Pun Salad

Two days after Twitter permanently suspended an account belonging to Jesse Kelly, a senior contributor to The Federalist and conservative talk radio host, the social media publisher reinstated his account without any explanation.

CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd said during a Monday morning CNN discussion about climate change that eating hamburgers will kill Americans.

"Tens of millions of Americans will wake up today and eat hamburgers for lunch; that’s going to kill them," said Mudd, the former director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center.

Some of my conservative friends are mystified by the apparently enduring appeal of Robert Francis O’Rourke, a.k.a. “Beto,” the faux-Hispanic progressive from El Paso who failed to unseat conservative stalwart Senator Ted Cruz in spite of a flood of money and a tsunami of media adulation. “He lost, didn’t he?” they ask, perplexed.

There is an answer to this riddle: snobbery.

The Democratic party is the political home of snobbery, a word and a concept often misunderstood. Snobbery does not refer to the cultivated preferences of those refined persons who order the ’82 Bordeaux because it is their mothers’ milk or who have an iTunes library full of Liszt because the sound of Cardi B fills them with discomfort and anxiety. The genuinely refined — particularly those cocooned by wealth — usually are not much interested in the enthusiasms or tastes of others, whereas the snob is obsessed with his own discernment relative to the low and vulgar tastes of those around him. The snob is the kind of man who sees a pair of Wranglers and sneers at the life he imagines they represent: $42,000 a year, tract house, SUV, work boots, Garth Brooks, Donald Trump. The snob isn’t a man of exacting tastes, but a poseur: The word derives from an older English word for a shoemaker’s apprentice and is intended to convey contempt for vulgar social climbers who aped the manners and tastes of the upper classes.

Sociopaths have haunted fiction since fiction began, and no wonder. Sociopathy is civilization's greatest challenge. Richard III and Iago; Raskolnikov, Kurtz, Willie Stark, and Humbert Humbert; J.R. Ewing, Frank Underwood, and even HAL 9000. How do we understand the narcissist, the demagogue, the liar, the manipulator, the person without scruples or conscience? The creative imagination can probe dark places that psychology and medicine can't reach. So I am not being cute when I say that Star Trek is a source of insight into the universe of President Donald Trump.

A new Washington Post “analysis” of domestic terrorism argues that attacks from white supremacists and other “far-right attackers” have been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency, and “surged since President [Donald] Trump took office.” It’s a familiar storyline meant to assure liberals that, yes, Trump-motivated right-wing terrorists are running wild. There are, however, a few problems with this proposition.

For one thing, even if we accept the numbers the Post offers, the use of the word “surge” — meaning a sudden, powerful forward or upward movement — strains credibility. There’s no evidence of a “surge” either in historical context or as a matter of ideological preference. But even if we’re okay with replacing “uptick” with the word “surge,” a cynic might note that the Post’s reporters seem to filibuster their own findings to push preconceived partisan notions about the state of the nation.

1. Is this actually going to materially hurt me over any significant period of time? If not, maybe I shouldn’t be too upset.
2. Is there some hidden upside I haven’t noticed yet? How could this actually end up being beneficial?

Cornell University will feature newly-elected New York US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “campaign shoes” in an art exhibit beginning next week.

Also featured will be US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s judicial collars and an outfit worn by former US Attorney General Janet Reno.