The Trump Administration's “War on Government Statistics”

The Trump Administration is flooding the airwaves with such a constant flow of “information” that it would not be surprising that a desperate reader did not remember the March Bloomberg headline: “The War on Government Statistics Has Quietly Begun” [3/11]. Bloomberg is not in the least a left-leaning media source. Nor does it publish conspiracy theories. Yet the article worries out loud:

In a time of great economic uncertainty, President Donald Trump’s administration quietly took a step last week that could create even more: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.

It leaves the reader with a worrisome observation:

Reduced transparency in official statistics is perhaps the most troubling aspect of disbanding FESAC. Cutting off agency staff from external advisers creates an environment where political interference could occur much more easily — and go undetected.

The committee also advised the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other U.S. Commerce Department statistical bureaus.

There were many more reports on the subject with revealing headlines such as the following:

• “‘Bad sign’: Purge of data experts raises alarms over economic reports” [3/21/25](Poltico)

• “Experts worry about degradation of economic data after advisory committees disbanded” [3/13/25](Marketplace)

The latter article included the tidbit that the Bureau of Economic Analysis Advisory Committee had also been disbanded.

The Week published a piece just this week: “Economists fear US inflation data less reliable” [6/5]. 'In an email this week to economists who had raised concerns about "quirks" in the April CPI report,' we learn, the BLS revealed that, on top of disbanding the expert advisory/oversight groups, 'it had indefinitely "reduced" its data collection "due to a staffing shortage in certain CPI cities"' (a fine excuse).

The first CPI inflation reports, to date, from the Trump Administration covered the recent December and January months under the Biden Administration. The numbers were surprisingly high. The inflation rates for February through April — months under the Trump Administration — either came in below expectations (February) or surprisingly below expectations (March, April). Following the April report, expert economists contacted the BLS about euphemistically described quirks — inconsistencies — in the data. The reply they received was that this was going to be the new methodology for some indefinite period of time.

The Federal Reserve sampling system, called “the Beige Book,” — protected from the Trump Administration control for the moment — showed, instead, notable increases in selling price of the range of products surveyed. “The pace of selling price increases eased somewhat [in May] butremained moderate.... While some firms said they were absorbingtariff-induced cost increases, most reported that they were passingthrough some or all of such cost increases to their customers byraising prices.” Specific numbers are not given but the picture seems to indicate inflation at a moderately increasing rate.

The Administration's labor statistics have also been surprisingly resilient. In spite of major government layoffs and rapidly rising private sector layoffs the recent BLS jobs report showed a surprising increase of 177,000 in new hires. Surprisingly, the unemployment rate remained 4.2%.

Over the same period, the highly respected ADP [Automatic Data Processing, Inc.] jobs data saw an altogether different trend in its numbers. According to CNBC [6/4]:

Private sector job creation slowed to a near standstill in May, hitting its lowest level in more than two years as signs emerged of a weakening labor market, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.

Payrolls increased just 37,000 for the month, below the downwardly revised 60,000 in April and the Dow Jones forecast for 110,000. It was the lowest monthly job total from the ADP count since March 2023.

Even Fox Business finds itself having to report private aggregator data:

Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday released a report that said there were 93,816 job cuts announced by U.S. employers in May. That amounts to an increase of 47% from 63,816 announced last May, while last month's figure was down 12% from 105,441 cuts in April.

That brings the total number of job cuts announced this year to 696,309 — an increase of 80% from the 385,859 jobs cut in the first five months of 2024. This year's total is just 65,049 job cuts away from matching the 2024 annual total.

It seems that the most highly respected private data aggregators show a labor market already plunging, on the brink of free fall. Government numbers, on the other hand, show a surprisingly (even incredibly) healthy labor market. Government numbers show the inflation rate going down. The Fed shows prices going up and retailers actively passing along tariff-induced price increases to their customers.

Meanwhile, Fox (non-business) “News” is continuously interviewing Trump Administration officials from the White House lawn with such headlines as “Every Measure of Inflation is lower than its been in over 4 years, Kevin Hassett says,” [6/6] in which Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, informs viewers that:

Tariff Doomers have egg on their face.

This is exactly what the president said... What about the economists? Like, they're so bitter there's no inflation. I mean, they can't understand why all their soothsayers were wrong about this,... we've had big positive surprises in jobs every month since President Trump's been in here. And so what that means is that we've created 500,000 more jobs now in just a few months.... We did this while we cut 50,000 federal government worker

All are singing off the same song-sheet. Gloating, actually. Government numbers verify that genius Trump was right all along.

Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:

• Harvard and Columbia: What Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Know. June 2, 2025. "beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, they discovered that not all of the Progressive activists that had supposedly been swept away had actually disappeared."
• Shelving the books in a dying democracy. March 24, 2025. "I only now begin to shelve books, in fits and starts, with the scenes I am seeing replaying over and over as I do."
• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• Pierce Butler, Fanny Kemble, et al.  July 22, 2020.  ‘“An attempt of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to make a way around the original Fugitive Slave Law, of 1793, by finding a private agent guilty of kidnapping for having remanded a slave from Pennsylvania to Maryland was forcefully overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in Prigg v. United States (1842).”’
• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

 

Harvard and Columbia: What Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Know.

The Trump Administration is aiming financial hammer blows at Columbia and Harvard Universities. There are a number of theories as to why. I would like to add my own.

In the case of Columbia, the government cited, among other matters, “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” This referred to demonstrations against what student demonstrators describe as Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip. While the atmosphere created by the demonstrations is sure to have intimidated some Jewish students at Columbia, the Administration's purpose in this is far more to capture the U.S. Jewish vote away from its traditional choice, the Democrats, in future elections.

Among the changes the Administration requires are to '“complete disciplinary proceedings” for some student protesters, formalize a definition for antisemitism, reform its admissions process and place its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under “academic receivership”.'¹ The definition of “antisemitism” will surely need to satisfy the Administration and demonstrating against Israeli actions or organizing boycotts, etc., will surely meet the definition. Columbia will be required to publicly sign onto the new definition as its own.

In the longer view, after this fashion Antisemitism steadily becomes more associated with Progressivism than its long-traditional, and richly deserved, association with Nationalism and other forms of Far-Right politics. Demanding an official redefinition of Antisemitism that suits the Far-Right locks in the effect. Marching with torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” are nowhere in the conversation much less the redefinition.

In the case of Harvard, the ploy to capture the Jewish vote away from the Democratic Party was repeated and much more. The initial financial attack was followed by a letter of April 11, 2025, demanding that the university replace all of its management practices with a regimen provided to it by the Administration. All racial and gender diversity programs were to be ended forthwith and to be replaced by “Viewpoint Diversity Programs”. The university was to “report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department” the details of its students' personal lives.

Viewpoint Diversity Programs would assuredly refer to Harvard firing progressive professors and staff and replacing them with others from the MAGA Far-Right until a “balance” was achieved. The personnel office would no longer be permitted expressly to encourage female applicants or applicants of color. Attempts to do so are already being reported to the government for severe “corrective action”.

The original Progressive Era began around 1890 with movements to organize labor into unions and overcome legislative roadblocks, constructed by the new and growing wealth elite, through ballot referenda. Some ten years later, socially conscious journalism — known as “Muckraking” — allowed citizens to look behind the curtain and see how market practices threatened their lives and livelihoods.

It is no coincidence that present-day MAGA Republican state legislatures have been attacking those same ballot referenda, attempting to establish prerequisites impossible to fulfill. Nor that Republicans have long opposed and legislated impediments to unionization of labor. Nor that the far-right has spent recent years building a national media network, dedicated to “alternative truth,” and the Trump Administration has used the executive branch powers to ferociously attack mainstream media.

The Progressive Era accomplished the initial legislation upon which the country has long depended for its health and welfare and largely came to an end around 1920 when highly conservative Republican presidents Warren Harding (1921-3), Calvin Coolidge (1923-9) and Herbert Hoover (1929-33), signaled a reaction to President Woodrow Wilson's vigorous (1913-21) Wilsonian Progressivism, and a hard right turn in the nation's politics. Contemporary Progressives have unwisely rejected Wilson — an absolutely fundamental building block of the movement — for not pushing racial equality issues as part of his program in the early 20^th century. The Ultra-Wealthy have despised him during his presidency and since for his success in regulating business for the benefit of the common American citizen — in particular, his passage of the income tax to replace tariffs.

With the end of Wilson, business interests ruled the day once again. At Columbia and Harvard, there had not been a Progressive phase. Business ruled there all along via trusts and endowments.

It might be asked: “Why then is Trump intent to conquer those universities, in particular?” As always, the answers fall along two lines. Donald Trump is not an intellectual in the least. Not even a reader of books. He is a businessman made wealthy — made president — by realizing the importance of brand recognition and media coverage above business savvy. His reason for attacking Harvard and Columbia — his reason for doing anything — is to destroy any threat to his gaining wealth and power and to wreck revenge on those who have made him look bad, even criminal.

Donald Trump knows no more about Wilsonian Progressivism than he does about the pre-income-tax President William McKinley's (1897-1901) tariff policy, that he has taken to lauding, or its overall effects. That is the bailiwick of Stephen Miller, Russell Vought and the rest of the Heritage Foundation. Trump picks up whatever bits and pieces stick from his conversations with them. What sticks is what promises to enhance his wealth and power.

What drives Miller, Vought and company — which have spent decades now doing their homework and analysis — is the knowledge that for all the return of the rule of the Ultra-Wealthy and their Republican servants seemed to put an end to Progressivism it proved to be an illusion. When their greed managed to bring the country to the edge of ruin, beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, they discovered that not all of the Progressive activists that had supposedly been swept away had actually disappeared. A dedicated contingent had carved out niches as professors at Harvard and Columbia Universities. Before Franklin Roosevelt had even become president, their students were advising him as governor of New York. They made up most of Roosevelt's famous “Brain Trust”: the architects of the New Deal.

Felix Frankfurter, the most prominent professor, had already been a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (1920) and taught his Harvard students the lessons of the diaspora of the original Progressives following the Wilson Administration. His student Dean Acheson became a Under Secretary of the Treasury. Another of his students, James Landis, served on the Federal Trade Commission, created under Wilson, and participated in the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934. His students Ben Cohen and Thomas Corcoran were the master draftsmen of legislation of the time such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, in 1938, and appeared together on the cover of Time magazine. The list goes to dozens of names — across multiple class-years of Harvard and Columbia graduates.

Miller, Vought and company are fully aware of how the Ultra-Wealthy seemed to have ended Progressivism and recaptured the levers of American power for all time — very much their own present plan — only to be thwarted by a few dozens of pinhead intellectuals from Harvard and Columbia Universities. They have no intention of making the same mistake twice. They are also aware that Trump lives to display unmatched power. They know that such a person is easily manipulated to execute their plans.

1“Columbia University signals it will comply with Trump administration's demands” NBC News, March 19, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbia-university-signals-will-comply-trump-administrations-demands-rcna197110

Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:

• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
• Blank Verse Now and Then.  January 1, 2019.  “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.” 
• The Elegy and the Internet.  July 1, 2005.  ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’

• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

 

Click-Bait from Tudor Times to the Present.

The publishing industry experienced revolutionary growth in the final decades of the sixteenth century. Techno-social revolutions moved much more slowly, then, but the movable-type printing press was changing that as well. Gutenberg's press was rapidly felt as a cultural earthquake in Germany. The publishing revolution that followed, in two waves, some 50 and 100 years later, was the subsequent tsunami that washed over all of Europe.

The earthquake was followed by centuries of aftershocks. The history is surprisingly little known. We do not have time to supply it here in full.

Suffice it to say that the revolution created many of the Western World's greatest works of fiction, vast numbers of topical pamphlets and broadsides, and even more vast numbers of advertising fliers. The entrepreneurs that drove that explosion of printed material were also the tech bros of their time. They rapidly improved their machinery, their product packaging, their distribution and their advertising.

What didn't improve, however, was the product itself — the content. Ironically, it did improve in that ever more of the new publications were printed in the vulgar language of the given country. But the educated portion of the European population continued to write their works in Latin and less often in Greek. In fact, the first wave was brief and smaller, of publishing new and old works in the classical languages. Classical Greek works actually became generally available for the first time.

The second wave brought fiction in the vulgar tongues and rapidly reached a level that gave us the likes of Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes and the wide range of Italian writers from whom they stole/borrowed. Many of those Italian writers flourished before Gutenberg's press. Their books were copied by hand in monasteries and urban workshops. Copies were rare and they were very expensive.

Non-fiction, however, was the best seller. Seeking the widest possible sales (that is to say profits), it was written in the language of the common man, by freelance writers and translators, and included wild tales of men with their heads embedded in their chests, cannibals, giant sea-serpents, the most gruesome murders under the most lurid circumstances, etc. Witches were suddenly no longer rare beings but were everywhere around as was a literature informing the reader how to identify them. In short, most non-fiction was on a par with our supermarket tabloids and click-bait sites and throve for the same reasons. On the level of the pamphlet, non-fiction was in large part an entertaining topical fiction. It was not simply fiction, it was often dangerous fiction that could result in torture, violent attack, death, maiming and financial loss.

For the first 50-100 years after Gutenberg, legitimate information was largely available only in Latin. It was the universities' way of protecting their own markets. To know Latin was to know the facts of things... as they existed in classical times. More importantly, as greater circulation placed non-fiction beyond the universities' monopoly control, classical facts slowly began to give way to non-fiction based upon observation and experimentation. At first, still in Latin.

Knowing the history of the printed word, it is striking to see just how much the more recent history of the Internet runs parallel to it. Professionally vetted information — for all its was first openly available — has gone almost entirely behind paywalls as exclusive as the classical languages. Such vetting costs considerable money, much like learning, type-setting and proof-reading classical languages. After a couple of decades, subscription fees have been added to advertising in order that legacy media might cover its overheads and make a profit.

Left behind for the average reader are the popular non-fiction: small freelance “companies” that have sprung up to bring information to the multitudes. Their names suggest the situation: Knewz, MiBolsillo, Benzinga, Money Talks News, Slingshot News, The i Paper, Stockwits, Cryptopolitan. Red Effect, Irish Star, Tagtik. The full list is longer still. Many more such names attach to “news” outlets that feature paid advertising (“sponsored content”) presented as news.

In the spirit of the pamphlets of 400-500 years ago, the best from these venues tends to be brief sensationalized overviews of various pay-walled and social media content, behind sensational hyperlinked headlines, without meaningful vetting or otherwise standards. Spelling and grammar are haphazard. Typos often showing signs of having been dictated into a computer transcription program. It is unwise to believe their information without confirmation from more reputable sources.

Unlike the pamphlets, the new media provides colorful photos rather than colorful word portraits. More and more often, articles are actually slide-shows composed of pictures purchased from the growing number of online image brokers. Accompanying text is severely limited — barely more than a caption — information even moreso. Photos are not specific to the article. It is their job to keep eyes glued to the page and accompanying ads.

It took some 300 years, after Gutenberg, and a good many maimings, deaths, frauds, bankruptcies, and vast amounts of wasted time, for standards to be established for the popular media. How long it will take — if it will be accomplished at all — for the Internet revolution to develop standards to stave off the worst of the glorious and treacherous flood of popular media is an important question. It is hard to believe that we have anywhere near as much time.

Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:

• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
• Blank Verse Now and Then.  January 1, 2019.  “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.” 
• The Elegy and the Internet.  July 1, 2005.  ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’

• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

Also from Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’

What's News?

For above a hundred years, the news media regaled the U.S. public with unprecedented amounts of information for a small fee under the old advertising model that would serve the western world so well. In print media, advertising became more science than art thus stabilizing and increasing profits. Improved color printing technologies also made advertising more effective.

With the advent of television the advertising model proved even more lucrative. Television advertising revenues were much larger, the small fee impractical (the alternative being coin-operated televisions) and unnecessary.

It is probably fair to say that the quality of the product created by the larger players, and a good many of the smaller players, in print and television, was high. Mostly what was lacking was diversity — which is to say “quite a lot” but not to the present point.

Perhaps a decade after its inception, the Internet began to offer quantities of news. The potential revenue was too much to resist and legacy media began expanding into the digital realm. The old advertising model was kept largely intact as the main source of revenue. For another decade still, the strategy was to lower production costs via the remarkable new technologies coming available and to gain audience through the vastly expanded connectivity.

Investment and overheads in order to be able to establish new venues being so tiny compared to historical models, however, “new media” rapidly captured a huge part of the available audience. The price of expertise and journalistic ethics being irreducible, they were, at best, conveniently redefined. If legacy media would follow suit they would have no superior product to offer. Sadly, however, they would be unable to manage sufficient profit without discounting that same expertise and those same ethics.

Search engines not bringing enough traffic to the larger venues, news aggregators, such as Google News, YouTube and Yahoo News, sprang up to attract more eyes. Those news venues with more resources purchased prime listing space and additionally developed their own proprietary apps to capture as much of the audience the aggregators brought to them as possible thus increasing their audience and data share.

To overhead and operating costs, scaled back by going digital, then, were added in stages: 1) IT and consulting costs; 2) placement costs on search engines; 3) SEO costs; 4) subscription costs to aggregators. The aggregators being essential, they take far-and-away the lion's share of the advertising revenue. Burgeoning new media take an ever greater share of what remains.

All of this history has arrived at my morning news. In order to take away more traffic from Google News and YouTube aggregators, Microsoft Network began locking in its own news aggregator to its Edge browser, displaying the aggregator on every New Tab that the user calls up. All comers, large and small, in the news field, were offered the chance to apply for their articles to be listed. Once the population reached optimum, in MSN judgment, the invitation-links landed on a deactivated page.

Meanwhile, the larger venues had, one at a time, begun instituting paywalls — requiring paid subscriptions — in an attempt to turn what was left of expertise, ethics and reputation into revenue. Microsoft Network has been so successful traffic-wise, however, that it has been able to require all its venues to drop their paywalls for links submitted to the MSN aggregator.

So most mornings I am regaled by a large colorful photo from Tagtik News and a headline designed to hint at compelling information. While Tagtik states that it was founded in 2008 so regular a news hound as I has never seen it until the past year. It sees itself as the future of journalism:

Tagtik News’ unique selling proposition of providing bite-sized,meticulously curated news stories resonates in an era of information overload, setting a compelling example for the future of digitaljournalism.

It exists not to provide quality journalism, by any traditional measure, but to provide a “unique selling proposition”. It is a pretext for advertising provided in the Dutch, French and English languages.

It is one of the more analytical and disciplined of the many such new media sites. The photo is sourced not from a staff photo-journalist but from several among the myriad “stock” photo and video companies that have sprung up to serve the new media and to monetize their stock by asserting newly developed legal bases to claim copyright for every video and illustration they can manage to print their name on and offer up for sale. There is no more a graphics department than there is a print shop.

The article on the other side of the headline will uniformly be 100-150 words or less. It will be general and generally disappoint the headline and it will be so free of specifics as to avoid check-able facts. It will reference an unlinked (unverifiable) source so general that expertise can only be implied to have been brought in from outside the Tagtik newsroom (such as it is). The “news” will be several days old, as the rule (some new media show contemporary headlines connecting to stories from weeks to decades old without disclaimer). The byline will be unidentifiable — in the English language version, generally initials.

Tagtik, it bears saying, is among the more successful of the new media. If for no other reason than having seen the MSN invitation soon enough to apply before it was closed down.

Also from the Library of Babel:

• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
• Blank Verse Now and Then.  January 1, 2019.  “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.” 
• The Elegy and the Internet.  July 1, 2005.  ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’

• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

Also from Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’

Shelving the books in a dying democracy.

I have undergone many changes, major and minor, for better and for worse, in my life. Over the years, when those changes come, I have grown in the habit of re-shelving the books that are always scattered throughout my rooms. Along with them I re-collect my thoughts. The underlying task is so simple that my mind cannot help but wander.

There is a pleasure to reliving moments of my life through those books and the thoughts they revive. I cannot resist dipping into a volume or two or twenty. Almost certainly Rilke, Virginia Woolf, the Transcendentalists of little Concord, Massachusetts, the artists and intelligentsia of Paris and Vienna before the Great War (as World War I was called before there was a World War II), Hofstadter (not so much Richard as Douglas), John Burroughs.

I say “my rooms,” as if I were a Fellow at Oxford, but, actually, I've long lived (wherever I've lived) in a library. Everywhere floor to ceiling bookshelves. Being a submariner and an engineer / nuclear technician by training it feels perfect that I travel dark alleyways with one of several droplights in hand.

Burroughs and his brotherhood and a raft of field guides remind me how I loved my life as a quasi-hermit (more hermit than quasi), in a little tumble-down cottage nestled in an emerald swatch of semi-tropical forest, better than any other that hasn't included my beautiful, sparkle-eyed little daughter. I might have stayed there — no telephone, no television, in the midst of a virtual bird sanctuary, Anole lizards for pets and an opossum replete with annual litter for upstairs neighbor — for the rest of my life if it had proved possible.

The world around me as of this past January 20^th, however, has so totally changed that I find myself constantly peering out the window and into the computer monitor (behind which most of my books are now “shelved”) trying to understand what I am seeing. I only now begin to shelve books, in fits and starts, with the scenes I am seeing replaying over and over as I do.

The world outside the window looks much the same, on the surface, and, when I bike through the landscape, I see the same pavement, the same trees. Though spring is blossoming around us I see almost none of the smiles that customarily bloom along with it.

The products on store shelves are considerably more expensive but that was happening before the 20^th. The neighborhood has no regular mail-carrier, no regular daily schedule. Again, a trend begun before. There are almost no birds their numbers having steadily dwindled now for decades. Some crows are evident, now, from time to time. Some grackles. A migrating flock of perhaps a dozen geese where there once were hundreds.

On the other side of the computer monitor, on the other hand, is a new hubris and ignorance, on one hand, and growing fear and anger on another. Internationally, the U.S. is recklessly destroying its reputation for dependability. Climate projections are getting worse. The President is claiming climate science is a sham and is shifting responsibility to respond to the continually increasing natural disasters onto the state governments. Economic numbers are getting worse. The President says that economic pain will be necessary in order to reverse the “false positive” economic numbers of the previous administration.

Arthur Laffer is back in the news touting his ridiculously failed economic theory that tax cuts increase revenues. The Republican congress is preparing to revive their specialized mathematical system called Dynamic Scoring created in order to justify the Laffer theory. The world's richest man is practicing the math of simply declaring (inexplicable) mathematical outcomes without showing his work (the President nodding along). In case all of this still doesn't result in the desired outcomes all the math-checkers in the government are being ferreted out and let go as a cost-cutting measure.

In spite of all of this (and much much more) — and because of it — the enormously ambitious Trump agenda — the agenda, that is to say, of the Ultra-Wealthy, to end progressive taxation and the liberal democracy and social programs which require it — is in danger of failing to meet its schedule. There being no Plan B, he has begun launching attacks against anything and anyone who might be slowing its progress. He feels justified in destroying anything and everything except for the economy that makes the Ultra-Wealthy wealthy and the instruments of authoritarian control intended to keep them that way.

Also on the other side of the monitor, I see that far and away the most useful ally of the Ultra-Wealthy is the Extreme-Left, as usual. This has been the case since the Ultra-Wealthy coӧpted the evangelical and alt-right communities (that compose the MAGA movement) in order to have enough voters to win elections. These communities receive the gratification of seeing their social agenda flourish at the cost of supporting the tax and economic agendas of their senior partner. For their part, the Ultra-Wealthy provide unlimited campaign donations and are rewarded with control of the financial machinery of the government.

The Extreme-Left assures voter turnout among MAGA for the candidates of the Ultra-Wealthy. More importantly, it assures a growing coӧptation of the center-right and of unaffiliated male vote through vigorous fore-fronting of movements such as “Me Too,” “Transgender Rights” and “Gender Fluidity” in spite of the disadvantageous economic agenda required by the Ultra -Wealthy.

Well, this certainly isn't getting any books shelved. Let's see. The Dover reprint of Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds culled from the publications of the United States National Museum. It informs me that the cardinal was reported no further north than northern Kentucky, in 1886. By 1923 numerous sightings were reported in Iowa. Already sightings had been reported as far north as southern Ontario in 1916. There was a mating pair in the boscage in front of the old hermitage. The male would fly up to the top of the tall Florida pine in the morning to welcome the day with song. Boy, do I miss that.

Also from the Library of Babel:

• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
• Blank Verse Now and Then.  January 1, 2019.  “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.” 
• The Elegy and the Internet.  July 1, 2005.  ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’

• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

Also from Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’

Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025.

The Center of Disease Control being forbidden to issue health alerts, even after a judge's order requiring them, surely it falls to us as citizens to fill the breach.

We have entered an age of pandemics. The medical community has known to expect it for some decades now. The growing world population, especially in impoverished regions, together with the close proximity in some to animal species that host a range of pathogens, mean it is only a matter of time before the next epidemic occurs. The interconnectedness of our world means that every epidemic is a potential pandemic.

Furthermore, our antibiotics have proven to have a devastating side effect. While they give us a sense of ever increasing security, enough bacteria survive them to build up ever-growing populations immune to their effects.

Various scientific groups have been modeling the likely biological outcomes of these facts. How many sociologists have thought to model the social effects, local or worldwide, however, is not clear. We tend to leave that kind of research to eccentrics and dystopian novelists. Especially in the instance in which the pathogen is a political idea.

But to the political pathogen we must add its constituents as modelers. It is most certainly not operating on instinct. Unlike cellular agents, the societal pathogen must develop a conscious plan of attack. Such a plan requires a model. We see this in the various think tanks and 501(c)(3)s that have grown up around the Republican Party over the past 50 years.

First the party had to be conquered. The name had to be kept in order to wield its influence and connections. The party was at a particularly vulnerable moment due to its shrinking base. For this reason it welcomed a foreign agent that took it over. As is the way of viruses, it made the party into a zombie vehicle of its will. The pathogen next took control of state legislatures and institutions.

Thus fortified, the zombie vehicle had a power-base. Like any virus, it had established control over a few organs and processes, at first, with an eye only to taking over the entire body.

It is not generally recognized that the pathogen itself does not have an Alt-Right orientation in the least. It is resoundingly intent upon the ultra-wealthy being free of taxation and regulation and able to wield the police forces and the military to enforce their interests. Everything else is just a tool to achieve its goals. Its identification with the Evangelical Religious Right is merely a tactic. It controls most of the money in the country but it needs votes in order to acquire the power of the government to forward its objectives. The ends justify the means.

As the population of the Religious Right shrank, the pathogen's strategy would be to replace their numbers by coöpting disaffected voting groups so opposed to progressive government that they could not find candidates to represent them. The strategy was to add them to the Religious Right in order create cobbled-together majorities eager to dismantle secular political norms, institutions and legal processes, thus creating the conditions to bring an end to the income tax, business and financial regulation and the social safety net that made them essential.

The model was simple. Keep absolute control of the party's money. Coöpt radical communities through their sense of marginalization and increase their voting rates by describing them as victims of insidious conspiracy. These voters were only too glad to assist the pathogen in conquering the body politic in exchange for non-monetary benefits such as the right to reject those “others” who marginalized them, to daunt various “others” by carrying firearms in areas not inhabited by the hyper-wealthy, exclude “others” from job and housing markets, etc. A “conservative” news media was created in order to feed them constant propaganda and instructions.

This having been achieved, the pathogen has developed into full-blown Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation (and the National Debt) from the ultra-wealthy to an already shrinking middle class and the rapidly growing poor. Constant Internet and television images (the nervous system of the body politic) are being deployed in order to keep the body off balance and the coöpted voters so mesmerized that they are unaware that they are to receive absolutely nothing of value for their role — that they will be among the biggest losers inasmuch as they are no longer needed.

Federal spending is scheduled to be reduced by demolishing the social safety net — a change that will as consequence greatly reduce wages for all but the dedicated minions with high-level skills that obey the orders of the ultra-wealthy without question. Spending will also be reduced by ending humanitarian aid and shifting the financial burden of alliances totally onto the backs of those allies and bullying them into ending taxes on U.S. Companies that operate within their borders. The power of the U.S. will no longer be used to enforce international law but will sweep it away wherever necessary in order to benefit its ultra-wealthy ruling class.

If the timing works out, the Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025 will have less and less need of the coöpted voters (now called “MAGA”). They will desperately cling to their belief that the lies of the pathogen promise genuine rewards, nonetheless. Tariffs will drive high inflation for all including MAGA. The federal minimum wage will remain $7.25 (or the equivalent) for all including MAGA. Natural disasters will ravage the planet and the homes of the common man including MAGA. Potable water will become an expensive market commodity. The wealth-gap will become immeasurable. It will all be Joe Biden's fault.

This is the model upon which the Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025 operates. Already it has shown frustration that not all is proceeding as planned. It was aware from the start that threats, lies and bluster, would be necessary in order to confuse the body politic, to dominate historical allies and to impress the coöpted voters. Those tactics having been insufficient, outrageous demands are being delivered with an absolute confidence designed to amplify the effect. Failures can only be addressed by doubling down.

What, you may ask, can be done to prevent the body succumbing to the Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025? Can there be a cure?

Also from the Library of Babel:

• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
• Blank Verse Now and Then.  January 1, 2019.  “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.” 
• The Elegy and the Internet.  July 1, 2005.  ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’

• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

Also from Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’

The Mass-Production of Individuality

Mass production and mass consumption have steadily been redefining the Individual such that the term has become synonymous with "Consumer".  Behavioral algorithms are the final stage in which the last vestiges of the Individual are being eradicated.  They standardize the last, most stubbornly resistant step in the production-consumption process: desire.  Because the data shows that people deeply desire the feeling that they are Individuals, our behavioral algorithms must constantly inculcate the illusion that consumption choices are the proper definition of "individuality" in order to accomplish optimum outcomes.  Because the truth-value of an algorithm, like any logico-mathematical equation, is its effectiveness in solving a problem upon which it is brought to bear, then, the existence of individuality has actually been proved “true” by virtue of its eradication.  We mass-produce individuality.