The movies all starred Dean Jones. That Darn Cat.
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Right! But I couldnât track down if there were any others along the same lines but for sure I remember that scene happening more than once.
Thereâs no reason to believe a word he says or think heâs actually doing anything practical.
Indeed. He may as well take Silk with him when he does his media rounds.
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So Nunes has been on the HPSCI since 2011 and he doesnât know how the IC gathers intelligence? Or how any of this works? What has he been doing for seven years?
Especially when you factor in that approximately 28 minutes of that has to be spent grovelling and listening to him meander and babble about everything BUT the case against him.
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Mainly because he isnât, and has more or less freely admitted it on several occasions. He hasnât reviewed the case files, has barely spoken to his clientâŚhe just sees a camera and runs out in front of it to babble.
The frustrating part is that its being treated like so much we have seen before is treatedâŚlike Guilani is a Very Serious Lawyer and therefore his every utterance must be carefully balanced on the scales of bothersiderism. The working assumption for so much of the press still continues to beâŚâThey wouldnât like to us, they are Very Serious Peopleâ, despite the fact the press has voluminous evidence that they lie to them every.single.day.
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Absolutely, and just this morning or yesterday @ralph_vonholst flagged a really intriguing piece called âNormalizing Trump: An Incredibly Brief Explainerâ by Jay Rosen that incisively if somewhat over-briefly (but we were warned) explains this in a way that makes sense to me. Most people around here assume a kind of complicity going on between Trump and his normalizers but Rosen I think correctly says itâs more that describing Trump as he really is is too unusual, threatening, and sad for commentators or the public to deal with. I think this needs to be fleshed out more so Iâm going to try to articulate it better myself. Itâs certainly something Iâve felt the tension of. The part I want to flesh out is related to stories like âThe Emperorâs New Clothesâ and to the necessary fictions you maintain in family or work life. For the moment, say that very often saying the complete truth about a matter isnât compatible with continuing to play your role in a particular system. You can say âMany observers confess to a deep perplexity about exactly what improvement in Trumpâs legal position Giuliani hopes to accomplish with these media appearances.â But you canât say, âLook, heâs a fake. Always was. And now heâs really losing his step.â Or rather you could say it in Slate, or Wonkette. But not at CNN or the NYT.
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The only one that is holding up the interview is Trump. He does not want to be caught in a lie. The DOJ briefings do not change that at all.
Thatâs the problem with such pieces. Its their job to expose unusual, threatening and sad to the public, when it concerns someone like Trump. Their refusal to do so because it offends their sense of propriety is a ludicrous defense.
To use Joshâs metaphor from the other day, about ânormsâ being the orange traffic cones that Trump is running over so he can speed down the heavily traveled pedestrian sidewalk, this sort of âexplanationâ is reporters showing deep concern for the poor traffic conesâŚand completely ignoring the people getting run down. Its getting a sit down interview with the driver afterwards and asking about the traffic conesâŚand then getting squeamish because clearly not everyone runs over traffic cones. Meanwhile Trump is saying âYeah, I wanted to get down the sidewalk because someone might have dropped a quarterâŚand did you see those people I hit? Man, they really flew up in the air. The highest! And that one guys headed exploded like a watermelon. Really great stuffââŚThe MSM is still clutching its pearls about the poor traffic cones.
No thatâitâs a deeper thing. Just ask yourself how often youâve seen people fail to deal with reality, even when itâs hugely consequential. Just in military terms, you see it all through history. The Charge of the Light Brigade, WWI, the ongoing madness with nuclear weapons. Itâs utterly insane, it could literally destroy humanity, but we just sort of live with it. Societies slide into fascism, and people watch it happen. Once youâre woven into that system, itâs not always easy to step outside of it. I never understood how the Jews didnât all just leave a Europe they were threatened in, and then I read Maus and understood better how they were mired and hemmed in and it just wasnât a thing they could do, even if it meant their lives. Itâs more like that phenomenon than it is about âpropriety.â I failed to explain it at all if thatâs how you read it.
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That wasnât about a failure to deal with realityâŚit was about miscommunication, a common enough occurrence on the battle field, particularly in that day and age. The officer that was tasked with delivering the orders, (which were actually tactically quite sound), delivered them orally instead, and misidentified the target. When the charge started, he saw the error and raced out to correct it, but had his head blown off by cannon fire before he could. The rest is history.
I am not sure what part of WWI you are referring, but the interconnecting treaties that resulted in a world war from a Serbian royal family member being assassinated was a result of basically the previous 100 years of Great Power diplomacy.
They key point there isâŚit took roughly 100 years to get to that point. The press got to there point in all this almost instantly from the moment he came down the escalator, and have stayed right there throughout. Its not âOh, this is too much for our readersââŚits âOh, this is going to drive some serious eyeballs to our sights and ad revenue!â. They have known how insane he is for decades, and they love itâŚbecause $$$. If it bleeds it leads, and Trump makes everything bleedâŚfrom their where evers.
If the press started pointing out that he is a complete fraud, that the stories he spins are nonsensical and lies, then people stop following him andâŚstop visiting the press.
There is a story breaking now, out of AZâŚthat ICE has taken roughly 7,000 children into custody this yearâŚand has completely lost over 1400 of them (so far). No idea where they are, what happened to them, records are simply gone. As a side piece, someone was posting yesterday that ICE has ruled that they donât have to maintain records of sexual assaults committed on people in their custody. Scandalous!
But that ICE ruling happened over a year ago. And the press didnât say boo. Because nothing was bleeding. Now it is.
Weâre talking in different directions and getting nowhere. Sorry to waste your time.
In any market, the people sought out as experts become so dependent (emotionally, behaviorally, financially) on their own status as experts that they are poorly placed to see when the market itself is about to blow up, get displaced, or tank in any way that will disrupt their own lives. Usually they are trying to be objective, but the objective truth is too painful to accept. Thatâs how we get former Enron traders and former dot-com millionaires who are also very smart people.
ETA: I put this reply before I saw there were others.
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Thatâs exactly what Iâm saying. Iâm still trying to more precisely articulate this, and analogous things help. There are different ways you can be invested in a system, in a status quo, and very often people fail to adapt to major systemic changes. Weâve had the interesting experience of living through a world-historical change in communication technology. That drives all kinds of changes very rapidly. Nobody wants their status threatened; nobody wants to have to reinvent themselves. But sometimes thatâs the situation. How many people are nearly resourceful enough to handle it? One in twenty? Thirty? I read the other day that people who lose jobs later in life almost never regain their former status. So you live with the absurdity rather than say look, the job I once did is pointless now. Thereâs no reason to sit in the White House briefing room. Thereâs no reason to report on administration positions as if they matter. But neither can you throw your hands up and say âThe whole bunch is corrupt and stupid and they need to be resisted and voted out asap period full stop.â Because that wonât put braces on Seanâs teeth or contribute to Janeyâs college fund. Youâd be fired. And very few people can step outside the system and survive. Are they complicit? Or are they trapped? I actually have some experience in this business and have seen the world a bit. Iâm saying its more the latter. Like most people, they canât say every truth they think. Not without serious sacrifice that most people wonât make.
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Try this on. http://jobtransition.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/The-Stocksdale-Paradox-from-Good-To-Great.pdf
Oh hell, the link has a goofy name. What I meant was, the thing you are getting at is a thing, it does have a name, it is non-obvious, but the best-known precis of it is in an otherwise overrated âbusiness bookâ from about 15 years ago.
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The corollary is that if in fact the truth is something like âMy familyâs video rental shop is not going to be around in 10 years,â or âOopsie, unsustainable business model here at Enron, guess Iâm not a BSD after all,â or âGee, itâs been nice owning this buggy whip factory, and investing in great Dow stocks such as American Felt, but this automobile contraption seems to be catching on,â â then however painful it may be to accept this truth much less act on it, it beats the alternative.
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wowza:
Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said,
âThis is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will
prevail in the endâwhich you can never afford to loseâwith the discipline
to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they
might be.â
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Shorter Trump: if they found our Russian minder, the sooner we cover it up the better!