THE TROOPS: Sacred Homer named the troops!

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2025

Lady Bird planted flowers: "I love beauty," she frequently said, at least if memory serves.

We're thinking of Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady of the (former?) United States. In some ways, those were simpler times back then. The leading authority offers this report:

Lady Bird Johnson

Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (1912–2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She had previously been Second Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963 when her husband was vice president under John F. Kennedy.

Notably well-educated for a woman of her era, Lady Bird proved a capable manager and a successful investor. After marrying Lyndon Johnson in 1934 when he was a political hopeful in Austin, Texas, she used a modest inheritance to bankroll his congressional campaign and then ran his office while he served in the Navy.

As first lady, Johnson broke new ground by interacting directly with Congress, employing her press secretary, and making a solo electioneering tour. She advocated beautifying the nation's cities and highways. ("Where flowers bloom, so does hope.") The Highway Beautification Act was informally known as "Lady Bird's Bill."

[...]

In 1965, she took the lead in calling for passage of the Highway Beautification Act. The act called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System...

Her capital beautification project turned the national capital into a showcase for the nation. It was intended to improve physical conditions in Washington, D.C., for residents and tourists by planting millions of flowers, many of them on National Park Service land along roadways around the capital. 

She said, "Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

She wanted to beautify the nation's burgeoning interstate highways. "I love beauty," we believe she occasionally said.

Johnny Appleseed planted trees—and yes, he was a real person. Mrs. Johnson planted millions of flowers. Especially at a time like this, we'll speak for the value of beauty. 

Western literature is sometimes said to have started with the Iliad, a beautifully rendered tale of furious, rage-filled, ugly behavior by furious, rage-filled men. As the famous poem begins, the Achaeans (the Greeks) have been laying siege to Troy for almost ten years. 

Two sets of troops stand opposed in the field. At the start of the poem's second book, sacred Homer calls the (nearly endless) roll of the furious Achaean troops. 

Here's the way that roll call starts, as rendered by Robert Fagles:

BOOK TWO 
The Great Gathering of Armies

[...]

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, Ilesion and Erythrae
and those who settled Bleon, Hyle and Peteon,
Ocalea, Medeon's fortress walled and strong,
Copae, Eutresis 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...

"Thisbe thronged with doves," and so on, at length, from there. This continues for roughly three hundred additional lines as sacred Homer names the troops, though only the troops of one tribe. 

For the record, they'd been willing to fight for almost ten years over a perceived insult based on an issue of Bronze Age sexual politics. For hundreds of years, or so we moderns are told, every Greek school child would hear those names as they'd be recited from memory.

In the present day, the troops have been gathered in L.A., but they gather each day and each night on "cable news" TV shows and in the halls of Congress. On the "cable news" channel which messages to Red America, angry assortments of aggrieved troops gather on such pseudo-discussion programs as these:

Fox News Channel programs:
Fox & Friends First (M-F, 6 a.m.)
Fox & Friends (M-F, 6 a.m., 7-10 a.m.)
Fox & Friends Weekend (Sat-Sun, 6-10 a.m.)
Outnumbered (M-F, 12 noon)
The Five (M-F, 5 p.m.)
Gutfeld! (M-5, 10 p.m.)
The Big Weekend Show (Sat-Sun, 6-8 p.m.)

Armies once fought with Bronze Age weapons. Today, armies my fight with the modern weapons of Storyline, messaging, script.

On those Fox News Channel programs, but also from within the ranks of Red America's office holders, the governor of Minnesota is now "Tampon Tim." The governor of California is "Greasy Gavin," though his last name is also "Newscum."

Mayor Bass is a Communist; Senator Van Hollen is "a scumbag." The governor of Illinois poops too much. The five women of The View are compared, on a nightly basis, to horses, cattle, pigs and cows, whale and elephants, "livestock."

Astoundingly, they even play the margarita card; they do so again and again. Just last night, one of their troops said, of what has long been known as "The City of Angels," that it's "a city of criminals" now.

It goes on and on from there within that nation's angry troops. It's much as Woody Guthrie once said:

As through this world I've traveled 
I've seen lots of funny men [sic].
Some rob you with a six gun,
Some with a fountain pen.

The troops who assemble on that particular "news channel's" shows don't play by traditional rules. That said, they're rarely totally wrong, or at least not for long, in the claims they deliver:

Unfortunately, the bungles created by Blue America's troops have endlessly let those angry troops feed on a list of "own goals."

We haven't yet named the individual Red American troops. Sadly, this:

In the last several decades, Blue America's bungle-prone troops have been handing them the material from which it's easy to eke out wins.

If only for today, we decided to drown our sorrows in one bit of language from the first great poem of war. That poem offers a beautifully rendered tale of furious, rage-filled behavior by furious, rage-filled men.

It offers a beautifully rendered tale. Years later, Lady Bird Johnson even wanted to beautify the nation's highways! Johnny Appleseed planted trees, she played millions of flowers.

She wanted to beautify the nation! From the present-day perspective, we'll suggest that she partially failed.

Tomorrow: Tarlov enrages the troops