'This Site and You,' as a self-help zine would put it. (Bonus note included.)

I was about to write a piece on the chaotic madness whirlwinding its way across the erstwhile federal government, now merely a hornets' nest of in-the-making, malign authoritarianism.

(If those last two words strike you as a tautology, it's because they are. My semantic offense is purposeful, however. Although malign is, ahem, bad, there's some good in Trump's authoritarian malignity. His flawless incompetence, sublime excesses and perfect fatheadedness strongly suggest the most fleeting of all national apocalypses.)

The nest can wait, I've decided. It's neither going anywhere soon nor is the abysmal topic going without another day's hefty tranche of commentary elsewhere. So it and he can just wait for — in his fashion — me me me, and — never once in his fashion — you you you. We have a bit of Saturday housekeeping to get done.

This mop-up work came to mind from a new and really splendid site I visited moments ago for some background on the aforementioned subject. The Ideas Letter is an Open Society Foundations publication of essays "from across ideological aisles," explains "About." Then this:

If catholicity is your métier, and you are uneasy with banging the drum but would rather hear its many sounds, this is the place for you.

We really like critique. Not the mean-spirited or spiteful kind, but rather commentary that raises tough questions, unpacks assumptions, sometimes calls people on the carpet, and always provides opportunity for discussion.

I liked the self-identifying passage. I liked its reasoning and I'd like to think it identifies what takes place here as well.

Internet commentary is weighted down with black-or-white sites, no-grayish-ground-acknowledged and often no-dissent-allowed venues. Many have sizable readerships. This commentary's readership is small; small because of its readers' exceptionalism in intellectual sophistication.

I say that with no flattery intended, none whatsoever. I give you instead the objectively noted, empirical cause for size — and by inference, my readers' elegance of mind: Nowhere else on the internet will you find a political site that self-identifies — as this site has in sundry social media — as Center-left with a Burkean twist. Its shortest but most accurate assessment: That's death to a large readership.

When pondering the ghastly crowd now in charge of this country, it's true that I take only one side. The reason is simple enough; there's only one reasonable side to take. When Presidents Obama and Biden were in office, there was no rarity of criticism in my commentary — not frequent, but often enough and I gather stentorian enough that one-sided readers dropped in regular droves. Hence the site's "smallness" in numbers, far better framed as — voluntary exclusivity of readership.

The Ideas Letter goes on to say "you'll find here [challenging] articles, essays, and criticism" which the publisher hopes will further debate. Here, given the readership as discussed, you're unlikely to find much debate. Temporary — I hope — is the radically lower readership because of the weeklong downtime in changing platforms; reader comments, then, are also radically lower.

Once the numbers stage a comeback, so too, I hope as well, will the number of commenters. For now, in anticipation, I again bum from the Letter in saying, "[I] really like critique. Not the mean-spirited or spiteful kind, but rather commentary that raises tough questions, unpacks assumptions, sometimes calls [me] on the carpet." From tough questions and assumptions confronted we can both learn.

As for the grittier sort of housekeeping to be done, I wish to add this little something for both you and — hear ye! this is important — the folks in your life you think might like to join us, but haven't because they simply don't know we're here. Invite them for heaven's sake, send them a link or two, encourage them to pop by with regularity. I cheaply, tackily and opportunistically cited heaven's sake, by which I really meant mine. The math couldn't be easier: more readers = more contributions = this commentary's financial sustainability.

Tell your friends and family members what you've found here and what they'll find. That we've covered. So now for Hear Ye! This Is Important No. Two. Those to whom you reach out and invite needn't hold political views or a general philosophy similar to yours.

Indeed, even better that they don't. We both know of the internet's bubbles, its echo chambers and epistemic closures. For years I've hoped to puncture at least a few of those bubbles, but your help is needed, in fact it's downright indispensable, utterly critical. It may even be that the politically unlikeminded you know have always wanted to do what they, in turn, see as some bubble-puncturing of their own. As I said, all the better.

There. Housekeeping done. In the title I promised an additional word, a bonus note of sorts. By that I meant a morsel of fare to feed our seemingly insatiable hunger for Malignity Inc. I've decided to serve up a characteristically rancid dish of acute contemporaneity — this one, you probably know already.

Today the Republican Senate confirmed Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security, whose self-described mission is "to face new and emerging threats against" the fatherland. Early it was when the South Dakota governor's name shot to Trumpism's top-of-possibles list since her background is void of law enforcement experience. Further boosting the odds of her nomination was that she never served on the department's oversight committee during her eight years in the House.

Politico reports that the chief advocate for Noem's impeccable unfitness was the lady-stalking, woman-abusing, Down syndrome-girl-mocking and equally Homeland-oblivious Corey Lewandowski, a senior of course adviser to the administration's highest placed abuser, mocker and ignoramus.

Ms. Noem joins Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an army of others who know a total of zip about the sprawling department, bureau, agency or subagency they now head. A hornets' nest or snake pit, nomenclature up for grabs. Could be both, or you can drop both and go with the unmistakable umbrella term: shanty shack and bottomless abyss of the clueless.