The Donald Trump Show (Burning Sensation)

“The political establishments of both parties brought about this war. Are they willing to swallow their pride to end it or will Trump have to do to the Beltway Ivory Tower what Sherman did to Atlanta?”

―Joseph R. Murray, II

We might indeed acknowledge uncertainty as to why the thought of Donald Trump’s queer outreach administrator appealing to the burning of Atlanta with all the grace of a domestic abuser making excuses for himself might seem remotely funny.

“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will,” General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to Atlanta’s officials as he moved forward with plans to evacuate and burn the city. “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

Less than three months before the presidential election, the political establishment and media elites are facing the “curses and malediction” of war of their own making. After years of being used and abused, the Silent Majority they muzzled is rising up and its voice is Republican nominee Donald Trump.

There is no doubt the protectors of the status quo see a threat in Trump. Why else does the media hang on Trump’s every word and pounce whenever they get a whiff of a salacious scent, no matter how faint? Why else has the establishment professed that Trump must change the very formula that resulted in him trouncing multiple Republican rivals―many of whom were thought to be the crème de la crème of Republican politicians?

The answer? Trump is winning this war to restore the Silent Majority and his victory means the pay for play power structure in Washington―enjoyed by both Democrats and Republicans alike―is about to come crashing down.

Maybe it has something to do with the vein-popping apoplexy about what reads like the embittered triumphal confession of defeat, as if it is all of the third week in August and already the time has come to start accounting for what pass as blessings or redemption amid the devastation of failure.

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Image note: Top ― Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump departs from a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami, Florida, 27 July 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Carlo Allegri) Right ― Detail of This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos, 15 August 2016.

Murray II, Joseph R. “Trump’s recruitment of Bannon means war and everyone knows it”. The Hill. 19 August 2016.

A Note for Jim Webb

MEMORANDUM

To: Fmr. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA)

re: About that presidential campaign

Just so we’re clear, sir, you probably shouldn’t be wondering why your Democratic presidential nomination bid drew so little support.

• msnbc: “Former Dem. candidate: I won’t vote Clinton” (4 March 2016)

• Politico: “Jim Webb: I won’t vote for Clinton, but I may for Trump” (4 March 2016)

No, really. Don’t wonder.

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Image notes: Top ― Former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), during the Democratic presidential candidates debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, 13 October 2015. (Detail of photo by Joe Raedle.) Bottom ― “.@JimWebbUSA: ‘No,’ I won’t vote for @HillaryClinton, but I’m ‘not sure yet’ on Trump”; msnbc’s Morning Joe program, via Twitter, 4 March 2016.

Collins, Ezra. “Jim Webb: I won’t vote for Clinton, but I may for Trump”. Politico. 4 March 2016.

msnbc. “Former Dem. candidate: I won’t vote Clinton”. Morning Joe. 4 March 2016.

A Note on Fact Checking, Equivocation, and the American Press

“Sometimes a lawmaker will wander on the floor of the House or Senate and begin speaking without any notes. That’s a big mistake, especially for someone like Sessions — who is chairman of the House Rules Committee and was speaking about the federal budget.”

―Glenn Kessler

The American political discourse is a strange brew of curious and even counterintuitive histories. There are the politicians, as a general classification, and if everything that can be said about them has been, it still isn’t enough. Voters are viciously demanding, and often contradictory unto themselves, both generally as a classification and particularly as individuals. The press is a business proposition―not the Fourth Estate―that has discovered better profits pretending that all things are equal.

Perhaps we might recall John Kerry’s run for president in 2004. The former U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State encountered a familiar problem along the way, a group of right-wing scandalmongers that had dogged him with their complaints for decades. He did what he always did, what people in Massachusetts were accustomed to, which was try to ignore them.

In the end, that didn’t work, because the press didn’t just treat the Swiftboat controversy as a shiny object, but as a shiny new thing. The American mainstream press is a business proposition, not the Fourth Estate. Due diligence in American journalism is simply enough explained: If somebody says something about somebody else, ask that other person. If there is a history defining the original claim as false, that is not of any useful concern to the press.

For Kerry, the fix was essentially in. Addressing the fake scandal was to stoop; ignoring the fake scandal was bad politics. That these people were lying and always had been was not of any useful concern to the press, despite the dishonesty being apparent from the outset.

In the end, Kerry was vindicated when a Newsweek reporter tracked down the third person who received medals for his actions on the day in question, and even the official paperwork showed Larry Thurlow to be a liar. The press’ response? To complain about John Kerry.

Voters? Hell, most can’t even be bothered to read the state voters’ guides. They need the press to tell them what’s in it, except most years the press doesn’t bother, either.

The response over the years has become a specialized cottage industry within journalism: fact checking. And it needs to be a specialty, because, well, you know, even by allegedly respectable standards, facts have nothing to do with being a reporter.^α

In the 2012 cycle, reporter Matt Appuzzo deliberately tanked a fact check, an act of journalistic activism the Associated Press defended as appropriate. And in a certain sense, one can argue it really was: The fact check would have been unkind to one candidate, which is a problem for a press in which equivocation is a professional standard, so poor Matt Apuzzo had no choice but to invoke irrelevant history in order to throw Romney a bone.

All of which leads us up to a consideration of “why lawmakers should not speak without notes”:

Sometimes a lawmaker will wander on the floor of the House or Senate and begin speaking without any notes. That’s a big mistake, especially for someone like Sessions — who is chairman of the House Rules Committee and was speaking about the federal budget.

Kessler and the WaPo team awarded “four pinnocchios”, and advised that, “Senior lawmakers should not be uttering nonsense math on the House floor”. But this analysis falsely adheres to the notion of “all things being equal”, when in fact they are not.