PMC Commentary

Fox News and Trump's coming network, Fantastic Fake News

I'm astonished that Trump had time this week to Twitter-attack his former, favorite propaganda arm, Fox News, considering how busy he was, releasing a classified photo with no aforethought whatsoever; "monitoring" Hurricane Dorian, while a former Canadian prime minister was "rooting for a direct hit on Mar a Lago!”; barring the entry of Canadian Muslims into the U.S.; learning that his campaign manager has billed one of his super PACs for nearly a million dollars; sacking a besotted, loquacious assistant; snubbing National Security Adviser John Bolton; and furthering his assault on former FBI director James Comey.

Nevertheless, he did have time, accusing Fox of "heavily promoting the Democrats" through the nefarious ploys of interviewing a DNC spokeswoman and having hired former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile as a contributor. Oh my.

Thou shalt not hear opposing views, is Trump's first commandment. One would think Fox would take that seriously, coming, as it does, from the King of Israel and second coming of God.

....are all in for the Open Border Socialists (or beyond). Fox hires “give Hillary the questions” @donnabrazile, Juan Williams and low ratings Shep Smith. HOPELESS & CLUELESS! They should go all the way LEFT and I will still find a way to Win - That’s what I do, Win. Too Bad!....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

Only six minutes later, he was at it again: "We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!" even though, on Friday, Trump tweeted "four videos on the Justice Department’s critical inspector general report regarding … Comey," writes the Times. "All four clips featured guests criticizing Mr. Comey, and all four clips were from Fox News."

In overlooking the critical background of Trump's quarrel with Fox, as it does, the Times story omits two likewise critical subplots — speculative on my part, but having tracked the manipulative mind of the grifter guy for four years, discerning his shifty little thoughts has become second nature to me.

Hence, the two subplots. Trump knows his internal numbers for 2020 are consistently, remarkably dreadful; that his ceiling — not his floor — is roughly 40 percent. Thus he's almost certain to lose. When that blessed event occurs, he will, in his oh-so familiar wicked way, need all the scapegoats he can imagine. And Fox News is a prime target, since it's robotically viewed by so many of his flaky fans. Subplot One.

Subplot Two. Having whined that he lost his reelection bid because Fox News, among many other innocents, betrayed him, he'll announce (assuming he has found a major investor) that it's time to launch a more truthful news and commentary network — just as he planned to do in 2017 or shortly thereafter, until the aforementioned flakes crowned him president and King of Israel. Ergo his tweet — an intensely suspicious one — "We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!"

I'm not hallucinating, notwithstanding the morphine I'm now on. As Vanity Fair reported on 16 June 2016:

"Trump is indeed considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States….

"Trump, [a source] close to the matter suggests, has become irked by his ability to create revenue for other media organizations without being able to take a cut himself. Such a situation 'brings him to the conclusion that he has the business acumen and the ratings for his own network.' Trump has 'gotten the bug,' according to this person. 'So now he wants to figure out if he can monetize it.'"

Why not? Through Constitution-violating emoluments and political contributions, as president he's already monetized rapacity, otherworldly mendacity, unprecedented incompetence, and staggering vindictiveness; so I'm staying tuned, awaiting their reincarnation in Trump's Fantastic Fake News network.

Trump has lost women, including white women, by the binders-full

The Hill reports on an "A-" Quinnipiac University poll released this week, which found Trump running behind the leading Democrats — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg — anywhere from 9 to 16 points. What has really shaken the White House, though, is that each leading Dem trounces the president by "23 points or more among all women."

Even worse for the misogynistic hoodlum, Biden and Sanders scored best among white women, both pummeling Trump by 18 points.

Quinnipiac's pollster noted that 48 times since November 2016 he has surveyed women about their opinion of Trump, and "in all 48 surveys, women disapproved of Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin." What largely boosted him to the White House were white women, who supported him by 52 percent. Now that is gone. Quinnipiac reports that "white women go for the Democratic candidate by double digits in every scenario."

However here's a bullet point from "Women for Trump" that has me impossibly perplexed: "Trump’s female supporters point to," among other issues, "a paid family leave proposal for newborns." Well hell they can't vote, nor could they get very far in the family SUV.

The extremist crackpots just love U.S. authoritarianism

I can't recall how it came about, but while clicking around and writing this morning I ran across an Election Day 2018 item of mine. It addressed "A horrifying encounter with online Russian drivel," and secondarily one Nicholas Sampsidis, writing for an ultraconservative site called The Duran. More on Sampsidis' Russian drivel, also on Election Day 2018, in a moment. First I must ease you in to his somehow comically grotesque psyche.

In October of last year he scribbled a downright hilarious piece titled "The Trump Miracle and the Logical End of US Democracy: What happened?" A few tastes: "Obama’s, [sic] Grand Canyon [divisiveness] was cemented, subsequently, by Clinton’s 'Deplorables' gaff [sic — a gaffe in a gaffe!]" … "the Obama-Clinton regime politicized that which should never be politicized, namely, core beliefs and values, starting with God" — which in conspicuous truth originated with Falwell Republicans, and pretty much needless to say, the "Obama-Clinton regime" did no such thing afterward … "Debate is one thing, but the [Obama] regime followed up with direct and indirect actions, which some writers call rainbow fascism" … and these two passages, of which I am fondest: It's a damn shame we lost "compassion and sensitivity to opposing views," followed up by Hillary "flying about on her crooked broom, peddling influence and laundering bloody cash from terrorism-sponsoring sheiks."

Poor Sampsidis. He doesn't know his adorable knockabout ass from the hole in his head.

Now on to his Election Day 2018 drivel (See Russian; subsection Putin) in "The America I Once Knew," in which "anything was better, in my day" — such as potentially deadly measles  — "even a school bus ride home. A mama’s boy was a sissy who wouldn’t get even an eyebrow of interest from the girls." Also see: homophobia.

In the end, however, Sampsidis morphs uncommonly spooky, since, he needs us to know, "democracy … has failed because of the intolerance of Obama and Clinton for any views but their own." I'm still working on that particular incoherence, though he may have just hastened its unintelligibility in a propagandistic fever, so as to get on with what he really wanted to say:

"A dictatorship can be a more effective form of government for business considering that the dictator is free to enact legislation without the restraints of Congress. If the economy is good, foreign wars aren’t needed. Finally, the dictator is above money, considering that, he or she, is in power for life, so it’s not necessary to steal from coffers or to stash away bribes for a rainy day."

Right, except a dictatorship can also summarily shut down your business or subsidize your competitors; except after lamenting the failure of democracy, he makes clear he prefers the extermination of any congressional restraints on some Stalinist goon; except that dictatorships are exceptionally free to launch and maintain foreign wars when their economies are headed north, south, east or west; and except that dictatorships throughout history have been notorious for stealing from coffers and stashing away bribes — consult "rules 5, 6 and 7" of Peter York's "Dictator Chic." Other than these trivial objections, you sure nailed this one, Nicholas.

He concludes by going altogether bananas:

"The US is about to become either a benign dictatorship of the right or a radical dictatorship of the left. It’s up to Trump and his supporters to recognize the fact and to seize the opportunity while it’s still possible."

Does anyone believe this ghastly buffoon of primordial mind won't be inciting riots when Trump crashes in 2020?

The impeachment dilemma?

The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik mulls over House Democrats' choice of holding onto prudence or upholding principles in the manifest case against Donald Trump. I have condensed his evolving argument as economically as I could:

The prudential argument, against impeachment, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi advocates … is that the crucial thing for those who resist Donald Trump … is to win elections in 2020…. A victory in the Presidential election is paramount, but almost as important are victories in the congressional elections which would, in the event of a President Warren or Harris or whomever, make her policies possible — and, in the dire event of Trump’s reëlection, would sustain a power center able, at least in theory, to resist him….

The principled case, now and then, is summed up in three words: Trump’s a crook…. Any one of half a dozen scandals … would have been the immediate cause of an impeachment inquiry into … any previous President.... Trump himself continues to profit while and through holding public office. Above all stands his record of open engagement with foreign autocrats against American interests and against democracy itself, and, with it, a record of attempting to obstruct justice to obscure inquiry into any such engagement…. The task of holding Trump accountable becomes more urgent for a simple reason: he’s getting worse. Apparently emboldened by what he sees as his acquittal in the Mueller report, he feels free to execute his own [corrupt] vision of the Presidency….

There is another, pragmatic reason to pursue impeachment. Nixon may have been a bad man, but he was not an incompetent President. Pretty much every Republican in Congress knows that Trump is a dangerous and unfit President, and clings to him only out of partisan loyalty and fear of his or her own base…. Let them own their own bad consciences…; [and] making Trump’s Republican defenders own the truth does not sound like bad politics….

The normalization of Trump and Trumpism — allowing those things to be defined merely as a political problem needing a political cure — degrades democracy. Calculating political advantage, too, narrowly misses the point of taking part in politics, which is to defend values.

I would so much like to agree with Gopnik — a distinguished commentator and New Yorker writer since the mid-1980s — since Trump is a crook, among many other unpleasant attributes. But I can't quite bring myself to any sort of pragmatic or flawlessly principled "reason to pursue impeachment."

I question that Republican lawmakers are burdened by bad consciences, and, in this one narrowly defined instance, making them own the truth does sound like bad politics. Democrats from purple or red districts — which gave them the majority — would be at tremendous risk in doing so, especially since most or all of them promised their future constituents they'd reject devout partisanship. They would be contested on that by duplicitous Republican rivals, whether they supported Trump's ultimate removal or not. Impeachment proceedings would have GOP challengers dancing on incumbent, moderate Democrats' political graves months before Election Day.

Thus I can picture a Housecleaning from hell. It is no light matter to shove so many temperate Democrats into harm's way. And the more authentic degradation of democracy would embody itself in a Republican House. "The crucial thing for those who resist Donald Trump … is indeed to win elections in 2020." I'm unaware of any other foremost objective in politics — and should impeachment emerge as a dominant aim, the pragmatism of principles might well become a principled abyss.

I'd prefer a censure of Trump — the harshest of censures that details his numerous crimes and assures conscientious voters (a bit of pragmatic fibbing here) that the House would have impeached him, if not for Mitch McConnell's probable, in fact almost certain refusal to even hear the case in his dissolute Trump-Republican Senate. Just as he violated the constitution in refusing to hear the case for Merrick Garland. McConnell's nickname of "Moscow Mitch" is fiendishly apt, for he has the political ethics of a vodka-sloshing Putin.

A censure would counteract "the normalization of Trump and Trumpism." The Democratic presidential nominee would also protest any such normalization by encouraging voters to interpret the race, in part, as a referendum on Trump, his crimes, his unfitness, his friendships with autocrats and enmity toward allies. (It should go without saying that the nominee must also lay out policy plans for real progress on healthcare — a public option; Trump's astronomical deficits; gun reform; repairing or rebuilding America's infrastructure; and a host of other worthies with a Democratic House, Senate, and White House.)

Yet the ideal way to un-normalize Trump and Trumpism — not "allowing [gangsterism] to be defined merely as a political problem needing a political cure" — would be eight years of a Democratic president demonstrating that incessant and abusive tweeting, disagreeable behavior at international forums, law-breaking and lying and the like do not necessarily come with the territory. Normality would be re-normalized. After two terms of presidential decency Trump and Trumpism would transmute into little but a vague memory, although voters should exercise prudence in not forgetting too much. This president has been an aggressive driver on our road to serfdom — and lest we completely forget, an avowed representative democracy will flourish only through a wary-of-demagogues electorate.

Next up? More of Trump's 2016 blather about illegal votes.

Merely another day of Trump lunacy, what with "Who possibly thought that this was a good idea?" asked an immigration lawyer — the bad idea being the rather odd denial of automatic citizenship to children of naturalized U.S. parents serving in the military or working for the federal government overseas, if those parents had departed this country before five years of their U.S. residency had transpired. The children will just have to apply for citizenship before they're 18. Odd indeed. And then there's more methane-unleashing by small energy firms that care to, and sadly, plenty will.

Somewhat funny, though simultaneously alarming and far beyond odd, is that Trump, reports the Post today, began reiterating this month his absurd allegation of lore that "thousands and thousands" of illegal votes had been cast for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, along with Virginia and California, three states he lost.

"New Hampshire should have been won last time," Trump said to reporters in mid-Aug., as they were heading to a N.H. rally, "except we had a lot of people come in at the last moment, which was a rather strange situation. Thousands and thousands of people coming in from locations unknown. But I knew where their location was." (Again, see below, just like Capt. Queeg's key to the strawberries.)

That's gigglingly daft, of course. But what also makes it alarming? Former N.H. GOP chairman Fergus Cullen explains via analogy and a looming, dark vision:

"People hold riots after their favorite football team loses the Super Bowl. There’s just no telling what people will do when they’re incited to it. We’ve never been in a situation like this, where there’s so much dry kindling across the landscape and we’ve got someone all too willing to light the match."

Assuredly, Trump will light it when he loses next year. What we don't know is how many deranged Trumpeteers will begin heaving large logs on the fired kindling.

"Ah, but the strawberries …"

Politico:

"MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday retracted his reporting that claimed Russian oligarchs had co-signed for Deutsche Bank loans to President Donald Trump, and he apologized for not adhering to professional standards."

Such as:

Trump's wall project is as barren as T.S. Eliot's "Waste Land"

Trump conceded last year … that a wall or barrier is not the most effective mechanism to curb illegal immigration…. But he told lawmakers that his supporters want a wall and that he has to deliver it. Trump talked about the loud cheers the wall brought at rallies.

— The Washington Post

There you have it. All the detentions, all the suffering, all the deportations and all that money only so Trump can indulge his venomous base and retain their uninformed votes.

And here was a nice touch: "The height of the structure will vary between 18 and 30 feet, high enough to inflict severe injury or death from a fall."

Death. Serves them right for having attempted a misdemeanor.

You know the rest, unless you slept through yesterday: Trump promised pardons to aides who, on his orders, must break various laws so that an "[in]effective mechanism to curb illegal immigration" can be hailed at rallies by a presidential sociopath. He's also set on the forcible use of eminent domain, of late a GOP-detested abuse of government power.

The good news is that neither he nor we will ever see his enchanted wall. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has erected not one inch of the 500-mile, now-nonexistent fencing the president guaranteed his voters. And now he's left with an impossible 14 months to see that it's done.

Not that Trump and his nominally pre-pardoned subordinates won't give it the old criminal try. As a senior Border Patrol official summarized the administration and its project:

"They don’t care how much money is spent, whether landowners’ rights are violated, whether the environment is damaged, the law, the regs or even prudent business practices."

I'd advise packing a heat shield, beginning 2020; he's at it again

"This is extraordinarily harmful," said the United Nations' advocate for sustainable energy, Rachel Kyte, who perhaps added diplomatically yet off the record that the foremost harm comes from the extraordinarily harmful U.S. president.

At issue? Said U.S. president now intends to gut the Obama-era regulation on methane emissions, the second-largest contributor to the greenhouse effect — although it is disproportionately more powerful, in the short run, than carbon dioxide.

The Obama administration required oil and gas companies to update their monitoring systems of sundry equipment, so as to more quickly remedy any methane leaks. Was there ever a more rational government policy? Or a more rational reception by affected private enterprises?

Which is to say, major oil and gas companies, such as Exxon, BP America and Shell are resisting the current, extraordinarily harmful administration's proposed annihilation of President Obama's cleaner-energy rule. (Not "smaller oil and gas companies," though, which have rebelled against the policy's cost.) The big boys do so out of self-interest. Having advertised natural gas as a more environmentally friendly source of energy than coal, you-know-who's revamped oversight of the industry — meaning none — would augur poor public-relations on oil and gas companies' part.

That this insanely harmful president intends to obliterate yet another environmental regulation — courtesy his predecessor for the good of the globe — is but an intention (expected to materialize in 2020) that dwells remotely from genuine news. The unbalanced tosspot in the White House does something surreally stupid every day, which by now has hurled the general consumer of news into a catatonia-like numbness.

What's noteworthily peculiar, however, is that the Times article from which I gleaned this narrative contains not one word of Why; that is, why would any president further harm the environment deliberately? But we already know why, which is perhaps the reason for the Times' silence. First, as noted, the president is unbalanced — most likely clinically unbalanced. And of course second is the president's narcissistic hatred of Obama and any of his laws or regulations. If either has Obama's fingerprints on it, they gotta go, in the diseased mind of today's popular-vote-losing chief executive.

As semi-comedian (I've seen his show) Yakov Smirnoff would say: What a country!

Hallelujah!

Her theft of Al Franken from the U.S. Senate finally caught up to her. 

I'm too giddy right now to add anything else, except — Justice.

American paranoia on the rise

From a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, here's an exemplary sample of the potentially lethal poison that Trump has introduced into our politics:

"If the candidate they support loses, nearly four in 10 [registered voters] said they would have little or no confidence that the election had been conducted in a fair-and-square way, setting up what could be a debate over the legitimacy of the next president. Those expressing doubts crossed partisan lines – 30% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats – although they identified different threats to the electoral process."

Other than outlying conspiratorial-type peeps who remain convinced that George W. Bush somehow rigged thousands of Ohio's electronic voting machines in 2004, the sad and evidently growing conviction that a nationwide election will be deemed unfair-and-unsquare by voters if their unfavored nominee wins is a Trumpian infestation no different from that of assorted banana republics.

The blight of voter suppression is of course real. But the broader concept implied by the polling is some sort of rigged election that sinister, super-secret forces imposed on us. If such a concept ever settles in the minds of an electoral majority, we might as well start calling this country the United States of Guatemala-like Fraud.

In one Trump tweet, his entire personality

A Trump tweet that eerily manages to combine his narcissism, misogyny, lying, exaggerations, base-pandering, childish name-calling, obsession with size, and hatred of the First Amendment — in only 34 words.

They do stories so big on Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren’s crowd sizes, adding many more people than are actually there, and yet my crowds, which are far bigger, get no coverage at all. Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2019

The importance of aggregate polling, even this early

Yesterday, Aaron Blake of the Washington Post's "The Fix" posted a thoughtful piece on misleading polling, especially that of Morning Consult's — an outfit, I have remarked of late, that "I have had little trust in," but "perhaps there's some hope for them." Boy was I wrong.

Blake looks at its recent poll …

that supposedly proves … Trump’s net approval rating [has sunk] in every battleground state…. It’s overwrought…. Those shifts look pretty damning. He has lost 18 points off his old net approval rating … in New Hampshire, 20 points in Wisconsin, 18 in Michigan, 18 in Nevada, 26 in Arizona and even 23 in Florida….

What could account for such shifts? The answer: because [they're] being compared with the very beginning of his presidency, which was a high point of his presidency…. Pretty much every president is popular upon inauguration, meaning that if you compare their later approval ratings to that, you’re likely to find some sort of regression…. The biggest problem is that this creates the appearance of change, when Trump’s numbers have shown very little of that. He has had some of the most remarkably static approval ratings for a president, in fact, and there is little reason to believe that has changed much in recent weeks, months or really since the start of 2018….

A better comparison than to Trump’s inauguration would be … before he got the inaugural bump. His favorable rating on Election Day 2016 was minus-29 in Wisconsin, minus-20 in Michigan and minus-14 in Pennsylvania, according to exit polls — all worse than his new approval numbers in those states….

Trump may be in trouble, but this is hardly adding to the data that demonstrate that. And when you see polls suggesting some kind of big shift in Trump’s numbers, you should always be wary.

My most enjoyable class when I was an undergrad student double-majoring in political science was on public opinion and polling. My enjoyment of these topics perseveres, so forgive me for my rather intense concentration on political polling.

But this stuff is important, it seems to me, no matter how often a columnist or television commentator insists that it's far too early to be responsibly polling the presidential race. I disagree, obviously, because early, aggregate polling establishes a kind of baseline from which we can monitor trends. One poll here and another there may not mean much, but when 20 polls suggest that Trump is in really big trouble, then odds are, he's in really big trouble. 

Thus even though Morning Consult appears not to know how to poll, if 20 other polls lean to its findings more professionally, then we have something we can pretty much rely on — and keep our eyes on.

National Review: "Exhausted" by Trump

In a sign that the right — some of its professional inhabitants, anyway — has soured on Trump, conservative blogger and National Review Online contributor Jim Geraghty molests, manhandles, and damn near sodomizes the nation's chief executive.

He opens with this punch in the gut: "The editors of National Review are exhausted with presidential tweets, from asking whether Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell or Chinese leader Chairman Xi is the bigger enemy, to 'hereby ordering' private companies to look for alternatives to operations in China. (If Fed chairman Powell is indeed an enemy of the United States, then whatever fool appointed him to that position should resign in disgrace.)"

He later condenses his post's theme, writing simply that "A lot of people … are getting tired of [Trump's] daily drama" — i.e., conservative people whom Geraghty cites.

For instance as panelists, Ben Domenech (publisher of The Federalist) and Chris Stirewalt (Fox News' digital politics editor) were in agreement with Fox's anchor Bret Baier in defending the network's polling, which has been gruesome for Trump, and in denying that the network had "changed," as the president recently whined.

"Fox has not changed," said Baier, remarking on the (vague) distinction between the news and opinion sides. And "we do polls. Our latest poll had the Democratic candidates head to head, several of them ahead of President Trump, and this poll tracks exactly … the RealClearPolitics average of polls — even a little the other way."

The conservative Washington Examiner's Byron York, notes Geraghty, tweeted on 21 Aug.: "The president should really stop talking about loyalty and disloyalty and who he thinks is loyal and who he thinks is disloyal" — meaning, of course, Jews who vote Democratic.

The day before York's tweet, even Mollie Hemingway, a Fox News contributor and, wrote Politico in 2017, "a reliably pro-Trump commentator," tweeted somewhat critically of Trump: "Good argument against Trump is that he ever hired people like Scaramucci or Omarosa." (In her more usual Trumpmanic way, Mollie went on: "NeverTrump[ers] and the corporate anti-Trump media" are emotional, not rational, and both stand in "limitless opposition" to what others know to be the president's limitless inanity and ineptitude.)

And Rod Dreher, a blogger for the American Conservative (which, admittedly, has never been keen on Trump), wrote a week ago that "I reacted much more strongly to President Trump’s idiotic insult to our NATO ally Denmark yesterday than I normally do to whatever embarrassing thing Trump has done. There aren’t negative superlatives strong enough to capture the childishness and stupidity of [this] American president."

But there, the "lots of conservatives" ended — and here, I don't mean to imply that Geraghty could perchance name and quote every Trump-disgruntled rightist. Yet even if he could, one must remember that these are professional conservatives, most of whom actually give some thought to the horrors of Trump; and that professionalism segregates them from the politically amateurish mass of Trump's 80 percent of rank-and-file Republicans who just don't give a cognitive damn about the presidential atrocity that is Trump.

You know, I think Trump actually could shoot somebody on Fifth or Pennsylvania Avenue and still get nearly 40 percent of the vote in 2020. He may have a few thoughtful conservatives as critics, but is base is just unyieldingly boneheaded.

Democrats' polling carousel

From U.S. News, a counter-poll to Monmouth's:

"Emerson College ... released a new poll Tuesday [rated "B+" by 538] that finds Biden with a 7-point lead over Sanders, 31%-24%. Warren garners 15% and Harris rounds out the top four with 10%. All other candidates polled at 4% or less….The Emerson poll was conducted between Aug. 24 to 26 and surveyed 627 Democratic primary voters. The margin of error was 3.9 percentage points.

"Emerson's survey polled head-to-head matchups against President Donald Trump, finding that Biden and Sanders are the only two candidates to defeat him. The poll found Biden leading Trump, 54%-46%, and Sanders defeating Trump 52%-48%. Both Warren and Harris tie Trump" ...

… so assuming the Emerson poll is reasonably accurate, the spreads between Sanders, Warren and Harris vs. Trump, either too narrow or nonexistent, lead to the inescapable conclusion that the spreads are far too perilous.

And so it goes.  

A salute to cats - and dogs

Here's a portion of a memorable piece ("A Divine Pat") in Harper's Magazine, 2018, by "Professor at Large" John Cleese, which, for some reason at first unknown to me, I felt compelled to share with you:

"Let me tell you about a cat, a truly wonderful one called Wensley. He and I have a special relationship based on affection and a strange kind of respect. But I have to tell you that smart though Wensley is, I am, forgive the boasting, a lot more intelligent. I could say that my cat doesn’t really understand me. For, if you asked Wensley what the purpose of life was, he’d probably say it was something to do with mice.

"Here’s my point. I bet that the gap in intelligence between God and me is rather bigger than the gap between me and Wensley. So, I find it hard to see the point of my trying to describe in words what God is like or what his or her purposes are because I might be foolish enough to believe that God might think just a little bit like me. But, just as I can stroke Wensley and maybe make him feel loved and secure, I can conceive of the possibility that I might have an experience, a very slight kind of contact, a sort of divine pat, which might affect me at some deep level."

After a moment of meditation, I began to realize that I did have a reason to quote Cleese.

My daughter also has a cat, Frannie; the former being either an atheist or agnostic (as I am) — I've never quite discerned her exact position on the religiosity spectrum — whereas from what I've seen of the latter, Frannie actively maintains the equanimity of Zen or the rich complexities of Taoism. (A vague likeness of her is in the photo's background.) Indeed one might think she's a cat, just living for the moment, utterly unconcerned with the existence or nonexistence of a god, or gods.

My professed anthropomorphism of Frannie is, I think, valid. She's somewhat an ideal human being (though I prefer dogs, who are impeccable examples of the human ideal, excepting poodles and chihuahuas). She's "truly wonderful," and my daughter also possesses "a special relationship [with her] based on affection and a strange kind of respect," which at times, I'm rather sure, exceeds that which she has with me.

And that would only be natural. For I sit among eminently flawed humanity, while Frannie, assuming she's not sleeping for the umpteenth time on any given day, reigns eminently playful, unbothered, and absolutely oblivious to any manner of an afterlife. (I once read a series of interviews in book form with a Buddhist priest, who, when asked about his views on an afterlife, said, Why would you even ponder such a thing? It makes one's head hurt.)

So here's to Wensley and Frannie, a couple of felines from whom we could all learn.