Cup of Coffee: March 13, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

The Daily Briefing

Bobby Witt Jr. dodges a bullet

Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. got smacked in the left forearm by a 96 mph fastball yesterday but, luckily, X-rays were negative. He has a bruise and he's not expected to miss much time.

And no, I never would include a news item this trivial most days but (a) it was a profoundly slow baseball news day yesterday; and (b) his name coming up in a news item inspired an extraordinarily tangential thought and, what the hell, why not share it?

Mid-morning yesterday, around the time the existential angst started to set in – a now-daily occurrence now since we've returned to The Dark Times – I thought to myself that maybe the only way I'm gonna make it through all of this is to re-read all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. Yeah, I've read all of them at least twice, but he had a way of describing absurdity and horrors in a way that made you feel sane. Not better, mind you, but sane. "Yes, this thing that is happening is awful and crazy," Vonnegut basically told his readers, "and there is no real way out of it because it's all out of our control. But you know it is happening and I know it's happening and you and I are both sane, so at least we can dispense with the part where we question if this is our actual reality."

That feels important because, as I discuss in today's final item, feeling good or bad is almost secondary for me these days. I just want to stop feeling like I've O.D.'d on crazy pills. I think Vonnegut's particular brand of sage pessimism sprinkled with both fatalism and humor is the thing most likely to help me get there.

As for why this is relevant to a Bobby Witt Jr. news item, well, it's not, but they're both juniors, and it made me wonder about the juniors who choose to keep the "Jr." at the end of their names and those who don't.

Vonnegut was long-billed as "Kurt Vonnegut Jr." on his author page, but he stopped doing that in the mid-70s. His reasoning, if I remember correctly, was that by that point his father had been dead for 20 years, he himself was in his 50s, and there was really no use in the differentiation or the mild infantilization that the "Jr." signified. Maybe he could've dropped it in the 50s when his dad died, but he wasn't an established author at that point, so it didn't really matter yet.

Witt's father was pretty famous in baseball circles and, of course, he's plying the same trade, so I guess the Jr. still matters for him. But it's also the case that Bobby Witt Jr. is already better than his dad ever was and will no doubt greatly surpass his fame if he hasn't already. So eventually, won't we just call him "Bobby Witt?" The closest analog to those guys doesn't really help us, unfortunately, because Ken Griffey Jr. adopted "Junior" as a nickname, making it unthinkable that he'd ever shake it. I bet if he didn't, though, he'd just be "Ken Griffey" in our minds.

Did I mention it was a slow news day yesterday?

The Cubs and Dodgers are in Tokyo

Do you know how I know that?

Lookin' good, Justin. And thank you for leaving the cap on, as it totally makes the pic.

Again: did I mention it was a slow baseball news day yesterday?

Other Stuff

The Democrats are about to cave

On Tuesday the House passed a continuing resolution to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. The ball is now in the Senate's court. The Senate vote on the resolution proper will likely take place tomorrow but before it gets to that point there needs to be a cloture vote in which 60 Senators have agree to end debate (i.e. avoid a filibuster) and proceed to the substantive vote. That would require eight Democratic senators to vote for cloture, as one Republican Senator – Rand Paul – has said that he will not. The cloture vote could happen today. It could happen tomorrow. It's unclear. Obviously it's a fluid situation.

On Tuesday night and for most of yesterday it was sounding very much like enough Democrats would vote for cloture thereby enabling the substantive vote, which would pass given that all it requires is a majority and that Republicans have the 51 votes needed. Then, late yesterday afternoon Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that Republicans do not have the votes for cloture. Then after that things started getting really confusing and, at least by the time I went to bed last night, it seemed like the Democrats were just trying to look like they were fighting but were actually caving in a particularly stupid way. Go read Josh Marshall for the full explainer on that. It's absolutely stupid. Basically, the plan seems to be to give Republicans the cloture vote in exchange for a purely symbolic vote on a Democratic bill that is guaranteed to lose, after which Republicans will get everything they want.

And it pisses me off. Because I want the Democrats to force a government shutdown.

Yes, in normal times a government shutdown would be disastrous. But we're not in normal times. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are already dismantling the United States government. Thousands have been laid off. USAID is closed. Hundreds of billions in grant contracts for critical research – including cancer research – are frozen and will likely be scuttled. The Department of Education is, quite literally, being destroyed. All the bad things you usually want to avoid in a government shutdown are already happening.

If the Democrats were to hold firm and force Trump to face the possibility of a government shutdown, they would have the power to demand concessions or changes in behavior from the administration. They would have at least some leverage to hold Trump and Musk's feet to the fire. They could demand, in exchange for avoiding a shutdown, that Musk's illegal gutting of the government stop. And if Trump said no, well, have fun explaining to the public why the party which controls all three branches of the government can't govern. Would it necessarily play out like that? No, because I don't think Trump is a rational actor, but it'd absolutely be worth a shot. The point is that if you have power – and at the moment the Democrats still have at least some power – you have to use it or else what's the point of having it? One should not refuse to use one's only immediate point of leverage when one wishes to stop the rapid, ongoing, systematic destruction of the federal government.

Except it now seems pretty damn likely that the Democrats won't even try to use it. Worse, it appears as though they're going to try to pretend to be tough in an effort to take the heat off, but that the whole exercise is merely a cynical and cowardly performance. They're caving and they want you to think they're not.

Why are they caving? The arguments that I've seen circulated in favor of giving Trump his continuing resolution are not all that convincing. To the extent I can follow them, they roughly break down to "don't interfere with Trump while he's setting himself on fire" and "if we don't vote for the continuing resolution Trump will blame us!" Again, maybe in normal times those arguments make some sense but (a) Trump and Musk's very goal is to burn down the government, so frowning at him as he wields a flamethrower isn't exactly an win; and (b) they're going to blame Democrats for whatever bad things happen anyway.

Democrats' refusing to fight does nothing to change those things but it does a hell of a lot to communicate to their constituents that they're unwilling to take a single chance to do the right thing. Staring Trump down, however, and forcing him to either make concessions or explain why all hell is breaking loose on his watch would show just the opposite.

Ultimately, the "give Trump his continuing resolution" argument boils down to "just wait until the midterms, and then we'll rout 'em!" I agree that the Democrats will likely win in a big wave in the midterms, but given everything that's happening they're likely to win big regardless of what they do on this continuing resolution, as no voters are gonna hold an early 2025 government shutdown on them in the fall of 2026. Hell, given the speed with which Trump and Musk spread chaos, it'll likely be forgotten by next month. The difference is that if they fight now, and if they force some concessions out of Trump and Musk, there may actually be some semblance of a federal government left to govern come 2026. By not fighting they will give Trump and Musk months and months to burn the government to ashes with absolutely no opposition whatsoever.

Mostly, though, caving in is simply demoralizing. Democrats have spent the last couple of decades allowing Republicans to retain the tools of obstruction – the filibuster chief among them – by saying that it's critically important that they have the ability to stop an out-of-control majority if and when that time came. Well, it's fucking here. Trump and Musk have essentially nullified Article I of the Constitution. They're destroying governmental capacity with a meat-axe. They're fomenting a worldwide economic catastrophe. They're disappearing dissidents to black sites. If you're unwilling to use the filibuster as a means of stopping that – if you're unwilling to even attempt to poke at the eyes of the shark that's trying to eat you – what the hell fucking good is it? And what the hell fucking good are you? We can be eaten by a shark just as easily without you!

There is, functionally, no law right now. No Constitution. Trump has declared himself king and, his delusional state notwithstanding, no one has done a thing to make him stop. The Democrats have gotten a front-row look at this and, increasingly, the general public is getting wise to just how out of control Trump and Musk are. Call me crazy, but I think it's better to fight against that – and fight hard – than it is to retreat to reactive calculation, horseshit five-dimensional chess, the Sparknotes version of Sun Tzu, and prayers for a deus ex machina. Show some damn spine! Refuse to keep funding this administration and make them try to explain to the American people why they can't pay the country's bills. I assure you, the people in charge will take the heat for it, not you.

If they cave here they're cowards, the lot of them. If that happens we'll need a Democratic Tea Party to throw as many of these feckless losers out as we can and replace them with people who actually will fight for something. There'll be no moving forward otherwise. Hell, if Trump and Musk continue to go unchecked for six more months there may be no moving on no matter what happens.

America: still a world leader

Sure, America has aggressively attacked its closest friends and neighbors, it has abandoned countries and people in the most vulnerable of predicaments, and it has actively moved to befriend rogue states led by gangsters, but let NO ONE SAY that we are not still an example for others to emulate!

Proposals to restructure NHS England, with entire teams axed to save money and avoid duplication, could be replicated across a range of arm’s length bodies that spend about £353bn of public money.

Separately, No 10 and the Treasury are understood to be taking a close interest in proposals drawn up by Labour Together, a thinktank with close links to the government, to reshape the state under plans dubbed “project chainsaw”.

The project’s nickname is a reference to Elon Musk’s stunt wielding a chainsaw to symbolise controversial government cuts for Donald Trump’s administration.

With a name like that I'm sure that this represents a good faith desire to preserve the NHS and not a nihilistic effort to hamstring public services while enriching capital under the guise of efficiency.

The Golden Rule

A local news station in Virginia asked people for their opinions on Trump's trade war. Among the answers:

Dave Brat, a Senior VP at Liberty University, said today on a local news interview that the tariffs are following “reciprocity,” which he said is the Golden Rule: “whatever you do to us, we’re gonna do to you.”

I don't consider myself a Christian, but as someone who has studied the Bible and Christianity a good deal I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the Senior VP at the evangelical university – who, you should probably know, is a former Republican Congressman – seriously misunderstands the Golden Rule.

I will say, though, I am morbidly curious what this dude thinks the whole eye-for-an-eye thing means.

A "Poker Face" teaser is out!

We interrupt our usual reports from the American Dystopia to bring you a glimmer of good news:

Season 2 of "Poker Face" will fix me. Of that I am certain. I will be taking no questions about this at this time.

My room is a mess

I was a messy little kid there for a while. I didn't put my toys away. I didn't put my dirty clothes in the hamper. I didn't make my bed. The shades on my two bedroom windows were always uneven, neither really up nor down. The lampshade was always crooked. The overly-bright overhead light was always on whether I was in there or not. If I was told to clean my room I would shove everything in the closet and consider it a job well done.

Sometimes my mother would give in and clean my room for me. She wouldn't make a big deal out of it. I didn't even know she was going to do it. I'd just be outside playing. I'd go home when the streetlights came on, I'd go back to my room and I'd find things in perfect order. The bed made with the blanket turned down. The overhead light turned off and the soft light of the bedside lamp on. My room was warm, welcoming, and inviting. It was just waiting for me to go take my bath, put my pajamas on, and get under the covers. It was wonderful. Not because my mother had cleaned my room for me, but because my room had ceased being chaotic and had become peaceful. Orderly. Everything was in its right place.

I wasn't very old when I began to understand that I felt better when my room was ordered like that and that I felt anxious, excitable, grumpy, prone to tantrums when it was chaotic. To understand that if I wasn't feeling good about things for some reason I could clean and organize my personal space and that it'd calm my mind. To understand that, for me, there is a direct link between an ordered environment and an ordered mental state. My room was never really messy after I figured that out.

There are a lot of reasons I went to law school. Normally when I tell it I talk about how it was a function of my career uncertainty, an assessment of my best skills, and a desire to make a lot of money, but there was another reason too: I liked rules.

No, I was not a blind rule-follower or some sort of goody two-shoes. It wasn't like that. I just liked to be in situations for which the parameters were clear. To know what was expected and what I could expect. I liked sports because sports had rules which created a framework for understanding the game. I studied political science for much the same reason. Becoming a lawyer seemed like the logical next step. I ended up having a lot of other problems with the legal profession, but I always appreciated working in a rules-based world. A place where, no matter how chaotic things got or how far someone wanted to push it, one could always find a safe harbor and a touchstone in the law, in rules, and, usually, in reason.

I see a therapist every couple of weeks. He knows all about the peace/order/rules stuff. He's actually the one who helped me understand that about myself. I only went back and applied it to my clean room and my career choices after we discussed it, but it definitely all checks out. It also applies to a bunch of other stuff I do and think. My happiness and my mental state are dependent upon the minimization of chaos and clutter, be it literal or figurative. The existence of an ordered, understandable, and an at least to some degree predictable context.

I've tried not to unload my political agita on my therapist because it feels weird to do that, but last week I couldn't help myself. I dumped on him about Trump and Musk and all of that stuff has got me down. I figured it'd just be a vent session because, really, it's not like my therapist can fix all of the stuff those jackasses have broken, but he did have some insight. He told me that the substance of what's happening – this policy or that policy and the ascendence of values I abhor – are not the sole source of my unease and depression. Those things bother me, obviously, but I have encountered abhorrent views my whole life and I have the tools to advocate against them and in favor of what I believe in and against what I oppose.

What is beating my ass, he said, is the chaos. The mess that these people have created and the disruption and disorder they have sown. The fact that, increasingly, there are no rules, the laws aren't followed, and thus neither rules nor the law matter. Yes, everything that is happening is an affront to my values and my beliefs on a political level, but I've lived through that before. The fact that it's all happening in a context that has destroyed the means by which I understand and cope with the world, however, has pushed me towards a place of near existential crisis.

I can't find peace in a messy room. I can't find my personal gravity without some source of order. It's made thinking through all of this and pushing back against everything that's happening all the harder.

Have a great day everyone.