I Am Pro-Ballroom. (But Please Don't Unsubscribe From This Newsletter. Thanks.)

Orange man bad, yes, but in terms of the ballroom, have to hand it to him.

I made this image myself. No AI necessary. Just pure Photoshop talent.

The East Wing, it is no more. Sleeps with the fishes, it does!

And the children, they are devastated. Their parents, too. And the childless. The orphans are probably fine. They have real problems to worry about.

But people without real problems to worry about are damn near inconsolable!

Take one particular childless lunatic, for example: Will Stancil.

Bru, come on.

He’s the most “notable” person I saw run with this point, but there were lots of random nobodies on social media saying that Trump just did what Osama bin Laden only dreamed of: demolishing the White House.

Take a pill.

For one thing, the distinctive characteristic of terrorism is not “building go down.” It’s “building go down unexpectedly while filled with civilians in an act of politically motivated mass murder”—and, crucially, the terrorist doesn’t replace it with a nicer, more functional space afterward.

And again, let’s clarify what we’re talking about here: the East Wing. Not the West Wing. Not the Residence. The East Wing. If a terrorist blew up the East Wing, his boss at Terrorism HQ would say, “Goddammit, I knew he was going to fuck it up.” It’s the architectural equivalent of missing the target. If 9/11 had hit only WTC 7 and left the Twin Towers untouched, we’d call it “Close, but no cigar, Osama.”

The nature of the physical universe is such that to build a new thing where an old thing stands, one must first demolish the old thing. This is a temporary state of disorder.

Equating this thing with terrorism at all in any way is the sort of thing where, if you do it sober multiple times, you’re going to get a reputation! People start to talk. “This guy ain’t all there,” they’ll say.

Let’s back up for a second. Beep Beep Beep.

I haven’t gotten to write a post like this in a while because Trump 2.0 has, in fact, been worse than Trump 1.0. Unlike the first time around, there have not been many occasions this year when I thought, “calm down, dummies.” I’ve disagreed with how people go about voicing their frustrations or the extent of their outrage, but for the most part, I agree that the stuff he’s done this year has actually been bad. It’s basically just been disagreements of degree, which don’t really get my blood pumping.

It’s been a little disappointing for me because, I mean, this Substack is literally called CALM DOWN.

But after thinking about it for much of this week, I am happy to announce that I have concluded not only that people need to calm down about the ballroom, but that the ballroom is good.

Why Is The Ballroom Good, Ben, You Fucking Collaborator Moron?

I’ll tell you why, friend whose insulting tone I’m not taking personally!