It’s safe to say the pseudonormalization of Trump has stopped, at least for a while. The moment Trump fired Comey, DC immediately returned to the frantic hysteria of the first month of the administration. Trump, who thought that Comey’s firing would be welcomed by even the Democrats, shattered the illusion…

In the previous diary I wrote about the pseudonormalization of Trump over the last month. What I gave was only half of the story. I didn’t explore the sheer significance of the administration’s marginalization of Steve Bannon. Bannon’s demotion and marginalization is indeed a key part of what allows the…

How far we are from a month ago. I look back at the early Trump Diaries and they read like missives from a different world. The seething paranoia bred by the travel ban has died down. There have been no mass mobilizations like the one spurred by the initial…

Milo Yiannopoulos’ fatal flaw was being English. I’ll explain. I’m breaking my No Milo policy because while I maintain that Milo Yiannopoulos functions as a decoy to distract his opponents from things of actual importance, the story of his downfall is of some importance for understanding the state of the…

Michael Flynn (office 9 in the above pic) resigned under pressure yesterday. The supposed reason being given is that he repeatedly lied to VP Pence about not having discussed sanctions with the Russians last year. Who knows if this is true? Firing Flynn makes Trump look doubly weak, first for…

The White House backed off. That, at least, is the major takeaway from the chaos that followed the incompetently-drafted, ambiguous, and massively overreaching travel ban issued late last Friday. (Many left orgs are still calling it a Muslim ban, which is too imprecise. It applies to Muslim-majority countries, but there’s…

On Twitter, Zunger has conceded many of the below points and admitted that he would add caveats had he known his article was going to be read by as wide a group. As he does not wish to add these caveats now, I am posting this commentary as a corrective…

Philosophical Anthropology and Absolute Metaphors — I. Hans Blumenberg was one of the most searching, omnivorous scholars and philosophers of the 20th century. His fundamental inquiry was simple and universal: “How do we come to terms with reality?” In attempting to answer this question, his books on myth, metaphor, science, and culture invoke an intimidating breadth of…