Yep, I’m “that guy.” I’m that much-maligned bandwagon sports fan who tunes in when his favorite team is winning and unapologetically tunes out when it is losing.
In other words, now that my hometown professional basketball team has made the playoffs for the first time in a long time, swept a team that owned them during the regular season, and won the first two games of the second round series on the road against the world champions, I’m here to add my full-throated “WOLVES IN FOUR! and “REFS YOU SUCK” chants.
I admit, I wasn’t there to cheer on the likes of Mark “Mad Dog” Madsen, Michael “Candy Man,” Olowokandi , and Earvin “No Magic” Johnson. I just couldn’t. But I am here for this talented, disciplined, deep, and successful team.
“Real fans,” the ones who in good times and bad dig deep to buy season tickets, TV packages, and closets full of gear, ridicule guys like me. But I maintain that my selective approach is the only sane approach to sports. Life is too short to put too much faith into billionaire Wolves owner Glen Taylor finally figuring it out.
Photo credit: CBS News Minnesota
If you see sports as strictly entertainment, as I do, it only makes sense to show up when it is entertaining for you.
If you see it as the path to self-actualization, I guess I could understand the passionate commitment to blind loyalty that I hear on sports talk radio. But that just doesn’t strike me as particularly sane or healthy.
Therefore, I have only recently shelled out something well into the two figures for the Bally Sports add-on to my DirectTV streaming service and my single Wolves t-shirt.
Who knows, if things are going well tonight in the pivotal Game 3 — and by “well” I mean a non-stress-inducing Wolves blow-out — I might even tune in until halftime! Even if that happens, at half-time my wife will serve me my warm milk and tuck me into bed in my nightshirt at the appointed bedtime. As I have so many times before, I will set a recording and watch the second half tomorrow, if, and only if, my morning headlines scan indicates that I will find the second half to my liking.
And if my favorite team brings me joy again on Sunday? Well, then I might even move to the next phase of bandwagon fandom, and purchase that face paint I’ve been eyeing. You know, the water-soluble, easily removed kind? LET’S GO WOLVES!
[Update: Because of a serious lapse by WWP’s over-paid copy desk, the original version of this screed included several unforgivable typos. We apologize. The staffer responsible has been fired, flogged and given a referral to Power Line.]
Every time I read one of those “Neighbor from hell” stories, where, you know, the guy next door demands a survey crew come in because he’s convinced your hostas are three inches over the property line, or the hoarder lady hauls in and drops an eighth garage sale Barcalounger on her front lawn, I think of what we here Minnesota have to put up with. And by that I mean … South Dakota.
I’ll spare you the tale of my long-running interaction with SoDak’s unique concept of law enforcement. (Short version: Stopped and searched on an Interstate for transporting a half-ounce sample jar of CBD-infused foot cream.) Except to relay what a former reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader offered by way of explanation: “This place is really stupid.”
In case anyone ever forgot that, we now have the head-slapping story of the state’s current governor taking out a gun and killing her “playful” puppie because she didn’t want to bother training it not to chase chickens. That and because her dream job is becoming Vice-President to a flabby 77 year-old playboy who very well might keel over on a golf course some day making her — who I refer to as Governor Barbie — Queen of All She Sees.
I am of course responding to the story, told by Kristi Noem herself in her new autobiography, of how in the context of making the kind of tough choices self-infatuated, gun-fetishizing right-wing politicians have to make to gain cred with their people, she gunned downed her puppy and a goat and tossed them in a gravel pit. It’s the kind of story most politicians would pay serious money to cover up, but Noem, reading the winds of MAGA … brags about it in a book she … had written for her.
This is the same South Dakota prairie princess who:
Dipped in to the state fund to erect a $400,000 fence around the, um, governor’s mansion in more-than-a-little-off-the-beaten-path Pierre, South Dakota out of fear that antifa or The Squad or Bernie Sanders might break in and assault her … despite her clearly being armed and willing to shoot them in the face … like a playful puppy.
Continued to engage in an “abusurdly blatant and public” affair with Trump “advisor” Corey Lewandowski months after denying it. Said a source, ” … they personally witnessed Noem ‘sitting on his [Lewandowski’s] lap’ and ‘playing grab-ass’ during an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in December 2020.
Is currently banned from fully 10% of her state thanks to pissing off tribal leaders of the place’s sprawling reservations … that she proudly does little to nothing to improve and insinuates are league with drug cartels. Quite possibly the kind hooking kids and puppies on CBD-infused foot cream.
And all this while allegedly governing a state where:
*A distracted Congressman/ex-Governor traveling 75 in a 55 blew a stop sign, killed a constituent on a motorcycle (minor irony there) and in his defense claimed he was having a diabetic reaction.
*A distracted (South Dakota) Attorney General swerved off a highway and killed a guy walking on the shoulder, told (South Dakota) law enforcement he might have hit a deer, despite clear evidence the dead man’s head came through the windshield depositing his glasses on the front passenger seat.
And * A state where, as we learned from the Pandora Papers expose, banking regulations are so opaque the place could well be and probably is happily serving as safe haven for billions of dollars in highly suspicious deposits. According to the Washington Post story, South Dakota is protecting $360 billion in very murky assets while, if you’re scoring along at home, producing only $50 billion in GDP, via ranchin’ and bikin’ and shootin’ puppies.
I could on for another eight hours it’s so lunatic over there. But if there’s a bottom line to this “shoot the puppy” story (and so many others) its that, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer put it so succinctly, when it it comes to understanding what MAGA leaders and cult members are thinking, “Cruelty is the point.”
Cruelty is what they’re selling … and buying.
Put another way, when you’re asserting your MAGA bona fides by telling a story of how you shot your puppy, you are appealing to MAGA’s insatiable, bottomless appetite for transgression. The desire for sound and fury against the prissy, “politically correct” norms of “urban elites” and every other adversary who doesn’t respect the agrarian American freedom to … ignore pandemics, protect the assets of international criminals, play grab ass and shoot puppies.
You want to put up a wall? I got a border that needs a wall.
Today … two things that constantly embarrass me: (1) The amount of time I spend watching football. Hundreds of hours a year. It’s absurd-to-obscene. That and (2) Talking or listening to people talk about football. As in grown adults having serious, supposedly meaningful discussions of … football.
This cranky geezer line of thinking cycled back into my head last evening when I clicked over to ESPN and was gobsmacked by an aerial shot of nearly 300,000 people mashed together outdoors in downtown Detroit (not Coachella) to watch … the NFL draft. Not an NFL game, mind you. Just the Commissioner of the NFL on a stage a half mile in the distance announcing draft picks and greeting college-age players — in street clothes and, um, sun glasses mostly — who flew in to be part of what has become like everything else about the NFL, a wildly-hyped TV extravaganza.
Allow me to repeat: 300,000 people … to watch a TV show.
Again, I like football. I enjoy watching football. Some of these players are freaks of nature in terms of what they can do throwing and catching a ball. But that, for me, a sour curmudgeon with a bad rotator cuff, is pretty much the end of it. In terms of time spent on football.
Judging by close ups of various fans in their NFL-sanctioned official team jerseys, hats, face paint and other assorted costuming, my guess is there were plenty of people who spent time and money (in this inflation-crippled economy, TM any Republican) to drive/fly to Detroit to you know, “support” their team.
If someone asks me on a Monday morning what I thought of Sunday’s big game, (and they’re all “big” dontchaknow), I’ve got the patience for 30 seconds of deep thoughts. After that … I’m embarrassed to be seen talking about something so otherwise irrelevant to my life experience, or meaning, or value … or whatever.
So you can imagine the answer is, “No. I never listen to sports talk radio.” Grown men (mostly) nattering on for hour after hour, day after day, month after month about … the NFL draft. I’m embarrassed for them. It’s a great paying gig for the hosts … because football has been marketed up to the status of a religion in this country, (soccer may be even worse outside the US). 300,000 show up in person in Detroit and millions more (mostly men) listen devotedly every day across the country. There’s a lot of pickups, beer and Cialis to be sold to a crowd that big and single-minded.
People argue that this kind of secular religious mania is a good thing. In a world where half the country thinks the other half is nuts and/or dangerous, watching and talking football is considered therapeutic. It’s a binding agent. Or so “they” say.
Maybe. And maybe I really should calm the f*ck down and get with the program. You know, buy a pair of Helga braids, paint my face and garage door purple and gold, pay $75 to tailgate in 10 degree weather and join in that creepy Nuremberg-rally “Skol!” clap before each Vikings game. But I’m too embarrassed.
Maybe it’s because I’m constantly aware of how little people, (men mostly), seem to know or care or care to talk about things that … to me … seem a lot more important and valuable in terms of life experiences.
Like? Well, like art, politics, the mysterious functioning of the human brain, dark matter, automobile maintenance, dog grooming or just about anything else that hasn’t been marketed to us, like hormone-infused feed to dull-witted sheep.
Having said that, I told pals last winter watching the NCAA championship game that that kid McCarthy would look good in a Vikings uniform, and …lo!
You’ll have to trust me on this one. Back in the immediate aftermath of the police killing of Justine Ruszczyk — the Australian-born woman in her pajamas in an upscale neighborhod who so terrified a Minneapolis cop he shot her through the window of his patrol car — several journalists from Down Under landed in Minnesota to report on how authorities here were explaining that one.
The item I can’t find, but vividly remember, was one of the Aussie reporters commenting on how weirdly polite the local press was in press conferences with Minneapolis cops and city leaders. It was jarring, he said. The incident was nuts on the face of it. The cop was so freaked out and trigger happy — in a quiet, generally crime-free neighborhood — that he snapped and killed the nice lady in her jammies who reported a noise in her alley. But that withstandig, Minneapolis cops and leaders were up there day after day tap dancing, prevaricating and giving it the old All-American legalistic spin. “We must wait for all the facts to be known …” Yadda yadda.
The Aussie made the case that instead of any American reporter standing up and saying, in effect, “What the fuck are you talking about? He killed her! Who hires these people? Do they get any training at all?” the local press meekly played along with the bureaucratic, mumbo-jumo niceties of American cops ‘n press protocols. Maybe because freaked-out cops killing innocent civilians is so common here, no reporter feels the outrage anymore.
This all comes to mind (again) watching the Trump trial circus now unfolding in New York.
Last night Jon Stewart gored his cable news colleagues — most of them in the CNN and MSNBC universe — for the hours of over-coverage of Trump trial banalities they’ve already served up, pretending any of it has news value. Like for instance … OJ-style chopper coverage of Trump’s motorcade driving downtown to the court house. And … straight-faced analysis of … court room sketches. And … yet more of the tiredest of Trump-era cliches. Like the one about how this time “the walls really are closing in” on Donny JT. (Nine years and counting on that one.)
One item Stewart didn’t get to was the already ritual Trump-bullshit-and-whining appearance outside the court room every afternoon.
To paraphrase the Aussie, “WTF?!”
Are you telling me there isn’t anyone in the waiting press horde who can do a Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and bellow back at the cartoonish fraud and fool, “Sir! Sir! What is worse? Your chronic flatulence or the appalling sleaze and cheesiness of your crimes?”
Obviously the answer is, “No. There’s no one who dares.” That would be so puerile and impertinent. So … so … unbefitting an interaction with a former POTUS.
So, no. There’s no one in the so-called legitimate, professional press who has yet taken the attitude that this guy is and has been for 40-plus years an absurd-to-obscene fraud, deserving of nothing more than derision and mockery … to his face. If the legal system wants to treat him like a super defendant, and allow him to tie it in knots and years of delays, well that’s fine. That’s their game. But what compels the press to play along?
The underlying point is that American journalism still hasn’t figured out the best — which is to say the most moral and ethical — way to cover a profane and dangerous circus act like Donald Trump. Despite giving him something like $5 billion in free advertising in 2016, a factor at least comparable to The Comey Letter in terms of pushing him over the top … in the Electoral College … the master plan for this current coverage, while less flattering, is predicated on sustaining ratings and ad revenue, just as it was in 2016.
Sorry. But I say we’re waaay past the point of requiring a much different game from “the media”. Certainly when Trump is standing there right in front of them and still lying his ass off.
For years the annual South by Southwest arts and tech festival in Austin, Texas has been a kind of marketing launch pad for music and films … and media “elites” asserting their influencer status. The hype this congregation can create is pretty impressive.
At the top of the list of the “most hyped and hyper-ventilated over” at this year’s SXSW was the new film, “Civil War”, which I finally got around to seeing last night.
If you follow news and culture at all you know that “Civil War” imagines a modern day USA in all out violent conflict between at least two factions. In the film the focus is on a small group of journalists looping through the eastern seaboard countryside. Leaving a war torn New York and looking for a back way in to Washington D.C., where they tell us they plan to interview the President. Kirsten Dunst is the lead, playing a hardened war photographer.
As they are so often wont to do, those at the levers of the hype machine — declared “Civil War” “a masterpiece!”. I’m pretty sure this is the same crowd constantly declaring every new pop song, old building and pricey hand bag “iconic”. (For me, the constant over-use of “iconic” has gotten so bad it’s like someone hammering a gong next to my head every time I hear it.)
I’m not here to say “Civil War” is bad. It’s not. It’s quite a good film, and thoroughly admirable in giving life to the nightmare imaginings of quite a few Americans. But, please people. This is not “8 1/2” or “2001” or “Lawrence of Arabia.” What it is is a very well crafted piece of speculative fiction with an umbilical attachment to our 2024 zeitgeist.
The film’s creator, writer-director Alex Garland, (his earlier film, “Ex Machina”, about a Peter Thiele-like tech billionaire who has created a sentient robot in his New Zealand-y forest hideaway is excellent, and bit closer to a “masterpiece”), is quite canny about the set-up for his film. While the sitting President, played by Nick Offerma, is clearly a thuggish autocrat, serving a third term and demagoguing about “restoring America … “, the film plays with little other sense of who is “right” and who is “wrong”.
Perhaps its for this reason that audiences after screenings this past week in Texas and other red areas were not offended by what they watched, suggesting they did not see themselves in Offerman’s Trump-like character or his supporters, several of whom Dunst and her crew encounter on their way to DC.
How any MAGA cultist fails to see a full Trump Part Deux future in Offerman and “Civil War” is beyond my ability to understand. But then as I say, Garland’s construction is canny in the way he doesn’t rub anyone’s nose in ham-fisted ideological soliloquies or red meat antagonisms. That, and as we all know, MAGA America is not exactly known for its grasp of nuance.
Part of Garland’s plan for avoiding “in your face” partisan antagonism lies in the decision to make his lead characters journalists. Professionals doing a job. People out there just “getting the story” and letting audiences back home “decide.” The characters’ entrenched apoliticism has apparently bothered some lefty/blue audiences, who find the characters unsympathetic to what’s going on around them.Never mind that Dunst and her crew suffer terribly at the hands of various combatants, most notably Dunst’s real-life husband, Jesse Plemons, playing a, dare I say?, highly recognizable modern American “type.”
What’s perhaps most admirable about the film, which as I say is very well staged and acted (with another excellent sound design, BTW), is that it can’t help but engender a conversation about how close we could be to this sort of open warfare in real modern American life?
As I watched, I couldn’t help but ask myself something I think about perhaps too much. Namely, what exactly will my response be if Donald Trump were to suffer yet another substantial popular vote defeat and be elected (again) thanks to the Electoral College. The college being a wildly anachronistic device sustained primarily by right-wing politicians and judges that is 80 years older and arguablyt even less relevant to modern America than the much-mocked 1864 abortion ban recently held up as standing law by the same type of political crowd in Arizona.
Worse, what if this next election is riddled with nefarious activity by Russia or whoever, and then subjected to the kind of blocking and delaying tactics imagined by Trump legal advisor John Eastman, substituting state legislatures, like Arizona’s and Wisconsin’s, for the popular vote of their people?
At my advanced age and obvious decrepitude I’d have to think twice about smearing camo makeup on my face and learning how to fire an AR-15, but I seriously … and I do mean seriously … suspect tens of thousands of people younger and equally outraged Americans will say, in effect, “No fucking way!”
And at that point “Civil War” becomes something more than speculative fiction.
Politics is sometimes shaped by the Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC). The actions that politicians take expecting a particular result can sometimes lead to unanticipated outcomes.
For instance, in 2011 Minnesotans saw the Law of Unintended Consequences come into play when Republican political hacks in the state legislature voted to put a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot. Their thinking was that a majority of Minnesotans, who they assumed were as eager as they were to outlaw marriage equality, would turn out in the 2012 elections to pass the amendment. They then hoped that the voters attracted by the marriage ban would elect anti-LGBTQ Republicans.
It didn’t work out that way. To the surprise of many, the Republican’s same-sex marriage amendment was rejected by 51.9% of Minnesota voters. This made Minnesota the first state to reject such a ban at the ballot box. To make matters worse, Republicans lost control of the Minnesota Legislature.
This allowed state Democrats to pass a statute legalizing same-sex marriage in 2013.
In other words, the heated debate over the Republican-generated ballot measure made Minnesotans more accepting of same-sex marriage, not less. In this way, the Republicans’ ban plan led to a legalization law. Go Law of Unintended Consequences!
Similarly, at the national level, the 70 times congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA)/Obamacare forced previously cowed and muted ACA supporters to finally explain the tremendous value of the ACA. As a result of their pro-ACA advocacy during those 70 debates, an overwhelming two-thirds of Americans now support the preexisting conditions protections of the ACA. Support for ACA repeal is now just 17%.
As with same-sex marriage in Minnesota, the once-unpopular ACA became quite popular, thanks to Republicans’ efforts to kill it.
With these LUC examples in mind, I’m hoping that the LUC might come to the rescue when it comes to Team Trump’s relentless efforts to delay his pending criminal trials. Through a series of legal maneuvers, Trump’s army of lawyers has been pushing out the start of trials, presumably so that verdicts and appeals can’t be finalized prior to the November 2024 election.
U.S. News and World Report, March 15, 2024
The chances are good that Trump’s delay tactics will largely do exactly what they are intended to do, help him once again escape legal and electoral accountability. But maybe, just maybe, they could hurt him. Here’s how:
If Trump’s criminal trials were happening this winter or spring, as originally hoped, the damaging information spotlighted during the heavy coverage of the criminal trials could by November be largely forgotten by lightly engaged, easily distracted swing voters. On issue after issue, we’ve seen that swing voters have the attention spans of gnats. The news they’re casually focused on today could easily get forgotten by the time they vote seven months from now.
But if Team Trump’s delay tactics cause the insurrection-related testimony to be dominating the news in early fall, that could make those issues much more top-of-mind for voters during the closing days of the campaign.
Imagine a September and/or October dominated by wall-to-wall news of insurrection trial coverage. This coverage is constantly showing voters alarming images of Trump supporters assaulting police. Imagine swing voters seeing the mountain of evidence showing Trump doing nothing to stop the bloody assault and subsequently praising the rioters. Imagine them hearing law enforcement officers and Trump’s most loyal supporters and staff giving damaging blockbuster testimony about the bloody chaos that Trump created, relished, and glorified.
Imagine that this is what swing voters are hearing in the immediate lead-up to the election, rather than Trump’s most effective criticisms of Biden about the economy and immigration. And all of this is coming to them via a judicial setting, which feels more weighty and credible to them than the 2022 congressional hearings.
Even though the verdict and appeals wouldn’t be completed by Election Day in this scenario, these are hardly the final images Trump’s campaign strategists want in undecided voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box. If the trial timing worked out this way, the delay tactics could unwittingly keep the insurrection nightmare fresher in voters’ minds than would have been the case if the trials hadn’t been delayed and were happening now.
Again, this is a long shot. The more likely outcome is that Trump’s delay tactics will cause him to largely push his law-breaking out of voters’ minds until after the election.
Pro-Trump fortress near Blacksburg, SC. Photo by Noel Holston (author)
I’ve often heard liberals
and progressives of my acquaintance assert that Donald Trump’s diehard
supporters have been brainwashed by Fox News, OAN, Breitbart and other
right-wing media. I don’t think so.
I believe they seek out such “sources” because they already believe a lot
of the fabrications and falsifications those outlets disseminate and just get
off on having their perceptions reinforced.
For further evidence, allow me to share some memes and ideas I recently encountered
on the Facebook page of a guy whom I will call, since his real name is
similarly normal, Rodney Harper.
Rodney hails from the same Mississippi small town as I and went to the
same second-class university. I don’t
remember him from school. Our paths only recently crossed. He read and liked my
2023 book, As I Die Laughing, and sent me a Facebook friend request,
which I accepted.
Turns out, apart from having fond memories of our free-range youth,
Rodney and I couldn’t be much different. When I looked at his Facebook page, I
saw that, along with photos of his dogs and his collection of antique tools, he
mostly shares memes attacking liberals for the being the pestilence he
apparently believes we are. He often gets dozens of “amens” and huzzahs for his
shares.
Here are a few of the memes I saw, along with a bit of annotation:
Screenshot of Facebook meme by Noel Holston (author)
Like many folks on the right, Rodney resents paying income tax. Not sure how he squares that with the fact that taxes pay for some things we can probably assume he likes — for instance, our military, our highways, sewer systems, dams. Also note that the poster image for “productive and useful” is a white male, not that we should read anything into that.
Screen shot by Noel Holston (author)
Another complaint about taxes, this time leaving no room for the notion that foreign aid has benefits both tangible and intangible for the good old USA.
Screenshot by Noel Holston (author)
My jaw dropped upon seeing this one. Much as I loathe and fear Donald Trump, the man who would be America’s Vladimir Putin if he could, even he doesn’t deserve comparisons to the mass-murdering fuhrer of Nazi Germany.
The inference about Biden is insane. Joe can’t be Mr. Magoo and Hitler, too.
Screen shot by Noel Holston (author)
Rodney appears not to have noticed that the GOP, originally the Party of Lincoln, more than 50 years ago exchanged identities with the segregationist Democrats, aka “Dixiecrats.”
The “Test”
Rodney also shared a “test” that was attributed to one Mark Barcus, whose
Facebook page identifies him as a saddle maker based in Wyoming.
The test is supposed to show you what side of the fence you sit on
politically. I’m putting Barcus’s declarations in italics, my reactions
in boldface.
If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
Neither I nor any liberal I know wants all guns outlawed. We advocate what most Americans consider sane, reasonable regulation that would include registration, serious background checks and limits on owning military-grade weapons that make mass murder easier.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
The only people I know who want all meat products banned are radical animal rights advocates. They may be liberals, but they’re a tiny minority. I’m an omnivore myself and couldn’t care less who or what conservatives put in their mouths.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
Oh, please. As if only conservatives ever pull themselves up by the bootstraps and only liberals ever need a helping hand.
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
I know plenty of liberals who despise Fox News. I am aware of very few who want Fox News shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and Jesus silenced.
The non-believers I know, both liberal and conservative, may think belief in God is misplaced, but they don’t care who or what you worship as long as you don’t try to impose your beliefs on other people in public settings.
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
No one “decides” he needs health care. He (or she) gets sick. Like most conservatives, most liberals have private insurance or a job that provides health care benefits. If liberals “demand” that “the rest of us” pay for fellow citizens who are poor to have basic health care coverage, we also fully expect to be picking up our share of the tab.
If a conservative reads this, he’ll post it. A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended.”
Obviously I didn’t delete the list. I reprinted it. I’m not offended, just struck by its false equivalencies and illogic.
And speaking of illogic:
Screen shot by Noel Holston (author)
The notion that Donald Trump is the Sheriff, some sort of modern-day Wyatt Earp, is not just illogical, it’s absurd.
If Trump had been in Tombstone, he’d have been a member of the thieving
Clanton gang.
And if he’d owned the OK Corral, he would have overstated its square footage on a loan application.
About the author: Guest columnist Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.
High up among the questions I’d like answered about this era is how and why so many people seized on Donald Trump as The Man with the Answer? As the guy who could get “it” done? Was it really because in their minds he already got it done? As the wildly successful and glamorous businessman, like the one he played on TV?
Was it really that simple (minded)?
In a culture that regards fame as an unalloyed virtue and keeps score based on the number of gold-plated toilets seen in your publicity photos, TV-created Trump and his repeated claims that, “I’m really, really rich” seem to have played like fentanyl-laced salted caramel candy to a certain type of brain configuration.
But if that’s true, what do those same people think now as they watch him flounder and squeal and rant trying to cover the half billion dollar tab on his New York fraud conviction?
Yes, yes, it’s all “the Deep State picking on him” for no reason at all other than they hate freedom. But it’s just a bond. He gets the money back if he wins his latest of hundreds of time-sucking appeals. Are any of his adoring mob asking themselves, “Why doesn’t he just write a check?”
I’m absolutely certain even Trump TV hosts and pundits on Fox and NewsMax have reported his inability to convince any bank or insurance company to give him a loan. So the “money problem” is “out there”, as the kids like to say.
As of this morning Team Trump is asking the judge (uh, excuse me, “liberal, biased New York judge”) to allow him — the “really, really rich guy” with the gold-plated toilets — to pay just 20% of his tab, much like a court would allow you or me to cough up $20 to cover a $100 parking ticket.
Maybe some of the folks who confused the opening credit sequence of “The Apprentice” with reality are wondering, “Why didn’t he set aside some dough just in case he lost — at the hands of that biased, uppity, colored babe?” Or maybe take out a revolving line of credit on one of those big New York ofice buildings he says are worth billions?
Most likely the gullible fans of famous and “really, really rich” aren’t wondering much at all. This is all just another liberal attack on the “one true real American.” A tycoon who is again turning to them and pleading for their money to save his ass. Not cash for bogus college courses, knock off vodka, tough steaks or gold-plated sneakers, but to cover his legal bills, “Right now … before Monday! Before thewy get their filthy hands on Trump Tower and those toilets.”
Why anyone making south of $100k a year (and much less) would send a “really, really rich” billionaire money for anything boggles my mind. But Trump’s celebrity-struck masses have and still are, although less and less as time (and repeated appeals for more) have gone on. I mean, they gave him over $200 million to fight the “rigged election” almost all of which he pocketed in (another) naked fraud that he is not being prosecuted for by the Deep State. But they Belivers gave it and few if any complained about getting ripped off.
That PAC, his Save America gimmick, is still up and running, and he now has full control of the Republican National Committee’s fund-raising as well as his own Trump 2024 campaign income. All of money sucked in by all three could … could … go to his legal bills and not to getting him or any other Republican elected. Does the Trump herd understand that? Or care?
If I were a betting man, based on Trump’s fifty-plus years of marketing himself as vastly richer than he really is and evading America’s sclerotic legal system all along the way, I’d say he’ll skate on this one, too. Either the system will give him some pennies-on-the-dollar relief, or he’ll suddenly come in to a windfall from an undisclosed benefactor.
He may not like the look of (yet another) bankruptcy, but there’s no way he says “No” if a Russian oligarch or Saudi prince bails him out … on the down low, of course. No names on anything. Just a gift out of left field to a “friend”. A gift to a friend … with an “understanding.”
(The fine point being, as many others have pointed out, a guy desperate for money is the classic mark to be converted to an intelligence asset. Or, put simply, money from Russia makes Trump Russia’s man, even more than he already has been. And that all the while he is legally entitled to regular top security briefings as the presumptive Republican candidate. Jesus christ … ).
The mentality of the average fame-struck Trump idolator would have a much harder time with bankruptcy than a half billion dollar “gift” from an undisclosed, mysterious source. Bankruptcy looks so, mm, “shabby”. So much like drunken cousin Ted after buying that $80,000 pickup. But hundreds of millions from some unnamed source would be to them just further proof that “he’s a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy” … even if the guy in question is currently slaughtering Ukrainians by the hundreds and/or chopping up up newspaper columnists.
But “The Apprentice’s” producers never showed them any of that.
I’m not sure if you have heard this, but we are now in the midst of the latest in a long series of “most important elections of our lifetime.” It’s a match-up between the most accomplished President of my adult lifetime versus the most authoritarian, racist, and incompetent President in U.S. history, and somehow it’s going to be a very close race.
Accordingly, anxiety among my friends is running high. Everyone is pondering what they can do to influence the outcome of the election.
There are many ways to influence the election – donating, fundraising, phoning, talking to loved ones, voting, and grassroots volunteering, among many others. Maybe because I work in public relations, used to work in politics, and am outspoken about my views, friends occasionally ask for my thoughts about how to best persuade their networks through social media activism.
I don’t have a good short answer. But I do have a lousy long one. This post explains how I do social media activism, and the method to my madness. I don’t have all the answers, and am surely making plenty of mistakes, but I hope this provides food-for-thought to help you figure out what kind of social media activism feels right for you.
For what it’s worth, here are a few strategies that I use, very imperfectly, when communicating on social media about policy issues, candidates, and elections.
Social Media Activism Strategies
Show Up. First, I show up. In a world where we now have dozens of channels for self-publishing, we all have agency when it comes to political communications. Political communications is not just someone else’s job –Biden’s, Schumer’s, Walz’s, Jean-Pierre’s, Krugman’s, Sykes’, Carville’s, Maddows, etc. It’s also our job.
Because of ubiquitous social media platforms, for the first time in human history we all can now communicate quickly and efficiently with dozens, hundreds, or thousands at a time, several times per day. Amidst our family pictures, pet humor, and recycled memes, we can include peer-to-peer activism in our social media feeds.
So, let’s say that you’re upset that your friends don’t know about Biden’s achievements. Show them.
Or maybe you’re frustrated that so many in your network don’t follow the news enough to know about Trump’s attacks on the middle class? Regularly condense and share that news.
Perhaps you can’t stand that conservatives have an outsized presence on your news feed and you worry that is skewing your friends’ viewpoints. Provide balance with the other side of the story.
The bad guys have figured out how to use social media to their advantage, including with AI bots. The good guys should too.
Woody Allen famously said that “80% of success is showing up.” Something like that applies to peer-to-peer social media communications. Showing up in social media discussions is no guarantee that we will persuade anyone. But if progressives all remain silent while conservatives speak out, progressives are guaranteed to lose the arguments.
Don’t Rely on Politicians To Deliver Your Messages. Joe Biden is never going to influence many people in your life. Anything he or his staff say, even if eloquent and well-supported with credible facts, will be disregarded by cynical swing voters as political, tribal, and self-serving. Public opinion polling bears this out.
This is why peer-to-peer messaging is more persuasive than politician-to-peer messaging will ever be. So, quit complaining about politicians being poor communicators and take accountability for doing your part.
Forget About “The Base.” Close elections aren’t decided by “base” voters — dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and die-hard Democrats. They’re decided by the roughly 30 percent of Americans who are “swing voters.” Swing voters are soft-Republicans, soft-Democrats, and voters who identify as “independents.” These folks tend to swing back and forth between political parties.
To be more specific, the people who really matter are swing voters in states that are the most closely contested, such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada. However, social media posting can’t be targeted by geography, so don’t worry about this kind of battleground state targeting.
Because swing voters decide the outcomes of close elections, when drafting messages I try to think about addressing people in my life who are undecided. I craft my message in a way I hope that good old Neighbor Fencesitter or Uncle Stradler might find most persuasive.
At the same time, when committed Republicans are screaming at me, I don’t let them scare me away, bum me out, or influence my approach. I also don’t use the partisan “red meat” language that I know my partisan Democratic friends crave. I do occasionally post on Democratic issues to get Democratic friends more motivated and activated.
However, again, the most important goal of my social media activism is to persuade the all-important swing voters, not Democrats and Republicans.
Inform Your Messaging With Polling. If you’re ambitious, it can also help to occasionally search the internet for polling to inform your posts. I’m not talking here about “horse race” findings about who would win if the race were held today. I’m talking about polling focused on issues and messages.
In your posts, stick to the issues where survey research tells us that, 1) swing voters support the progressive position and 2) the issue is important to swing voters. Among other issues, stress health care, Social Security, insurrection, drug price controls, and reproductive health rights. Stay away from other issues, such as relatively obscure foreign policy issues. Your messages need to be chosen with swing voters’ biases and priorities in mind, not yours.
Also, seek out polling that helps you understand what type of arguments are most persuasive with voters. For instance, surveys tell us which ways you can talk about Biden’s age that are most persuasive to young adult voters.
Deliver the News. More than two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news via social media feeds, with Facebook being the top source. Therefore, consider becoming a self-appointed news curator and summarizer for your followers.
I regularly post excerpted news and commentary, often derived from behind paywalls. I understand that most won’t read more than the headline of the items I share, if that. But the hope is that they will occasionally stop and read, and that exposing them to information that they wouldn’t otherwise see can have an impact on a close election.
Include Humor. Using humor to make your points disarms critics and makes messaging more fun for both the messenger and the audience. So sprinkle political satire, cartoons, and self-deprecation into your posts.
While humor has its place, pay attention to the line between welcomed humor and off-putting snark. Personal attacks and over-the-top derision are cathartic for partisans. But remember, the point of all this is not to make your like-minded pals snicker. It’s to persuade fence-sitters, they tend to tune-out harsh political mud-slinging.
If you don’t want to drive away persuadable folks on the center-right and center-left, stick to politely, reasonably, and calmly making matter-of-fact points about Trump’s policies, words, and actions, rather than delivering critiques focused on his make-up, body parts, hair style, weight, supporters, and family members.
Simplify and Condense. I regularly ignore my own advice on this, but it’s important to simplify and condense messages as much as possible. Many lightly engaged social media scrollers will skip right by your message if it’s not bite-sized.
There’s a place for longer posts, but most swing voters are usually not interested enough to consider your viewpoints for more than a few seconds.
So, give them more than they want — short and simple.
Grow Thick Skin. Speaking up about candidates and issues can be discouraging and exhausting. One of my favorite observations from the writer Namoi Shulman helps remind me why I still have to enter the fray, even when it’s uncomfortable:
“Nice people made the best Nazis.
My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.
You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”
Throughout history, the resisters who have improved the world had to have very thick skins. If we want to make a difference, we have to summon the courage to be more like them.
Be Persistent. I once heard a rule of thumb from an advertising executive that consumers don’t even begin to recall a message until they hear it at least seven times. That’s why advertising works, because it can deliver message repetition until the message eventually begins to stick.
By the way, the number seven in that claim is wholly non-scientific. The precise number obviously will vary depending on variables specific to each topic and circumstance. However, the overall point of the ad man’s adage remains valid: We can’t say something once or twice, and assume our job is done.
If you prefer inspirational metaphors to advertising rules of thumb, here is one that has stuck in my head over the years:
“A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
While that quote from an unknown source might sound trite, it makes an important point. Few of us have much political power in the traditional sense. But we are capable of being persistent communicators, and over time persistence can make a difference.
Skeptical? Trump was like that persistent river delivering demonstrably false messages about the 2020 election being “stolen. His unremitting repetition of his Big Lie worked with a depressingly large swath of Americans.
Truthtellers need to emulate Trump’s persistence if we are going to beat him.
Stay on Offense. The tired cliché “the best defense is a good offense” is as true in politics as it is in sports. So, stay on offense. Stress the strengths of your policies and candidates, not their weaknesses. Deliver those messages proactively, as opposed to always reacting to your opponents’ inaccurate posts. And make your points confidently and unapologetically. Again, mirror Trump.
Will Any of This Work?
If you do all these things, I can’t guarantee that your candidates and ideas will prevail. So why bother? In our closely divided country, elections are routinely decided by razor-slim margins. Therefore, in many elections having even a minuscule impact on the awareness and attitudes of swing voters can be decisive.
If doing peer-to-peer activism on social media feels futile to you, ask yourself this question: When ultra-conservatives do the things discussed in this post, do you think they are wasting their time? If you think their social media activism is making a difference, why do you conclude that your social media activism can’t make a difference?
I understand why many people don’t want to speak out about political views on social media. I really do. It can be exhausting, discouraging, and controversial with our friends and family. But if reasonable Americans allow ultra-conservative extremists to have the social media stage disproportionately to themselves, we shouldn’t be surprised when MAGA viewpoints carry the day, and we suffer the consequences.
So, the same God that sent us Jesus also sent us Donald Trump?
Image from Daily Kos
I guess that’s possible seeing as how the same God gifted us with sex and STDs, but I doubt it.
Saying Donald Trump isn’t a “perfect” man is a huge understatement, like saying DDT isn’t the best of condiments.
I, Noel Holston,am not a perfect man. I sometimes talk when I should be listening. I’m bad about leaving the toilet seat up. I’ve been known to tithe less than 10%. I once stole a pair of sunglasses from a surf shop in Daytona Beach.
I regret it all.
But unlike Donald Trump, who regrets nothing, I’ve never sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room, mocked a disabled man’s tremors, lied on loan applications, stiffed a contractor, or paid hush money to a porn actress. I’ve also never been sued or charged with any crime, let alone 90.
No, Trump is not a perfect man. He’s more like a perfect storm, a monsoon of malfeasance.
But that’s not the truly disturbing thing about the meme reproduced above. We know who Trump is.
The meme was shared on Facebook by a woman from my Mississippi hometown, someone who also posts pictures of angels and kittens, and it quickly amassed a long trail of supportive comments, from anti-Liberal slurs to “Some time we need a Joab.”
(For those of you who aren’t ready to compete on Bible Baffle, Joab was a Jewish military commander under King David known for his ruthlessness.)
The scary thing is that there are people living among us who actually believe Donald Trump was chosen by the Almighty Himself to clean up the sinful mess that liberals, progressives and free-thinkers supposedly have wrought in the U.S. of A.
Here again, the logic is strange.
God loved and blessed America when European conquerors, also known as settlers, drove indigenous peoples off their lands and killed them by the thousands.
God continued to love and bless America when some of its enterprising newcomers used abducted Africans to build great fortunes and, later, after a bloody war incidentally freed those slaves, disenfranchised, harassed and lynched their descendants for another century.
Only now, when some men and women want to love someone of their same gender, when some men and women want to change their gender, and when poor brown people from Central and South America are trying to cross our border Southern to pursue life, liberty and happiness is God so infuriated with us that He has dispatched a snide, vulgar, narcissistic real-estate hustler to lead us back to the straight and narrow.
There’s a word for this: insanity.
There’s a second word as well: blasphemy.
Forgive them for they know not what they do? Sure. It’s the Christian thing.
But not until after you’ve voted them and their orange idol out.
Author’s note: I had hoped to work Matthew 9: 26 (“There are none so blind. . .”) into this, but it broke the flow. Another time.
—
Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.
I remember quite well rolling my eyes every time Ronnie Reagan went off on one of his “shining light on the hill” riffs. America the exceptional! A blemish-free paradise, by god! No worries ’round here other than those frumpy Rooskies! Ignore whatever’s going on with those Iranian mullahs and the guns we’re shipping to fascists in Central America. And no Gertie, AIDS is nothing you need to worry your pretty little heterosexual Christian head over.
It was platinum plated BS.
But the thing is … it worked. The guy got reelected in a goddam landslide. He was Mr. Upbeat. A doofy old dude you’d have a beer with and listen to him tell stories of fighting his way up Mt. Suribachi … the scale model one out on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. Listening to Reagan’s cheery BS made the rubes feel everything would work out and they could devote even more time to obsessing over football and cheesy TV.
So last night, allegedly decrepit and addled Joe Biden takes a page from Reagan — and even name drops ol’ Ronnie — while setting up what is clearly going to be the fundamental message competition of the coming campaign.
Not just that, “Yeah, I’m old, but my ‘predecessor’ is crazy.” But, “Where I see solutions to problems, and have already solved problems, these guys … like that f**king nut job in her MAGA hat yelling at me from the cheap seats … are about the gloomiest damn bastards I’ve ever met. Hell, no sci-fi writer could come up with dystopia grimmer than this crowd and their cult leader.”
The internet is on fire this morning with startled praise for the juice Biden brought to his speech last night. Not only did the guy look and sound vigorous, he was clearly enjoying batting Republicans (and Sam Alito’s Supreme Court) around like a cat with a yarn ball.
Simultaneously, I don’t think I’ve ever read worse reviews for a State of the Union response. We’re talking Alabama first term senator Katie Britt. Have you watched this thing? OMFG! Your way too put together, very white, super Christian, average Mom (with de rigueur crucifix necklace, gold variety) smiling … before she’s tearing … before she’s tearing again about the absolute wasteland of criminality, vice, degradation and despair … outside her homey kitchen.
It is truly beyond parody. (Betting is heavy she gets “Saturday Night Live” attention.)
But the essence of it all is simple and obvious. While Biden (and hopefully at some point his more youthful surrogates like Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, etc.) talk up all the positives through the campaign …
… Republicans, led by Orange Jesus, are only capable of talking about what a godforsaken hellhole we’re living in. How the price of a dozen eggs is more than it was in 1985! And how no one has a spare nickel to drop on, I don’t know, a Redneck Riviera condo, a new Super Duty truck with a six-ton towing package to set up in a casino parking lot outside Vegas, a set of his and hers ATVs or concierge service at little Spider and Dewey’s summer Bible camp.
Never have so many endured so much deprivation and misery!
Purely by coincidence, I opened this morning’s e-mail from John Hinderaker and Minnesota’s own dystopian sourpusses at the American Experiment. This is the crowd that has still yet to calm themselves from “overreach” of last year’s Minnesota legislative session. You know, the one where Democrats delivered on damn near everything they campaigned on and for which voters sent them to St. Paul.
Here’s a taste of this morning’s litany of misery from our local conservative intellectuals:
Migrants (!) lining up in south Minneapolis looking for work. Horror! They’re all rapists and fentanyl dealers!
An arrest in a Dinkytown shooting. Subtext — black kids involved. Democrats are still letting black kids walk around on our streets!
$2 billion for another LRT line! When will the woke spendthrifts stop the insanity and build another four lanes on every freeway?
Welfare spending still too high. Is there a worse abuse of the public purse than using tax money to pay for housing and food for poor people? Those black kids need to learn to house and feed themselves … just like Republican intellectuals did. I mean, I think Jesus gave a speech about exactly that.
Subsidies for green energy! As everyone knows windmills cause cancer. Why are we subsidizing a clear health hazard? Far better we expand tax deductions for 6000-pound, gas-powered “work vehicles.”
And finally, Socialist activism in the “uncommited” primary vote. Quoting a piece of data from the rarely-if-ever credible Alpha News we learn that hard core lefties in Minnesota’s metro areas are practically running amuck, and unless they get a tough lesson upside the head they’ll soon be protesting on the lawn of the Lafayette Club. Something must be done! Hopefully by a reinvigorated police force. No mention though of Bob Kroll.
Bottom line: The next eight months will be defined by neo-Reaganism from … Democrats, and visions of a Cormac McCarthy hellscape from Republicans.
The Lovely Mrs and I did our duty and voted in Tuesday’s primary. “Two for Joe,” as the kids might say. It was perfunctory and quiet in the Edina gym where we scanned our ballots … after inspecting them for threads of Chinese bamboo and tell tale signs of Italian satellite mischief.
A couple hours later, home and safe from rampant, hell-hole crime, out of control inflation and the toxic embers of this once great country of ours we noted the resounding defeats of Nikki Haley everywhere but Vermont. Then, the next morning to no one’s surprise, the former South Carolina governor called it quits … without endorsing You Know Who … yet.
Prior to this, whenever the topic of Haley came up I tried to make the point that while I’d never vote for her over any Democrat I can imagine, there was no doubt that a Nikki Haley presidency would be more or less Republican business as usual. Sane, experienced, corporate tax-cutting, regulation-gutting conservatives would occupy pretty much every cabinet level office and key spots in the federal bureaucracy. She would at least make a cri de coeur for supporting Ukraine. She would explain the financial and moral/reputational cost to the United States of appeasing Vladimir Putin. In other words, despondent liberals and the country would survive to fight another day.
The contrast to a deeply demented Trump 2.0 was and is stark.
But like a lot of people, I always regarded Haley as as craven as she was intensely ambitious. Following her career from a distance I couldn’t recall her ever taking a political risk in pursuit of a higher ethical standard. She was a parody of The Weathervane Politician. Everyone points to her “courageous” decision to … finally … take the Confederate flag down off the top of the goddam state capitol. But precious few point out that she only did that in the aftermath of a racist lunatic murdering nine people at a Bible study meeting in Charleston.
Now I grant you, yanking the Stars and Bars is more than Mitch McConnell or any Republican dared do after Sandy Hook. But still … good lord, what does it take to make a stand against … the Confederacy?
The pundit class I respect gives Haley credit for finally finding her voice in the past three months and at long, long last saying what is obvious to everyone outside the Trump cult. This is much the same way they credit hapless Mike Pence for doing one honorable thing, on January 6. It took Haley too damn long to get where she finally got, and she may yet spin another 180, but she finally did it and said it. Which is more than you can say for … well the list is hundreds of pages long.
One assumption is that she’s playing a long game, gambling that if Trump loses and takes the House and Senate down with him, she’ll be regarded in 2028 as the Prophet and the torch-bearer for the resurrection of a Reagan-Bush-style Republican party. A countervailing assumption is that Trumpism has so thoroughly captured and controlled the white, rural base Nikki Haley will be quickly forgotten as post-Trump the mob shifts towards, who knows, Tucker Carlson? Don Jr.? Josh Hawley? Jeanine Pirro?
The major irony in this, as I see it, is that I strongly suspect Nikki Haley, or any Republican capable of putting two coherent paragraphs of thought together AND courageous enough to say into a microphone that Donald Trump is exactly what we all see he is, namely, an incompetent vulgar fraud, would crush Joe Biden in November. There are that many people, women in particular, nigh on to desperate for anything new.
But the GOP is now so far gone with white rural grievance and delusional evangelicism that Haley or whoever is going to need a completely new party.
The collapse of this case is so total you’d be embarrassed for someone — looking at you Sean Hannity — if they weren’t so completely insulated from embarrassment and shame.
(BTW — 50 Dickens Points for Smirnov’s name. Can’t make it up. Have a double, Sean.)
There are dozen different ways to examine this story, but for some reason the face of a guy I used to work for kept popping up in my head. He ran a small media operation here in Minnesota and was constantly struggling to walk what is known as the “false equivalency” tight rope, a style of footwork that required him to regularly tut-tut “the extremes” of modern media, to be specific the FoxNews and MSNBCs/CNNs of the world.
As he tried to sell it to his staff of quasi-journalists, the two ends of the spectrum (as he saw the spectrum) were equally reckless and irresponsible. The proper (i.e. safer) course was right there square in the middle where you never developed or argued an opinion on anything that mattered, other than maybe how yummy the brioche was at some new restaurant/possible advertiser.
Having a few Jewish friends and some familarity with street level Yiddish, every time I saw this guy the word, “Putz!” flashed before my eyes. And I wonder what (if anything) he’s thinking today watching Fox, with its latest long-running act of reckless hysteria-mongering, faceplant on the sidewalk like a career drunk?
On a matter more specific to journalistic integrity, there’s the as-stark-as-you-can-get issue of honesty in the way the two “extremes” are currently handling this story.
As Media Matters, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Department of Justice,Slate and others have all reported — (none of whom are funded by a looney Asian religious cult or a company that just got done paying almost $800 million in damages for its last long-running carnival of lies and bullshit) — the “FBI informant”, Mr. Smirnov, arrested by the Trump-appointed special counsel, is an almost cartoonish joke. He’s so farcical any respectable journalist could check him out in an hour. No news organization with any respect for facts would have tolerated him as the foundation for so much coverage. Not for an hour, much less for years.
But such is the seal of the bubble around America’s MAGA conservatives today. Almost nothing intrudes on what they so desperately want to hear and believe. They offer the Epoch Times, the FoxNews/Hannitys/Jesee Watters/Lauta Ingrahams of the world their embittered credulity and those “sources” exploit it.
But despite the demise of any basis of fact with the arrest of Mr. Smirnov, The MAGA Credulous are not getting anything remotely like an apology or a correction from their most trusted purveyors of truth.
My apologies if you’ve already heard this:
From The Washington Post … “… no one on Fox News invested more heavily in the ‘Biden bribe’ story than Hannity. An analysis from Media Matters determined that he has covered the allegation in at least 85 segments since it first emerged in May 2023. On Thursday night, he had nothing to say about the new development. Instead, he began by focusing, once again, on [Atlanta DA Fani] Willis. Viewers who tuned in at 7 p.m. had, by 9:30, gotten an hour and 40 minutes of commercial-interspersed discussion of the hearing involving the Georgia official.”
Said Media Matters, ” … Hannity alone aired 85 segments promoting the claim, including 28 monologues. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump estimates that Fox News mentioned the claim about 2,600 times in the last 12 months.”
Two thousand six hundred mentions — including 43 on camera, primetime interviews with MAGA’s beknighted committee chairman, James Comer — about assertions, that Fox and Hannity knew were just assertions, but they nevertheless presented as “bombshell” facts. Assertions, (the official-sounding “1023s” Hannity referenced so often are in fact just that, a statement of as yet uninvestigated assertions), in no way, shape or form verified.
And to date this morning, three days post arrest and implosion, there has not been a peep of remorse or apology from anyone at FoxNews. Not that any of us in this “extreme” bubble are surprised, of course. Reckless assertions and the unapologetic peddling of … well, lies … is built into the Fox business model. We expect no more. And much less.
My point here is the contrast. The contrast a value-free “putz” and anyone on America’s new MAGA right refuses to make between the two allegedly equivalent “extremes”. The Fox/Epoch/Mark Levin/name your favorite MAGA mouthpiece and, the CNN and MSNBC “extreme.” For simplicity sake think of it as a Sean Hannity v. Rachel Maddow battle of “extremes.” (Lord, I’d love to watch a debate between those two. At The Sphere in Vegas. $500 a pop!)
Had either CNN or MSNBC engaged in anything as high-profile, bombastic, persistent and egregiously fallacious as what Hannity and FoxNews have done they’d be fired on the spot and faced with reputational ruin. At best they’d be a laughingstock.
But you and I know the Hannity engine — from the basement of his Palm Beach mansion – will plow on without the slightest wound of consequence.
Immunity from shame may be the biggest benefit of operating within that “extreme” bubble.
After the Special Counsel report gratuitously describing him as “an elderly man with a poor memory” the clear consensus is that Joe Biden has to come out of his protective shell, say “f*ck it”, (as he is wont to say) and let it all hang out. Just as with “crooked Hillary” and “her e-mails” back in 2016 the meme has settled in that he, Joe Biden, an honest operator with 50 years of government experience is a bigger risk than a 77 year-old failed casino operator campaigning as the fool he is proud to be.
Sunday’s Super Bowl may have been the single most-watched telecast … in history … and Biden passed on an interview with CBS. Not with a self-serving gasbag like Bill O’Reilly or a smirking frat boy like Jesse Watters or some other right-wing stooge, but with an intellectually honest network’s interviewer. Someone with a professional allegiance to facts and respectful decorum. That was a big mistake.
Especially … especially … when you factor in that the game’s enormous audience was likely fueled by an unprecedented inflow of women primarily interested in the whole Taylor Swift side show. With women voters showing a 22% preference for Biden over a guy a lot of them likely regard as the epitome of a shit boyfriend/worse husband; an undisciplined, vulgar blowhard facing 91 criminal counts and officially judged a “rapist” for his assault on a woman in a department store dressing room, Biden failing to immediately recall the name of the president of Egypt could hardly be deemed perilous to their view of who is the wiser choice.
So given the fact that barring some deus ex machina event that removes him from the nomination, Biden (i.e. his team of strategists) has to push him out for unscripted interviews. Not with MAGA fools like Watters, etc. But with people like, say, Jonathan Swan, now with The New York Times. Or Maggie Haberman of the Times. Chris Wallace at CNN. Jonathan Lemire of Politico. Hell, I see value in an hour-long chat with a bona fide conservative like Bill Kristol.
Let the public decide if his (lifelong) stutter or his occasionally lengthy reaches for a specific name or date is disqualifying early onset dementia or just an older guy whose head is full of names and dates. (Among the facts conveniently ignored amid the frenzy over Biden’s “gaffes” are all the times George W. Bush, 30 years younger, mangled names, dates and spewed out bizarre salads of incongruence.)
Neither of these guys is Bill Clinton or Barack Obama when it comes to slickness on the impromptu stage. But one is sane, sincere and qualified. The other is … well, we all know … . I don’t have to repeat myself.
I’m tempted to say that as the years accumulate I understand less and less. But as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’ve never understood all that much. That said, lately I’ve found myself building a list of stuff happening today that I simply do not get. And being committed to public service I’m offering it to you now.
1: Hands free driving. If you watch football you’ve no doubt seen the commercial of your standard issue, cookie cutter, commercial male “average guy” actor — forty-ish, eight-day growth of beard, outdoorsy attire — behind the wheel of his gleaming new Chevy truck (estimated retail cost $80,000). But that’s all he is … behind the wheel. Never mind he’s heading downhill off a mountain with a truckload of buddies pulling a trailer carrying four ATVs. (Boys gotta have toys.) He’s got his hands in his lap letting his shiny rig drive itself. Total weight of this set up? Six tons. I don’t get it. Is steering that exhausting? More to the point, how nervous are your buddies at this scene? Also, what’s State Farm’s payout when a deer jumps in front of all this and you pile yourself, your pals and all that gear into a rock face … because you weren’t steering 12,000 pounds (minimum) down a damn mountain road?
2: Intuit Turbo Tax (or H&R Block … ). Another heavily hyped-during-football “service.” The only reason millions of us pay out $80 for TurboTax software or $300 to a tax accountant is because the likes of Intuit have so heavily lobbied our congress critters to prevent the government/IRS from offering this same service (or a better one) for free. Don’t believe me? Watch this illuminating report from The New York Times.
Let me put this bluntly … we are chumps for allowing this to happen. The Biden administration did put money into the IRS to begin addressing this stupidity, but of course … oh, you already knew … House Speaker Mike Johnson and his MAGA puppetmasters are railing against it on the grounds that, yeah yeah, jack-booted IRS thugs are going to knock in your trailer door and confiscate your guns to settle back taxes. FFS!
3: Cussing. Speaking of speaking bluntly. Politico had a story last week of Biden, who, you know, is so addled he’s repeatedly telling people Obama is still president and that woke Democrats are going to change the name of Pennsylvania (oh sorry, that’s the other guy), cussing out Orange Jesus in private conversations. Echoing former Secretary of State and Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and countless others employed by Trump would said exssentially the same thing Biden reportedly called the failed casino operator/spiritual leader of modern Republicans a “sick fuck” and “a fucking asshole.” The context being, according to Politico, Trump’s constant indifference and cruelty to people far, far below him on the economic ladder.
Now personally, being an occasional potty mouth myself and a very big fan of The Dude, I found this to be pretty funny. Largely because it expresses so precisely and in such a succinct, common street level language way what at least 80-plus million voters are thinking … every day. Public figures generally try to avoid sounding like Joe Pesci in “Casino” when they’re out campaigning or handshaking moms at some pre-school opening. Spot on cussing is not, you know, “dignified” or “statesman-like.” But my guess has long been that wonky grey Democrats in partiucular would do well to adopt a vernacular more in tune with actual Americans. People find something relaxing and something akin to cathartic and humanizing about a leader who looks on vulgar cancer like Trump and says, “Jesus, what a sick fuck!”
4: Awards season. I like movies. I like music. But I am truly way too old and have seen too much to get excited about Oscars and Grammys and CMAs and BAFTAs and Guilds-this and that. These “contests” have almost nothing to do with objectively evaluating artistic merit … as though anything could or should. They’re virtue-signaling, trend-obsessed popularity contests heavily … and I do mean heavily … tilted in favor of who sold the most tickets and who marketed themselves to the right people in the right ways. Maybe something like the London Film Critics comes close to applauding artistic merit. But the Oscars and Grammys and the rest are first and foremost about putting on a show! About selling ads on a TV celebrity-choked extravaganza with a giant audience. Put another way, nobody wants to watch a collection of paunchy yobs you’ve never heard of natter on about some dorky film no cool kid has seen on Tik Tok.
An independent analysis released this week by the Minnesota Department of Commerce found that up to 151,000 Minnesotans could be helped if the Minnesota Legislature gives health insurance consumers of any income level the option of buying into the public MinnesotaCare health insurance plan. MinnesotaCare has been operated by the Minnesota Department of Human Services since 1992 but has only been available to about 83,000 people who make too much to qualify for Medical Assistance (Minnesota’s Medicaid program) but earn less than 200% of the federal poverty level.
The Commonwealth Fund explains what little is known about the MinnesotaCare buy-in option proposal that will be considered by the Minnesota Legislature in the coming months:
Minnesota is also considering a buy-in option but is focusing on expanding MinnesotaCare, the state’s Basic Health Program. The Basic Health Program was created by the Affordable Care Act and allows states to leverage federal financial assistance typically used to subsidize private insurance purchased through health insurance marketplaces to instead fund a state coverage program for individuals with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. MinnesotaCare and the state’s Medicaid program are run by the same agency; MinnesotaCare provides more generous benefits than marketplace coverage at lower premiums. The state’s recently enacted law allows the state to study and pursue different public option models in addition to the MinnesotaCare buy-in.
As the Legislature prepares to debate this issue in coming months, lobbyists for insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals are howling, which confirms to me that the Legislature is on the right track.
Hospital and doctor lobbyists are predictably complaining that they will get reimbursed less by MinnesotaCare for medical services. Health insurance lobbyists are predictably complaining that they will earn less by being forced to compete with MinnesotaCare.
I don’t doubt that what the lobbyists are saying is true. But their complaints should lead Minnesota legislators to ask themselves this key question: How can we possibly make insurance more affordable for struggling consumers if doctors, hospitals and insurance companies don’t get paid less?
We can’t.
If medical industry lobbyists lose on this, ordinary Minnesota insurance customers will win. It’s pretty clear that hospital executives, specialty doctors, and health insurance company executives are in a better position to make do with a little bit less money than 300,000 uninsured Minnesotans who are just one injury or illness away from medical bankruptcy or going without life-saving care.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, health insurance consumers are winning in Washington and Colorado, states that have already gone down this public option road:
“Washington and Colorado, which have operational programs, are seeing incremental progress. In Washington, public option plan rates will increase in 2024, but at a slower pace than non-public option plans (+5% compared to +8%). Similar to this past year, in 2024 they are expected to be the lowest-cost silver plan in most counties (to which premium tax credits are pegged). Public option plans will be offered in 37 of 39 counties, up from 34 in 2023.
Despite opposition from the insurer and provider communities, the Colorado Option program has generated savings for consumers while offering more comprehensive benefits and increasing transparency around health insurance premiums and provider reimbursement rates. Requested increases for Colorado Option plans were more than 30 percent lower than non-Option plans and, following the state’s subsequent rate review and hearing processes, the state announced that 25 individual market and 24 small-group market Colorado Option plans will meet the state’s target of a 10 percent reduction in premiums compared to 2021 levels. The federal government also recently affirmed that the program is expected to generate savings from reductions in plan premiums.”
That’s very encouraging progress. It’s not a cure-all, but it is progress.
Do Minnesota legislators care more about the financial bottom line of insurance companies, hospital companies, and specialty doctors than they do about the pocketbooks of Minnesotans struggling to afford health protections? In the coming weeks, we will find out.
I don’t think it’s my imagination. I really don’t. Not when every day it gets tougher and tougher to believe today’s Republicans have an ounce of respect for the intelligence of the average rube. Their average rubes. Not when in the course of a single week we had …
1: A dozen Colorado Republican congressional candidates — including “Beetlejuice” groper Lauren Boebert — being asked how many of them had ever been arrested? And half of them proudly shot up their hands … to the delight of the crowd that commenced hootin’ and hollerin’ in delight … at the sight of, you know, such bona fide maverick Wild West independence … or something.
2: Minnesota’s 8th District Congressman “Coach Pete” Stauber, a guy sent to D.C. solely because he can talk hockey to the marginally literate of the far north, boasting to his fellow puckheads about how he “advocated” for the billion dollars of federal money to rebuild the giant Blatnik Bridge to Superior. When in fact he … oh damn, you already knew the punchline … he caved to MAGA group think and voted against all those high-paying construction jobs.
And 3: And now, a whole host of once-upon-a-time Republican presidential candidates, (pseudo-intellectual/inflamed hemorrhoid Vivek Ramaswamy), Fox, NewsMax and OAN anchors and pundits plus … plus! … the guy who did so well selling the story of Hillary Clinton eating babies in the basement of a pizza parlor … that has no basement … freaking out about Taylor Swift rigging the the Super Bowl and the next election.
I freely concede I live in a bubble where this kind of stuff strikes me as … mmmm, what’s the word I’m looking for? … well how about “stupid” until I can come up with something better? (“Batshit” has been worn thin describing this crowd.)
But the Swift thing, besides so vividly demonstrating how afraid the MAGA-nauts are of one cute, fabulously wealthy young lady, is interesting because her influence over her fans, most of them young to young-ish women is both extraordinary and immense. Any of us who have followed pop culture for decades have to admit we’ve seen nothing — nothing — like her Eras tour or the devotion her fans have to her.
The still on-going tour has been a campaign across the globe that made her a billionaire because in large measure she was selling joyful community via high professional standards. (Ok, and high prices, too.) Point being, all her songs about relationships gone wrong withstanding, her affect is of someone who respects her audience and holds herself to standards respectful of truth (sometimes hard truths) and decency towards others. Fans may shriek and sing along and wave their flashing Swiftie bracelets without giving a lot of explicit thought to such virtues, but they feel it … and in Swift’s case, based on what we and the MAGA crowd can see, she lives the virtues she sings about.
Including the virtue of not being a sap for the bastards of the world.
Therein lies the fear she strikes into the (mmmmm, gotta come up with a new word) cynical thought leaders as they contemplate what she might be able to do with a political endorsement later this year.
Being a (very) shrewd businesswoman, Swift no doubt calculates the impact of “coming out” for say Joe Biden might have on her remarkably unblemished celebrity. Sure, there’s a percentage of her fan base that would react negatively. Certainly to an overt endorsement. But what percentage would you put that at? 10%? 15%?
She has 534 million social media followers. She can lose 50 million and still be a goddam force of political nature … if she wants to be.
The sense she’s giving at the moment is less about doing something as heavy-handed as popping up on the Jumbotron at the Super Bowl and telling all Swifties everywhere to “Vote for Joe”. It’s more — and this is savvy and wise in so many ways — simply making the persistent case to, “Vote and vote for the right thing. Vote for racial justice, gender justice, honesty and intelligence and respect for everyone, including yourself.” Presented that way, the average Swiftie — a lot of them smart young ladies — has very little difficulty discerning who of the two strange old geezers running for The Big Job embodies those virtues best.
Ms. Swift is an unprecedented phenomonon, in no small part due to her masterful manipulation of social media. She gets her message across. Instantly. And by virtue of her … well, professional virtues … her message has startling credibility with her millions of fans, (unlike, say Ted Nugent or Kid Rock), a large portion of whom may never have voted before and wouldn’t now other than she — their gold standard for fun and decency — says it’s important.
And for that reason Sean Hannity and the usual collection of incel folk heroes are rightfully terrified of her.
Politically speaking, Trump has a lot going for him. Very early in the primary season, he is the runaway front-runner for the GOP nomination. Wrapping this up early will save him a lot of money and allow him to aim resources at Biden, instead of at his fellow Republicans.
He is battle-hardened. He has already endured dozens of serious scandals that would have ended most candidacies – two impeachments, 91 criminal indictments, a videotaped incitement of insurrection, the “grab em by the” lady bits tape, dozens of embarrassing gaffes, a porn star hush money conviction, a sexual abuse conviction, popular vote losses in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, etc.
Despite all of those calamities and more, Trump somehow still has around 35-ish percent of voters consistently enthusiastic about him and another 15-ish percent of voters who currently seem willing to hold their noses and vote for him.
After all of that, it’s difficult to imagine what could cause Trump to lose much electoral ground in the next 10 months.
Moreover, Trump has the good fortune to be running against a politically wounded, gaffe-prone octogenarian who has had to endure post-pandemic economic headwinds throughout his term.
Add to that the very real possibility of a third-party candidate siphoning off anti-Trump voters from Biden, and it can’t be denied that Trump has one hell of a strong political hand. At this stage, he should be considered the favorite to win in November.
But if I were on Team Trump, these are five challenges that especially would concern me.
Surviving a Conviction(s)
A major conviction, especially on the insurrection-related charges, could weaken Trump with a block of undecided voters. The Washington Post recently reported:
“…election-day surveys showed 31 percent of Iowa caucus-goers and 42 percent of New Hampshire GOP primary voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime.
Those are big scary numbers, but I would add two caveats to them: First, with an army of Trump lawyers trying everything possible to delay proceedings, it’s going to be very challenging for prosecutors to get a conviction and subsequent appeals completed before the November election.
Second, I’d be surprised if even one-quarter of those people who today say a conviction would be a deal breaker for them would actually abandon Trump. After hearing Trump and his supporters endlessly claim how the conviction(s) was the product of a politically motivated witch hunt, I think many cynics will agree with that cynical argument.
Still, if even a relatively small fraction of that large block of conviction-sensitive voters abandon Trump because of a conviction(s), that could be decisive in a close general election.
Moving Beyond “The Base”
Also, Trump is currently weak with swing voters. While much is made of how loyal Trump’s base is, once the primaries are over the MAGA base is not anywhere near large enough to give Trump a general election win. He needs to win over the non-affiliated independents, soft Democrats, and soft Republicans who will decide this election. Like Biden, Trump has a lot of work to do to win over those voters.
Trump should be very worried about his poor showing with independents so far. MSNBC’s data geek Steve Kornacki noted a remarkable 71-point difference between how New Hampshire independents voted for Haley by 21 points compared to how the state’s Republicans voted for Trump by 50 points.
Fox News exit polls in New Hampshire found that 35% of GOP vote primary participants, many of whom were independents, indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump won the Republican nomination that they wouldn’t vote for him.
Again, if even a fraction of that holds in November, that could seriously hurt Trump’s chances in battleground states.
The Economy, Stupid
Then there is the economy. The state of the economy has traditionally been very important to swing voters – independents, soft Republicans, and soft Democrats. Up until now, that has helped Trump pull ahead in the polls.
But as pandemic-related economic challenges have eased, the economy under Biden has very quietly gotten robust – historically low unemployment, consistent economic growth, much lower inflation than earlier, interest rate decreases likely on the way, a historic boom for the stock market/retirement funds, wage growth outpacing inflation, and, at long last, increasing consumer confidence. The United States under Biden has the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery in the world.
Even if that good economic news only neutralizes the enormous past advantage Trump enjoyed on this issue, rather than turning it into a strength for Biden, that could help Biden win over persuadable swing voters.
Doh! Roe!
Trump also continues to face tricky political winds related to abortion rights. Surveys show that two-thirds of Americans think the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that kept abortion legal and safe was a mistake. Meanwhile, Trump is out there telling anyone who will listen that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade.” That’s music to Democrats’ ears.
The 2022 elections showed how much Republicans’ post-Dobbs abortion bans have hurt Republicans, particularly in suburban battlegrounds where battleground state elections are often decided.
Now congressional Republicans are promising a national abortion ban. That just adds fuel to this fire.
That would also worry me a lot if I was a Trump supporter.
Trump Being Trump
Getting voted out of the White House and kicked off Twitter has made Trump’s outrageous behavior a bit less visible than it was when he had the presidential bully pulpit. To the extent that Trump has been visible, a lot of the news coverage has been focused on how resilient he remains with the relatively narrow band of Americans who make up his political base. That success appealing to Republicans has made Trump look, up until now, relatively strong and normal.
But in a general election campaign, Trump’s steady stream of outrageous comments and actions will once again be more visible. Trump can’t keep himself from sounding childish, bigoted, incoherent, unstable, and dictatorial. That persona led Trump to lose the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.
Highly visible “Trump being Trump” news coverage is great for Trump when the task at hand is appealing to the Republican base. But a constant stream of Trump outrageousness doesn’t always help him with more moderate swing voters. Moreover, his undisciplined stream-of-conscious blathering keeps him from repeating the most persuasive anti-Biden messages and pro-Republican messages.
Again, Trump is far from politically weak. He is rightfully favored to win in November. But if I were a Trump operative, these are five things that would certainly keep me up at night.
In 2023, DFLers in the Minnesota Legislature passed a staggering amount of significant policies to help parents, children, students, women, people of color, seniors, taxpayers, voters, and workers. In 2024, it’s time for Republicans to show what they’ve got. Up until now, they haven’t had much of a policy agenda, other than opposing all of the aforementioned DFL improvements and trying to cut taxes for the wealthiest seniors.
But buckle up, because Minnesota Republicans have a hot new culture war issue to promote. State flag preservation, baby!
Minnesota Republicans are promising to fight like hell to preserve the current Minnesota state flag. You know, the one with the jumbled seal that looks like several other state flags. The one that is impossible to discern at a distance. The one that has long been seen by indigenous people as celebrating their subjugation and genocide. Republicans love that sucker!
The University of Minnesota’s Bill Lendeke explains the troubling origin story of the current flag, which features a picture of a white pioneer plowing a field with a rifle next to him while a Native American rides away with the sun setting:
The (state flag) designer’s wife, Mary Eastman, even penned a short poem to explain what was on the seal:
Give way, give way, young warrior, Thou and thy steed give way; Rest not, though lingers on the hills The red sun’s parting ray. The rock bluff and prairie land The white man claims them now
Eastman’s rhyme has the benefit of honestly reflecting the dominant feelings of white Minnesotans at the time, most of whom wanted to eradicate Native Americans from their homeland. As such, the seal and flag represent sentiments that led directly to the genocide of Dakota people, and is one that Minnesotans should not celebrate in any way.
Despite this dark history, Republicans seem to see themselves as fighting to preserve a righteous flag, not unlike the brave soldiers at Iwa Jima in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo.
The state Republican Party even created a Save The Flag website to hock sweet t-shirts suitable for MAGA rallies.
Needless to say, Republicans look nearly as ugly in this fight as when they fight to preserve statues celebrating white supremacists such as Nathan Bedford Forest, Robert E. Lee, and John C. Calhoun.
To be clear, no flag redesign was ever going to be universally loved. When it comes to matters of design, everyone has different tastes and biases. And plenty of folks who preferred one of the other more than 2,600 designs considered by the State Emblems Redesign Commission are understandably still feeling tender.
But most of us who didn’t get our top choices respect the process and don’t throw a hissy fit over it
Given that we’re never going to have a unanimous opinion on flags, we have to look at the big picture: The current flag celebrates race-based dominance, and that’s just not ok. Beyond that, flag design experts have long said that Minnesota has one of the very worst state flag designs.
The Commission’s recommended design fixes both of those problems.
Ted Kaye, who wrote the 2006 guidebook “‘Good’ Flag, ‘Bad’ Flag,” gave Minnesota’s new design an “A” and called it excellent.
“You can’t make everybody happy, but Minnesota will come to be extremely proud of this flag,” said Kaye, secretary of the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). “The state has seized a wonderful opportunity to improve its symbolism.”
He said he believes it would rank in the top 10 among the states and provinces of the United States and Canada were NAVA members and the public to be surveyed.
I hope the Minnesota Legislature doesn’t waste much time on the state flag debate. It’s clear what it should do.
The Commission went through a painstakingly thorough and thoughtful process, so the Legislature should quickly, decisively, and proudly approve the recommended new state flag. It is a huge improvement over the ugly — in so many ways — flag that has been poorly representing Minnesota for far too long.
I’ve driven gas-electric hybrids for 20 years, but I wanted to step up my environmental game. I thought I’d share the basics of that journey towards increasing electrification, since others may be pondering the same.
My first choice for a new vehicle was a Toyota Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) that uses 100% electric over the first 40-ish miles and then automatically switches over to the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine (ICE) after that. Since the U.S. Department of Transportation finds that 95% of trips are less than 35 miles, that seemed like a sensible bridge vehicle to use while the charging infrastructure and EV battery technology improved.
However, after spending two years on a Prime waitlist, I got impatient and somewhat impulsively bought a 100% electric Chevy Bolt EV instead.
The Bolt’s battery pack has an EPA-rated 247-mile range. Though the range is much lower in the winter, even winter ranges easily cover the way I use my car over 99% of the time. It’s very feasilble to go further by refueling at the fast-growing number of public charging stations, but for the other 1% of trips we also do have an ICE-powered vehicle in reserve.
For what it’s worth these are some of my initial impressions of EV life.
While the Bolt is much cheaper (MSRP ~$30,000 with generous tax credits available to many) and much more utilitarian than the Prius and other high-end EVs, it’s easily the smoothest, quietest, and most technologically sophisticated vehicle I’ve driven. I’m not a car enthusiast, but I look forward to driving my Bolt. While many people I know seem to assume EVs will have worse driving performance than ICE vehicles, I’m finding the opposite to be true.
It’s also cool to never again have to do things like add gas, oil, transmission fluid, sparkplugs, fuel filters, and coolant, or make other repairs associated with ICE cars powered by thousands of recurrent explosions. Brakes also last much longer because one-pedal driving has the engine doing much more of the braking, which also regenerates free electricity to slightly extend the range.
I’m not one of those guys who meticulously calculates the cost of electric charging versus the cost of putting gas in the car, but the federal government calculates that the average 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV user will save about $5,000 in fuel costs over 5 years. I tend to keep cars a lot longer than 5 years (current car is 14 years old), so that benefit will grow over time.
Environmentally, it’s not perfect, because Minnesota has a lot of coal fueling its grid. But that is changing rapidly as Minnesota moves to sunset coal use by 2035. Still, the Bolt has a 10 out 10 EPA rating for greenhouse gas emissions and is rated at 115 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe), which measures the efficiency of vehicles that run on non-liquid fuels.
Charging is truly easy. The vehicle comes with a Level 1 charger that you can plug into a regular three-prong household outlet. A Level 1 charger is the slowest kind of charger, delivering about 4 miles of additional range per hour of charging, or about 96 hours per day. That’s mighty pokey compared to other types of chargers, but a lot of people who don’t drive far or often could get by with it. In my dotage, I probably could.
For a couple grand, minus a nice rebate from my utility company, I put in a Level 2 charger in my garage. The Level 2 delivers about 25 miles of range per hour. With that, I can easily fully charge a nearly empty battery overnight with cheaper off-peak power rates. So, I start every day with a “full tank,” though “full” is a very complex concept among the legions of EV techno-geeks.
When making longer trips, I’ll use Level 3 chargers at public stations, which deliver about 200 miles of range per hour of charging. That leads to a longer re-fueling stop than I made with my ICE vehicle at gas station. But by the time I take care of my biological needs, appetite, and smartphone addiction, I don’t think that an hour will be so onerous. And again, for the vast majority of my trips I’m only charging in my garage, where there is no waiting for refueling.
Beyond installing a charger, life with an EV truly isn’t that much different than life with an ICE vehicle.
Except for all of the questions I am fielding. That’s definitely different.
You don’t need to become an EV expert to own and operate an EV. EV enthusiasts inhabiting online EV discussion sites can make EV operation seem like quantum physics, but the truth is that you can ignore that level of complexity if you’re not interested in deep analysis of all things EV. And I most assuredly am not interested.
However, you do have to become somewhat of an expert to endure the endless questioning you get from the genuinely curious to the shockingly hostile. “Aren’t you worried that thing will start your house on fire?” “Don’t you know EVs are actually worse for the environment?” “Why get it when gas prices are low now?” “Why not wait for the next generation of improved technology?” “Aren’t you worried about getting stranded?” “Oh, so you’re better than us now?” “How can you afford that?” “Oh now I suppose you’re going to be That Guy who never shuts up about your precious EV?” “Doesn’t range decrease in cold weather?” “What did you pay for X, Y, and Z (EV-specific things)?” “Aren’t EVs going to overwhelm the grid we depend on for our homes?”
That constant barrage of questioning definitely does get tiresome. But so far, that’s the only part of EV life that I dislike.
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