CSotD: Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds
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You can’t copyright a title, and, even if you could, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds would be in the public domain, since it was published in 1841. It is wonderful reading, with stories of the Crusades, the South Sea Bubble, the making of highwaymen into heroes and other follies, and I highly recommend it, though parts of it are, at best, poppycock.
I didn’t say it was true. I said it was wonderful reading.
Which brings us to Dr. Macleod’s cartoon, because Trump’s extraordinary delusions and the madness of his crowds make wonderful reading, much of which is also poppycock or worse.
I disagree with Macleod’s contention that the media is ignoring the truly bad things and focusing on the spectacular. In the glory days of print, the press did choose which stories to magnify, and, in the few places that still have more than one newspaper, you can compare them to prove partisan selectivity.
But in today’s multi-source world, where legacy media competes with Substacks and TikTok and a million other outlets, everything gets covered. What Macleod is seeing is that the things that catch on rise to the top, and thus was it ever, but moreso today.
Are there outlets which abuse reality? Sure. I worked for an editor who was obsessed with hipness. If she encountered a fad in Newsweek, we’d be sent out to “localize” it, and she’d be furious if we didn’t find a hometown example.
She also blew some major stories because they weren’t hip yet, so she wouldn’t assign them and, if we found them anyway, she’d bury them in obscure places.
(We didn’t get along terribly well.)
But even competent, ethical journalists naturally respond to customer interests, because if you try to feed them too much news that is good for them rather than news they want to know about, you’ll be out of business quickly.
And at the risk of condescending, the mob doesn’t seem to understand tariffs and they have trouble projecting what a budget approved today will mean on their kitchen table in a year, but, by golly, they can understand an airplane.
So you write about it all, but that stupid airplane is what gets talked about on the street, and reposted on social media, and once it becomes hip, the circle begins to close and to accelerate until that’s what dominates coverage while the stories of important medical research being victimized by budget cuts becomes one-and-done coverage, ignored and forgotten by the public.
Zyglis feels we should be paying attention to those harmful cuts rather than allowing ourselves to be distracted by the hoopla, but it’s like saying we ought to eat more vegetables and skip dessert. Even if we agree, it ain’t gonna happen. And there is a level of intentional diversion involved.
I suspect that, if Trump’s birthday didn’t happen to fall on Flag Day and the Army’s 250th birthday, his parade would be languishing with his expansionist fantasies about Greenland and Canada. It appears, however, that his Soviet-style gala is really going to happen.
It is a brilliant way to excite the mob, but I don’t think it’s any more of a brilliant plan than was the toddler-in-chief’s inspiration to resuscitate Alcatraz after he watched a Clint Eastwood movie.
In this case, there are people who will benefit from indulging our combination of Ralph Kramden and Dennis the Menace, knowing full well, as Ohman suggests, that the mob has forgotten the heel spurs, the insults to veterans, the security lapses, the conflicts of interests and government-by-Fox-hosts, and will cheer the John Philip Sousa music as the flag flutters by.
And will feast upon dessert for dinner and no more vegetables any time.
And never is heard a discouraging word nor are the skies cloudy all day. Garry Trudeau offers comfort to those who aren’t being fooled, but it’s as futile as Charlie Sykes continual reminder “You are not the crazy ones.”
It may be comforting, but that and four bucks will get you a (small) cuppa coffee these days.
Fact is, it’s like that old bit of driver’s ed doggerel:
This is a story of Johnny O’Day
Who died maintaining his right of way
He was right, dead right, as he drove along
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.
On a similar note, the recent revelation that RFK Jr took his grandkids swimming in water known to be full of e-coli might, at another time, in another world, signal the end of his career as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
But it was no revelation that he’s a screwball. The question isn’t about him swimming in sewage but about him getting the job in the first place, along with Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi and on and on. As Judge says, we’re all swimming in sewage.
President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho should sue for plagiarism or identity theft or something. I’m not sure what, but, again, I’m pretty sure only the Doonesbury crowd would understand the lawsuit. The point of the movie was that smart people don’t fit.
Meanwhile Camacho/Trump’s constituency is fired up because James Comey posted a photo of seashells spelling out “8647,” which in bar and diner slang means “get rid of Trump” but which Dear Leader contends was a death threat.
As McKee says, the loyalists don’t remember screaming “Hang Mike Pence” or attempting to overthrow the government by force and violence. Nor do they remember Dear Leader posting a picture of a truck with artwork across its tailgate depicting Joe Biden hogtied, nor do they remember that their cohorts were selling bumper stickers that said “8646.”
Nor that a lot of people credit Comey’s October Surprise with handing Dear Leader his 2016 victory. No James Comey, no President Donald Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Trump.
You would think, perhaps, that average struggling blue-collar Americans would resent the flow of money coming to an elitist, draft-dodging nepo-slacker, or you might think that if you haven’t been looking around lately.
But if Idiocracy prompted the ball in 2006, Keith Olbermann spiked it in our faces in 2011.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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