18 Nov Chronocentrism – FT#185
Show Notes
Chronocentrism occurs when someone assumes a specific time period is inherently better or more important than all others.
Trump
We started out by discussing this clip of Trump going overboard announcing the Gaza ceasefire:
Then we looked at this clip of Trump on his favorite political slogan, and a supporter explaining what it means to them:
And finally we talked about this clip of Eisenhower responding to Adlai Stevenson’s campaign slogan:
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about this clip of David Cameron in 2016:
Then he looked at this clip of Lord Bates:
Followed by this one of Boris Johnson:
The this clip of Rishi Sunak:
And finally this clip of Kier Starmer:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Frasier:
Then we discussed this clip from Quantum Leap:
And we finished up with this clip from Modern Family:
The study about people feeling like they’ve reached the end of their personal journey of change can be found here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1229294
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong again this week, and is on 50%!
Trump’s best friend Jeffrey was not a logical fallacy
We talked about the recent release of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- It’s November, which means elections in the US, and Democrats had a VERY good one this time around. Zohran Mamdani won, of course, as New York Mayor, which upset all kinds of racists, so that’s nice, but there were so many more. Mike Sherrill won as Governor of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger became Virginia’s first female Governor. Also in Virginia, Democrats won the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races, and gained 13 seats in the House of Delegates, securing their largest majority since 1987. Democrats held all three seats under contention in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, won two seats on the Georgia Public Service commission for the first time since 2000, and gained seats in both houses of the Mississippi legislature, breaking the Republican supermajority in the State Senate. They gained their own supermajority in the New Jersey Assembly, and flipped more than 20 Connecticut towns from red to blue. They also won big on ballot initiatives, with Maine voters overwhelmingly rejecting voter ID requirements and absentee ballot suppression, Colorado voters increasing taxes on the rich to fund free meals at public schools across the state, and California voters approved Proposition 50, allowing the Democratic legislature to redraw congressional districts to fight back against Republican gerrymandering. Democrats even won races way down the ballot, including getting rid of a Sheriff in Bucks County, PA who pledged to cooperate with ICE, and flipping a Texas school board who censored textbook chapters about vaccines, climate change and diversity. Republicans tried to downplay the results, with JD Vance tweeting “I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states”. Trump claimed part of the reason for the absolute pounding they took was that he wasn’t on the ballot, but even Fox News reported that according to exit polls 71% of the people who voted for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey gave their reason as “to oppose Trump”. Another reason, which even Trump was able to see, was that voters overwhelmingly blamed Republicans for the longest government shutdown in US history. Fighting tooth and nail to starve poor Americans while holding Great Gatsby themed parties at his private club might not have helped. The results were a clear message from the electorate that Trump is in the wrong and they appreciate the Democrats holding the line and opposing him. Which made it all the more of a kick in the teeth less than a week later when eight Senate Democrats caved, and voted with Republicans to reopen the government with no deal beyond the promise of a future vote on Obamacare from people who have never kept a promise in their lives.
- When your administration has a reputation for shutting down and firing members of agencies whose job it is to report on the financial and employment impact of its policies when they produce figures that tell how badly you’re performing, and engineers a government shutdown that’s so long figures for a whole month are unavailable from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), then why wouldn’t you alight on a report from a single commercial enterprise to claim that inflation has been tamed. Especially if that enterprise whilst once donating big time to an Andrew Cuomo Super PAC during his Democratic mayoral primary bid this past spring was a vocal supporter of Trump’s budget; the budget that gives big tax breaks to high net worth individuals like DoorDash CEO Tony Xu. Doordash’s report seems to indicate that general grocery costs and the cost of cheeseburgers have gone down on average nationally. Despite the ‘Breakfast Basics Index’ being made up of three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel, and an avocado – those staples of national breakfast, and the cheeseburger index showing that the price of a cheeseburger, a soda, and a side of fries varies from $10.75 in Lincoln, NE to $25.55 — more than double — in Anchorage, AK. It reminds me of the use of the Mars bar as an indicator of wealth on the basis that the price of one sits in the same percentage of income as it did in 1932, notwithstanding that at over £1 nobody buys one any more!! When asked if the company feels a responsibility to clarify what this report does say and if “inflation has been tamed” is a conclusion one should take from this report? Doordash said “The White House can use the language that they are using on that. I’m not gonna speculate on that, but, you know, we put everything that we feel is relevant in the report.” All the information is on the Task. A real economist Daniel S. Hamermesh, emeritus professor of economics at Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Texas at Austin explained that the White House relying on the DoorDash report for meaningful data is “so absurd. If anybody would believe this says anything about the average person, it’s just nuts. I’m quite sure as long as we don’t have the national information, these guys will cherry-pick information that makes them look good” and pointed out that withholding reliable data is a tool dictatorships use to keep people in the dark. The five year plan is working comrades. You can rely on us to know, don’t keep asking awkward questions, rest assured the gulag has infinite capacity!
- Plastic-faced puppy killer Kristi Noem has no clue how to run the Department of Homeland Security, so instead she’s spending her time funnelling millions of dollars to close associates while playing dress-up. According to reporting from ProPublica, the DHS has spent $220 million on a series of TV ads featuring Noem herself, basically telling immigrants to fuck off. Some of the money was used to buy ad slots on TV networks, but $143 million was paid to a company called Safe America Media, a company that was registered just a few days before it won the contract. They didn’t make the ads themselves, though, they subcontracted out to a company called The Strategy Group. By sheer coincidence, Ben Yoho, the Strategy Group’s CEO, is married to Tricia McLaughlin, Kristi Noem’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. When asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.” It sure is a mystery, but we do know they didn’t go through the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption, because the agency claimed the “national emergency” on the Southern border meant that “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation.” By pure happenstance, Ben Yoho also made some videos for Noem when she was governor of South Dakota, ostensibly to encourage people to move to the state, but possibly just to pay his company $8.5 million so she could dress up as a state trooper, a dentist and a plumber. That contract did go through a bidding process, with the contract opportunity, serendipitously, going live the day after Yoho registered to do business in South Dakota. A former official involved in the proposal process told ProPublica that a top Noem aide told them the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win the contract. It all looks a bit dodgy to be honest. Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law, said “It’s corrupt, is the word. Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer”. Umm… OK? Unless I’ve missed a crucial part of this story, I don’t think Mr Tiefer knows how to play “hide the salami”.
- Sean Charles Dunn known to most people as Sandwich Guy was charged with misdemeanor assault under 18 U.S.C. 111(a)(1), which prohibits forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officials or employees “while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties.” after throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer serving on President Trump’s D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force. Both sides want to make an example of Sandwich Guy. The government, as a menace to society against whom that society must for the sake of law and order impose punishment, and the defense, as a dissident unfairly targeted for his deeply held ideological convictions.The question is whether the throwing of the sandwich was, as the defense put it, “a punctuation,” “an exclamation mark at the end of a verbal outburst,” “a harmless gesture that did not and could not cause…injury” or whether it was a violent act, and a federal crime.The prosecution used language like “He takes the sandwich in his hand, he cocks it back,” saying the sandwich was thrown at “point-blank range.” The agent on the receiving end describes the impact “I could feel it through my ballistic vest,” “The sandwich…exploded all over my uniform. I could smell the onions and the mustard.” The horror, the horror! The defence asked the victim to identify the sandwich; he says he can’t make a positive verification, because he didn’t go back to collect it. She pointed out that the paper wrapping is still largely on, the contents essentially intact. “You don’t see there’s mustard on it?” No. “You can’t tell there’s ketchup on it?” No. “You can’t tell there’s mayonnaise on it?” No. Lettuce? Tomato? “In fact, the sandwich hasn’t exploded at all?” Cross examination wrapped with the defense questioning the agent about gag gifts his colleagues conferred on him after the encounter. One is a plushie sandwich. Another is a “Felony Footlong” patch purchased from a vendor in the city. Agent Lairmore put the plushie on his shelf and the patch on his lunchbox. So even the man supposedly harmed by the flinging of the footlong finds the situation funny. And the defence summed up with ‘The government, prosecuting this case “in some purported effort to keep law enforcement safe and free from food fights,” is trying to turn a “gag-gift worthy moment into a federal criminal offense.” Customs and Border Protection Commander Greg Bovino—currently leading Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago—recently said in a deposition in a case about his team’s use of force against protesters and journalists that he has “instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations.” And whilst the jury took upwards of seven hours to find Sandwich Guy not guilty, no matter how you see Sandwich Guy, the government’s message in forcing 12 citizens of Washington, D.C., to decide his case even after a grand jury had rejected felony charges is clear: Mess with this government, and it will mess with you. Trump’s regime is getting increasingly hard to swallow.
- As we know, Trump loves to pardon people who have committed crimes he himself is guilty of. It’s like Oprah giving away cars. Fraud? You get a pardon! Corruption? You get a pardon.. Sex crimes? Don’t let the cell door hit you on the way out. But the people he loves to pardon the most are the ones who will either personally enrich him, or who broke the law to benefit him directly, like the January 6th mob. He loves it so much, he’s pardoning people who aren’t even accused of federal crimes. The latest batch has gone to the various conspirators who lied their asses off in court and on TV to try to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Mark Meadows, Jenna Ellis, Ken Chesebro, John Eastman and more. It’s utterly meaningless, of course, because they were all charged and in most cases convicted in state courts. Meadows repeatedly tried to get his case moved to Federal Court exactly so something like this would matter, but he failed in that just as badly as he failed America. The pardon also covered the six fake electors who pretended Trump won in Nevada, and in a lovely bit of ironic timing, just three days later the Nevada Supreme Court revived the State Attorney General’s case against the six, after a lower court temporarily tied up the prosecution based on a claim charges were filed in the wrong district. Nevada AG Aaron Ford said Trump’s pardons would have “no bearing on our decision-making or prosecution under Nevada state law.”
- Gloating like Gloaty McGloatface Trump has received the apology from the BBC for the programme Panorama editing his Jan 6th speech in a way that didn’t indicate the sufficient passing of time between two lines in his speech, and the BBC has vowed to be a bit more diligent in how they edit stuff, like they did when they edited the Queen to appear to be doing stuff before she had done it. But ol’ mobile goalpost McGoalpostface has said it’s not enough to do the thing I asked you to do, now that you’ve done that I can see that you are putty in my hands and instead of saying okay thanks don’t do it again, he’s gone red in the face and told the BBC he’s going to sue them for damage to his reputation and good-standing and mental anguish to the tune of “anywhere between a billion and $5bn, probably sometime next week. We have to do it.” Well, you don’t, cos you got all the things you’re saying the edit prevented you from getting; i.e re-elected, and whilst the BBC and media can be a powerful force it wasn’t that edit of a speech made in 2020 that was aired in 2024 that lost you the election to Joe Biden. Buoyed by the fact that YouTube agreed to pay $24.5m (£18.6m) to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump, following similar settlements with X/Twitter and Facebook and other media outlets capitulating to the Kumquat Fascist, Trump is determined to reach beyond US borders to overseas broadcasters. Trump has signalled an intention to bring any eventual litigation in the US state of Florida, where he has legal residency, rather than in the UK. Trump would need to prove three major components – that the content published was factually false in a way that was defamatory; that he suffered harm due to the false and defamatory coverage; and that the media organisation knew it was false and acted with “actual malice”. You know, the very thing that Trump is known for doing! The statute of limitations on defamation in the UK is one year, which has already elapsed for Trump because the documentary aired in October 2024. In Florida it’s two years, but he’d have to prove that the edit in the Panorama programme was viewed in Florida, there is no evidence so far to suggest that it has been shown in the US. Also he’d have to prove he actually suffered that much in losses, said Prof Lyrissa Lidskey of the University of Florida Levin College of Law. “Given that he won the presidency after this and has continued to make money in his businesses, it seems implausible that he’s going to be able to prove a billion dollars worth of damages.” Seth Stern, the advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation added “He doesn’t care if he wins or not. The point is to intimidate and punish those he views as critical to him.” Eek we’d better check the bank balance Jim!
- Weirdly, Trump hasn’t complained that CBS edited his 60 Minutes interview, but perhaps even the dimestore ambulance chasers he calls his personal attorneys have refused to claim that he was coherent either post or indeed pre-editing. As it was, he came across as the usual lying bigot viewers love to hate. Among the bigger lies he told were the claim that $17 trillion is being invested in the US right now, which is around double what the White House website claims, and even that number is Walter Mitty levels of bullshit. He claimed he’d saved 100,000 Americans from fatal overdoses thanks to the extrajudicial killings of more than 80 people on boats near Venezuela which the administration claims without evidence were all drug traffickers. Incidentally, 100,000 people would be more than all the US drug deaths in 2024. He repeated his claims that he’s ended 8 wars, that grocery prices are down, that the US has no inflation under Trump, that foreign countries pay tariffs, not Americans, and that the 2020 election was stolen. He claimed CBS put out their edited Kamala Harris interview just two days before the election, which was only off by about four weeks, and he claimed some previous Presidents invoked the Insurrection Act 28 times, instead of the actual maximum, which is 6. So, maybe he’ll sue them for not editing him enough this time. To be fair, they already cut it down from 90 minutes to 23, I’m not sure there’s an editor alive who can make him make sense.
- An odd week in Britpol this last week or so – yep that’s how odd; Keir Starmer’s advisors seemed to be the source of a briefing that Wes Streeting Health Secretary who by the way has no more qualification to be in charge of the National Health Service than say ooh RFK Jr, that Mr Potato Head Wes was mounting a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer for being too boring. Wes was forced to appear on TV denying this and proclaiming his faithfulness using the language of the Traitors TV programme which did nothing to make him appear down with the people but even more like an out of touch cringe-meister. Keir then raged in parliament saying advisors briefing against members of the cabinet was one thing he wouldn’t tolerate and would find out who did it – obvs its former campaign manager turned chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – and ensure they get reprimanded – he won’t obvs. Meanwhile inside globally-respected everywhere besides the UK public broadcaster the BBC admitted editing together two bits of a Trump speech that were an hour apart originally so that they looked like he fomented a violent insurrection on Jan 6th 2020, you know the thing that all those arrested for violently insurrecting said that he did, and you know the thing that made no difference 4 years later when he got voted back in. This appeared in an internal memo ‘leaked’ to the Daily Telegraph obvs by the so-called impartiality tsar Robbie Gibb who formerly impartially worked as Theresa May’s communications director, impartially co-founded right-wing news shaped channel GBNews and was impartially appointed to the board of the BBC by Boris Johnson. His moaning about the lack of impartiality by the leftie BBC led to the resignation of the Director General and former Tory council candidate and deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Association in the 90’s – Tim Davie. All the other media companies and right-wing parties are having a field day cos basically the BBC is their strongest competitor with the largest reach and trust rating in the world and with them out of the way they can continue to peddle their shit for money whilst paying no tax of course. Labour and the BBC; the last bastions of centrist thinking being hollowed out from within. Yep fire up the rocket again Bezos it’s time to leave the planet – again!
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