WAGERS: There will (likely) be blood, we've been told!

THURSDAY, JULY 4, 2024

Blue America's wager: The Iliad describes one small slice of a fictional war between two civilizations.

The dueling forces are sharply distinct. In his introduction to the 1990 Fagles translation, Professor Knox lays it out:

The background of the rage of Achilles is a war between the assembled armies of the Achaean [Greek] cities and Troy, a rich, fortified city on the coast of Asia Minor near the Hellespont, the narrow western outlet of the long passage from the Black Sea to the Aegean. For the Greeks of later ages, the Iliad was history. 

[...]

The first city we hear of in Greek literature is Troy. It is characteristic of the Iliad's tragic viewpoint that this city, the literary prototype of all Greek cities, is to be destroyed. The poem ends before Troy falls, but we are left in no doubt about its fate. One of the deep sources of the tragic force of the Iliad is that the city of Troy is doomed, doomed go down in fire and slaughter under the assault of the Achaeans, whose cities are far away and half-forgotten in the long siege, whose home for ten years has been the raw world of tent shelters and beached ships.

Homer's Troy has been assigned a few traits that sound Oriental (or at any rate non-Greek)—Priam's fifty sons, for example—but it is still recognizably a Greek polis. It is a site chosen with an eye to defensive capabilities, with a high eminence that serves as a citadel, a sacred area for the temples and palaces. It is near the junction of two rivers, and it depends on the produce of the surrounding plain, which is rich plowland and grows wheat. It is fortified against attackers: it is well-walled and well-built. it has steep ramparts and gates. These fortifications enclose a vision of civilized life, the splendors of wealth and peace. 

[...]

Inside Troy the manners of civilized life are preserved; there are restraints on anger, there is courtesy to opponents, kindness to the weak—things that have no place in the armed camp on the shore. In the city, those who have most cause to blame, even to hate. Helen, the old men of Troy, members of the council. murmur to each other praise for her beauty—as they express their wish that she would go back to the Achaeans; and old Priam, who has lost sons because of her presence in Troy and will lose more—Hector above all, and all Troy with him—Priam too treats her with kindness and generous understanding.

Unfortunately for Troy, the Trojans have the defects of their qualities: they are not so much at home in the grim business of war as their opponents...

Troy is not at peace: it is under siege, and by men who mean to raze it from the face of the earth. The arts of peace are useless now. 

Hector is a brilliant warrior. But in the end, even he won't be able to hold off the furious men who have now been camped, for almost ten years, in their ships down by the shore.

All in all, it's hard to argue with Professor Knox's portrait. As we see it in the Iliad, Troy is a place of civilized values—but it's under siege by an armed camp of furious men who mean to raze it from the earth.

Decades later, on a different continent, a group of mainly wealthy men triggered a different real-life war. In a well-known document, they authored what they called a "pledge," though you might also call it a wager.

For reasons we've never understood or seen explained, they decided to declare a form of independence from the world's greatest military power. They gambled that, in the bloodshed which was sure to follow, they wouldn't be captured and hung.

We've never really understood why they wanted to do that—but now we're engaged in another great war. And as with Troy, so too perhaps here:

The small, tiny virtues of Blue America may not be enough to withstand the rage of this latest revolt. 

Over here in Blue America, we like to present ourselves as the highly civilized, wondrously admirable modern American demographic. In our own view, we Blues would be well-advised to just get over ourselves.

A large amount of self-deception is involved in that flattering self-portrait. But over the weekend, a major player from Red America—a major player from the camp by the shore—seemed to say that there will almost surely be blood.

The report appears deep inside this morning's New York Times. There may be blood, a major Achaean has now declared:

Heritage Foundation Head Refers to ‘Second American Revolution’

The president of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has developed a prominent series of policy plans to overhaul the federal government under a Republican president, said on Tuesday that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The group’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, made the comments in an interview on “The War Room,” the Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s show on the network Real America’s Voice. (Mr. Bannon himself did not host the show on Tuesday, because he reported to prison the day before to serve a sentence for contempt of Congress.)

Thus spake our own inflamed Agamemnon! What's coming "will remain bloodless," he said—but only if we modern-day Trojans submit.

The warrior Roberts is promising blood? So too with Candidate Trump.

He's been visibly disordered for years. Blue America's multimillionaire corporate tribunes have shown little sense, down through the years, of the way to bring that news to anyone who isn't already numbered among their "favorite reporters and friends."

As they keep preaching to the choir, a furious onslaught advances. Last Sunday, the former president reposted this proposition on his deranged social media site:

ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.

For CNN's report, just click here. In a second Truth Social post, the fellow in question presented photos of 15 former and current elected officials as he offered this further musing:

THEY SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL ON MONDAY NOT STEVE BANNON!

As for Bannon, his recent interview with David Brooks strikes us as highly instructive. For now, thought, back to Trump:

At present, this sadly disordered person is the odds-on favorite to be the next presdient. He wants a military tribunal for Liz Cheney—and, according to one wingman, there may not have to be blood!

Candidate Trump has been visibly crazy for a very long time. Those recent posts have resulted in very little mainstream news coverage. 

They will never be mentioned by the corporate hacks who beat the drums on the Fox News Channel. That channel's viewers are never told about the crazy things this visible nutcase says.

In Blue America, our big news orgs tend to avert their gaze from that manifest lunacy too. How have we Blues responded to this onrushing revolt from below? 

Sad!

Over on our own nation's channel, Rachel Maddow churned her way through two (2!) hours with Stormy Daniels this past Tuesday night. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our highly civilized tribe may be too clueless to survive.

We've pledged our lives and our sacred honor to the insights of people like this! Meanwhile, on the Fox News Channel, a certain furious termagant was at it again last night:

Astoundingly, he once again told millions of sweltering viewers that climate change is a hoax. Needless to say, he engaged in his usual badinage, in which President Biden is constantly said to be sh*tting his pants.

That garbage this furious fellow spews is featured on Fox every night. In Blue America, the finer people at our civilized sites ignore the garbage spewed by this furious man and by his nightly assembly of hacks.

We Blues! We've been dumb enough to swallow the Maddow line—to fall in line behind what Janet Malcolm admiringly described, in the New Yorker no less, as "her performance of the Rachel figure:" 

All in all, but overwhelmingly, we Blues have believed our own twaddle.

Result? There may well be blood, we've now been informed. Our cable stars would prefer to be listening to the latest guff from the woman who wanted to score a big sack of cash in lieu of "telling her [utterly pointless] story."

Troy was a deeply civilized place, but it was destined to fall. 

We tell ourselves that we're civilized too. We've purchased that porridge every step of the way, and there will likely be blood, we're now told.

We've based our wager on the joys of comically high self-regard. There will be blood, we've been told—but first, this just in! Two hours from the woman who, ten years later, wanted the big sack of cash!

Meanwhile, why has Donald J. Trump's madness gone unexplored? We'll be exploring that powerful question in the days and the weeks ahead.

Gutfeld and Watters are part of the answer, but so are the people we're taught to trust. We refer to the people we trust over here, behind Blue America's extremely high walls.