In which I examine my instinct to call Trump "that cosmic oddball."

Half an hour ago, in the depths typing the first post of the day, I felt called to use the expression "Trump — that cosmic oddball."

Now, in the cool fresh start of the third post, I want to examine the words "cosmic" and "oddball" and reflect on the phrase that popped up out of the blue.

The OED tells me that "cosmic," originally and obsoletely, meant "Of this world." In that sense, we're all cosmic, even the most mundane among us. Everybody is a star. (But not everybody is a porn star.)

Non-obsoletely, "cosmic" means "Of or belonging to the universe considered as an ordered system or totality; relating to the sum or universal system of things." Not quite. Ah, this is better: "Characteristic of the vast scale of the universe and its changes...." It's hyperbole for "huge." Fine.

An "oddball" is "An eccentric or odd person; a person of unconventional views or habits."

Are you ready for the big announcement?

@mattieonthedrums #duet with @brandonethridgemusic Big announcement, Big finish #trump #ragtime #rolandvad503 #roland #vdrums #duet #fyp ♬ original sound - Brandon Ethridge923

Cat-napping — taking advantage of the little spaces — is a super-power, not a weakness.

But you said nothing when Trump did similar. https://t.co/Ggv2IZH0w3

— V Daniels (@funkapunk) October 22, 2022

Here's a 2021 column in The Guardian: "From Aristotle to Einstein: a brief history of power nappers/Churchill took naps for at least an hour, Da Vinci for 20 minutes and Dalí for just a second" by Caroline Davies."

Salvador Dalí, in his 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship for aspiring painters, outlined tips for the one-second micro-nap, including sitting upright, key in hand and upturned plate beneath. Once asleep, the key will drop and the ensuing clang ensures instant revival. Albert Einstein deployed a similar technique, using a spoon or pencil instead of a key.

For Saturday, take a journey through 12 TikToks, arranged meaningfully... or so some people think.

1. Maybe you'll say "I remember the old pole."

2. London women who don't like American women are not too likable themselves.

3. How you would love it if your candidate were this loved.

4. A vertiginous ride.

5. A vertiginous walk.

6. The workhouse museum.

7. The meaning of life in eating your toast.

8. The butter board?!

9. Oh, Wisconsin!

10. When Anne Bancroft met Mel Brooks.

11. Saving a seal.

12. A dog carps about the stuck traffic.

"Why would the internet have corrupted Republicans so much more than Democrats, the global right more than the global left?"

"My analysis begins with a remarkable essay [by] Jonathan Rauch [who] pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge. This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. 'We let alt-truth talk,' Rauch said, 'but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.'... [M]illions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.... [Trump] and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime."

From "The Rotting of the Republican Mind/When one party becomes detached from reality" by David Brooks (NYT). Brooks goes on to blame distrust of experts and anxiety about social and economic conditions, but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left, nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left. That is, ironically, he himself does not follow "a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge"!

And it's so ugly to speak of "rotting" minds. You'd better be sure there's no rot in your own before you express that kind of emotive contempt and disgust. What makes you so sure you and your friends constitute an epistemic regime that ought to be deferred to by the people you obviously regard as deplorable? It's right there in the open. And you assume that the non-elite people of the left are already in full deference mode. Why?!

"The sun is rising, trumpets are playing, all signifying redemption."

How happy I was to find only that when I searched for "trump" on the page "How Can We Bear This Much Loss?/In William Blake’s engravings for the Book of Job I found a powerful lesson about grief and attachment" by Amitha Kalaichandran (NYT).

In Blake’s penultimate illustration in this series Job is pictured with his daughters.... The sun is rising, trumpets are playing, all signifying redemption. Job became a fundamentally changed man after being tested to his core. He has accepted that life is unpredictable and loss is inevitable. Everything is temporary and the only constant, paradoxically, is this state of change.

"In the world in which QAnon believers live, Trump’s detractors, such as Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, wear ankle monitors that track their whereabouts."

"Press reports are dismissed as 'Operation Mockingbird,' the name given to the alleged midcentury infiltration of the American media by the CIA. The Illuminati looms large in QAnon, as do the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish family vilified by the conspiracy theorists as the leaders of a satanic cult. Among the world leaders wise to satanic influences, the theory holds, is Russian President Vladimir Putin. QAnon flirts with eschatology, fascist philosophy and the filmmaking of Francis Ford Coppola. Adherents believe a 'Great Awakening' will precede the final storm foretold by Trump. Once they make sense of the information drip-fed to them by 'Q,' they will usher in a Christian revival presaging total victory. The implication is that resolving the clues left by 'Q' would not just explain Trump’s planned countercoup. It would also explain the whole universe.... Some big names have bought into the fantasy. Roseanne Barr, the disgraced star of the canceled ABC revival that bore her name, has posted messages on Twitter that appear to endorse the QAnon worldview, fixating on child sex abuse...."

"‘We are Q’: A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump’s ‘MAGA’ tour" (WaPo).

"Trump Promise Tracker... We’re tracking the progress of 60 pledges he made during his campaign — and whether he achieved his goals."

"It’s day 12 of the Trump administration with 1,449 days left in his term," and Trump has kept 5 promises and broken one, according to the WaPo Fact Checker. Trump has taken some action on 7 promises and not yet done anything on 47.

The broken promise is: "Impose a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service."

On Jan. 28, Trump signed an order that he said would impose a five-year ban on lobbying after government service by executive-branch officials. This appeared broader than the language in the contract, which said it would apply to White House officials, but it actually fails to fulfill his repeated pledge to "drain the swamp." There is no reference in an executive order to a ban on congressional officials. The five-year ban applies only to lobbying one’s former agency — not becoming a lobbyist. Moreover, Trump actually weakened some of the language from similar bans under Obama and George W. Bush, and reduced the level of transparency. Given that this action in many ways is a step backward, we will label this as a promise broken.

Trump has cued up the new distraction.

I have made my decision on who I will nominate for The United States Supreme Court. It will be announced live on Tuesday at 8:00 P.M. (W.H.)

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017

ADDED: Last week he told us he'd make the announcement on Thursday. He moved it up 2 days.

AND: Can we talk about the Supreme Court nominee and immigration at the same time? I'm picturing anti-Trumpists thinking they can make the 2 things into one combo-topic. And I predict that will not work well at all.

As Scott Adams says: Outrage Dilution.

If you try to do multiple outrages, it will dilute. If you stick to one at a time, he can always dump a new one on top of the old one. Will you drop the old topic and play catch up? Or will you stick to the old topic and let him get away with doing this new thing? Or will you waste energy in confusion about what to do?

ADDED: John Henry asks "Was that a poll, Ann?," and I say "It's funny how this post is like the previous post: Can we do more than one thing at a time?" The previous post has a poll, so here's the poll for this one:

How should Trump opponents fight when they see one outrage after another?

Jump on the new outrage immediately and concentrate on denouncing him for that.

Don't get distracted by a new outrage unless it is clearly more outrageous.

Keep adding outrages together and cry out over the terrible mass of outrages.

Mix up those 3 approaches. Don't let Trump predict how you will react.

 

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