#chris murphy

At home, the day’s strangest recurring object was the Reflecting Pool, which has now become Trump’s own Rosebud, except wetter and somehow more litigated.

In the press availability, he went on and on about the pool: razors, rubber lining, acid on the grass, thugs, sick people, vandalism, 350-foot gashes, beautiful surfaces, federal statutes, ten years in jail, no shortcuts. At the Fair, he returned to it again, describing the pool as vandalized but already beautiful, soon to be restored. In Trump’s telling, the Reflecting Pool is proof of his builder identity. He fixes what others let decay. He restores beauty. His enemies slash at it with knives because they hate order, patriotism, and perhaps properly maintained water features.

Then Chris Murphy walked onto the Senate floor and flipped the object.

Murphy delivered a long indictment of what he called “500 days of corruption,” arguing that Trump’s scandals are not isolated events but a system. Crypto conflicts. Donor-requested regulatory reversals. Pardons for connected criminals. No-bid contracts. Benefits to Trump family investments. Wartime market trading. Ballroom and fountain contracts. Then Murphy put the theory plainly: “This is not a disconnected series of scandals. This is a system.”

His central argument was normalization by saturation. As Murphy framed it, Trump’s goal is to engage in “so much corruption, so much self-enrichment” and hand out “so many favors to his friends, his family, and his political allies” that it becomes “the pitter-patter of rain.” Normal. Constant. Never-ending. A leak in the roof of the republic, except everyone is told the wet carpet is just patriotism.

In Murphy’s version, the Reflecting Pool is not a symbol of civic restoration. It is another exhibit in the patronage economy: a no-bid contract, inflated costs, Trump friends, public money, and the familiar conversion of government into favor-bank. One object, two narratives. Trump the restorer. Trump the contractor-in-chief. The marble gleams either way; the invoice is the question.

Murphy’s speech deserves its own treatment later, because it was not just a list of scandals. It was a theory of regime corruption. Trump, Murphy argued, is not hiding the corruption. He is flooding the zone with it. He is betting that if there is a new outrage every few days, the public will stop distinguishing scandal from background noise. In normal times, Murphy said, any one of these stories might dominate the news or end a career. In Trump’s Washington, it barely cracks the surface before the next absurdity rolls in wearing a flag pin and asking for a no-bid contract.

Murphy’s closing warning was the real point: once corruption becomes normal, it becomes permanent. That is the danger of the weather machine. Not that every drop shocks you. That eventually, you stop noticing it is raining indoors.

That is the day in miniature. Rutte flattered Trump in order to keep NATO attached to the dock. Senate Republicans staged resistance, then partly folded. Trump turned a messy Iran vote into a real dominance win, but could not yet force the same surrender on the SAVE Act. At the Fair, he converted America’s 250th birthday into a restoration myth starring himself as builder, warrior, redeemer, city planner, price regulator, and part-time fireworks sommelier. Venezuela was both conquered and befriended. The Reflecting Pool was both sacred restoration project and alleged corruption exhibit. And over everything, Trump repeated the refrain: the country was dead, now it is hot, and every institution is expected to line up and confirm the miracle.

The method is not simple chaos. It is pressure, spectacle, and rebranding. Defiance becomes capitulation. War becomes negotiation leverage. Aid becomes proof of friendship with a government you just decapitated. Public works become personal monuments. Corruption becomes weather. And democracy, if nobody keeps pointing at the machinery, becomes just another booth at the fair.

Who: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut)

X: https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT

When: April 2025

What: Trump's 100 days of corruption

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Noah Wyle with Senator Chris Murphy in Washington, DC talking about supporting healthcare workers.

Welcome to the prog trance ambient rock cèilidh …

Plunger have always wondered at how iTunes (sorry, showing our age) ‘Apple Music’ comes up with their ‘genre’ allocation, after notable oddities like Greenslade as ‘Pop’, Derek Trucks Band as Electronica/Dance and Neal Schon as ‘New Age’…! 

That latter tag is the one they’ve applied to Powers Of Observation, the second instrumental album from fiddle maestro Chris Murphy under his Seven Crows alter ego. Now maybe it’s just us, but ‘New Age’ kind of conjures whale-song, finger-cymbals and Tibetan singing bowls, the kind of thing they put on in the background for your local yoga class… which this resolutely is not!

Having seen Chris do his solo loop-supported shows several times now, it’s no surprise he’s gone full-Mike Oldfield and performs everything you hear on the album - unlike Mike though it’s almost all the one instrument! He conjures a surprising range of sounds and tones from his five-string electric fiddle: celtic melodies and bagpipe-like drones might not be unexpected, but the earthy bass, woodwindesque lead lines, pizzicato-generated sequencer-mimicing bleeps, tweets and twiddles, and rich synth-style washes all come courtesy of an array of guitar FX-pedals. While his trusty stomp-box provides much of the ‘beats’ involved, there are also what sound like raps with the back of his bow to add crisper ‘snare’ effects in some of the tracks.

Most of the songs take a leisurely approach (possibly an artefact of their slow-build looping origins) with only five of the fourteen clocking under five minutes - one of which, Woke Up Singing, most closely resembles Chris’ other, rootsier oeuvre, with a llght upbeat bass-led bounce I was convinced his vocals were about to burst in!

Many of the tracks have a filmic quality, evoking expansive vistas: from the cloud-wreathed northern mountains of Boreal, the ethereal celtic afterglow of Amanda On The Bed, and the spring-forest-after-rain calm of Waltz, to the shimmering caravanserai desertscape of Talk Story, the oriental exotica of 1958 Hong Kong or the indian spicings of the closing pair, Mortal Moon and Narrow Margin with their sarangi-like lead melodies. 

And while there’s naturally a certain consistency of overall tenor across the album, the moods change from contemplative to urgent, wistful to threatening, romantic to (almost) rocking and stylistically Plunger’s (maybe not to be trusted) ears picked up undercurrents of everything from Vangelis to Górecki, Afro Celt Sound System to  Tangerine Dream, and Steve Hackett to Hawkwind, as well as the more obvious folk-roots elements.

Excellent stuff, and ideal for your car, your chill-out room, your nature documentary or Oscar-winning film soundtrack. And I guess at a pinch you could use it for a mindfulness class or Pilates session down at the community centre too…

Powers Of Observation is out now and is available to stream/download here: https://sevencrowsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/powers-of-observation 

Austin Hays takes 14 (rehab assignment).

Morris Austin takes 39.

Who: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut)

X: https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT

When: May 2025

What: Gun violence

Watch on C-SPAN