The Carpentariat

"Deep reading … has become dangerous to literature"

While taking a recuperative break from fake national emergencies, I have just read, in the conservative website Quillette, a few non-alternative facts about the dreadful artlessness of contemporary literary theory, written by philosophy-major Gustav Jönsson (University of Glasgow). Don't run, don't panic, this is no academic treatise on the ghastly currents of today's literary criticism — it's more of an oft-pronounced obituary for a once-readable, thoughtful profession. The article, titled "High Theory and Low Seriousness," is instead a painfully entertaining exploration of just what in God's name has happened to the discipline, once a legitimate form of literature itself (as the distinguished critic Northrop Frye convincingly argued).

Over the past several decades, there has metastasized throughout the humanities and social sciences the grim development of what one might call excessive professionalism, otherwise known to the general reader as inscrutability. To differentiate itself from unembellished lucidity, which any layman can comprehend, literary criticism has become perhaps the worst offender of what Jönsson rightly labels "pseudo-philosophical gibberish." Placed in the hands of today's ostentatious critics, Wilders's Little House on the Prairie can now be (and likely has been) a dazzling maze of feminist, Marxist, new historicist, post-structural or deconstructive analysis. To read a simple story of 19th-century family remembrance would be a gross misreading of such simplicity, critics would argue, if, that is, one could possibly understand what the modern critic is actually arguing. Lucidity is the intellectual enemy of excessive professionalism.

Jönsson treats us, as just one example among hundreds of similar incomprehensibility, to this entry, randomly chosen, in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: "The operational validity of semiotic analysis, and in particular of the Greimassian semiotic rectangle, derives, as was suggested there, not from its adequacy to nature or being, nor even from its capacity to map all forms of thinking or language, but rather from its vocation specifically to model ideological closure and to articulate the workings of binary oppositions, here the privileged form of what we have called the antinomy." About which, philosophy student Jönsson notes: "Hegel hardly wrote anything more muddled." Indeed, Hegel was a stellar model of clarity when compared to the language molester who scribbled that indecipherable blather.

Jönsson highlights the criticism of fashionable critics by University of Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum ("herself a lucid writer," he notes) who broadsided the "celebrated" gender theorist Judith Butler "by saying that her elliptical and obscure writing 'creates an aura of importance' but also 'bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions." Such is the cerebral — ? — trick of excessive professionalism in literary theory. Take any well-written, plainly conceived, old-school interpretation of a written work of art and thereupon gussy it up through a labyrinth of baroque unintelligibility.

I differ with Jönsson on one minor point. He correctly observes that "Surely an author with something insightful to say would take care to make herself comprehensible. Why convey a thought at all if it need not be understood?" No argument there. He goes on to write that "At best, [literary theory] is hypothesis without predictive value. There may be some descriptive capacity in literary 'theories,' but they do not predict anything about prose or poetry." Again, no argument. Yet, in my book, Jönsson then commits the gravest of all critical transgressions — he discounts the innovative brilliance of Northrop Frye's most illustrative student and colleague. "What future literary developments can be anticipated by reference to Harold Bloom’s theory of 'the anxiety of influence'?" Bloom's groundbreaking masterpiece, by the same title, intentionally looks backward, not forward, as he meticulously and readably delineates the sometimes unwitting influence of classic poets, playwrights and dramatists on their successors. That may not seem groundbreaking today, but only because Bloom's "theory" is now as obvious as the invention of the wheel.

Jönsson closes, as I shall, with the nearly unequaled magnificence of Saul Bellow's insight, who, as he did in his novels, addressed modern literary criticism with earthy perceptivity. In Bellow's original 1959 NY Times article (not quoted by Jönsson), he wrote.:

"Deep reading has gone very far. It has become dangerous to literature."

Party over country - and the U.S. Constitution

For years, partisan opinion has largely dominated the allegation that the GOP has privileged its parochial interests over the country's welfare. As if there ever existed any real question as to the veracity of the opposition's contention, its long-standing indictment is no longer grounded in mere opinion or garden-variety partisan adversity. That the GOP's narrow self-indulgence lies in sharp contradistinction to the nation's much greater interests is now a demonstrably indisputable fact of our two-party system. 

The NY Times:

Some top Republicans, led by Mr. McConnell, pivoted quickly to say they supported the president’s [national emergency] action because it was the only option left to him after Congress failed to meet his demands for wall funding….

Trump exerts a powerful hold on his party, and lawmakers are cowed by the belief that opposing him will end in their political destruction….

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida spoke for many House Republicans in praising the president’s action. "I’m proud of our president for boldly declaring he will not allow politics to stand in the way of the United States’ national security interests."

"Proud" Mr. Gaetz undoubtedly is, but he erred in his usage of "politics." Rather, the president has lawlessly declared he will not allow the United States Constitution to stand in his way of confronting a fabricated national emergency. On this, Article I is unambiguous: Congress, exclusively, authorizes and appropriates funding for federal initiatives. All chief executives have at times discovered our founding document's critical separation of powers and institutional checks and balances to be, let's say, inconvenient in their occasional pursuit of an imperial presidency. None, however, has so brazenly, illegally, unconstitutionally defied these paramount hallmarks of American governance.

Trump's declaration was also in no way "bold." It was a cowardly, premeditated, impeachable abuse of power, not to mention traitorous — all in pursuit of a presidential monarchy, merely to placate his party's increasingly precarious base. And his party's congressional allies are shamelessly complicit.

For a number of days now I've been out of physical commission, resulting as well in what I feared was mental unfitness for anything approaching coherent writing. So I spared you, although again, my apologies for being AWOL, however unavoidable. Still, I kid you not, I have found that my grim, somatic disabilities were personally preferable to finally reading the news.

The nearly always bughouse Ann Coulter has nevertheless said quite soberly that "The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot." Well, idiot presidents we have suffered before. But never an incontrovertible traitor — and with his party mostly behind him. 

Apologies for my absence. It appears that the recent medication I've been on for my gastroenterological condition has only exacerbated it. In the last few days, my head has spent more time in my bedside wastebasket than gazing at my laptop. Mine has been a miraculous education. I've learned I can actually vomit more fluids than my body possesses. Anyway, though manly man that I am — stoic, rugged, moronically independent — I finally acceded to the wishes of two caring women in my life, and called the doctor. I await more medical wisdom.

Did somebody say "wall"?

The always brilliant Ann Telnaes.

A colorful mess in the making

The Blue Wave helped to wash ashore the Green New Deal, which is far pinker than the American electorate will tolerate.

Democrats' progressive base loves it, and since that base is (presumably) essential to any candidate hoping to win the party's presidential nomination, many of the hopefuls — Harris, Warren, Booker, Gillibrand, and, of course, Sanders — have opportunistically embraced it. And the GND is as practical as was Huey Long's Share Our Wealth plan.

As Jon Chait understates it: "The Green New Deal is a document that defines the party’s entire domestic agenda. Turning that over to a member of Congress who’s been in elected office for a few weeks and whose views are a radical outlier within the party was a bad idea."

Programatically, the GND is a tangled mess. The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell notes that it glories in "emphasizing empty slogans instead of evidence-based policy, rejecting experts in favor of cranks [Chait: 'very few environmental experts consider the targets laid out in the plan to be remotely attainable'], handwaving away questions about implementation and promising that an expensive policy will magically 'pay for itself' through economic growth."

Politically, the GND is even worse. The "manifesto … promises the free lunch that we’ve come to expect of policies from the other side of the aisle," continues Rampell. Trump proposed a surefire national security plan to be paid for by a foreign government, congressional Republicans proposed all the benefits of Obamacare with none of its costs, and modern conservatism in general is but a collection of extravagant, toll-free fantasies on stilts.

The GOP has proposed such intellectual atrocities only to satisfy its radical, or at best, vastly unrealistic, base. These "ideas" sprang not from serious think tanks, but often from the party's backbencher crackpots who wouldn't know serious policy from the phone book. Nor would they care. Just getting elected and then staying in office by pandering to the electorate's lowest common denominators and most simplistically minded was their peculiar call to, uh, national service.

Now, as I have vaguely fretted before, so frets Rampell more pointedly:

"Ocasio-Cortez is a freshman representative, not a presidential candidate. She doesn’t hold a senior Democratic leadership position. So who cares about her fuzzy math...? That’d be a reasonable response, if so many of the actual 2020 Democratic contenders hadn’t already endorsed her Green New Deal — presumably because, as with Medicare-for-all, the slogan sounds nice, and they’re terrified of crossing their base. Plus, they may have concluded that shallow thinking will be rewarded."

That way — the contemporary Republican way — lies doom. A vastly unrealistic "conservative" party calls not for a counterbalancing, unrealistic progressive party. It calls instead for thoughtfulness, prudence, and what old-school George H.W. Bush labeled "the vision thing." The real thing.

Another round of jackass-in-the-box

A wall by any other name would still reek, though by now it's a less-than-Shakespearean jumble of household words: "a steel bollard-style physical barrier." That, in part, the president now has, yet the Times reports that his "conservative allies on Monday night were already denouncing the deal" to avert another government shutdown. Sean Hannity, for instance, called it "a garbage compromise."

Why so cranky, Sean? Your president has "$1.375 billion for fencing and other physical barriers at the Mexican border," which by my calculation is $1.375 billion more than he had yesterday. Is a fence or other physical barrier a wall? That, I suppose, depends on the semanticist one hires. The proposed congressional agreement permits "55 miles of new bollard fencing," which is pictured on the right and defined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as "A … wall [that] provides significant impedance and denial capability. These are hollow steel beams that are filled with concrete and rebar." That may be garbage to Mr. Hannity; to me it's a wall.

Which would reek less if Speaker Pelosi had not vowed in early January: "We’re not doing a wall. Does anybody have any doubt about that? We are not doing a wall. So that’s that." Pelosi's vow was somewhat refined Monday by Democratic Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a member of the compromise-seeking conference committee: "We started at zero on the wall, and we compromised a lot after that."

Still, compromises do require the eating of one's words, and in this instance, the heretical allowance for an additional billion-dollar wall was vastly subordinated by a higher purpose. "You have ICE agents picking up mothers and fathers and children in their own neighborhoods," added Roybal-Allard. "That’s why the beds issue [capping the number of detainees] is so much more important than the wall."

Besides, as Trump said at his El Paso rally last night, "We’re building the wall anyway." Although he'll likely be stopped, or at a minimum, interminably delayed, in federal court, he will shift money around in pursuit of The Great & Useless Eyesore. The Washington Post's Robert Costa tweeted late yesterday that the White House is relying on statute 10 U.S. Code § 284 - "Support for counterdrug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime" — which permits the defense secretary, in cooperation with other departments, to construct "roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States." I'm no lawyer, but that singular statute might well unsurpassably conflict with laws banning military intervention into domestic peacekeeping.

As for the sheer politics of the congressional compromise — assuming it passes both chambers — let us hope that Sean Hannity's opinion prevails among the saddened Trumpeteers: It's garbage. And Hannity is not alone. There is, for one, Mark Krikorian, head of the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies, who tweeted that "Reduction in ICE detention capacity more than cancels out any benefit from that small amount of extra fencing."

Through characteristic arrogance and ignorance and abundant incompetence, Trump has so boxed himself in, he'll possess little to no choice in agreeing to the compromise. That, anyway, is the consensus. The far right's Hannitys and Coulters will be livid — and there will go another few points from Trump's base of support.

Yes, I like this deal.

The 2016 presidential contest was sick, but Trump is already making 2020 far sicker

I must say Elizabeth Warren is looking good right out of the gate. But her battle against Trump, the shallowest president ever, is nearly unremarkable in comparison to the deeply repugnant strains of sexism she faces in American politics.

"The women who run are still going to be, I think, more scrutinized about their appearance," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "I would love to think that they won’t get the kind of comments that Hillary Clinton got about, 'Why is she yelling at me? Why doesn’t she smile more?' I’d love to think that that’s all gone now, but I don’t believe that to be true."

"For many years," continues the Times, "female candidates tried to adopt the characteristics voters wanted to see — to act, stereotypically speaking, like men." The characteristics referenced are "strength, toughness and valor." Trump is an exceptionally androgynous, thin-skinned, weak and quivering cypher, so let's not include him; hence otherwise can you think of any male pol alive today who is stronger, tougher or more courageous than Nancy Pelosi?

What's more, Trump seems to have found some humor in the Trail of Tears slaughter, which historians say decimated roughly one-fourth of the entire Cherokee nation. "See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!" he tweeted Saturday. "And in case anyone didn't get the joke," notes CNN Politics, "his son Don Jr. shared it and added 'Savage!!! I love my President.'"

Male pathology in black and white. This is what female pols feel compelled to imitate? Unfortunately, that's a rhetorical question.

In a political game, self-deception can't change the score

How does Team Trump hoodwink its base into believing political momentum is with them — that America is just wild about Trumpism, an alternative fact opposed to that of the "fake news"? It helps to have a corrupt beancounter whose fantasies and fallacies can then be disseminated throughout the equally corrupt right-wing mendacity machine.

https://t.co/pmZZ9w358J

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) February 11, 2019

Rasmussen's finding is no "outlier." It' a lie. It (52 percent) is a full 10 points higher than the average from an array of other polls, some showing Trump's approval rating as low as 38. Granted, the latter is still 38 points above what a universally sane electorate would generate, but whoever said democratic bodies are sane?  

Quite aside from the unethical disgrace of just making stuff up, the morally neutral, counterproductive aspect of the right's relentless myth-making is that in time its manufactured delusions run, or will run, headlong into the concussive ferocity of reality, called Election Day. What will its base think of a party incapable of converting almost unbridled national enthusiasm for Trumpism — as self-advertised — into an electoral victory? And why, just three months ago, did widely popular Trumpism take such a beating at the polls?

When a party is down, there are three fundamental steps to regain its footing. First, admit you're down. Until then, the other steps are useless.           

Beware of the truth

The Hill:

"A major Jewish advocacy organization on Sunday called on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to apologize for suggesting that a pro-Israel lobbying group [AIPAC] was buying off lawmakers, calling her tweet 'stunningly anti-Semitic.'"

I've no idea if Rep. Omar is "stunningly anti-Semitic." When I was working in political finance, however, one truth loomed larger in that endeavor than others: Democratic pols need AIPAC's support (or at least indifference), less for the cash than political cover.

Over the years, AIPAC has managed to conflate opposition to the Israeli government's unconscionable Palestinian policies with no less than flagrant anti-Semitism. Therein lies a falsehood as disingenuous as Trump's "witch hunt," but it has settled into the status of an unshakable political bugbear, giddily promoted by the "Christian" right. Few Dems have dared to expose its insidiousness. President Obama probably did more for Israel's security than any of his predecessors, yet his vocal opposition to Israel's international crime of constructing sprawling West Bank settlements was rewarded with Republican howls of injustice, presumably anti-Jewish at its heart.

And so with Rep. Omar. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy absurdly "said the Democratic congresswomen’s comments were 'more so' reprehensible than the [white supremacist] comments made by embattled Rep. Steve King earlier this year." Not to be outdone in trashy bombast, GOP Congressman Doug Collins (Ga.) tweeted: "Wow. A sitting U.S. Congresswoman actually just suggested AIPAC is paying Members of Congress to support Israel.... This level of anti-Semitism coming from the left is truly stunning and must be denounced."

The only stunning element of that tweet is its non sequitur. But without illogic, what's left of Republican demagoguery — which is to say, Republicanism?

***

Update: On this issue, regrettably, it's not just Republicans:

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants on Monday sharply condemned Rep. Ilhan Omar for using anti-Semitic remarks and called on her to immediately apologize in an extraordinary rebuke of a colleague."

And so the myth of conflation goes on.

Now we know

The NY Times:

Comments by one of Mr. Mueller’s lead prosecutors, disclosed in a transcript of a closed-door hearing, suggest that the special counsel continues to pursue at least one theory: that starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump’s candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

The theory was offered almost as an aside by the prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, during a discussion of contacts between Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and a longtime Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom investigators have linked to Russian intelligence….

Pressed by the judge at Monday’s hearing to say why Mr. Manafort’s alleged lies mattered [?], Mr. Weissmann gave a broad hint about the thrust of the investigation.

"This goes to the larger view of what we think is going on, and what we think is the motive here," Mr. Weissmann said. "This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating."

I've just got to get this off my chest

In his memoir, Hitch-22, the British iconoclast observes that good journalism is less a learned profession than a frame of mind. I quite agree. With no journalistic training, Winston Churchill, for instance, dispatched useful, readable thrills from the Boer War, leading a biographer to note that "his analysis was insightful and brilliant, and his prose was incredibly beautiful. I read a lot of coverage of the Boer War and his was head-and-shoulders above that of everyone else."

This is scant evidence, I grant you, in support of Hitch's point (and mine); nevertheless let the record show that outstanding reporting can emerge from other than Columbia School of Journalism graduates. Good journalism chiefly requires an eye for the poignant — not the trivial; a grasp of history; an exploring mind; emotions in check — but not to excess; and the most (seemingly) forgotten of all skills — good grammar. Without the latter, one will have a devil of a time adequately displaying one's talents.

Which leads me not to a pet peeve, but a huge gripe. Is passing so little as a middle-school grammar test no longer a requirement for a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism?

As just one recent example of inexcusable incompetence in basic English, I offer this passage from Mediaite.com — "a trusted source on the intersection of politics and media across the political spectrum" — which saw 12 million unique visitors in January 2017. Its reporting centered on Howard Schultz's peculiar objection to the word "billionaires," preferring "people of means" instead. His sensitivity was broadcast on CNBC, which provoked Mediaite to report:

While the clip has gone viral in the manner that ostensibly aims to embarrass billionaire Schultz for protecting he and his fellow super wealthy peers….

I'd take a fingernail screeching across a blackboard to that … what, what is it? It's not English. "Protecting he and and his" fellow peers? After the broadcast, did him take a cab, or did a limousine take he to the hotel?

How is one supposed to read a crippled passage such as Mediaite's without resorting to strong drink?

Come on, people. This is pretty basic stuff — or it should be, especially for journalists and editors.

The Dems are finally getting the enemy: themselves

Pogo lived, fittingly, in a swamp, and he was no fool. "We have met the enemy, and he is us," said the philosophical possum, realistically rephrasing Commodore Perry's 1813 declaration, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

We seldom think of the lovable little cartoon character any longer, but in his postwar days — into the Eisenhower era, and nearly into that of Jimmy Carter's — he was bigger than Peanuts. In his more morose reflections, he seemed to have modern Democrats in mind. This made his meditations easier.

On the 2020 presidential front, they're dropping fast. No matter what you might think of Bernie Sanders, as a leading, future prospect just three years ago, he's already a footnote. The principal cause appears to be Elizabeth Warren, or at least she was, until her genealogical curiosities began taking her down with a fresh vitality. Her hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, has asked that she stop with the drip, drip, drip of revelations, which both experienced and inexperienced politicians continue to believe will do the trick. I'm skeptical that she'll ever pull out of this quagmire of her making.

Since his spectacular showing against the lugubrious Ted Cruz, whizkid Beto O'Rourke has schizophrenically morphed into Jack Kerouac, tooling around the nation between teeth cleanings, keeping us informed of his every last move, notwithstanding its banality. There's a reason God made political consultants — and the solitary O'Rourke is it. Meanwhile, in the press, Sen. Amy Klobuchar has moved from Minnesota Nice to mafioso meanness. Stories of the Klobuchar Terror have prevented her from even fully staffing a presidential run.

In Virginia … well, Virginia. What can one say? From its Democratic governor to the Democratic lt. governor and the Democratic attorney general, racial equality has been achieved: they're all scoundrels. I won't equate rape with the stupid pranks of youth, but whatever convinced any of these gentlemen that their past wouldn't someday haunt? — and do their party inestimable damage.

Then there's the freshman class of '18, which is footloose and sounding as radical as the Gingrich Class of '94. It's also keeping Nancy Pelosi up at night. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?" she said derisively of the amorphous Green New Deal. And of those pushing prematurely for Trump's impeachment, Pelosi observed that which ultimately drove the GOP into unmitigated madness: "The fact is, you are by definition as an advocate dissatisfied, relentless and persistent. Whatever the electeds are doing is a compromise, it’s not the purity of what we want."

That is what truly frightens. In their exhilaration over the Blue Wave, Democrats will overreach and push moderate voters into either apathy or worse. They need a pragmatic anchor that can give one voice to the party, before they descend into an unforgettable collection of amateurs, unachievable idealism, and unwarranted triumphalism. The process has barely begun, and that frightens even more.

Best headline of the millennium

During my illness I did not follow the comments. I'm glad. Many would have only made me sicker. What would I, or any other reader, have learned from them? Only that center-left sites can attract as much personal bile and juvenile behavior as Michelle Malkin's site does. How many times must we endure this before I cancel the section altogether? Monitoring crap is not why I began this site years ago. It's not worth my time, it demeans the site, and it makes some commenters look as childish as any right-wing crackpot. I extend my apologies to commenters who tried to maintain some sense of civility, and my apologies as well to readers who happened to suffer through all the drivel — wondering, why? Short of obliterating the comment section in toto, I will begin barring commenters who violate known — known by adults, anyway — rules of simple decency.

Is the GOP achieving its greatest, albeit final, success?

Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist, former Republican White House staffer and all-round partisan hack, describes his party's almost indescribable expectations yesterday for its president's belated SOTU address:

"This week, as I talked to Republicans around the country, many asked whether Trump could achieve a big moment…. Republicans were craving a non-event, a moment of normalcy that did not leave them embarrassed and on the defensive Wednesday. They hoped for nothing that would cause head-shaking demoralizing bewilderment and/or shell-shocked mumbling among the GOP faithful. And the president delivered. He was not a terrifying wild man."

For Trump's overwrought disciples, this is now what passes for a magnificent "big-moment" speech — one of something commensurate with, roughly equal to, or at least in the neighborhood of, monotonous Hardingesque "normalcy"; one of anything but powerfully distressing "bewilderment" and understandable battle fatigue; one of Trump attempting to play the difficult role of president of the United States instead of seamlessly appearing as the Big Orange Ape of Borneo.

From the party of Lincoln, T.R., and Eisenhower to the more streamlined party of Trump³ comes an army of once-sober, now-pathetically fanatical "conservatives" who have done lost their minds — and are about to lose more. More than Trump? You bet. As with all his swindles, he'll walk away sitting pretty while his patsies are left with nothing but the shambolic remnants of a once-major league party.

It's all extraordinarily fascinating. We are real-time witnesses to the historic disintegration and perhaps abject collapse of — to repeat — the party of Lincoln through Eisenhower (you're welcome to toss in the already, virtually forgotten Reagan). Who could possibly fill the big red clown shoes of Borneo's Big Orange Ape? Among the GOP's highest apparatchiks, there is no Stalin after Lenin; nor, for the pseudoconservative proletariat, can there ever be.

At last, the Republican Party might well be achieving its predestined goal: utter nihilism.

Trump's verbal filth, just hours before SOTU

One tell of a man, of a good man, is his amiable acknowledgement of his opponents' agreeable attributes, which at times is even an honest acknowledgement. When forced on occasion, such a recognition nonetheless shows some magnanimity and an admirable willingness to appreciate legitimate disagreements. (This observation assumes, of course, the actual presence of favorable assets amongst his opponents; otherwise, false praise comes across as little more than a Pecksniffian labor.)

Yesterday, however, we were again bludgeoned by that unpresidential model of a truly bad man. Trump told of himself with striking ease. Speaking with network television anchors at a closed-door luncheon, he proceeded to assess a few opponents with the crudity and vile disingenuity we've all come to expect from this Fifth Avenue con artist turned global abomination. And he did it just hours before delivering a SOTU address featuring calls for a passable measure of Beltway congeniality and bipartisan cooperation.

Of Joe Biden, whom the Trump campaign fears most in 2020, according to numerous press reports, the president said he "was never very smart. He was a terrible student. His gaffes are unbelievable. When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it's on purpose; it's not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it's because he's dumb."

Leaving aside Trump's bizarre pride in counterfeit gaffes as a useful instrument of presidential rhetoric, is there a soul alive who could honestly deny that Biden-Trump's IQ scores would just about parallel the respective numbers of a fairly normal blood-pressure reading? (On the other hand, and for a refreshing change, Trump did apply "dumb" to someone other than a woman.)

Speaking of dumb, Trump brilliantly said to the dining network anchors that Chuck Schumer, whose at least intermittent cooperation as Senate minority leader the president will very much need, "can be a nasty son of a bitch." Moving along, what's misogyny absent some racism as well? Said Trump of Schumer's Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren, "I hope I haven’t wounded Pocahontas too badly. I’d like to run against her."

You're probably thinking about now that this hateful clown couldn't possibly get even more vile over one lunch. Ah, but here, Trump alone can fix your misapprehension. Still seething over John McCain's Senate vote against repealing Obamacare — still seething as the family still mourns — Trump bellowed, as the fountain of ignorance he is, that the late senator "wrote a book and the book bombed." (Notes the Washington Post: The book — The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations — "was published in 2018 and became a New York Times bestseller.")

As for the State of the Union address that followed, a few hours later, the president's emetic filth? I didn't watch it. I seldom watch SOTUs; they go down faster, they're more easily digested, in print. As has been the custom since the birth of presidential speechwriters, Trump didn't write his. But Trump's words at the White House luncheon? All his, and far more indicative than the SOTU speech of precisely who he is — the tell of a truly bad man.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to a Wormhole

Kafka-like, this morning I awoke in an alternate universe. In print and on air, gone was 24/7 coverage of Gov. Northam, eerily banished like yesterday's news. Ubiquitous instead was wall-to-unfunded-wall reporting on the Orange Nebula, whose eternal miasma will seep into your consciousness tonight and deliver his antebellum State of the Union address. Speechwriting credit: Ray Bradbury.

"Trump is expected to call for more bipartisan cooperation," reports the Post, in what has to be a sick cosmic joke. He'll again run through his exhausting dog-and-pony show on why we should fear and forever bar those swarthy alien types south of the border, but "also highlight areas where he hopes to forge consensus, including around infrastructure projects and cutting the cost of prescription drugs." The first means immense largess to the president's construction pals, which Democrats won't stand for; the second means undying, unconquerable GOP opposition.

In a show of his good faith in bipartisan cooperation and Beltway camaraderie, Trump — what else? — slammed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, via — what else? — Twitter: "I see Schumer is already criticizing my State of the Union speech, even though he hasn’t seen it yet. He’s just upset that he didn’t win the Senate, after spending a fortune."

Yes, it's looking like a whole new epoch in presidential graciousness, cooperation, or any other misnomer of your choosing. With his 1950s greaser coif and leathered punk attitude to match, Trump will surpass all customary SOTU hyperbole about the American paradise the president has created, notwithstanding Democrats' whimpering obstructionism and their enemies-of-the-people allies. He'll open with "Good evening." Even that will be a lie. It'll go downhill from there.

But, he'll accomplish that which he precisely set out to accomplish.

A few months ago I attended a private gathering in which the name of Trump was offhandedly spoken. Overhearing, a young, white, rural male instantly sauntered over to our little subgroup and said, "Yeah, Trump, isn't he great?" A mortified retired teacher, at my side, gazed at the young man and replied with unconcealed contempt, "Son, did you ever take American or constitutional history in high school?"

Tonight, there will sit Trump's exclusively targeted market: ill-schooled rubes, chumps, the easily bamboozled and ignorantly supportive of this, an American president in name only; a sinister little man who would sell out his base in a Manhattan minute, if the exchange rate were attractive enough.

Theirs is the malarial alternate universe to which I awoke this morning — a faithless Beelzebub, his galactically gullible minions, a Miltonian creation of "Paradise Hustled." The upside? In the original epic it is written: Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.

A brief note on Northam, and those virtuous Republicans

Well, I missed that projection by at least one day. So much for my prognostic powers. Perhaps tomorrow I will rejoin the living.

Today about all I can do is passively follow the wretched saga of Gov. Northam. When it comes to Republicans bemoaning dated Democratic acts of racism, my instinctive advice to the former is somewhat Hobbesian: i.e., nasty, brutish, and short — "Fuck off." For a political party that built its power base by relentlessly pandering to racial fears — and then decry the opposition's "hypocrisy" — is simply more than my withering political integrity and robust cynicism can countenance.

But of course it won't be Republicans who remove the Virginia governor from office. It will be Democrats, who, as the Times reported, "fear that if Mr. Northam remains, he will prove a drag on the party’s fund-raising and jeopardize its efforts to persuade voters in a year when control of both legislative chambers is expected to be bitterly and closely contested."

It's always about the money — and in this case, also the irrational premise that the idiotic hijinks, decades ago, of an even more idiotic medical student could in any way reflect the views of the contemporary Democratic Party.

This will work out. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax will be a far preferable governor. And when he delivers his own come-to-Jesus Race Speech, as Barack Obama was compelled to do in 2008, his ascension in national politics will be guaranteed.

This appears to be never-ending

This personal update is likely unnecessary for regular readers, but for the uninitiated …

Thursday evening I began losing fluids by the bucketful — for me, a not uncommon experience — the reason for which has gastroenterologists baffled statewide; though as far as I know, their fees haven't reduced. My case is a bit like that of Mad King George III's, whose physicians were always ready with well-compensated treatments, which did absolutely no good. Anyhoo, said, severe and rapid loss of fluids conspired to throw me into a near comatose state, which I've lulled in for the past 48 hours. And, of course, being "out of it" for two days only further depleted my fluids, what little were left. I'm now trying to drink, and eat, without losing that, too. All of which is to say, I doubt I'll be back by Sunday morning, but my hope is high for Monday. Perhaps I'll be somewhat human by then.

Quick take

Can you imagine (sorry, Howard, if you have that word copyrighted) any other president saying something so petty, childish, and boorishly pompous? They all probably thought it, but none would have been so shallow as to actually say it.

So great to watch & listen to all these people who write books & talk about my presidential campaign and so many others things related to winning, and how I should be doing “IT.” As I take it all in, I then sit back, look around, & say “gee, I’m in the White House, & they’re not!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 31, 2019

***

Afterthought: A somewhat related instance, which just came to mind, occurred in 2008, when Rachel Maddow "interviewed" presidential candidate Barack Obama. That is to say, she sat him down to explain everything he was doing wrong in the campaign — namely, that he wasn't being progressive enough. Obama listened politely as Maddow rattled off her sundry corrections, to which the candidate finally said, "But Rachel, we're winning."