Not Much of a Debate

 

Disclaimer: I hate debates. They are a stupid formality that are somehow supposed to educate voters about the candidates--and they don't do that. The first (and possibly only?) 2024 presidential debate reflected everything I hate about debates, regardless of format. One candidate lied relentlessly, one candidate tried to talk policy, and the moderators were basically useless. No one is learning anything from it. It was brutal to watch, and I had the sound off and relied on closed caption because the sound of Trump's voice lying makes me a little irrational. 

That said, two huuuugge Trump lies got debunked right off the bat: the first being that Biden would be on some kind of uppers or super-soldier drugs, and the second being that the CNN moderators were out to tank Trump.  Biden seemed hoarse and a bit subdued. Tapper and Bash started off with inflation, and the debate somehow went 44 minutes before the convicted felon insurrectionist's weak point (being a convicted felon insurrectionist) came up. 

That was...inauspicious. 

Now, it is a lot to expect real-time fact checking against Trump's farrago of nonsense, but major howlers, like whether ANYONE supports post-birth abortion, probably begged for some pushback--but since the media barely tries to do that in interviews, why expect it? Even if it's literally an accusation of murder. Of course, there will be ample fact-checking stories to come--but you know who is going to read/or watch those?

That's right--people who are already pretty informed. Your uninformed voter probably tuned out the debate about 30 minutes in and is gone forever. 

TWGB: The Messy Things Called "Details"

Even though I'm just a normal person who waits with bated breath for things like surprise indictments of peripheral Trump/Russia figures or who refreshes Twitter threads about secretive federal Grand Jury hearings like a twitchy addicted lab animal looking for a fix (especially on Fridays), I'm also kind of relieved that Saturday was relatively quiet on the news front, so I could finally catch up with some of the hanging news out there. There are times when taking in Trump World news is a little like trying to drink from a fire hose.

On Thursday, Maria Butina plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to infiltrate the political sphere of a certain political party with the goal of influencing US/Russia relations as a foreign agent working in hand with Russian billionaire Alexander Torshin. Some people might quibble over whether political folks who met her through the NRA should have been a little suspicious over whether she was just a little...obvious or whether being an agent of Russia or a spy are different things, but I think The Daily Beast article includes a pretty valuable perspective:

John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, described Butina as an example of Russian “espionage lite,” operating openly but hiding the direction and support she got from the Russian government.

Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations, said Thursday, "It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service. She is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in the Russian government to do a job."

So maybe not a spy like a "secret agent"--but some kind of agent, anyway.  I kind of suspect her gun rights org was a cut-out but what do I know? But did US people think this back when she was making friends and influencing people--and did they care?  Eh, details!

In other news, we got a further corroboration of the activities of Individual One with respects to Michael Cohen's activities: Donald Trump was in the room with Cohen and AMI's David Pecker when they discussed what to do about Trump's long and winding road vis a vis horndoggery--in August 2015. So the idea that Trump would be making arrangements regarding the silencing of troublesome wenches was not a spur of the moment post TMZ video thing; it was known to Trump that this would be a problem (how big, though--a real quote from Steve Bannon in Wolff's Fire and Fury suggested Trump's other attorney, Marc Kasowitz, handled maybe "a hundred"). It was a part of Trump's entire campaign strategy to minimize a seedy existence (which may entail snorting Adderall and sleazing on underage beauty contestants--stuff which was known about, but never really addressed, by MSM during 2016 when it might have mattered--thanks!) But eh, details!

It also turns out that Paul Manafort, of the maybe kinda/sort of JDA with the Trump defense even since his plea deal and the being too close to Russia to stay on as campaign manager in 2016, but who still shaped the Trump transition, also gave Trump advice about how to discredit the lawful investigation of his activities by the FBI. Who would have thought? But there was so much suggestion of obstructing justice and lying to create a bad opinion about the FBI's work. And it really seems in retrospect like this is what Trump did--with a will! Take the regular snipes against McCabe (who offended Trump I guess because of the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation that was totally well-deserved?) and the low-hanging fruit of the Strzok/Page relationship, which, while interesting, never resulted in any leaks from their Clinton investigation or from their general distaste for Trump, and never actually resulted in any out of the way cover-up by the FBI of their texts. Some RW pundits are maintaining that the standard resetting of returned electronic devices to factory specs (as is procedural) was somehow a "wiping" (great shades of the "acid-washing" of Hillary Clinton's emails!) of damaging material--but no. Information was recovered because that is how data retention works. But eh, details!

Peggy Noonan: "Shonda"

It's a shame, Peggy Noonan asserts, that the National Cathedral doesn't choose to continue celebrating the people who rebelled against the US government in favor of slavery because they were pretty great...gentiles or something. Because when the Civil War was finished, we supposedly fixed racism.

I think she might be missing a few chapters here. Like Jim Crow and segregation and stuff. But I really feel uncomfortable about her slipping "shande" in here. (It just doesn't feel like her word to use--it's a shame people held slaves and were ready to tear a country apart over it. It's a shame--but the way Yiddish uses "shande" is different.)

White Supremacist apologia is just weird. But she just made it weirder. Confederates being killed or willing to be killed didn't make them right. It made them just as wrong, but traitors. We need to abandon the hagiography of the lost cause. They were wrong. They stay wrong. Their privations on the way to being defeated did not sanctify their cause, because the cause of enslavement is always wrong. We can do away with the monuments to their wrongness, and just read in history books that they lost and were wrong.

It would more than suffice.

Bill O'Reilly's Vacation has Become Permanent

The first sign that Bill O'Reilly wasn't going to weather the sexual harassment allegations this time was the vacation--that sort of seemed like Fox Mushroom Farm Inc. wanted his face off television right away. That had to happen because O'Reilly has a touch of the (in) righteous indignation about him and would have made things worse, if anything. That's my personal guess--I only have a superficial insight that if you wanted to do damage control, whisking the focal point of the shit-storm away from the hot light of the cameras is the way to go. But post-Roger Ailes' nasty sexual harassment scandal, this problem of sexual harassment and cultural misogyny stops being about personalities doing wrong things, and starts looking like a very unhealthy corporate atmosphere.

And, of course, their biggest money-maker was leaking sponsors like a sieve. Away he goes! But this is after losing so many other very familiar faces--Andrea Tantaros? Gretchen Carlson? Greta Van Susteren? Megyn Kelly? So maybe it's a good change that they are now losing a familiar face who has actually consistently proved he deserved to get booted (instead of women who just were trying to do their jobs in a crappy sexist propaganda mill).

After all, this is hardly the first time that we are hearing that Bill O'really is a creep. We've been hearing this for a very long time--Rolling Stone has a detailed timeline of grossness. He's not just reportedly sexist, inappropriate, and abusive, though. He's also super racially-insensitive and kind of a huge liar. This is why, when he alleges that he is the victim of leftist "character assassination", it rings sort of hollow. He's being smeared by people reporting what his co-workers and former co-workers has admitted he does, and what the previous monetary settlements seem to imply? It's like when politicians claim they are being smeared when they have been quoted verbatim--if you don't like the effect, quit hitting yourself!

But as for the future of Fox News, I can't say they are necessarily doing a big turn-around by filling his slot with Tucker Carlson. And the culture of the company, it stands to reason, is still the delightful oink-fest that made up pretend fan-sites to promote their female talent for their other-than-professional attributes. Just because O'Reilly is gone, doesn't mean the problem of what the company has promoted on their news channel and lived and worked by behind the scenes is cleared up. They have problems beyond O'Reilly and Ailes. And I feel like we'll be hearing about more things sooner rather than later.

Anybody But Trump; Anybody but Cruz

There are only two realistic front-runners for the GOP primary right now--Donald Trump as the front-runner, with Senator Ted Cruz pulling alongside or occasionally leading by a smidge depending on what state's polls you are looking at. I'm a life-long Democrat, so this dynamic is fascinating to me: both of the candidates in the lead for the GOP nomination seem to have significant groups of people in their own party who really seem to shudder at the thought of them getting the nomination.

Now, people have been writing "Everyone Hates Ted Cruz" pieces ever since he became a senator, so I appreciate how an "Anyone But Cruz" party came about. His brash and uncompromising brand of conservatism is distinctively unhelpful in the atmosphere of the Hill, and has led long-time senators like John McCain to dub him a "wacko bird". But when the Governor of Iowa actually says out loud that he wants Cruz defeated, that's a pretty significant sign of the sheer magnitude of the Calgary-born Cruz's ability to rub people the wrong way.

On the other hand, long-time Conservative publication National Review is putting out an entire issue arguing against Donald Trump, questioning his conservative bona fides, temperament and seriousness, indicating that there is also an "Anyone But Trump" contingent that is alive and well. (And yet, probably awfully late to try to start slowing Trump's roll, now.)

As Sarah Palin's rambling endorsement the other day indicates, Donald Trump has been running on a populist trip, and has curiously picked up significant evangelical support (which Team Cruz probably by rights thought were his folks). And yet, funny old thing, the donors/establishment types are coming around to Trump.

Now, despite all this, I'm not really seeing a path for, say Marco Rubio to three, two, one his way into the lead, let alone for Bush or Kasich to suddenly take the lead. The establishment is no more.

Looks like Trump Has Won Another News Cycle

Donald Trump is obviously unhappy with the Fox News handling of his appearance at Thursday night's debate, and was, predictably, pretty vocal about it. There was that one comment though, where he went, as Erick Erickson from RedState.com put it--"a bridge too far", when he basically implied that debate moderator Megyn Kelly was hard on him because she was having her period. (Trump insists he was referring to bleeding out the "nose" and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a "deviant". As a grown person, I certainly don't believe he meant "nose" and am pretty sure he's calling an awful lot of grown people "deviants" right now.)

This is, as I have called this primary before--cuckoo bananas. With a handful of comments directed at Fox News, he's got his followers turned against Megyn Kelly, a smart conservative broadcaster whose centerfold looks and lawyer's instinct have made her pretty popular (and she is receiving an enormous amount of sexist shit right now)and Erickson, an influential conservative blogger who is nobody's idea of a champion of political correctness, might as well be a born-again social justice warrior in the eyes of some Trump folks.

Well, um. That escalated quickly.

But the result is, Trump gets talked about incessantly--again. He's, as the Charlie Sheen Hashtag put it #winning. Or maybe, a little bit more appropriately, as the old journalism saw says--"If it bleeds, it leads." I wonder if, anticipating that this is what Trump-style means to political news, it was this, and not Trump's prompting, that made former Mayor Giuliani (allegedly)contact Fox to request gentler treatment for The Donald.

It also makes me wonder a little bit about that call that was supposed to have taken place between Trump and Bill Clinton. I wasn't sure what to think about that before. I still don't exactly know. But I wonder if ol' Bill didn't tell him, "You may not be the leader that the GOP needs right now, but you sure are the leader they deserve." And then he hung up. Then he laughed.

Brooks can't lift Coates' Hat

Because David Brooks is a columnist of the paper of record, NYT, I think that their endorsement of him because of the content of what he writes is an endorsement of the quality of his output. In other words--I think they truly believe he produces quality content, despite the degree to which he serves as fodder for the Left, who mostly deride his privileged viewpoint and decry his generalizations about things according to his own limited and privileged perspective.

And, although I know scholars like Driftglass or Charles Pierce might do far better, I think I have to address the stupidity that is Brooks thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates. While white, like he could be anything but? I have but one statement to really address:

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.

What constitutes "excessive realism"? Because, for black Americans, the US is comparable to Rwanda.

It would make sense for awake people to want to review that problem with as much realism as they needed. Because while David Brooks might be looking at Ta-Nehisi Coates' life to try and understand why this pessimism exists, maybe he needs to look at the story of Sandra Bland. The whole future was ahead of her. But then something happened to derail that.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it explode? Is it "excessive realism" that traps people? Or is it the grind of history being too real? Is it what happens to black girls when the rainbow is definitely not enough? Is it history? Is it something we all need to look at?

I think Brooks needs to get that his privilege isn't just a geas on how we talk about it--it's how we do something about it. Because if we don't-- The acid isn't realism--the acid is racism. The anger of awake people about what is eroding their future isn't a dissolution of a dream--but an awareness of what destroys all dreams on contact. We can not sleep on it, any of us. We need to read what is current, and act.

Something About Jeb Bush

It was a couple months ago that I had to ask the question, "Does Jeb Bush want to be President?" because he didn't seem to have come prepared, with clear talking points, strong answers, or the ability to clearly separate himself from his father and brother's respective records.

Jeb Bush is trying, to the extent that he is trying to be anything other than a cash-raising machine, to be an all-around acceptable guy. He wants Liberty University to love him. (But really? Dude, they saw Ted Cruz first.) He wants moderates and pro-immigration reform people to love him.

But even though he says he's his own man, he still wants his family to love him, so he would invade Iraq just like big brother and Poppy before him did. Even knowing what he knows now. As Laura Ingraham, who is never shy with her opinions (and whom I got real pissed about this one time when she went all "mean girls" on Meghan McCain) put it--

There is something wrong with Jeb Bush. 

Um--I concur. I just don't think that's the response you give when you're trying to win. So many people by now have abandoned the idea that the Iraq War 2 was really about anything at all. People are literally calling the decision Bush43 made to invade Iraq one of the worst foreign policy ideas ever. He's had since 2003 to think about how he would answer that question having gotten an opportunity to run, and he's going to just agree with it?

There's family loyalty, and then there's looking like you have either lost the plot or never had it to begin with.

Yep. This week I said something good about a George Will column, gave a slight backhand to Sy Hersh, and agreed with Laura Ingraham. The week is still young. What the hell am I about?

George Will Writes a Good One

I usually have deep reservations about what George Will writes, and not altogether on the sole basis of the lack of overlap between our respective ideologies. I've found him impossible on the subject of climate change and in general don't agree with him on most (but not all) economic issues. But regarding former AR Governor Mike Huckabee, I think he voices what is also my chief concern with him:

Huckabee was unsurprised when a lunatic murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” So, the slaughter was a consequence of the 1962 Supreme Court decision against government schools administering prayers? Was the 2012 massacre of 12 people at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater caused by insufficient praying at America’s cineplexes? (Gosh, that part is apt--Vixen)

Today, Huckabee says, “We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity,” and he asserts a biblical duty to pray for the Supreme Court justices pondering the matter of same-sex marriages. Politico recently reported that Huckabee told some conservative pastors that “he cringes whenever he hears people call a court decision ‘the law of the land.’ ” He added: “This is not that complicated. There are three branches of government, not one.” To radio host Hugh Hewitt, Huckabee further explained his rejection of the idea of “judicial supremacy, where if the courts make a decision” it is “the law of the land”:

And D'Souza is D'Worst.

For fuck's sake, man, when something forms an angry, pus-filled head like that, you should probably get it looked at.

Is this Peak George Will?

So, this column makes me feel a little bit like I'm stuck in an absurdist sketch.

GW: When some people are living hand to mouth, we all do better.

VS: Well, except those living hand-to-mouth.

GW: But they get a raise when they shop at Walmart!

VS: With food stamps, that they hand over to employees who also qualify for food stamps.

GW: Low wages lower prices for all consumers.

VS: But wages obviously can go so low that one can't buy anything at all, no matter how cheap.

George F. Will is Not an Expert on Things.

One of the amusing things about punditry is it convinces the accepted class of mainstream commenters that their opinions on any and all things are valid and probably pretty damn smart.

George Will is an ancient and accepted pundit--and he is so wrong about stuff that Chris Wallace has to drag his ass up.  He unbelievably tries to say ebola is quasi-airborne because...nothing, on the FOX News Sunday show, and literally cannot be told he is wrong. Even the doctors he thinks he is quoting will go on to say he is wrong.

This is of a piece with his shtick though. Like, regarding climate change, where I have raked him over, he trots out the same things even though better brains than mine have said "Stahp".

He's made a spectacle of himself over rape culture to his detriment, and now, he wants to make a brand new spectacle of himself about ebola?

He is an expert about being a pundit who was mildly relevant in the 1980's. Please, Old Media, stop pretending he's relevant about anything else. He's very uninformed. He's like some 1950's sex manual recommending a cola douche for birth control. It's like, that level of embarrassing.

Welp--No good Obviously Comes From This.

I will be on Fox & Friends tomorrow morning at 7.00. Ebola and ISIS will be topics.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2014

I'm not really sure what The Donald's level of expertise is on the topic of Ebola or ISIS, but he reeeeeaaaallly likes criticizing the president, so, I dunno. I guess he will be doing that thing. Since he was the guy who suggested just letting ebola-stricken Americans die, I'm sure whatever he's planning on saying will be most illuminating.

But now that there has been a second person in Dallas diagnosed with this disease, it might not be a bad idea to look rationally at what has happened. For one thing, as I've mentioned before in the comments, the decision by ER staff at Texas Health Presbyterian to let Duncan go with just a prescription for antibiotics when his fever had spiked to 103 F strikes me as shocking. That's a dangerous fever--a person's kidneys could shut down! A person could experience seizures! I'm not sure why they turned him out for sure--but I suspect to some degree they weren't trained to look twice at what should have been a major warning sign that this guy needed immediate isolation and observation. The infection of the health care worker who tended to him appears to be due to a breach of protocol, and it seems like there is some question about whether this particular facility was equipped to handle this kind of case. (I think it bears thinking about that a health care worker became infected--but as yet, not a single one of his family in isolation show signs of the disease.)

Ben Stein, How Would Michael Brown Disarm?

 
 



Ben Stein certainly packs a lot of head-scratchers in his recent comments regarding Michael Brown being armed with his "incredibly strong, scary self."  But really, just as a thought:

How would Michael Brown disarm?  One can lay down a gun or a knife, but how does Michael Brown ever exactly lay aside his size, or the perception of being "scary" to...some people?

 

It seems like the argument we are having is whether this young man's body was inherently threatening. Another thought, then--

 

How would he ever have the "reach" on a gun from yards away?

What's the Worst that Could Happen?

So, I guess the obvious answer to Weekly Standard editor (he lose a bet?) and best argument against the heritability of intelligence, Bill Kristol, when he asks the question, "What's the harm?" in bombing ISIS for a few weeks is "We'll find out" because we have been bombing them. 

He doesn't seem to be aware of this. It's either that mentioning this fact would mess up the narrative that President Obama is doing nothing, or he geniunely does not pay attention to current events. And I would not be in a hurry to discount the latter notion. After all, he somehow was unaware that sectarian differences in Iraq would be a "thing", so it's possible the odd incredibly pertinent fact might get by him then and again.

But I feel comfortable in speculating that the "harm" would be in the possibility of large numbers of lost lives and destroyed infrastructure adding to the existing instability in the area, contributing to the disaffection of even more local people who would feel inclined to support any other faction, not necessarily because of hopes of good government, but because they've found another set of thugs who might be able to offer temporary protection. In the short-term sense of degrading ISIS' capabilities and possibly pushing back on the area they are able to control, sure, bombing is an option. (And I'm not opposed to those outcomes, frankly.) But let's not be glib. It won't be a long-term fix to the long-term screw-ups that resulted in a fractured and fractious region.

And that's just Iraq. Syria's government has amusingly advised Obama that the US should be very careful about unilaterally helping them with the wolf at their backdoor (and they will help! us! help! them!). Is it likely that Kristol's question has a much more complex answer than he seems to be comtemplating?

In a word: Damn.  As in, people are still listening to Bill Kristol?

Oh, Peggy, You've Spoiled my Illusions.

In one phrase:

This is how I think normal people are experiencing what is happening:

Nay, how speak thee for the norms, now, Peg O My Heart, when "normal" never encompassed the like of such a Stupor Mundane as this?

It's like you live in a house that's falling apart. The roof needs to be patched and there are squirrels in the attic, a hornet's nest in the eaves. The basement's wet. The walkway to the front door is cracked with grass growing through it. The old boiler is making funny sounds. On top of that it's always on your mind that you could lose your job tomorrow and must live within strict confines so you can meet the mortgage and pay the electric bill. You can't keep the place up and you're equal parts anxious, ashamed and angry. And then one morning you look outside and see . . . all these people standing on your property, looking at you, making some mute demand.

 

Little children looking lost—no one's taking care of them. Older ones settling in the garage, or working a window to the cellar. You call the cops. At first they don't come. Then they come and shout through a bull horn and take some of the kids and put them in a shelter a few blocks away. But more kids keep coming! You call your alderman and he says there's nothing he can do. Then he says wait, we're going to pass a bill and get more money to handle the crisis. You ask, "Does that mean the kids will go home?" He says no, but it may make things feel more orderly. You call the local TV station and they come do a report on your stoop and then they're gone, because really, what can they do, and after a few days it's getting to be an old story.

There's squirrels, there's hornets, and then there are traumatized migrant children. Just waves of infestations happening to normal people and the kinds of neighborhoods they live in--will an exterminator do something to get them off your lawn? No, not at any conceivable price. Vexing, I'm sure.

I'll Give this one to Ann Coulter

It's very rare that I ever agree with Ann Coulter (no kidding!), but she has a pretty good take-down of the McDaniel campaign's ongoing battle to get a "do-over" of the MS GOP primary run-off.  I mean, good, even if I have to roll my eyes a little at the "communist lunatic" bits. Here are the graphs that provide the take-away:

McDaniel's Sore Loser Brigade doesn't have half as strong a case as these guys did. In Dornan's case, it was worth the fight, inasmuch as he was running against a communist lunatic. In Mississippi, they're attempting to destroy a good Republican.

Cochran won the runoff by 7,667 votes, according to the certified vote count announced this week. McDaniel's partisans don't just have to prove that more than 7,000 ineligible voters went to the polls, but also that they all voted for Cochran, not McDaniel. Good luck with that.

George Will Has a Problem With Actual People

I have mentioned occasionally that George Will suffers as a pundit from not knowing whereof he speaks.  He does not recognize this as a problem himself, as a sufferer of privilege. When social justice/feminist bloggers like, uh, myself, talk about privilege, we're practically describing an affliction, because the reality in which someone like George Will, a healthy, educated, not impoverished, white male, has flourished, does not actually give him insight into how a lot of other people live. It isn't his fault, but it can't actually be said he's gone out of his way to ever remedy the experience he lacks by, like, listening to other people and giving their experiences credit above his own.

In Which I Can Not Help Myself, Because...Tengrain.

Okay, I don't like to pick on Ann Coulter because I don't think she is actually well and picking on the unwell is not my scene, but, when the rabid Electra of the tragic Right mourns for an entire nation laboring under the tyranny of hashtags, there really is no answer but to slink to her Slitherin level.

It seems like Ann Coulter was not quite the figure of fun she is now, once upon a memory of mine, but I am old enough to remember K-tel music compilations and learned to crawl on a textured carpet. Anyway, I am old enough to remember that her slide towards random trollhood is not so new.  And continues to be sad. This may have everything to do with her copy-pasta-ing the same refrain "libs commies bad, me like guns, mens" with new footnotes, which naturally challenge the dedicated reader to test her veracity/reading comprehension.

Her social media fail is hardly a surprise; it's only a surprise it went viral because who knew so many people still recognized Coulter as a force once to be dealt with, let alone one so necessary to flick at, as one would a fly, to this day.

And yet it must be said--we see you, dear. Yes, we do.

George Will Just Seems Extra-Insufferable Lately

I've commented on George Will before, but usually having to do with climate change--his denialism, for a supposedly smart person, is tiresome in its sheer repetitive belief that science somehow works like politics does. But to be pretty honest, on any forum he's been on, he has a habit of talking down as if he's a guy who knows things, so listen to his plausible bullshit, okay?

I think of it as "Willsplaining" for obvious reasons.

So I shrugged off his kind of "Hey, kid president, get off my White House lawn"  column of a few weeks back because--why yes, I did think it was pretty insulting to basically call the president childish, but on the other hand, I don't yet know what it's like to have a president who is younger than me, and I guess that might feel weird, huh? I mean, if Marco Rubio became president, he'd still be a whole year and a half older than me.  Maybe that is kind of a mindscrew. Who is this punk who uses the slang and has smoked the marijuana and thinks he is the boss of the country anyway, the whippersnapper? It's a generation gap thing. Maybe Will can't, like, relate.

But this thing here about putting down hashtag activism is pretty awkward in more than a few ways:

CHRIS WALLACE: I want to turn back to the kidnapping, the terrible kidnapping of these Nigerian schoolgirls in the little bit of time we have left in this segment. Because this week Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai joined the Bring Back Our Girls movement. More than 2 million people have now tweeted the hash tag. And George, I'm just curious. Because I'm not saying I was that familiar with this phenomenon. It's even got a name, #activism. And I'm curious what you make of it. Do you think that this is significant and helpful? And can make progress? Or do you think it's really about helping the people who tweet the hash tag feel better about themselves? 

GEORGE WILL: Exactly that. It's an exercise in self-esteem. I do not know how adults stand there facing a camera and say, bring back our girls. Are these barbarians in the wild of Nigeria are supposed to check their Twitter accounts and say, oh, Michelle Obama is very crossed with us, we better change our behavior. 

WALLACE: It's trending on Twitter. 

WILL: Power is the ability to achieve intended effects. And this is not intended to have any effect on the real world. It's a little bit like environmentalism has become. But the incandescent light bulb becomes the enemy. It has no effect whatever on the planet, but it makes people feel good about themselves.