- Losing My Perspicacity
- Posts
- Losing My Perspicacity, August 22, 2025
Losing My Perspicacity, August 22, 2025
Why the Cubs should comment on Charlie Kirk posing for photos with two players
Julie DiCaro
August 22, 2025
Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for reading this morning.
Back when I first made the switch from practicing law to covering sports, experienced sports writers told me that, eventually, I’d stop being a fan of the teams I covered. That seemed ridiculous to me, right up until the Chicago Cubs, my very favorite team, managed to kill my love for baseball almost entirely.
It’s naive, I suppose, to think you can see how the sausage is made and still feel the same way you did before the curtain was pulled back to reveal that the Great and Powerful Oz is just a guy in a suit working some levers and a smoke machine. Anyway, I’ve talked multiple times about how often the Cubs complained to my boss, so I won’t go into it again.
However, I feel bad for all the fans who are legitimately upset by seeing Cubs players Matt Shaw and Michael Busch posing for pictures, on the field no less, with right-wing racist, sexist, antisemite, and provocateur Charlie Kirk.
If you don’t know who Charlie Kirk is, he’s the little twerp all of Twitter used to laugh at for being a wannabe Rush Limbaugh. Then, suddenly, Trump was in the White House, and Charlie Kirk was somehow being treated as a legitimate voice on the right. Wild. Listing all of his racist, sexist, xenophobic takes would use up too much of our time, but here are two quotes that I think are illustrative of his schtick:
“MLK was awful,” Kirk said. “He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe.”
***
“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at America Fest. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
He also thinks women need to get married and start having more kids earlier in life, and is a documented bigot when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. I probably don’t have to tell you that he’s also a 2020 election denier. That Charlie Kirk is now an influential person in American politics is damning of our entire political system.
Kirk is a well-known antisemite, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see him using the same language about alleged criminals (immigrants?) in Washington DC that Nazis used for Jews and Hutus used for Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide.
If you don’t know, the practice of comparing marginalized groups to vermin is a tried and true practice used by some of the worst people to ever exist.
During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals. In Less Than Human, David Livingstone Smith argues that it's important to define and describe dehumanization, because it's what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.
And this is far from the first time referring to other human beings as “cockroaches” has caused an uproar:
During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Hutu media referred to Tutsis as "snakes" and "cockroaches". There have recently been comparisons between Palestinians and snakes on Israeli social media, in an effort to "dehumanise" them, said Turkey's Anadolu news agency.
In 2015, Katie Hopkins wrote a column for The Sun comparing migrants to cockroaches. The article, published hours before 800 people died when a fishing vessel packed with migrants capsized off the coast of Libya, drew widespread criticism, including from the UN's human rights chief.
So you’ll forgive me if I believe that Charlie Kirk knew exactly what he was doing when he used the word “cockroaches” about Americans living in Washington DC.
But back to Chicago, which has sizeable Jewish, Black, and immigrant communities. The Cubs are headquartered on the north side, historically one of the most liberal areas of the city. So the minute the photo of Kirk on the field with two players started making the rounds, the team should have been prepared to comment. I reached out to the Cubs yesterday afternoon for comment, but wasn’t surprised not to hear back.
This isn’t the first time the Cubs and their owners, the Ricketts family, have failed to anticipate backlash from their fanbase. In 2018, the team traded for infielder Daniel Murphy, who spoke openly about his “disagreement” with the “gay lifestyle,” and brought him to Wrigley Field, which lies immediately next door to Boys’ Town, Chicago’s vibrant gay community. In 2016, the team traded for reliever Aroldis Chapman, who had been suspended for domestic abuse after (allegedly) choking his girlfriend and waving a gun around in the vicinity of his newborn baby. In 2018, they completely fumbled the domestic abuse allegations against all-star Addison Russell. And then there’s the fact that Todd Ricketts held a fundraiser for Donald Trump at Wrigley Field, in one of the bluest cities in America, and one that Trump regularly denigrates. Then there was the leak of the racist and bigoted emails of the family patriarch, Joe Ricketts, who also founded Ameritrade.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe teams should have to answer when they do things that make marginalized segments of their fanbase feel less than. I’m far from the only fan who has hit the pause button on my Cubs’ fandom while the Ricketts family owns the team, and maybe the Cubs just don’t care. After all, there are more than enough fans who are willing not to care.
But when your players are palling around with a guy using the same language the Nazis did to slur the Jewish population, it seems like someone should say something.
If the Cubs ever do get back to me, I’ll let you know.
Before we get to the news, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to LMP. A monthly membership is less than the cost of a venti drink at Starbucks, and you’ll be helping to support independent journalism at a time when it’s increasingly under attack. Either way, please help me offset the cost of putting out this newsletter five days a week by clicking on the ad below.
Retirement Planning Made Easy
Building a retirement plan can be tricky— with so many considerations it’s hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve put together The 15-Minute Retirement Plan to help investors with $1 million+ create a path forward and navigate important financial decisions in retirement.
Today: California redistricting moves forward; Trump deprives us of great content; That’s why the right hates the Smithsonian?; And The High Note.
Here we go.
California keeps pace with Texas’s redistricting
Less than 24 hours after the Texas legislature passed a new, mid-decade redistricting plan at Donald Trump’s behest, California is moving ahead with its own plan to redraw congressional districts:
California leaders on Thursday approved a sweeping plan to elect more Democrats by redrawing congressional districts, delivering an immediate counterpunch to the gerrymandered map that Republicans in Texas are passing at the request of President Trump.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two redistricting bills that the Democratic-controlled Legislature sent to him earlier Thursday. He also declared a special election on Nov. 4 that will ask voters to grant final approval to the newly drawn congressional districts
While Trump declared that he was “entitled” to five more seats in Texas, California has a plan to flip five Republican seats and strengthen seats in four swing districts, effectively nullifying Texas’s move and all the drama that came along with it.
“We’re responding to what occurred in Texas,” Mr. Newsom said before signing the bills. “We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance, because when all things are equal, we’re all playing by the same rules.”
***
“We don’t want this fight, and we didn’t choose this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we cannot and will not run away from this fight,” Marc Berman, a Democratic assemblyman in California, said as he presented the legislation in the State Capitol on Thursday.
NY Governor Kathy Hochul has also signaled plans to redistrict her state to counter Texas’s partisan gerrymandering.
Donald Trump disappoints again
Yesterday afternoon, reports started making the rounds that Donald Trump was going to “patrol” DC with National Guard troops last night. I, for one, was absolutely looking forward to this ridiculous photo op, which surely would rank up there with Trump holding a Bible upside down in front of a church.
Breaking news: President Trump said he will patrol D.C. streets tonight with law enforcement as his administration continues its effort to exert control over the city.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com)2025-08-21T17:00:30.115919187Z
Mostly, I was looking forward to seeing what Trump was going to wear, hoping against hope that he’d be crammed into a Kevlar vest and some bunny boots, potentially giving us a meme for the ages.
Alas, it was not to be. As of 10:30 pm ET, there has been no sign that Trump has done anything other than show up in a suit and hand out some pizza earlier in the evening. Is it possible that someone at the White House saw Trump in his “patrol” outfit and pulled the plug on the whole thing? I’m going to choose to believe that it is.
Either way, Trump basically ranted about being called a “dictator,” made up a bunch of things, and then left.
In a radio interview earlier Thursday, Trump said he would be "going out tonight" with the law enforcement and military, but he returned to the White House after the visit to the facility.
***
"And all I do, all they do is they say 'He's a dictator, he's a dictator' -- the place, people are getting mugged all over the place, and they give you phony records, like, it's wonderful and it's worse than it ever was, but we've got it going. People are so happy. They're going out to restaurants again," he claimed.
Come on, Donald. Give the people what they want.
That’s why the right is after the Smithsonian???
I read this piece in The New Republic yesterday, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Have you wondered what the deal is with the right going after museums, and specifically the Smithsonian?
Well…
For most of the nation’s history, the Smithsonian has served as symbol of national unity, receiving praise from members of both political parties and the public at large.
***
That all changed in 1994, when veterans’ groups and conservative politicians, including Patrick J. Buchanan, vocally criticized the National Air and Space Museum for highlighting the Japanese casualties of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in a proposed exhibit tied to the fiftieth anniversary of the Enola Gay. They considered any questioning of the decision to drop the A-bomb as dishonoring veterans, and thus anti-American. It was, in Buchanan’s words, “a sleepless campaign to inculcate in American youth a revulsion toward America’s past.”
Okay, that sounds like Pat Buchanan. But stay with me, it gets weirder.
A year before the Enola Gay controversy, in 1993, future Ancient Aliens star David Childress, then a self-described “world explorer,” introduced the world to his new conspiracy theory, that the Smithsonian was actively trying to suppress the “truth” about various lost races of white giants, ancient Egyptians, and assorted what-have-you that allegedly occupied prehistoric America.
***
The most important part of Childress’s conspiracy, though, was the specific claim that John Wesley Powell, the director of the Smithsonian in the late 1800s, orchestrated a cover-up of evidence for giants who were part of a lost race that had been in contact with Europe and built pyramids and mounds across America. The most spectacular of these mounds, Monk’s Mound at Cahokia near St. Louis, has a base as large as the Great Pyramid at Giza’s.
I did not expect to see Ancient Aliens regular David Childress show up here, but, in hindsight, I probably should have. But here’s what the whole thing boils down to:
Soon enough, claims that the Smithsonian intentionally hid the bones of Bible giants went mainstream, presaging the country’s own rightward shift. By the 2010s, the Smithsonian’s secret giants appeared in popular paranormal books, on late-night radio shows, in multiple cable TV documentaries (including at least two separate History Channel shows), and across a network of evangelical and far-right media outlets.
***
For the far right, the E.T.s of Ancient Aliens—the same ones Congress is currently hunting in various UFO hearings—are actually angels and demons, and those demons are the souls of the giants who died in the Flood, according to a nonbiblical text Alberino endorses. Burlinson said in 2023 that he thinks UFOs could be angels, and more recently he promised that a congressional UFO hearing to be held on September 9 would feature witnesses who “handled the bodies” of these beings.
I’m not doing the piece justice by breaking it up into blockquotes, and I recommend you read the whole thing for yourself. Hating a museum because of some fringe Bible theory about angels and demons is the most on-brand American thing ever.
Good news out of Florida, for once!
This news broke just as I was about to put the newsletter to bed, but it’s too important to leave until Monday.
MIAMI HERALD: “A federal judge on Thursday barred DeSantis and Trump from bringing new detainees to Alligator Alcatraz and demanded the state close out operations at the immigration detention facility within 60 days…” www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social)2025-08-22T02:26:16.100Z
The State of Florida has already filed its notice of appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. But still, any roadblock to ICE and the Trump administration is a good thing.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Today, please enjoy this Drunk History on (some of ) the First Ladies:
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Report ICE sightings. Hold your sports teams responsible for their political actions. Have a great weekend.
Reply