Do you know what the Streisand effect is? It has nothing to do with singing but is relevant to efforts to hide the truth. By Hal M. Brown

 

Click here to enlarge the original image of Barbra Streisand's cliff-top residence in Malibu which she attempted to suppress in 2003 to full size. 

I didn't know what The Streisand effect was until I read this on BlueSky:

Click above to enlarge.

Here's an explanation of what the Streisand effect is:

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. 

The effect is named for American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attorney attempted in 2003 to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California, inadvertently drawing far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph. The effect exemplifies psychological reactance, in which the attempt to hide information instead makes it more interesting to seek out and propagate.

Attempts to suppress information are often made through cease-and-desist letters, but instead of being suppressed, the information sometimes receives extensive publicity, as well as the creation of media such as videos and spoof songs, which can be mirrored on the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks. In addition, seeking or obtaining an injunction to prohibit something from being published or to remove something that is already published can lead to increased publicity of the published work.

The Streisand effect is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to acquire and spread it.

Read numerous examples and the back story with Streisand on Wikipedia here.

In the past few days we have Trump making a last ditch effort to stop the release of Jack Smith's report. Trump’s lawyers said they reviewed a two-volume draft copy over the weekend. The question anyone following this should be asking is what is in the report that they don't want the public to know about.  There are no doubt many people who thought that the entire Jack Smith matter was done and dusted. Now Trump's efforts may pique their interest whether or not it is ever released.

Trump, through his lawyers, also tried unsuccesfully to stop the sentencing in the E. Jean Carroll trial.  This can have the same effect.

As long as we have the semblence of a free press everything Trump is going to do to try to censor the news will make the news. This doesn't only apply to Trump. It was reported today that Mark Zuckerberg is going to stop independent fact checking on Facebook and Instagram.This has already led to an accusation that he on of the oligarchs showing fealty to Trump. 

Last week Jeff Bezos wouldn't allow an Ann Telnais editorial cartoon showing him and other billionaires bring money to Trump. This led to a huge media and public reaction against a media mogul .

The danger with Trump is that he could succesfully hide information so nobody ever finds out that he's hiding it. This can only be done in a complete dictatorship where the press is totally controlled. The Streisand effect only works when the attempt to suppress information is done in secret. Fortunately you can't do this by filing lawsuits. It can be done in the intelligence community. The planning for the raid to kill bin Laden is an example.  Many military and national security operations illustrate this. The Manhattan Project and D-Day are other examples.

Trump will obviously try to make his administration leak-proof. He will always want to control the flow of information. If the past is prologue, Trump's administration will leak like a sieve.  If he tries to use the legal system to manipulate public opinion there is a good chance the effort will backfire.  

The more noise Trump makes about something being fake news the more likely it is to be fact-checked regardless, and often because of, efforts to stop fact-checking.  

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Jan. 6th: The start of the second great experiment in American democracy is about to be certified. Something wicked this way comes. By Hal M. Brown

The United States is about to embark on its second great national experiment with Donald Trump being certified as the winner of the 2024 election as president. Very possibly this will mean Project 2025 will be initiated laying out the guiding principles of his administration. (Click above to enlarge)

There's nothing astonishingly original in my saying this. Critics of Trump and Trumpism have been saying this for over a year. To be candid, in writing today's blog I just wanted to have an excuse to use the illustration I put together. My fear that this experiment may represent the death knell for democracy is expressed in the illustration. 

You now doubt know that Benjamin Franklin, when asked whether the federal constitution of 1787 established a monarchy or a republic famously said  “ a republic, if you can keep it.” George Washington, in his first inaugural address, described the “republican model of government” as an “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

There should be no need to remind Americans that our democracy has been considered an experiment since the nation was founded. A good article about this is "Why Franklin, Washington and Lincoln considered American democracy an ‘experiment’ – and were unsure if it would survive" by Thomas Coens. 

The country has survived as a democracy, even through Trump's first admisntration. It has never had a president like a supercharged Donald Trump. There was never a playbook like Project 2025. Trump appears to be following this. We can judge this by his statments and his nominations. There is plan afoot to change the fundamental way our country is governed.  This made me think of the Ray Bradbury novel "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

Above, one  of the many covers of the book.

Here's a summary of the novel from Wikipedia:

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 dark fantasy novel by Ray Bradbury, and the second book in his Green Town Trilogy. It is about two 13-year-old best friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and their nightmarish experience with a traveling carnival that comes to their Midwestern home, Green Town, Illinois, on October 24. In dealing with the creepy figures of this carnival, the boys learn how to combat fear. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those it enslaves. Mr. Dark's presence is countered by that of Will's father, Charles Halloway, the janitor of the town library, who harbors his own secret fear of growing older because he feels he is too old to be Will's dad.

The novel combines elements of fantasy and horror, analyzing the conflicting natures of good and evil that exist within all individuals. 

The title comes from the line  in Macbeth said by the three witches. Consider what the witches represent (also from Wikipedia): 

The Three Witches represent evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. They appear to have a warped sense of morality, deeming seemingly terrible acts to be moral, kind or right, such as helping one another to ruin the journey of a sailor. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traitor and rebel that can be". They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world

I shouldn't have to elaborate about why the witches and the Bradbury novel's plot reminds me of what kind of carnival Trump will bring to town.

We may remain a democracy through Trump's administration, although if he achieves half of what he has said he wants to accomplish we will be perilously close to becoming a dictatorship. 

We may end up having tanks on both our borders and deputized Trump vigilantes with AR-15s making sure only the purest of pure are allowed entry.

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In two years let's hope voters realize Trump is a modern Fiji mermaid, by Hal M. Brown

I began to write today's blog after reading this:

I made this llustration using AI:

You can read about how the panel on "Morning Joe" reacted to the leak here.

This was supposedly leaked to NBC News. I wonder if  John Barron "leaked" what Trump said. After all, Trump wants to rub the lib's noses in the fact that he is about to bring these henchmen back into power. I don't have a way to know if it was John Barron (aka Donald Trump) who made sure the press reported this or someone was told to do it. There might have been a true leaker at the gathering. In a way I hope it is the latter since the more things that make Trump paranoid the better as far as I'm concerned.

On "Morning Joe" Michael Steele said "What was the sense in this room, what was the purpose of this gathering, is it just an in-your-face-moment or just a tale of things to come?"

I think this was both. I think it was a deliberate in-your-face moment which was leaked on purpose and is a tale of more things to come. Trump is an in-your-face, thumb-in-your-eye, and giving his enemies the finger personality type. 

I agree with everything co-host Symone Sanders Townsend said, but I disagree with the last part (highlighted):

"Let's just say –– let's just put a finer point on it, this is sickening!" she exclaimed. "This is sickening, I am sick. Peter Navarro, Jeffrey Clark, the people that went to the Capitol to take up arms against the United States government, because the president at the time lied to them, that's what happened." 

"Those are not patriots," she continued. "What Donald Trump did last night is a disgrace to the country and Constitution, and the fact that they didn't tell anybody about it lets you know that they knew what they were doing was untoward, and they wanted to do it anyway."

I think Trump wanted to have a private gathering where he and his pals could gloat over their victory, but then "leaked" that they did this. 

Unless Trump is clinically delusional he knows that he doesn't have a mandate to turn the country into a ruthless dictatorship. This enhances his pleasure over being able to use the power of the presidency, a slim majority in Congress, and a conservative controlled Supreme Court to achieve his goals.

Above is the blog up to the point where I thought of comparing Trump to P.T. Barnum who had his own sideshow.  Then I went on with a new focus.

Trump is like a modern P.T. Barnum. I am sure he congratulates himself for being able to pull off a hoax, the bigger the better. 

Barnum convinced people that the Fiji mermaid (original fake on the left) was real. He had nothing on Trump. 

Trump sold just enough voters that he could give them what they wanted because of some magical and unique personal power. We should have seen this coming when he won the first time even after the Access Hollywood tapes came out.

In this election we should have known he could do this when he turned a mugshot into a marketing success. We certainly should have known that he'd win when he not only survived the first assassination attempt, but gave the world the defiant fist raised money shot photos. 

Our hope is that before the next election people will have realized that Trump himself is a version of the Fiji mermaid. 

Below: Original photo I changed for blog illustration.

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My take on The Washington Post spiking an Ann Telnais editorial cartoon and her quitting in protest, by Hal M. Brown

 

Above is my way of expressing what RawStory conveyed in the illustration for 

WaPo staffer resigns after paper spikes cartoon that jabbed billionaires cozying to Trump

Ann Telnaes is one of my favorite editorial cartoonists. Her overseers at The Washington Post spiked a cartoon for expressing an opinion they objected to. Then she resigned in protest.

Ironically, now more people will see the cartoon than would have seen it in the Post. They spiked her, but in the other meaning of the word, interest in her work will no doubt spike. I for one just subscribed to her substack (here.)

This is her column reacting to her cartoon being rejected.

The cartoon depicted Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner bringing bags of cash to Trump. I doubt too many people would be able to identify all, or even any of them, from the drawing. She didn't even need to draw Trump's face since it is obvious who he is from the fat belly and long tie. 

The brilliant part of the cartoon as far as I'm concerned is the dead Mickey Mouse. I am sure it representing cartoons in general. It was drawn in color. I have no doubt many cartoonists of all kinds were inspired as children to take up their profession by Disney. Before beginning her career as an editorial cartoonist, she worked for several years as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering (reference). 

I have been active on BlueSky for over a month but I didn't know that Ann Telnaes was also there. Now I am following her.

Below are the BlueSky posts from three well known people (click to enlarge).

  Thanks to Telnaise I know know that there's a Freedom Cartoonists Organization (she's on their advisory board) and an organization called Cartoonists Rights (she's a former member of their board).

On a personal note, I am a frustrated cartoonist who aspired to draw cartoons for The New Yorker, which my parents subscribed to, when I was a child. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw very well. Now, with the advent of AI, as my readers know I like to use it and photo manipulation technology to make illustrations for my blogs. 

The only good thing that I see coming out of this is that this kind of censorship by media oligarchs doesn't go unnoticed. In the old days before social media and the internet few people would ever know about something that wasn't published.

How many people, for example, would have known that the Los Angeles Times was owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong who was behind its refusal to make a presidential endorsement? He met privately with Trump during between 2016–2017 in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a position in the administration.

When The Washington Post editors weren't allowed by Jeff Bezos to endorse a candidate and staff members resigned in protest, their disappearance might have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for social media and the internet.

Ann wrote in her substack  "I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist." She wrong. It isn't being dismissed and it is causing a stir. Here's the Google News search for the story. Click below to enlarge image.

It even was reported on in The New York Times which doesn't even have a regularly pubished editorial cartoonist.

It must be noted that when The New York Times stopped publishing editorial cartoons in 2019 The Washington Post published The New York Times cuts all political cartoons, and cartoonists are not happy.

Excerpt:

Some political artists view the Times’s decision to end daily political cartoons as a repudiation of the art form.

“It is their clarity and pointedness, the sharpness of their satire, that make them such powerful vehicles for expressing opinion,” Association of American Editorial Cartoonists President Kevin Siers, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer, said in a statement Tuesday.

“There is no ‘on the other hand’ in an editorial cartoon,” the AAEC continued. “This power, understandably, makes editors nervous, but to completely discontinue their use is letting anxiety slide into cowardice.”

Speaking to the larger landscape, Matt Wuerker, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for Politico, said: “The collapsing space for political cartoons and satirical commentary because editors don’t have the spine to stand up to social-media outrage campaigns is bad for free speech, and bad because political debate benefits from a little humor now and again."

Taking a similar view on the bigger issue is Daryl Cagle, head of the syndicate Cagle Cartoons, which distributes Chappatte’s (he published in the International Times) work to about 800 subscribing clients.

“By choosing not to print editorial cartoons in the future, the Times can be sure that their editors will never again make a poor cartoon choice,” Cagle said. “Editors at the Times have also made poor choices of words in the past. I would suggest that the Times should also choose not to print words in the future — just to be on the safe side.”

There have been quite a few cartoons depicting the Statue of Liberty crying over the loss of democracy in the United States. My own idea for a cartoon about the death of a vital part of our democracy, Freedom of the Press, is a graveyard with a flag flying at half-staff with tombstones with the names of the publications whose content is controlled the corporate owners.

This is Ann's website.

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Am I the only anti-Trump shrink who thinks Trump may not have dementia? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Many mental health professionals are absolutely, positively convinced Trump has dementia. I seem like a lone voice among them saying we need more evidence. 

Most mental health professionals who are saying this are not neurologists, let alone neurologists who specialize in dementia. 

I am not an expert, but because I live in a continuing care retirement community I have seen a lot of people with dementia in all stages. 

In my training there was no mention of considering dementia in making a differential diagnosis. In my 40 years of practice I never treated anyone with dementia. I did, however, have three clients who I thought had temporal lobe epilepsy which I knew about having read the book "Seized" by Eve LaPlante. I referred them to a behavioral neurologist who did sleep deprived EEGs with them and it turned out two of the three did have this disorder. When I began practice nobody was conversant about another brain disorder, the autism spectrum. My point is that mental health professionals must be aware that there are sometimes physiological and neurological explanations for behavior. This certainly applies to trying to discern explanations for what seems to be aberrant behavior in Trump. The unanswered question is whether is this behavior psychological, physiological, or a combinaiton of the two.

I have seen the  photos and illustrations of Trump's leaning forward posture countless times as if this was absolute proof of dementia. Lots of people his age stand that way at times. 

His word salad could be an indication of mania, not dementia, or it could be, as he claims, a kind of improv which he calls the weave. 

Many mental health professionals are digging in on the Trump dementia position. I think this is, in a way, wishful thinking couched in science.

We, meaning shrinks, have all the evidence we need to say Trump is a malignant narcissist, but then perhaps desperate to find more to justify saying Trump is unfit, they added dementia to bolster the argument that he was dangerous. I think mental health professionals need to be more self-critical and open minded in our judgments and not succumb to confirmation bias. It is easy to cherry pick from all the evidence when there's so much Trump, Trump, Trump just about every hour of the day.

Is anybody keeping track of every bit of Trump's behavior to find indications that he doesn't have dementia?

We have ample examples of Trump going on for one or two hours without exhibiting any unambiguous signs of dementia. Much of his extemporaneous sidetracking can just as easily be considered a manifestation of his malignant narcissism as of dementia.

There's currently a Change.org petition online  "Our Diagnostic Impression of Trump is Probable Dementia: For Licensed Professionals Only."

The petition begins:

We, the undersigned licensed medical and mental health professionals (INCLUDE YOUR ADVANCED DEGREE IN YOUR LAST NAME WITH NO PUNCTUATION) concur: From our years of training and experience, we are convinced that, while a definitive diagnosis would require further testing, Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills. 

I highlighted the part that jumps out at me. First, the "years of training and experience" should apply to those who were in fields like neurology, particularly behavioral neurology, and neurosciense. It is true that a definitive diagnosis would require testing, however the use of the word "unmistakable" along with "strongly suggesting" shows a bias. Leave that word out and I can accept this sentence.

The petition then goes on to list diagnostic indices in these categories:

1) Decline from baseline

2) Memory:

3) Language

4) Motor:

5) Behavior: 

The list reads like someone went over a text on dementia and then found things in Trump's behavior and managed to make a case that he had this disorder. It wasn't that long ago that splotches seen on Trump's hands during the E. Jean Carroll led to rampant speculation that he had syphillis. Even before that the syphillis theory was in the news and no social media. This was from 2017: Trump’s ‘Unhinged’ Behavior Could Be Due To ‘Untreated Syphilis,’ Expert Claims. 

There is a reasonably good case to be made that Trump might be suffering from some stage of dementia. However, reasonably good isn't good enough as far as I am concerned.

I think the list lacks the scientific rigor necessary to reach a foregone conclusion. This being said, I agree with the conclusion whether or not he has dementia:

This represents a unique danger because of Trump's pre-existing Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. As he continues to deteriorate he will become even more erratic, impulsive, paranoid, and aggressive than he already is. A demented malignant narcissist as president of the United States would have unimaginably catastrophic consequences.

Not only is Trump unfit, but he cognitively incapable of carrying out the duties of president. Under normal circumstances, relatives of such a patient would be seeking consultation with experts, and considering long term care, as he continues to deteriorate.

We feel an ethical obligation to warn the public, and urge the media to cover this national emergency.

The media must report objectively on anything that suggests Trump may have a cognitive impairment and bring in true experts from the appropriate fields. We can't allow another Goldwater Rule fiasco to occur. When there were obvious examples of his being  a malignant narcissist and mental health professionals spoke up about this  they were debunked by many and accused of breaking some sacrosanct professional rule. 

Anti-Trumpers who make the news warning about the dangers of Trump wielding the power of the presidency have been accused of having a psychiatric disorder the name of which has been used to discredit them. You know what it is: Trump derangement syndrome. We must not feed into this narrative.

When mental health professionals go public about the possiblity that Trump has dementia they must do this by emphasizing that this is a possiblity not a certainty. They must write or speak with gravitas and always allow for the chance that they are wrong. 

Time will be the ultimate decider regarding this since dementia always gets worse. There may come a time during his presidency that his symptoms are so obvious you don't need to be an expert in dementia to reach this conclusion.

This is when the 25th Amendment becomes a real possibility. Then we will be dealing with J.D. Vance. Nobody has suggested he has dementia.

More of my thoughts on this subject:

 If Trump has dementia it might be a kind doctors have never seen. Call it weaveheimers. If not, the weave may be as brilliant as he says it is.

This was in Salon (I'm the clinical social worker in the title): Clinical social worker: "With the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia"

I also wrote I’m not the only mental health professional who says that Trump needs a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.

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