SEPARATION: Calchas could read the flight of birds!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Kilmeade works for Fox: The European world's first poem of war gets off to a blistering start.

With apologies, Agamemnon, lord of men, has stolen the daughter of a priest to Apollo to serve as his sexual servant. Soon thereafter, the elderly priest arrives at the Achaeans' camp and offers an array of gifts—"a priceless ransom." 

The elderly priest was named Chryses. "He begged the whole Achaean army but most of all the two supreme commanders, Atreus' two sons." 

Agamemnon was one of those commanders. Chryses begs him "to set my daughter free, my dear one."

 "All ranks of Achaeans cried out their assent," but Agamemnon explodes in anger, and the "terrified" priest departs.  But as Chryses "trails away in silence down the shore where the breakers crash and drag," he offers a prayer to Apollo, and Apollo visits a plague upon the Achaeans' camp.

Within the Robert Fagles translation, this plague is pictured as a hailstorm of arrows from Apollo's terrible swift sword:

First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves—
and the corpse-fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.

We're barely sixty lines into the text as those corpse-fires burn. The poem is off to a very fast start, at which point Calchas, who's skilled at reading the flight of birds, is introduced in the narrative.

Achilles has risen to speak to a gathering of the troops. He suggests that they "question a holy man" about the plague—"someone to tell us why Apollo rages so."

So the swift runner proposed, and Calchas rose among them:

So he proposed
and down he sat again as Calchas rose among them,
Thestor's son, the clearest by far of all the seers
who scan the flight of birds. He knew all things that are,
all things that are past and all that are to come,
the seer who had led the Argive ships to Troy... 

Of all who scanned the flight of birds, Calchas was the most knowing by far. So it was, in the Late Bronze Age, as warriors outside the walls of Troy sought information and guidance. 

Calchas could read the flight of birds! Here today, within our severely divided nation, our neighbors and friends in Red America may occasionally turn to less reliable sources.

To cite one example, they may turn to Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel, from whom they repeatedly hear such remarks as the ones he authored on his primetime Fox program this weekend.

Somewhat ironically, the program is called One Nation with Brian Kilmeade. The program airs at 9 p.m. Eastern every Saturday night. Below, we show you how one segment began on last Saturday's show. 

Kilmeade interviewed Ron DeSantis during the segment in question. Returning from a commercial break, an excited Kilmeade introduced the segment in the manner shown:

KILMEADE (2/17/24): Major cities, liberal cities, are overrun with crime. Everywhere you look. Think about it. You've got carjackings, robberies, thefts, smash-and-grabs. Every city! You don't even know where it is, you just recognize the criminals...

You've got places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

If you want to watch the entire segment, you can start by clicking here.

Every city, the excited star said. In fact, it was every liberal city. His introduction to the segment ran above this chyron:

LAWLESSNESS IN LIBERAL CITIES

Every such city is overrun with crime! And people like Governor Newsom think the whole thing's OK!

(In homes across the fruited plain, red tribe viewers had no idea that they were being misled.)

Kilmeade then played a piece of videotape recording the aftermath of an actual shoplifting incident. By happenstance, Governor Newsom had been present to witness the act of shoplifting—and the immediate problem is this:

Based on the videotape which Kilmeade played, it's clear that Newsom doesn't think it's OK when people "take whatever they want." As such, Kilmeade's use of the videotape was one version of a demagogic practice we mentioned last week, the apparent theory being this:

Once you tell millions of viewers what it is they're going to see, they won't notice when the "evidence" you present actually shows something completely different. 

So it goes on red tribe cable, and sometimes even on blue.

As it turns out, Calchas gives an accurate report to the Achaean council at the start of The Iliad. Again and again, then again and again, the fight of birds is a more reliable source of information than the inaccurate or misleading claims heard on the Fox News Channel.

Red tribe voters are routinely deceived by Fox News—by the likes of Kilmeade.

Over here in the blue tribe's world, we have a set of problems too. But we'll be focused on the Fox News Channel at the start of this week.

That said, our own blue tribe may soon be forced to come to terms with the need for a serious reckoning. Tomorrow, we'll start to show you what was wrong with the various things Kilmeade said—but we'll also be asking, all this week, why the major organs of our own blue tribe have tolerated this type of misconduct down through the many long years.

A key point:

Red tribe viewers watching Fox shows don't know that they're being misled! In fairness, we blue tribe viewers may have a somewhat similar problem at times—and we may be steeped in denial concerning the way our own tribal culture has been.

Can we blue tribe denizens come to see ourselves more clearly through the medium of great literature? Can The Iliad help us see ourselves as we actually are? How about Plato's Seventh Letter? How about I, Claudius?

Tomorrow, we'll continue with the effort by Calchas to develop information based on the flight of birds. The Iliad gets off to a blistering start as Calchas divines the truth of the matter and Agamemnon explodes.

Also, we'll wonder when the tribunes of our own blue world will finally rise in protest against the round the clock dissembling of seers who are less reliable than Calchas was—less reliable by far.

Final point:

We'll be filing this week's reports under the rubric of SEPARATION. What role does "separation" play here? What do we mean by that?

Tomorrow: Almost everything Kilmeade said in that segment was bogus. 

The same is true of the segment he'd staged, two weeks before, with John Walsh of the newly revived America's Most Wanted.