[A] I could probably agree with you without having to revise my statement. Trump's ability to shift blame is exceptional, and the gullibility of his supporters is downright amazing. The things they have to blind themselves to in order to maintain their faith in him beggars belief. Nor is this just Trump, as he often seems to be the personification of an even more deluded hive mind. How long they can keep this up in the face of repeated strain isn't clear, but Trump & company are doing things that cannot reasonably be expected to work, and that are likely to fail catastrophically. As they do, I expect his support will wither, starting with isolated defections that could lead to total collapse. But it's hard to say how many and how fast, and whether they will join into meaningful opposition or find other pathologies. In any case, Trump's survival depends on two things: his ability to confuse popular opposition by deflecting blame and claiming expedient wins, and his efforts to curtail democracy.

Clearly, Trump's demise won't happen soon or sure enough to avoid great hardships. Whether meaningful opposition happens at all is a fair question, especially given the lame posturing of mainstream Democrats. But I was raised in a generation that still expected happy endings, so that's what I expect, even when I know better.

[A] Seems like I get a letter every couple months asking advice on how to get more recognition from DownBeat. My basic answer is some combination of "I don't know" and "I don't care," but sure, if you do care, contact them directly. They're not that big, although I must admit that they almost never respond to my emails. But then my only involvement with them is to vote in their polls, for which I get a free sub I thumb through on the john before recycling, a t-shirt I never wear, and the gnawing feeling like I've totally wasted 3-6 hours of my life -- although I sometimes glean bits of information I can make use of. That's why I've compiled my annual Poll Comments, going back to my pre-voting days in 2003 -- although since I started voting, I usually take my notes then, instead of waiting to second-guess.

Those notes files are probably why I get the questions. By 2025 I stopped commenting almost completely, but took pains to write down everyone on the nominating ballot. DownBeat uses Survey Monkey to tabulate the results. Each of 53 categories starts with a list of nominees (most in the 30-50 range[*]; the album lists can top 100). Write-ins are allowed, but as the magazine only reports the top 15-20 in each category, and individual ballots aren't available, they are very unlikely to register. Hence getting on the ballot is some kind of milestone, but most people on the ballot don't make it to the magazine, let alone finish high enough to have any real impact. The dividing line between a category and its "Rising Star" division is rarely if ever clear.

This year they roughly doubled the number of critics invited. It looks like they've picked up a lot of voters from our Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, but I haven't yet assessed who, let alone to what effect. My simple guess is that they went for more critics simply to claim "biggest and broadest" poll status -- a boast we've made with 177 voters in 2024 -- and the effect is to shift results very slightly toward freer jazz. (Anthony Braxton won their Hall of Fame this year, and major category winners include our 2024 top album, by Patricia Brennan, and recent winners James Brandon Lewis and Mary Halvorson.)

As for Rising Star Bass, their ballot had 48 names, and you weren't on it. I don't have records to check on ever, but it looks to me like most years they simply copy last year's nominee list, then tweak it a bit. I don't know how they get new names to add, but probably from their own reviews -- access for which is another question many musicians have -- and ads (which is probably the answer, as correlation between ads and reviews is pretty high). I doubt they put much work into it, or care much about quality results: every year I catch a dozen-plus mistakes, rangin from spelling errors to unnoticed deaths (some are marked "RIP" but others aren't). When incompetence and malice are the options, the former is much more likely.

Pure speculation on my part, but I can venture three possible reasons: there are a lot of really good young bassists to choose from (given roughly the same number of available slots, this is one of the hardest categories to break into, probably 2nd after piano, or maybe 3rd after drums); the bass is a relatively hard instrument to hear, so attention tends to go to bandleaders and composers (like Mingus, though nobody doubts his chops, possibly because he was in a position to feature them; Peter Washington is a really great bassist few people notice because he's always in the background, making everyone he plays with brilliant); and you're based in Europe, which DownBeat barely knows exists. Looking at your credits list, I'd guess that a lot of those leaders share your frustration with DownBeat.

My only other thought is that at least half of the 48 Rising Star Bass nominees are names I don't even vaguely recognize. While that could mean that they're scraping the bottom of the barrel and your omission is a major mistake, it's more likely that they all have good stories, and their listing just further exposes my ignorance.

[*] The smallest I noticed was 23, a tie between Rising Star Clarinet and RS Percussion; RS Baritone Sax 25. Aside from the album lists, the longest appear to be Jazz Group at 81, and Bass at 80. Piano has 53 + 57 RS. Drums 71 + 49. Their new jazz list had 136 albums; historical had 33 albums; blues had 53 albums; "beyond" had 69 albums. Their album lists are set up from April-to-April, instead of previous calendar year. I've made several suggestions over the year, and as far as I know none of them were even considered. (They certainly didn't elicit a response.) One was to move the date posts back to calendar year, so critics would get an extra three months to evaluate the previous year, instead of having to issue rush judgments within days of the cutoff point. (I'd also move the later fan's poll back to the previous calendar year. Readers could use the extra time even more than critics.)

[A] I quoted this letter in Music Week a while back, but thought I should keep a copy here, noting that "much common thinking is profoundly and/or pathetically atavistic, governed by concepts that once seemed valid but are no longer viable, and in some cases plainly ridiculous," and noted some examples, like the tendency to rally in crises behind self-confident leaders. Bush after 9/11 was my example. This is a big part of Trump's support, but his crises are often self-inflicted, his incompetence is more obvious, and many people have little trouble seeing through him.

The point about "animal instincts" is well taken. I don't doubt that fighting is one such instinct, but cooperation and care are also factors, and social conditions are overwhelmingly complex and conflicted. There is way too much to sort out here -- one could go off on a tangent about little social value (and how much harm) has been produced by attempts to suppress animal attractions like sex and some drugs, while rationalizations about greed and violence run unchecked -- but it's quite possible that the net concern isn't much. People have a lot of trouble comprehending how much human society has changed over the last 75, 150, 225, 300 years, and ill prepared we were from the previous 10,000 years of civilization, let alone whatever evolution led up to that.

Reason is a useful tool for understanding all this, but has its own limits, including the risk of misunderstanding the deeply buried animal.