THE WESTERN LAND, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes.

The causes lie deep and simple—the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

Today, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Fani Willis could stay on the case against Trump in Georgia, provided Nathan Wade leaves the prosecution team. It’s a judgement that proves the adage about Solomon splitting the baby is routinely misapplied. In Solomon’s case, he made a shockingly clean but injudicious decision to avoid a revoltingly messy outcome. Here, Judge McAfee made an unnecessarily messy decision because he was trying to look judicious - but whatever. No one really thought this guy was Solomon anyway, and in the end, Fani Willis gets to stay on the hunt.

Good.

Personally, were I the judge, I would have tossed aside the charges against Willis months ago and told the adversaries to stay focused on their roles in the case against Trump and his associates. I’d have made the judgement that - as a white guy in Georgia - there was zero chance that ANY good would come out of publicly examining the private, sexual, and financial lives of prominent Black professionals in an already highly polarized and racialized historical and legal milieu. Even admitting that I shared a hint of suspicion that, for some reason, an attorney and political leader as accomplished as Fani Willis would stoop to using a combination of sexual persuasion and political clout to extort and manipulate a colleague - who is also a man of substance, means, and power - for paid vacations is just offensive on its surface. It plays WAY too hard into the Jezebel / Wild Buck stereotypes of Black sexuality, and even considering it - I’d have surmised from the offing - would only turn my courtroom into a pathetic sideshow of shadow-play racism for weeks on end. But I’m not Judge McAfee - so here we are, two months after this unnecessary stupidity began, with the trial again moving forward.

Ugh, what a silly distraction.

I’ve stopped reading the New York Times, as it has turned to clickbait garbage, but I still crack the Washington Post every day to scan the news and gauge the state of the “liberal-biased media.” While far better than the Grey Old Lady, it can be nearly as frustrating a process. Check out the headlines and framing for four of the five above-the-fold stories today in America’s last half-decent broadsheet.

1. Biden faces pressure to deliver a strong message to DISSATISFIED VOTERS.

2. Bernie Sanders made private WARNING to Biden about 2024 campaign.

3. Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loans. Some say it’s NOT ENOUGH.

4. Of Biden’s proposals in his address last year, here’s what FLOPPED and what succeeded.

These choices represent a lot of editorial intention, but they sure as hell aren’t guided by a “liberal bias.”

Yesterday, while puttering around in the kitchen, I thought about what a great exercise it would be to aggregate all economic stories in the major media over the past year to compare the framings. By the numbers, it’s been an extraordinarily great year by nearly every metric of growth. Inflation is down, employment is up, GDP growth is strong, manufacturing jobs are soaring, unions had a great year, and so did the stock market. Building projects are engaged across the country through the Inflation Reduction Act, the crush of debt from student loans for young earners is being addressed through forgiveness and remediation, and pharmaceutical companies are being forced to rationalize the prices of at least some lifesaving medicine. All that is empirically true, but what I’d like to know is the percentage breakdown between stories that SIMPLY REPORTED THOSE NUMBERS vs. stories that reported the numbers inside articles leading with the message “economy strong, BUT NO ONE BELIEVES IT.”

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Soon, the Supreme Court will take up the Colorado case to determine if, after trying to overthrow a legitimate election to maintain power, Donald Trump is eligible to hold the office of the Presidency of the United States.

They will almost certainly make an embarrassing hash of that ruling.

I’ve not been posting much political content for the past months for a few reasons. First, the issue most central to the global debate is uniquely ill-suited to social media. In October, the day after Hamas murdered over 1000 Israelis, I hazarded this excerpt from the poem September 1, 1939, by W.H. Auden:

“I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.”

Like Auden’s complete poem, written just hours after Hitler invaded Poland, setting the stage for World War II, I offered that stanza as a lament for the hell that would flow from that newly minted and atrocious history of violent action.

It was not taken as such.

CJR - the Columbia Journalism Review - posted an important story this morning, linked below in the first comment. It's about a 5-minute read that breaks down the failures of the New York Times and the Washington Post regarding political reporting. Consumers of both broadsheets will note that CJR correctly tars the Times as significantly worse at their job, though both papers of record are shitting the bed when it comes to maintaining a properly informed public.

For all the talk about the polarization of news, the siloing of information, or even the bizarre and mindless assertion of a liberal-biased media, the real problem is capitalism - though CJR doesn't come right out and say that, so I'm saying it here.

Before anything noble or enlightened about informing the public and the virtues of independent journalism, newspapers want to keep their readers' attention. So, when it comes to politics, the absolute imperative is to sell the horserace. If, by the very nature of the horses involved, that race is a thoroughbred vs. an old nag, then the media needs to boost the slowpoke, hobble the speedster, or both.