, but my husband took the challenge to heart and came up with something he thought would be great for companies to use.
However, after doing his presentation and a lot of discussion about it, he was told to delete everything in regards to the program and forget that he ever came up with the idea. Because what he came up with could have had serious consequences if his program got into the hands of someone who had bad intentions.
My husband wasn't thinking about the bad things because he wasn't looking at it from that angle, he was looking at it from the helping side.
And maybe that's what the Nobel guy was thinking too?
Wow, somebody looked at unintended consequences. Bravo
"Geoffrey Hinton, 75, announced his resignation from Google in a statement to the New York Times, saying he now regretted his work. "
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65452940
Somehow I was bitten by the "science bug" before I was 5, when is started wiring simple circuits, wondering about fossils, and closely examining plants, before I knew that was a certain category of interest. I was henceforth THE science (and to some degree, art) nerd in my various schools. Up until about the "smartphone" era, I thought that, although any technology can be misused, the more tools in our toolbox the better, and that each new discovery and technology primarily benefited and empowered the public.
In recent years I detect a shift in who and how technology serves, and while the "dark side" of our technical endeavors was always apparent, it seems to me that increasingly, technologies are being built and purchased by people standing apart from the mass of society, who aim to control and exploit other people, not serve and empower them. I do not believe this is just old age resistance to change, or paranoia on my part; at least not entirely. In the nerdy days of computer use, the customer was king, and companies went to great lengths to cater to ad empower computer users. Now it seems increasingly set the rules for how the customer interacts with their product. Apple even made products irreparable with firmware that simply would not allow the device to work unless Apple does the repair. Software is increasingly rented rather than sold, and some mechanical devices (not just things that make sense, like phones, but accessories in cars) will not run without a monthly subscription. The scale to which new devices massively compromise user privacy is neither adequately appreciated nor sensibly regulated. Gov. Newsom just vetoed bill that would have regulated AI. This is to say nothing of despotic applications in places such as China.
This is part and parcel of the (for me) shocking degree we are passively allowing corporate interests to define and control our culture and our lives. There never were golden, generically "Good Old Days" when there were not severe problems social problems or glaring inequalities, but I think we are passively losing control of our own futures. The clear and present threat of Trumpism is just one of the more salient indicators. If we continue to drift, I fear the outcomes.
I was reading an amazing article recently on this new treatment for HIIV that these researchers had tried out in monkeys to astonishing success. It is an inoculation that instructs cells to mimic the virus in that it tricks the DNA of the immune system to reproduce strands and subsequently burst, sending the material exponentially out into the body, but somehow they were training the cells to copy the antidote so that if the virus entered, all cells would be immune? Like the Covid shots but even more crazy. I'm sure I'm butchering the explanation, but it was amazing. The researchers were pretty sure it will work in humans and could eradicate the virus. But... it would permanently effect everyone's DNA, so would be passed down generations. Being immune to HIV sounds like a great perk, but if decades later they found some unintended interaction then there is no reversing it. So THAT to me is an actual conundrum.
The whole AI thing on the other hand, doesn't seem like a tough call. Have these people never seem a scifi movie, not one, ever? Don't trust the robots! Don't turn yourself over to the robots! Especially if the only benefit we have so far is getting Google to awkwardly summarize itself, or creating whatever the heck this is: https://www.freepik.com/premium-ai-image/funny-realistic-food-item-smiling-face-ai-generated_56718168.htm
Lordy, I have trouble enough with real reality & now they want to add fake reality too? Excuse me, gotta go…I now have a massive headache! 🤯
That genetic modification of which you speak is the same sort of thing that keeps a large portion of the population immune to sickle cell disease, which itself was a reaction to some tropical disease. Around in circles we go.
Inventors of nuclear fission should have had the same thought, but Hitler...
I read an article about a doctor or scientist in Japan who's spent his entire career figuring out how to get our bodies to regrow teeth, and he's been successful with mice. Sounded interesting to me.
You’re on a funny roll today!
As a cancer survivor, I love the idea of curing cancer. But that’s not where I think we should be putting our money. I think we should be putting our money into making sure kids have enough to eat, that folks can afford safe housing, that we do stuff to cope with climate change, that we have universal healthcare, that social security becomes, well, secure. If we do those things, we’ll probably have less cancer too. These things aren’t moonshots, they’re achievable now. So let’s achieve them.
What a concept, doing something good for society. 🙄
Seriously, all the technology in the world is useless when basic human needs aren't being addressed.
That's because most technology is used to benefit the top 10 per cent of the population.
Amen to that, Ellen
Every study that has implemented Universal Basic Income, and there have been at least a dozen good ones, demonstrates that UBI results in better outcomes - people are happier, healthier, drink and smoke less, crime goes down and it costs more to deal with the social problems caused by poverty than it does to provide everyone with enough money for the basics. But every government that participates in a UBI study ends up ignoring the results. Why?
So well said, KR
and ALS, which my husband has - we need a cure for ALS.
Of course they can make you a jet pack. They just don't want you to have one. For what its worth, the 10-year old me totally agrees with the 10-year old you.
My human right to fun is being denied, and this denial cannot stand.
Will, from Cal:
Thank you for making me laugh this morning!
Stop this.
Stop it at once, all of you!
Go and do some of the twenty seven things you PROMISED yourself you would do today!
And so will I . . . .
Meanwhile, while some beat on their trumpets, on 10/9 at 7:05 PM Eastern NEWSWEEK confirmed that ex-CEO of Overstock, Patrick M. Byrne, has set up residence in Dubai.
Kudos to a journalist on 'X' in September 2024 who had posted Patrick M. Byrne " ... would not be coming back to the U.S. for the foreseeable future." 🎯
Update: Byrne is out of Trial judge's jurisdiction for the upcoming set Trial.
A Default judgment is dead ahead most likely with substantive law & money sanctions.
* We need to start tracking the Perp Exodus & related extradition treaties.
"They" can also control the weather, according to Marjorie Taylor Greene. 🤪
Laughing too hard to press thr "like" button on that one.😄
The same Mentality that created Nuclear Weapons is creating A.I. ....
It's the same mentality that thought "Hey! I'll take a couple of rabbits to Australia!"
Or cane toads.
I love cane toads, because they perpetually look SO grumpy. Like they know what you did and can't believe you are getting away with it.
“why can't any of them ask that ONE obvious question???”
Because we have lost sight of the importance of teaching the liberal arts. Scientists are not trained to ask questions about the implications of what they do. That would require a grounding in philosophy. The ancient Greeks called them the “liberal arts” (philosophy, fine arts, music, etc.) because they liberate the mind to understand and make better use of the “servile arts” (the sciences), which don’t have value in themselves except to better the human condition. Today we’ve lost sight of that idea and have elevated the sciences to such a degree that we’ve forgotten that they are servile—that they have no value if not partnered with deeper insight and understanding.
Meet George Jetson!!🤣
My kidhood favourite!
It's all there in your new watch! And it sends you messages all day whether you want them or not.
A 3 year old I know recently said, "Siri, get me out of my car seat" .
Cancer wont ever be cured. The best possible strategy is to prevent it. Part of preventing it would eliminate diabetes II.
I'm not a prolific commenter here, so no one will remember my previous reference to my self-assigned writing project, "Fifteen Times Fifteen." These discussions keep dredging up recollections of that project. To wit, two come to mind:
"Fortunately, creativity – effective problem-solving – is simple: unfortunately, the difficulty arises in identifying the problem."
"You are finished when you've decided something is good enough, and I am not finished ..."
I identify as a Creative. (There are more of us than realize it.) Creativity, whether artistic or scientific, is problem-solving. Effective problem-solving is achieved by people who are extremely focused ... sometimes to the exclusion of consequences. People who pursue the solution to a problem are unable to stop themselves. Because when you reach what looks like success, it's really just a milestone that unveils the next mile ahead. That's why you keep getting new iPhones you didn't ask for. It's the blessing/curse Creatives live with. Generally, we die unhappy.
Those are primarily environmental /lifestyle diseases that need to be prevented rather than treated.
Lol, I want to know where the flying cars are too?!
Do not fail to listen to the Feb 2024 Freakonomics Radio series about Richard Feynman.
Dollars, Will.
Maybe climate catastrophe will “trump” such “progress.”
Mother nature will have the last word on our cluelessness. It's happening now but we're still in denial.
Before our eyes, which so far are above the water.
like everyone communications wise, the technologies and businesses involved will be co-opted into the political processes willy nilly. I can't say how effective AI generated will be more effective than old fashioned outright lies and existing prejudices.
It does it without us even knowing. Will we die happier?
rhetorical i assume? Remember exposes about the advertising industry over half a century ago? eg Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders.
Attended a talk he gave at Fairleigh Dickinson U back in early ‘60s! Built in obselesance was a term he used!
Built in obselesance I surely know about.
I missed that. Google coming up.
"Hal" the computer...
AI would "logically" conclude humanity is the greatest risk to its own existence and the survival of the planet...
Might as well name AI "Thanos" like the villain in The Marvel Universe of The Avengers.
“Sorry ‘Dave’ I can’t do that…?”
…or Skynet.
Tune into the A.I. Developments in Ukraine, and Gaza...
I have been VERY CONCERNED about AI for the reason you noted. A very powerful tool that can go so wrong in the wrong hands.
I've been thinking for a while now science is going to be the end of us, not politics.
Perhaps for the first time in evolutionary history a species (homo sapiens) is inventing and manufacturing the species (AI) that will replace it.
Exactly. We don’t have any effective regulation in social media and we end up with a Baffin in 2016. Now, enter A.I. with no regulation added to social media to an information illiterate and gullible public. What could go wrong?
This is one of the top questions that our commercially-obsessed society is skirting. It is insane to ignore it and hope for the best. Some of the few that acknowledge that that it could impact individual lives and society in unforeseen ways point to the historical precedent of industrialization, and assure that technology always makes things better, but machines that decide for themselves in a generalized way are unprecedented. We are potentially handing immense power to algorithms themselves and to irresponsible and/or malign human uses of that power.
Hope without a plan won’t be enough.
Always “Hope”
Justice is Hurricane Milton coming for the state that elected Ron DeSantis. Unfortunately when it gets to that point the destroyer does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.
"does not distinguish" ... from what I've seen on the media, DeSantis and government are doing as much as anyone can from these storms. The bigger picture, he folds into the Republican denial syndone, continued now by Maga.
Frank Loomer: Yes, during the national catastrophe that a category 4-5 hurricane packs, Governor Ron De Santis has done his duty.
It is startling to see the Governor act responsibly when his political rhetoric incites hatred.
Strange contrast.
Both he and Biden have publicly praised each other in prosaic terms, the Harris thing seems to have drifted out of sight.
He wants to keep his job. Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson does what is required of him from time to time, passing funding bills, etc., however grudgingly. What they say and what they do are often at odds. Watch what they do-the ones that follow thru on hateful rhetoric are the dangerous true believers. Most Republican politicians are guys who are riding the train to the best of their ability, however lacking that might be.
Not excusing DeSantis- he is hurting Florida more than he is helping- just in this instance, his partisan line has yielded to acknowledgment of reality for a change.
I don’t think Floridians will see it that way when the Citizens bill arrives.
If I used the title “stupid” it would be for DeSantis.
Never has, nor did Nazis
Carla Childress: Yours is the only logical response -- Bewilderment.
Today's column truly paints how truly bizarre the American polity is today.
Stunning.
Circa 1958, at 10, I was old enough to watch Rod Sterling's "Twilight Zone." The actors were conventionally dressed 1950s persons; the surroundings, buildings, cities were conventionally mid-century; but the events were so very strange and bizarre, that the viewer was HOOKED.
Events, exactly as Professor Heather Cox Richardson describes them, could fill whole seasons of "Twilight Zone."
It is unreal.
Your reaction is the only logical one to a truly bizarre election.
It is like "The New York Times" were available in everybody's living room, but they would reach out to Alfred E. Neumann -- What me worry? -- and "Mad Magazine" for believable reporting.
Strange times, indeed!
I wonder the same thing.... Elon Musk has something to do with Pro-Trump , he has a massive younger male following on X ... so many celebrities, x-Republicans have come out pro-Harris. The polls leave the race seemingly tied with no one prepared to call a result.
I half wonder if the foreign influencers are also manipulating the news we see about polling. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, at some point in the future we will learn Putin, or perhaps more accurately his oligarch bros, have direct financial influence over Trump. They own him after bailing out his bumbling business failures over and over again. Some smoking gun will reveal this.
Wouldn't surprise me.
Carla, I’ll do my best to answer your great “what is justice” question in as few words as I can muster, but I’ll start by saying it’s not you that’s challenged, it’s our changeable but currently immature human culture.
I hate to say I agree with Vivek Ramaswamy about anything, but I agree with him about one thing, and that is fixing the root cause. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you can’t fix something you don’t understand.
Like it or not, our relationship with one another is not transactional (potentially useful, potentially a threat, and otherwise irrelevant). As MLK said in his letter from Birmingham City Jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” In other words, our relationship with one another is transformational (relevant regardless of context).
For an immature child, because a relationship with an individual outside the child’s (unconscious) circle of concern is transactional, a conflict with that individual is treated like a problem with a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over” solution. That relationship becomes transformational when the child’s circle of concern expands, aka when the child becomes sufficiently mature.
An immature child’s circle of concern is smaller than the child’s circle of influence. For example, the child’s circle of influence expands exponentially on the first day of preschool, and it takes time to adapt, but with a competent teacher, the entire class quickly matures. The competent teacher’s goal is a classroom-wide “all for one and one for all” circle of concern.
Vivek, Trump, Musk, Putin, Speaker Mike, etc. have a “me, myself, and I” circle of concern. In other words, they’re more immature than the child was on the first day of preschool. For all of us, every conflict with someone outside our circle of concern is unconsciously perceived as a problem with a one-step solution, and every conflict inside our circle of concern is perceived as a dilemma with a multi-step resolution (aka an adult conversation).
For people on the political right, it’s “us” against “them.” For people on the political left, it’s “us” against “them.” For people at the political center, it’s “all for one and one for all.”
Don’t get confused by the MSM’s definition of the political center. At the political center, there are difficult but adult conversations in which dilemmas are being resolved at the appropriate level. Note that dilemma resolution does not make for sensational headlines.
I think the Biden administration and the Harris-Walz ticket are in the vicinity of that center, aka 12 o’clock, and MAGA went to the dark side, aka 6 o’clock. Note that you can get to the dark side by going clockwise (too far to the right) or counterclockwise (too far to the left).
We will have justice when we resist the temptation to assign responsibility to people who are obviously insufficiently mature, and the only reason to do that is because the assigner is insufficiently mature.
For example, when you vote for a POTUS, don’t think “what’s in it for me?” Instead, think “what circle of concern is being expressed by the candidate?” Then vote for the candidate who promises to be a president for all Americans and hold them to that promise. Resisting the temptation to spend money that ends up in Musk’s pocket is another example.
In general, always treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot (aka transformational relationship) while recognizing that the only alternative is “do as I say and not as I do” (aka transactional relationship).
When everyone does, then we will have justice.
OK - It's this close for several reasons.
--The Old Guard Corporate Democrats ignored non-college educated white people to slant the system in favor of wealthy people and the corporate world. That would be Biden, Obama, the Clintons, Clyburn, Pelosi, Schumer and more. They've done this for at least thirty years.
Nafta, the repeal of Glass-Steagle, the insanely insufficient stimulus of 2009, (as recommended by the corporate shill Larry Summers)... In 2021 Biden refusing to even try to repeal, or modify, the filibuster. Or how about in 2005 when Biden was the key player in restructuring the bankruptcy law to benefit his corporate buddies and screw over students.
Or maybe it was in the last three years as Biden once again couldn't see the forest for the trees and totally missed that the problem is PRICES of items that matter. Maybe it's because Biden has done zero to recognize and attack the REAL problem - price gouging.
Maybe it's because voters watched his pathetic Super Bowl ad where he promised he would talk to the price gougers. Talk... that's what Biden and the Old Guard had to offer. Truly pathetic.
It's close because the Corporate Old Guard of the Democratic Party has ignored the middle class to leave them twisting slowly in the wind.
It's close because potential voters are desperate to dump the Corporate Old Guard. Look at the reaction to dumping Biden. Biden wasn't dumped because of his age. He was dumped because he's a terrible candidate. He has the charisma and presence of a wet mop. And the people that built the foundation of the Dump Biden movement were the rank and file of the party. Once it became blindingly obvious he was like a ball and chain the Corporate Old Guard showed up. They got him to pull his head out and see the exit door.
In addition there is the Corporate Media using terminology like "misinformation" and "disinformation" and 'falsehood". The "journalists" that have learned how NOT to talk to people. The folks that have convinced themselves that they are technically correct while regular people don't absorb a syllable being sent their way. An army of technocrats that haven't a clue when it comes to talking to everyday people. People with four and six year degrees and years of experience busy yammering to each other.
What ever happens in the next election the Corporate Old Guard needs to be dumped. Good bye to Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Clyburn, Schumer... time to move on.
I always find it disingenuous when people complain about democrats while totally ignoring the Republicans.
And with project 2025 waiting to go into effect, ignoring them is even worse.
So please tell me what repubs have done to make this country better?
Well said. Great respond to David
Huh, I thought we were in this mess because many of us bowed out of engaging in keeping our democratic rights alive years ago, while many others were busy corrupting our systems. But whadduh I know...
Hey people. David makes some good points. The Democrats have indeed been asleep at the wheel for decades. How could they not have noticed the slow but steady packing of the federal judiciary with hard-right ideologues? Why didn’t Obama fight harder for Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court? Etc.,etc. Democrats always seem to be back on their heels playing defense. I frequently find myself angrier at them than Republicans. Frankly, I kind of admire the latter for knowing what they want and relentlessly pursuing it unlike Democrats who are frequently paralyzed by infighting and indecision.
Give it a rest. You’re on a weird pattern of thought. How has the party of trump helped anyone or anything but themselves. No one thinks democrats are perfect.
Because dems are on the take as well from corporations. Not as blatantly or as criminally as repubs but still on the take.
Easy on the filibuster issue! He was President then not a senator. Dems had two traitors in the senate besides all the magafied gop puppets like by Moscow Mitch which precluded any action on the filibuster!!!
Correct!
How's the weather in Vladivostok?
It’s this attitude that keeps MAGA in office.
Troll.
Calling people names is a sign that you have no real argument offer - usually I see this with the magats...
Sorry but we need real change. I love VP Harris but let's face it, will she be able to change the power structure in this country where billionaires and corporations really rule not we the people? I'm just a regular person so I have no grand solution but I do see the grand problem...
Never up, never in.
A defeatist mentality is the real problem, Tovarich.
Don't assume I'm not in - I donted $450 to VP Harris! So far. I can support her and be critical of a broken system at the same time! It's called intelligence.
Totally agree and have been saying this with less finesse than you since slick willie...Say it loud for the people in the back!
The Bulwark discussed the election polls yesterday with the various ways one could interpret the continuous, no matter what 2+ points that Kamala has had over Trump for a while now, with no fluctuation.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-grand-unified-theory-of-why-the
The Bulwark is published by the head of Republican Voters Against Trump, but not all of the reporters are Republican, or even former Republicans, but they are more conservative. Gives me some balance in what I read, and a lot of them are really good. They can admit being wrong, and they do a lot of focus group surveying which is interesting.
I'm going to be honest: it is hilarious to me to see the ink being spilled over the polls NOT moving by the people who are usually paid to spill ink over why the polls are moving. It is Occam's Razor personified. All this big stuff has happened that would usually make the polls move, but nothing is happening? How could this BE???
It's reeeeeaaaaal freaking simple. We have been living in the same dynamic for 9 freaking years now: MAGA/anti-Democracy vs. anti-MAGA/pro-Democracy. Roughly 46% of voters are in a cult and absolutely nothing is moving them off, whereas roughly 49% of voters are voting against that nonsense whoever the candidate is. Biden running again made enough people grumpy to lose a few percent, the second it was Kamala instead she scooped up those people who had wandered literally in a matter of days. Good debate, bad debate, good interview bad interview, good economic data, bad economic data, hurricane or no hurricane, it is 46-49 until the last few days where the VERY SPECIAL 5% of people who never make up their mind until the last minute make it up, and who are most of them more likely gonna pick, the guy they already said NO to twice, or that other lady that seems nice on Howard Stern?
That old golden rule, time for it to be respected again.
I agree. I cannot understand how this race can be so close. Will, from Cal is correct. People are stupid. My sister (a trumper) says Democrats are stupid. She needs to look in the mirror. :(
I’m grieving the loss of both of my once sane sisters. It’s a contagion of hatred and willful ignorance, imo. I do not understand how you can believe something with no fact base (the government is controlling the weather) and NOT believe the facts of climate change. That is willful ignorance.
Well said, Carla.
Very well said, Carla. None of us understand. The Kavansugh revelations we all could “see” without knowing. Cheap crooks and rapists in our highest court! Despicable! All the inmates in America just nod, knowingly
Well, and how dare they accuse Democrats of politicizing ANYTHING after the Manchurian Cantaloupe politicized the FBI and the DOJ?
Like they say in Brooklyn, “Woulda, coulda, shouda.” The time to answer your question starts on November 6th. Until then each of us needs to do all we can to beat the forces of evil.
This answer from Eric Hoffer in the 1950s keeps seeming relevant: https://yadontknow.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-true-believer.html
Horrifying hypothesis from Hoffer! Suggests chump is the personification of EVIL! Thanks for the link!
Louis, I was first introduced to Hoffer about 5 years ago from Professor Richardson here. It is pretty astounding.
This is why people will vote for Trump: Many people think they should have a house, a truck, a motorcycle, and a lake place, and if they don't, whose fault is it? IMMIGRANTS!
Another writer said this and I can't remember who it was, but this makes it clear to me.
Trying to understand MAGA is a waste of time. They just need to be defeated. And they will be, by end of day, November 5th.
I hesitate to comment about this because it’s personal. But I feel compelled to speak out, partially as I feel a responsibility for the ones who didn’t live. I got Covid19 in the spring of 2020. Where I live, there were no tests and barely any PPE for medical workers. I have insurance but I was unable to get tested, not for Covid and not for the ensuing suspected pneumonia. They wouldn’t allow me in the X-ray facility because if I was contagious, they would have to shut down for the day to disinfect the place. The single hospital was totally overrun, they were stacking patients in hallways and in tents in the parking lot. I stayed home and gutted it out, and after a near death experience where I woke, unable to breathe until I flung myself halfway off the bed, head down, and that gesture unstuck my lungs. I had brain damage and had to relearn how to read, do basic math, understand simple recipes. I still struggle, but at least I am alive. I will never forgive Trump for how he behaved, and how he incited his cult to behave toward people like me who have been to hell and back. This news about him sending the test equipment to Putin shouldn’t have shocked and gut punched me like it did, since I know his depravity and lack of decency, but I’m afraid it did. Again, I know I’m lucky, because I still live. Damaged as I am, I feel it’s my obligation to those who were so unnecessarily lost and to myself to keep fighting this monster until he is defeated.
Thank you for speaking out, MaryOMary. As a nurse I can picture the hell you went through and the purgatory you are left in, all of which should never have had to be. As a post-COVID patient I felt the same gut punch when I learned that Trump had sent diagnostic equipment for COVID to Putin before most Americans had access to testing. In the 2 years since I got sick, I have struggled with recipes (even for pies I have been rolling out for 61 years), calculations, and memory gapping, along with debilitating fatigue and anxiety attacks. All of that (and your horrific COVID experience and sequellae) could have been prevented if Trump had allowed our public health system to do it's job, and if he had not poisoned the public with his lies - and if he had not put Putin's health above ours.
Although I am a stranger, I am deeply, deeply sorry from the bottom of my heart that you went through such a horrifying ordeal and have suffered such an aftermath. Thank you for sharing your pain and experience, for bringing this all home to us in stark terms. My family was lucky to not get sick, but that was because my Dad and I could work from home and we all became a unit of hermits. I suffer from multiple anxiety disorders and the relapse that I experienced was so severe that it actually lasted up until very recently. The pandemic was a mass trauma we have yet to fully grieve and process. I truly think much of the existential gloom people seem to be clinging onto despite otherwise positive economic and political trends is left over from it, I really do. For you the effects are obviously much more physically acute. I agree that we have now reached the stage where nothing the treasonous former guy says or does can truly be counted as a surprise, but the recoiling I received from reading the Woodward bombshell about the Covid tests still hit me hard, as you described. I take it as I good sign that I am not too jaded. We must never, ever become that jaded.
What they are doing now to the hurricanes is the same as what they did to Covid: bald-faced lies about a natural disaster designed to exploit it regardless of who it hurts or how many people get literally left for dead in the process. If that isn't evil, nothing is. Anyone who says "Oh, but the economy..." after Covid, Jan 6, the indictments, etc. (especially considering the economy is great) gets none of my respect. None. Some things can't be forgiven and some things are disqualifying, and if someone thinks what happened to millions of Americans in the hospitals in 2020 is somehow an equal outrage to a can of soup being 50 cents more, then I'm sorry but your morals need some rescuing and we have nothing more to talk about.
And besides that, they’re wrong about the economy. It’s been better under Ds for my entire lifetime, and I’m in my 60s. That’s just an excuse to cover up the racism and misogyny.
It's not the economy writ large they're complaining about. It's the greedflation in the grocery store and that's hard to fix. See Gerald Ford's "Whip Inflation Now" program in the 70s.
Glad you’re back, Will. I’ve missed your writing!
Will,
I am preparing paperwork to send to the incoming Harris/Walz administration. I am nominating you for a role in the federal government. I am thinking along the lines of an advisor or communications director. Tell me which you would prefer.
I've had to share that same mindset with family members, Will. And they STILL don't get it!
Some things cannot be forgiven. Your "equal outrage" juxtaposition is accurate.
Will, you have said it all!
Thank you for this very well-stated comment. My thoughts exactly.
You are so right will. If only you could talk to the millions of cult members and if they would listen…
I'm so sorry Mary. My daughter, an RN, has a similar story. She is still paying the price for it. You are not alone. And yes, he is a monster.
He is a traitor.
In Bible talk, Trump is possessed by a demon.
The demon is called Malignant Narcissist Sociopath.
I am so sorry that the first round hit you personally so hard Mary. I think you have every right to take this new layer of information about Trump’s reckless (malignant) disregard for the people he was meant to do everything possible to protect ..really he is morally guilty of manslaughter to my mind. This outrageous example is more of a sentencing enhancement.
It also illustrates a weakness in both authoritarian figureheads: they both proceed with such disdain for what they perceive as weakness in the public..be it illness or injury (thinking military personnel here) ..yet were both so very paranoid about their own susceptibility to the virus. Their duty to protect? …only themselves…
Agreed on the manslaughter part, KSC.
❤️🩹 gut punch, exactly Mary. Thank you for sharing your story, it gave me chills whilst making me mad too. May you live long and prosper 💖.
Thx for comment, Mary, and reminding us all about the impact of COVID and how it was handled. I was shocked that WaPo editorial board was silent today about Trump’s gift to Putin. Instead, it whined about Harris advocating Medicare coverage of home care in her comments on The View! Shame on them.
Shame indeed.
Thank you for sharing. It is stories like yours that need to - must - come to light. Just as the young mother in Georgia died because she could not get appropriate health care. You are a living example of what Trump did to this country. What would happen under a second Trump presdency is clear. And even worse if that is imaginable. I actually have the chills sitting here reading your story. Thank you again for your courage.
Hitting "like" seems inappropriate to you comment, Mary. Just know that I feel for you. I lost my brother to dementia which was accelerated by COVID isolation (he had aphasia and sunk into depression, he could neither understand what was happening nor ask questions) and finally COVID itself took him. I stopped to reply to you before reading further, and I am sure there will be others who share their stories as well. COVID itself was bad, but the attitudes have left a scar I will carry all my life.
My only older brother died fm covid 6 days before being able to get a shot.
I can't hate. tfg did it. Where can I go?
COVID has hit us all, Misele. I'm so sorry for your brother.
So sorry Mary. It is truly scary that so many plan to re-install a traitor as President.
Thank you for sharing your experience with COVID. The collective memory is short. We need to know these stories to remember the horror of the pandemic, especially in its early stages. I won’t address the blasphemous treason of the Republican candidate here, but may God bless you.
The collective memory is indeed short. I have several friends who had COVID before it was "announced" although the rumblings were there (they were all in a community choir that rehearsed in February and early March). My best friend and her Mom are both long covid victims (both in the choir) and at least 3 people in that choir have died from what were probably results of their early COVID infections.
Brava, MaryOMary!
I am so sorry. So sorry. I am glad you lived.
Thank you for sharing your story. We’re all voting blue with you.
What a terrible experience Mary. I'm glad you survived, and I hope you continue to recover.
Mary, thank you for sharing your awful story. I don't know where you are, but I have several friends who had "covid before covid" in early February. We thought one of them (elderly) was going to die, but she survived. Two of them suffer from long covid, and several more have died from likely complications from those early infections.
Your inability to be tested or receive appropriate treatment is unconscionable. I am so sorry, and very glad you're with us here to share your experiences.
😘
Heavy news today, so how about something nerdy and off-topic? This community means something to me so I have spent my whole day off typing up the following and am going to share something special with you guys: I have been working on developing a predictive model for Senate races! I cannot divulge the details, because obviously it is proprietary knowledge and there has not yet been any binding agreement as to whether/how it shall begin to be published publicly. Yet I have the OK to share some of my research, which is of course based off of publicly available data. The research goes back for the last half-century, and so far the model has been tested on the last 400 Senate races. The current version has a 98.3% accuracy rate over those last 400 races, and the accuracy increases as we get closer to the present day. Yes, you read that right. Very exciting, and since I keep finding myself smacking down people in internet comments over the Senate races, I'd better bring some receipts and explanations, for anyone who is interested.
Here is what I have discovered in my research (that I am able to share):
1. The margin of victory for the Presidential candidate is massively overrated as a predictor, and the margins ARE NOT LINEAR. So if President X wins one state by 2%, another by 5%, and a third by 15%, that does NOT mean that is the order in which those states are competitive for Senate races. This is the BIGGEST MISTAKE people are making, BY FAR. It is one component regarding which candidate is favored, but only one. My research shows it takes up until the margin is something like 20% for a race to start getting truly out of reach. Senate races are viewed as state affairs by many voters, similar to governor's races, and they will vote party loyalty for President but are more likely to give a vote to an opposition candidate with a unique "brand."
2. The much more predictive way to think about each race is as a comparison of CANDIDATE STRENGTH. If people already voted for you, they have already indicated they like you enough to do so again, and each term someone gets elected to makes them stronger. Each large margin they win by makes them stronger. Candidate strength has to do with PRIOR RECOGNITION, and NOTHING to do with popularity, wealth, charisma, or military or business cred. A popular governor is a stronger challenger than another statewide official like an AG, who is a stronger challenger than a Congressperson, who is stronger than someone with no elected experience. Conversely, a challenger with a prior loss or gap in service is a weaker one.
3. Races with INCUMBENTS do NOT perform the same as OPEN races, and there are many notable instances of long-term incumbents greatly overperforming polling. An open race in a Presidential year almost always matches the top of the ticket, but a race with a long-time incumbent will still usually default to the incumbent regardless of the Presidential margin (even a large one), unless a strong enough challenger is presented. There is also evidence that a strong Senate candidate can bolster a Presidential candidate, rather than just the other way around.
4. PARTY UNITY and organization is also absolutely key. A competitive primary hurt the nominee's chances, as does a notable third-party candidate share. A margin of victory for a governor can matter just as much as a Presidential margin.
5. The "WAVES" that usually happen in MIDTERMS against the President's party are another very overrated canard. They only really impact the field if the generic loss is quite large AND the effect only serves to bring incumbents of the party in power down a notch, rather than bolstering open seats or opposition-party incumbents.
6. SCANDAL can seriously tank your chances, but the level it has to rise to is very selective. There must be actual investigations, indictments, or lawsuits. Outrageous comments or behavior do not make the cut unless there is bipartisan condemnation and continuous attention. If a candidate wins over a scandal-ridden opponent, they might be weaker than the typical incumbent next time.
7. As an aside, SMALL STATES often do not work under the same dynamics as larger states. States like Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, or Maine are the size of 1-2 Congressional districts apiece. PERSONAL CONNECTION with Senators from those states is far more possible than in large states, and someone who maintains it can defy way, way, way more gravity if the Presidential vote is against them compared to someone running in California or Texas or Illinois.
8. The above factors stay constantly predictive REGARDLESS OF any changes in political MOOD of the country. To anyone saying, "well, everything has changed in the post-2016 era and people are more partisan and just don't vote like they used to"... the factors I have listed have actually gotten MORE predictive post 2016. ***The current version of this model has has called every - yes, I said EVERY, as in 100% - of the Senate races from 2014 onward, all 233 of them.***
AS YOU CAN SEE, these considerations do not involve polling, approval ratings, funding for ads, fame/personality, or ratings from other "crystal ball" experts. These things have no predictive value at all, at least not in comparison to these fundamentals. When those more traditionally publicized measurements conflicted with the model I am working on, the model has been correct in calling the "surprise" almost every time.
Please ask any questions! I can’t share what the model says for this year’s races or the exact numbers (again, proprietary knowledge, yet to be copyrighted), but anything else, bring it on! Love you all!
Do we have a chance? My 4 am brain is interested but can draw no conclusions from what you say. I have a strategy for donating. Every time I get a “begging” email from Ted Cruz (God knows why), I donate to Allred. Three so far. Just got one from chump, so donation to Dem coming up. Wish I had Elon’s money, but retirement bucks will have to do. Thanks for using your considerable intellect to combat stupid. They would win by a landslide, I fear.
JD, I totally get the wee hours of the night brain wut? syndrome….interesting offerings from Cal tho…looking forward to hearing more from him.
He can match wits with the demons. Desperately needed.
You affirm my beliefs for modeling good dialogue and I appreciate your presence here. I'm all for factoring in wildcards (like extreme weather events and mushroom clouds of disinformation) so I reread and am finding hope in #8. I keep hearing more about young men Trump voters who actually admire his successes, as well as laborers who think they'll feed their families better with Trump. Disinformation!?! (I believe so.) What's more or less predictive is not a capacity I have to think about well but I do have a universal and off-topic response to your nerdy and off-topic one; that is from relentlessly adaptable fungal networks, "Fungi don't let a good crisis go to waste." (Sorry I can't cite the source, possible from the Green Arts Lab Alliance.). Having read about fungal behavior when meeting glyphosate (Roundup), I have bouyant hope that as a democratic country, we can emerge stronger (ultimately).
Okay you've taken me down a rabbit hole with the fungi and gloyphosate reference...
But an interesting one. The “Fungi don’t let a good crisis go to waste.” Is definitely a keeper. Just like Covid and the “Spanish Flu, Fungi love our ignorance.
I can really feel this. It rings true in my gut because I have been aware viscerally that whatever the horserace type of political commentary is is just hype. Can you do this kind of analysis for other than politics? It would be so nice to have a tool for eliminating all of the hype. We really need to view things realistically.
A hype-free world. I’d love it. It takes so much energy. Sort of like emotionally-disturbed kids trying to function in school.
WOW, Will! Your 7 Factors influencing senate races seems vastly more useful than just labelling varieties of stupid! THANK you! Is there a connection or interaction between the 7 Factors and the levels of stupid which lead to the 7 Factors' accuracy?
Thanks for this, Will. I'm going to send it to a couple friends with a similar bent (and who are far more intelligent than I am) and see what they think.
Copyright law does not protect this information. You need to talk to an intellectual property lawyer.
So hope your conclusions are true in the Ohio U.S. Senate race! Go Sherrod Brown!
Will, many thanks for sharing. Looking forward to the release of your predictive model. A question: when I went to vote on the first day of early voting it was a brisk turnout of retirees (expected numbers) with several younger voters completing registration onsite, which is legal, in order to cast their vote (unexpected numbers). I am curious whether this increase in late registrations will have any impact on your model, or just amplify the predicted outcomes?
Will - For your consideration. I wonder if you have any predictions on the House races? Hopefully the appended letter I sent to the three WAPO authors of "The fight for the House and Senate: Where things stand: Will both chambers flip? Congress may once again have to work under the strain of divided government." peaks your interest.
https://wapo.st/483gXRQ
Greetings,
I found your article, The fight for the House and Senate: Where things stand, very informative, well researched and well written.
I wonder if you have considered doing an article that examines the majorities of the state delegations? If the Rs execute Steve Bannon’s Precinct Strategy, HGA: TRUMP 2024:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHuMjIhS6t0&t=2s
do the Democrats have any chance of flipping enough state delegations to prevail if the POTUS election gets kicked to the House? Or have the Rs gerrymandered their way to minority rule?
This has happened before, Heather Cox Richardson’s 20 September 2024 Letter from an American https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-20-2024?r=5k7fz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email gives this example: “But almost immediately, the Electoral College caused a different crisis. In 1824, electors split their votes among four candidates—Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford—and none won a majority in the Electoral College. Although Jackson won the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, when the election went to the House, the state delegations chose Adams, the son of former president John Adams.”
Thanks for your excellent reporting.
I keep posting on MT Sheehy site Hcr letters & other info about how can a someone running on military service as a Navy seal support the Con? Emphasis on character & leadership.
Wow! This is awesome research Will! Thanks for sharing. Can you share just a little for this election , like if you feel good about the Democrats in the Senate?
It is no surprise that the MAGA gang are openly traitors to the Constitution and the country. What is shocking is that the Republican faithful are so supportive.
Malignant narcissism. Those who would be kings exude it, and use it to divide and conquer.
They are traitors too, save two
This has been existential for the GOP, now turned MAGA, and the amazing thing seems just how many Americans are going for it, and given electoral biases built into the system.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
There should not be any doubt that MAGA cultists offer the criminal Trump unwavering support. While Putin has focused his military efforts on Ukraine, he has directed Russian intelligence efforts toward the creation of disinformation and propaganda, and its distribution through an array of American sources. Why commit an expensive missile or start a proxy or direct war with the United States when you can simply create a story about pedophilia at a pizza parlor and have MAGA cultists so hopelessly immersed that they follow such a story with violence.
The creation of disinformation and propaganda has rapidly evolved since the 2016 election cycle. Worse, the ability to distribute lies has exploded since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and turned it into a cesspool and megaphone to amplify his own ignorance and uninformed hatred.
I still do understand the generational despair that is felt by working families across the United States. Yes, the stock market is at record levels. Yes, the attributes in which we assess economic strength are surprisingly good. Yet the messaging must account for the multiple generations of wealth concentration which has caused key prices for housing, healthcare, transportation, groceries, and education to rise faster than salaries. This was all GOP/Heritage strategy and has led to today -a clearly unfit criminal in a close race for the Presidency, supported by the obscenely wealthy like Elon Musk, backed by what was once a political party transformed into an aiding and abetting criminal organization, and global adversaries like Putin.
One of our major political parties no longer believes in government of, for, and by the people and has been captured by a wannabe dictator who gets his support from billionaires and theocrats.
Fraid you've pointed out a lot of what's going on ... esp the obscene influence made possible by obscene wealth.
Trump’s support should crumble after these revelations, but his loyalists are blind to reality! What he did with those Covid tests is an act of treason!
It’s partly that they will never see these revelations - unless they are covered in detail on Fox News, etc. Which they will not be. Despite all the worry about the NYT not holding Kamala to the same standard as Donald, and giving him a pass on his wild and racist rants, I doubt many of the undecideds will be reading political coverage in the NYT.
I agree. The people who rely on Fox News miss out on many important stories that Fox simply ignores.
As I said already, too many citizens (voters) take little personal responsibility to be informed on any issues. So much for the basis for democracy to work!!!!
maybe so, but most Americans will treat this as a blip. I doubt if it's a vote changer except for finely tuned voters still trying to make up their minds.
If not misinformed, they are uninformed! There goes our educated public down the drain!
I’m in shock. No exaggeration. But since I heard the first word about Woodward’s book, I just want to know, when did he have this information? And why didn’t he speak up immediately?
Is the lure of a best seller so much that he basically sat on this critical story for… how long? While he worked on his book? What the hell?!
I read a good piece yesterday on this issue…journalist covering Trump who sit on nuggets in anticipation of if a book deal. Maggie Haberman of the NYT was another example. I
Exhibit 1: Maggie Haberman. Had rare access to the Trump presidency and plenty of information about how damaging Donald Trump was, and she held on to that information for months so that she could cash in on her best seller.
I wish there was a button for GRRRR!
That’s the same refrain that I’ve been singing about most of his trump centered books. He knows stuff but waits to put it in a damn book! He had a great reputation back when but now he’s just a money hound in my book.
I remember news from MSNBC on Cavanaugh's appointment, it seemed there was a lot of suspicion or more that his sexual misconduct was not adequately investigated thanks to White House interference. What gobsmacked me was his televised tirade against the radical "left", it was oh so clear where his biases lay and still do.
I remember walking into class in community college and the teacher and a few girls were listening, completely agape, at Brat Cavanaugh sobbing like a little b!tch at his appointment hearing about how his only crime was liking beer and the liberals were destroying his life. A woman would never have been able to get away with that behavior without being excoriated. That level of "too emotional" would be disqualifying. Hell, if any of us guys in college had ever behaved that way in any context we would have never lived it down. I just sat and couldn't believe I was actually hearing this embarrassment in real time. The whole thing laid every bit of the privilege of the few utterly bare. I remember thinking that he could have just addressed it calmly, and the fact he couldn't do so proved he had nowhere near the temperament to be a judge of anything, whether he did what he was accused of or not.
Then I got on the bus later and put in my earbuds and watched Blasey Ford's testimony. I literally cried on the bus. I think people thought I was getting bad news from a loved one. I'm a staunch sanctity-of-the-system innocent-until-proven yadda yadda kind of person, but c'mon man. That lady was so terrified yet so poised. She didn't want to be there. She had everything to lose. He obviously did it. And those absolute assholes listened to her in person and then voted to put that guy in charge of our rights for the next couple decades. They could have chosen someone else. Anyone else. Nope! Disgraceful. I'm never forgiving it and none of us should. Those girls from my class certainly won't, I can tell you that.
Thanks for this vignette, Will. I was in a drive-through oil change place watching the testimony on my phone. I was freaking gobsmacked.
Later, as Ketanji Brown Jackson was in her confirmation hearings, and held herself to the utmost levels of emotional calm, I thought back to Kavanaugh and how his sniveling, crying self would have been crucified if he'd been female, or gods forbid, a Black female.
Her authenticity resounded. I was gobsmacked by his elevation.
Same here, Gail. What woman would put herself through that ordeal if it wasn’t true! Can anyone name one??!
Isn't that usually the go to for SOME men first off? Accusations of lying.
I remember at the time reporting of the knowledge that there were many un-investigated reports about his actions. I smelled a rat then, and it stinks even more now.
A friend of mine , who is vehemently anti-Trump, recently asked me, “What about Kamala’s father, wasn’t he a Communist?”
This conjures up the analogy using a choice of airline meals: the chicken or the shit with crushed glass.
The points made in tonight’s letter should be damning enough to bring him down. But here we are, less than four weeks from Election Day, and seemingly rational people are asking, “How’s the chicken cooked?”
Disinformation is like lead poisoning, and it’s killing our democracy.
So does Trump want us to torch the constitutional and policy making machinery? Makes me sad. Makes me sick.
This could be the Reason DJT is not reaching out to New Voters... He just needs to get close enough to Steal The Election... Then his Minions will implement Project 2025... That could be why DJT is nor cooperating with the Transition Teams... DJT doesn't Cooperate, DJT Dictates... Then as DJT said, We will not have to Vote again.... At that point, the American Democracy that We have known, will be Dead...
To be frank, this sort of thinking is really unhelpful in both tone and content. First, thinking this way just isn't good for anyone's personal health, and I like you, Apache! Don't do this to yourself! Second, it gives these Kremlin-wannabe morons a power they don't actually possess. This is still the m@therf#ck!ng USA. WE decide who is in charge of us. We have kicked these psychos out over and over again the last few years, and we are damn ready to do it again in a few weeks. They want you to think that they have something up their sleeve, but they don't. They couldn't get the whole coup thing done when Mango Mussolini was actually in the White House, so how would they get it done now, exactly? We vote like we did before, they lose, period. And this time we also get to have a kickass Lady Prez while they get to go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Yeah, Cal, it pisses me off and makes me want to put on my work boots and kick some traitorous butt—OK, I might not be able to kick that high anymore, but I could sure get ‘em in the shins! Reading HCR’s missive tonight, my first impression was that old saw that TFFFG won’t bend over backward for the American people, but he will bend over forward for Putin. Lousy joke for a toady of a “creature”, cuz he’s no “man” the way I see it.
I remember this one time when I was getting picked on a bit and my Dad was trying to teach me some attitude, he told me that when he was in school (wayyyy back) a popular thing for some of the kids to yell to get a rise out of others was "your mother wears combat boots!" He and his friends decided that the appropriate response was "That's so she can kick your wimpy father's BUTT!"
I remember it because I thought it was hilarious, so I told my Mom, who was appalled at him ("JAMES!") for "setting an example for such behavior," which made it even MORE hilarious to me, because it was so quaint to begin with. She suggested I just respond to everything with "So?" which admittedly was elegant and effective but kinda took the fun outta it.
Anyway, your image brought that memory back, so thanks for that.
Exactly right. We give them too much power.
That is the worry, Apache.... vote blue
That’s his plan man
This is part of a massive right wing effort to "re-set" government. I'd almost say, US is in the middle of a smouldering, so far non-shooting "civil war". Trump wins, batten down the hatches for what's to come. Vote blue, Ned, of course you already know that!
You know, Frank, I am part of several different majorities:
> the silent majority;
> the exhausted majority;
> the loyal majority;
> the rule-of-law majority; and,
> several others I can not think of.
How about the exasperated majority?
Frank, I am at the point with this election that I used to find myself when studying for an exam I dreaded in school. I would study away until I got to the point where I said to me that I did not care what grade I got.
Just get the damnable thing done, already!
Then I knew I was prepared, good or ill, for that test.
These days, I feel much the same way about this election. I believe President Biden would have won. I believe Vice President Harris will win by more.
As for a civil war?
Like those exams, I am ready.
Yes, Ned. I think he does. It makes me sad and frightened at the same time.
I know. Paying more attention to Putin than the peaceful transfer of power really galls me.
To put it mildly.
It's a bit like watching the approach of the meteorite.
I don't agree with thinking of it in this manner, considering 1) the threat is not a force of nature from space but a very earthly predicament and 2) we are IN NO WAY powerless to stop it, we have been stopping it pretty well, and acting powerless to affect the outcome is never the appropriate response to anything.
Now you're talking my language.
Darn tootin'!
I'd really like to see Trump crater.
People are exiting his rallies, he’s finding fewer crowds than the VP, and all he has is the old hate and division song and dance. Vance’s open misogyny is alienating women voters, and I am embarrassed he is one of my senators, I did NOT vote for him.
America works by what my Mom and I like to call The Project Runway Rule (named after the fashion competition show). The rule is thus: It is better to be a mess than to be boring. When it came to the bottom two in most Project Runway episodes, it was usually between one outfit that was a monstrosity resembling a bunch of trash bags having intercourse with a bowl of mac-n-cheese, versus another that looked normal but (*gasp*!) boring and "frumpy." Frumpy was usually deemed the greater sin and eliminated, while monstrosity lived to see another day.
My point is that Cheeto is most likely going to go down again, not because America is properly horrified by his monstrousness, but because he has been a loud monstrosity for so long now that he's just... boring. It's painfully ironic, but are you gonna tell me I'm wrong? America HATES boring, and you can only top yourself with crazy lies and treason before people EXPECT crazy lies and treason, and what's the fun in that? Only so much shock factor before the shock wears off. Oh, look, more treason? YAWN.
This reality show has "jumped the shark." Kamala wants us to "turn the page," but what everyone is ready to do is change the channel.
Been waiting for the “jump the shark” movement to stick. Basically, I thought there weren’t any sharks left to jump.
JL, maybe he and Elon can take a trip to Mars….they could rule the whole planet!
"Take your damn starship with ya aaaaaaaand STAY OUT, ya hear!"
Don'cha come back no more, no more, no more, no more.
On a 50 year mission to boldly go to the Universe, and Beyond! (Be sure to write).
Good one! I watched Musk and must confess to an uncharitable thought. He should star in a biopic.: "Revenge of the Nerds: the Final Retribution". 😉
EDIT: I steal your idea somewhere below. Thanks!
I'm not sure how much to define Musk as nerd, or just a word the rhymes with it. Musk seems bright, but his main "ability" is to spend virtually unlimited cash for whatever he wants. What percentage of the population might accomplish even more, and more admirably with that kind of money available and more integrity? Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be Musky.
lol, deeply! Then turn it into a tourist site into which folk can pitch rocks
A deep, wide crater.
You want to hope the Kamala Collision will outweigh the Maga Mash.
I think a K alliteration is clean and positive. That M alliteration is shapeless and smothering.
A dance-off, Frank, and Kamala has all the right groovy moves! Ever see TFFFG “dance”? Awkward!
lol to both of you, i guess my pun on 'monster mash' dates me quite a bit eh!
Yeah, Frank, we “caught on in a flash”!
It's a Graveyard smash.
It's the "Chicken Dance", right?
Kamala has a lot more gravitas.
Remember that we've been expecting the election tampering, and the legal folks have been working on this for months. Bless Mark Elias and all who do this work.
And Charles Koch can rot in his very own hell
Our lives, fortunes and sacred honor to coronate Trump? Who needs the devil?
Methinks it would provoke sharp words from the ghost of Lincoln.
Yes
1:40am Pacific Time I’m overwhelmed w info I have known was coming… Heritage is real. Russia & folks are real & effectively promoting the downfall of our democracy, our “experiment” in enlightened government. Disinformation is working just as projected in the 80’s in college courses at SSU & SFSU. The nightmare is Real. I wish I could say thank you to Heather Cox Richardson, my first Substack writer, my first living historian who I know has been telling the truth forever.
A quote plucked from today’s letter:
“ On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”‘
Now there’s a surefire way to tank the US economy. SS is a contract between income earners and the government. If you pay into the system for xx years, when you retire you get it back in a life supporting income stream.
Imagine, for a moment, some millions of elderly Americans with their EARNED SS income eliminated, forced to sell any assets they have to finance their standard of living. Imagine the housing market thrown into disarray as hundreds of thousands of homes are suddenly available for sale. Imagine the pain up and down the scale of younger homeowners who are now underwater on their home mortgages due to the crash in market values created by the surfeit of homes for sale.
Crash the housing market and the economy will crash. It’s not rocket science.
Dems should flood the airways with that one paragraph. Even MAGAts love their SS and Med
In the words of Donald Trump "You knew I was a snake when you took me in."
On November 5, Americans have the opportunity, if not obligation, to put that traitor in prison.
Anyway...
Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Suffice it to point out Donald Trump, during the last six months of his one term, executed THIRTEEN Federal prisoners, FIVE of those AFTER HE LOST the 2020 Election. This is a pattern. He took out full page ads to call for the executions of five boys who were falsely accused and convicted, and later exonerated - he has NEVER APOLOGIZED. He has consistently and repeated called for violence, particularly during his "rallies," and recently includes his plans to have law enforcement take action against civilians in what equates to "The Purge" or a modern-day "Kristallnacht." He indicated his desire to have the military fire upon protestors and anyone attempting to enter the country at the Southern Border. For years, he has expressed his plans to set up military tribunals, arrest and execute his perceived enemies, including elected officials, journalists, and judicial officers holding him to account for his actions. Now additional confirmation is in evidence of his ingratiating conduct to Putin while withdrawing support for allies such and NATO countries and nations based on democratic governance, such as Ukraine. In his words, he'd allow Putin to "do whatever the hell he wants."
It's time Trump is held accountable for his actions, through the rule of law, and the consequences determined by "a jury of his peers." He's not being persecuted, he's being prosecuted. His desperation makes him more dangerous, and without guardrails or any "bottom" to his depravity, lies and criminality.
Professor Richardson, thank you again for making sense of another tumultuous news cycle from just a single day! It's hard to know where to begin, but your top-line summary of Beth Reinhard's article about how the FBI's tips were kept under wraps to facilitate the so-called vetting process of Bret Kavanaugh caught my attention. Given these damning facts, is there a process to impeach a sitting Supreme Court Justice? If so, what is it? Perhaps we can start with Bret.
Yah, I wish that they had gone father in their promised follow-up and actually investigated the underlying accounts and not just the turn-a-blind-eye non-investigation. Collins should be called to account on her assertion that it was a legit investigation and her affirmative vote.
KSC, watching Collins actions over the past number of years I was struck how gullible she seemed.
You are being generous to her. I used to work in the same building as her main Maine offices. I voted in her district. She is a strategist and, like Romney now, and has been trying to maintain a sheen of a moderate in the mold of Margaret Chase Smith while keeping the funds flowing from the RNC. I highly doubt she would have had the courage to risk it all and stand up to McCarthy. I think the facade of that Kavanaugh further FBI investigation was raised principally to give her and the others a cover.
Ah, so it was an act after all!
Yes… 100 percent. She just presents herself differently than Trump does. But she’s a con artist just like he is.
A nation cannot survive treason
from within..
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
There is a recent Lincoln Project video titled "Brutus." It raises interesting possibilities about the intent of many power-minded Republicans, and especially Vance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2TZx5WbOj4
Thanks for the heads up
I've been captive as much as anyone to the gloom Russia, Iran, and China have been sowing in the U.S.
Heather puts together here one story, really, on the orange felon 1) stroking his favorite murderous dictator, Putin, 2) protecting his like-himself-abuser of women Kavanaugh, and also-like-himself 3) feeding of contempt for U.S. institutions, Byrne.
Imagine a totally opposite single story. So let me remind Heather's good followers that we indeed have that, too -- and need it, need to celebrate it: Tom Hanks' "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece," a novel.
It's a fiction, but gloriously tells a fuller truth about the older America that the billionaires and dictators are now so trying to destroy.
It's a film crew, in a very small town in northern California. It is an expensive, major film they are dedicated to filming. But Tom Hanks' great contribution here is two-fold. One, it reminds us of the superb complexity Americans have mastered indeed to make many, many great films. Two, it shows us in rich detail the variety of characters in all sorts of roles -- persons technical, transport, make-up, stunts, sets, walk-ons, scheduling, acting, and provisioning of food that mesh all smoothly.
This is a litany to a tapestry of the American working classes. Races. Ethnicities. Ages. And especially the female gender in gloriously many capabilities. So many richly individual.
Daily we can see the criminality of those fully concerted to kill America, to stoop to new lows of contempt, deceit, lies, and vulgarity. But please, let's remember, things such as this great novel, "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece."
Art impacting our reality. I’ll buy that.
Thanks for the info, Phil. I'll look it up