It's Super Tuesday at last.

Check out the newest polls on Real Clear Politics to get a sense of which of the 3 ancient white men might fall forward into an unstoppable momentum rolling into the Valley of Inevitable Trump Victory.

I have my cruel neutrality vantage point, but even if I wanted to get more engaged, I couldn't pick somebody to root for. I don't want any of them! What a ridiculous condition the 2020 race has deteriorated into!

I'm interested in the populism of Trump and Sanders and feel something of a thrill to see the establishment of both parties getting their comeuppance. But my real preference is for absolutely boring government, run by men and women of integrity, expertise, and competence. Such folk never show up and last long enough to be in the running this late in the game, but maybe Bloomberg is closest to that idea.

But I think Bloomberg will get crushed today, and I anticipate laughing at him when that happens. That's how little my abstract preference has to do with watching the Super Tuesday antics.

Am I with the moderate, cautious people who are gathering behind Joe Biden? No, I'm staying up here on my cruel neutrality vantage point. I don't think Joe Biden is in any condition to do what it takes to fight until November and then deal with the job of President.

By the way, I had a dream about Donald Trump last night. I was at some sort of artsy song and spoken-word performance, in an intimate pink room with long comfy sofas. There were several polar bears reclining on a sofa, along with Donald Trump. This was right next to me, and I wanted to get some personal conversation with Trump, something I could remember and talk about. He was enjoying the show and singing along, being quite charming and talking to everyone. I leaned over and asked him, "Are the Secret Service okay with the polar bears?"

"irascible appetite, irascible affection, irascible part of the soul, in Plato's tripartite division of the soul, τὸ θυμοειδές, one of the two parts of the irrational nature..."

"... being that in which courage, spirit, passion, were held to reside; and which was superior to τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, the concupiscible... part in which resided the appetites."

From the OED definition of "irascible," which I looked up just now after writing "irascible" in the first 2 posts of the day. The first definition of "irascible" is "Easily provoked to anger or resentment; prone to anger; irritable, choleric, hot-tempered, passionate."

My first post today had a quote about Trump's "irascible fantasy of what the United States should be."  I said out loud: "Does Trump seem angry to you?" We watched a couple of his rallies this week, and my answer was, no, he seems jovial.

I liked the change of pace in encountering Plato in this OED definition. It's interesting, isn't it?, that the irascible part of the soul is the place that gives rise to courage, spirit, and passion. Maybe go down that road and figure out something about Trump.

To get up to speed, here's the Wikipedia article, "Plato's theory of the soul."

The Platonic soul consists of three parts:[

the logos (λογιστικόν), or logistikon (logical, mind, nous, or reason)
the thymos (θυμοειδές), or thumetikon (emotion, spiritedness, or masculine)
the eros (ἐπιθυμητικόν), or epithumetikon (appetitive, desire, or feminine)...

According to Plato, the spirited or thymoeides (from thymos) is the part of the soul by which we are angry or get into a temper. He also calls this part 'high spirit' and initially identifies the soul dominated by this part with the Thracians, Scythians and the people of 'northern regions.' In the just soul, the spirited aligns with the logistikon and resists the desires of the appetitive, becoming manifested as 'indignation' and in general the courage to be good. In the unjust soul, the spirited ignores the logistikon and aligns with the desires of the appetitive, manifesting as the demand for the pleasures of the body.

IN THE COMMENTS: Unknown says, "You've been anticipated by Carson Holloway in The New Criterion," pointing to "Thumos, Or Spiritedness, Is Central To His Appeal":

"The left keens that the president is destroying our sacred institutions and jeopardizing our national security. But..."

"... for many Americans, the events of the last week prove that Trump is right to be cynical about a rigged system and deep-state elites. The inspector general’s report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation offered a hideous Dorian Gray portrait of the once-vaunted law enforcement agency. As Charlie Savage wrote in The Times, the report uncovered “a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process.” The F.B.I. run by Comey and McCabe was sloppy, deceitful and cherry-picking — relying on nonsense spread by Christopher Steele.... Unfortunately, this climate of confusion and cynicism allows Trump to prosper. He did not come to Washington to clean up the tainted system; he came to bathe in it."

From Maureen Dowd's new column, "Trump’s Bad. Sadly, He’s Not Alone/Another wild week for the president, but does it lead to rejection or re-election?" (NYT).

Is it true that Trump "did not come to Washington to clean up the tainted system"? He was always saying "drain the swamp." You might argue that he's no good at cleaning things up or that he's messing things up in his own way, but I don't see the support for the notion that his intention in becoming President was "to bathe in" the swamp. Didn't he visualize himself as a hero who had observed things for decades and felt confident that he could apply his insight and business acumen to fixing everything?

"Coverage of Trump’s latest rally shows how major media outlets normalize his worst excesses."

Aaron Rupar writes about the Green Bay rally at Vox:

The president falsely accused Democrats of supporting infanticide, called the FBI and Justice Department leaders he’s purged from government “scum,” referred to the assembled media as “sick people,” and even admitted his proposal to punish blue states by relocating undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities was “actually my sick idea.”...

The New York Times did attempt to fact-check Trump’s lie about Democrats and abortion — Trump accused Democrats of supporting doctors who “wrap the baby beautifully” before they get together with the mother and “determine whether or not they will execute the baby” — but in so doing, the outlet demonstrated it doesn’t really have a vocabulary to adequately deal with Trump.

Instead of calling Trump’s lie a lie, the Times used the euphemism “revived an inaccurate refrain” in a tweet that was widely mocked. The accompanying article goes out of its way to avoid accusing Trump of lying, instead describing him as “reviv[ing] on Saturday night what is fast becoming a standard, and inaccurate, refrain about doctors ‘executing babies.’”...

The irony is that on Saturday night, as always, the media was one of Trump’s foremost targets of abuse — yet the very outlets Trump demeans continue to bend over backward to cover him in the most favorable possible light.

Are the media going soft on Trump? If so, why? I suspect that if they are lightening up, it's because they've come to believe that constantly battering Trump has produced numbness and even sympathy. That's the effect it has on me. And the post-birth abortion lie is a very special problem. To expose the misrepresentation, you must focus on the death of infants, and that generates powerful feelings that abortion-rights proponents may fear.

"This week in 2016, I declared I would be 'Never Trump.' A friend suggested I use a hashtag that had started circulating on Twitter, i.e #NeverTrump."

"The piece exploded and pushed me into a whirlwind of coverage. Despite lots of pressure, protestors literally on my front porch, and harassment directed towards my family, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. I voted third party.... I could stay home or vote third party as I did in 2016. But what will that get me? ... While I understand and accept the sincere conviction of some of my friends who have decided they will just sit out the process, I have decided otherwise. In 2016, we knew who the Democrats were and were not sure of who Donald Trump was. Now we know both and I prefer this President to the alternative. I will vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. And, to be clear, it will not be just because of what the other side offers, but also because of what the Trump-Pence team has done. They’ve earned my vote."

Writes Erick Erickson.

The Democratic Women — dressed in white to honor the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote — stand and cheer as Trump says just the right things to rouse them out of what I think was supposed to be grim disapproval.

It was so much fun to see this creation of festive happiness:



Let me break this scene down:

0:00-0:12 — "No one has benefitted more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58% of the new jobs created in the last year," says Trump, leaning into "women." He pauses, nods and looks around.

0:15 — We see the array of women in white, keeping a solemn look at first. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turns around and causes the women behind her to smile.



0:17-0:19 — This gesture happens — one woman  (who?) puts 2 elbows in the air and points 2 thumbs down at herself.



Is she receiving a signal (from Nancy Pelosi?) or simply deciding on her own? The thumbs are shaken and the woman nods her head vigorously. Her reaction sets off the woman 3 seats over to her left (who?), but there's a quick edit, so we don't see how that interaction progresses.

0:19: — We're shifted to this super-happy blonde woman (who?). The 2 other women are standing and clapping but looking like it pains them to have to approve of anything.



0:23 — Some real celebration breaks out (amid some dubiousness):



0:24 — Something's happening to the right of the screen that's exciting everyone, even bow-tie guy:



0:23-0:30 — The frame opens up and pans as if to help us see what they were pointing at, then the frame jumps back to the women we were seeing before, and they are clapping with arms extended and pumping fists in the air and laughing.



0:32 — Even AOC is standing and laughing (though not clapping):



0:36 — We get back to Trump, head back, blissful smile.... Nancy's applauding (or playing here comes the crocodile):



0:41-0:44 — The women sit down, and Trump nods a few times, and a slight smirk grows. I feel like he's thinking, Yeah, that's what I like.



He suddenly shakes his head to get into the character that works to deliver the presumably improvised line: "You were not supposed to do that."



There's an impish, confidential tone that, to me, reads as: Give me any kind of chance, and you will love me.

0:46 — The congresswoman in the headscarf is doubled over in elation. And look at the other women in this shot. Now, notice the man (with the glasses in his mouth, perhaps irritated to see that the women are going wild and annoyed that shallow charm like this works):





0:53-1:03 — "All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before."

1:07 — The reaction begins. One woman is standing (who?). AOC is talking and turning to the woman on her right, making her presence felt. Notice how the woman on her left leans away from AOC, perhaps tired of her continual efforts at looking like a powerful influencer:



1:12 — AOC is not the last one to stand. The woman on her left is (and she doesn't stand until 1:18):



1:25-1:27 — With one finger held aloft, Trump improvises: "Don’t sit yet. You are going to like this." There's an immediate, warm laugh from the assembly, and the instant he hears it, his face shows gratification:



He really does feed off the energy of the crowd. This moment is like what he gets (in much larger doses) at this rallies.

The hand position changes from upward pointing to the OK position. Given all the talk about the KKK over the weekend, I want to get out ahead of any stupidity about Trump's OK gesture. Here's Wikipedia on the 4chan prank of calling the OK sign a white power symbol.

1:30 — "And exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before." This is the dynamic in the middle of the word "before":



Nancy is calling on her people to rise.

1:45 — And here's how it looks as he gets to the end of "before":



1:47 — They're all up, and though AOC is looking dyspeptic (for an instant), there's lots of celebration and cheering:



2:03 — We see the family reaction  (with Ivanka looked so much like Ivana):



2:04- We see the women in white again, cheering. Many hands in the air, fist-pumping, pointing. AOC leaps forward in a big high 5 that connects with no one (2:06).

2:20 — A U.S.A. cheer begins off screen, and the on-screen women in white pick up the cheer, with rhythmic clapping.

2:30 — The camera closes in on AOC. She's a camera magnet. She had been doing the clapping and chanting, but stops and bows her head. What is she thinking?



What is that man doing to us?

"Whether the speaker is a drawling Spacey in character as a secretly homicidal sociopath or a comedian who styled himself as a postmillennial cross between John Cassavetes and Alan Alda..."

"... while he was whipping it out every chance he got, a horrible truth still emerges. These types of guys thrive on attention, and if they can’t get the positive kind, they’ll settle for the negative. 'Oh, sure, they’ve tried to separate us,' Spaceywood said, inadvertently speaking for Louis C.K. as he emerged from his alt-right chrysalis and flapped his moth wings in Levittown. 'But what we have is too strong. It’s too powerful.' Unless it isn’t. This concludes the last thing I’ll ever write about Kevin Spacey or Louis C.K., until they’re sentenced in courts of law, or I have to write their obituaries."

Writes Matt Zoller Seitz in "The Real Louis C.K. Is Finally Standing Up" (The Vulture). So he's saying that even if there are court proceedings, including trials with witness testimony and announcements of jury verdicts, he won't write a word? He'll wait for the sentencing stage?

The idea is that Spacey and C.K. just want attention, so don't feed them, or you're part of the problem. I remember when I tried that with Trump. But silence is not like yelling. One person's silence only enhances the speech opportunities of other people. Yelling, you might drown other people out, but shutting up doesn't work like that.

"The 'Mona Lisa' moment is a sense of despair at the impossibly crowded... room devoted to the Mona Lisa... a scene of pure chaos..."

"... as tour groups jostle and throng and sometimes shove one another in hopes of getting close enough to snap a cellphone picture of the world’s most famous painting.... The Mona Lisa moment can be had in the galleries of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which has become so crowded that serious art lovers now avoid it...  The problem isn’t just crowds, or noise or distraction; it is the annihilation of one of the essential components for viewing art, which is extended individual contemplation... In the late 19th- and throughout much of the 20th century, museums stood as temples of art, delivering lessons about the 'civilizing' value of culture. In the middle of the last century, new generations of museum leadership began to stress more populist ideas of openness and equality in the gallery experience. That second age of American museums — the Age of Access — has bred the seeds of its own destruction, generating a cultural experience that attracts enormous crowds, but without giving them any substantial engagement with the materiality or cultural complexity of the art itself.... Are contemporary art museums, in fact, providing something of value to the public?"

From "This new museum doesn’t want Instagram or crowds. Does that make it elitist?" by Philip Kennicott, the art and architecture critic at WaPo. Kennicott isn't suggesting excluding the riffraff to make way for the thoughtful, nuanced people. That would be plainly elitist. His answer, befitting an architecture critic, is architecture — things like narrowing hallways to choke the flow of crowds.

This subject connects to something we were talking about 2 days ago, "‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did Technology Help Get Us There?" by Farhad Majoo (NYT).

The Farhad Majoo article clearly fit with my longterm interest in the problems of travel. I almost want to say the impossibility of travel. Museums are a subcategory of travel, since travelers often see the museums of the places they travel to, and in my personal experience, museums are at the top of what I've wanted to do when traveling. I see that Kennicott called museums "impossibly crowded," and maybe that was just hyperbole, but I think he's seeing what I'm seeing. The presence of other people changes the environment from the place you want to see, so the place you want to go no longer exists. Traveling there is literally impossible.

Is that elitist? I'd say, no. It's just aesthetically sensitive and aware. It's only elitist if you think your sensibilities justify excluding the people who don't mind the problems as they continue to crowd the places that you'd go to if they were virtually empty. If you cede these places to the other people, you're the opposite of an elitist. You're a populist.

And that reminds me of how I felt when Donald Trump won the election.

ADDED: When I went to Paris in the 90s, I didn't bring a camera. I had a sketchbook, and the comments to this post — exploring the idea of seeing the parts of the museum where the crowds don't  — made me remember this page:



AND: Here's something I wrote in my Paris notebook that's quite relevant to this post. Transcribed verbatim: "I spent so much time today at the museum — walking all over the Louvre — there is so much here that you get numb, you don't care. If you had to travel from church to church to see each piece, it would mean much more. But as it is, you get to the point where you traipse along, casting your eyes about to see if anything really grabs you (oh, yeah, they're about to deliver a second axe chop to the neck of a saint who's not dead yet! That's cool — heh, heh. I saw some kids pointing this out — & aren't they on the same wave-length perhaps as the artist — in his time). One américain says, 'Let's skip this shit' & I don't think 'What a crass/ignorant little man!' I think 'I know exactly how you feel.' But much is good. I don't mean to slight it. It's just that one really doesn't prefer culture in one humongous globule! And yet in our modern world, great art has been globbed up in large Louvrish hunks, so this is the only way you can see it. For a normal look, you must look at the art of your own time, as the medievals viewed crosses and chalices in their own churches, localized and, not unimportantly, imbued with meaning: the beliefs that they shared with the art & artists themselves."

"Tiffany Trump and Lindsay Lohan were spotted on Wednesday continuing to live it up on the Greek island of Mykonos."

They're old friends, says The Daily Mail.

Lohan is working on a Mykonos-based MTV reality show that just put out this teaser:



It's hard to imagine how bad the show must be if that's the best they could come up with to fill 17 seconds. Lohan is 32 years old, in case you're wondering, and I assume you will be if you stick out that clip to the end.

One of the worst-rated comments at The Daily Mail raises a very good point: "Shame on them.especially Tiffany. Greek fires took lives and ravaged towns and she['s] partying up a storm there. Shameful behavior." Yeah, now's not the time to be posing and teasing something about cavorting on a Greek isle. Or... maybe it is, what with "Mamma Mia Here We Go Again" in the theaters, feeding the female fantasy of geography and romance.

What's Tiffany doing lending support to this nonsense? Maybe she just likes enjoying Mykonos, but it did give The Daily Mail reason to remind us of Lindsay's support for the Tiffany's father:

Lohan has also expressed her support for Tiffany's father Donald Trump. 'THIS IS our president,' Lohan tweeted. 'Stop #bullying him & start trusting him. Thank you personally for supporting #THEUSA,' she tweeted.

During a Facebook Live... session... in February 2017...  Lohan [said]: 'I think always in the public eye you're going to get scrutinized. He is the president — we have to join him. If you can't beat him, join him.'

ADDED: I've heard it actually sucks to attempt to live it up on Mykonos:

On my first day in Mykonos, in fact in the first five minutes, the hotel driver who picked me up from the airport —there are only 30 taxis on the island, so good luck getting one — let me in on a secret... "Mykonos is not really Greece. It's nothing... Look at a map, find the islands that don't have airports, and go there. Any one will do. They're all beautiful."

"The internet has always been lawless, but the chaos of the Trump era has worsened online nastiness to the point where even I, a verifiably snarky internet writer..."

"... have grown sick of it all. Desperate for an antidote, I started dabbling in wholesome activities: bicycling, crossword puzzles, baking and writing in my journal. 'Oh no! You’re becoming a hippie,' my mother said after I informed her of my new hobbies. In these efforts to self-soothe, I made a life-changing discovery: Making sourdough bread is the opposite of using the internet...."

From a NYT essay by Eve Peyser, "I Wanted a Dog. I Bake Bread Instead." The headline highlights the dog/bread alternatives as opposed to the escape-from-the-internet theme. I'm guessing that's because dog gets hits... on the internet.

Anyway, I'm blogging this because of the mother's concept of "hippie" and the idea that it could include crossword puzzles. But I like the idea of the younger generation rediscovering the hippie lifestyle, especially if it's envisioned in positive ways — with "wholesome activities."

Also, this article fit with something else I was just reading, "In a divided U.S., therapists treating anxiety are hearing the same name over and over: Donald Trump/'Trump Anxiety Disorder' may not be an official diagnosis, but therapists know the symptoms" (Politico), which chimed with something I'd already blogged this morning, Trump himself using the term Trump derangement syndrome.

Isn't it interesting that therapists are seeing the reaction to Trump as a disorder?! And that Politico framed it that way.

Maybe mainstream media is noticing a lot of people who feel the way I do, that the antagonism to Trump is so over-the-top that it's weirder than Trump. We turn away... and toward the man we originally resisted because he was too weird.

I tried to find a picture of a hippie doing a crossword puzzle, but my search had the serendipitous effect of turning up this New Yorker humor piece from last February: "Former Hippies Put in Horrible Position of Rooting for F.B.I." ("'I always dreamed I’d spend my retirement surrounded by my grandchildren, telling them that the F.B.I. were fascist pigs,' Carol Foyler, a former hippie who lives in Santa Cruz, said. 'That dream has been shot to hell.'").

"My favorite part is when he yells 'Get me a Coke, please."

When you see the headline "Trump caught on tape: Get me a Coke, please" — at CNN — you may think slow news day but this is a very entertaining segment by Jeanne Moos — who has "carved out a niche with her off-beat, thoughtful reporting on the quirkier aspects of life." She strikes a nice tone and I think it works for Trump lovers and haters and — there are some of us — agnostics.

There's so much heavy, mean stuff out there. This piece is — to use Coke's 1929 slogan — The pause that refreshes.



I'm giving this my "getting used to Trump" tag, because this really is normalizing Trump. You wouldn't do a cutesy piece about how Hitler drank soda. I pause to google "did hitler like coke" and got "How Coca-Cola became Hitler’s drink of choice."

I was surprised to see overt support for Trump on the UW campus today.

Parked very conspicuously, by the lake trail:



But I hear some very quiet expressions of support here and there. It is so socially unacceptable in Madison that it means a lot to hear or see any at all.

"This was all the result of my psychiatrist, Willie Nelson, calling me at 3 O’clock in the morning as I was watching Matlock."

"He asked me what I was doing. And I said, 'Well, I’m watching Matlock.' And he said, 'Well, that is the surest sign of depression. Turn ‘em off, Kinky, turn Matlock off and start writing.' And this inspired me because Willie is older, and he took the time and the energy, as a lot of people don’t, to encourage somebody. And then these songs came very fast, most of ‘em based on a silent witness of some kind, written to a silent witness, a dog, or a missing cat, or a dead sweetheart. So I consider these my Matlock collection. And there’s some wisdom to what Willie said, too. We may all have a Matlock, but we may not realize what it is — but if we can turn it off, god knows what we can accomplish. I hadn’t written songs in forty years, and these sound like they were channeled in from Leonard Cohen, or early Kristofferson, or something like that. I think all of ‘em are tragic songs. Best writing I’ve ever done."

From "Kinky Friedman’s New Album “Circus of Life” Is Full of Surprises/The Texas songwriting legend says we ought to give Donald Trump a chance" (RealClear/Life).

What's the part about giving Trump a chance?

The battering Trump is taking in the press is not hurting him.

From Real Clear Politics (which averages the polls):



I invite you to offer your own explanations, but I'm reading "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper" (NYT)...

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?”...

Republican voters repeatedly described an instinctive, protective response to the president, and their support has grown in recent months.... Mr. Trump has also retained support across a range of demographics other than the working-class voters who are most identified with him....

[A]s another immigration crisis of his own making smoldered this past week, critics inside and outside Mr. Trump’s party predicted another devastating, irremediable low point in his presidency. Yet many Trump voters said that they no longer had the patience or interest to listen to what they see as another hysterical outburst by Democrats, Republican “Never Trumpers” and the media....

For many Republicans, the audio of children sobbing at a migrant detention center barely registered, because these voters don’t pay attention to the left-leaning and mainstream media that have covered the family separation crisis far more than their preferred channel, Fox News....

Others said they saw a ploy by the president’s enemies to obscure news that was more favorable to him, like the internal Justice Department investigation that recently uncovered evidence of F.B.I. officials speaking disparagingly of Mr. Trump....

Then there's "Trump Loses His Superpower/The president’s tweets have been powerless against images of migrant children in the news media," by Jack Shafer (Politico) — which I feel like calling As Trump Supporters Resist the Assailing of Trump, His Antagonists Dig In Deeper:

The border story couldn’t have arrived at a worse time for Trump. After the inspector general’s report on FBI handling of the Clinton email investigation came out on June 14, Trump seized on it with his demagogic tentacles and started to score points with his misguided supporters about how the deep state had attempted to block his election....

But... the border story nullified Trump’s howling about the IG report and the evil James Comey. Nobody wanted to hear about the IG anymore; they wanted to hear Trump justify the border policy. Trump was now facing a story that couldn’t be diluted or contaminated with Twitter truculence....

For three years now we’ve been told that nothing bad sticks to Trump, that his mind games and double-talk make him invulnerable to the protestations of the righteous. That no matter how tight his detractors tie the knot, he’ll always slip out of it. This week we learned differently. Trump can reliably win the battle if it’s fought with words. But against images and descriptions of distraught and traumatized children and parents, Trump’s superpowers fail. If you want to beat Trump, hit him in the heart because he doesn’t seem to have one. He’s a man with zero emotional intelligence.

So... hit him in the thing that he doesn't have. Is that a Zen koan? I don't know. Jack Shafer just sounds... truculent. It's inspiring my instinctive, protective response. Shafer ought to see how battering Trump stimulates that feeling... but it would take some... emotional intelligence.

"From the moment late in 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s formless, themeless, listless campaign handed the White House to Donald Trump (assisted by Comrade Putin), Democrats have been counting on..."

"... the reckless, heedless, careless novice to return the favor. Rather than melt down, though, President Trump is gaining strength. After a rocky start, the president has cut himself loose from the highly unpopular Congress to create a clear account of his unusual reign, which he repeats with unflagging discipline. He’s a rulebreaker who gets results, and the enemies of change are conspiring to stop him. This is a polarizing message, indeed. But Trump appears to understand that popularity and unpopularity aren’t necessarily opposites. They can be partners...."

From "There will be no Trump collapse" by David Von Drehle (WaPo).

"Kanye West is not in fact losing millions of followers for tweeting his love of Donald Trump."

The Verge has figured out. Well, it was easy to figure out, because by "followers," The Verge simply means followers on Twitter, and anybody can look and see how many follower he has. 27.9 million. He follows exactly 1 person, his wife.

West has been tweeting things like:

You don't have to agree with trump but the mob can't make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don't agree with everything anyone does. That's what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.

And:

my wife just called me and she wanted me to make this clear to everyone. I don't agree with everything Trump does. I don't agree 100% with anyone but myself.

And even:

my MAGA hat is signed 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/DrDHJybS8V

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

All that fire! And that led to:

pic.twitter.com/tB8SlAjIfV

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

"I just want to lead with love. I want to be about love.... I love Donald Trump."

Said Kanye West.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kevin said:

Love Trumps Hate

Remember?



What did it mean? Scott Adams wrote in "Win Bigly":

One of the more notable persuasion failures from the Clinton campaign involved the slogan Love Trumps Hate. The first two thirds of the slogan is literally “Love Trump.” Again, human brains put more weight on the first part of a sentence than the end. On a rational level, the sentence makes perfect sense, and it says what Trump’s critics wanted it to say. But in the 3-D world of persuasion, this slogan simply told the world to either love Trump or love the things he hates, such as terrorism and bad trade deals.

Just one more thing Scott Adams got right.

AND: Here's something Ted Rall got wrong:



Turned out we didn't get that 4 to 8 years of stupid — not that particular form of stupid, anyway (the stupid of getting called "sexist" every time you criticized the President).

"Putin is a good Russian president. Russia is lucky to have a president like him. If the country had someone weak as its leader..."

"... no one knows how everything would turn out for the country. The Russians have at least 5,000 nuclear warheads, and clearly, someone needs to keep an eye on the goddamned order. Putin has been good at it.... He is cool. Clearly, one has to get rid of someone at times, but I mean that the CIA also throws people under the bus, but, perhaps, they do it more accurately."

Said Dolph Lundgren, quoted in Pravda. I hadn't clicked on my Pravda bookmark in a long time. I'd had it squirreled away in a lesser folder — labeled "other news," as opposed to "main news," which are both under "news." I was surprised to find something bloggable (and new).

Lundgren was born in Sweden, and English is not his first language, but he's been living in L.A. for a long time. He's been famous in the U.S. since 1985, when he got to punch Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky IV":

"I walked in to a Westwood movie theater as Grace Jones' boyfriend and walked out ninety minutes later as the movie star Dolph Lundgren. I was shell-shocked for years from the mind-boggling and daunting experience of being a student-athlete from tiny Sweden suddenly having to live up a new action-star persona."

So he speaks English. I think he knows what he's saying. You see what he's saying here: "Clearly, one has to get rid of someone at times, but I mean that the CIA also throws people under the bus, but, perhaps, they do it more accurately." That implies: Sometimes the government must surreptitiously kill an inconvenient person, and the only difference between Putin and the CIA is messiness. 

And while I'm looking at Putin news, I found this in The Hill, something Putin said at the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia, on Thursday. Responding to a question, he talked about the disrespect for President Trump in the United States:

"Inside the country, disrespect is shown for him. This is a regrettable negative component of the U.S. political system," Putin said. 

He's right that disrespecting the President is an inherent part of the American system. Every President is disrespected. It's what we do in a democracy. Myself, I don't regret it or regard is as negative. I'm an American. It's what we do. I'm not going to disrespect the disrespect. I observe it. It's our culture. I'm a little blasé about it, because I've been observing it since I was able to get the gist of newspaper headlines and it took the form of saying all Eisenhower does is golf.

[Putin] continued, saying that "one can argue but one can’t show disrespect, even not for him personally but for those people who voted for him."

Of course, we can show disrespect, and we do. But he means one shouldn't show disrespect. And he makes something of a good point, and it's close to something I think: The people who preferred Trump won, a legitimate victory means a lot, and those who lost should try to understand their own country, not demonize their fellow citizens.

"Mr. Trump was elected by the American people. And at least for this reason, it is necessary to show respect for him, even if you do not agree with some of his positions," he added.

Trump is getting respect for this, just not complete respect and not from everyone. 

The Russian leader told his audience that those who ascend to the highest office in the U.S. possess a "certain talent" that allows them to survive America's bruising political process. "I believe that the president of the United States does not need any advice because one has to possess certain talent and go through this trial to be elected, even without having the experience of such big administrative work. He [Trump] has done this," the Russian leader said. "He won honestly."

I assume Putin knew those last 3 words were inflammatory, coming from him, and that he got a bang out of saying them, tweaking the Trump-disrespecters who jump at clues of collusion. Even as he's lecturing us about settling down and accepting the reality that our system produced President Trump, he's agitating the haters and resisters.

Trump approval improving.

The Real Clear Politics average:

Why do you think the polls are improving? Check all the apply:

Hurricanes.

Kim Jong-Un.

U.N. speech.

Normalization happened.

Trump haters are tiresome.

Russia collusion story fading.

Successful policies have been implemented.

Nothing's gone horribly wrong (yet).

Bad things like The Wall and repealing Obamacare seem to have been merely campaign bluster.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Scott Adams describes the spectacular persuasion technique as a charismatic BLM leader speaks to Trump supporters. (Wow)."

Scott Adams describes the spectacular persuasion technique as a charismatic BLM leader speaks to Trump supporters. … https://t.co/6f4cn9D5pt

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) September 20, 2017