"What do you think Musk is buying?"/"What do you think will happen to us if Brad Schimel wins?"

Every day, multiple glossy anti-Schimel cards come in the mail. I photographed the latest bunch:

The quotes in the post title — to be found on the cards — ask us what we think. The facts are hazy, but threatening and sexual, and we're nudged to angst and ideate? This, in a city where an awful lot of people are cranking each other up about politics.

"The whole thing is hard for me to write. I couldn't sleep for two years after the election. I was so angry, I wasn't fit to be around."

"I apologize to all those who endured my outbursts of rage, which lasted for years and bothered or bored people who thought it pointless to rehash things that couldn't be changed...."

Writes Bill Clinton in his new book, quoted in "Bill Clinton makes stunning confession about his bizarre behavior after Hillary's defeat in America's 'darkest election'" (Daily Mail).

Presumably, he means he didn't sleep well. The assertion that he couldn't sleep for 2 years is patently untrue. He's still alive.

Clinton also writes in a mode that would be called "election denialism" if it were pro-Trump: "Almost two years after the election, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a highly regarded social scientist said Russia's cyber attacks piled on top of Comey's interventions were effective enough to persuade voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to vote for third parties or stay at home. If so, Putin's enablers were Comey and the political press."

What about the Russia hoax that Hillary participated in?! Shouldn't that balance the effect of "Russia's cyber attacks"?

What were the "cyber attacks"? Here's Kathleen Hall Jamieson's book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know" (Amazon Associates link). From a 2018 New Yorker article about that book:

What methods has this 16-year-old girl used to measure the boys?

You might wonder how a 16-year-old girl gets an op-ed column published in the NYT. I won't guess about her parentage, but her name is Naomi Beinart. The piece is titled "I’m 16. On Nov. 6 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft." Excerpt:

We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman. Where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President. Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.

What made my skin burn most wasn’t that over 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. It was that this election didn’t seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me, whether their parents supported Mr. Trump or not. Many of them didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair. ​​We don’t even share the same future....

The word "seem" doesn't cure all problems with assertions about what other people are thinking. The election didn't "seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me." Either you tried to measure them or you did not. If you had some sort of measuring device and applied it, you wouldn't need to use the word "seem."

If you're so worried about what the boys share with you — "didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair"/"don’t even share the same future" — why don't you share in the sense of speaking to each other? Why just look at them and decide they aren't enough like you to interact with? 

"It just seems to encompass literally everything. It bleeds into everyday life and every interaction you have with other people, and so that’s very stressful."

Said Mallory Roelke, 35, from Dallas, about presidential election politics, quoted in "Exhausted by the Election, Some Americans Are Catching Flights Abroad/For some voters, the campaign season has felt draining. Some are recharging by heading to Mexico City, Barbados or the English Cotswolds, to name a few," in the NYT, which seems to be ever on the alert for new ways to promote travel.

The banality of the photographs at that link is enough to make a sensitive person swear off foreign travel forever. Sample caption: "Mallory Roelke traveled to the Greek island of Santorini in late October, just as the Election Day in the United States was approaching." Don't go to the link and look. You know exactly where Roelke is standing. Other Roelke photos include her standing in front of the Parthenon and a closeup of a glass of white wine held aloft in front of a vineyard in Sicily.

Credit..."

"Cozy, whimsical novels — often featuring magical cats — that have long been popular in Japan and Korea are taking off globally."

I'm reading "In Tumultuous Times, Readers Turn to 'Healing Fiction'... Fans say they offer comfort during a chaotic time" (NYT).

[Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series, “Before the Coffee Gets Cold,”] — set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time while their coffee cools — centers on ordinary people struggling with loss and regret who wish they could change the past....

Recent releases of cozy Japanese novels include Mai Mochizuki’s “The Full Moon Coffee Shop,” set in a magical coffee shop run by talking cats.... [There's also] “The Travelling Cat Chronicles,”.... “The Goodbye Cat,” and... “We’ll Prescribe You a Cat,” [and] “We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat”....

Cats are such a staple in healing fiction that Kawaguchi’s publishers in the United States and Britain added a fluffy brown cat to the covers of “Before the Coffee Gets Cold,” even though, in a break from tradition, cats are not central to his novels....

No mention of Trump (or Vance) in this article, published yesterday, but it's featured at the top of the home page like this... 

... so it's pretty obvious that the NYT is offering this Japanese fantasy material as self-care for its readers suffering from the Democratic Party's blistering defeat. The election that's come to such a bad ending for them featured cats — Trump said "They're eating the cats" and Vance had said "childless cat ladies." So maybe cat offers some charming help for the suffering Trump haters, some balance for that awful squirrel that controlled the American election from the afterlife (as depicted charmingly in a cool fantasy novel to be counted among my unwritten books).

And, yes, I see the headlines on the left-hand side of the page. They're really important, but I'm not blogging in order of importance.

ADDED: I love the framing of Donald Trump inside the coils of barbed wire. It's all that's left of the dream of imprisoning him.

"One of New York City’s elite private schools told families on Thursday that 'students who feel too emotionally distressed' the day after Election Day will be excused from classes..."

"... and that psychologists will be available during the week to provide counseling. In a section of an email to members of the school’s community headed 'Election Day support,' Stacey Bobo, principal of the upper school at the institution, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, said that it 'acknowledges that this may be a high-stakes and emotional time for our community.' 'No matter the election outcome,' she wrote, the school 'will create space to provide students with the support they may need.' No homework will be assigned on Election Day, the email said, and no student assessments will take place on Wednesday. Excused absences will be allowed on Wednesday or whatever day the election results are announced for students who feel unable to 'fully engage in classes.'"

From "Elite School Will Offer a Day Off for Students Distressed by Election/Attendance on Wednesday, or whatever day the results are announced, is optional for high school students at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City, families were told" (NYT).

Annual tuition at this school: $65,540.

"What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people? To encourage them to buckle. This is the lesson they are providing, for ungodly sums of money" — said Jerry Seinfeld, whose kids used to go to this school.

The Washington Post Editorial Board pushes Kamala Harris to pay attention to the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States.

I was surprised to see the Board highlighting the semiquincentennial, but here's the column featured on the front page today — 2 weeks before Election Day — "America has a big birthday coming. Kamala Harris should talk plans. The celebration is a chance to renew our nation’s commitment to the promise of its founding."

Is this an issue the people are clamoring for attention to be paid to? Donald Trump paid attention to it... a year and a half ago. He thought about it on his own and made a dignified speech detailing his multi-part plan for a full-year celebration. So for the WaPo editors to bring this up is to put pressure only on Kamala Harris. Is she supposed to jump at their prodding? There's zero hope of her sounding sincere responding to this one-sided demand. 

The editors say — in a tellingly passive voice:

Efforts are already underway to plan the semiquincentennial, but they got off to a slow start, mirroring much of the country’s political dysfunction.

In other words, the Biden Administration hasn't been doing enough?

The federal commission appointed to oversee the proceedings, writes the Atlantic, “swiftly descended into a morass of charges and countercharges over process, favoritism, hiring, gender discrimination, and budget decisions.”

So here's what cued up the issue. There's an article in The Atlantic, published a week ago: "America Is Suffering an Identity Crisis/In two years, the U.S. will mark its 250th birthday, and the left doesn’t seem to care—giving up on America’s symbols and its very meaning."

The left doesn't seem to care. But if Trump is elected he will preside over the occasion, and he certainly seems to care. I can now understand the WaPo editors' decision to forefront this issue. There's a horror of the Donald Trump Birthday of America Extravaganza and a chilling realization that his Make-America-Great-Again theme fits enragingly perfectly with the occasion. Quick! Present a left-wing alternative vision!

The WaPo editors lamely suggest that Kamala Harris "try to persuade skeptics on her side of the political spectrum that the United States is indeed something worth celebrating." It's a little late for that. But the editors say she's "well-positioned to make this pitch, because as the child of immigrants and a woman of color, she represents in her very candidacy the progress the country has seen." As if this big occasion should revolve around her: Celebrate me! Because I embody what's worth celebrating!

The Atlantic article says that Biden dealt with the "meltdown" at the commission by appointing Rosie Rios as the commission chair. Under her, the key concept seems to be a "radically decentralized" social-media concept called "America's Stories" — a website where anybody/everybody writes anything. This would be inclusive, but it would include all the hostility against America that we expect from the left. Would they resort to censorship? They would have to! 

The Atlantic writer, the Yale historian Beverly Gage, says:

For the past 60 years, much of American historical scholarship has been about exposing a darker story behind self-congratulatory myths.

Next time you propose a toast at a birthday party, try exposing a darker story behind the self-congratulatory myths.

As a believer in that effort, I have long shared the left’s ambivalence about patriotic symbols: the flag, the Founders, the national anthem, the Fourth of July. Today, though, I feel an urgency to reclaim and redefine all these things, lest they be ceded to those darker forces historians like to write about.

So you and your fellow historians devoted yourself to telling the "darker story" and now, as the people look to celebrate a big birthday, you are worried that they aren't going to frame the event around your dark story but will look to the kind of characters — the "darker forces" — that you've been disparaging all these years? People are drawn to the good — to an uplifting idea of what the country means — and you see that very optimism as an embrace of the darkness.

Nearing the end, the historian comes out with: "[N]ow that I think of it, why not wear the hat and fly the flag?" Well, for one thing, flying a U.S. flag at your house is regarded as equivalent to having a Trump yard sign.

We have a U.S. flag at our front door. But I'd consider bringing it inside for the next few weeks, because I don't like exacerbating the anguish in the neighborhood as the impending Make-America-Great-Again victory comes into focus.

Kamala Harris sounds so weary of all those people in Pennsylvania. Does she even want to be President?

Let me preface this with the assurance that I have never trusted the people who want to be President, and I have despaired over the structural problem that we're always stuck having to vote for somebody who has strongly desired the presidency. But it is possible occasionally — through ascension from the vice presidency — to end up with a President who didn't want the job.

Please watch the TikTok video I've put at the bottom of this post, after the jump, or you can also go here, for YouTube video (begin at 1:06). Alternatively, read the text.

But you won't get the point from the cold text, so I'll have to ask you to imagine a first rate actress reading the lines in the role of a woman who can barely cover up that she's really had it with being carted around to these bullshit nothing places with their tedious needy people:

"I am feeling very good about Pennsylvania, because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard. That's why I'm here in Johnstown, and I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I'm listening as much as we are talking and, ultimately, I feel very strongly that I've got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live, and so that's why I'm here.  We're going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania."

Harris was speaking at a bookstore in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Can you put your usual partisanship to the side and genuinely empathize with her as human being?

How, indeed?

A headline pair on the front page of the NYT catches my eye.

"How a Naked Man on a Tropical Island Created Our Current Political Insanity" — The naked man catches my eye, but a quick glance identifies the naked man as Richard Hatch, winner of season 1 of "Survivor," and we know that "Survivor" led to "The Apprentice," Donald Trump's big lateral move into the nation's psyche:

What does "Heavy on Buzz" even mean?

I'm trying to read Reid J. Epstein, in "Harris’s Early Campaign: Heavy on Buzz, Light on Policy/On policy, the vice president is drafting off President Biden, essentially cherry-picking the most popular parts of his agenda and betting that a younger messenger can sell them to Americans" (NYT).

When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, she had more than 200 distinct policy proposals. Four years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a task force write a 110-page policy document for his White House bid.

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have a policy page on her campaign website.

A last-minute campaign born of Mr. Biden’s depreciated political standing has so far been running mainly on Democratic good feelings and warmth toward Ms. Harris, drafting off legislation and proposed policies from the man she is hoping to succeed....

I made the link a free-access "gift" link so you can help me read this thing. I am irritated by the claims of "buzz" and "good feelings and warmth." We're being instructed on how to feel, but it seems to be about how other people feel, or so we are told. 

ADDED: Is there a shift going on? A week or so ago, it was all about how Kamala Harris feels. I made a tag "how does Kamala feel" because I thought that was the wrong focus. We were told she was "joyous." Obvious bullshit, of course, but that was the nature of the campaign — the purportedly heavy-on-buzz campaign. But now the NYT seems to be nudging us into thinking about how we the people feel, and we're supposed to feel good... good and warm... about Kamala.

AND: "Buzz" is a cool looking word.

"'How would Kamala Harris feel....' I hope that doesn't become the key question at every turn — How would Kamala Harris feel? Ugh."

"I hope this isn't the beginning of a new phase of semi-conscious misogyny: Because the Vice President is a woman, we must think about the Vice President's feelings. Does anyone ever wonder how Mike Pence feels?"

That's something I wrote on November 9, 2020. (The internal quote is from an Axios article.)

I see I made a tag "how does Kamala feel," but then I never used it again. I wanted to keep an eye on an unwholesome phenomenon. Sorry. I forgot. But I want to remember again. The question facing us in this election is what the candidate is offering to do for us and whether she or he will be very good at it. Your support should never be about wanting to boost the spirit and self-esteem of the candidate.

The Trump trial was supposed to be such a big deal, but somehow "a strange sense of anticlimax hangs over the whole affair."

As Michelle Goldberg puts it, in "The Trump Trial’s Great Anticlimax" (NYT).

In a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 16 percent of respondents said they were following the trial very closely, with an additional 32 percent following it “somewhat” closely. “Those numbers rank as some of the lowest for any recent news event,” wrote Yahoo News’s Andrew Romano. When people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was “bored.”...

A hopeful possibility... is that a guilty verdict will come as a shock to many Americans who have checked out of the news cycle, perhaps giving them pause about putting a criminal in the White House. I wouldn’t count on it, though.

I wouldn't count on it either. People already have their idea of whether or not Trump is a criminal, and if the jury doesn't agree with them, they'll be outraged at the jury. 

"Trump is America’s biggest comedian. His badinage is hardly Wildean, but his put-downs, honed to the sharpness of stilettos..."

"... are many people’s idea of fun. For them, he makes anger, fear, and resentment entertaining. For anyone who questions how much talent and charisma this requires, there is a simple answer: Ron DeSantis. Why did DeSantis’s attempt to appeal to Republican voters as a straitlaced version of Trump fall so flat? Because Trumpism without the cruel laughter is nothing. It needs its creator’s fusion of rage, mockery, and poisoned imitation, whether of a reporter with a disability or (in a dumb show that Trump has been playing out in his speeches in recent months) of Joe Biden apparently unable to find his way off a stage. It demands the withering scorn for Sleepy Joe and Crooked Hillary, Crazy Liz and Ron DeSanctimonious, Cryin’ Chuck and Phoney Fani. It requires the lifting of taboos to create a community of kindred spirits. It depends on Trump’s ability to be pitiless in his ridicule of the targets of his contempt while allowing his audience to feel deeply sorry for itself. (If tragedy, as Aristotle claimed, involves terror and pity, Trump’s tragicomedy deals in terror and self-pity.) Hard as it is to understand, especially for those of us who are too terrified to be amused, Trump’s ranting is organized laughter. To understand his continuing hold over his fans, we have to ask: Why is he funny?"

Asks Fintan O'Toole, in  "Laugh Riot/To understand Trump’s continuing hold over his fans, we have to ask: Why do they find him so funny?" (NYRB).

Maybe that's behind a paywall, and you can't read O'Toole's answer. Maybe you can answer his question on your own. I can't quote the whole thing.

I'll quote 2 beefy sentences:

"Former President Donald Trump is a cultural phenomenon.... For his legion of passionate supporters, he is more than a politician."

"He is like a sports team or a rock band that helps define who they are as much as the families and communities to which they belong.... Uninhibited by concerns about decorum and tradition, Trump has aggressively figured out ways to market himself like a cultural product, not a standard politician, knowing that this would forge much deeper ties....To be sure, Trump is not the first president to command strong cultural currency with voters that goes beyond traditional political attachments. Stuffed toy bears identified with President Theodore Roosevelt became a phenomenon in the early 20th century. During the 1930s, saloon owners famously hung portraits of President Franklin Roosevelt over their bars.... There were President Ronald Reagan dolls in the 1980s while Shepard Fairey’s 'Hope' poster from President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign remained iconic throughout his two terms.... Rational appeals about the inconsistencies of his rhetoric, the dangers of his positions and the practical reasons for choosing someone such as DeSantis... don’t mean much to the fans whose homes are stuffed with MAGA hats, shirts and coffee mugs...."

Writes Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history and public affairs professor, in "What’s really working for Trump" (CNN).

There's always a lot of irrationality in politics, but it's very disturbing when the candidate you fear and hate is working the emotional backchannels of the human mind much better than the guy you're stuck with. Yes, of course, that fear and hate is also irrational. But it's negative, and isn't it a bitch that that positivity is stronger? Love beats hate. 

Hey, remember "Love trumps hate"?

"People are saying it feels like we’re sleepwalking off a cliff... The left is kind of despairing and divided and exhausted...."

"When you talk to people outside of politics — maybe you’ve had this experience too — they say, oh, I’m just pretending it’s not happening. I have to block it out for my own mental health.... This is a long, long time that we’re going to be living with this both extreme low energy but extremely existential fight.... A year ago, most Republicans wanted to move on.... And so what happened in between then and now? I mean, part of it, obviously, is the indictments and — I don’t know that it was preordained that he would come out of that with most Republican voters believing that he was a martyr.... There’s people who say, well, I did fine during the Trump years... but... people just forget how scary it often was to have someone so out of control in charge.... He has changed the culture. He has shifted our conception of what’s normal in a way that we might never get back the kind of innocence that many of us enjoyed in 2015 and 2016.... [I]magine what it will be like to see Donald Trump inaugurated again.... I strongly suspect that people won’t be able to say this isn’t who we are. It will manifestly be who we are. And I think people will just turn inward and try to shut it out...."

From "Michelle Goldberg Imagines a Second Trump Inauguration/Sounding the alarm on 'the utter bleakness'" (NYT)(transcript of this audio).

1. "Imagine what it will be like," not would be like — Goldberg is already resigned to Trump's return to the presidency. 

2. "The kind of innocence" — what kind of innocence was that?

"On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness."

A NYT article.

I'm linking if only to marvel at the photograph at the top of the page. The faces! Caption: "Vivek Ramaswamy spoke to voters at a town-hall meeting at Wellman’s Pub and Rooftop in Des Moines. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times." 

The  article, by Lisa Lerer, is subtitled, "As Monday’s caucuses approach, voters casually throw around the prospect of World War III and civil unrest, anxious of divisions they fear are tearing the country apart."

Key concept: Anxiety.

Four years ago, voters worried about a spiraling pandemic, economic uncertainty and national protests. Now, in the first presidential election since the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, those anxieties have metastasized into a grimmer, more existential dread about the very foundations of the American experiment....

But isn't it this fearful fragility the real threat to democracy? Why do mainstream media stoke despair and anxiety? Why don't they — why don't we — build our resiliency and optimism?

"Once again, Democrats find themselves looking toward American institutions to stop Mr. Trump, whom they view as a mortal threat to democracy."

"For many, it may be more pleasant to think about a judicial endgame that stops Mr. Trump than envisioning the slog of next year’s likely rematch against President Biden. And this time, with Democrats now well aware of how easily he can bend the country’s fragile guardrails — and of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which includes three Trump appointees — their optimism is tinged with trepidation."

I'm reading "Democrats Keep Hoping It’s Curtains for Trump. He’s Still Center Stage," by Reid J. Epstein, in the NYT. Subtitle: "As Donald Trump faces a new threat to his political future, this time over the question of ballot eligibility, Democrats again find themselves looking toward American institutions to stop him."

I'd like to think that passage was written with a sense of humor: Democrats out to save democracy long for a solution to Donald Trump that is anything other than defeating him democratically. The judiciary is supposed to swoop in and rescue Democrats from the task of winning the votes of the people. But the Supreme Court isn't stacked with judges who lean in the political direction that disfavors the candidate they loathe. So their hope for a nondemocratic alternative to the next election is pre-crushed.

Is there evidence in that article that the humor is intentional? There are some quotes from Democrats that made me laugh. Especially this, from Biden: "It’s self-evident. You saw it all. He certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero." 

Goodbye to Norman Lear.

"Norman Lear, Whose Comedies Changed the Face of TV, Is Dead at 101/As the producer of 'All in the Family' and many other shows, Mr. Lear showed that it was possible to be topical, funny and immensely popular" (NYT).

 
“You looked around television in those years,” Mr. Lear said in a 2012 New York Times interview, referring to the middle and late 1960s, “and the biggest problem any family faced was ‘Mother dented the car, and how do you keep Dad from finding out’; ‘the boss is coming to dinner, and the roast’s ruined.’ The message that was sending out was that we didn’t have any problems.”

ADDED: I've written about Norman Lear on this blog a few times:

July 27, 2022: I blogged Norman Lear's NYT piece — "On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump" — and said: "Lear says Archie, if he were around today, would probably watch Fox News and vote for Trump. Probably?! He also imagines that Archie would have disapproved of the January 6th incursion on the Capitol. But why? Seems to me he'd approve, but Lear doesn't want him to, so okay. "

"In the vanilla-scented office of Abby Rose Spirit, under the glow of Turkish ceiling lights, she tapped her white Skechers on an Oriental rug and listened to a voice she found soothing."

The voice was her psychic, asking "You know how they have those amusement park cars? It’s like you’re in the go-kart and you feel like something is going to smash into you." And the woman, Kathy Nichols, 58, "thought: Navigating life on Wisconsin’s northeastern thumb was stressful enough. Why did she have to worry about the country’s chaos, too? 'It’s overwhelming,' she agreed."

I'm trying to read this Washington Post article about Wisconsin, "In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics."

It's Door County, not my county, so I have no first-hand account, not that anyone has a first-hand account — even in a limited geographical area — of how "everyone" feels. But why is there are front-page WaPo article about feelings in Door County, Wisconsin, and who cares about the ceiling fixtures and ambient odor of the office of a psychic and the footwear of a random client? 

"When Trump was president I started every morning by reading the New York Times, followed by the Washington Post, and would track both papers’ websites..."

"... regularly throughout the day. To be less than vigilant was to fall behind.... My friend Mike likened this constant monitoring to having a second job. It was exhausting, and the moment that Biden was sworn in to office I let it all go. When the new president speaks, I feel the way I do on a plane when the pilot announces that after reaching our cruising altitude he will head due north, or take a left at Lake Erie. You don’t need to tell me about your job, I always think. Just, you know, do it. It’s so freeing, no longer listening to political podcasts—no longer being enraged...."

Wrote David Sedaris, in "Happy-Go-Lucky," which came out in 2022 (I earn a commission through that link).

I recalled that passage as I was listening to Monday's NYT "Daily" podcast, "Swing State Voters Are Souring on Biden/A new Times/Siena poll finds Donald Trump leading President Biden in five of six key battlegrounds."