Of Red Barons and Book Clubs

Curmie can’t speak for everyone, but he’s a little starved for something, anything, other than politics.  Perhaps you are, as well, Gentle Reader.  The thought that anyone would vote for either of the likely contenders for the presidency (as opposed to against the alternative) is chilling.  So Curmie has been casting about, looking for something else to write about.  This may not be much, but at least it’s something.  And Curmie did sort of open the door for this kind of post last Christmas season with an analysis of ads for Monopoly.

Red Baron (the pizza company, not Snoopy’s antagonist, but why pass up an opportunity like this?) has released a trio of new commercials, all connected to the joys of sharing.  They’re not going to convince Curmie and Beloved Spouse to buy their product—we’ve tried it and found the gustatory difference between it and cardboard to be insignificant (your mileage may vary), but that doesn’t mean their commercials are similarly boring.

Indeed, “Baddie Librarians,” in which two stereotypically bespectacled (complete with glasses chains) older women naughtily share a pizza intended for a single person, is trite but at least reasonably cute.  “Hipsters” is even more fun, as sharing a delicious pizza leads to sharing of a different sort: one character “shares” that he’s tired of being hip, another (her name is Willow, of course) admits that she doesn’t even know what her neck tattoo means, the pizza is described as “way better than kale” (I’ll grant that much), and kombucha is called “garbage water.”  It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but at least it brings a smile.

“Book Club” starts down the same road, but it takes a wrong turn.  Sharing the pizza prompts one woman to “share” that she didn’t actually read the book.  Indeed, no one has; the closest anyone can come is the hostess, Linda, who “watched the movie last night.”  So far, so good.  But the ensuing dialogue goes like this:

-- I judged it by its cover.

-- I haven’t read a book since middle school.

-- I’m secretly seeing two other book clubs.  [What?]

-- I can’t even read.  [He’s holding the book upside-down.]

-- I’m not really Gary.  He just paid me to be here.  [Again, what?]

If “Hipsters” showed something like a moment of enlightenment for the characters—they’re questioning their past pretentiousness in the name of hipness—“Book Club” seems to excuse that very pomposity and deception.  If Willow and her friends begin to re-evaluate the illusory benefits of being hip, Linda and her book club giggle about how cute it is to be superficial, anti-intellectual, illiterate, and deceitful.  Eating that tasty pizza brings the hipsters to a realization that “kale sucks”; for the book-clubbers, though, it prompts only the joys of shared ignorance and imbecility.

No, I’m not blaming the purveyors of frozen pizza for the decline of thoughtful analysis that has characterized the last couple of decades in this country.  But that one ad in particular, while not a contagion, is at least a symptom.

One of the first papers Curmie wrote as an undergrad was for a class on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  (I ended up in that class because my first couple of choices for a Freshman Seminar were full when I tried to register, and I’d at least heard of Rousseau.)  We’d just read Émile, in which one of the key points was that what we try to teach and what a child sees in that pedagogical moment do not always coincide.  We were assigned to write a short analysis of a contemporary story or event from the perspective of such a child.

I don’t remember what I wrote about (it was over a half century ago… ouch!), but the assignment itself keeps re-appearing in my consciousness after all this time.  I know what “Book Club” intends its message to be, but what I see is “stupid, incurious, and artificial people like our product.”

Dammit, it seems like Curmie is writing about politics, after all…  

A slightly edited version of this piece appears under the (better) title of “Curse You, Red Baron!” on the Ethics Alarms site.

If the Dog Hadn't Stopped...

Still at large

Curmie knows next to nothing about his great-grandfather (his paternal grandfather’s father) except that he was a fount of aphorisms.  His cruder, and therefore in times like these more appropriate, version of “if frogs had wings…” was “if the dog hadn’t stopped to shit, he’d have caught the fox.”

That saying resonates in Curmie’s mind as he gazes at the dumpster fire that is the American political scene.  (Curmie wishes his commentary from 17 months ago were a little less apt.)  On the one hand, we have a convicted felon who is walking the streets at all only because judges he appointed have made up ridiculous reasons to let him off the hook.  Was his prosecution political?  Probably.  But the fact remains that the lawyers for the guy who boasts that he hires only the best people were there for the voir dire.  If a single one of the jurors they helped select had as much as “reasonable doubt” that Donald Trump had done the things that he was accused of doing, and that they were felonies, he wouldn’t have been convicted.

One could make the case that Trump wasn’t the worst President in US history (he’s a contender, though), but he is surely the most vulgar, narcissistic, mendacious, and authoritarian.

On the other hand the Democrats have apparently anointed one of the most singularly unaccomplished vice presidents in American history, a smug but not terribly intelligent partisan hack who got the gig by demographics rather than competence.  (Yes, Curmie knows that could be said for a lot of white men, too.)  She was polling in single-digits even in her home state in her presidential run in the last election before dropping out before primary voting even started.  Once elected as VP, she lasted about a month on the job before she was shunted to the background, as she offered little in the way of policy expertise and made the often gaffe-ridden Joe Biden look like Cicero himself by comparison.  Jolly.

So… how’d we get here?  Well, a lot of dogs stopped to shit.

If the press hadn’t given Trump far more free media coverage than all the other Republican candidates combined in the 2016 primary season, we’d have caught the fox.

If the Clintonites didn’t actually encourage that practice, believing (wrongly, of course) that Trump would never win the nomination, let alone the presidency, but would push the more viable candidates to the right, making Hillary’s path easier, we’d have caught the fox.

If the GOP didn’t have a ridiculous policy of giving all the delegates from a primary election to the “winning” candidate, even if that person got barely a quarter of the votes, one of the not-Trump Republicans would have emerged as the nominee, and we’d have caught the fox.

If the DNC hadn’t colluded to get Hillary Clinton the 2016 nomination, there’s a good chance we’d have caught the fox.

If she’d run a competent campaign focusing on swing states instead of smugly assuming an easy victory, we’d have caught the fox.

If presidential elections were won by the person who got the most votes instead of following an archaic system designed to appease slave-owning states, we’d have caught the fox.

If the DNC hadn’t colluded to get Joe Biden the 2020 nomination, there’s a good chance we’d have caught the fox.

If Biden hadn’t made a stupid pledge to select a BIPOC woman as his running mate, we’d have almost certainly caught the fox.  [N.B., Curmie grants that Harris is a far better choice than either of Trump’s VP choices.]

If Trump were appropriately held responsible, either by the courts or by the populace (including Republican voters), for the events of January 6 and for his clear attempts to overturn a fair election, we’d have caught the fox.  [Side note: if you want to say that the press treated Trump unfairly, Curmie will listen.  But if you want to dispute the testimony of a series of Republican governors and secretaries of state that Biden had won their state, please leave.  This blog is for people who can think.]

If the GOP had said, as they certainly could have, that you’re not going to be our nominee if you don’t participate in the primary debates, we’d quite possibly have caught the fox.

If the GOP had literally any other candidate who might conceivably attract the attention of a swing voter, it’s pretty likely we’d have caught the fox.  But when Nikki Haley is the most palatable of the alternatives…

If Trump had been jailed for contempt of court, as literally any other defendant who pulled his antics would have been, we’d be well on our way to catching the fox.

If SCOTUS had refused to hear Trump’s absurd assertion of absolute immunity instead of delaying… and delaying… and delaying… and then finally granting partial immunity, denying intent as a determining factor and sending rest of the whole business back to the lower courts, thereby ensuring there would be no real ruling before the election, we’d have caught the fox.

If, indeed, any Trump-appointed judge (Curmie’s looking at you, Aileen Cannon) cared more about the nation than about their blubbery hero, catching the fox would be within reach.

If Joe Biden’s inner circle and the major media hadn’t so obviously lied to the public about the man’s mental health issues, we’d be closer to catching the fox.

If Joe Biden, his advisors, and pundits from the left really cared about their country (and their party), he’d have announced that he wasn’t going to seek re-election a year ago, when his faculties were clearly already in decline.  Then at least a sizeable chunk of the $100 million or so in Biden’s campaign coffers would have gone to a candidate whom actual voters would have had at least a little say in selecting.  Yes, the DNC would have stacked the deck for Harris, but Curmie still doubts that she’d have emerged victorious.  If she did, however, the process would have had at least some legitimacy.  Either way, we’d be in a better position to catch the fox.

If Biden had trusted his own delegates to come to their own conclusions about who should be the nominee after his withdrawal from the race, we’d be closer to catching the fox.

There’s a reason the cover photo on Curmie’s Facebook page is of John McEnery as Mercutio in the Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet, uttering the character’s most famous line, “A plague o’ both your houses.” Since the only alternative, Baby Bobby, is a full-fledged wackadoodle, our choice, it appears, is between about the worst possible candidates for both major parties, although to be fair Biden (or DeSantis or Haley or Ramaswamy) would have been awful, too.  Curmie is going to vote for the mediocrity instead of the hubristic sociopath, but, Gentle Reader, we’re going to need a bigger pooper-scooper.

And the fox is still at large.

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checker

 

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document offers a glimpse of a dystopian future, even for those who agree with some of its recommendations.  It’s set up as a game plan for a conservative (e.g., Trump) administration.  Donald Trump himself has, characteristically, either lied about it or revealed himself to be less au courant with the world of politics than is the average cocker spaniel.  (Or both.)

In a post on his ironically named Truth Social platform, he wrote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”  Yeah, right.  The overwhelming majority of the screed was written by former Trump administration staffers; if he doesn’t know that much, it’s not Joe Biden who’s more in need of cognitive testing.

Curmie also confesses to being a little confused as to how Trump can “know nothing” about Project 2025 but also “disagree with some of the things they’re saying.”  The man has always been incoherent, but it’s getting worse.  On the other hand, he does seem to be sufficiently in control of his faculties to avoid saying which parts of the document are “absolutely ridiculous,” as that would alienate the yahoos of his base.  As it is, they know he’s lying, and they’re OK with that: all for a good cause, after all, same as the SCOTUS nominees lying about Roe v. Wade as “settled law.”  Indeed, everyone knows he’s lying, but few Democrats are willing to say so in so many words, and conservatives, even the otherwise intelligent ones, pass it off as everyday “exaggeration.”  Boys will be boys, after all.

Curmie is not at all interested in reading the entire 900ish pages of the Mandate for Leadership; he’s seen quite enough, thank you.  But a Friend of Curmie posted the meme you see above on her Facebook page, and Meta proceeded to label it “partly false” because “independent fact-checkers” had deemed it so. 

The “independent” lads and lasses in question are in fact a single (as in not plural, rather than unmarried) dude named Alex Demas, who writes for a publication called The Dispatch, which describes itself as “conservative,” “center-right,” “unbiased,” and “fact-based”… yet describes the Democratic Party as endorsing “abortion-until-birth… [and] wholesale gun confiscation.”  Curmie considers himself reasonably well aware of political perspectives, and he has literally never seen any significant Democrat argue for either, let alone both, of these things, nor does he know anyone personally who has championed either cause.  So much for Meta censoring the right!  (Well, to be fair, they did move Demas’s “mostly false” verdict to “partly false.”)

But just because The Dispatch straddles the line between “far right” and “wackadoodle” while pretending to be otherwise doesn’t mean that Demas’s commentary is inherently flawed.  And it’s not at all uncommon for some folks on the left to stray from objectivity and truth.  So let’s take a look.

Curmie wants it known that he wrote all of the above without comparing the assertions in the meme with the “Mandate.”  He promised himself that he’d post his findings irrespective of what he discovered.  As noted above, I’m not going to check all 900 pages to see if something that appears in the meme is in the book.  I’m not going to take Demas’s word for it.  But let’s look at two things: those that Demas regards as accurate assessments and those for which the meme provides page numbers.  It’s easy enough to look at page 691 to see if it includes what the meme says it does.  (Well, since the meme-creator was so sloppy, it gets a little harder to see if a passage exists anywhere in the document, but there is a word-search function.)

So: Demas grants the accuracy of the assertions that the Heritage Foundation (hereafter, the HF) is advocating the following: 1). providing additional tax breaks for corporations and the 1 percent, 2). eliminating the Department of Education, 3). using public taxpayer money for private religious schools, 4). increasing Arctic drilling, 5). deregulating big business and the oil industry, 6). promoting and expediting capital punishment, and 7). banning transgender service in the military.  There’s plenty on this list already (especially the odd-numbered ones) that makes Curmie certain to vote against anyone who supports these initiatives, but let’s look at the other stuff.

Let’s shorten this post by noting that Curmie agrees with Demas that the following claims in the meme are indeed false: 1). Cut Social Security, 2). Cut Medicare, 3). End birthright citizenship. 

And Curmie agrees that the following are mostly false: 1). End the Affordable Care Act, 2). End civil rights and DEI protections in government, 3). Use the military to break up domestic protests. 

There are also two “partly false” ratings that seem reasonable to Curmie: 1). Mass deportation of immigrants and incarceration in ‘camps,’ and 2). Eliminates federal agencies like the FDA, EPA, NOAA, and more.  In the latter case, the problem is overreach: the document is replete with commentary on what the FDA should be doing, for example.  There is a suggestion to eliminate NOAA, however.  The storm that passed through town a few days ago had been downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it got here, but it was still powerful enough to rip the roof off a modular home two blocks from Chez Curmie and plonk it down in those folks’ front yard.  Given the utter incompetence of GOP so-called leaders in Texas, Curmie would really like to keep NOAA around to know what’s coming.

It should be noted that Curmie is looking at this specific document.  Some of the meme’s allegations are true of Donald Trump, or of what it has been reported the HF is considering.  Others have been advanced by other conservative organizations or politicians.  But if it’s not in the Project 2025 tome, it’s not in the Project 2025 tome.

So, let’s look at where Demas and Curmie disagree, even if only marginally.  Demas lists all of the following as “false.”

“Complete ban on abortions without exceptions.”  Demas is splitting hairs.  The document doesn’t use those words, but who does Demas think he’s fooling?  The chapter defines human life as beginning at conception (because they say so), argues that “abortion and euthanasia are not healthcare,” objects to the CDC using fetal cell lines to search for a solution to the COVID-19 pandemic, outlaws chemical abortifacients (Demas does acknowledge this one), and doesn’t seem to even consider exceptions for rape or incest.  The folks that pretend to be in favor of small government and personal liberty also lay out a series of bureaucratic intrusions into the lives of women who seek or receive abortions where they are legal.  The proposal does stop just short of an outright ban, but it sure looks like this is the thin edge of the wedge.  Curmie’s verdict: mostly true.

Ban contraceptives.  This time, it’s the meme that quibbles.  Yes, one particular contraceptive would be banned, but there’s no comprehensive policy recommendation.  That said, if we’re going to take as given that human life begins at conception, then the fact that a goodly number of contraceptives are designed to prevent fertilization (which happens after conception) becomes relevant.  I don’t think that’s what they’re going for, though, at least not yet.  Mostly false.

Elimination of unions and worker protections.  Demas is pretty accurate on this one.  There is nothing to suggest that unions should be eliminated (and there’s nothing even vaguely relevant on page 581).  There is, however, a push for “Non-Union Worker Voice and Representation,” which certainly seems like an attempt to reduce unions’ power.  Curmie says mostly false.

Teach Christian religious beliefs in public schools.  The relevant chapter includes a couple of interesting ideas and a plethora of utterly horrific ones, including, as Demas acknowledges, using taxpayer money to support private religious schools.  So it’s being just a little too cute to say the document doesn’t advocate teaching Christian ideology in public schools, because their little end run around the First Amendment makes religious schools de facto public schools.  Red state pols have been trying to enact this crap for years, and it’s not difficult to see the dominionists at the Heritage Foundation urging them on.  Curmie isn’t buying this charade, and although tempted to moderate his stance and say “mostly true,” it’s a full-throated true on this one.

Ban African American and gender studies in all levels of education. Demas admits that Critical Race Theory would indeed be de facto outlawed at all levels.  Those conservatives sure are champions of free speech… when they agree with it.  The rest of Demas’s analysis is reasonable enough, at least on the surface, since the HF is a little cagier than the Ron DeSantises of the world.  Mostly false.

Ending climate protections.  True, some of what is being proposed here amounts to little more than re-allocating resources, especially from the federal level to regions and states.  But a good deal of it prioritizes short-term economic advantages to corporations over the environment and the interests of the nation.  If Demas honestly believes that “the changes do not broadly curtail efforts at climate protection,” he needs to share what he’s smoking.  Mostly true.

End marriage equality.  Oh, puh-leeze.  As usual, the page numbers aren’t even close to accurate.  But the “Mandate” as a whole hyperventilates over “Biblical” marriage, going so far as to encourage heterosexual Christian couples (you know, the important ones) to marry even if they’re not quite ready to do so.  It argues that Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) Grants should be available, apparently exclusively, “to faith-based recipients who affirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman.”  It advocates “policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families” with a father and a mother.  That’s defined elsewhere as “healthy marriage.”  There’s nothing to say that same-sex marriages can’t happen, but the authors advocate a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” which is the only kind that really matters to them.  And “equality” means more than just “legal.”  Mostly true.

Defund the FBI and Homeland Security.  Another “it isn’t on the page the meme says it is.”  The lead proposal in the relevant chapter is to “dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”  On the one hand, it’s clear that what the HF seeks is a restructuring whereby the DHS’s responsibilities would be assigned to other government agencies.  It is more than a little difficult, however, to reconcile Demas’s assertion that “There are no calls to defund the FBI or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the plan” with the document’s promise to “cut billions in spending” by enacting the proposed changes to DHS.  (Such a reassignment of tasks may be a good idea, but that’s not the issue here.) 

The document also recommends that “[t]he next conservative Administration should eliminate any offices within the FBI that it has the power to eliminate without any action from Congress.”  It’s unclear whether those offices would be assigned elsewhere (if not, then we’re definitely talking about “defunding”), but it’s clear that the HF wants the FBI to be more subservient to the (politically appointed) Attorney General, who, in a conservative administration, would be answerable directly to the President.  It will be interesting to see how much the HF still advocates that policy should President Biden be re-elected.  Mostly true.

OK, so where does this all leave us?  Of the sixteen allegations Curmie checked out, he found nine that were in his opinion mostly false or worse, and two others that were partly false.  That’s not good.  The meme-maker did us all a profound disservice by being lazy, irresponsible, and, frankly, stupid.  The legitimate objections to this abominable and occasionally unconstitutional “Mandate” are severely undercut by its proponents’ ability to point to the manifold errors in the critique.

Unfortunately, this sloppiness is unsurprising.  Nor should anyone be shocked by the fact that Demas seeks to downplay the document’s privileging of rich cishet Christians (Jews are borderline acceptable), preferably white males, or by Curmie’s desire to highlight those very points.  We all see the world, and indeed what we believe to be objective truth, through the lens of our own experience and political philosophy.

Facebook was ill-served by relying on a single, far from neutral, fact-checker, but their ultimate conclusion that the meme is “partly false” is difficult to dispute.

We need to be right on the facts, but we also need to be united in our criticism.  The Mandate for Leadership is a nightmarish document.  If nothing else, any text that includes the phrase “human resources onboarding operations” needs to be rejected immediately.

Questions. Curmie’s Got Questions.

One of Curmie’s current research projects is trying to determine who directed a terrible but historically interesting play that premiered in Dublin over a century ago.  He doesn’t know exactly what happened—he’s hoping for some archival assistance that hasn’t yet been offered—but he’s about 98% certain that a host of big-name scholars are wrong. 

He experienced a similar phenomenon in considering the events in Butler, PA on Saturday.  He doesn’t know what happened, but has some suspicions that what didn’t happen was that Thomas Michael Crooks, acting alone, attempted to assassinate ex-President Trump with an “AR-style weapon” from a rooftop 150 hundred yards away.  Were it not for the four other casualties (including Crooks), Curmie would be ready to declare unequivocally that it was all a hoax.  As it is, he’s at the “eyebrow raised in suspicion” phase.  That, Gentle Reader, is still a fair distance from “we’re hearing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Not a few of Curmie’s theatre friends reacted immediately to the news of what has been described as an assassination attempt, suggesting that it looked staged (Curmie agrees).  A number of folks experienced in military and security operations have also expressed doubts.  Curmie had a link to a meme/quote from such a person, but it has vanished into the ether.  Thanks, Facebook!

Curmie generally detests conspiracy theories, and he’s not pushing one here, but before subscribing to the official version of events, he’s got some questions that need answers.

1.     1. How did this kid who’s not military, CIA, or anything like that, and who has no relevant training, get into position where he could even get a shot in the general direction of someone with Secret Service protection?  Why would the security detail leave such an obvious space accessible?  And how did Crooks know it wouldn’t be secured?  Curmie is more than a little skeptical about that whole “outside the security perimeter” business.

2.     2. Did the Secret Service intentionally allow this to happen?  Because they wanted Trump dead?  Because they knew it was a ruse?  Or are they just terrible at their jobs?

3.     3. What was Crooks’s motive?  He’s a registered Republican.  Is he a Liz Cheney kind of Republican, harboring a grudge against Trump?  Does the fact that he once gave $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote cause mean anything?  Did he join the GOP just to disrupt the primaries, as someone on the right has tried to claim?  Was his motive political at all?  He certainly wouldn’t be the first prospective assassin to have an altogether apolitical reason for attempting the life of a politician.  Perhaps there’s a latter-day Jodie Foster to impress out there somewhere.

4.     4. He’s got an “AR-style weapon.”  Those things fire about 10 rounds per second.  If he really wanted to kill the ex-President and (apparently) didn’t care about collateral damage, why did he get off only 8 rounds?  Wouldn’t he have sprayed the stage?  Instead, we hear a series of pops (see about the 14 second mark here).  If you’ve got a semi-automatic rifle and you’re trying to shoot someone, why don’t you use the weapon the way it’s intended to be used? 

5.     5. It’s also a little hard to believe that the Secret Service identified the source of the gunfire, took aim, and shot Crooks dead in less than a second.  Or, if the Secret Service was indeed in position to respond that quickly, why didn’t they either shoot Crooks before he fired or radio to their colleagues on the stage to get Trump out of harm’s way?  Or, you know… both?

6.     6. When the shots are fired, Trump quickly grabs his right ear.  Yet the video of the event appears to show no signs of blood on his hand when he brings it down again a second or two later.  One of Curmie’s Dad’s friends paid his way through grad school by working as a professional wrestling villain.  One of his schticks, bloodying his opponent while pretending to bite his ear, was founded on the fact that cuts to the ear bleed a lot.  A small piece of razor blade serves the purpose admirably.  Curmie is not suggesting that’s what happened, but doesn’t rule out the possibility.  If he trusted Trump even a little, this thought would never even flicker across Curmie’s mind.

7.     7. Why do the rally-goers immediately behind Trump show concern for their hero but little if any fear for their own safety?  As it happens, they probably weren’t in the line of fire, assuming Crooks was indeed a lone gunman, but they’d have no way of knowing that.  In theatre terms, Crooks was offstage right, and would be shooting past them (unless he was spraying the stage), but they’d have had no reason to believe that the threat was over.  The “shooter’s down” announcement doesn’t come until nearly a full minute after the first shots are fired.

8.     8. Why was there an apparently reliable source who claimed that Trump was hit by glass fragments from a teleprompter rather than a bullet?  Stated otherwise, what would be gained, by literally anyone, if that report were to be believed?  (By the way, the direction Trump was facing as the shots were fired would make it impossible for him to be hit on the right side in this manner.)

9.     9. Then, as Lieutenant Columbo in the meme at the top of the page wants to know, why would Trump behave the way he did after being shot (worried about his shoes?  really?), and why, as the military veteran mentioned above (the one whose post was apparently censored by Facebook) wants to know, did the Secret Service let him get away with this bravado at the risk of his safety?  (Or was the incident all an illusion, with bravado to match?)

1    10. Or was this somehow a “hit” orchestrated by the Biden campaign, as wackadoodle Congresscritter Mike Collins alleges without, of course, a whiff of evidence?  Yes, it sounds stupid, but insert something about stopped clocks here.  But if it was a hit, why hire a 20-year-kid instead of, you know, a hitman?  Maybe Crooks was the best they could find on Craig’s List?  

There are, indeed, questions.  Perhaps there are answers forthcoming: an explanation of the lapses by the Secret Service, a rationale for Crooks’s actions, a bullet fragment with Trump’s blood or tissue on it, etc.  The alternative to what now passes for the true story is terrifying indeed, as it would entail an elaborate plot in which multiple Secret Service agents would have to be complicit rather than merely incompetent.  

Yes, Trump is an accomplished conman a consummate showman, and there’s no question that he’s an amoral narcissist and, shall we say, not a devotee of truth-telling… but could even Donald Trump be willing to sacrifice a couple of his followers for an opportunity to grandstand?  That seems unlikely.  Not, alas, impossible, but unlikely.  Curmie does suspect, though, that Dolt45 might be sufficiently wily to seize on an opportunity to showboat when one presents itself and sufficiently stupid to do so even at the risk of self-endangerment.  His hubris is about all he has going for him, after all.

And there’s no question that the incident worked to Trump’s political advantage.  Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms argues to the contrary in a comment, noting that it knocked Biden’s lack of acuity off the front pages.  But the most recent headlines were about what a totalitarian nightmare Project 2025 is, and Trump emerges from the event having shown defiance and what could be interpreted as courage.  In the minds of idiots—and the MAGA minions (as opposed to those who will hold their nose and vote for him as the lesser of two evils… as Curmie will do in the other direction) all fit in this category—he, unlike those dozens of schoolkids who’ve been killed by assholes with an assault rifle, was protected by the grace of God Himself.  The more the campaign is about literally anything other than policy, the better for Trump.

It may be true; indeed it probably is true, that the Conventional Wisdom is generally if not completely accurate.  But watching the video of the incident was rather like sitting through a particularly poorly directed episode of “Covert Affairs,” except instead of attractive actors like Piper Perabo and Christopher Gorham we’re stuck looking at a morbidly obese geriatric demagogue.  The entire nation must have been very naughty indeed in a previous life.

Independence Day Contemplations on the Mythic, the Hallucinatory, and the Real

Independence Day posts have become something of a tradition for Curmie: not every year of late, but more often than not in the last few years.  In 2018 Curmie emerged from a writing hiatus to think of the day through Bruce Springsteen songs, especially “Independence Day,” which of course has nothing to do with the Fourth of July but does offer us this lyric: “Because there’s just different people coming down here now / And they see things in different ways / And soon everything we've known will just be swept away.”

Two years later, Curmie based his Independence Day musings on a line from the Aaron Sorkin TV series “The Newsroom”: the US is not “the greatest country in the world,” “but it can be.”  Two years later still, in 2022, Curmie headed his post with a quote from James Baldwin, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Last year’s “contemplations” included some stark observations about the state of the nation and the world, but ultimately expressed some hope that on this day at least we might start thinking of ourselves as Americans first and members of other taxonomies—political perspective, race, gender, religion, etc.—secondarily.

All of these posts revolve around the same theme: that our collective failure to achieve our aspirational goals for the country should lead not to despair but to resolve.  There was too much right about the USA to allow ourselves to be sucked into petty bickering and fear-mongering.

Curmie still believes in resolve, in fighting the good fight, but he despairs, nonetheless.  The two presumptive nominees for the presidency are both old men.  One is already an octogenarian, the other will be before the next presidential term expires.  Both spew incomprehensible word salads on a regular basis.  Neither is as sharp as he was even a couple of years ago, and neither was ever an intellectual giant.  Both are narcissistic, totalitarian, mentally suspect, and mendacious.  They manifest these traits in different ways and to different degrees, but all of them are strikingly obvious in both men.  In that 2020 piece, Curmie wrote that there are three fundamental criteria by which politicians ought to be judged: intelligence, integrity, and sanity.  Neither of these guys is even average at any of those standards.

We are left with fear, and perhaps a little whataboutism.  Seriously, Gentle Reader, what is the case for either of these candidates other than protecting the nation from the other guy… an other guy who threatens the very freedoms this fledgling nation sought to guarantee?  The problem is that both candidates are right about one thing if nothing else: the other guy is unfit for office.

Does Curmie think one of these guys is even worse than the other?  Sure, but that’s hardly the way things ought to work.  Eightyish years ago this country cast its lot with Josef Stalin in opposition to Adolf Hitler: not a happy choice, and one whose downside manifested itself for decades… but it was nonetheless the right call.  An alliance with Winston Churchill, whatever his faults, was still a lot more palatable.

Seventeen months ago Curmie surveyed the political field in the light of a then-recent poll showing that the majority of Democrats didn’t want Joe Biden to seek re-election.  The fact that Curmie titled his piece “2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid” should tell you all you need to know.  As Curmie said at the time, “The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa.”

Had Biden chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have dropped out of the race a year ago.  He might have even moved closer to securing the southern border, as Trump’s minions would have have less incentive to scuttle a bipartisan bill lest it give Biden a victory.  Much better, in their minds, to have a campaign issue than to solve a problem, after all.

Had Trump chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have accepted the rather resounding defeat he suffered in 2020 and faded away.  (Yeah, like that could have happened!)  Oh, and the Republican Party would have chosen someone at least a little less offensive to sane people.

Those rich white Christian guys who adopted the Declaration of Independence 248 years ago today did not succumb to either the negativity or the cowardice we see today.  They saw a vision of a glorious new nation, and they were ready to take on the greatest military power in the world to get it.  They knew that the fight, literal and figurative, would be long and intense.  And they were ready to take up the challenge.  We need to be the same. 

But how to do that?  By rallying behind a mentally declining old man because he may be less than honest but at least not malicious or evil?  “Our candidate sucks less than yours does” is less than an ideal rallying cry.  Communication theory suggests two kinds of persuasion: positive connections (X will lead to a good Y, and we therefore need to seek X) and negative connections (X will lead to a bad Y, and we therefore need to prevent X).  The campaigns so far are 90% (or more) negative on both sides.  We fear the consequences if “our side” loses rather than looking forward to the brighter future if we win.  This is both unsurprising and disturbing.  Alas, it’s also inevitable, as there isn’t a lot positive to say.

One of Curmie’s favorite new (in this context) terms is “hallucinatory,” referring to AI programs’ willingness, when the alternative is to admit that they don’t have an answer, to just make shit up.  It’s not exactly intentionally false; the program would have told the truth if it could have; it’s just that, like a politician, it doesn’t know how to shut up when it’s got nothing relevant to say.  Nor are all the untrue statements currently being hurled around by the pols and the pundits mendacious; some, perhaps many, are merely hallucinatory.  This is small consolation.

There is, as the title of a course Curmie taught as a grad student 40 years ago suggests, such a thing as the “American myth.”  The term as applied in that context uses “myth” in an anthropological sense: not as a fiction, necessarily, but as that which is believed on the basis of faith rather than evidence. To say that there is a lot of myth masquerading as reality on both sides of the political aisle is merely tautological.

Today, Independence Day, is the time to nevertheless celebrate the myth, and to pledge to seek to merge it with reality.  If we could keep the hallucinations at bay, that would be a good thing, too.

Please forgive the wonkiness of the formatting if you’re on a computer (it looked OK on my phone).  Blogspot being Blogspot.  Curmie spent 20 minutes trying to fix it, to no avail.