Trump's Dog-Bites-Man Insanity
Plus, Joe Rogan's Useful Idiocy
Saying the Quiet Part Loudly on Live Television
I’ve long said that Donald Trump is indistinguishable from your average 75-year-old Fox News-obsessed crank conspiracy theorist; he just happened to be president. New reporting — and Trump’s own statements! — over the last week have once again proved that to be true.
On Sunday, Trump released a statement saying that [he believed], no really, Mike Pence could have overturned the election on January 6th:
This came after a rally on Saturday night where Trump, in his trademark style, floated the idea of issuing pardons to those involved in the January 6th if he is re-elected. Then earlier this week there were new revelations that Trump tried to use various federal agencies — such as the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security — to seize voting machines in an effort to “prove” voter fraud — an idea so banana-crackers-crazy that even Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t go along with it.
I often wonder if Trump actually believes these insane conspiracies or if he’s just using them as cover for the authoritarian tendencies he has anyway. It’s similar to his rampant, likely pathological, dishonesty. Is he setting out to be dishonest, or is he simply so untethered from reality that he genuinely believes the obviously-untrue things he says? At a certain point, however, that becomes a distinction without a difference. Regardless of whether Trump actually believes provably-false accusations of election fraud, the fact remains that he wanted/tried to use extralegal means to stay in office after losing a free and fair election, in contravention of the law. He then fomented an attack on the American legislature by his rabid supporters, and has since offered to pardon them should be become president again.
That is bananas.
It’s the sort of thing that if we learned it from a secretly-recorded phone call, it would be a major scandal. But since Trump instead simply says it in press releases or into microphones on live television, it’s like our brains don’t recognize it as scandalous.
Which is to say, Donald Trump is, at best, deeply unwell psychologically with complete disregard for reality. Or, he’s a corrupt authoritarian willing to abuse political power to benefit his supports at the expense of the rule of law. But since he states his intentions out loud and in public, it’s met mostly with a collective shrug.
He keeps telling us who he is, but it seems that many people are too exhausted to care. (A sentiment to which I am sympathetic, honestly.) But I still find it, shall we say, unsettling, that he’s probably an even-money bet to win the presidency in 2024. After everything! Wishcasting to the contrary aside, if he declares for the GOP nomination, he will win it. That’s just the fact. Barring him choking to death on a Big Mac or keeling over from cardiac arrest in a sand trap — which many Republicans are privately, though they dare not say it, rooting for — all he has to do to become the 2024 Republican nominee is declare a desire for it. And given the Biden administration and congressional Democrats’ stubborn insistence on doing unpopular things, whoever the Republican nominee is in 2024 will likely be at least a slight favorite.
I find myself often thinking “surely he can’t win if he runs on relitigating the 2020 election and promising pardons to January 6th perpetrators…” But then I remember I thought the same thing about Muslim bans, “Build the Wall,” and, ahem, so-called locker room talk. At a certain point we have to realize that Trump isn’t within a coin-flip of being re-elected in 2024 in spite of his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, and various psychological conditions. Voters just want what they want; and some 75 million Americans prefer that.
Hey Joe Whaddaya Know?
Speaking of someone who is popular with millions of people for reasons that elude me and whose audience probably shouldn’t vote, various musical artists have pulled their music from Spotify — and some subscribers have canceled their subscriptions — in protest of Spotify hosting Joe Rogan’s podcast; which they claim is a major source of misinformation (particularly about COVID).
I’ll say up front that I don’t particularly care for Joe Rogan. I think, on balance, he’s bad for the culture. But I can also sort of relate to him and understand why he’s popular. At a basic level, he and I are both just some guys working out our thoughts in public that for some reason people (considerably fewer in my case) find interesting.
Rogan starts from a place of ignorance, and he’s “just asking questions” as sort of a journey he takes with his audience in seeking out new information. He’s just a dudebro who doesn’t know any better who wants to get baked and shoot the shit with people he thinks are smart so that he can feel smart. People relate to that because they are also dudebro’s who don’t know any better and just want to get baked and shoot the shit with people they think are smart so that they can feel smart. I suppose I prefer that to someone like, say, Tucker Carlson who pretends to be “just asking questions” mostly as a hedge against liability but unsubtly implies the answer to the questions he’s asking. And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se.
The problem for Rogan and his audience is that, contrary to what we were told in school, there absolutely are stupid questions. Sometimes “just asking questions” gets so remedial that they end up entertaining questions that have been settled for years and don’t actually need to be revisited. Questions like, say, “Do vaccines work?” And when such rudimentary questions are asked, there is no shortage cranks and charlatans willing to provide an “answer.” And given that Rogan apparently doesn’t have the ability or inclination to differentiate between reputable and non-reputable sources, he ends up — I will charitably assume unwittingly — providing a massive platform for people with bad information. People like to think they’re in on a secret, or that they know the “truth” before other people; so his audience is primed to indulge all manner of nonsense so long as it is presented authoritatively. Which is to say, I don’t think Joe Rogan is operating in bad faith; but I do think he provides cover for people who are. (Plus, he makes a lot of objectively dumb people feel intelligent by acting as if it’s smart to ask dumb questions and I find that unforgiveable.)
I also think the whole Joe Rogan phenomenon is more a symptom rather than a cause of our, uh, current unpleasantness. It’s no secret that trust in our institutions has plummeted in recent years. People wouldn’t be dabbling in anti-vaccine kookery from a meathead podcaster if, say, the media and public health apparatus hadn’t spent the last couple of years (or in the media’s case, last several decades) stepping on their own wieners. And sure, there are public personalities from television hosts to members of Congress who have spent years telling people not to trust anything from the government or media; but that doesn’t excuse those institutions harming their own reputations through their own incompetence.
It’s just more evidence for my increasingly dour realization that maybe we aren’t as worthy of all this freedom as I thought. Don’t misunderstand — I still think freedom is the just and proper state of man. It’s just that a lot of us aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. Our whole system depends on people acting responsibly; and the last couple of years especially have shown us that we simply can’t rely on a sizable slice of the population to behave responsibly when it matters. And that’s how we end up in a situation where we’re arguing about a podcaster providing a platform for charlatans to peddle public health misinformation to millions of people. It’s less than ideal.
Occasional trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Sports History
Clue: The Yankees retired his No. 5 in 1952.
Joe DiMaggio
Today’s clue:
Category: Sitcoms
Clue: These were the two sons in the Cleaver family on a 1950s TV sitcom.
Dispatches from the Homefront
Earlier this week I actually got together with some friends of mine for the first time in three months. Turns out that having a baby, then holiday travels, and a pandemic surge really puts a damper on a social life. But I called in favors from the in-laws and made extra-sure that it was cool with the wife, and actually rather enjoyed myself.
We had just won the pub’s trivia contest when I got a text from my wife saying that our older daughter was apparently spewing vomit in all directions like a tiny blonde version of Linda Blair (my words, not hers) and could I please hurry home for reinforcements. Serves me right for having fun, I suppose.
I did learn some things, however. Like that Nickelodeon plays Paw Patrol in the middle of the night; which will be useful in the inevitable future sick child situations.
In other news, I am never leaving the house again.