Mailbucket #5: Who’s Groomin’ Who?

Also: A fraction of your 5,000 music emails

You know the drill: We get too many long/interesting/informed/hilarious emails to read out loud on our paying-subscriber Members Only episodes, hence these collections, which I lightly edit/format/respond to. (Previous editions: #1, #2, #3, #4.)

Before we get crack-a-lackin’, I noticed whilst compiling these that we’ve got a good recent batch of requests to provide various major career/life advices; enough to justify a whole M.O. on the genre. So: Email us (or even re-mail us) your life-decision dilemmas right now, and we’ll get to them next time ‘round. Onward:

From: Mark

Subject: My [redacted] Photo w/ Kristi Noem, and Notes

Date: May 18, 2024

Gents,

Attached [and deleted, for safety’s sake] is my photo with Gov. Noem back before she got "The Melania." This would have been December of 2020, so post-election, full-on Covid. Kmele is right, she was kinda hot. 

This was at a luncheon in Arlington, TX. At the time I didn't know anything about her. She gave some remarks, mostly about her non-lockdown policies in South Dakota, and I thought she was poised and sounded mostly sensible, although she had a distinct edge, which I attributed to her being a country girl. Having grown up in the country myself, I'm familiar with her type, and her type has an edge. You can see it in the eyes. Country girls are a little bit crazy, which makes them fun and very dangerous. 

Also at that luncheon was ... Corey Lewandowski. He wasn't there as an attendee, he was in her entourage. This was well before I'd heard anything about their alleged affair, but I got a sense at that time that something was weird. The way he watched her from the crowd -- leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, proud smile -- and the way she kept looking at him from the podium, as if yearning for his approval.... It was weird. Something father-daughter about it, but definitely more than that. 

There were some questions from the crowd about whether she was considering a run for the White House (remember this was Dec. 2020; it appeared to everyone that Trump was out and down), and she gave the kind of noncommittal response that told you she was definitely thinking about it, and I'm sure that her dalliance with Lewandowski had something to do with that. The two of them reeked of ambition. 

Was he grooming her? Was she using him? Could I have slipped in and hooked up with her that night? These are the thoughts swirling through my head as I watch her self-immolating in real time. 

P.S.: If you share this on the pod, don't use my real name plz. I'm in a serious relationship now and have definitely never been attracted to another woman ever. Promise. 

(Our lips are sealed, Mark! Speaking of which, your tale reminds me of the time I almost dared myself to bust a move with a former Bangle….)

***

From: Kelly

Subject: Nostalgia Overload, and Why the Kids Are All Right

Date: May 16, 2024

Hey boys,

I am a paid subscriber and have had lovely online interactions with both Matt and Kmele. (Kmele about the joys of introducing children to Stevie Wonder, and Matt many music tweets and general griping about Covid policies). I never understood why Moynihan ignored my @'s on Bird Internet until your Members Only #210 made it clear. All is forgiven.

I have always wanted to write, but never felt I had a great reason other than to thank you all for being a bright light in crazy times. After Ep. #210, the wave of nostalgia you induced was so profound I finally found my reason. Hearing you talk about "olden days" travel reminded me of the European road trip my husband and I took for our honeymoon in the mid-aughts. After a few missed turns in where-the-fuck-are-we, Austria, we found ourselves at the Innsbruck visitors center where the friendly employee booked us a room at a small B&B that might generously be described as "charming" but was actually "a dollhouse, but where murders might happen." We noticed some flyers for the IIHF World Championship that happened to be in town that very night. The U.S. was playing Latvia! What were the chances? 

Upon arriving at the game, it became quickly apparent that the whole of Latvia had been bussed in for this game. We made our way to our seats and realized that aside from the two young guys who worked at a nearby U.S. military base, we were THE ONLY AMERICANS IN THE ENTIRE ARENA. What's worse, the leering Latvians seemed to be acutely aware that we were THE ONLY AMERICANS IN THE ARENA. This subdued our enthusiasm substantially, even with a 3-1 victory for the USA. I never thought I'd be so relieved to find myself back at the dollhouse murder hotel.

When we regale our kids with these stories, they are always fascinated by the fact that we used paper maps to navigate, went to "internet cafes" to check email, and didn't have Google Translate to help us out of sticky situations. Even with these amazing advances, we're still susceptible to the depths of despair Matt describes and any seasoned traveler will recognize. 

We now homeschool the kids for many reasons, but on top of the list is the ability to travel whenever and wherever we please. We want them to experience getting lost, sticking out, and feeling that deep despair every now and again. Now they get that sometimes going down that unplanned street may result in a killer bootleg. (More realistically, a really good ice cream shop.) The only thing they insist upon is that we "never fly coach." Who on earth taught them that???

Anyway, thank you all again for all that you do. Life is sweeter when I get a Fifth notification on my phone. 

Kelly

P.S.: Matt, I'm sorry. The Eagles fucking suck. 

(Dammit, Kelly, don’t make me do this…. No really, I am not a proselytizer. When people tell me The Beatles suck, I tend to say “right on” rather than talk another human out of their musical preferences, especially regarding the still-omnipresent. When I said on the podcast “Finally admit that the Eagles are great” or whatever, the implied but omitted phrase was “to myself.” I used to pretend to myself that anyone could certainly write and probably perform those harmonies, and the songs underneath them, maybe even do ‘em live, but … nah):

***

From: Scott A.

Subject: Record Stores, and Moynihan’s New Favourite [sic] Film

Date: May 15, 2024

My older brother had heavy metal cassettes in the ‘80s, which got us into music. We both hopped onto the "alternative" and grunge trends in the early ‘90s, but I really found my own thing when I saw Rancid play live just before their big explosion on MTV in 1994. I was 14, and I knew that punk rock was going to be my thing. It was fun to discover bands by reading the liner notes of albums to see which bands were being name-dropped in thank-you’s, or by tracking down original versions of covers.

The most enjoyable part of finding music was going to independent music stores and getting to know the staff and talking about music. A particular store in town was owned by a curmudgeonly rocker, and I ended up shopping [there] for almost 30 years. Once he'd warmed up to me, I'd find him bullying me into buying better albums that veered further and further into the weird corners of music. I'd pick out a bunch of contemporary punk records and he'd hand me ‘80s hardcore records, or British punk records, and tell me I was buying them. That slowly veered into him bullying me into buying soul, spiritual/experimental jazz, krautrock, noise, dub, psych, or pretty much anything that he'd loved to listen to at some point in his life. It was honestly one of the best and most fulfilling relationships I've ever had. Going into his store, talking about music, and coming home with something I'd never listened to was one of the great pleasures I've had in my life.

Napster was released in my final year of high school. I refused to buy into the digital music world, and just kept that record store experience going as long as I could. I think streaming and downloads have probably been a net good; people now have a much wider experience of music than when you had to be "in the know" … but I feel like a community has been lost as record stores have mostly closed. Getting recommendations from an actual human is far more rewarding than getting recommendations from an algorithm. The shop I went to closed during the pandemic, and I finally dipped my toes into streaming.

I'll end this with a trailer for a new movie that Moynihan is sure to love.

(Oh man, that trailer…. Your key sentence: “Getting recommendations from an actual human is far more rewarding than getting recommendations from an algorithm.” I am well past the frantic, life-or-death phase of constantly searching for new music, so Spotify’s everything store has actually been a boon, but even then not because of the algorithm, but because my friends [many of whom I’ve played music with for decades!] will say something like, “Have you ever heard of this forgotten cosmic country band called Sand?”  

I will say here, as alluded to in Firehose #93, that you people sent us SO VERY DAMN MANY emails about music after M.O. #210; just a treasure trove of recommendations. But instead of publishing all those emails here, and risk glazing out the eyeballs, I would just ask the authors to reprint them (perhaps in distilled form) in the comments to this post!)   

***

From: Alisa G.

Subject: Soros, Campus Protests, and Where Is All This Going?

Date: May 10, 2024

Hello dear Fifdom family: Dad, wayward cousin, and weird uncle who isn't Robbie Soave,

Not drinking because I get a tad emotional, and have done enough of that over the past seven months. Joined in Jan. 2021 (Kmele on Maher was my gateway to all of this), and became a paying sub shortly after, probably right after flying into Miami last minute to attend that legendary live show. 

I read this article by Park MacDougald on campus pro-Palestinian encampments and protests and their sponsors, which happen to be Soros-related NGOs (and others). What I struggle with understanding is to what end? I went searching for profile pieces to understand his ideological leanings and what is driving him, because it makes no logical sense to me. This NYT piece was quite charitable. 

Our dear friend Jamie Kirchick who is in our Israel support chat shared this piece he wrote, and it clarified a lot more (Matt's article is mentioned -- apparently Matt wrote about Eastern and Central Europe politics, the Soros/Orban connection -- shocker! /s). 

 “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” this erstwhile champion of American global power and the ideals of an open society wrote in 2007, “is the United States.” As for Islamic extremism, Soros saw a moral equivalence between the actions of groups like al-Qaeda and the democratic societies defending themselves against their depredations. “We abhor terrorists, because they kill innocent people for political goals,” he told Newsweek in 2006. “But by waging war on terror we are doing the same thing.” […]

“I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe,” he told The New Yorker in 1995, tacitly blaming other, unassimilated Jews for anti-Jewish bigotry. “The only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.” Soros has given scant money to Jewish causes; The New Republic in 1994 described an “aversion to financing Jewish organizations” and a “cynical” “view” of organized Jewry, an aversion and a view which seem not to have dissipated over the ensuing decades. As for the Jewish state, Soros believes pro-Israel advocates provoke anti-Semitism. “Attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views,” he has written. Speaking conspicuously in the third person plural, he told Connie Bruck, “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence—but I don’t want to be part of it.”

I'm still confused by the man. Am I missing something, and he is consistent in his ideologies? I was wondering if you had any more insights and could discuss his motivations in being not an anti-Zionist but anti-what? And to what end? 

Thank you for your service. Life's better with you in it. See you all soon (August) but Matt/Dad earlier on June 6th. 

Your Soviet Russian Israeli friend

(Shall we do a Matt/Soros bibliography, in chronological order, albeit with the sad realization that my ‘90s archive is inaccessible online? Why not:

December 2003, Reason: “Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a socialist, self-hating Jew.”

April 2004, Reason: “Temporary Doves: Why are the architects of Kosovo so down on Gulf War II?

October 2009, Reason: “Soros to Vanquish Whatever Market Fundamentalists He Can Still Find.”

August 2010, Reason: “I Guess it Depends on the Meaning of the Word 'Soros'”

November 2010, Reason: “Glenn Beck's Ridiculous Misreading of George Soros Might Not Be As Inappropriate As Busting a 14-Year-Old's Balls for How He Behaved During the Holocaust, But It Still Sets Back the Cause of Human Understanding.”

April 2011, Reason: “Politics Has Made George Soros Dumber.”

April 2012, Reason: “George Soros and Other Lefty Moneybags Types Aren't Primarying Lousy Old Democrats Because the Party Is More Ideologically Diverse! Wait, What?”

October 2018, The Atlantic: “Why the Right Loves to Hate George Soros: He’s a punching bag for resurgent populists worldwide, and has been for a quarter century.”

I’m sure there’s more lurking in some forgotten corners. To answer your question ass-backwards: 1) It doesn’t really matter what George Soros thinks anymore; dude’s 93 years old, and handed control over the Open Society Foundations (OSF) last year to his son Alexander (who BTW is canoodling with Huma Abedin). 2) Alex describes himself as “more political” than dad (including interest in abortion and “gender equity”); though he’s also a Bill Maher fan who thinks campus speech codes are dumb, as is constantly calling Trump voters racist. Perhaps more relevantly, 3) “Alex, by contrast, has visited Israel several times and he celebrates such Jewish religious holidays as Rosh Hashana and Passover, which his father doesn’t,” 4) he wrote a piece in January titled, “Open Society’s Fight Against Antisemitism,” and 5) is in the process of a pretty big OSF reorganization, including slashing 40 percent of staff. My hunch is that he’ll be a tad less global, and be more keyed in on messaging that allows Democrats to win presidential elections.

But to actually address your question, everything from George Soros flows from his pet Theory of Reflexivity, which assumes that markets and behavior are typically based not on perfect rationality but rather a distorted feedback loop of irrationality. He just so happens to have concluded during George W. Bush’s first term that the biggest distorting “bubble” out there was the one caused by “American supremacy,” and its economics-profession handmaiden, “market fundamentalism.” Since neoconservatives were the worst sinners in this regard, he reoriented his life’s work toward bursting their bubble, in addition to continuing his previous (and far more noble, if still flawed) work of building up civil society institutions in formerly communist countries. Somewhere in this process he goosed the work of Human Rights Watch, valuing its role as an intentional corrective to the Washington Consensus about the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

In his more lucid moments (including when I interviewed him for United Press International in 1993), he has recognized that his philanthropical dollars creates all sorts of distortional effects of their own, as people try to tell him what they think he wants to hear, and cling to their sinecures as a balm for their own political failures. More commonly, and especially as he began building up domestic “mirror” institutions, such as Media Matters, to combat the Right, he mostly let the degradations of political combat pile up and cloud his vision.  

To be charitable, statements like “I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe” can sound not a small amount like what Kmele says about inherited identities. And at George’s best, he can be almost gleefully self-critical, as if he was seeking arbitrage gains by identifying early his own distortions. (Such musings are often near those moments in which his behavior is labeled as being a “self-hating Jew.”)

But more than anything, I reckon, he has long since lost the ability/interest to manage how his political/philanthropical money is thrown around inside America. Alex seems a little more conscious, if more of a Democratic tribalist himself. These are all just my half-educated guesses, of course.)

***

From: Jonathan

Subject: Legalize Adderall (Neuropsychologist’s Perspective)

Date: May 3, 2024

Gentlemen, I'll keep it relatively quick/bulleted.

* Before subspecializing, I saw a lot of ADHD, and this still comprises about 30-40% of my cases. I actually wish it weren't so, but in my region, I'm viewed as the guy who will say “no” to patients regarding ADHD diagnosis, so I get sent a lot from referrers.

* I have published a bit on ADHD and continue to peer-review for journals such as Journal of Attention Disorders, though my current research is mostly focused on other things.

* ADHD does seem to have increased recently, including referrals.

* But, ADHD is almost certainly the combination of a number of traits, all of which fall on a spectrum and are not taxometric. So as cultural contexts change, so too can the diagnosis/prevalence; it's a useful falsehood to say you "have" or "do not have" this for medical systems/diagnoses, but it gives the false impression that only those who "have it" would benefit from the medication -- most people improve cognitively on stimulants (this point matters later).

* I have ADHD (legit, every co-worker I've ever had has commented), and out of fear only recently started stimulant meds -- I cannot believe how helpful it is when used in a targeted manner, and I've come to believe most people with highly demanding jobs should consider experimenting with its use.

* Adderall arguably has a smaller risk profile than alcohol.

* Let's just ... legalize this? 

(I honestly can’t remember whether we read a selection from this on M.O. #209 or not, but anyway, here is some tasty specialist testimony in full!

Thus endeth the fifth Fifth Mailbucket! Final reminder: Email us your deep life advice questions!)