WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2023
...as the New World Order totters: The leading authority on the Iliad shares such insights as these:
The Iliad, "a poem about Ilium (Troy)", is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences...Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary mixture of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Homer's authorship was infrequently questioned in antiquity, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition...
Critical themes in the poem include kleos (glory), pride, fate and wrath. The poem is frequently described as a masculine or heroic epic, especially compared with the Odyssey...The Olympian gods also play a major role in the poem, aiding their favored warriors on the battlefield and intervening in personal disputes.
"European literature" pretty much got its start right there! Included is much of the familiar "masculine" human behavior which is producing a great deal of shock today.
Murderous genocides always occasion surprise, no matter how often they happen. In the last hundred years, they have happened all over the globe, but they always occasion surprise.
Let's be fair to the Bronze Age warriors who spent ten years laying siege to Troy. They may have dragged the bodies of the warriors they had slain through the dirt on the plains outside Troy, but there was nothing especially "racial" or "demographic" about it.
Bodies were dragged through the dirt, and women were kidnapped and enslaved, but it wasn't exactly a "racial" thing. Our modern lapses into Bronze Age behavior have more commonly followed lines of demographic identity. In our view, this returns us to what Hillary Clinton recently said.
The Turks conducted a genocide against the Armenians. We've also had the murderous madness of the Third Reich, and the genocides which followed.
Belief in "race"—belief in demographic identity—can be extremely dangerous. This has always been true, but new manifestations of an attendant murderous impulse are always greeted with surprise.
It's important to avoid believing in the existence of Others. Eventually, this could lead us back to the nature of Norman O. Brown's undiscovered mystery, and to what we'd call the unwise thing Hillary Clinton recently said.
On the plains outside Troy, Achilles dragged Hector's body through the dust. Improvements in values to the side, that's how it has always been done.
We descend from a Bronze Age warrior class. This is why it's very important to avoid creating The Other, especially when you're very sure that your sweeping assertions are true.
The Old Testament, though, is very much into "demographic identity":
ReplyDelete"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
Andrea Mitchell should have been choked out today and likely would have been if the mother of two children, who are currently hostages of Hamas, had been in the room with Mitchell and her Bothsideris as Andrea was interviewing her.
DeleteExcuse me?
Delete1. Demographically speaking, there were no Greeks in Homer’s time. Greece is a modern name for city states that people then identified with. Those from Troy were Trojans. The so-called Greeks were Spartans from Sparta, another city state, not a country called Greece.
ReplyDeleteAgamemnon and his brother Menelaus were the sons of Atreus, king of Mycenae (Argos). He would have thought of himself that way.
DeleteGreece became unified around 337 BC whereas Troy fell nearly 1000 years earlier, 1180 BC.
Somerby wants to pretend that the brutalities of the past are the same as the present but that is factually incorrect. Cultures that believe in reincarnation are more brutal because they do not see death as final, and act accordingly. Those who believe our corporal body goes to heaven tend to mutilate their enemies so the body will be disfigured in the afterlife. Hence drawing and quartering. Warfare has changed and with it the brutality of specific ways of killing or disabling people. Technology is part of warfare.
Belief in race is no more dangerous than belief in witchcraft and that women were sexually susceptible to Satan and thus in league with him, which got a lot of innocent women killed across time, or that disability is the mark of the devil.
Kinship has always been the glue that binds small communities together enabling survival. It is the heart of individual identity but also defines obligation to others. To call that identity bad or wrong or a source of evil, as Somerby hints today, is ignorant. He might better focus on violence than on cohesive binding among people.
I’ve never heard Somerby complain about the senseless fighting in the Illiad. Why not?
Come on, everybody knows witchcraft is real.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RCtDnfYPGo
People living in the Bronze Age didn’t know it was the bronze age.
ReplyDeleteGender is part of “demographic identity. Shall we put that aside and create a gender-blind society as Somerby urges, or are some demographics ok while others are not? Republicans might object to doing away entirely with notions of manhood, even though Homer glorified them.
ReplyDeleteImagine google maps if it couldn’t refer to the places people live using descriptive names.
ReplyDeleteSomerby thinks differences would disappear if there weren’t names like white and black. This is a kind of magical thinking. If no one speaks Voldemort’s name he can’t hurt you. Hate doesn’t go away if you just don’t talk about it.
ReplyDeleteDifferences won’t ever disappear, what occurs is that they don’t matter.
DeleteA friend of mine told me her experience as a white kid, in second grade, as her school desegregated and a black child was new to her class.
They held hands all the way to the cafeteria and on the playground after lunch.
Tell Somerby. He is the one who thinks kids don't see color if no one tells them about it. I had a black friend in elementary school and embarrassed both of us by asking her whether she was an Eskimo, since she looked like the picture in one of my books. She was still my friend, by why keep kids ignorant about things that are obvious to them?
DeleteIn modern fighting no one drags the bodies around. Is Somerby hinting that Gaza and Israel are bronze age people because they are Middle Eastern like Greece? Or is he saying that Palestinians (or Israelis) are committing such atrocities? Or is he just lamenting war? Even though there has been active fighting in Ukraine that could have been lamented every day.
ReplyDeleteDemographically, I am not Greek and thus not descended from anyone in Homer’s stories, not even in spirit. I deeply resent Somerby automatically including his readers in his grandiose “We”.
ReplyDeleteIsn’t there a new law against trying to make others feel bad over actions of historical figures to which we are not even related? And if Somerby wishes to eschew race, he needs to stop labeling all humans as part of a race that does bad things.
Somerby should weep because no one is willing to talk about cease fires and truces. They are only debating how much retaliation is justified. In a 10 year war back in Troy, you'd think one or another of those wise men could have brokered a settlement. Why was that not possible? Somerby doesn' say -- he is more on the side of those who glamorized warfare, among them Homer.
ReplyDeleteHow do people find their way out of these enduring conflicts? There is a field called Global Peace and Conflict Studies which examines methods of promoting peace. That is what Somerby should be reading and discussing if he truly finds this flare-up of an ongoing struggle something to mourn. He might ask questions like "would the US accept Palestinian refugees if resettlement could be made palatable to those stuck in Gaza with no way out?" Or "did Hamas attack Israel (with Iran's backing) in order to blow up the peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia?" Then we might focus on what might be done instead of killing and blowing stuff up. Homer is at too great a historical distance to be any use discussing, not even as a metaphor. And Somerby expresses no real opinions except to say that we are all shit.
The failure of House Republicans to approve Biden's nominations of staff to embassies worldwide, including Israel, has hampered our ability to help broker peace in the Middle East. The failure to approve Biden's nominations of military promotions and leadership, including the head of the Joint Chiefs, has hampered our ability to support our allies against foreign enemies in Ukraine and now also in Israel. Republicans don't seem to favor war or peace, but only obstruct whatever our current president does. Are they unaware that they are members of the same country as their political enemies?
DeleteIt seems to me that more focus on identity would help Republican identify as Americans, along with their neighbors, instead of defining themselves as solely good while everyone else is literally Satanic or "communist" as Marjorie Taylor Greene keeps saying.
Why are Somerby's lectures about forming a larger national identity (as we once had) not being addressed to Republicans who are the ones doing the most otherizing these days?
No matter what we Democrats say to certain Republicans (as identified by Hillary Clinton), we aren't successful in convincing them we don't support the Devil or communism. I cannot see how joining the right in demonizing the left is going to help anything, even if Somerby is demonizing us for not agreeing with the MAGA right.
Anonymouse 6:26pm, you don’t have to join the right. We’ve had a two-party system for quite awhile.
DeleteThe difference now is that we didn’t have a capitalist globalist alliance with a democratic socialistic cohort that wishes to micromanage our culture AND to get rich and powerful.
It took the microchip to give us that.
We don't have to join the right but the right needs to join the rest of the country and stop subverting national interests. If anyone here wanted to support Israel, they would find it harder to do because the right wing has obstructed normal functioning of the House of Representatives, nearly shut down the government and has no interest beyond subverting democratic processes.
DeleteYour cute little Q-Anon paranoia makes you sound like a fool. But that's nothing new.
The Right will never be "pro-life", no matter how many women they legally make 2nd class citizens.
DeleteNo one studies Greek or Latin any more because these languages and the literature written in them are no longer the foundation of modern culture. That includes the Bible.
ReplyDeleteThousands of people study Greek and Latin.
DeleteWhen it comes to naming colors, the first two names assigned in primitive cultures are "light" and "dark". They are opposites and one is defined in relation to the other. These names for color do not include hue but only the characteristic of brightness. The physical name for that is illumination. When a culture needs to add another name, the first name used is red, which denotes a specific wavelength of light, a unique hue in the physical color spectrum. What comes after that varies with cultures. Many add blue/green, another set of hues maximally distant in color space from red, just as light and dark are maximally distant. The third characteristic of color is saturation, the intensity of the hue (deep red versus pale red). Some cultures give differently saturated colors unique names (fuschia, pink) whereas others use modifiers added to the hue name (light red, pale red, medium red).
ReplyDeleteThese characteristics of naming enable people to differentiate among objects in the world that they wish to talk about with other people. The same thing happens when discussing dogs, rocks, food, and yes, family members versus neighbors versus clan members versus strangers or outcasts or enemies (all with varying degrees of inclusion in one's social circle).
Somerby's suggestion that if we do not discuss degrees of social inclusion or exclusion, then we will never have conflicts with other people, is ludicrous. The language exists to talk about the world -- it does not define the world, much less create it. That bit of Whorfian magical thinking was discredited decades ago. We know that can and do think and have experiences without language and that language serves thought, not vice versa.
So, if we name Others using whatever terms best capture the differences to be discussed, it is because we are thinking about people and their differences. For example, black children and white children both notice skin color and think about it, even before they have language to discuss it, or know what language is used by adults and teachers, as opposed to other kids. Ignoring the differences does not make them disappear. Neither will it work to pretend that Others do not exist, to avoid naming them, or avoid talking about what makes them Other in our society. Talking about things without fearing or hating is far better than ignoring what separates us. And talking is better than fighting because talking allows people to find solutions to problems, whereas fighting deepens grievances and hurts both sides without solving anything.
So, Somerby is aiming at the wrong target. Telling us not to make Others is not the way to resolve conflict. It doesn't work. But it is an easy way to demonize liberals and call Democrats names here, while pretending to take some sort of high road. If Somerby's goal is to help Trump and advance Republican talking points, then what he is doing makes more sense. It makes no sense if he really wants to lessen conflict.
Your essay is founded on this premise: Somerby suggests that “if we do not discuss degrees of social inclusion or exclusion, then we will never have conflicts with other people.”
DeleteBut Somerby never suggests this. Your imagination is working overtime.
I agree with Dogface. That isn't even a Right-wing meme, so there is no way Somerby would suggest it.
DeleteThe only way I've found to coexist with everyone is to avoid talking about politics at all. That works fine to avoid conflict, but it isn't how politics work. The right has thrown out all civility when it comes to politics and that has destroyed bipartisanship. It is a change very much for the worse. Somerby wants to blame the left for this, but it isn't anything we've done. It is the right wing at fault.
DeleteAvoiding the term Other or any references to people's differences is not the solution, and it IS what Somerby is demanding. Tolerance is needed. I have never heard Somerby use that word.
Contact:
ReplyDeleteFanny van der Faart, civilian.
I guess this is another expression of mourning.
Delete“It's important to avoid believing in the existence of Others. “
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean Somerby supports open borders, or is he just mad at Hillary?
Just Bob crying bigotry on those who
Deletedecry bigots.
https://m.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/comprehensive-report-reveals-endemic-hate-education-in-palestinian-schools-632057
ReplyDeleteSomeone on the prior thread asked for articles reporting how Palestinian children are taught to hate. Such links are sadly all too easy to find. One example is above.
David in Cal
I condemn Corby.
ReplyDeleteThat’s only because you have a name attached to fifteen paragraphed screeds of repetitive dribble and now… always will have.
DeleteIn the age of blog board unaccountability, she outed them good, and boy-oh-boy, do they hate everyone but her, for doing it.
Who is "her" and who do you think outed someone and who hates who here? You aren't making any sense at all. Most of us are here to express opinions and discuss with others. Your view of what is going on is truly bizarre.
DeleteThis. Go away.
DeleteUm…the person who isn’t you.
DeleteImagine that!
The person whose statement I addressed.
Randy Rainbow! Did we go to school together?
DeleteI don’t remember she/ he/it/them/they/her/him/furry telling anyone to go away.
My dear, that’s just you.
Somerby says "...as the New World Order totters..."
DeleteThe excessively literal meaning of that phrase is the order in the world has been disrupted. But there is another, less superficial meaning to that reference (from Wikipedia):
"The ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory argues that a shadowy elite force is trying to implement a totalitarian world government. Proponents of the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy believe a cabal of powerful elite figures wielding great political and economic power is conspiring to implement a totalitarian one-world government.
It is believed that this is taking place through a grand ongoing conspiracy to influence the media, press, civil society and democracy from the shadows. Many major world events and crises are attributed to the ‘New World Order’."
But there are more sinister overtones to using this phrase, including:
"The theory has gained notable traction amongst right-wing extremist and militia movements. Most notably, it is often integrated with antisemitic tropes that claim Jewish elite, particularly banking families like the Rothschilds, are behind global crises and conflicts. In fact, some groups and movements conflate these narratives entirely by referring to the ‘New World Order’ as the ‘Jew World Order’, or ‘JWO’ for short."
Is this a dog-whistle to Somerby's anti-semitic, white supremacist handlers? To his loyal fanboys on the right, the extreme right? There is no real reason to use this specific phrase otherwise.
Cecelia, your reference to Randy Rainbow sounds like you think he is someone from the past. He is currently running for president (like Colbert did). I suspect you are a bit foggy about who he is. Google him on youtube.
DeleteHe wouldn't be as kind to you as people here are.
DeleteThe fact that anonymices want me to google someone named Randy Rainbow, who would not be as tolerant towards me as anonymices, tells me everything I need to know.
DeleteHe’s an anonymouse or Uber anonymouse. Some fatuous bullshite artist.
Meanwhile, Bob ironically says the New World Order— we people in control now — are on our way to being as ancient as Ancient Greeks and he’s accused of antisemitism by people who have spent the last three days accusing everyone of being biased toward Israel.
Go to bed, kids. You’ll look better.
I admire Corby.
DeleteRandy Rainbow is a talented performer who is running a humorous campaign for president, just as Stephen Colbert did. He is funny to those who are not Trump supporters. Cecelia's paranoia is nearly as funny.
DeleteIt is interesting that someone as well known as Randy Rainbow on the left is unknown to someone like Cecelia on the right.
I, Corby, have never heard of Randy Rainbow.
DeleteNo, I am Spartacus.
DeleteOf course we will all be ancient several thousand years from now. Nothing profound about that and none of us will be here to see it happen.
DeleteSpartacus’s cause was just.
DeleteSpartacus was the Corby of the Roman Empire.
DeleteDid Corby get crucified there in Italy? Next to Tony Curtis?
DeleteIt's been a long time, I don't remember much. But I do remember I liked Tony Curtis better than Corby, I'm sorry to say.
Tony Curtis claimed to be a singer of songs in that movie. But he never sang a note.
DeleteThom Hartmann is suggesting that Trump may have leaked info about Israel's Iron Dome defenses to Putin (at his request) and thus to Iran and Hamas, enabling the recent successful strike against Israel:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.alternet.org/mar-a-lago-leak/
How charming. But are you sure it wasn't the Big Guy & Son, selling it to everyone interesting for the price of a Corvette?
DeleteTotally sure, since there is no evidence against Biden but plenty around Trump. Read the link.
DeleteYou're adorable, Corby.
DeleteEverybody loves Corby.
DeleteI used to love Corby, but now I adore Corby.
DeleteIt could also be Mr Menendez. For a couple of gold bars. Because he doesn't trust the banks. Because his parents were Cubans.
DeleteCorby really has a way with a ballad.
ReplyDeleteSteve Scalise or Jim Jordan for Speaker. Are Republicans joking? We want Corby!
ReplyDeleteIt's only because of misogyny Corby is not the speaker. And because of Putin.
DeleteOff Topic
ReplyDeleteUnder Trump we had the heads of Israel and Arab states in the Middle East signing peace accords together at the White House
We had a President who physically visited Israel himself and visited the wailing wall in Jerusalem— the first to ever do so.
We had Israel naming parts of their territory after Trump.
Now, we have war and chaos and a President bribing terrorists, missing in action, running from the press, and addressing the ever-pressing issue of “junk fees”
We need strong leadership back in the White House. It’s the only way
David, our crushing deficit is destroying America. Therefore we can't afford to aid Israel.
Delete"We had Israel naming parts of their territory after Trump."
DeleteThat helps how?
Trump blames Netanyahu for Hamas attacks, calls Hezbollah leaders 'very smart'
Deleteover 80% Israeli citizens polled blame the attack on Netanyahu. Who does your tribe of republican pygmies blame, David?
They'll be building monuments to President Biden once this war is ended. David, pull your head out of trump's ass or have you finally gone senile?
Delete@1:59 Fair question. One duty of the President is to maintain good relations with our allies. Trump's popularity in Israel demonstrates that Trump did an outstanding job of maintaining and strengthening relations with Israel. Alsoi, the way Trump became popular in Israel was the Abraham Accords. Trump brought about peace treaties between Israel and several of its neighbors.
Delete@2:16 Netanyahu is the leader. This horrible attack happened on his watch. He deserves blame.
Of course, Israel's vaunted intelligence people completely f*cked up. But, that doesn't absolve Netanyahu IMO. It was his job to see to it that they did their job well. Netanyahu failed at this responsibility.
So, David. No more complaints about the deficit? It's OK to give money to Israel?
DeleteTouché, Caesar. Actually rather than give lots of money to Israel, I would rather setje US and Europe stop giving money to Palestinians, as long as that money is used to support terrorism. IMO it makes no sense for American taxpayers to simultaneously support both sides in a war.
DeleteTrump wisely stopped a program of giving money to Palestinians, meaning to Hamas. Biden foolishly reinstated that program
David, stop calling the Abraham Accords "peace treaties". These countries weren't at war. The problem with these agreements is that they deliberately ignored the Palestinians in the talks. And because of that, as is now all too evident, they weren't worth the paper they were written. (Jared did manage to score a few billion out of the deal however)
DeleteNetanyahu is the most extreme right wing leader Israel has had for an unprecedented 16 straight years, and because of that trump kissed his ass, and Netanyahu deliberately stuck his big fat nose in our domestic politics.
How about this part of trump's record, David. Did you forget about this?
Revealed: The highly sensitive Israeli intelligence on Isis that Donald Trump gave away to Russia https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-israel-intelligence-share-isis-mossad-spies-sergei-lavrov-kislyak-us-a8071086.html
‘Netanyahu let us down’: Trump chides Israel just days after attack
DeleteHe also directly went after Netanyahu, who he asserted did not help the United States in the drone strike in 2020 that killed Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps responsible for secret military operations.
At the time of the killing, Netanyahu praised Trump for acting “swiftly, forcefully and decisively” but Trump on Wednesday chastised the Israeli prime minister.
“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” he said. “That was a very terrible thing.”
His disapproval of Netanyahu drew an immediate response from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is competing with Trump for the GOP nomination and posted on X that “it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel.”
Remember, the USA needs a big deficit, so that it can be ignored when discussing defense budgets, and be the most important thing in the history of the world when it comes to helping the citizens. How could we do that without it?
DeleteFeel good, look good, think good.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/joe-biden-age-update
Off topic:
ReplyDeleteRepublican party incapable of governing - film at 11.
Biden did something right
ReplyDeleteThe Biden administration is preventing Iran from accessing the $6 billion the U.S. recently transferred after Hamas, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, launched a brutal attack against Israel,
Hamas is not an Iranian-backed organization. Not at all.
DeleteHezbollah is.
We hate them both, so we believe they support each other. I am not Corby.
Delete2 days ago you were claiming the $6 billion funded the attack by Hamas. By the way, you know how Iran accumulated that money in the Korean bank?
DeleteIn 2018, Trump granted eight countries, including South Korea, a waiver that allowed them to continue purchasing oil from Iran even after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Gulf nation after Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal...
@5:51 The $6 Billion will fund many future terrorist attacks, unless the US permanently prevents the transfer of this money.
Delete@5:02 Biden Administration Says Tehran Has Been Funding Hamas,
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-gaza-rockets-attack-palestinians/card/biden-administration-says-tehran-has-been-funding-hamas-vcqW9iQ2iLODbRf3DBZb
The money belongs to Iran.
DeleteTo suggest how this money would be used is a right wing fantasy, served up to promote a narrative. It might equally be used to fund uranium enrichment, which analysts indicated increased after Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal. The amount is 1.6 % of Iranian GDP and a very tiny fraction of Iran's total wealth. Money being fungible and all, it would be disbursed among all the projects financed by Iran. The Trump administration already allowed for this money to be freed up in 2019, with restrictions and monitoring, but Korea did not proceed with it, allegedly fearing that the Trump administration would at some point fine them for not sufficiently complying with the restrictions. Notably, the Netanyahu government would have favored the funding of Hamas with this money in 2019, when Trump's administration freed it up, insofar as Netanyahu specifically told members of his Likud party in 2019 that it was to Israel's advantage that Hamas be funded. This right wing hysteria about the money in South Korea conveniently disregards this history to promote their politically motivated narrative. That's all this is, your typical republican BS.
Delete