Colossus With Clay Feet?

The Speech, &tc.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the “regular” edition of The Quarter Inch, a mid-week short(ish) roundup on current events. Monday’s “unscheduled” edition wasn’t intended to replace the Wednesday edition.

First things first. The imminent arrival (March 17th) of The Bailey Band’s debut album means that you will have to indulge some shameless promotion for the foreseeable future. As you might already know or can surmise, it is incredibly difficult for artists to get heard in the mass marketplace. Back when legacy music studios controlled everything it was well-nigh impossible without going through those gatekeepers, and you would have thought that the democratization of the industry by way of digital streaming would make things easier for independent artists. Yes and no. Yes, it is relatively easy to get your music available; but the flood of indie artists doing so makes it all the more difficult to break through and get any kind of wider attention. There’s just more competition than ever.

There are all kinds of companies and websites offering “tools” for artists to promote and get their music heard; some are reputable, others are shameless scams. But there is one surefire thing artists actually have some influence over: their friends and fans listening to the music and sharing it. Grassroots is likely not sufficient to get the attention of the digital “algorithms” (as they call them), but it is highly necessary. So, in the coming weeks we’d be grateful if you’d give us a listen and pass it along to everyone you know. Don’t get us wrong; we are happy to write and record and perform music for our friends and family (though it is an expensive labor of love), but our music does have much wider appeal and we would like to tap into it if we can.

Our website has been revamped in preparation for the release. Feel free to browse around, but of particular interest is a new “Album” page that gives some backstory and fun facts about the actual songs. And—oh, yes!—there is a lot of really cool merchandize for sale. Thank you, and back to regularly scheduled programming.

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President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress last night and spoke for one hour and forty minutes. I assure you that the only people who watched for more than a fraction of that time are A) journalists and commentators getting paid to do so, and B) Trump’s most ardent and devoted fans. The purpose of the event is not, however, to hope that the masses tune in to listen to a coherent lengthy speech; it is to produce a tableau of bite-sized little video nuggets of Trump “owning the libs” to be carved up and spread around social media websites today. This is the social media presidency.

And the Democrats are just hopelessly stupid. For whatever reason (my guess is self-indulgent cosplaying as some world-historical “resistance” movement) they decided the best thing to do would be sit there, arms crossed, looking like they all just ate a particularly sour lemon, and refuse to applaud anything Trump said. And so Trump got his video clips of him celebrating a kid overcoming cancer and honoring the man killed by the bullet intended for him and women athletes harmed by “trans” opponents, with Democrats refusing to applaud any of it. That’s not a very bright political move. Jeff Blehar:

Which is when Trump deployed his own brutal, pre-planned countermove: He lectured the Democrats in the room over their inability to stand up and cheer for anything he does — out of the petty, partisan spitefulness of their Democratic hearts — and then proceeded to turn the rest of the night into an escalating series of challenges to them: “You won’t applaud for border safety? Okay, how about this 13-year-old brain cancer survivor who I just made an honorary Secret Service agent? You won’t clap for that? Okay, how about this kid who just had his acceptance to West Point announced live on-air? Still gonna hold out on me, eh?” It was a beautifully effective piece of jiu-jitsu, and Trump himself — otherwise notably low-energy yesterday night, because he was forced to stick to a script — visibly drew energy from the Democrats’ mulishly reflexive oppositionalism, and used it as a springboard for his best jokes.

The speech was a victory lap a whole whopping six weeks into his term. Sound and fury, and mostly signifying nothing. He’s got a few “wins” under his belt, for sure. Border crossings are basically at an all-time low. DEI reform is underway by way of executive action. On the downside, there are zero legislative (read: lasting) accomplishments (Congress just failed to pass a bill protecting women’s sports—an extremely popular measure) and Trump doubled down on his unshakeable conviction that all the countries of the world have been “ripping us off” (by, um, selling us things we want) and therefore he is going to make them (well, us) pay to rectify this injustice with tariffs.