ARRIVALS: PBS portrayed Red America's voters!

FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2025

Is it also a portrait of us? How did our struggling nation's current arrival gain purchase? 

For better or worse, adherents continue to come over the walls. But how did this latest arrival begin—and why did it gain purchase?

We said we'd show you what PBS said, and so we're going to do that. We refer to the venerable PBS program, American Masters, whose newest episode debuted last Friday night:

S39 Ep 5
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny

Premiere: 6/27/2025 | 01:23:45 | TV-PG 

Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.

The American Masters program is now in its 39th season. Last Friday, it finally got around to profiling Hannah Arendt. 

Arendt was present in her native Germany to witness a different arrival. As a bit of basic background, her biographer tells us this:

Hannah Arendt 

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.

Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of wealth, power, fame, and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, tradition, and totalitarianism. 

[...]

In 1933, Arendt was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for performing illegal research into antisemitism. On release, she fled Germany, settling in Paris...When Germany invaded France, she was detained as an alien. She escaped and made her way to the United States in 1941. She became a writer and editor and worked for the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, becoming an American citizen in 1950. With the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, her reputation as a thinker and writer was established, and a series of works followed.

According to that overview, Arendt is best known for her work on an endless array of topics! That said, she was present in her native Germany during the early years of a disastrous arrival—and she literally wrote the book about the way totalitarianism arrives on the scene.

In last Friday's American Masters program, the portrait of that German arrival starts at roughly the 20-minute mark. You can watch the entire program at its official site.

Full disclosure! The program does a remarkably poor job identifying who is providing the background narration at various points along the way as it describes that arrival. That said, we think we can give you an accurate account of that matter.

According to the program's website, "actress Nina Hoss provides the voice of Hannah Arendt as a student in Germany to the 1970s" [sic]. When Hoss provides this part of the narration, she's reading the actual words of Arendt. 

Several scholars also provide the narration as this German arrival is described. 

In our view, also this:

In its account of that German arrival, the program is making a clear comparison to the rise of our own nation's current political movement. 

You can decide if you think that comparison fair. But to our ear, that's plainly the way this program fashions its account of that earlier disastrous arrival.

How did that German arrival gain purchase? As that part of the PBS program begins, Germany is reeling in the aftermath of its defeat in World War I. 

As best we can tell, these are the voices who now seek to explain the early rise of the political movement which would become the insanely murderous Third Reich:

VOICE OF ARENDT: The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy. The Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews and needed a counter-conspiracy to defend itself.

By 1931, I was firmly convinced that the Nazis would take the helm.

So begins the program's account, with Hoss reading Arendt's actual words. Continuing directly, the scholar Roger Berkowitz extends the discussion:

BERKOWITZ: There were federal and regional elections at the time. And if you look at Hitler's speeches during the campaigns, he would say things like, "We are a majority."

He was never a majority! And he would come up with some argument that they won. He was giving them a coherent narrative.

"We are winning. We are going to change Germany. We are going to change the world. And the movement is growing, and it's stronger because of you and your undying loyalty to me."

To our ear, the comparison to our nation's current situation is already emerging. At this point, the voice of Arendt takes over again, and the implied comparison becomes that much more clear:

VOICE OF ARENDT: The Nazis translated the propaganda lies of the movement into a functioning reality. The ideal subject was not the convinced Nazi, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer existed.

A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader, who, like a talisman, assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality.

A basic distinction—the ability to distinguish fact from fiction—was being replaced by total loyalty to the movement's leader. Stating the obvious, that's part and parcel of one current portrait of the rise of the MAGA movement—not, we'd say, without reason. 

As it was then, so it is now? At this point, Berkowitz takes over again:

BERKOWITZ: Arendt saw this. She was there. She was living there. And so many of her friends said, "Oh, well, he's just crazy. He's just making things up. And don't worry about him. He can't win. He's just creating fantasies."

But fantasies are sometimes what we want and especially at times of economic, cultural, social, and political despair.

People—they were lonely. They were needy of meaning and belonging, and that's what Hitler was giving people.

People were saying that Hitler couldn't win—that he was just too crazy? That, of course, is what many people were saying about Candidate Trump as of 2015. 

At this point, the broadcast returns to the voice, and to the words, of Arendt herself. Within the current context, we'd score these remarks as unwise—as highly unattractive:

VOICE OF ARENDT: The Nazi movement recruited their members from this mass of indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic, or too stupid, for their attention.

The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene.

Were Hitler's early supporters apathetic, indifferent, stupid? In effect, were they just the deplorables?

We have no idea. But within the context of this emerging presentation, that also seems to function as a portrait of President Trump's ongoing support.

In our view, our own Blue America goes off the rails when our scholars pleasure us—implicitly, when they flatter us—with that unpleasant portrait of Red America's voters. At any rate, the overview by American Masters continues with two scholars commenting in the manner shown:

BARBARA HAHN: I think she came up with these ideas when she was looking at what this mass society would provide people.

It would provide them with the impression that they're not alone any more, and there is a party giving them an idea that they are part of something really big.

MALE COMMENTATOR: All the major German conservative politicians are on record over and over again saying, "We cannot let Adolf Hitler become chancellor."

And, yet, because they wanted to recruit followers of Hitler to their side, they didn't just exclude Hitler when they could, they tried to control him. And he was able to then play them all against each other until they had to make him chancellor.

German conservative politicians thought they could control Hitler! Plainly, that's a very familiar portrait of the way Republican pols perceived Candidate and President Trump in the first years of his arrival.

Today, we know that the German arrival led to a brutal genocide—to one of the most deranged events in all of human history.

In this tenth year of his reign, President Trump has engaged in no such conduct. Beyond that, we know of no reason to believe that he ever will, or that he would. We say that despite his new, explicit statement, made last night in Iowa, about the way he actively hates the others—in this case, the Democrats.

It's our assumption that President Trump is fundamentally disordered—is disordered in way which Blue America's press had agreed not to evaluate or discuss. Still, he hasn't conducted a genocide. 

That said:

In our view, much of what that profile describes is well worth contemplating. As our nation has split into two rival nations, it can be said, and often is, that many voters in Red America have turned into "people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists."

For many voters in Red America, it can be said that "loyalty to the leader" has perhaps replaced the traditional attempt to separate fact from fiction—has led to the ultimate "victory of fiction over truth and reality."

For many voters in Red America, it can perhaps be said that loyalty to President Trump has gifted them with a pleasing set of fictions, in which they're battling a world conspiracy led by a pleasing set of villains. In our view, American Masters was plainly sketching that comparison in last Friday's program. 

In April 2024, it seemed to us that PBS did much the same thing in the portrait of Julius Caesar offered by this underwhelming program:

Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator

The dramatic story of how nearly five centuries of ancient Roman democracy was overthrown in just 16 years…by one man. This is the story of a brazen, ambitious power-grab that saw Julius Caesar consolidate the vast power of Rome in his own hands.

Back then, Trump was said to be Julius Caesar. As of last Friday night, he was you-know-who himself.

In our view, there's substantial merit in American Masters' implied portrait of Red America's pro-Trump voters, who no longer separate fact from fiction in their pursuit of a pleasing tale.

In our view, that's a reasonable critique of many of Red America's voters. The question we will continue to ask about our own Blue America is this:

To what extent, if to any extent, can it be said that this pleasing portrait is also a portrait of us? To what extent has our own tribal blindness lead to the situation our flailing nation is in?

ARRIVALS: Hannah Arendt was on the scene...

THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2025

...when an arrival occurred: How might we most instructively picture the nature of this latest arrival?

Within the House of Representatives, this latest arrival continues this very day. Even as we type, the megabill is about to be approved by the House, extending the political dominance of the current sitting president.

His ongoing political success is supported by tens of million of neighbors and friends—by tens of millions of our fellow citizens. He came down the escalator in 2015. What accounts for the ongoing appeal of this vastly surp arrival?

Those of us in Blue America have a hard time seeing the ways we ourselves helped set the stage for this potent arrival That said, and for better or worse, the forces of MAGA America continue to advance. But what would be the most instructive way for us to picture what has been happening?

For ourselves, we juggle such pictures as these:

When we see the Secretary of Homeland Security speaking, in full sincerity, about the cannibals who may be inclined to eat their own arms, we think of the portrait offered in Men in Black, in which an extremely strange set of alien beings are secretly living among us.

(We refer to the secretary herself, not to the alleged cannibal.)

The scenario offered in Men in Black is comedic. We think of that comedic portrait when we see players like Noem offering highly peculiar assessments.

But when we see people like Watters, Failla and Gowdy assailing a CNN journalist by name—a journalist who reported on an actual DIA assessment;

When we see such people doing that in the immediate aftermath of the murders in Minnesota;

When we see them doing that in support of the sitting president, who said the CNN journalist should be "thrown out like a dog;"

When we see them doing that in support of the president who said that CNN and the New York Times are "scum" because they reported that (actual) DIA assessment;

When we see President Trump, plus Watters, Failla and Gowdy, behaving in such astonishing ways, we toss Men in Black to the side. We think instead of the murderous way the rage-filled Achaeans came over the walls of sacred Troy at the very dawn of the West.

How should we understand the rage which leads people like Trump, Watters, Failla and Gowdy to behave in the dangerous way they did? Which leads a person like Lisa Boothe to put the life of Dr. Fauci at risk through the astonishing attacks she has delivered in several of her appearances on the Fox News Channel?

At this site, we're looking for other arrivals which might help us understand and portray the arrival which is still unfolding here. As we've noted, that leads us back to the portrait of a disastrous arrival—a portrait which was offered by the PBS series, American Masters, this past Friday night.

How did it [ever] get this far? That's what Don Corleone asks at one point in The Godfather. Today, we might ask a similar question about the MAGA movement:

How did this movement ever get stated? What explains its arrival, which continues along today?

Last Friday night, American Masters debuted its latest documentary. The PBS program is now in its 39th year. By clicking here, you can visit the website of its current episode, which you can watch in full:

S39 Ep 5
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny

Premiere: 6/27/2025 | 01:23:45 | TV-PG 

Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.

Hannah Arendt was indeed a major figure of the last century. It's portrait of her is TV-PG, the website says—but along the way, this documentary discusses one of the most consequential arrivals in all of human history. 

The program discusses the way the Third Reich first gained purchase in 1930s Germany. Breaking a rule of contemporary journalistic discourse, the program seems to compare the early years of that arrival to the way our own nation's current arrival gained purchase.

On its face, that's a highly unflattering comparison. At this point, it's important to state an obvious point:

The deranged leader of the Third Reich went on to stage "the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims."

President Trump has never done anything like that. Beyond that, we know of no reason to believe that he ever would or will.

Whatever one thinks of President Trump, he hasn't engaged in such conduct. That said, the American Masters profile of Arendt draws an obvious comparison between the arrival of the MAGA movement and the arrival of that other movement in the Germany of the 1930s.

Was the program wise to do such a thing? Given the horror of where the German movement went, is it decent to create and broadcast such a comparison?

Readers can judge that as they wish. For those who want to ponder the history of the current arrival, we think it's worth restating what the PBS program chose to present.

President Trump has done no such thing. But what explains his political appeal at the time of his arrival? Who was drawn to his arrival, and why?

The portrait of that 1930s German arrival starts at roughly the 20-minute mark of the American Masters program. You can click over there to see what the program says.

For the record, that program does a very poor job identifying who is providing the background narration at various points along the way. In spite of that major shortcoming, you'll surely get the gist pf what the program is saying.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what the program says about these two arrivals. The programs tells us what Hannah Arendt, then a young woman, saw in Germany at that time. It also presents some of what she later said about the appeal of that arrival.

According to the program's website, "Actress Nina Hoss provides the voice of Hannah Arendt." When Hoss provides this narration, she is reading the actual words of Arendt.

Several scholars also provide the narration as this German arrival is described. To our ear, the program clearly compares that arrival to the rise of our own nation's current dominant political movement.

For reasons we can't even remember at this point, we were struck by what the American Masters program said. Tomorrow, we'll transcribe its intriguing account, trying to remind you of this:

The foolishness and arrogance of our own Blue America helped set the stage for the rise of the MAGA world. 

Quite frequently, Donald Trump's supporters have legitimate complaints to make. It's the lunacy of the cannibal spottings, married to the inability to rein in the rage, which leads us first to Men in Black, then to the murderous assault on sacred Troy and on those within its walls.

We Blues helped set the stage for this arrival. Why did it take hold?

Tomorrow: "The ideal subject was [the person] for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer existed."

WEDNESDAY: The analysts screamed and tore their hair...

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 2025

...when Staphanie Ruhle got it wrong: Last night, at the start of her program's second segment, MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle decided to level with her viewers. She went on to describe the fiscal nightmare which would be created by passage of the GOP megabill.

She started the segment with a reference to the name of a regular segment:

RUHLE (7/1/25): It is time now for "Money Power Politics." And this evening, we are talking about our financial responsibility as a country.

I want a "level set" here. This has been a problem for the United States for many years. Our debt has exploded over the past two decades under the leadership of both parties. But that makes it even more important to take a hard look at what this Republican bill would do to make an already bad situation even worse.

As the New York Times puts it, this is one of the most expensive pieces of legislation in years and would put our country on a more perilous fiscal path.

Ruhle wasn't kidding around! Bringing the note of sadness in, Paul Krugman recently said that current projections describe a situation which is "unsustainable" even before the GOP bill makes future debt larger still.

Krugman has recently said it; for that reason, we believe it. Now, Ruhle was going to "level set" the situation. She was going to lay it right on the line.

At that point, sad! Moments later, she offered this thoroughly bungled statistical portrait of where matters stand:

RUHLE: These numbers are going to impact all of our lives in really important ways. So I want you to keep these three things in mind.

First, the national debt. Right now, it's a whopping $37 trillion. And this bill would add at least three trillion more over the next decade.

The analysts screamed and ran into the yard. Glumly, we slumped back into our beanbag chair.

Sad! Ruhle was right about the size of the national debt at present. But her presentation plainly gave the impression that the GOP bill would cause the debt to ruse to $40 trillion, perhaps a bit more, by the end of the next ten years.

Plainly, her presentation gave that impression. Plainly, that portrait is howlingly wrong.

Sadly, this is the actual state of current projections:

According to current projections, the debt will rise to something like $56 trillion (or more?) over the course of the next decade even if the GOP megabill doesn't pass. According to the CBO, the GOP bill would add something like an additional $3-5 trillion to that current projection:

That is, the debt will stand at something like $60 trillion over the next decade if the megabill passes. We're at $37 trillion now, but we're headed for much bigger things.

As we've noted again and again, our major journos have largely been fumbling this matter all through the past few months. Now, MSNBC's top economics / business anchor has completely misstated this matter

None of this actually matters, of course. It's much too late to expect anything like a competent national discourse, about this or anything else.

That said, the analysts screamed and tore their hair when Ruhle histrionically laid out the facts. The pictures she painted was groaningly wrong.

Again and again, in a million ways, this is the state of Blue leadership.

As an example of what we mean: Once again, here's Andrew Duehren's picture of the situation:

Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

[...]

With roughly $29 trillion in debt currently held by the public, the budget office had already expected the government to borrow another $21 trillion over the next decade, meaning the Republican bill would make an already-dire fiscal forecast worse. And the initial estimate of a cost of $3.3 trillion for the Senate bill is an undercount, because it does not include additional borrowing costs which could push the bill’s overall addition to the debt closer to $4 trillion.

For a larger excerpt, see Monday afternoon's report.

Bowing to the endless complexity which dooms all hope of understanding, Duehren is referring to debt "held by the public," a subset of overall national debt. But as you can see, total debt is projected to grow by a mammoth amount even if the GOP megabill doesn't pass.

The megabill would add a few trillion more. Pretty soon, before you know it, you're talking about real money!

ARRIVALS: When Noem told Watters a very strange tale...

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 2025

...no one said a word: Arrivals of the type under review have occurred all through human history.

As Professor Knox described, such arrivals sometimes succeed due to a lack of preparation (or will) on the part of the invaded society. So it was in the lesson learned from the violent assault which took down sacred Troy:

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history, immortalized in lyric poetry, in tragedy, on temple pediments and painted vases, to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

It was a vicious, rage-fueled arrival. Troy's civilization had been more refined—but after ten long years, the sacred city wasn't able to hold off the murderous, rage-filled assault

Last Friday evening, PBS debuted an 83-minute American Masters program which described a different arrival. We refer to the disastrous arrival which swallowed much of Europe starting in the 1930s.

Starting at the 20-minute mark, the program broke one of our current society's major journalistic rules. It directly compared the early years of that arrival to the arrival which is playing out today within our own flailing nation. 

Tomorrow, with Independence Day approaching, we'll show you what American Masters said about the early years of that earlier arrival—and about the way that early arrival seems to resemble our own.

For today, we'll direct you to this:

Many warfighters have come over the walls as our present arrival continues. One such player is Kristi Noem, President Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security.

Today, the New York Times reports a rather strange presentation by Noem. This happens early in a news report in today's print editions:

On Pivotal Day for His Bill, Trump Leaves Washington for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

While the fate of his entire legislative agenda was being decided on Tuesday, President Trump traveled a thousand miles away from Washington to hang out in a makeshift detention center for migrants that had been thrown together on an old airstrip in the Florida Everglades.

The place had already been nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Republicans, on account of the fact that it’s surrounded by miles of marshland seething with reptiles. Mr. Trump instantly thrilled to the alligator alliteration—as he said on Tuesday, “I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon”—and ordered up a tour.

[...]

Ms. Noem told a story about a recent detainee. “The other day, I was talking to some marshals that have been partnering with ICE,” she said. “They said that they had detained a cannibal and put him on a plane to take him home, and while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself and they had to get him off and get him medical attention.” (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions seeking clarity about the episode Ms. Noem described on Tuesday).

“These are the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America,” she said.

The facility is surrounded by gators; also, Noem was there. Along the way, she told what seemed to be a very strange story about one recent detainee.

To its credit, the New York Times reported her very strange story. Also, the Times is seeking comment or clarification from DHS, though we'll guess that the paper will never mention this strange tale again.

With this peculiar tale, we may have moved away from the type of vicious arrival executed by the Achaeans. We may have moved instead to the type of arrival described in the 1997 feature film, Men in Black. 

Do highly unusual creatures secretly live among us? More to the point, are such creatures the ones who are being detained? Or is it possible, in some cases, that these highly unusual beings are the ones who are locking the detainees up?

Not long ago, Secretary Noem published the story of the time she shot and killed her disobedient puppy. She may have failed to understand the way the story would seem to many of her fellow citizens. 

Yesterday, she repeated a very strange story. It's a story she originally told last Friday night on what may be the most extraterrestrial of all current "cable news" programs.

For videotape from yesterday, we'll direct you to this news report by Mediaite's Zachary Leeman. (Headline: "Kristi Noem Shares Jaw Dropping Story at Trump Presser About Detained Cannibal Migrant Trying To Eat Himself.")

The migrant tried to eat himself! So said this member of the wedding—and her story did sound a bit odd. Indeed, it sounded so odd that Fox News Digital, like the New York Times, says it has asked three federal agencies—DHS, ICE and the U.S. Marshals—to provide further comment. 

(For the Fox News report, click here.)

At any rate, so said the cabinet member, perhaps from somewhere within her own private Everglades. As we try to find better ways to describe the participants in the current arrival, we thought you should see the original way she told the story, speaking to one of the skillful corporate messenger fellows who now drive what's left of our national discourse.

Noem appeared last Friday night on Jesse Watters Primetime, the second highest-rated program in all of "cable news." Inevitably, Watters started talking about the "bad hombres" who are being detained and deported. 

Soon, the cabinet member said this:

SECRETARY NOEM (6/27/25): Listen, Jesse, you calling these guys "bad hombres"—they really are. I was talking to a U.S. Marshall just yesterday, and he was talking about the fact that they were deporting a planeload of illegals and one of them was a cannibal.

And he kind of said it off-handed, and I said to him, 'What do you—what do you mean, it was a cannibal?" And he said, "Well we put him on the plane, put him in his seat, and he started to eat his own arms, he was such a deranged individual."

This is the kind of people that President Trump is getting off of our streets—people who are murderers and rapists and, and are deranged individuals, that we are working to get out of the country as fast as possible.

Apparently involuntarily, Watters briefly raised his hands to his head as her story started. Even Watters seemed to be taken aback by what he initially heard.

The gentleman quickly regained self-control. Soon, with Watters back to playing the fool, Noem's strange story continued:

WATTERS: Secretary, was this bad hombre handcuffed to something, and he was trying to chew his arm off so he could escape? Or was he just hungry?

SECRETARY NOEM: No, what bothered me the most was that this U.S. Marshal just said it like it was normal. These are the kinds of people they have to work with every single day when they're deporting people out of this country.

So they had him—put him on the plane and had him in shackles for the flight because he was such a dangerous individual. When he got back to his seat, and put another individual in the seat close to him, he said he was literally eating his own arms—that, for him, that is what he did. He called himself a cannibal, ate other people, and ate himself that day.

Her jumbled story doesn't quite parse. That's often the case with extemporaneous speech. 

That said, is something wrong with Kristi Noem? As background, we offer this:

At least as a matter of theory, (almost) everything is possible. That said, does it sound like the member's tale actually makes any sense? 

According to Noem, the men and women of her department aren't just working with murderers and rapists—they're also working with cannibals!  That includes the kinds of cannibals who may start eating their own arms! 

In fact, "these are the kind of people they have to work with every single day." So said Kristi Noem, speaking to the ridiculous Watters.

Does that story seem to make sense? For example, to the extent that any such people exist, do cannibals actually eat their own arms? Does some such representation seem to make any sense?

Noem seemed to think that her story did make sense. Though startled, Watters engaged in the kind of slippery pseudo-discourse which now forms the basis of much of our "cable news."

Many people have come over the walls in the course of the current arrival. For the record, these people often have legitimate complaints about the frequently ridiculous conduct of our own Blue America. 

But as in Men in Black, so too here, or can it sometimes seems. It can sometimes seem that certain beings are living among us who may dwell in their own private Everglades.

What is the world was Secretary Noem talking about? Yesterday, when she told her story at a major press event, the New York Times and Fox News found her story so peculiar that they sought further comment.

By way of contrast, consider what happened last Friday night.

When Noem told the puzzling story last Friday night, she did so on one of the most-watched TV shows in all of "cable news"—and no one said a word about what she had said! No one reported the weird thing she'd said. No one discussed her strange story, or wondered about what it might meant. 

As we've told you, what happens on the Fox News Channel is allowed to stay within the Fox News Channel. That said, it also spreads all through Red America, fueling the current assault.

Blue America's orgs agree to avert their gaze from that realm. To appearances, no one wants to tangle with Fox. Putting it a different way: 

No civilization can long survive once it loses the power (or the will) to defend itself against an assault.

Tomorrow, we'll turn to American Masters, and to the disastrous arrival which started in the 1930s. For today, is something wrong with Kristi Noem? As part of the ethos of Blue America, no one is permitted to ask.

In closing, also this. Sacred Thoreau said it long ago, right at the start of Walden:

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

In the comedic Men in Black, visitors from a distant land have already staged an arrival—are already living among us. From what sort of distant land did the secretary's story emerge?

Tomorrow: Why do certain arrivals gain purchase?

TUESDAY: Lock them up, the president says!

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2025

The defendant would be CNN: We're sorry to see that the megabill has squeezed its way through the Senate.

Almost surely, it was always going to do that. We'll see what happens back in the House. Individual posturing to the side, the megabill will likely struggle through there as well.

Discussions have focused on the way the bill "reforms" Medicaid, but also on the bill's expected effect on future annual deficits and on the rapidly growing national debt. With respect to projected growth in the national debt, we'll only offer this:

Our annual deficits are already remarkably high. A nation experiences an annual deficit when the amount of revenue it brings in falls short of the amount of spending in which it engages.

As present, our revenue shortfall is quite high on an annual basis, and that is expected to continue indefinitely. Paul Krugman has recently said that this pattern moving forward is, in fact, "unsustainable."

What is the GOP's answer to that? Of course! In the face of those very large revenue shortfalls, the GOP went out in search of new ways to bring in even less revenue! Below, you see an excerpt from Andrew Duehren's new analysis piece for the New York Times:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Republican Bill Puts Nation on New, More Perilous Fiscal Path

[...]

[T]he Republican bill goes beyond simply extending existing tax cuts. It also introduces several new ones, including versions of President Trump’s campaign promises to not tax tips or overtime pay. Those policies are slated to last only through 2028, meaning Congress will again have to decide whether to extend expiring tax cuts. Given the popularity of lower taxes, and Democratic support for many of Mr. Trump’s ideas, lawmakers are likely to vote to extend them, effectively raising their [long-term] cost.

“All of a sudden, it’s just this endless daisy chain of expiring tax cuts and temporary tax cuts, on and on, which really ratchets down federal revenue,” said Brendan Duke, senior director for federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.

Facing an endemic shortfall of revenue, the Republican Congress has found several ways to bring in even less revenue. Meanwhile, who knows? For some radicals within TrumpNation II, this may involve a desired catastrophic effect.

Our colonial nation had its witch trials. Earlier in that same century, the Dutch Republic experienced its tulip craze.

Here within our fractured culture, some retain their true belief in the endless miracle of tax cuts. Meanwhile, possibly due to the flooding of the zone, our major news orgs make less effort than they once did to explain any of this material.

Also this:

In the madness of the era, President Trump has now made the statement reported below. We're linking you to Alex Griffing's report for Mediaite:

Trump and Noem Pledge to Prosecute CNN For Reporting: ‘We’re Gonna Actually Go After Them!’

President Donald Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to prosecute CNN over their recent reporting on a controversial ICE-tracking app and the network’s ongoing reporting on the impact of the U.S. strikes on Iran.

Deep inside a private Everglades, Secretary Noem went first. She said she's "working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute" CNN for a recent report on that ICE-tracking app. 

As you can see on Griffing's videotape, President Trump jumped in with this:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/1/25): And they may very well be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran. They were giving totally false reports. It was totally obliterated. And our people have to be celebrated, not come home and say, “What do you mean we didn’t hit the target?” We hit the target quickly. 

You know, the pilots came home, they said we hit the target quickly. So they may very well be prosecuted for that. What they did there, we think, is totally illegal.

For the record, no one has ever said that the pilots "didn't hit the target." But so it goes in this revolutionary time.

There is, of course, no way to know if Noem and Trump were serious in these statements. Does President Trump mean what he said, or was he just flooding the zone again?

Either way, the statement by the sitting president is an example of madness. This is part of what came over the walls at the time of the recent arrival. 

ARRIVALS: Kennedy, Watters, Failla and Gowdy...

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2025

...came over the walls doing this: It must have been the summer heat—the not yet midsummer madness—which led us down this path.

This very morning, at 5 a.m., it was 86 degrees outside; the humidity was high. It must have been a recent attendant madness which led us to think that we could find a way to describe our nation's ongoing decline by searching amid various portraits of various previous arrivals.

Who or what arrived on the American scene when Candidate Trump came down the escalator in June 2015? By whom would Blue America be assailed in the years which followed that date—during the extended, aggressive arrival which continues along today?

We've long favored the Iliad as a portrait of the current fall. That portrait begins with The Rage of Achilles, along with the corresponding rage of Agamemnon himself. 

From the earliest parts of that poem of war, Agamemnon, lord of men, is a highly erratic, rage-fueled commander of the Achaean troops—a man whose command stays on track thanks to the intercession of respected advisers like Nestor, the seasoned charioteer, and Odysseus, the wily tactician.

In that sense, Agamemnon is the first-term President Trump—a ruler subject to constant emotional breakdowns who is persistently saved from himself by the superior judgment of the lieutenants around him.

In this, the gentleman's second term, it has been widely noted that the Nestors are largely gone. The president's fury seems to have built over the course of these ten years, just as the Achaean fury had built during their ten-year siege of Troy. 

(The fury has also built within the sitting's president's supporters, including those at the Fox News Channel. These corporate players have all sorts of legitimate complaints, but they seem to have little ability to regulate their anger.)

Here within our own failing nation, the rage has grown in these past ten years. In his lengthy introduction to Professor Fagles' 1990 translation of the Iliad, Professor Knox offers this portrait of the way the Achaean rage expressed itself when they suddenly came over Troy's towering walls—when, at long last, they arrived:

[T]he death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. 

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history, immortalized in lyric poetry, in tragedy, on temple pediments and painted vases, to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

So it went in the aftermath of the Iliad. 

In their vicious night assault, the Achaeans fought with the weapons of the Late Bronze Age. In our current situation, the fury of Red America's leadership cadres is expressed through the weapons of the Information Age—misinformation, disinformation, distraction, the flooding of the zone.

(Did we mention the fact that these furious players do have real complaints? This cadre does have real complaints, but in their fury, these players often seem to have little ability to regulate their emotions.)

What happened in that night assault hasn't quite happened here. On the other hand, even after the Minnesota murders on June xx, people like Watters, Failla and Gowdy keep attacking CNN's Natasha Bertrand in the most irresponsible and fact-challenged ways. 

Watters, Failla and Gowdy oh my! The basic background is this:

A few days after the June 21 attack on Iran, Bertrand filed an accurate report about a preliminary damage assessment from within the DIA. Please note:

Stating the obvious, this damage assessment didn't come from CNN's Bertrand herself. The assessment which she reported had come from within the intelligence agency of the U.S. Defense Department.

That said, the DIA report had differed from the instant assessment which had been offered by this nation's impetuous president. For that reason, players at the Fox News Channel had to go on the attack.

Let's give a measure of credit to the silly child Jesse Watters! In his ridiculous presentation on the June 25 The Five, he didn't state the name of the reporter in question. 

Elsewhere, the assaults have shown less restraint. This past weekend, D-list comedian Jimmy Failla and former congressman Trey Gowdy went go after Bertrand by name in a pair of inanely fact-challenged Fox News Channel attacks.

The victims in Minnesota were being memorialized even as Failla and Gowdy came over the walls in that remarkably dangerous manner. First though, here was the silly child Watters, on last Wednesday's edition of The Five, teed up by the former VJ who now performs as "Kennedy."

Here's what these (useful) idiots said:

KENNEDY (6/25/25): So Jesse, it almost seems like CNN and the New York Times are using this leaked report, whatever it is, to cheer triumphantly that perhaps the bunker buster bomber strike wasn’t quite as effective as the administration is claiming. 

What do you make of that? And will the president get credit if he did, in fact, dismantle Iran’s nuclear program?

WATTERS: [Silly initial patter]

Now, the woman is the same reporter who said the laptop was Russian, and now she says our bombs don’t work. You’d think she would have been fired for getting hoodwinked by the deep state couple of years ago, but she actually got promoted. She got promoted for being wrong! She got a raise for being wrong! 

Now she’s on CNN getting hoodwinked all over again, because that’s the point. She’s not there to be right. She’s just there to hurt Donald Trump. 

[...]

The Israeli intelligence team, Petraeus, Rubio, the CIA, the IAEA. Everybody says, "Direct hit, years to come back from it." And then there’s CNN, alone in the corner in last place, spewing enemy propaganda. I don’t think they can come back from it.

KENNEDY: Do you think they’re getting it from some sort of nefarious Iranian sources and it’s wishful thinking?

WATTERS: A hater in the Pentagon leaked an early report that had no confidence and just relied on some camera up in the sky. That’s it...

For Alex Griffing's report at Mediaite, you can just click here.

Kennedy seemed to have no idea where the damage assessment had come from. Presumably, she was playing dumb, a task these stars are paid to perform.

Kennedy was casting herself as clueless with respect to the leaked assessment. In his response, the silliest child said that CNN had been "spewing enemy propaganda" in the report by the hoodwinked woman who was "just there to hurt Donald Trump."

According to Watters, CNN had been "spewing enemy propaganda" by issuing an accurate reports about an initial assessment from within the Defense Department's intelligence agency. But then, this is the way the garbage flows on this nation's most-watched "news channel."

In that exchange, Kenndy was playing the fool, as was the silly Watters. In truth, Watters' on-air comic persona is a highly sophisticated blend of the sacred and the profane—is part of the ongoing use of comedy stylings on the Fox News Channel to help make the propaganda go down.

According to Watters, CNN had been spewing the views of the enemy! As for the unnamed woman herself, she had somehow said "that our bombs don't work."

That was stupidity beyond the reach of the stupid. Such porridge is dished on this channel all day and all night, with the finer people at the New York Times and the Washington Post—but also at CNN and MSNBC—agreeing that this conduct must never be reported or discussed.

This manufactured stupidity is part of the warfare of the Information Age. So was the conduct of the president—the conduct which Kennedy and Watters were working to reinforce.

On the previous day, the furious president had repeatedly referred to CNN as "scum." Early on that same June 25, he had attacked Bertrand by name, saying that she should b fired by CNN—should be "thrown out like a dog."

(So raged Agamemnon, long ago. So rages this man today.)

The players on the set of The Five were working to help that conduct along. Minnesota had happened just one week before, but they took no warning from that murderous conduct. Instead, they told some crackpot somewhere that the CNN reporter in question has been spewing enemy propaganda in her latest attempt to hurt Trump.

How stupid does it get on this corporate "cable news" channel? The silly boy Watters inanely said that Bernard had said that our bombs don't work! He also claimed that she'd once said that "the laptop was Russian."

That claim was breathtakingly bogus too. In fact, fifty major intelligence figures had signed a letter describing that as a possibly. She had simply reported what those public figures had said.

Yes, it actually does get that stupid on this corporate messaging service. Four nights later, here was a certain D-list comedian spreading this (dangerous) messaging to whoever might be unbalanced enough to decide to act upon it:

FAILLA (6/28/25): Long story short, CNN quoted anonymous sources to cast doubt on the attacks. And they did it using a reporter named Natasha Bertrand, who is actually the one responsible for starting the false claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, OK? 

Like all reporters, Natasha would like to win a Pulitzer Prize one day, but (insert stupid commentary here about former President Biden falling off his bike).

It doesn't get dumber than that—and it doesn.t get more irresponsible.

Two weeks after Minnesota, the flyweight Failla was spreading the hate to the next potential assassin. Astoundingly, former Rep. Gowdy did the same thing the following night, savaging Bertrand by name while employing the helpful term, "aiding and abetting." 

You can watch his presentation here. We return to the arrival which occurred when the rage-filled Achaeans were finally able to come over the walls at Troy.

The Achaeans expressed their fury through the tools of Bronze Age war. Today, people like "Kennedy," Watters, Failla and Gowdy express the fury of the past ten years through these more modern means.

In the immediate aftermath of the murders in Minnesota, they were willing to go on TV and behave in such dangerous ways as these. Meanwhile their own Agamemnon was crying "scum" and asking that the reporter in question be "thrown out like a dog."

Our view? The rage and the fury are the are the same emotions portrayed from the Iliad's first verses forward. In fairness, today's players have perfectly valid complaints about various aspects of Blue America's conduct. But even at this dangerous time, their ability to regulate their fury barely seems to exist.

We've long been drawn to Professor Knox's portrait of that "night assault"—of that ancient arrival. It starts to give us a way to understand the arrival which is now sweeping Blue America to the side. 

Then again, there's the arrival which was recalled last Friday night by this new PBS program:

S39 Ep 5
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny

Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.

So reads the synopsis from the American Masters program itself.  The program discussed a catastrophic arrival which took place in the Germany of the 1930s.

Should American Masters have done such a thing? Tomorrow, we'll show you what the program said.

Tomorrow: To be perfectly clear, President Trump has never done anything like that