The Panican Ledger

The Age of Incoherence, Part II:

Of Apophenia, Sane Washing, and Media Complicity

In any properly functioning republic, the daily musings of a sitting president would be subject to the rigors of scrutiny, especially if those musings included fevered tales of windmill-induced cancers, the mechanics of annexing Canada & Greenland, or a long-simmering vendetta against anyone who challenges him. But in our present timeline—a mishmash of mass delusion and partisan loyalty—we have entered the era of Sane Washing: a coordinated campaign to present the visibly unwell as merely unconventional.

Where Biden was called doddering for saying “Good morning” after 11 a.m., Trump is called "authentic" for delivering 40-minute rants about Al Capone being treated unfairly. That this grotesque double standard is abetted by much of the press and half of Congress is not accidental—it is systemic acquiescence. The political media, fearful of being labeled biased, has taken refuge in apophenia: the desperate act of finding patterns where there are none, of asserting strategic intent behind verbal flotsam.

When Trump rants about George Washington founding airports or implies that whales are conspiring against oil tankers, he is not speaking in metaphor. He is confused. When he trails off mid-sentence and redirects to a tale about "a very strong man who cried," he is not being rhetorical. He is lost. And when he insists the sound of wind turbines causes cancer, he is not stoking populist rage. He is unwell.

And yet: headlines read like parodies of themselves. "Trump Sharpens Message on Energy Policy" (after a tirade on bird genocide). "Trump Touches on Health Care" (after suggesting bleach as a therapeutic). "Trump Unfiltered" (which is to say, Trump).

What is this if not collaboration? The myth of the man’s lucidity must be preserved for the sake of access, for ratings, for spectacle. Networks, papers, and pundits become accomplices, laundering nonsense into narrative, treating a cognitive car crash as a deliberate detour.

Perhaps no image better captures this phenomenon than the side-by-side headlines that emerged after Trump’s West Point address: one describing a “rambling speech about trophy wives, golf and the ‘great late’ Al Capone,” the other soberly noting he “stressed a new era.”

This is not just editorial spin. It is narrative laundering. It is the construction of parallel realities—one where Trump sounds like a man having an episode on a bus, and one where he is a solemn statesman ushering in a renaissance.

Thus we arrive at the present day, where a man who slurs through public appearances, forgets basic facts, and issues foreign policy by emoji is flanked by a Beltway press corps that nods politely and wonders aloud, "Is this a pivot?"

No, dear reader. It is a pirouette into madness, and they are holding the curtain open.