ARMIES: An Iliad of the ongoing siege of the Biden White House!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2024

We'll start to sing it tomorrow: It's sometimes called "a poem of war." We've seen it thumbnailed thusly:

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.

What in the world is "the Epic Cycle?" For an overview, click here. 

According to the source we've quoted above, "The Iliad [was] 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." We now move on from there.

The western world's story-telling starts with this ancient war poem. As noted above, its legendary siege of Troy extended for roughly ten years. 

Here in our struggling modern-day nation, we're now involved in a kind of modern-day war which will last for at least another nine months, but which can also be said to date back quite a few years.

Robert Fagles translated The Iliad in 1990. In his rendition, Book Two of the poem's 24 books was adorned with this apt headline:

THE GREAT GATHERING OF ARMIES

As the war poem begins, the Achaeans (more simplistically, the Greeks) have decided to stage a formal assault on the walls of Troy. At this point, sacred Homer calls the roll of the Achaean troops.

The Achaean troops are great in number, and they're ready to go. For page after page in the Fagles translation, the alignments of their various constituent armies are described in this manner:

Sing to me now, you Muses who hold the halls of Olympus
You are goddesses, you are everywhere, you know all things—
all we hear is the distant ring of glory, we know nothing—
who were the captains of Achaea? Who were the kings?
The mass of troops I could never tally, never name,
not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,
a tireless voice and the heart inside me bronze,
never unless you Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus
whose shield is rolling thunder, sing, sing in memory
all who gathered under Troy...

First came the Boeotlan units led by Leitus and Peneleos:
Arcesilaus and Prothoenor and Clonius shared command
of the armed men who lived in Hyria, rocky Aulis,
Schoenus, Scolus and Eteonus spurred with hills,
Thespia and Graea, the dancing rings of Mycalessus,
men who lived round Harma, I1esion and Erythrae
and those who settled Bleon, Hyle and Peteon,
Ocalea. Medeon's fortress walled and strong,
Copae, Eutresls and Thisbe thronged with doves,
fighters from Coronea, Haliartus deep in meadows,
and the men who held Plataea and lived in Glisas,
men who held the rough-hewn gates of Lower Thebes,
Onchestus the holy, Poseidon's sun-filled grove,
men from the town of Arne green with vineyards.
Midea and sacred Nisa, Anthedon-on-the-rnarches.
Fifty ships came freighted with these contingents,
one hundred and twenty young Boeotians manning each.

So begins a long recitation. 

This call of the roll runs through a full ten pages in The Iliad's published form. It consumes almost three hundred lines of text. As recently as three thousand years ago, rapt audiences sat and listened to every word.

The Iliad turned this brutal war into a lengthy war poem. As becomes clear in that early call of the roll, many smaller regional armies create the great contingent which eventually conquered Troy when Achilles beat back his great anger and defeated noble Hector in battle, then dragged his lifeless body through the dirt and the dust.

A very unusual political war will be fought in our nation this year. It seems to us that this news report contains a bad indication for our own blue tribe, the spectacularly flawed political tribe we ourselves have always voted for:

Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview for Second Year in a Row

President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.

CBS said on Saturday that the White House had turned down a request for Mr. Biden to participate in a televised interview with its news division, which would have aired in the highly rated hours ahead of the big game on Feb. 11.

In a tradition dating to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, although there have been exceptions. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Mr. Biden declined to appear on Fox, home of cable hosts like Sean Hannity who are sharply hostile toward him.

As the siege of his White House continues, will President Biden be able to conduct a vigorous campaign on his own behalf? 

His decision to skip that interview adds to our sense of concern. These new poll numbers from NBC News are another warning sign. 

On the other hand, Candidate Trump arrives on the scene badly disordered and deeply erratic. He drags behind himself an astounding array of possible pitfalls as his tribe's siege of the Biden White House adopts its final form.

The Iliad records the names of all the Achaean participants as they neared the end of their ten-year siege of Troy. As the poem moves on from Book Two, it describes the events of the next few weeks, events which culminate in this immortal closing line:

Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.

That line comes from the Richmond Lattimore translation. We prefer it to Professor Fagles' rendition of the poem's closing line.

That was then, and this is now. Here's how we plan to proceed:

At this site, or perhaps at a different location, we plan to describe the actions of (some of) the participants in our own nation's political war.

More specifically, we'll describe the troops who publish opinion columns in our nation's most famous newspapers. Also, we'll describe the troops on cable TV, including the various print journalists who appear on our "cable news" channels as political commentators.

We Americans! As this year's siege moves onto the field, we've arrayed ourselves in two large armies, the red army and the blue. For ourselves, we'll be voting the way the blue tribe votes, as we always do. But tens of millions of neighbors and friends will reach a different judgment.

Beyond that, Zeus himself instructs us to tell you this:

We think that we in our own blue tribe have helped bring potential defeat down upon our heads. That casts us in the role of Paris—he whose unwise though deeply human behavior led to the fall of his native Troy.

Beyond that, we think our tribe will need to understand such matters if we're able to move ahead in the future after a potential November defeat. And yes, to borrow from President Lincoln, such a defeat may come.

This week, we're going to call a cursory roll of some of the visible players within our nation's red army. Having said that, a confession:

In our view, our own blue team has performed so unwisely in certain ways that even the most ridiculous forces of that army hold a powerful upper hand concerning some of the basic issues which will help determine the outcome this siege.

On balance, we don't really believe that President Biden will be able to conduct a vigorous campaign on his own behalf. That said, we're prepared to be wrong about that. 

We have no way of knowing what will happen, domestically or globally, if Candidate Trump wins. But if that happens, we blues will need to improve our game as we try to rebuild our political standing—and our blue nation's political game could stand a ton of improvement.

It's hard to believe the degree of intellectual squalor we will start to describe tomorrow as we begin to call the roll of the players in one of the armies in the advancing red siege. 

For starters, the anger and the childishness were everywhere among one of the red tribe's cable news programs last Friday night. But on certain very basic issues, their assembled troops will almost surely seem to be right on the general merits in the eye of most American voters:

Except for human blindness and the fog of war, it's amazingly easy to see why that is. 

It's hard to believe the childishness and the intellectual squalor which, by now, have been thoroughly normalized on the Fox News Channel. That said, thanks to the flaws of our own blue tribe, is it possible that their assembled battalions hold a winning hand?

It's a long, long way from sacred Homer to the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program. We'll guess that very few people within our blue world understand the degree of inanity and coarseness which now prevail at that major "news org."

Tomorrow, we'll start by calling the roll of that small but embarrassing clique. The Iliad records the events of one famous war. We'll be recording these.

At present, our blue nation seems to be losing to an embarrassing collection of armies. Can it possibly be the case that our own tribe's self-assured armies are, in some hidden way, worse?

We're going to document the action. In this case, as in so many others, you can be sure that no else will.

Tomorrow: Assessed by any traditional norm, almost beyond comprehension