The Carpentariat

If they only understood: Jeffrey Toobin in "The Agony and the Ecstasy"

Vice.com's "Flash" news from 10/19:

"The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on….

"Two people who were on the call told VICE separately that the call was an election simulation featuring many of the New Yorker's biggest stars: Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans; Evan Osnos was Joe Biden, Jelani Cobb was establishment Democrats, Masha Gessen played Donald Trump, Andrew Marantz was the far right, Sue Halpern was left wing democrats, Dexter Filkins was the military, and Jeffrey Toobin [represented the parking-lot, open trench-coat voting bloc]."

My apology. I actually do feel sorry for the guy. Nature suddenly called? But still, what the fuck was he thinking? When was the last time you decided that a professional confab was an ideal opportunity for what they used to call "self-abuse"? I could understand if Jeff had been Zoom-interviewing Trump. I mean, after all, you'd need something on your mind as he prattled away. 

It gets better.

"New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote in an email to all New Yorker staffers: 'Dear All' — Oh My Gad, not again! — 'as you may have read [as you may have read] in various news reports today, one of our writers … was suspended after an incident [an incident] on a Zoom call last week. Please be assured that we take such matters seriously [in hand] and that we are looking into it [because we all want to see how it 'came' out].'”

Has the United States not become a Monty Python skit, or what? 

The NY Post endorses four more years of …

Just a few doozies from the esteemed rag's reelection endorsement of the only president to out-bottom James Buchanan.

"We can have economic freedom and opportunity, and resist cancel culture and censorship. We can put annus horribilis, 2020, behind us and make America great again, again."

I believe they mean Trump's anus horribilis, 2017-2020.

"A Joe Biden administration would be beholden to a socialist left that sees an opportunity to remake the nation in its vision, one more dependent on government debt."

Yes, it has started. Democrats love deficit spending, while Republicans remain loyal to fiscal conservatism. Always have, always will. No exceptions.

But here is the Post's most eloquent flapdoodle:

"Trump has rolled back the excesses of previous administrations."

Right, just as Adolph did to Weimar's excesses. But for Christ's sake, at least the little mustached tyrant got the trains to run on time.

What do we do about Q? What a puzzler.

The Washington Post has published what struck me as a kind of touchy-feely, Psychology 101 video produced by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, titled "What Do We Do About Q?" The question itself is worthy of ridicule — although Kirby strongly advises that we shun ridicule of QAnon morons. That only hurts their tender feelings and causes their entrenchment into whatever universe they live in.

No, instead we must "stay connected" with these bizarre ignoramuses, we must "share information" about reality with them — as though it's not already surrounding them — and we must "be patient," "kind" and "gentle" to Q-dupes who "will benefit more from our interest and respect."

Yes, respect. Respect for malicious clowns who believe Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are pedophilia hustlers (but offer complimentary pizza!).

My advice, Kirby, is to just let these paranoid freaks continue windsurfing in their Trumpian cesspools. Let them tweet and blog and share their crap-filled mental infirmities on social media with their fellow crackpots.

Let 'em rip. As the Irish academic and politician James Bryce wrote a quarter-century before Louis Brandeis wrote of free speech and disinfectants, "Sunlight kills many of those noxious germs which are hatched where politicians [and loony partisans] congregate. That which … we may call the genius of universal publicity has some disagreeable results, but the wholesome ones are greater and more numerous."

A book

(h/t Infidel1753)

What an elegant description of the printed word, "funny dark squiggles … binding together people who never knew each other." 

As a professor of mine once said to one of my seminar classes, in which, day one, the chairs were aligned in rows so as to position an all-knowing leader up front — "First, let's get these chairs in a circle, because we're all equal in the pursuit of knowledge." And it all begins with the printed word. 

We can thank Gutenberg for whatever advances we, as a once-illiterate, genuflecting species, have made.

There's no such thing as political polarization

Every day we read of America's political polarization and negative partisanship. Democrats vs. Republicans. We're trapped in an increasingly hostile national arena of liberalism vs. conservatism, the latter of which has lost its genuine meaning, but that's irrelevant here.

Democrats, as the gossamer narrative goes, are latte-sipping, overeducated, emasculated wusses dominated by radical-feminist Ilhan Omar and Bella Abzug types.

Republicans, however, have vacated their "wine and cheese" ways and transmogrified into gun-totin', pick-'em-up-truck-driving, "beer and blue jeans" voters, as the immensely offensive Rep. Jim Jordan has explained. (Doubtless he gives his "old lady" a ride on his manly Harley by day, and she rides his cryptofascist dib by night, once she finds it.)

These are the general impressions that one absorbs when it comes to the poundingly repetitive phrase, "political polarization."

And the phrase is bullshit. Meaningless. Misdirecting. Empty.

What we are undergoing is simply an amplified instance of decent, responsible, conscientious Americans vs. indecent, irresponsible, unconscientious Americans.

Party labels don't make the woman or man; the two make themselves. Democrat, Republican, Know-Nothing, Whig, Anti-Masonic, Greenback, Populist and Progressive labels have all been monikers of character, nothing more. They have never been an accurate signifier of, explicitly, political identification or combative polarization.

We're all just barely advanced primates trying to make our way, though some of us do much better than others.

The Trumpian tweet of the month

Do even his most devoted supporters buy this shinola? Could be. As Goebbels so insightfully reasoned, the biggest, most absurd lies are always more effective than little fibs. 

Debate Poll Average: 89% Trump. 11% Sleepy Joe Biden!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2020

Even Bibi is done with feeding Donald's gargantuan ego

In what has to be the funniest of diplomatic prudence vs. America's presidential buffoonery, here's a partial transcript of Trump's phone conversion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for having assisted in Israel's normalization of relations with Sudan — that well-known titan of world power:

TRUMP: Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi, Sleepy Joe?

NETANYAHU: Uh … well … Mr. President, one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America.

Not even right-wing Bibi is about to piss off Joe Biden, who is about to take Trump by his scruffy little neck and throw him into the legal clutches of New York's attorney general.

You have to love the "Uh … well … Mr. President," which also has to be the most sublime example of DiplomaticSpeak for "Fuck off, you absolutely worthless piece of olympic, slanderous narcissism."

If you've the stomach for it, here she be, all 22 seconds of it. 

And then there's Rudy, America's craziest uncle

Some crazy uncles are kindly old souls. And some are as scary as a six-foot timber rattler.

I report, and you decide.

A HUGE win for @realDonaldTrump last night! #KAG 🇺🇸

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) October 23, 2020

Debate polling results

​​​​​SSRS polling, commissioned by CNN, finds that "overall, 53% of voters who watched the debate said that Biden won the matchup, while 39% said that President Donald Trump did."

Of course Biden won the debate. His vast superiority was obvious to all those who hope to rescue the America that is hanging by its nails from Trump's precarious cliff of destruction.

The 53% of viewers who believe in competence and human decency wish not to see this venomous president replaced by just anyone (although "just anyone" outside a maximum security prison would be an improvement.) They want a man or woman who possesses both characteristics, and Joe Biden is unquestionably the embodiment of both.

But, that 39% of viewers responded in favor of Trump once again confirms that a frighteningly large percentage of our neighbors are the fiercest, most disingenuous of partisans — and are willing to countenance, among Trump's countless other crimes against humanity, the caging of children.

There has always been a sickness of the American soul. This is nothing new, just intensified. And we know what the sickness is, or rather, who.

Wow

Just wow.

All I can say, or need say, is that I think Donald was doing a Jeffrey Toobin routine behind that podium.

Frank Luntz, speaker of truth, for once

​​​​​I’ve never seen a campaign more mis-calibrated than the Trump campaign. Frankly, his staff ought to be brought up on charges of political malpractice. [Because] they think Hunter Biden will be a winning issue for them, [they have] their heads up their asses.

—Republican English-bullshit consultant Frank Luntz

Oh, Frank — ye of $15 million net worth by huckstering propagandistic language such as "death tax" (not "estate tax":); "illegal aliens" (not "undocumented workers"); "exploring for energy" (not "drilling for oil"); "gun control" (not "gun safety"); "tax relief" (not "tax cuts"); and "Washington" (not "government," since, as you have correctly noted, "most Americans appreciate their local government that picks up their trash, cleans their streets, and provides police and transportation services" — I once objected to your very existence.

But now I gather neither Trump nor his inept campaign staff hasn't called you, sent you flowers or chocolates, or in any way fattened your kitty. So you're peeved. Really peeved. Hence you have publicly turned on what is probably the final product — the Big Strutting Cheese — of your decades-long, bullshitting language-molestation. Therefore I can, at last, at least tolerate your existence.

What, exactly, is the cause of Trump's unremitting denials of reality?

If there's a psychologist or psychiatrist out there, I'd love an answer to this question: Does Trump's addiction to I'm-never-responsible blame-game charade, which is embarrassing to the informed, reflect his highest-grade narcissism or severe sociopathy? Or perhaps both?

Watching his six-yearlong, unceasing abnormal behavior has caused me to regret having never intensely delved into research materials on the morbidly deformed mind. And I've never witnessed a more deformed one than Trump's. Even a psychology layman can understand that much.

Sinclair's Eric Bolling: "With COVID, is there anything that you think you could have done differently, if you had a mulligan or a do-over on one aspect of the way you handled it, what would it be?"

Trump: "Not much." pic.twitter.com/bRtPVsYVAA

— The Recount (@therecount) October 21, 2020

What Trump understands, for sure. is that those "great leaders" abroad followed the science of controlling pandemics rather than the politically sociopathic pursuit of national economics only, and therefore cut the severity and duration of a coronavirus spread — many of whom cut them to near zero. That's what made them great leaders and "really smart" people. And yet he insists that the United States has triumphed from the perspicacity of his singularly brilliant leadership.

Is that narcissism or sociopathy? Or do those mental diseases usually come as a two-pack?

Rudy G. you dirty old man

And then Borat, the girl's father, runs into the bedroom to tell Rudy she's too old for him. She's 17.

I am hearing from my sources here in Hollywood who seen it.

It is much worse than it is described and here is a still photo from it.

Tell me more about Hunter Biden's Laptop Rudy. pic.twitter.com/qNkqHu3pWd

— YS (@NYinLA2121) October 21, 2020

Is there any self-righteous Trump supporter who has yet to be caught — no, not tumescently red-handed — in fulfilling sexual desires ranging from banging the way-too-young to enjoying the sight of his wife screwing a pool boy? 

But Republicans' family values haven't changed. They're as phony as they've always been. 

The Scorpion King

In perhaps the most flagrant display of irony ever, Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell has informed his partisan minions that Speaker Nancy Pelosi "is not negotiating in good faith with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and that any deal they reach could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week."

I have tried to recall even one instance of McConnell's straight dealing. My effort was unproductive. Not since Trump, yesterday and the day before and the day before that, ad infinitum, am I able to recollect a more treacherous, insincere, double-dealing worm of politician..

In this instance, at least he was capable of implicitly conceding that his obsession with putting the third, right-wing ghoul on the Court far surpasses his (nonexistent) concern about the welfare of the American people. For Mitch it's all about his legacy and the welfare of hardcore ideology über alles.

Thus Mitch and his Teutonic general staff worry that "a stimulus deal could splinter the party and exacerbate divisions at a time when they are trying to rally behind the Supreme Court nominee." Well of course. Gaveling a lock on an imperious 6-3 star chamber is a much worthier cause than that of aiding millions of hungry children and unemployed adults and thousands of failing small businesses.

Comical yet heartbreaking statistics

"Fully half (50%) of Trump supporters said they think Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings, while another third (33%) aren’t sure," reports YouGov.com. Hence 83% of Trumpeteers are either frightfully insane or at least willing to dwell in the former's asylum — all of whom I would love to play poker with. Their credulity would earn me a fortune.

In addition, "among Trump’s supporters, roughly the same results appear when respondents were asked if they think Trump is working to dismantle said sex-trafficking ring: 52% think he is, 12% don’t think so and 37% are not sure." Now we're up to an astounding 89% of Trump's looniest-of-toons — the QAnon quacks.

A mere 20 years ago, scholars of America's history of anti-intellectualism —better known as boorish imbecility — would not have believed that this nation's system of both public and private education could ever produce such morons. Yet it's true, it's breathtaking and profoundly disheartening to all but predatory poker players, pool sharks and Trumpian confidence men.

I'm thinking of putting a halt to writing and art, moving to the reddest town I can find, and opening a dry-cleaning, tarot-card-reading and backroom-gambling establishment. I'd make a killing, returning to these boobs their poorest-in-taste garments, collecting their markers and issuing unremittingly blissful predictions of their futures.

But my fear is that given enough time, their universal stupidity might be contagious.