A completely new vector of chaos

Yesterday I went down to the Detroit Film Theater for a third silent film with live accompaniment. This one was The Last Laugh, made in Germany in 1924. This is from the “Golden Age” of silent films, known for its innovative camera work. This time the accompaniment was by the ensemble Little Bang Theory. The central character is the head doorman of the posh Atlantic Hotel in Berlin. He wears a fine uniform that, when he goes home at night, gives him a lot of prestige with his neighbors. He lives in an apartment with his daughter, who is about to get married. But he’s getting old. He’s been such a valued employee for so long he isn’t fired, but demoted to washroom attendant, handing towels to the gentlemen who use the facilities. So he steals the uniform. Alas, that doesn’t restore his prestige and his life goes downhill. The last laugh is that the movie decides his story needs a better ending. Little Bang Theory played various drums, metallic percussion, a few instruments, and a couple synthesizers. They added sound effects, such as car horns. I felt the music matched the mood of the movie a bit better than the two earlier silent films. But the music was way too repetitive, endlessly repeating just a few notes. I finished the book The New Guys by Meredith Bagby. It’s the history of the NASA astronaut class of 1978 and of the space shuttle. This class, 35 of them, was the first class that wasn’t all white men with military backgrounds. Yeah, there were some of those kinds of men, but there were also women, black men, and a Japanese-American man. Their occupations included doctor, scientist, and engineer. They significantly expanded the definition of astronaut. They were hired before the first shuttle flight and a few were still around at the last shuttle flight. The book focuses on about a dozen of the New Guys, starting with why they chose to apply to NASA. Nichelle Nichols, Uhura of Star Trek, was a big reason. We see why NASA thought it was necessary to broaden its pool of applicants beyond white men. And we learn that the shuttle design – many details being filled in after this class was hired – had some significant flaws, such as the ceramic tiles serving as the heat shield. Yes, about 20% of the book deals with the 1986 Challenger disaster. There is a thorough recounting of what went wrong and of how they learned what went wrong. Another 5% deals with the Columbia disaster in 2003. The second failure was around different circumstances, but caused by the same lack of management not listening to the engineers who had strong doubts about the safety of the spacecraft. We get the story of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. She was afraid managers would discover she was lesbian, very much a reason not to hire her back in 1978. After her historic flight she had to deal with the public relations tour that seemed relentless. She also served in both the Challenger and Columbia investigation teams and was the one who noticed the same managerial problems. The reason to end the shuttle program was rather simple. Since the late 1990s it’s primary purpose was to get the International Space Station built. After it was, many recognized its original design flaws and its outdated technology and recommended it be replaced. Alas, its replacement by NASA hasn’t materialized in the dozen years since the shuttle program ended and we’re stuck with SpaceX. I’ve now read several books on the lives of astronauts and my book shopping list includes a few more. This is a good one, an enjoyable read for anyone interested in space. In 2024 I read 48 books, plus one more I gave up on halfway through. That’s almost a book per week. The pundit roundup for New Year’s Eve by Chitown Kev for Daily Kos included several discussions of Jimmy Carter. His Chief Domestic Policy Advisor Stuart E. Eizenstat writing for Haaretz noted how he embraced the suggestion to establish the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Since the museum opened in September 1993 there have been over 47 million visitors from the US and around the world, over 90 percent of them not Jewish. In the comments is a cartoon by Peter Schrank showing a living room with the nasty guy on TV as a man reads a newspaper with headline announcing Carter’s death. A boy asks, “Hey Grandpa... Can nice guys really become president?” For New Year’s Day the pundit roundup for Kos dispensed with the pundits and went straight to the cartoons, both in the body of the post and in the comments. Of course, there are several about Jimmy Carter. David Horsey posted one showing the old man labeled 2024 saying, “Hey! Where’s the little New Year’s baby?!” Another old man, labeled “2017 2025” replies, “2025 is kind of a Déjà Vu year, so they just brought me out of retirement.” One about Carter is by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune and uses the words from a song I learned in the 1960s.

If I had a hammer I’d hammer in the morning (building respect) I’d hammer in the evening (building a roof of justice) All over this land. I’d hammer out danger (bars over the door to extremism) I’d hammer out a warning (hanging a sign saying “Hate has no home here!”) I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters All over this land.

A Calvin and Hobbes Fan Account posted one of Calvin shouting

If the new year requires resolutions, I say it’s up to everyone else, not me! I don’t need to improve! Everyone else does!”

Tom Gauld posted a cartoon showing a room with one side tidy and the other side messy. The guy on the tidy side says:

My New Year’s resolutions are to jog to work every day, choose the healthy option at lunch, and run a pleasant, well-ordered workspace.

Th messy guys replies:

In the interests of scientific rigor, I’ll be the control, and change absolutely nothing.

Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos showing two billionaire hands, one with a nasty guy puppet and the other with a Clarence Thomas puppet. The nasty guy puppet says, “Remember when yachts were status symbols?” A couple older pundit roundups. A roundup from December 19 by Chitown Kev quoted Ari Breland of The Atlantic talking about the MAGA desire for revenge displayed at a MAGA gathering.

Trump and his supporters haven’t exactly been quiet about their fantasies and promises. Trump talked about mass deportations all throughout the campaign, and has doubled down since his victory. But there is a meaningful difference between being aware of the rhetoric and truly experiencing its full force. As a reporter who covers the far-right internet, I’ve seen countless posts from people like Gill and Bannon talking about deporting as many immigrants as possible or incarcerating Democrats and the press. But to hear these men fervently say it and watch a crowd of more than 1,000 erupt into cheers and laughter in response added a new dimension. They don’t just want policies, and they’re not just s---posting to provoke people online; they want their enemies to suffer, and they want to relish in their pain. “Reckoning is coming, and there will be retribution and there will be accountability,” Lewandowski said onstage. “And that accountability will be to the highest levels.”

Heather Digby Parton of Salon wrote the current Great Capitulation by the media. The first time was when Bush II came to the Oval Office.

The media completely capitulated to him for more than two years. The propaganda spread by the Bush administration was slick and professional but it was deadly. In their quest to fulfill their long-held dream of toppling Iraq leader Saddam Hussein and remake the Middle East as a democratic paradise (at the end of a gun), they lied repeatedly and the news media helped them do it. One of the lowest points in New York Times history was when they allowed a Bush sycophant named Judith Miller to publish front page stories about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction which later turned out to be non-existent. But it wasn't just lies about the war. The media turned themselves into gushing super fans of George W. Bush. They exalted his brilliance when he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn and declared to the assembled workers "I hear you! The whole world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" Soon after, he threw out the first pitch in the third game of the World Series at Yankee Stadium and the media swooned over his perfect delivery.

Matt Waite of NiemanLab wrote we should rethink journalism

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll put everything on the table. And I mean everything. Like how we write and who we write for. Like what we write about. Like the very assumption that people can even read our stuff. Gallup in 2022 found that half of Americans aged 16 to 74 had low literacy skills. Most people read at an eighth-grade level. Billions of words (it feels like) have been spilled dissecting why news organizations are in the state they’re in. (Radio! Television! Cable! Corporate ownership! The internet! Craigslist! Google! Facebook! TikTok!) Meanwhile, 130 million people struggle to read stories written by people who either went to grad school or have thought about it far more than people who read at the eighth-grade level. If journalism is going to live up to its lofty billing as being essential to an informed democracy, it has to stop thinking that anything is above replacement.

In the comments a cartoon by David Hayward shows a book labeled “Theology” strapped to a gurney and the nurse tells the doctor, “We had to restrain him. He was hurting a lot of people.” Hayward added, “Bad theology hurts good people.” In a roundup from December 21 Greg Dworkin quoted Joe Perticone of The Bulwark discussing the first time the nasty guy was in the Oval Office.

Chaos was visited on anything unfortunate enough to elicit the interest of the administration. There were sudden changes, ego-driven showdowns, and more backstabbing than you’d see in a Real Housewives episode. There were also multiple government shutdowns, including the longest one in U.S. history. And now, the decision by a re-empowered Trump to appoint Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to be his terminally online enforcers adds a completely new vector of chaos. Also, Vice President-elect JD Vance is there, too. Somewhere.

David Dayen of The American Prospect wrote about the spending bill that Musk railed against and was able to kill.

That brings us back to the initial reason for the blowup: Elon’s endless scroll. Which appears to be tied to none of the inaccurate reasons he offered on X, but an old standby for billionaires: personal financial and business incentives. The original bill would have made it harder for Musk to build Tesla factories in Shanghai.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic about why people seem to be shrugging off the nasty guy picking rich people for government positions:

People don’t really know about these Cabinet picks because average Americans just aren’t as read-in to the news as they once were. They watch the news on their phones in 30-second snippets. If they read, it’s headlines and social media posts, maybe. So they know, probably, that Trump nominated Dr. Oz to something or other. But do they know that he has a roughly $30 million financial stake in companies that will be doing business with the very Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that he is probably going to lead? I very much doubt it.

In the comments PragmaticDem posted a cartoon (author not named) showing a woman talking to a man, “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”