The death of “Democracy Dies in Darkness."

I'm reading "The Washington Post’s New Mission: Reach ‘All of America’ /This week, The Post began trying out a new mission statement: 'Riveting Storytelling for All of America'" (NYT):

After Donald J. Trump entered the White House in 2017, The Washington Post adopted a slogan that underscored the newspaper’s traditional role as a government watchdog: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, the newspaper debuted a mission statement that evokes a more expansive view of The Post’s journalism, without death or darkness: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.”

The new slogan is terrible. The old slogan was also terrible, but at least it was ridiculous. "Riveting Storytelling for All of America" is just really dumb — a dumb slogan expressing the opinion that America is dumb, but what are you going to do? 

It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul's State of the State Address: pic.twitter.com/nFsb7Fowu0

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2025

"Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.’s obituary will be stalked by the counterfactual: What if he hadn’t made the selfish decision to run for reelection?"

"What if he had passed the torch a year or even six months earlier?... The way that events unfolded—his catastrophic debate performance, the stark clarity with which the nation came to understand his geriatric state–-beggars belief. Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier? Why didn’t his aides stop him from running?"

Writes Franklin Foer in The Atlantic, in "How Biden Destroyed His Legacy/The president’s accomplishments are considerable, but on his signature issue of preserving democracy, he failed spectacularly."

Let me answer those questions (as I'm sure you can answer them): Democrats wanted 4 more years of a mentally deficient presidential figurehead for their power. They just desperately changed their plan when we the people got too good of a sudden, scary glimpse at what they'd been up to.

But Foer says: "A cabal intent on preserving its own power would never have blundered in such tragically self-defeating fashion." And: "Democrats ignored a cascade of warning signs...." Is Foer writing to give them cover?

What do you think? Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier? 

So, what's your answer?

Cabal

Bumblers

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I keep rereading this sentence: "A cabal intent on preserving its own power would never have blundered in such tragically self-defeating fashion." It gets funnier every time. 

"I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution."

From "Statement from President Joe Biden on the Equal Rights Amendment."

What does that mean? Did he do anything or is he just sharing his thoughts?

From the NYT: "Trump Transition Live Updates: Equal Rights Amendment Has Passed, Biden Says, but He Does Not Force Certification": "President Biden... said he would not press a legal fight by ordering the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it."

The conspicuous doing of nothing.

Supreme Court upholds the TikTok ban.

Opinion here.

Per curiam. Sotomayor concurs, but let's read the Gorsuch opinion, concurring:

To what extent does Trump's new official portrait look like his mugshot?

 Surely, the resemblance is intentional... but so are the differences:

The similarities include the framing of the picture. Notice how the side of the collar and lapel line up under the ear (the famous ear!) and how much of the top of the head is showing, with the chin down. There's a lack of symmetry in the eyes, and a distinctive arced wrinkle over his left eye.

But the mugshot face has garish color and harsh light and shade and a deep frown line on the left side of the mouth. The official portrait lighting puts the shadow where it is flattering and where it reveals the individuality and humanity of the face. By comparison, mugshot Trump seems cartoonish. It's almost as if the light were adjusted to create the look of a Hitler mustache. 

In both pictures Trump's right eye seems more active. It's more narrowly pinched than his left eye. It's the eye that's looking right into you. The portrait eye is gentler, wiser, and it influences my interpretation of the mugshot eye. Mugshot Trump is angry. And, oh!, those mugshot eyebrows. They overhang the eyes ominously. He's saying he will fight, fight, fight. Portrait Trump is more complex.

What do you see in him? Whatever it is, it includes his intent to make you think about the mugshot and all that it represents. His adversaries threw everything they could at him, and he fought back and triumphed. But he's not smiling. He's not the Trump in the 2017 portrait:

But who is he? Who is he, now that he's Trump 47?

"Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership."

"Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement." 

Said "a White House official," quoted in "Biden administration will leave it to Trump to implement TikTok ban/The ban goes into effect on Sunday unless the Supreme Court intervenes" (ABC News).

What's not clear, of course, is the position if there is no "American ownership." It is clear that at long last the Biden administration will be going. It did seem as though Biden might want to horn in on the role of TikTok savior, but no. It will leave this one to Trump (or the Supreme Court).

Speaking of the last moments, Bob Dylan joined TikTok a couple days ago, just in time to make fun of needing to go:

Sunrise and moonset — 7:13 and 7:30.

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Goodbye to David Lynch.

"David Lynch, Maker of Florid and Unnerving Films, Dies at 78 A visionary, his films included 'Eraserhead,' 'Blue Velvet' and 'Mulholland Drive,' which was considered his masterwork" (NYT)(free-access link).

Made by a man with a longtime devotion to the technique of “transcendental meditation,” Mr. Lynch’s films were characterized by their dreamlike imagery and punctilious sound design, as well as Manichaean narratives that pit an exaggerated, even saccharine innocence against depraved evil. Mr. Lynch’s style has often been termed surreal, and indeed, with his troubling juxtapositions, outlandish non sequiturs, and eroticized derangement of the commonplace, the Lynchian has evident affinities to classic surrealism. Mr. Lynch’s surrealism, however, was more intuitive than programmatic. If classic surrealists celebrated irrationality and sought to liberate the fantastic in the everyday, Mr. Lynch employed the ordinary as a shield to ward off the irrational....

ADDED: If you go to Criterion Channel right now, the first thing you see is: 

What should we watch?

 

"I hate politics... I love policy and impact. I hate politics. And unfortunately, the two are not separable... [It's a] very dark, negative business.... There is a darkness to that world that I don’t really want to welcome into mine"

Said Ivanka Trump, quoted in "Ivanka Trump has blunt 3-word response when asked why she won’t return to White House" (NY Post).

Reminds me of young Donald Trump:

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday said he would appoint Ashley Moody, his state’s attorney general, to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate."

WaPo reports.

As state attorney general, Moody has aligned closely with DeSantis. Her office recently sued to keep an abortion rights amendment off the Florida ballot in November, and she also defended the state’s use of taxpayer dollars to advertise against the measure. The amendment, which DeSantis also opposed, was defeated. Moody also supported DeSantis’s controversial moves to use state funds to fly undocumented immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard and California to make a political point about immigration. In 2020, Moody backed a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block the election results after President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump....

"Hegseth is in no danger of rising to the level of mediocrity, but next to some of his Democratic questioners, he looked like Carl von Clausewitz."

"Hegseth’s core populist conviction — repeated ad nauseam — is that the grunts on the ground know what they are doing and the pencil-necked geeks in air-conditioned offices just write nonsense regulations that get in the way. The man wasted years at Princeton and Harvard when he could have learned everything he knows by watching that Colonel Jessup speech at the end of 'A Few Good Men.'... In a healthy democracy people revere great learning on substantive issues; they understand the world is too complex to be captured in bite-size slogans; but they also appreciate the wisdom that comes from concrete experience and know that most hard calls have to be made in light of the deeply held values that have made America what it is...."

Writes David Brooks, in "We Deserve Pete Hegseth" (NYT).

Here's Colonel Jessup:

 

And here's  Carl von Clausewitz:

Here's Wikipedia's list of Clausewitz's ideas:

"You know, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex...."

"Six days — six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power."

Said President Joe Biden, in his farewell address last night. 

There's a big difference between "military-industrial complex" and "tech-industrial complex." Eisenhower's phrase warns about the government and not merely private business. Biden's phrase only warns about private business. The "abuse of power" Biden identifies takes place outside of government, and he looks to government as a victim of abuse by private actors — citizens, speaking — and, potentially, as a cure — government, regulating speech.

The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.

What about all the lies you told for power and for profit?! 

We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.

What about your abuse of power squeezing the "social platforms" to follow the narrative that served your interests?

MEANWHILE: On the NYT home page, we see Trump swooping in as the savior of TikTok:

The World Monuments Fund "warns that more than 90 important sites on the moon could be harmed."

"In particular, some researchers are worried about Tranquillity Base, the Apollo 11 landing site where the astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon’s surface.... Beyond the lunar orbiters and rangers scattered across the moon’s surface that express scientific achievements, there are also artifacts of human culture. Apollo 11 astronauts left a golden olive branch to symbolize peace, while a SpaceX rocket lifted a lander that carried 125 miniature sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons to the moon’s surface last year." 

From "World Monuments Fund Puts Moon on List of At-Risk Sites/The organization said that more than 90 important sites on the moon could risk destruction if space tourism is left unregulated" (NYT).

If you follow the link about Koons, you'll see that his sculptures were small steel spheres — "moons" — each named after a famous Earthling, e.g., Ada Lovelace, Plato, and Billie Holiday. I guess they must all have some connection to the moon. Plato, for example, I learned from Grok, wrote that "the moon, along with the sun and the planets, are part of the visible gods, designed to move in a circular orbit, which reflects the eternal and perfect nature of the cosmos."

I asked Grok "What would Plato think about travel to the moon, particularly travel that leaves behind a small steel ball with his name inscribed on it?" The answer, to put it briefly, was that he would have mixed feelings. Really? I didn't think of Plato as a mixed feelings kind of guy.

Icy lakeshore — afternoon.

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"WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!"

Writes Trump, just now, at Truth Social.

ADDED: Here's what the NYT is saying now: "Negotiators from Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire in Gaza, though the start date is unclear, according to a senior official from one of the mediating countries and two senior Israeli officials.... There are also still technical details that need to be worked out. Two other officials said there was last-minute wrangling over the Egypt-Gaza border, which is currently controlled by Israeli forces.... President-elect Donald J. Trump also announced that a hostage deal had been reached, writing on social media that 'THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY.' Mr. Trump had threatened severe consequences unless Israel and Hamas reached an agreement before his Jan. 20 inauguration, which some officials credited with helping the negotiations to advance. If implemented, the cease-fire would allow for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, after more than a year of devastating war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed much of the enclave. Neither Israel nor Hamas has publicly endorsed the agreement, but the Palestinian group said on Tuesday that the negotiations had entered their 'final stages'...."

AND: Another Truth Social post from Trump: "This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies. I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones. With this deal in place, my National Security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven. We will continue promoting PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH throughout the region, as we build upon the momentum of this ceasefire to further expand the Historic Abraham Accords. This is only the beginning of great things to come for America, and indeed, the World! We have achieved so much without even being in the White House. Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return to the White House, and my Administration is fully confirmed, so they can secure more Victories for the United States!"