Friday's postcard, a belated apology, and postscripts to the corruptions of the Roberts Court
July 12, 2024
Another grand place to beat the mid-July heat—the falls at Hawk Creek slicing through Grande Ronde basalt north of Creston, WA
About that headline…
There are a handful of pieces I’ve written, in the past, that I can’t improve upon. One of them is Stuck in Stupid, a barbell of an essay I wrote nearly 15 years ago, with illustrations by my multi-talented daughter. I had no idea, then, that Donald Trump would become a viable presidential candidate. But the piece predicts Trumpism with an implicit warning that the forest was ripe for a wildfire. It was only a matter of time before someone like Trump struck the match.
The thrust of the piece is in one sentence: “I raise this to wonder, aloud, when Americans decided to lose their minds.”
My apology is for the use of the word “Stupid” in the title. I was exasperated. I couldn’t get my head around what the psychological/sociological research was showing at the time: that for a dangerously large swath of Americans, a certitude of pride, passion and faith outweighs reality. Confronted with facts that contradict their beliefs, they simply double down on their beliefs.
I’d worked very hard to become a journalist. It’s a noble craft. By analogy, I thought of myself as a well-credentialed airplane mechanic, competent, certified, satisfied. And then all of a sudden I was hearing from passengers that it was okay, with them, if the aircraft took flight without secure landing gear. The equipment and engineering didn’t matter; they had the bouyant, certitude of faith that the plane would not only land safely but be met, on some distant tarmac, with maidens tossing garlands of hibiscus.
That’s just crazy thinking. I didn’t have the patience for the psychological explanations for this syndrome. Nor do I now, to be honest. But it was arrogant to use the word “stupid” in the title as it is laden with judgment and an ineffective way to enter such an important topic with a hope of changing others’ minds. I was exasperated and I didn’t want to mince words in the header. But to those who took offense, I’m sorry.
About Joe Biden’s afflictions…
I’m less exasperated now, but I woke up this morning feeling a need to write something about the elephant (or donkey, in this case) in the room. This is the surreal impasse on the Joe Biden controversy—about whether he should stand for re-election this fall, or step aside for someone who is not exhibiting cognitive decline.
I’ve expended some 5,000 words this week on the Roberts Court scandal. But as I was writing it, the court scandal merged with the Trump scandal. On July 1st, with its decision in Trump v. United States, the Roberts Court granted a president broad immunity for “official acts” including illegal acts such as ordering Justice Department officials to make false public statements as part of a conspiracy to overthrow the results of an election.
The two stories do lean into each other in a profound way. The scenario really happened. And now the prosecution of Donald Trump in a federal case being heard in Washington D.C. must be re-tooled (and further delayed) to ensure such evidence is retracted. The votes on the court were right down the partisan cleavage— with the 6 affirming votes all coming from Republican appointees, including 3 appointed by Trump himself.
I didn’t watch the Biden-Trump debate two weeks ago. But I did listen to the audio feed, live, on my laptop. Not long after the debate started, my phone pinged. It was a text from Devin, watching in Denver.
“Watching the debate?” my son texted.
“Listening to it. You?”
“Watching it,” he replied. “Pure pain so far. You?”
“Does Biden look as bad as he sounds?” I replied.
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Not that context matters a lot, but it was the Biden team’s idea—floundering behind Trump in the polls—to have the debate to try to regain some momentum. Both candidates lost the debate: Trump by his expected, incessant lying. Biden because he seemed completely out of it, and shocklingly so. Trains of thought going off-track. Absurd statements like “we finally beat Medicare.” As numerous others lamented, it was not the kind of thing you could un-see or, in my case, un-hear. Biden and his team still don’t get this.
Yet, urging us to suppress this terrifying pratfall has been the Biden plan in the time since, asking for a mulligan on what could be the most consequential debate in American history. In the face of calls from high profile democrats and major donors to step aside, the defiant, 81-year old president vows to fight on, arguing that he’s the best, and perhaps only, candidate who can defeat Trump this fall.
To be sure, I’m not a political reporter, and there are journalists and pundits who do politics exclusively. You can see and hear them almost any hour of the day on CNN or MSNBC. So, take what I write on this with a grain of salt if you wish.
My hope that Biden steps aside is rooted in his moral blindspot on the Gaza tragedy and my sympathy not just for the innocents who’ve suffered so miserably, but for the succession of bright, talented U.S. officials who’ve resigned in protest of the Biden Administration’s complicity in this humanitarian disaster. I don’t think Biden and his team appreciate how much support they’ve lost—especially among younger voters—due to his inexcusable handling of the Gaza tragedy. I’m surprised how few pundits have even brought this up, despite how his Gaza policy has alienated a preponderance of Islamic voters in the key swing state of Michigan. But that’s me, and my hope that, for this reason alone, he’ll step aside.
There is one thing I’m sure won’t happen. Biden and others have blamed the media for stoking the pressure on him to step aside. They’d desperately like the daily defections and the round-the-clock media coverage of the controversy to stop and for journalists to focus more on Trump’s shortcomings.
This is not going to happen, no matter how much yelling and complaining that it’s time to get behind Joe Biden to save the future from Donald Trump.
The MAGA, Right-wing media universe is alien. It’s a consortium of grifters, activists and phony “news” organizations that behave like a cult. But that is not who Democrats are, and certainly not what the non-right wing media are about. A major inspiration for a journalist comes when those you’re covering demand that you stop asking questions, that you look elsewhere for answers, or go write about something else. Even if Biden succeeds in quieting Democrats (unlikely) the story will simply go on to the next phase, as reporters write about the agony of Democrats who see the train wreck coming in November and feel bereft and helpless to avert it. In the meantime, each event for Biden, every campaign stop, or press conference, will be covered—less for what he says, and more about whether he shows additional signs of cognitive failure, like that so clearly evident during his debate with Trump.
In other words, if the Biden team thinks they’re getting bad press coverage this week, just wait until next week and the week after that. It just isn’t going away, even if a choir of Democratic leaders sings his praise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. What would change to story is for him to withdraw and the party to choose another candidate. By the way, it is not as though Trump’s corruptions are not being covered. They are. But part of this surreal chapter in our history is that we (both journalists and news consumers) have begun to treat the Trump movement as something like Covid, horrifying but familiar—just morphing from one variant to another; sad, tragic, sickening but all too depressingly predictable by now. There’s little that Trump can say or do that would shock anybody by now. I’m sorry that’s true. But true it is.
Finally, I would like to add postscripts with links to the Clarence Thomas/Roberts Court story. The John Oliver program on Clarence Thomas’s corruptions (above) is, by now, a classic of that genre of comedic journalism that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pioneered. The conclusion of the piece is simply jaw-dropping and I won’t ruin it, if you haven’t already seen it.
•MSNBC interview, Senators demand Justice Department inquiry into Thomas and Alito for possible ethics and tax code violations, July 10th
•New York Times, July 10: Ocasio-Ortez Files Impeachment Articles Against Justices Alito and Thomas.
—tjc
