Trump says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trump said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trump responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trump talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trump thinks that or that Trump would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trump did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trump just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trump has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

"At a time when the pop charts were dominated by cloying songs such as 'A Horse with No Name' and 'Joy to the World' and the playlists of burgeoning FM radio stations were heavy on..."

"... James Taylor; Crosby, Stills & Nash; and the Eagles; Creem respectfully ceded coverage of those artists to Rolling Stone. It championed, instead, proto-punk bands such as the Stooges, the MC5, ? and the Mysterians, and Count Five; mavericks such as Lou Reed, Dr. John, Marc Bolan, and George Clinton; and nascent heavy-metal acts, including Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Alice Cooper. 'Unlike Rolling Stone, which is a bastion of San Francisco counter-culture "rock-as-art" orthodoxy, Creem is committed to a Pop aesthetic,' Ellen Willis wrote in The New Yorker. 'It speaks to fans who consciously value rock as an expression of urban teen-age culture.' The original staffers... saw the magazine as a cross between Mad, the satirical comic book, and Esquire circa the height of New Journalism....  Try as he might, [publisher Barry] Kramer never succeeded in turning Creem into the sort of cash-cow life-style magazine that Rolling Stone became. Its steadiest advertisers included A-200 Pyrinate Liquid ('one shampoo kills lice and nits'), Boone’s Farm wine, and mail-order head shops that hawked pipes, personalized roach clips, and something called the 'grass mask.' ('Shit, what a hit!')"

From "The Overlooked Influence of Creem Magazine/A new documentary makes the case for America’s only rock ’n’ roll magazine'" (The New Yorker).

ADDED: I tried to find an image for that item called the "grass mask." First, I turned up a lot of random junk that mostly gave me additional ideas about what it could be. I just wanted an old 70s ad. Then I put "grass mask" and "shit, what a hit" in quotes and that narrowed the hell out of the results to the point where I got to this PDF of a 1974 issue of an alternative newspaper called The Living Daylights....



There are no ads, so it's just somewhere in all that writing. If you readers would divide up the work, it's 28 pages, and maybe 28 of you could each read a page. If you find "grass mask"/"shit, what a hit," please write out the whole sentence and tell us the page number. Thanks! Lately, I've been nostalgic for the 1970s. Something about New York City going to hell has got me thinking about how the hell that was NYC in the 70s (when I lived there) was so much better than the fresh hell that is New York City today. But in any case, The Living Daylights seems to be from Australia. I've got no nostalgia about Australia. What does "the living daylights" refer to anyway?

It's like end "gun violence" — "It's time to #EndTrafficViolence" sounds like you want to take our cars.

Traffic violence kills thousands and injures even more Americans every year. On World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Crash Victims, I'm sending my love to the families and friends of those who have lost loved ones. It's time to #EndTrafficViolence.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 17, 2019

ADDED: This got me looking up the word "violence" in the OED. To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

But the real question here is whether we like the term "traffic violence." Does it do what its users want it to do? Of course, we're all against the harm done by cars, but most of us like our cars and want to use them for our good purposes.

"Thank you Joe and remember, the BRAIN is much sharper also!" tweeted Trump...

... in response to something Joe Scarborough, who'd said that Trump "looks like he’s about 20 years younger than a lot of Democratic candidates" (reported at Politico).

ADDED: Notice that Trump said "the BRAIN is much sharper," not "my BRAIN is much sharper." Remember, yesterday we were talking about "the geriatric possessive," how old people tend to say "I’m going to take my bath" and "take my walk" and "take my nap" rather than referring to baths and walks and naps and so on generally, without using a pronoun to highlight that the thing in question is theirs, which is what younger people do. Look at Trump — old but not seeming old — he doesn't even say "my brain." He says "the brain."

AND: Speaking of Trump's looks, here's something from the new Howard Stern book, from an April 2004 interview:

Caller: In a hypothetical situation—I mean, saying you’re not involved with Melania and there was no ethical backgrounds for business and whatnot—how many of those bitches [on "The Apprentice"] do you think you could’ve banged?

Howard: Good question.

Donald: Boy, I’ll tell ya. I love the thought, I’ll tell you that. ’Cause they were attractive. Do you agree with that?

Howard: I mean, some of the bodies on them while they were sitting there . . .

Donald: They were amazing.

Howard: Which is more important: talent or looking great?

Donald: Looking great.

Howard: I agree.

Donald: I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great.

PLUS: Meade corrects my interpretation of "I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great." He says Trump was talking about the women. I completely believed he'd switched over to talking about himself and he was looking back on the time when he was beautiful. I read the interview last night and saw it that way and went looking for it this morning because I saw it that way, and I published the quote without even seeing the ambiguity, I was so attached to that interpretation. I now believe that he meant the women — he's "had" women — and I find that so much less interesting.

SO: Now, I'm thinking about the word "had." You have your own brain, whether you call it "my brain" or not. You can use "had" to talk about the sexual partners you've had without needing to say "sex." Just say "had." To say "I've been had" means you've been tricked, and a sexual partner can be called a "trick." Of course, I look up "had" in the OED, and talk about ridiculously long entries. Try reading "have, v." It's long! I begin to laugh at myself for even trying, but then it jumps out at me:

13. transitive. a. To gain sexual possession of (esp. a woman); to have sexual intercourse with....

It goes back to Old English: "Þa het he feccan him to þa abbedessan on Leomynstre & hæfde hi þa while þe him geliste." Of course, there is Shakespeare: "Was euer woman in this humor woed, Was euer woman in this humor wonne: Ile haue her, but I will not keepe her long" ("Richard III"). Henry Fielding: "'None of your Coquet Airs, therefore, with me, Madam,’ said he, ‘for I am resolved to have you this Night.'" Keats: "I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well." And — we need a woman — Judith Krantz in "Scruples" (1978): "They cherished not having had each other because it created a current of continual warmth which... was more important to them than sex." Ha, the woman is about not having.

"What woes do not befall Chicago! That city has a debt of $6,000,000 which is increasing at the rate of a cool million each year."

"One Chicago newspaper gives a double-leaded opinion that the city has a 'prognathous City Council,' whose members accept bribes so quickly that Boss Tweed turns over in his grave," wrote the NYT on November 23, 1895.



By the way, $10,000 overcoat in 1895 corresponds to a $292,452 overcoat today.

Now, why am I reading this? It's not that I'm looking into Chicago's debt problems. Nor is it an interest in the word "prognathous." It means "Having projecting or forward-pointing jaws, teeth, mandibles, etc.; having a facial angle of less than 90°; having a gnathic index of 103 or more. Of jaws or a lower jaw: prominent, protruding." OED. I think the suggestion is that the Chicago City Council members are thugs. My Google image search on the word kind of freaked me out:



I was reading that 1895 article because I wanted to get a sense of when people started using the phrase "cool million" after trying to read this National Review article by Andrew C. McCarthy, "The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal." It begins:

Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads — the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

I thought it was funny to say a "cool half-million." $500,000 is not an awesome amount of money in this context, even if it's 5 times $100,000. Was "cool half-million" supposed to be funny or supposed to impress us with why Uranium One needs more attention? I found it distracting. You can see I'm not paying attention.

I'd rather talk about whether "the worst is worse than wienerworst" was once an idiomatic expression. You see it there in the second-to-last paragraph of the 1895 NYT article, where the issue of legalizing the sale of horse meat comes up. Attempting to google my way to an answer, I found this mindbending sentence:

For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's 'Barr-Bag' which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2,163 pearl buttons; nor of – in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel – or Suing Sophie!

I love the "in short."

AND: What are "boodlers"? Chicago is "cursed by the reign of boodlers" and "the Man in the Moon turns up his nose as he sails over during a heavy wind." The OED defines "boodler" as "one who practises boodleism," and "boodleism" as "bribery and corruption, embezzlement of public funds." "Boodle" can mean counterfeit money or money acquired improperly, but it can also be a contemptuous way to refer to a group of people, as in this 1861 example (from the OED):

I motioned we shove the hul kit an boodle of the gamblers ashore on logs. 'Twas kerried.

We're more likely to say "caboodle" or "kit and caboodle," but "caboodle" is a corruption of the phrase "kit and boodle" — where "kit" is a kind of open tub used to hold water for washing or to carry something like milk or butter.

IN THE COMMENTS: Gabriel find this wonderful passage in "Great Expectations," by Charles Dickens (1860):

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's account of him the said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air the writing," said Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite good, 'account of him the said Matthew.' And a cool four thousand, Pip!"

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

That pushed me to check the history of "cool" as a way to stress the size of an amount of money (which might have to do with the idea of the counting the money with an attitude of calmness). The OED traces this usage back to the 18th century. It comes up in "Tom Jones" by Henry Fielding, from 1749, when you only needed 3 digits to get to cool: "He had lost a cool hundred, and would play no longer." So the expression had been around a while before Dickens made comedy out of taking it literally and talking about temperature.

Politics is local, and "Gov. Walker serves up meal at local farm event."

This is Scott Walker at "Breakfast on the Farm" in Sheboygan. Don't miss the slide show, especially photo #5, which I'd like to caption: Stirring the shit.

Anyway... part of the meal Gov. Walker served up was some quotes about the recent document dump by the order of the federal court in the civil rights case against the prosecutors in the John Doe investigation:

“The folks [have said] over and over again, ‘Hang in there, we’re behind you, we support you,’” said Walker.

Asked about the documents that attracted mainstream media headlines about his central position in a "criminal scheme" and the supposedly important email he sent to Karl Rove, Walker said:

"That email’s pretty straight forward.... I was helping get the message out about what the senators did as they were heading into recalls and that’s completely legal."...

"I think in the end, people are going to see that despite the initial reaction, the bottom line is that what we’ve done is completely legitimate and right."

So, that's Walker in Sheboygan. But Walker's also doing national mainstream media — if Fox News counts as mainstream — here, last Friday on "Fox and Friends":



Here's the transcript, at Poltifact, which does a fact check and declares it "false." See if you can find the falsehood:

"You’ve had not one but two judges -- a state judge and a federal judge; a state judge (who is) a well-respected court of appeals judge, and a federal judge more recently -- have both looked at this argument. And in the past, not just recently -- remember this is not new news, it’s just newly released yesterday because documents were opened -- but no charges, case over.

Both judges said they didn’t buy the argument. They didn’t think that anything was done that was illegal, and so they’ve gone forward and not only said, we don’t buy it, they actually shut the case down, both at the state and at the federal level.

So, many in the national media and even some here in Wisconsin are looking at this (case) backwards. This is a case that’s been resolved, that not one but two judges have said is over. And we’re just learning about it because it became open in a document yesterday. But there is no argument there."

See it? "Resolved." There is only a preliminary injunction in the federal civil rights lawsuit against the John Doe prosecutors and it is before the appellate court right now,  so it depends on how you resolve the meaning of the word "resolved." The John Doe proceeding is enjoined, but if the civil rights plaintiffs (the targets in the John Doe proceeding) lose on appeal, it is conceivable that, if freed from the federal court injunction, and if the state court case is also eliminated as an obstacle, the prosecutors (the defendants in the federal court case) might resume the investigation.

How dead must the investigation be before Walker's entitled to use the word "resolved"?

Ask the folks in Sheboygan!

Let's see Walker opponents get out there in the state and assail Walker for the outrageous deception of using the word "resolved" to refer to the state and federal court interventions thus far.

Meanwhile, I'm here in Madison, being a professor in the law school, and my instinct is to look up the word "resolve" in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. The verb "resolve" comes from the Latin word resolvere, which means "to loosen, undo, unfasten, to unravel, solve, to unbind, to release, to separate into components, break up, to reduce to liquid, melt, dissolve, to soften, reduce to pulp, to make less tense, relax, to weaken the nerves of, paralyse, to make less strict or disciplined... to put an end to, finish, settle, to cancel, nullify, to refute, rebut...."

The oldest meanings of the word have to do with liquefaction, dissolving, melting, softening, and decomposing, and unbinding. The OED has 26 definitions for the verb "resolve," many with multiple subparts, so you'll have a hell of a time trying to pin Walker with that one word.

The set of meanings that seem most apt in this context has to do with unbinding: "To untie; to answer, solve; to decide, determine," especially "To answer (a question); to solve (a problem of any kind); to determine, settle, or decide upon (a point or matter regarding which there is doubt or dispute)." For example, from Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones": "Whether Mrs. Honour really deserved that Suspicion... is a Matter which we cannot indulge the Reader's Curiosity by resolving."

Have I resolved the meaning of "resolve"? I'm only trying to loosen it up and liquefy it, so that perhaps it looks like whatever it is those farmers are stirring in Sheboygan in photo #5. Because I'm here in Madison, cloistered in the academy, where we should delight in stirring the shit, and nothing can ever be fully resolved. Why, we've been talking for 500 years about "O that this too too sallid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolue it selfe into a dewe."

This John Doe business melted and thawed, it's resolving, and it has resolved itself into — if not quite yet a dew — a doo.

Adieu. It's Breakfast on the Farm time in Wisconsin.