"Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election."

Write Jake Tapper and Thompson in a book they call "Original Sin," quoted in "Exclusive: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says" (Axios).

The book will be out in a week, so presumably Axios can excerpt anything from the text and call it "exclusive."

Nothing wrong with needing a wheelchair while serving in government. Obviously, Franklin Roosevelt did it, but he also hid it. What's up with the shame? What does it say to people with disabilities to hide your need for a wheelchair? How can it be better to walk in a "halting" style and to risk falling? Was he in pain? Was he on painkillers?

It might be Bad Analogy Day on this blog — see the previous post — so I'll say it: It reminds me of a gay person in the closet. The hiding expresses shame that hurts others in your group and that underestimates the intelligence and empathy of those you're hiding from. Is that a bad analogy?

Speaking of things not done until after the election, here's Chuck Todd, denying responsibility for hiding Biden's fitness. I'm embedding this because Todd's inability to enact sincerity is so funny that I think an aspiring comic actor could use this as a model:

"Once the song was finished, we tried to get on television and the radio. But the BBC banned it."

"I think the people who banned it were intelligent people. They were just being protective. I don’t think it was because they felt it would create a revolution. It wasn’t about politics. There were no musicians or artists speaking about politics. There was nobody suggesting who you vote for. It was considered to be passé to even have a political stance then."

Writes Pete Townshend, in "'It Came From a Place of Resentment’/Pete Townshend began writing ‘My Generation’ as an anthem for his disaffected peers. Then the queen got involved" (NY Magazine).

Yes, my generation is passé. We're the ones who considered it passé to even have a political stance.

"Rogan’s descent into far-right politics is instructive for understanding the diminished cultural resistance to Trump."

Writes Brady Brickner-Wood, in "What Happened to the Trump Resistance? If the President’s first term was colored with protests and hashtags, his second has so far been characterized by a lack of dissidence" (The New Yorker).

The comedian and U.F.C. commentator had once come across as an anti-establishment social progressive—he endorsed Sanders for President in 2020—but now he presents himself as having penetrated the lies of the Democratic deep state. His once goofy interest in alien and moon-landing conspiracy theories quickly led to his identifying conspiracies everywhere: immigrants were being bused from blue to red states to swing the electorate in favor of Democrats; eating a beef-only diet could cure arthritis; the care given to transgender children was unethical in a “Dr. Frankenstein sort of way.” His dalliances with the psychedelic drug DMT and his experiments with holistic treatment modalities have mushroomed into anti-vax rhetoric and aggressive scientific skepticism. Establishment Democrats, as he sees it, mask their deceptions with self-righteousness while Trump tells it like it is, exposing the web of lies Rogan suddenly saw in everything....

Was that instructive for understanding the diminished cultural resistance to Trump?

This article caused me to rediscover my old "tired of politics" tag. But I don't know that people are tired of protesting or tired of needing to be upset about one thing or the other out there in the political world every damned day. I think a lot of people who are just keeping quiet actually like what Trump is doing. 

I'm glad to see I'm not the first person to say "Nonapology accepted."

Google shows it's been used 715 times before that time I wielded it this morning, here. 

Art Buchwald had a whole Washington Post column — "Non-Apology Accepted" — in 2005 ("This period in history will be known as the 'Age of Non-Apology.' Politics means never having to say you are sorry.")

I used it here, this morning, in the comments to the post analyzing Trump's Mother's Day rhetoric.

The first commenter said "I seem to recall a pledge to ignore him during the campaign."

I was all: "Have I ever made 'a pledge'? I don't think so. That doesn't sound like me. Link?"

The commenter backed off. He wasn't "sure about literal 'pledge,'" at some unlinked-to place in the archive, but he thinks he "chimed in to endorse the quasi-pledge." He wasn't going to search for a link to the place where that happened (or didn't happen). "Not trying to set any blog agenda," he said. "I'm fine with whatever, for what it's worth."

I said — and I recommend this usage — "Nonapology accepted."

"I’m so upset, I feel physically ill. Just the ugliness of it all. It’s so heartbreaking that all we can do is bring each other down and cut into each other. I feel like I’m going to cry."

Said Marsha Newman, a 66-year old school counselor in Chapmanville, W.Va., quoted in "These Americans Are Done With Politics/The Exhausted Majority needs a break" (NYT). According to the article, a study by a "nonpartisan organization" found two thirds of "a representative group of 8,000 Americans" to fall into a category labeled "Exhausted Majority."

“It feels very lonely out here,” said Jamie McDaniel, a 36-year-old home health care worker in Topeka, Kan., one of several people in the study who was interviewed for this article. “Everybody is so right or left, and you’re just kind of standing there in the middle saying, “What happened?’”

By the way, the word editing in the NYT has really gotten bad — "one of several people in the study who was interviewed"!

I'm glad I already have a tag that works for this topic — "tired of politics." I know I'm tired of politics, but I kind of have been all my life. It's nice to have company.

But is this NYT article really about how people are exhausted or is it about how the Democratic Party needs to admit it has a problem? The end of the article sounds like a loud wake-up alarm for Democrats:

"Watching hours of Trump at his rallies, it’s easy to sympathize with the desire to ignore them."

"John Dean tweeted a picture of the crowd waiting in line for the Erie rally and derided it as a 'meaningless show.' For supporters, it’s hyperbole, just rhetoric, entertainment, part of the unvarnished appeal; for opponents, it’s old news painful to watch, maybe, but inconsequential, narrow-casting to his base... But what the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary... It’s not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs.... It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster. I listen because I think we are making a mistake by dismissing him, by pretending the words of the most powerful man in the world are meaningless...."

From "I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too/It’s not a reality show. It’s real" — by Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker.

I was just inquiring into who's properly characterized as "exhausted." Supposedly, according to "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape," it's everybody but the progressive activists, the traditional conservatives, and the devoted conservatives.

But that New Yorker writer sounds powerfully exhausted and she's talking to New Yorker readers who she presumes are exhausted.

By the way, I had to laugh at the line "Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous." Glasser is disparaging Trump for saying that. She's paraphrasing. But you could just as well paraphrase the message from Democrats as: Republicans are not just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Glasser acts appalled by "the sense of actual menace" that Trump supposedly is "trying to convey to" his audience, but Glasser seems to be trying to convey a sense of actual menace to hers.

I would be exhausted if I were not amused.

I'm hearing about the "exhausted majority." Is that something different from the old "silent majority"?

A lot of people — including me, here, yesterday — are linking to the Atlantic article, "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" by Yascha Mounk.

I usually give the subtitle along with the title, but this article has a distractingly incomprehensible subtitle: "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." I mean, I can comprehend it now that I've read the article, but unlike most subtitles, it doesn't help you see what you're going to get by reading it. The use of the word "proxy" is, if not entirely wrong, entirely confusing. The idea is supposed to be that you're wrong if you assume that the older and whiter a person is there more likely they are to think "political correctness" is a problem. It turns out that all groups — except "progressive activists" — say they think "political correctness" is a problem. And the majorities are overwhelming.

The article draws from a new report, "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” which sorts Americans into various political "tribes." This depiction is a good quick summary:



Look at how many people are collected under the label "exhausted"! Obviously, we're a huge majority, and it's nice to see all the detail within the majority, but why are we all labeled "exhausted"? And why are "traditional liberals" said to be exhausted when "traditional conservatives" are not? The Atlantic article says that the views of the "traditional" and the "devoted" conservatives "are far outside the American mainstream." I guess the "traditional liberals," unlike the "traditional conservatives," don't belong in the "wings," and therefore get grouped with the "majority." But why is that entire diverse group, the majority, deemed "exhausted"?

To go to the underlying report:

In talking to everyday Americans, we have found a large segment of the population whose voices are rarely heard above the shouts of the partisan tribes. These are people who believe that Americans have more in common than that which divides them. While they differ on important issues, they feel exhausted by the division in the United States. They believe that compromise is necessary in politics, as in other parts of life, and want to see the country come together and solve its problems.

Is this group really tired or just hard to hear "above the shouts of the partisan tribes"? I suspect that the authors are using the term "exhausted majority" because they don't want to say "silent majority."

Here's the Wikipedia article for "Silent Majority":

How can you ask "Where's the outrage?" without harking back to Bob Dole.

I'm seeing an opinion piece in The Washington Post with the headline "Trump was outrageous in Michigan. So where’s the outrage?" and it doesn't mention Bob Dole, who used to be famous for asking "Where's the outrage?" Answer Bob Dole first, and then it might make sense to ask the question about Trump.

On October 25, 1996:

So they gathered up their FBI files, they took them down to the White House, and there they've been. They say, "Oh, nobody looks at these. We just brought them over to see what the boxes look like," you know, whatever. And what happens? Where's the outrage in the media? Where's the outrage? There's no outrage. There's no outrage.

And October 26, 1996:

.... A lot of you people in the audience may not know about there are FBI files. That doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. You have an FBI file. What about the 900 people, innocent people, just because they're Republicans, had their files taken away [audio gap]. They tricked the FBI. They tricked the Secret Service. They took them to the White House, and then they said, oh, nobody ever looked at them. We just brought them down here, I guess, to look at the boxes. Well, I know that Mrs. Yeutter's file was in that group. Here's one right here. Nice innocent person. Her only crime was being a Republican. Now, that will not happen in a Dole White House. That is an outrage. That is an outrage.... How long do you think the American people are going to take it? Wake up, America. Wake up, America! Wake up, America!...  What would happen if any Republican president would have done two of these things? Why, there'd be outrage all across America. There would be outrage....

But we have a Republican President now, so where's the outrage? There's plenty of it in the media, but media people want more, because we have a Republican President now. But the people are sleeping through it. Wake up, America! Wake up, America! Why won't America wake up, WaPo wonders. America is sleeping because it has outrage fatigue. I'm too tired myself to do anything more at this point than show you my Google search results:

ADDED: Here's Howard Fineman in Newsweek on November 3, 1996:

Last week [Dole] was King Lear in a Brooks Brothers suit. Old grudges surfaced, and new ones. His predicament was the liberal media's fault. "The country belongs to the people, not The New York Times,'' he thundered in Dallas. Democrats were "rushing'' immigrants with criminal backgrounds onto the voter rolls. "They want to get them ready for Election Day,'' Dole said. Society was at fault for ignoring the ever-lengthening list of ethical and legal questions surrounding Clinton. "Where's the outrage in America?'' Dole demanded in Houston. "Where's the outrage?''

"Oh, sweetie. Bless your heart. Lie still while we sink our claws into you."

Say Tom & Lorenzo blogging an introduction to this week's podcast:

First, we roll up our sleeves and harrumph ALL OVER the buzz-heavy (among the gay twitterati) Attitude magazine opinion piece charmingly titled “YOUNG QUEER PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BE OBLIGED TO CARE ABOUT LGBT HISTORY – AND THAT’S THE BIGGEST SIGN OF SUCCESS THERE IS.”... After we get done launching our volleys into the Great Gay Generational War of 2018....

The young guy they tear into is Dylan Jones, and let's see what's at that link:

Shame is largely a thing of the past and homophobia is, like, SO 2008.... Things still aren’t perfect. Of course, discrimination - particularly transphobia - is still rife in many schools.... But it’s way better than it used to be....  these kids have started to hit their late teens and early twenties, a sort of super-race has emerged, blinking, into 2018’s Instagram-hued social and professional stratosphere....

There seems to be an attitude among older generations of LGBTQ people, particularly older gay men, that their younger counterparts are “losing sight of the issues.”.... It must be hard to swallow, after going through such struggles, to see young, chatty, confident gay men swanning about like they own the place....

According to these self-appointed sanctioners, we’re allowed to fight for our rights, but we’re not allowed to enjoy them once we’ve got them. Instead of cracking open a Strongbow Dark Fruit and having a dance to Little Mix, we’ve got to sit back down, and somberly start drawing up plans for the next march.

All this raises the question – SHOULD young LGBTQ people care about their history? They’re certainly not obliged to. Why should they? This is just their lives. They’re existing as they should always have been allowed to exist – happily and freely. They shouldn’t be made to feel guilty, or even grateful for that....

I could say more, but I'll just say there's a big difference between:

1. Knowing history, venerating the heroes of the past, keeping vigilant about preserving liberty, and...

2. Seeing life in terms of endless grievances and yourself as a member of an identity group that must stay coalesced and ready for action.

ADDED: This controversy made me think about how we Baby Boomers grew up in the 1950s world that our parents generation suffered to create. We knew, theoretically, superficially, about the Depression and World War II, but we thought 1950s suburban American life was hollow and bland, and we just had to do something completely different.

#WakeUpWisconsin.

Twitter has #WakeUpWisconsin at the top of its "Trends for you" list for me. I won't show you what's mostly there, but I like these 2 reactions:

Wow. #WakeUpWisconsin is the #1 trending thing on my feed. Oh... it’s political??? Run away! pic.twitter.com/29yLJDBZjp

— Fife On The Radio (@FifeOnTheRadio) January 8, 2018

Lets make this non political and about .. literally just waking up! #WakeUpWisconsin pic.twitter.com/f7I5CO0K6T

— Craig Seeman (@CraigSeeman) January 9, 2018

Cass Sunstein says "Gone With the Wind should not be mistaken for a defense of slavery or even the Confederacy."

"[Margaret] Mitchell is interested in individuals rather than ideologies or apologetics. She parodies the idea of 'the Cause,' and she has no interest in 'States’ Rights.' She is elegiac not about politics, but about innocence, youth, memory, love (of all kinds), death, and loss (which helps make the book transcend the era it depicts). Irrevocably stuck in the past, and a bit of a ghost, Ashley Wilkes reminds Scarlett of 'the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs,' and 'the far-off yelping of possum dogs in the dark swamp under cool autumn moons and the smell of eggnog bowls, wreathed with holly at Christmas time,' and 'Stuart and Brent with their long legs and their red hair and their practical jokes,' and 'a whisper and a fragrance that was Ellen,' Scarlett’s mother, who died during the war. Mitchell draws a sharp distinction between those pathetic souls who keep hearing that sad magic, like Ashley, and those who want to move forward, like Scarlett and Rhett. Her own heart ultimately sides with the latter. But she also cherishes, and tries to capture, the magic, the yelping, the practical jokes, and a mother’s whisper.... [The Confederate flag] should be taken down. But even so, it would be a mistake to disparage the sad magic of half-forgotten songs. Americans have good reason to remember the sweetness, and the deaths, of the countless real-world Tartletons—and never to dishonor those who grieve for them."

From "Finding Humanity in Gone With the Wind/The classic novel shows that individual lives cannot be reduced to competing sets of political convictions."

When you're tired of all that political fakery...

... dogs are reliably spontaneous and ingenuous. Photographed by Meade at The Puparazzo, the cure for your political malaise.

"Though I understand why you might have yelled at me a month ago... it doesn't make much sense to yell at me now..."

Says Obama, appeasing a heckling crowd that was supposed to be good scenery for his immigration action.



Or was the heckling from the left a planned part of the show? Were these people meant to be scenery or were they meant to step up into bit parts?

I don't know anymore. Anything political might be theater — scripted drama — even the heckling from the right, in places like The Weekly Standard, which features that clip for the line "I just took an action to change the law" and pedantically informs us of the supposed rigidity of the separation of powers: "The United States Constitution says the legislative power is held by Congress, not by the president."

I'm just going to guess that President Obama decided to triangulate on immigration, and he anticipated and sought this drama from the left and the right as he strutted back and forth a few times on the political stage.

Are people burning out on the Obamacare debacle?

That's a question occurred to me when I saw this ludicrous list of "most read" articles in The Daily News:



Is everyone crawling deep into the low-information/aversion-to-politics hole?

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry said:

1. Not too sexy for Obamacare.
2. This cat is covered.
3. Drowning is not covered.
4. Early adopters don't.
5. Beer goggles are covered.
6. Fat kids cost the same as skinny kids.
7. Obamacare will make you go blind.
8. Whats with all the kids?
9. Self-employed Comedian live-tweets insurance loss.
10. Birth control is free. Don't you people listen?

"I’ll still keep up an online presence, particularly on Twitter.... I find it calmer than Facebook."

Writes Kenneth Burns, the erstwhile Isthmus writer (who's moved to Tennessee). He's deactivating Facebook at least for the summer.

Mainly, I’m weary of the politics. Understand, I’m fascinated by electoral politics, like any journalist. I have my views, and I express them in the polling booth and not many other places. Not on Facebook. I’m not interested in politics as an all-consuming leisure activity.

In my experience, though, Facebook is one rabidly political social network, and it’s not political in inspiring ways. It’s political in reductive, repetitive ways.

But why has his Facebook experience been so rabid and uncalm compared to Twitter? He's got himself to blame:

Quokka.

Another sign people are tired of having to think about politics.

Signs that people are tired of thinking about politics.

Here are the "most popular" stories in The Washington Post right now:



#1 is Michelle Obama's ass. #4 is a bird laid an egg. And both of these are stories that I blogged yesterday. The First Lady's ass attracted 197 commenters here on the blog. I blogged the bird story too. In the comments, Inga made fun of the WaPo headline saying that the bird had given birth, and I note this morning that the headline has been rewritten, and now it's producing a chick. But there we were, talking about whether it's silly to say a bird gave birth.

Give birth is an interesting expression, even as applied to mammals. Which is my point: What is interesting this morning? Something tells me it's not politics.

Meanwhile, even politicians seem to know we're tired of dreary politics. Apparently, Republicans want to win us over with "happy talk" — #3 on that list:

At a retreat for Republican leaders last month, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told them to “learn to be a happy party” and a “cheerful” one, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said they should be a party “that smiles.”...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor took this don’t­worry-be-happy strategy seriously, and in a heavily promoted “major” speech to the American Enterprise Institute [that]... began with an uplifting anecdote about the Wright brothers and quoted the inspirational words of Emma Lazarus. He spoke from a lectern decorated with a foam board carrying the slogan “Making life work for more people”....

Decorated with a foam board... That's like a bird giving birth. The WaPo is bumping up the rhetoric inanely. Even when mocking the GOP for its strained cheeriness, they're goosing us with inappropriate but exciting words.

And then there's that coin. It's moving closer to reality.  Here I am over here in Reality. And there... somewhere out there.... a coin... it approaches!

Words, words, words... What kind of words do you have an appetite for this morning?