PMC Commentary

Not your usual political entry

I'll begin by saying I've no idea where to begin. But that's a beginning for this free-flow of consciousness, so I'll hang onto that raft and float with it. 

This morning I left you a note, I'm "under the weather," might not return today. That was indeed one way of putting it. But you — and so many of you are loyal, longtime readers — deserve more than an idiom.

Spiritually, one might say, I'm busted. Wherever my spirit once lay, I'm lying in its ruins.

Freud wrote of the superego, a busy little thing managing one's affairs, mediating between ego and id. I'll substitute spirit for superego — and mine simply quit. The little fucker clocked out. Es ist kaput, in Siegmund's terms.      

As was the case of his ego and id, my spirit — a concept I'm using only for moi; there's no advancing a psychological theory here — is that which hovers, oversees and guides mind and body. Should my enlivening spirit recklessly wander off or collapse inexplicably (I'll cut it some slack), the others are set adrift.

This is most unhealthy. No longer —switching now to Marx — is there a superstructure within, that indispensable, spiritual overlord and mover of mind and body. In its place there is rot, a necrosis that stealthily creeps into the once-happily nurtured intellect and physical person. They too are clocking out, leaving a profound disability to reign. 

Should I ask, I'd be told my disease is clinically defined as depression. But ... Nein, Herr Doktor. That's treatable. I won't deny that condition, and I've just enough intellect left to have re-begun the ever-popular pills for it. That was essential, for my body is paying an extraordinarily high price for the psychic devastation. (See: "under the weather.")

No, Doctor, my condition is America's condition. Thirteen days ago its spirit clocked out — and that was no little fucker. Others would say soul. We haven't one any longer. We squandered it on a cheap demagogue who overtly promised the Constitution's immolation, the death of an American America.

Still unofficial, our soulless journey of (presumably) four years is nevertheless eating into millions of minds and bodies, those once dependent, as I was, on the guiding force behind Freud's id — the primitive and savage. Or do I project? One commentator noted that on the infamous Day After, the folks he passed on the city's sidewalks seemed unperturbed, unlike his 2016 experience.  

The millions I write of, are they not distressed and broken? Or is the indifference they showed on the city's sidewalks a concealed reinvigoration of spirit? We shall overcome. I'm not "getting that," not sensing it. The savages now with the reins have for years been soulless; I suppose they always were. What I'm getting is that millions more have accepted the Devil's bargain.

Yet millions more means not all of us. That I reject. For Christ's sake I'm no martyr, dangling singularly on a cross of national soullessness. I'm but striving to regain my spirit, my soul, lest the inevitable for mind and body. Many, many others are battling the encroachment of this spiritless necrosis. I merely suffer with them.

I also stick my face on this page every day and write of politics. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. The question is when; my answer can only be just as soon as I have recovered. My spirit, wherever it is, is temperamental — the disagreeable little fuck. It thinks it has a mind of its own. Well listen up, you — you're above that. You're above intellect and only somewhat familiar with body. And goddamnit we both need you back.

I think — and this is only my abandoned intellect speaking — I think my spirit may be off in search of a way forward. Where we have trod and now tread is unspeakably sick — thus useless as a template for writing. My body arises, painfully these days, whereupon my mind asks each morning, What is to be done? Not that old shit, for sure, is the echoing reply.

Nine years of my and a thousand other commentators' bashing of Trump, ridiculing of Trump and exposing his miasmic soullessness have accomplished only the blowback of his victoriousness. We influenced no one. We made the Devil a martyr. We put a .45 to our heads and blew away our entire raison d'être.

With it went my spiritual motivation to keep plugging, and that has racked mind and body. In correspondence this morning with my good friend, the Canadian poet Norm Sibum, I informed him of what I had resisted: the truth. I'm shot. Spent. Down. And by now he knows what that means. Elaboration not required.  

I then made note of a possible post today, "a deeply personal" one, no usual politics, for we've seen the productivity of that route. Sibum replied: "You can't force it. Be patient with yourself. Tell your readers to be patient with you. In any case, I think a great many of us are in the same pickle: what the hell happened and where is this going?"

Precisely. But Sibum had unknowingly posted a piece this morning of great relevance to me, which I had just read and promptly deemed brilliant. He penned this masterpiece at his site, Ephemeris, which only fools don't read. While lamenting political commentary as practiced, that where all the Trumpian "speciousness" and fraudulence of it overwhelms, my friend and outside observer reflected, "reason is better off vacating the field to joust another day." 

Again, precisely. Sibum had pinpointed my affliction, in large part and from afar, with terrifying accuracy. Reason. What's the use? To quote myself, "Where we have trod and now tread is unspeakably sick — thus useless as a template for writing." This has haunted for days, eating at me; it crushed my spirit and moved on to the task of glacially destroying mind and body.

Nine years of reason invested in fighting this plague of madness – all of it only to culminate in the latter's re-enthronement. We fucked up, we "reasonable" commentators. Our weapon was a self-pointed .45 of rationality inveighing against what was so clearly insane, while all long the insanity was wielding howitzers and blowing away America's soul.

What is to be done, then? I've no offense but Reason. To forsake it as my intellect was forsaken by that which once guided it would be to forsake what I have, ever wanted to have. Until this ugliest of eras, Reason was king. Now it's a pathetic pauper, the lowliest of commoners.  

You see the problem, just as you now understand my malady and grasp its hopelessness, or so it seems. But no I won't pull the trigger, not again. There must be some other path, along which can travel some sister variation of Pure Reason, itself "better off vacating the field to joust another day." 

Hence I return to another self-quote: "I think — and this is only my abandoned intellect speaking — I think my spirit may be off in search of a way forward." I appreciate that hope is not a strategy. But, gentle reader, it has come to that.

I'm hoping my errant spirit is indeed out there somewhere, seeking that healthful, forward path. Perhaps I mistook its absence — crushed or not — as unconcern for my welfare. Should it drop by again — no, let's keep the faith — when it drops by again, you'll know it. Because I'll be here. My spiritual powers were once expeditious. We'll see if they regain their strength and speed soon. God I hope so.

You may have read otherwise

I'm late with this, but it was too good to drop. (I'm also really under the weather today. This may be my only post.)

Trump Nominates Head of CIA

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In his latest major appointment, on Thursday Donald J. Trump nominated a new chief of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Speaking to reporters, Trump praised his nominee’s “extensive experience with Russia.”

“I have phone conversations with him every day, and he knows everything I know,” Trump told reporters. “Plus, the CIA won’t be the first spy agency he’s worked for.”

Citing another qualification of his nominee, Trump said, “He already has a great working relationship with Tulsi."

Andy Borowitz and I are on the same (news) page

I have mentioned to friends but I'm not sure I have mentioned here that the only television news source I've watched over the last couple years is the BBC, which I receive "streaming" on Samsung Free TV. (I like saying "the BBC" not "BBC," for it sounds almost subversive, like an anti-Hitler German tuning in to "the wireless" of "the BBC" in 1942.)   

I'm hooked on the network, although I'm not much of a TV news consumer. The BBC's political coverage of the 2024 race far exceeded in quality anything available on cable or network news. I've also learned more about everyday British politics, and, as Borowitz notes below, the BBC covers international news — for example, a half-hour each day on Africa — which domestic sources avoid because so many Americans believe the U.S. is the center of all things universal; other people don't exist.

With heartbreak I concede I'm not "the most interesting man in the world." Nevertheless, "I don't always watch TV news. But when I do, I prefer the BBC." As does Borowitz — this, from his subscription page:

Since the election, cable news channels have seen their ratings crater. And hundreds of thousands of Washington Post readers have cancelled their subscriptions to protest the craven behavior of the paper’s owner, Lex Luthor wannabe Jeff Bezos.

So you might be wondering: now that I’m over mainstream media, where do I get my news?...

[Answer: the BBC.]

You could watch MSNBC’s entire primetime lineup and never know that there’s a continent called Africa. Tune in to the BBC [I'm not alone, Andy also adds a 'the'] and you’ll learn all about the civil war in Sudan, which is affecting a huge swath of your fellow humans. Such coverage will make all those cable roundtables about whether Tim Walz was the right choice seem pretty silly.

He's right. Once you've had the BBC, you'll never go back.     

Borowitz concludes with this:

But I wouldn’t recommend consuming the news—even from an excellent source like the BBC—around the clock. I’m not a neuroscientist like George Santos, but in my experience, turning off the news is good for your mental health. And you’ll have more time for things you actually enjoy. Read a novel. See a friend. Walk your dog. Which is what I’m going to do right now.

Again I agree, no one should "consume the news around the clock." That way surely lies madness; I know because I'm damn close to it. My psychotic tipping point also lies somewhere in print, not television, which I already told you. Anyway, I know I'm consuming much too much news to retain a healthy mental balance. Hours a day of Trump Trump Trump could send even Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom — the quality closest to patience — into an unhinged tailspin.

Still, my fear of what Borowitz advises is that rational Americans will take it too far — this ignoring the news thing. Have we not had enough of that? Ignorance of what's going on is what led us to this point. It's a national plague. If even more Americans now avert their eyes from the hideous spectacle of Washington, D.C., then we're all toast, to use a cliché, which otherwise I never do — and that alone shows you how far along to the road's tipping point of madness I just might be.

Now hear this - my new social media site, no more Twitter

As I wrote yesterday, I'm done with putting my posts on Twitter or X or, more properly, Fascism Today.

I'm now posting at Bluesky, which has taken in a mass exodus of former Twitter users since Election Day.  

If I don't appear when you click on the above link, simply search for "pmcarpenter." Then the more important thing: Click Follow. [I nearly forgot. You will of course need to create an account first. It's super fast. I created mine in ... one minute?] 

I'm begin' ya, click Follow. I'm starting from scratch on Blue Sky, leaving behind several hundred followers on Voldemort's site. But it's a pleasurable departure — so pleasurable, I don't care about the loss of followers (for the time being). 

I thank you, one and all. —PM

@pmcarpenter.bsky.social

An early morning with a Breitbart blockhead

As I was coping with Facebook this morning I ran across the detritus below. Mr. Nolte's embedded bio says he's a "writer," but it turns out what he does is scribble garbage for Breitbart.com. There are no writers there, just shallow propagandists. In his bio he also includes his "pronouns," which he declares are "tits and ass." Now that's class.  

Nolte had about 20 comments on this post. Each one either raved about his brilliance or snickered at those leftist "elites," "hypocrites" and "ideologues." I left this remark: "I've read this nonsense from the far right many times. It springs from two sources: unoriginality and table-turning. Rational writers have cogently articulated why the far right is precisely what you accuse the left of. Your tactic: Just turn the accusation around. It comforts you. Yet there's no evidence of it, anywhere. It's baseless. Try being original someday. You might even become a writer. I doubt it but give it a whirl."

The gentleman "writer" wasn't worth my effort, but what the hell, it was about 4:30 a.m., I had not yet gone to bed — still haven't and won't, it's now a new day — and it's in these wee hours when my sleepless brain occupies itself with such frivolities. More follows.   

I'd first like to say I rather like elites, given that they're generally experts of some kind and I happen to respect expertise. That, as you know, is most unfashionable on the far right. The reason is simple: They're ignorant and envious of informed, intelligent minds. They compensate by praising and elevating their fellow ignoramuses to high offices, where they can launch full-scale assaults on experts and try to convince folks that their official ignorance is better for them. (And they just succeeded.)   

As for "ideologues," it's likely true that their breed is more common on the left. I detest ideologies — they replace thinking — nevertheless I'll take them any day over the abject lack of principles displayed by the contemporary right.

What we see today is ahistorical. Trumpism is fascism and fascism is an ideology, yet Trumpism has virtually none. Its primary feature is erraticism, otherwise sharing true fascist ideology mostly in its brutality and celebration of anti-intellectualism.

As contemptible as Hitler's ideology was, it contained unwavering principles. Hitler and his subordinates also reveled in their disdain of intellectuals, yet they churned out whole libraries of pseudointellectualism, which they passed off as the real thing. Trump eschews even that. Simply put, Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is — by the hour — even though there's no way to classify it other than as genuinely fascistic. Historians will puzzle over this phenomenon.                 

Last, this Nolte clown seems particularly ticked at elites' "hypocrisies." I might be too if I knew what in hell Nolte was talking about. But just as erraticism is a primary feature of Trumpism, so is obscurantism among his propagandists. They avoid specifics for good reason: They haven't any which apply only to elites. But it's sure easy to throw around just the accusation of their singular hypocrisy, and besides, the rabble eats it up.    

This concludes my encounter with "tits and ass" John Nolte. And may I never encounter him again.

The vagaries of Facebook, the stupidity of AI

Two posts below this one you'll see the title,

When you heft a moron on morons' shoulders

But you won't see it on Facebook. After I posted it here I promoted it there. Within seconds I received this FB message: "We removed your post. See why."

I found this most considerate of Mr. Zuckerberg. And naturally I ventured off to "see why," whereupon I received this message: "It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way." 

Sorry, Mark Z., you lost me there. I can't even begin to square that with the post's title. 

I was then invited to review my site's "Page Status." Well, its status must be in awful shape, I assumed, given its criminal severity.Yet, under the heading "Community Standard Violations," there was this: 

Ah, but what about the heading, "Account Status"? Surely a blindfold and cigarette awaited me here. Instead,  

I post this piece for two reasons. Some readers follow me on FB, but the Musk-as-moron post they missed because FB's AI assassinated it. The larger reason is in noting that AI programs are literally mindless — and as such, they can do damage while having no "idea" of what it is they're doing. They're stupid in the truest sense of the word. What I've related here about one post is utterly insignificant, of course. But what significant damage or heaps of damage might AI do someday? — harm that could affect us all? And that is worrisome.     

(By the way, I'm going to promote this post on FB. We'll see if AI's feelings were hurt and if it followed up with more retribution.) 

Cowards - the most sickening tweet ever

If the corporate executive mind ever believed it had a responsibility to uphold the best of America, rather than wallowing profitably in its filth, that mind is no more. Out of gutless fear of what Elon Musk might tell the incoming "president" and his hatchet man at DOJ — from my imagination: "Those evil, pro-Biden executives are still harming my 'X' business and I want them investigated" — they have preemptively caved to the pressure. They're back on his site, advertising.  

I began the above with "if," although once upon a far-lost time some corporate minds did, in fact, strive to be a part of what was good for the country. When President Eisenhower nominated GM's CEO, Charlie Wilson, to be his defense secretary, a skeptical senator asked at his confirmation hearing about a situation that might arise "where you had to make a decision which was extremely adverse to the interests of your stock and General Motors Corp.... Could you make that decision?" Wilson replied: "Yes, Sir, I could. I cannot conceive of one [such situation] because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."

Wilson was right and I wax nostalgic. Today's crop of corporate executives have the spine of a salamander. And Elon Musk is reveling in their cowardice.   

Just want to say that we super appreciate major brands resuming advertising on our platform!

Thanks @lindayaX and the whole 𝕏 team for your hard work in restoring confidence in our platform and ensuring that advertising content only appears where advertisers want it shown. https://t.co/e508KrMo9g

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2024

Not trusting Elon's word for this, I sought confirmation from AdWeek. Whereupon my stomach turned again. "X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment, have resumed ad spending on the platform this year," reports the publication, "albeit at much lower rates than before."

As if that wasn't enough, "A spokesperson from IBM told AdWeek its approach to X has not changed." The bastards won't even admit it. "Comcast, Disney, and Lionsgate did not respond to media requests." Others did but too late for AdWeek's story. 

So they're cowards and I'm a hypocrite. I'll promote this post on Elon's extortion-racket site, as I've done for years. Note to readers who are reading this because of the Twitter link: If you like this site, bookmark it. Because I don't like being a hypocrite. After today, no more linking on Twitter or X and, presto, no more hypocrisy.

When you heft a moron on morons' shoulders

America, meet the man who could have the most direct effect on your everyday life for the next several years.

By "the next several years," you likely thought I meant four. I did not. The "effect" on your life would linger far beyond 20 January 2029. That's because a Second Great Depression would present, oh, let's call it a problem not easily or quickly corrected by the next, rational administration, assuming one is allowed. 

Would it then help to recall that this problem wasn't your fault? — that it was a majority of voters in 2024 who brought this economic hell down on America? No, it won't help, since you'll be suffering right along with the 75 million majority morons who voted for Donald Trump, who then put the pictured gentleman, Elon Musk, in charge of slashing government waste. 

An electoral majority of morons. That's hard to accept. Nevertheless, in this, the world's oldest representative democracy, an electoral majority is presumed to be the equivalent of the nation's political IQ. So accept it we must, based on the 2024 majority's profoundly stupid decisions.   

Only one of which was the aforementioned: putting Musk, who evidently prefers to dress as a kind of internet-trolling biker, in charge of all things financial concerning the federal government. Speaking of morons, here's a man who way overpaid $44 billion for Twitter, which he moronically renamed X and then drove its "worth" down to $9.4 billion, says the investment firm Fidelity. That alone — Elon + high finance + Twitter's implosion — should make anyone really nervous.  

He, however, is doing just fine. Forbes' recent ranking of the humanly obscene had Musk's net worth right around $300 billion. Of that amount, not one dime would be harmed by all his slashing. He says he wants to reduce the number of federal agencies to 99 (there are now 400). The NY Times observed that "SpaceX, Tesla and other companies Mr. Musk created ... have been targeted recently in at least 20 different investigations or lawsuits by federal agencies. That means Mr. Musk will somehow be watching over agencies that police his companies." Self-explanatory. 

You and I are a different story altogether. Musk believes we should be in for some pain, since "we have to reduce spending to live within our means." And that, he continued, "necessarily involves some temporary hardship." He also said "everyone" — minus one, which he omitted — "is going to have to take a haircut." Only a king of the morons worth $300 billion would tell Americans earning on average less than $60,000 a year — and millions of citizens, far less than that — that they must sacrifice.    

Our one hope is that Elon Musk proves himself as incompetent at his new job as he has been at Twitter. He unquestionably is as ignorant as the voters who indirectly put him in charge of this charade; he understands nothing about the complexity of the modern federal government or the sheer impossibility of cutting $2 trillion from its revenue and "balanc[ing] the budget immediately," as he also said he could do.

My guess is that this ignoramuses' incompetence will rather speedily frustrate his budget-slashing fevers; he'll realize that his "coworker," Vivek Ramaswamy, is even dumber then he is; he'll gradually then swiftly get bored with his new power toy; and before we know it, he'll turn off the office lights and wander off the job — and not a peep about its shutdown will come from the Trump administration.

The ultimate achievement of ultimate moronity: nothing. 

Join my scavenger hunt

Dear reader: Did you see this piece on DefSec Hegseth on my site yesterday? Someone please tell me, yes, it was there. Otherwise, I've not lost a post, I've lost my mind. 

As noted, yesterday I wrote an 800-word piece (above) on Trump's inspired choice of a Fox News host as his secretary of defense. I just happened to notice that now the piece is not there. But at least Facebook thinks I posted it. (When I clicked on the title in FB, I got today's Giuliani piece.)

In 20 years of writing on this site I've not seen this happen. I'm posting this note for two reasons: that perhaps you saw the Hegseth piece and will let me know of that in the comment section, and I definitely wanted you to know that I did not simply dismiss as unimportant Trump's insane choice of a defense secretary.

I wrote about it. I wrote 800 words on it. Now I'd kinda like to know where they are.  

But it's OK, Matt. The grifting makes up for it.

Giuliani Warns Matt Gaetz That Trump Never Pays His Attorneys

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Urging him “not to take that freaking job,” on Wednesday Rudolph Giuliani warned Rep. Matt Gaetz that Donald J. Trump never pays his attorneys.

“I know what you’re thinking—'I’ll get paid millions and then I’ll be swimming in hooch and broads,’” the former New York mayor said. “Not gonna happen!”

“When Trump cans your ass—and he will—you’ll be in the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot with me drinking Two-Buck Chuck straight from the bottle.”

For his part, Trump said that by choosing Gaetz he was keeping his campaign promise of creating jobs for unskilled white men.

***

Addendum A

You may have noticed Rudy pulling up to his Palm Beach voting site last week in a Mercedes SL500 convertible. He did so in defiance of a judge's order that he deliver the car to former Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, to whom he owes $148 million as the result of a defamation suit.

The mother-daughter team were also to receive the contents of Rudy's multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment. But as the time approached for the property's surrender, Trump's former legal adviser cleaned the place out and squirreled away the goods to a location unknown to its rightful owners, also in defiance of a judicial order.

Other items that Rudy still has and mother-daughter should have instead are some New York Yankees memorabilia and a couple dozen luxury watches. None of this even comes close in value to the amount he owes them, yet four years after defaming them, leading to public harassment and death threats, the injured parties still have no Mercedes, no confiscated property, and no luck. 

On the other hand, Giuliani's spokesman said in a letter to the press that "the weaponization of our once-sacred justice system should concern every American." So perhaps my priorities are misplaced. They who have collected nothing from a $148 million judgment aren't the injured parties. Rudy is.

But, this just in: Two weeks ago, Giuliani attorney Kenneth Caruso formally informed the court that his client was being perfectly cooperative. "[He] is, and will remain, ready to comply" with the court's orders, insisted Caruso. So there it is: Though Rudy has done nothing wrong, he's still being subjected to our once-sacred justice system's weaponization. A curious thing, however. Yesterday, that same attorney formally asked the court to be released from defending Rudy because his client is acting in bad faith. In brief, it's Giuliani weaponizing the system against justice. So I guess I'll place my priorities back where they were.   

Addendum B

Why would I write about already forgotten Rudy Giuliani when the pertinent subject of Borowitz's report was Matt Gaetz and his future as U.S. attorney general?

Because I couldn't tolerate the alternative, immediate future of writing another piece decrying mainstream journalism's soft-headed reporting of Gaetz's Trumpian career advancement as merely "controversial," "unconventional," or, from The NY Times, "surprising," rather than what it is: loony, harebrained, and utterly mad.

Is Politico playing a joke on us? Attorney General Gaetz? DNI Gabbard? No. Can't be. Unbelievable.

In a hurry but just saw this come in from Politico ...

Tulsi Gabbard named as director of national intelligence and —

Matt Gaetz named as attorney general.

This is a joke, right? This can't be real. This can't be for real. This is the worst fucking nightmare I have ever had. Someone wake me. I'm biggin' ya.

An anti-depressant for Democrats

On January 20, 2025, we will swear in a convicted felon.

—Jonathan Last, The Bulwark

It's still bracing to read, still hard to absorb, and hardest of all, to accept. Last's quote is followed by mention of the many other obscenities of a D.J. Trump in the White House, his seditionist acts, his blasting of norms, etc. — we know it all by heart. 

In short, it's depressing as hell. And some, many or most Democrats are heaving defeat onto their shoulders and thus beating themselves up over the hell about to re-stumble its way into the Oval Office. Nearly as bad is that satanic Don will have both chambers of Congress behind him, or rather, in his pocket.

But here's a little picker-upper for Democrats everywhere. 

Yesterday I brought up the presidential election of 1964. You want to talk defeat? Last Tuesday was a popgun going off compared to the explosive magnitude in which Democrat LBJ blew away Republican Goldwater. He did so by a margin of 434 Electoral Votes. (Trump's margin was 86.)  

That was but part of the GOP's post-election blues. Democrats picked up well more than 30 House seats (I forget the precise number and I'm too hurried to check) and a couple more in the Senate, enough to give them a supermajority in the upper chamber. From the most obscure, backwater seat in the lower chamber to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., 1964 was a blowout for Democrats.

For Republicans, their defeat was so severe, newspaper columns (voters still read such things back then) speculated that the Grand Old Party might not never recover. This could be the end, they wrote, curtains for the party of Lincoln. Seriously. After a beating like that, the party's future seemed impossibly bleak.   

Flash forward two years. Just two years. The Dems lost nearly 50 House seats and three more in the Senate. And two years after that, the United States of America was blessed by the reigning (and ultimately resigning) presence of President Richard M. Nixon.

History can be vicious — especially to the victors. And victories can be damn short.

It is well for Democrats today to keep that in mind. It ain't over till it's over, and unless You-know-who does God-knows-what and kills off the U.S. of A., it sure as hell ain't over.

I have repented

I'm about to do something I have never done before. And here it goes. If you read, or tried to read, yesterday's too long, too needlessly complex post, give it another read. I just spent a rather good deal of time chopping well more than 200 words from it and cleaning up much of the remaining.

Here's something else I've not done before. I hereby swear I shall never again raise the awful ghost of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in one my posts. I heard about that. The complaint was more than valid; it was commonsensical.

The indecipherable, unreadable German philosopher of 200 years past is not really the best source for any contemporary political column to go running to. To today's sensible readers, dear old Friedrich is dead and that's where he should stay.

So he be gone from the revised version below, along with a lot of other unnecessary Hegelian verbiage (ha! I just wanted to work him in one last time).

The funniest sitcom in US television history is "Frasier," and in one of its episode, he turns what should have been a new little "jingle" for his radio show into a full-blown operatic monstrosity. Later, Frasier almost tearfully tells his father (I may be paraphrasing): "Maybe I just can't do simple." But he could. And he did.

I'm learning the same lesson. But hey, guys, be understanding. I've only been doing this writing thing for 25 years. 

An unemotional, clear-eyed approach to answering: What Went Wrong?

f

In the past few days I have read presidential election assessments by the dozens. Some I have sought out, yet I needn't look for most others — they arrive in bulk. This bountiful gush of opinions about what went wrong is a national, even international, phenomenon. Inboxes everywhere are overflowing with assessments, emails are rife with appraisals, political websites are packed with habitual self-agreements, newspapers are running short on bloviation ink — and cable news? Worse than ever, no doubt.

I've learned little from this titanic capsizing of emotions. And don't mistake, nearly all the analyses have been emotional; otherwise some objective, rational conclusion would have been drawn by now. The AWOL latter must be sought — a straightforward, dispassionate synthesis of all the whirling antitheses emerging viscerally and intellectually. 

Once these opposites clash, they'll balance and merge into one, revealing that singular, higher truth. Right? If only it were that simple. Still, I retain some intellectual trust in the old Marxian method of thesis + antithesis = synthesis.

Let's begin with this reaction from novelist Joseph O’Neill, writing for The New York Times Review of Books: "My sense is that in this era of the Internet, there are millions more fascists in this country than people think.... [Trump] is an evil guy, a villain—and many Americans are excited by it. Harris and the Democrats, by contrast, are boring, boring, boring. In this sense, the election was like a choice between four more years of church or four years of violent entertainment. Nihilistic consumerism, as much as authoritarianism, prevailed." 

Now that's about as from-the-gut, glandular and splenetic as analysis can be. Nevertheless, does O'Neill have a point? Of course he does. Even in the splenetic there's usually some factual element. Trump is an objectively evil, villainous guy, for whom 75 million Americans just gave a thumbs-up. So unquestionably there are "more fascists in this country than people think." On the other hand, they, these "fascists" — number unknown — have been a voting bloc for decades.

Historian Richard Hofstadter essentially pegged them as fascists when in the mid-1960s he labeled them pseudoconservatives (a terminological accuracy I adopted years ago). These voters were far more malevolent than Hofstadter's term suggested, which he made clear when describing the pseudos and their leaders.

Nearly always in American history we've had villainous demagogues preying on the politically paranoid, he noted. The fearmongers foment populist panic by identifying some monstrous domestic threat that can be eliminated only by upending "the system," which, to the paranoid, represents a society out of control. Only a strongman can rein it in, and that's the product he sells — his ability to do so.  

Six decades ago Hofstadter described pure Trumpism and that significant bloc of paranoid Trump voters. In the 1960s they would have been Goldwater voters (Hofstadter's "focus group," as it were) and some, Birchers. Perhaps there are, today, "millions more fascists in this country" than people thought, as O'Neill writes. But "many more millions," as he adds? Goldwater received 27 million votes; Trump, 75 million. Goldwater's U.S. population, 190 million; Trump's, 336 million. Goldwater's vote, 14% of population; Trump's, 22% — disproportionate but not vastly disproportionate.

And remember that Trump has been exploiting all that came from Goldwaterism. Our malevolence of a president-elect is in some ways unique but largely the accumulated quintessence of 60 years of pounding ultraconservatism and far-rightism — from the Arizona senator to Reagan to Gingrich to Bush II to ... this. I get what O'Neill is saying, parts of which are incontrovertible. His thrust, however, is dubious: that from a politically philosophical point of view, a whole lot of real fascists voted Trump back into the White House.

Offering a radically different perspective is former governor Andrew Cuomo: Trump won because the Democrats blew it. Writing in the Daily Beast, Cuomo coughs up a 10-point argument around his Dumb Democrats thesis, which I won't dissect here. Taken together, though, his op-ed reads like a Democratic politician who has an alternative "vision" of the party's future, and that party would be ever-so wise if it were to hoist Andrew back on it shoulders and allow him to lead it to victory once again.  

That's a strategic pitch, not emotional, nevertheless I raise Cuomo's argument because it's pinging quite a few others out there which are so emotional they're borderline hysterical. As Charlie Sykes put it in his latest Substack piece, "Apparently, the Democrats have decided to bypass the autopsy and move straight to an orgy of self-flagellation.... The moderates blame the woke left; the progressives blame the moderates; and nobody (for the moment at least) wants to say anything nice about Kamala Harris’s campaign." 

The above is classic irrationality, with hot tempers streaming from every side. It's also just plain stupid, in that it's suicidal.

Moving along, The New Yorker's Susan Glasser is anything but hot-tempered and over the top. She's a solid, analytical thinker. Writing on Election Day Eve, she observed that no matter who wins, "[Trump] will have proved that the most vicious campaign of lies, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia ever waged ... was not enough to stop nearly half the country from supporting him."

Note that Glasser stopped short of a sweeping fascist assessment. That's key; it's what sets columnist Glasser's argument apart from novelist O'Neill's. Hers is indisputable. Trump did prove that lies, misogyny, racism and xenophobia can prevail. Having established this as a fact — a ghastly presence stripped of all irrationality and emotion — Glasser, all the same, leaves the question hanging: What went wrong? 

Some will laugh at that. She just told you. What she told us is a fact, and a stand-alone fact tells us little without its context. I confess I'm stretching the old Marxian method I referenced above, nonetheless, the two together — simple fact and, or versus, complicated context — are something along the lines of a thesis and antithesis.

Thesis: Trump prevailed, and rather overwhelmingly, with pure, fascistic evil. Antithesis: Trump's vote-percentage of the U.S. population was not overwhelmingly disproportionate to that of Goldwater's in 1964.

Now, no American intellectual of the mid-1960s argued that U.S. voters were heavily fascistic, based on Barry Goldwater's vote total. Indeed, historian Hofstadter was making the point that the senator's right-wing extremists were outliers — they were the pseudoconservatives and political freaks who have been with us throughout all American history.

As for Trump's vote total, we must add to America's preceding, ever-present extremism the forthcoming and compounding history of the last 60 years — the relentless totality of the purest of pseudoconservatism that he was able to exploit and build on.  

So ... context. What's the context in which the fascistic president-elect has thrived? What immensity has been present in the American electorate for years — increasingly present as well as increasingly worrisome among informed voters?

IGNORANCE.

Mass, poisonous, politically corrupting ignorance, that essential ingredient of Trumpism that linked up evil and resulted in last Tuesday.

I once believed that 2016 was a black swan event. It wasn't — that much is clear, because it just came back to bite us in the ass. Furthermore, Trump has had another eight years to exploit not just the mass ignorance of 2016 but the ignorance that's been multiplying — almost exponentially, it often seems — ever since. Not stupidity, not necessarily, just neolithic ignorance.

There's more. Only a societal ignorance that far transcends the demographic boundaries of Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Twitter, talk radio and other perverse, far-right miasma could have diseased Americans to the virtually psychotic point at which evil could win the popular vote.

In a way, Trump is right. America does have "an enemy within." This nation's truest, most powerful enemy is right here at home. And if Americans fail to overcome the enemy of ignorance — well, you know the rest of that story.

My apology. I'm off my game.

I confess to no new sins this past week, but I do beg forgiveness for displaying my rather severe disorientation, if that's the right word.

Since Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, America's lowest point in its history, my brain seems to have taken on a kind of zombie existence. You've probably sensed the same in your own beingness — there's at least some hope for my recovery; just now I could have written "ontological experience," but I didn't — our difference being, I've exhibited my brain's zombiedom online. Every damn day.

The thoughts I've posted here since Wednesday afternoon have seemed scrambled as I was writing them. I've read each post afterward — perhaps a mistake, for each reading confirmed what at first only seemed to be true: the thoughts contained therein were indeed bloody awful, mostly in terms of construction and thus incoherence, not intent.

Tuesday night — it's my authentic reason and yet cheap excuse for being so off my game. Every sentence has been a struggle to get out of my head and put down in print. Looking back on them, every sentence should have been put down all right, but in a merciful, veterinarian way. The etiology of my mental ailing is incontrovertible: election night's catastrophe, which oozed slightly into the morn.

Nothing since has come easily, swiftly or naturally — a condition quite foreign merely a week ago. Its immediate and likely effective treatment was to lie low for a while, to regroup, to just shut the fuck up for a week or two and let my synapses overcome the shock. In the appalling trauma's earliest stage, I believe I knew this intuitively. And I recall readers advising the same in the comment section.    

Via email, I have heard from several readers who are much more than that; they are personal friends dearly loved. And what they had to say was nearly as traumatizing to me as the election, for they too have been so deeply traumatized. One such friend is Kathy W. — you've seen her here in the comment section (not often enough, I'll add) — who was a close friend of my late wife and has been simply magnificent in her generosity toward daughter Ellie. 

Kathy has been political all her life. She still is, despite. In her letter to me, which included the truths that "we are a nation of idiots" and "we better find a way to fix stupid," she wrote some other words that really hit home. About November 5th: "It’s kind of like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination; you know in your gut that everything in life will change, but you don’t know how." Yet Kathy knew one thing: "I know that I will no longer be the person I was on Monday." The eeriness lies in the empathy.

Another close friend, John C., or "ren," you also know from the comment section. His letter was gut-wrenching. John himself is facing a personal crisis with ineffable courage, which, in its totality, defines him. But as far as providence was concerned, that suffering in this life wasn't enough. No, in another and most unique way, he must also suffer the extraordinary evil of Donald J. Trump — because of the also ineffably courageous woman to whom he is married. 

You guessed it. His wife is an immigrant. She's from the Philippines, and though 10 years ago she began working hard to learn English and then pass her U.S. citizenship test — of which she was immensely proud (as John noted and I agree, most Trumpers would flunk it) — today, "she is not welcome" where they live, he wrote. "She's hated in fact." 

John recalled in his letter the day that his wife became a United States citizen. She emerged from the federal building that housed the testing center yelping "'Hala!" (wow), it's so clean here and you are so free." Added John: "And now America has come to this." The contrast, today, must be indescribable for them both. I myself cannot imagine the depth of the obscenity they face because of one little man of even smaller mind.  

John asked if I'm "serious" about expatriation, and if so, "where were you thinking? We're serious about moving on as well." America is no longer America, again, because of that one little man. She is hated here. From that comes the sick, the very sickest of ironies. She emigrated from her country of birth in part because she detested its dictator, Rodrigo Duterte (whom DJT admired). Now she and John must emigrate from America — and yet another dictator.

With their permission, I have passed along the stories of these three dear friends — stories that come because of this one annus horribilus, yet horribilis x 10 or 1,000 for we cannot know how many may follow. And as Kathy noted, You know in your gut that everything in life will change, but you don’t know how. Everything indeed. And, it seems, most everything has already changed — changed monstrously for America, for my friends, for you, and for me.

This may perhaps have been too lengthy of a way to explain what I called in the post's first sentence my rather severe disorientation. It's not that for which I apologize; it's the much lesser job — strike that, the remarkably poor job — of writing I have done since Tuesday, the explosive, apocalyptic onset of what most likely is America's death. 

If I am to write about it, to cover it and comment on it, I swear to you, I make this promise: My writing shall be far, far better from tomorrow on.