SATURDAY: It's hard to be totally wrong on the merits...

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2024

...if you're on the air at Fox: This very morning, the regular Fox & Friends Weekend crew shot out of the gate rather fast.

The regular crew was back in the saddle. We'll call the roll of that lineup:

Regular lineup, Fox & Friends Weekend:

Rachel Campos-Duffy: genial observer of Communists, Marxists and pagans

Pete Hegseth: Princeton / Harvard Kennedy School grad who hates the Ivy League

Will Cain: Panelist most likely to tamp down overheated assessments

Following last Sunday's repeated discussions of pagans, this crew did, in fact, shoot out of the gate rather fast:

The program began with a two-minute discussion of whether it's sufficiently "masculine" for a male TV host to wave at his program's viewers when his show goes on the air. After that, Campos-Duffy called our attention to a new op-ed by Victor Davis Hanson—a new opinion piece for Fox, an opinion piece bearing these titles:

11 ways Biden and his handlers are hell-bent on destroying America
The path to civilizational destruction should be very familiar by now

You can read the column here. According to an editor's note, the somewhat thinly-argued column "is adapted from a tweet."

Is President Biden actually "hell-bent on destroying America?" Has this president, along with his handlers, deliberately found eleven ways to do that?

Whatever you think of this president's policies, that claim might seem to be a bit overwrought. It's the kind of claim which closes the door on any hope of reconciliation between the forces of our current pair of nations—Red America and Blue America, as defined by Peter Baker.

The claim that the president is intentionally trying to destroy America might seem a bit overwrought. Unless the claim is being profiled by the extremely genial weekend co-host, Campos-Duffy.

"He's kind of saying what we're all thinking," the genial co-host instantly said. She dropped her first M-bomb at 6:03, saying this as she finished reading the list of Professor Hanson's eleven points:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (4/6/24): Number 11, "Turn world-class universities into indoctrination centers."  I would add, Marxist indoctrination centers. 

Here is Victor Davis Hanson on the bottom line:

(VIDEOTAPE: Professor Hanson, discussing his new column on the Fox Business Channel.)

Professor Hanson has always struck us as an interesting person who is also the western world's saddest, most mournful human being. By way of contrast:

As we've noted in the past week, Campos-Duffy strikes us as am extremely genial person who doesn't seem to possess the tiniest hint of the nuance gene. 

Campos-Duffy is inclined to see "Communists" and Marxists" wherever people display a viewpoint which slightly differs from hers. She seems to lack the nuance gene, along with the gene which allows for the possibility that different viewpoints can exist in the world in something resembling good faith.

As we noted this week, Campos-Duffy added "pagan" to her list of invectives on last weekend's Easter morning broadcast. The conversations which ensued made us think of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, in which a well-financed secret society is attempting to maintain an extremely ancient cultural tradition through a set of ceremonial activities which are religious / liturgical in their basic construction.

Yesterday, it was the Marxists again—and President Biden is deliberately trying to destroy the nation! We humans are wired to think in such ways, some of us a bit more than others. 

As a general matter, we humans will be inclined to react to others in such ways until we develop the ability to moderate such impulses. In our view, her constantly name-calling doesn't make Campos-Duffy a bad person. It means that her chemistry contains a bit too much of the million-year-old "tribal identity" juice.

(More specifically, we refer to the "my tribe or the highway" juice. Stating the obvious, a diverse and very large modern nation can't expect to run on such fuel.)

Campos-Duffy is a warm, constantly smiling presence—until she starts dropping her bombs. That said, our own blue tribe is inclined to drop a great deal of ordnance too. 

(A bit like the patrons Cummings bitterly described at Boston's Old Howard theater during World War I, we tend to "applaud all songs containing the words racist, bigot and homophobe" when sung on our cable news programs. We have quite a few other bombs we may tend to add to that last.)

We're the pagans and they're the bigots and rarely the twain shall meet! We've rarely seen this impulse go as far off the rails as it did last Sunday morning when Campos-Duffy and Hegseth, joined by the disappointing Joey Johnny Jones, mangled the basic facts of at least four news events to spread the idea that a bunch of "pagans" are now "spitting in the face of the people who love America most."

Large modern nations can't function that way, in the grip of that ancient tribal wiring. That said, the Weekend friends came out of the gate in a similar way once again this very morning.

By 6:07. Campos-Duffy was assuring Red America's viewers about the actual source of President Biden's eleven-point attempt at destroying the nation. As she dropped her first S-bomb, she told us where it comes from:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: You know, Barack Obama, I think, is behind so much of this. It is clear that President Biden isn't. 

And Barack Obama said, you know, his goal was, How do you do these socialist policies without the Americans actually knowing it is happening? And I think what's happening is we're at the point where we're finally seeing the fruits of it...

But I think a lot of people are writing, "Thank you for writing this. I'm not crazy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist." You know, somebody is intentionally trying to make this country worse—destroy it.

HEGSETH: For sure! If you want to read the whole thing, go to FoxNews.com, the entire op-ed is there, eleven points, the reason why. As always, Victor Davis Hanson giving some clarity, some perspective on something we're always kicking around here on the show: Why are they doing this?

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah, absolutely.

They're always kicking this around on their show! (For whatever reason, the policies in question had been bumped down by now to the point where they were merely "socialist.") 

That said, is President Biden—or more likely, is Barack Obama—secretly trying to destroy the country? 

"For sure," Hegseth quickly said. Campos-Duffy said, "Yeah, absolutely."

We were seven minutes into the day and we'd already reached that point. Within the realm of Blue America, the handbook is clear at this point:

Based on what Campos-Duffy said about Obama, we're supposed to denounce her as a racist. It can't be something as simple as her internal wiring lacking the first hint of the nuance or complexity genes, in much the way our own Blue America internals may sometimes seem to be wired.

When men fought on the wide plains before the towering walls of Troy, nuance and complexity played little role in the basic conflict. There was little need to manufacture otherization.

This was a war between two separate civilizations, with the Achaeans (the Argives, the Greeks) laying siege to a powerful city in what is part of present-day Turkey. Helen had left one world and gone to the other.

The Argives wanted her back.

What languages may have been spoken if some such combat really occurred? According to modern-day scholars, we still don't exactly know:

Trojan language

The Trojan language was the language spoken in Troy during the Late Bronze Age. The identity of the language is unknown, and it is not certain that there was one single language used in the city at the time.

[...]

In Ancient Greek literature such as the Iliad, Trojan characters are portrayed as having a common language with the Achaeans. However, scholars unanimously interpret this as a poetic convention, and not as evidence that the Trojans were Greek speakers...Some scholars have suggested that Greek-origin names for Trojan characters in the Iliad motivate a more serious argument for the Trojans having been Greek speakers. 

Putative etymologies for legendary names have also been used to argue that the Trojans spoke other languages such as Thracian or Lydian. These arguments have been countered on the basis that these languages would have been familiar to classical-era bards and could therefore be later inventions.

And so on from there. But that was a war between civilizations. Ours is a war between two coterminous nations, two nations which abide in one place. 

Under the circumstances, we have to find ways to persuade ourselves that we Americans are actually two separate nations. The kinds of otherizations perfected on Fox provide one of the ways we can do that.

Last Sunday's show was "cable news" about as throwback as it gets. In Eyes Wide Shut, a well-financed secret society was ceremonially maintaining an ancient sexual tradition. On Fox, the friends were explicitly seeking the continuation of a two thousand year old religious tradition.

Everybody else is a pagan. With that, the war was on.

Campos-Duffy is strongly inclined to otherize others. That said, given the state of present-day politics and policy, it's very hard to be totally wrong on the merits if you're hosting a Fox News show:

No matter how far over the top you may seem to go, you'll almost surely have a large amount of Blue American folderol to deal with.

In our view, that fact is clear in Professor Hanson's list of eleven points. His aim is reasonably true in at least a few of his basic points, though he tends to go light-years over the top in his motive-based otherization.

Good lord! Even Greg Gutfeld is sometimes arguably right on the bare bones merits of certain issues, once he has offered his standard joke about the way liberal women are just too freaking fat. 

Gutfeld would have been in that Long Island mansion in Eyes Wide Shut, engaged in those throwback procedures. But just because he seems to in the grip of some extremely unhelpful genes, even he gets to be basically right on the merits a fair amount of the time.

We'll have more on that claim next week. We'll be discussing some of the things our own bad case of tribal myopia won't allow us denizens of Blue America to see.

In our view, Professor Hanson is working with some basic points which carry some obvious merit. That said, he's also the world most mournful man, and it only took his genial admirer three minutes to spot her first batch of Marxists.

Two can play this unhelpful game. It seems to us that two modern nations, Red and Blue, are currently doing something like that!

Is that what Donald J. Trump really said?

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2024

Paraphrase can never be perfect: Under current arrangements, denizens of Red America hear an array of statements and claims. 

Denizens of Blue America rarely receive those same presentations. This creates a type of Babel as our nation, such as it ever was, continues to split in two.

Case study! Yesterday afternoon, we showed you a fairly length transcript of remarks made by Candidate Donald J. Trump in Michigan this Tuesday. Once again, for better or worse, here's the (somewhat lengthy) transcript of that part of what the candidate said:

TRUMP (4/2/24): Just a few weeks ago, I met with the grieving family of Laken Riley. You know Laken, she was incredible. Top of her class. Everything was the top. She was the top of everything. She was incredible. I met the parents, incredible people.

The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was barbarically murdered by an illegal alien animal. 

The Democrats say, "Please don’t call them animals, they're humans."

I said, "No, they’re not humans, they're not humans. They’re animals."

Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, "Please don't use the word 'animals,' sir, when you're talking about these people. 

I said, "I'll use the word 'animal' because that's what they are."

I'll never forget my vow to her wonderful mother, father and sister, two weeks ago. I said, "I will deliver justice for Laken." 

I said that, and now today, I'm adding something. It's going to be for Laken, and it's also justice for Ruby. 

We're going to deliver justice for Ruby.  We're going to watch what happens with this thug. We're going to watch what happens. And we have all the law enforcement behind. They're going to watch what happens to this thug. He's not going to get away with it.

For better or worse, that's what the gentleman said. "Ruby" was Ruby Garcia, a young Michigan woman who was apparently murdered by an unauthorized migrant who had been her boyfriend.

When the posted passage begins, the candidate has already discussed Garcia's murder at some length. For better or worse, we're showing you, once again, this part of what he said.

Now the question arises. How should a responsible journalist report what Trump said? How should that passage be edited? Also, how should that passage be paraphrased? 

In particular, who was Donald J. Trump describing as "animals?" Fairly quickly, that turned out to be the question at hand.

Well over twenty years ago, we told you this: The power to paraphrase is the power to spin. 

That bromide was derived from the phantasmagoric way the mainstream press corps kept paraphrasing comments made by Candidate Gore, starting with this poisonous paraphrase triptych from March 1999: 

Al Gore said he invented the Internet! 
Al Gore said he inspired Love Story!
Al Gore said he grew up doing farm chores, but he really grew up in a fancy hotel!

Those acts of paraphrase were all inexcusable stretches. Eventually, the claim about the fancy hotel (sometimes referred to as the Ritz Carlton) was seen by all to be plainly bogus--so much so that even the mainstream press corps abandoned the claim, eventually inventing the ludicrous December 1999 claim which restored The Rule of Three:

Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal!

In some ways, that was the most ludicrous claim of them all. But the mainstream guild whose work we now trust kept it up right through to November, attributing additional peculiar claims to Candidate Gore right through the Bush-Gore debates.

Today, it's Candidate Donald J. Trump who is being paraphrased. For various reasons, he can be especially hard to paraphrase, in large part because his statements tend to be so fuzzy and so imprecise.

How has the passage posted above been paraphrased by Blue America's leadership cadres? In particular, the question which arose was this:

Who was Trump describing as "animals?" How should his statement be described on that particular count?

Last Sunday, the leadership cadre on Fox & Friends Weekend made an absolute joke of the modern world. How have blue leadership cadres been doing? You probably won't like how we score it. 

Paraphrase can never be perfect. How has Blue America's cable news leadership cadre chosen to describe Trump's remarks?

We'll plan to show you tomorrow. We think they haven't done a great job, and that Trump tends to win at this game.

Remember—it's all anthropology now! We asking you to think of this as a study in (vastly overrated) human capability.

CADRES: On Fox, the friends kept dropping a bomb!

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2024

Once again, Kubrick's last film: Given the way our discourse currently works, by the end of the week it's a Babel—a Babel of many parts.

Eventually, we'll try to show you what we mean. For now, let's return to a torrent of babble which was produced last Sunday morning. 

More precisely, it was produced on March 31, 2024, which happened to be Easter Sunday.

Let's return to that day's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "cable news" show, Fox & Friends Weekend. Let's return to the start of a long, confused and richly confusing, thoroughly Babel-rich week.

On that Easter morning, Fox & Friends Weekend went on the air at 6 o'clock sharp. The bulk of the first hour was a live feed of the Pope in Rome. This may explain why the attacks on this nation's "pagans" didn't get underway until the 7 o'clock hour.

In Tuesday's report, we called the roll of the three friends who were present that day on the couch. We'll repeat that list for you here:

The leadership cadre in question:

Rachel Campos-Duffy, who added a term to her pre-existing string of invectives as Sunday's program aired.

Joey Johnny Jones, the Fox News Channel's rural Georgia import, who seems to be succumbing to the human desire to make himself right with the herd.

Pete Hegseth (AKA Trader Pete), the Princeton / Harvard Kennedy School grad who never met an erroneous or misleading statement by Campos-Duffy he wouldn't rush to affirm.

Those were the three "thought leaders" who sat in the saddle that day. Needless to say, the discovery of the nation's pagans started with Campos-Duffy, an extremely genial and likable host who doesn't seem to possess the tiniest hint of the nuance gene.

Normally, Campos-Duffy contents herself with identifying people who don't agree with every syllable which drops from her mouth as "Communists" and / or Marxists."  On this morning, which she described as sacred, her analysis went one step farther. 

Jumbling four bungled topics together, she hauled off and offered this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (3/31/24): The response was, "Well, Trans Day of Visibility has always been March 31." 

[starting to shout]

I'm like, Trans Day of Visibility has been around for like two minutes. The resurrection of Christ has been around for two thousand years! And this means something to the majority, even to those who don't practice and go to church on this glorious Sunday. 

It still means something in a lot of ways to Americans and that they would try to change—

Basically it's a new liturgical calendar, It's a pagan liturgical calendat that they want to make us adhere to, and I think a lot of Americans have just had enough of this.

HEGSETH: No doubt! And that's another contrast people will remember.

JONES: We're going to talk more about this with Mike Huckabee later on in the hour, so we're going to hash this out more...

Campos-Duffy is telegenic and extremely genial. It's easy to see why she's been around so long, and has been so successful, as a "cable news" host.

That said, she seems to lack any trace of the nuance or complexity genes. That said, we'd never heard her drop the P-bomb before—and the boys of course rushed to affirm her.

Please don't make us explain the four (4) separate bungled topics Campos-Duffy was referencing here. Red American viewers of this "cable news" show were already knee-deep in false, misleading or unfounded (or simply dreamed-up) tribal claims.

Campos-Duffy was now pulling the quartet of bungles together, telling us that "they" (in context, the Biden White House) were trying to make us—the good, decent people—adhere to a "pagan calendar!"

Jones promised further discussion. Like Lincoln's war, "it came." 

Huckabee arrived on the scene at 7:25 a.m. He managed to avoid use of the P-bomb, as did Campos Duffy, though she did offer this assessment, mainly about President Biden's proclamation concerning Trans Day:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: I think there's a battle going on. It's a spiritual battle. There are people who want to de-Christianize the country and very actively so. 

I think this was a very intentional insult. They can say all they want, "Oh, it landed on the 31st." But just as Pete said, they could have moved it to the first. April Fools Day would have probably been a more appropriate day than Easter Sunday in any case.

For the record, March 31 is the recognized day around the world for the international day in question. That isn't an American designation. The date has been in place, internationally, since 2009.

"Quite frankly, it's an affront to the Bible," Huckabee did say at one point. To watch this discussion, click here.

The troubling topic arose again at the very start of the 8 o'clock hour. Sure enough! At 8:02 a.m., the P-bomb was dropped once again:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: It is a holy day. And I think one of the things that we've been highlighting all through the portion of the show is the importance of Christians to take responsibility for honoring, making this day holy—not allowing, you know, the commercialization, much less this other pagan path that the Trans Day of Visibility, that the White House is trying to overshadow this holy day with, that ridiculous proclamation on the same day as the day that our lord is risen.

And so, you know—we're just a different kind of show than other networks.

HEGSETH: Yeah!

CAMPOS-DUFFY: And you know—

HEGSETH: Stay with us if you're with us. I think you are. 

CAMPOS-DUFFY: I think you may be.

HEGSETH: We're going with the whole two thousand year tradition, the whole "God came as a man and then died and rose again, defeating death as no one else ever had." We're going to celebrate that part of it here on Fox & Friends.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Amen to that.

At this point, Jones tried to put a kinder and gentler face on the matter. That said, the White House was now said to be trying to overshadow the holy day of Easter with that "other pagan path."

Concerning the threat of that pagan path, the three friends agreed. Fox & Friends wasn't like the other programs!  At Fox & Friends, they were going with the two thousand year old tradition instead! 

As we mentioned yesterday, we flash on Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut when we hear a statement like that. We flash on the liturgical celebration of traditional male sexual dominance upon which the Tom Cruise character stumbles, somewhere in a mansion out on Long Island, in that last Kubrick film.

As we've often noted, Campos-Duffy is extremely genial—until she spots the Communists or the Marxists under some one of a million beds. 

Now the pagans are under there too! And during the program's 9 o'clock hour, it sure enough happened again!

This time, Joey Johnny took the lead, with Rachel and Trader Pete taking turns dropping the P-bomb. We join Joey Johnny in progress:

JONES: Why would they attack Eastern Sunday, or at least do something that makes people feel attacked on Easter Sunday? And I don't just mean the Trans Visibility Day, the proclamation. I mean just all the way down to the Easter eggs. You can't decorate Easter eggs.

The people that are hurting the worst in this country have faith. The people that are hurting the worst in this country from these policies have love for us, and have love for this country, and believe and have hope that there will be another day they'll see their loved ones. Leaders should exemplify that, not spit in the face of it.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: I think it's really, again—it's an inflection point. We're looking at a moment where one side of the aisle wants to de-Christianize our country, move it in more pagan directions. And the other side wants to reinforce the values of Christianity and celebrate who we've always been. And I think that—

You know, it's a time for choosing! I'm sorry, they've made it so clear. I wish they hadn't. But they did

HEGSETH: You're 100 percent correct. I had a friend text me, say, you know, "We shouldn't call them progressives any more. They're pagan radicals!"

They want to dismiss, block, discredit, end any Christian tradition they can because if you get rid of God then government becomes your God. 

JONES: Exactly.

And so the long morning went. For the record, Joey Johnny had now dragged in a bungled claim about the decoration of Easter eggs—a bungled claim for which Breitbart site later issued a formal apology.

At Fox, no clarification will follow. To the rapidly succumbing Jones, the White House had been "spitting in the face" of the people who are hurting the worst in this country. 

To Rachel, the White House was trying to move the country "in pagan directions." Trader Pete was now eager to say that they are actually "pagan radicals." 

They're more pagan than the pagans were, back when the pagans were pagan!

In Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick portrayed a secret society on Long Island ceremonially restoring a million-year-old tradition of male sexual domination. From the first hundred lines of The Iliad. this eternal tradition of sexual dominance drives the plot of that ancient war poem.

In Kubrick's film, those throwback sexual ceremonies—ceremonies with a plainly liturgical feel—were bigly conducted in secret. On this sacred Easter Sunday, the Fox & Friends gang was walking a similar path. 

The friends were seeking to maintain a two thousand year old religious perspective. They were attacking the pagans as they did. But they were conducting their own secret ceremony right out in the open!

They were able to conduct a secret ceremony because Blue America wasn't watching. Our own tribe's screamers have repeatedly told us that we shouldn't speak to the deplorable people whose perspectives differ from ours.

God knows there's plenty to criticize in the ongoing absurdities and excesses of Blue America's current attitudes, behaviors and policies. With regard to several high-visibility topics, President Biden has been so astoundingly AWOL that it's very hard to be wrong on the merits if you belong to a leadership cadre in support of Red America.

Rachel, Pete and Joey Johnny almost seem to want more. On this day which they called so sacred, they were conducting a secret society in support of a very ancient tradition. They were also doing a lot of name-calling on what they repeatedly said was the most sacred day of their year.

As they did this, they kept misstating basic facts about a set of (at least) four current topics. They even brought Brian Kilmeade on to tell the world what one unnamed person had allegedly told him had supposedly happened when Governor Hochul attended the wake of a murdered New York City policeman.

There was no reason to believe what Kilmeade said he'd been told. Standing opposed to the Marxists and pagans, the Fox friends swallowed it down.

Judged by normal standards, they were behaving like terrible people. We'd say they're more probably acting like people people—that their behavior reflects the basic impulses of us the humans as displayed through the blood-soaked annals of time.

On Blue America's "cable news" channel, our own leadership cadres also behave like people people on a fairly regular basis. In closing for now, we'll add this:

The nuance gene plays a limited role in the wiring of our flawed human brains. We're inclined to return to the ancient traditions—in this case, to our separation into tribes and then to the endless descent into denigration, name-calling and war.

They're a bunch of deplorables, our own tribe once said. On Easter Sunday, the deplorables were fighting back, plumping for war with the pagans. 

The P-bombs were general over Fox News; all nuance was left far behind. Perhaps a bit like Pepperidge Farm, one "cable news" watcher remembered:

Lost to the clan,

lost to the hearth, lost to the old ways, that one

who lusts for all the horrors of war with his own people.

That's what the seasoned Nestor sagely advised the Achaeans, back in the days when men maintained Kubrick's ancient tradition of sexual dominance as they inanely staged a deadly siege which lasted a full ten years on the plains which surrounded the towering walls of Troy.

In our view, it doesn't get much dumber, or much worse, than it was on that Easter Sunday "cable news" program. In all fairness, we'd have to add this:

All in all, it was people people in action! 

We humans are wired to function like that! As the hours and the days roll by, let's take a quick look at the leadership cadres rolled out by our own flailing tribe.

Regarding babel, we'll restate this:

Our tribe now lives in Blue America. Their tribe now lives in Red America, which our own cadres rarely visit.

Has Donald J. Trump been setting out bait?

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

No bait left behind: Has Candidate Donald J. Trump perhaps been using his words?

In Tuesday's speech in Michigan, he began flashing "blood bath" again, deliberately giving the term new, additional weight. 

Along the way, he also offered the statement shown below. He was speaking about two young women who have been murdered by unauthorized or semi-unauthorized migrants:

TRUMP (4/2/24): Just a few weeks ago, I met with the grieving family of Laken Riley. You know Laken, she was incredible. Top of her class. Everything was the top. She was the top of everything. She was incredible. I met the parents, incredible people.

The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was barbarically murdered by an illegal alien animal. 

The Democrats say, "Please don’t call them animals, they're humans."

I said, "No, they’re not humans, they're not humans. They’re animals."

Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, "Please don't use the word 'animals,' sir, when you're talking about these people. 

I said, "I'll use the word 'animal' because that's what they are."

I'll never forget my vow to her wonderful mother, father and sister, two weeks ago. I said, "I will deliver justice for Laken." 

I said that, and now today, I'm adding something. It's going to be for Laken, and it's also justice for Ruby. 

We're going to deliver justice for Ruby.  We're going to watch what happens with this thug. We're going to watch what happens. And we have all the law enforcement behind. They're going to watch what happens to this thug. He's not going to get away with it.

Trump continued from there. "Ruby" is Ruby Garcia, a young Michigan woman whose murder Trump had already discussed at some length. 

You can watch his entire speech by clicking here. Or you can let a bunch of unimpressive journalists tell you what he said.

We'll start with several observations:

First, we have no idea whether Nancy Pelosi ever said anything like that to Trump. Also, we ourselves don't use the term "animal" to refer to a person. 

(We even complained when mainstream journos aped Jacob Weisberg, who had written that Candidate Gore came across like "some sort of feral animal who had been locked in a small cage" at his first debate with Bill Bradley. We noted that this is one of the ways we can dehumanize the people we choose to oppose.)

For the record, we can even remember when President Obama got criticized for calling some criminals "thugs!" (We wouldn't use that term either.)

That said, several questions arise:

First question: Was Trump saying that all migrants, or perhaps all unauthorized migrants, are "animals?" (And "thugs?") Or was he referring only to those who commit vicious murders?

Second question: Was Trump just setting out bait? Was he again employing language for which he knew he'd be criticized, but doing so in a way where he could claim—where he could fairly reasonably claim—that the liberals and the "fake news" media were misrepresenting his statements again?

Is Candidate Trump clever enough to lay out that kind of bait? We can't answer that question, but if he is, he can be sure of this one fact:

If he lays out such bait for our team to take, there will be No Bait Left Behind!

Uniformly, Trump's remarks have been edited and paraphrased in such a way as to make it sound like he was calling all migrants "animals. As with many things this candidate says, it isn't perfectly clear what precisely he meant. But it certainly isn't clear that he should be represented as having said that.

Was the candidate laying out bait? Surely, he knows the rule by which our blue team proceeds. Also, he's been a con man his entire life. He's much better at playing this game than our unimpressive pseudo-journalists are.

No Bait Left Behind! 

Ever since his early remarks about John McCain, it's been the rule by which our blue team has elected to proceed.

Our team is highly unimpressive, profoundly unskilled. It isn't clear that the candidate isn't beating us at his own game every time!

Final point: As a general matter, speaking up for innocent people who get murdered is extremely good politics. Incredibly, we blues don't seem to understand that fact at this dangerous point in time.

Why not also this: To recall the way that first Gore-Bradley debate was covered, here's the link to the late Eric Boehlert's report for Salon. 

More precisely, that's the way this debate was covered by the propaganda-inclined mainstream journalists whose assessments, judgments and intentions we unwisely place our trust.

Did Israel conduct a deliberate attack?

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

One meaning of "everything's possible:" Did Israel stage a deliberate attack on those humanitarian aid trucks, resulting the deaths of seven aid workers? 

Kevin Drum explores that question in a post which carries this headline:

Did Israel deliberately destroy an aid convoy?

We strongly recommend that you read Kevin's post. It creates a chance to ponder the way the world (sometimes) works.

Kevin starts by listing five bullet points which make it hard to believe that the attack was some sort of "fog of war" incident. His assessment comes next, as shown:

DRUM (4/3/24): So the only remaining question is: Why? Did the Israeli military deliberately destroy an aid convoy? Or, despite everything, did they somehow misidentify the trucks as Hamas?

I can hardly bring myself to believe it was deliberate. That would be monstrous. On the other hand, Israel's ongoing efforts to starve the Gazan population have been pretty monstrous. What's more, their recent acquiescence to increasing aid shipments has been very much against their will. Deliberately destroying an aid convoy would certainly be a very effective way of continuing their starvation policy by the simple expedient of scaring off humanitarian organizations. Finally, in addition to all this, it's just very hard to believe that an operation so precisely calculated and carried out was due merely to sloppy intel or a careless fog-of-war mistake.

I still don't believe it was deliberate. I can't. But it sure is getting harder.

We understand Kevin's reaction—and his reluctance. Beyond that, and for obvious reasons, we'll offer no final assessment of our own.

We have no reliable way to form an assessment. On the other hand, this:

Any decision which humans can make will eventually be made by someone. 

No matter how cruel, or even how evil, some such decision may seem, if the decision can be made, it has been made at some point in the past. And it will be made, once again, by someone in the future.

We understand Kevin's reluctance to say that Israel did this. On the other hand, he says in his post that Israel has already adopted a "starvation policy." How far away from that is this next possible step?

A few months ago, we introduced the concept of "disregarded peoples." Within the American journalistic context, Gazan citizens come close to being such a disappeared population—and the views and feelings of Israeli leadership cadres may have moved well beyond that.

We've often thought, in recent weeks, about the 1964 film, The Pawnbroker. The thumbnail runs as shown:

The Pawnbroker (film) 

The Pawnbroker is a 1964 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. The screenplay was an adaptation by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant.

The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. It earned international acclaim for Steiger, launching his career as an A-list actor.

[...]

In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot 

In Nazi Germany, Sol Nazerman, a German-Jewish university professor, is sent to a concentration camp along with his family. He witnesses his two children die and his wife raped by Nazi officers before she is killed.

Twenty-five years later, Nazerman is haunted by his memories. He operates a pawnshop in an East Harlem slum while living in an anonymous Long Island housing tract with his sister-in-law, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and her husband. Numbed and alienated by his experiences, he has trained himself not to show emotion...

The plot summary continues from there. Long story short, the Steiger character is a concentration camp survivor who has largely lost his soul in the process. Terrible things can happen to people who are subjected to so much vicious treatment.

With regard to the present-day situation, we've rarely seen a major topic which is so selectively reported and discussed within the mainstream American context. We refer to the coverage of actions by Israel itself, but also to the coverage of people here in the United States who are said to be (take your pick) "pro-Palestinian" or "pro-Hamas."

Some columnists have started describing and discussing the domestic pro-Palestinian / pro-Hamas situation, especially on college campuses. It seems to us that major news orgs are staying very far away from the general topic.

Tomorrow, we're expecting to suggest that Kevin hasn't been watching enough Red American cable news of late! We think he misstated the facts concerning a recent bit of Fox News journalism. (Our own blue tribe is rarely aware of what's being said and done over there.)

We think Kevin misstated the facts of that recent matter. We think he does a very good job laying out some basic facts concerning the deaths of those aid workers.

Everything is possible! If some type of decision can be made, at some point someone will. 

CADRES: We thought of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut!

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

One "news channel's" secret society: Early this morning, we thought of Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut.

We've thought of that film fairly often of late. In our own imperfect recollection, it was frequently rejected by the critics. That said, the leading authority on the film thumbnails the matter as shown

Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 erotic mystery psychological drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. It is based on the 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler, transferring the story's setting from early twentieth-century Vienna to 1990s New York City. 

The plot centers on a physician (Tom Cruise) who is shocked when his wife (Nicole Kidman) reveals that she had contemplated having an affair 12 months earlier. He then embarks on a night-long adventure, during which he infiltrates a masked orgy of an unnamed secret society. 

Kubrick died of a heart attack six days after showing the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner Bros., making it the final film he directed. He reportedly considered it his "greatest contribution to the art of cinema." In order to ensure a theatrical R rating in the United States, Warner Bros. digitally altered several sexually explicit scenes during post-production. This version was premiered on July 13, 1999, before being released on July 16, to generally positive but polarizing reviews from critics. Box office receipts for the film worldwide were about $162 million, making it Kubrick's highest-grossing film.

We're surprised to read that critics' reviews were generally favorable. We more strongly remember reviews like these:

Some reviewers were unfavorable. One complaint was that the movie's pacing was too slow; while this may have been intended to convey a dream state, critics objected that it made actions and decisions seem laboured. Another complaint was that it did not live up to the expectation of it being a "sexy film" which is what it had been marketed as, thus defying audiences' expectations. Many critics, such as Manohla Dargis of LA Weekly, found the prolific orgy scene to be "banal" and "surprisingly tame." While Kubrick's "pictorial talents" were described as "striking" by Rod Dreher of the New York Post, the pivotal scene was deemed by Stephen Hunter, writing for The Washington Post, as the "dullest orgy [he'd] ever seen." Hunter elaborates on his criticism, and states that "Kubrick is annoyingly offhand while at the same time grindingly pedantic; plot points are made over and over again, things are explained till the dawn threatens to break in the east, and the movie stumbles along at a glacial pace." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly complained about the inauthenticity of the New York setting, claiming that the soundstage used for the film's production didn't have "enough bustle" to capture the reality of New York. Paul Tatara of CNN described the film as a "slow-motion morality tale full of hot female bodies and thoroughly uneventful 'mystery,'" while Andrew Sarris writing for The New York Observer criticised the film's "feeble attempts at melodramatic tension and suspense." David Edelstein of Slate dismissed it as "estranged from any period I recognize. Who are these people played by Cruise and Kidman, who act as if no one has ever made a pass at them and are so deeply traumatized by their newfound knowledge of sexual fantasies—the kind that mainstream culture absorbed at least half a century ago? Who are these aristocrats whose limos take them to secret masked orgies in Long Island mansions? Even dream plays need some grounding in the real world." J. Hoberman wrote that the film "feels like a rough draft at best."

Lee Siegel from Harper's felt that most critics responded mainly to the marketing campaign and did not address the film on its own terms. Others felt that American censorship took an esoteric film and made it even harder to understand...

For the introduction to Michel Ciment's Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, Martin Scorsese wrote: "When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick's death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you'll see that all his films were initially misunderstood. Then, after five or ten years came the realization that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since."

Siegel and Scorsese to the rescue! But those reviews are more the way we remember it going when Kubrick's last film hit the fan.

Right from the jump, we were intrigued by Eyes Wide Shut. It seemed to us that those critics weren't seeing what we had seen in the admittedly slow-moving film.

Most specifically, we were intrigued by the portrait of an "unnamed secret society" widely operating, under the cover of darkness, within an uncomprehending New York. When the Cruise character stumbled upon the orgy scene out on Long Island, he was astonished by a part of the world he hadn't known was there.

In this case, the unnamed, rather large, well-financed "secret society" was a well-hidden sexual secret society. And it's true:

The film's sexuality was largely boring. In our view, it was the portrait of the secrecy itself—the film's portrait of the hidden disintegration of common cultural practice—which made the film intriguing.

In retrospect, we'd describe it as a portrait of the way empires come apart. For better or worse, we now think of the film pretty much every time we watch the Fox News Channel's primetime "news" program, Gutfeld! 

Greg Gutfeld is 59 years old. To our inner eye, he seems to have walked straight out of the film which Kubrick apparently viewed as his most insightful.

Let is be said that the secret society in that film had the feel of a "reactionary" secret society, a secret society operating from what would be thought of as the cultural right. It's a secret society formed in reaction to the leveling "sexual revolutions" of the previous four or five decades.

It's a secret society designed to roll back changes in permitted sex roles, to return women to their traditional place.

Just as Paddy Chayefsky prefigured Bill O'Reilly (and others) in the 1976 film Network, so Kubrick may have prefigured Gutfeld, and the adepts with some he surrounds himself, in his final film, Eyes Wide Shut.

One striking difference! The secret society Gutfeld conducts operates for all to see on our nation's most-watched "cable news" channel. It's on the air each weekday night for an hour in prime time, starting at 10 p.m. Eastern.

That said, everyone in Blue America has been told not to watch such fare and not to speak to the people who possibly do. We tend to stick to our Blue America "cable news" channel, where the guests discuss the chances of getting Trump frog-marched away and locked up, night after night after night.

As we'll note tomorrow, Blue America plainly doesn't watch the (prime time) Gutfeld! ("cable news") program. Last night, the program opened with the standard throwback sexual bullshit, with weird but soul-crushing puzzling bullshit like this:

GUTFELD (4/3/24): On Monday, Iowa's victory over LSU set a TV ratings record for women's college basketball. Good! Maybe it will help those gals find good husbands.

That was the termagant's second joke, though the audience seemed to have no idea what was supposed to make the joke funny.

What in the world made that a joke? Instantly, up came a standard hook! An offstage voice, with supporting pictorial, now described the puzzling joke as something "A SEXIST WOULD SAY!"

As if by law, the termagant's first joke had been built on the theme that President Biden is surely nearing his death. After that second impenetrable joke, the termie continued with this:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): A bearded transathlete was suspended from a female rowing team for leering at a topless girl in the changing room. He said it was all a misunderstanding. He was just trying to stare at her breasts to get rid of nis boner.

Again, the audience seemed to have no idea concerning what made that a joke. In response to the sounds of silence, the termagant offered this:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): That was a great joke. Thank you. 

I will take the applause! I had to force it out of them!

From there, it was on to the offering shown below, accompanied by a graphic showing this quote from New York Post: "Physically healthy Dutch woman, 28, decides to be euthanized dur to crippling depression:"

GUTFELD (continuing directly): A physically healthy Dutch woman decided to end her life due to struggles with depression. Evidently, she came to the conclusion after reading a new book.

Up popped a photo of Jesse Watters' apparently braindead new book. This produced a large burst of audience laughter in response to the standard bromantic jostling which exists between Gutfeld and Watters. 

Translation:

On Gutfeld!, any human tragedy is good for a laugh as long as it involves the misfortune of some young (non-conservative) woman. That even includes the ending of some such young person's life. 

That said, the largely undisguised loathing of women is a reliable feature of the comic fare the 59-year-old termagant offers the world every night. He goes there night after night after night. It's his most reliable fare.

Last night, he restricted himself to one last reference to the two days he had spent on the topic of teenage girls and their tampons. (As we noted on Tuesday, it was "TAMPON TERROR" in the tortured termagant's tormented language.)

In another bit of self-denial, he waited last night until 10:07 before he offered a throwaway reference comparing the singer Lizzo to a "single-celled blob." On the termagant's soul-draining program, women from the other tribe are routinely denounced as being way too fat.

Last night, the termagant's opening jokes were ten in number; we've already touched on four. Inevitably, his fifth joke turned on a diarrhea theme. His seventh jokes concerned the alleged need of Gen Zers to be helped by therapists.

In his eighth joke, he discussed the fact of Alec Baldwin "never having been shot to death by a careless actor." In his ninth joke, he returned to men wearing skirts—in Scotland, to be totally fair.

These standard obsessions rule this termagant's tortured mind and dominate his commentary. At 10:03 last night, his tenth and final "opening joke" went like this:

GUTFELD: Finally, Shakira said her two sons hated the Barbie movie because it was emasculating. Wait till they see Ken without pants!

The joke was accompanied by a picture of a naked Ken doll: Through shock value of for unknown reasons, it got a laugh. 

For unknown reasons, the "joke" got a laugh! But so it goes inside this post-Kubrick secret society—a plainly sex- and gender-based "secret society" which is available for all to see at 10 o'clock Eastern each weekday night.

You can watch these first few minutes of last night's program (or the whole thing) simply by clicking here. As usual, the termagant's mind was crawling with reactions to bodily functions, and to men wearing skirts, and to fairly obvious denigration of women—and with three jokes built upon the contemplation of the death of those who may not agree with the termagant's cultural outlook.

As we've noted before, we share a (partial) hometown with the termagant—sun-drenched San Mateo, California. We lived there from eighth grade through the end of high school. He grew up in San Mateo all the whole way through.

We graduated from two high schools separated by roughly a mile on the Alameda de las Pulgas. We've asked before how someone from such a sunny land could possibly have ended up as angry and crabbed as this "cable news" star. But let the word go forth to the nations:

Early this morning, we watched the opening ten minutes of last evening's Gutfeld! show. We've now reported a fair amount of what we saw. 

As usual, the content struck us as weirdly soul-draining. Also, it made us think of Stanley Kubrick's last film.

Let these further words go forth to the nations! There is no way to understand or discuss sexuality and gender roles which is absolutely correct. 

When Moses descended from the mountain, he had no commandments about the correct way to discuss bearded people and their imagined attempts to get rid of their endlessly imagined boners.

Moses carried no commandments letting us know if Lizzo (and, more typically, Joy Behar) are just too disgustingly fat.

If our own view, Shakira's full statement about her young sons' reaction to the Barbie film was basically quite humane. For the record, ger sons are 9 and 11. Here's her presentation as reported in this profile in Allure:

SHAKIRA: My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I'm raising two boys. I want 'em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.

ALLURE: Just because a woman can do it all doesn’t mean she should?

SHAKIRA: Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?

We haven't seen the movie in question. Beyond that, there is of course, no perfect way to discuss the optimal role of sexuality and gender in human affairs.

There's no perfect way to understand or discuss the eternal, unavoidable issues wrapped up here! But within the secret society being conducted in open air on this corporate "cable news" channel, statements like that produce a type of juvenile feedback which strikes us as soul-draining—a type of feedback which recalls the hidden but emerging world Kubrick was portraying in his final film.

Once again, the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut was a throwback secret society. It seemed to be devoted to rolling cultural practices back—to restoring the people understood to be women to the roles they'd inhabited on the planet dating all the way back to the days when men stole sexual slaves from neighboring towns as they fought on the plains outside Troy.

Even back in 1999, we thought Kubrick was portraying something which almost surely was happening somewhere out on Long Island (among other locales). The termagant comes from a sunnier place, but that strikes us as the same society he is crafting every night, right in the open air.

On Easter Sunday, we watched an alternate branch of that Red American secret society, starting at 6 a.m. Eastern. Tomorrow, we'll try to return to the new form of name-calling seen on that Easter Day program.

In the main, the name-calling came from Rachel Campos-Duffy, a very genial person who doesn't seem to possess even a hint of the nuance gene. To a large extent, that's what we people turn out to be like. As we told you yesterday, we were watching people people that morning, right out in the open air. 

It's hard to find much good to say about the unpleasant Gutfeld. But a secret society is functioning on his TV show, and it's unknown to Blue America. 

We'll have more about that Blue American cluelessness tomorrow. We see the effects of that cluelessness all over the propaganda we get served by our news orgs here in our Blue America day after day after day and night after night after night.

We Blues are unaware of all this! In Kubrick's film, Tom Cruise was shocked by what he stumbled on out on Long Island. By happenstance, that's where the Fox & Friends Weekend gang were huddled on Easter morning as their new name-calling took place.

Blue America doesn't know about the secret society currently forming on the Fox News Channel. Our own inane Blue America cadres have told us not to visit the neighborhoods where this Red conduct occurs!

Tomorrow: In the face of our own tribe's cluelessness, the termagant gets to be right!

Jesse Watters "interviews" polyamorous transsexual wolf!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024

Hard to believe but true: It's hard to believe but it's true.

Last night, on Jesse Watters Primetime, Jesse Watters pretended to interview Niya, who is "not only a polyamorous British Columbian wolf, but she's also an elite hacker who takes down sex traffickers."

You may be wondering what this undisguised idiot meant when he said that Niya is "a polyamorous British Columbian wolf." 

By clicking here, then continuing to click, you can see the undisguised idiocy which aired during last night's 8 o'clock hour on this "cable news" channel.

It's hard to believe that this undisguised idiocy now takes place on a regular basis on this particular channel. It's even harder to believe that Blue America's timorous orgs are too afraid of the power of Fox to report or discuss this insult to the American public and to this nation's interests.

Go ahead—click that link. Watch right through to the end. Attention should be paid!

Watters airs at 8 p.m. Gutfeld takes over at 10.

At 5, this pair of lost boys dominate The Five. The corporate bosses have found that it sells. Presumably, they've also found that it works as a messaging tool.

The idiocy continues apace. In BlueWorld, all is silent, much as it ever was, dating back to the undiscussed journalistic gong-shows of the Clinton / Gore / Clinton years.

"Bloodbath" gone from Morning Joe!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024

Also, new polling data: Who will win November's election?

We have no idea. It's our impression that Trump may win if he can survive his criminal trials. It also depends on what happens with the pair of major addiction addicts, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West.

(Presumably due to their lack of accomplishment, the addicts can attract attention no other way. And so they pretend to be running for president, taking a chance on changing world history as they force-feed their egos.)

We don't know who's going to win in November. That said, the Wall Steet Journal has released new polling figures from seven swing states, and we were struck by the way the results were chyroned on this morning's "cable news" programs.

Let's start with the Journal's news report about the new polling data. Dual headlines included, the report begins like this:

Trump Leads Biden in Six of Seven Swing States, WSJ Poll Finds 
Incumbent trails in most battlegrounds that decided 2016 and 2020 elections

Donald Trump is leading President Biden in six of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election, propelled by broad voter dissatisfaction with the national economy and deep doubts about Biden’s capabilities and job performance, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.

The poll of the election’s main battlegrounds shows Trump holding leads of between 2 and 8 percentage points in six states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina—on a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates. Trump holds similar leads when voters are asked to choose only between him and Biden.

Those numbers aren't great for blue tribe voters. That said, November's a long way off. 

At any rate, the weekday Fox & Friends crew was reporting those numbers by 6:09 this morning. The chyron beneath them said this:

POLL: TRUMP AHEAD OF BIDEN IN SIX OF SEVEN SWING STATES, TIED IN WISCONSIN

That chyron was perfectly accurate. On Morning Joe, the new numbers were discussed starting at 6:22. As you can see, Mika's initial report was perfectly accurate, but the chyron was soon saying this:

WSJ POLL: BIDEN & TRUMP CLOSE IN SEVEN SWING STATES

Neither chyron was flatly false. Maybe it all depends on what the meaning of "close" is! 

(As you can see in the WSJ data, Trump charts a seven- or eight-point lead in North Carolina. That's drifting away from "close," but November's a long way off and there's always sampling error.)

November is a long way off—and a (somewhat peculiar) criminal trial may get started in the next few weeks. That (slightly peculiar) criminal trial might hurt Trump extremely badly, or it could conceivably help him. 

Beyond that, there's no conceivable way to know who will win in the end.

That said, we were struck by the way these morning shows treated a second new topic. We refer to Candidate Trump's resurrection of the once-controversial term, "bloodbath."

Yesterday, at a campaign event in Michigan, Candidate Trump began giving prominent play to that term. Politico's report on this matter appears beneath this headline:

Trump rails against ‘border bloodbath’ as Democrats bash him on abortions

The term "Border Bloodbath" was featured on high-visibility signage during Trump's event. More precisely, the Trump campaign's newly prominent term seems to be this:

BIDEN'S BORDER BLOODBATH

Plainly, Trump has decided to showcase a word for which he was recently criticized. As you can see by clicking this link, the weekday crew at Fox & Friends was exulting in this decision as of 6:06 a.m. 

During the 5 o'clock hour, the Fox & Friends First team had discussed the choice of words, on two separate occasions, starting with a tease at 5:07 a.m. Quite plainly, Red America's "journalistic" leadership cadre was promoting Trump's use of this term.

On Morning Joe, the treatment of this matter was strikingly different. To wit:

As you can see thanks to the Internet Archive, the term "bloodbath:" was never mentioned, not even once, during today's Morning Joe. 

The program ran its full four hours. The word "bloodbath" was never spoken.

Just a guess:

For better or worse, the White House may have decided that the "bloodbath" play was a loser. More broadly, this may mean that the White House, and their cable news messengers, may have decided that the time has come to stop treating Acyn Torabi like the world's most insightful political strategist.

Our impression would be this:

Donald J. Trump has been conning people his whole life, and he's really quite good at it. He knows what kinds of claims he can sell. Also, he knows how to turn gong-show attacks on his choices of words into political assets.

He seems to think that the "bloodbath" fandango turned out to be a political asset. If so, we'll guess that his judgment is correct, and that Acyn's initial judgment was perhaps miscast.

For four hours today, Morning Joe just let "bloodbath" go! The word wasn't spoken even once. You could score it a technical knockout.

In our view, the situation at the border is astoundingly bad for Biden. We were glad to see Jim Messina say as much on today's Morning Joe.

In our view, the border as it currently stands is astoundingly bad for President Biden's prospects. Quite possibly, so are the sometimes dishonest attempts to beat Trump at his own games.

Also from those data: As you can see from the WSJ data, 48% of respondents said that Trump was "best able to handle the mental and physical fitness needed to be president."

Twenty-eight percent said that Biden was "best able." In response to a somewhat murky set of choices, twenty percent said that neither candidate was "best able." 

Two percent said they didn't know. Three percent said that Biden and Trump were equal. Those numbers may have nothing to do with where this goes in the end.

Also this, for whatever it's worth:

Forty-seven percent of respondents said that they were male. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were female.

One percent refused to answer. Only two respondents across the seven states—that worked out to zero percent—went with some version of "Other."

(In our view, all such answers are good and decent and are presumably godly. Unless you're watching Fox & Friends Weekend, where "paganism" quickly jumps in.)

CADRES: We don't believe in terrible people!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024

If we did, we could identify three right here: If we believed in terrible people, they would be terrible people!

We refer to one of the leadership cadres currently advocating on behalf of Candidate Donald J. Trump. 

Some of these leadership cadres actually make decent points on Trump's behalf. Some of these cadres also stand out for their appalling pre- or post-rational conduct.

The cadre of which we speak today is a cadre of pseudo-journalistic "thought leaders." For the record, we don't believe in terrible people. But if we did believe in terrible people, these would be truly terrible people, in spite of the fact that their blatant propagandizing is sometimes built on perfectly reasonable claims and viewpoints.

At any rate, we don't believe in terrible people? Let us seek to clarify that possibly puzzling view:

 We do believe that some people are (severely) mentally ill. Such people may be "sociopaths" or "psychopaths," though it's our understanding that those are not technical clinical terms within the current realm of medical science.

We believe that those unfortunate people can also be deeply dangerous. Society has to be protected from their behaviors, after which we recommend that they be pitied for the misfortune of their psychiatric affliction, which may have an organic basis, or even for their choice of parents—for their choice of the sociopathic parents who may have helped lead them astray.

(Full disclosure: Almost surely, our own parents—though imperfect like everyone else—almost surely weren't sociopathic. We ourselves were fortunate there.)

It's our understanding that some people are severely mentally ill. Other than that, we tend to believe that the vast array of people—especially ambitious, grasping public figures—are basically people people. 

What does it mean to be people people? In a bitter antiwar poem which named the name of our own father's theater, E. E. Cummings (we're capitalizing) wrote about the way such people may tend to behave when the thrill of war arrives:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard...

The bitter poem continues from there. (Continuing directly: "Humanity i love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink...") 

We tend to agree with Cummings' implied assessment. At times of war—in this case, the war in question was World War I—we humans are inclined to "applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother," in that case when such songs were being sung onstage at the Old Howard! 

(If we understand the chronology correctly, our own father was the young manager of the Old Howard at the time when Cummings was a patron—a patron who bitterly observed fellow patrons' inclination to fall in line in support of the thrill of war. Later, Cummings reportedly said that he derived the basic idea for his unconventional poetry from his favorite joke at the famous old Boston hall where Harpo Marx says he got his first laugh. We ourselves had just turned five when the venue finally closed.)

At any rate, we aren't inclined to believe in terrible people. But let the word go forth to the nations:

If we did, the people to whom we refer today would be truly terrible people! We refer to the people we saw last Sunday morning on Fox & Friends Weekend—on Easter Sunday itself.

Luckily, we don't believe in terrible people! That said, these three people would be truly terrible people if we believed in that construct:

The leadership cadre in question:

Rachel Campos-Duffy, who added a term to her pre-existing string of invectives as Sunday's program aired.

Joey Johnny Jones, the Fox News Channel's rural Georgia import, who seems to be succumbing to the eternal human desire to make himself right with the herd.

Pete Hegseth, the Princeton / Harvard Kennedy School grad who never met an erroneous or misleading statement by Campos-Duffy he wouldn't rush to affirm.

If we believed in terrible people, they would be truly terrible people, though they'd hardly be alone. At this point, we haven't even thrown Brian Kilmeade into the mix. We'll do so as we proceed.

If we believed in terrible people, they would be terrible people! For today, we base that assessment on the propaganda they churned—on the careless misstatements they rushed to advance—on the morning of the day they hold so sacred, on their admittedly beloved Easter morning.

It's very, very hard to chronicle all the unfortunate things they did—all the unfortunate things they said—on that particular morning. Nor so we expect that any of these rather obvious people people will ever acknowledge the problems with their inaccurate and/or misleading statements.

For an example of a news org which has now done the right thing—which has now retracted one such statement—we direct you to the start of this news report from Mediaite. Headline included, the report concerns a retraction by The Daily Caller, a highly partisan Red America site: 

Daily Caller Fully Retracts Article Claiming Biden Banned ‘Religious Easter Eggs’ From White House Contest

The Daily Caller on Tuesday retracted an article claiming that the Biden White House banned “religious Easter eggs” from an art contest at the annual Easter Egg Roll over the weekend.

The claim had spread through right-wing media, even though it was quickly and widely debunked by various fact-checkers and anyone familiar with the history of the event.

[...]

“Following the publication of this article, the Daily Caller became aware of additional context that undercut the central assertion of this article and its newsworthiness,” read Tuesday’s retraction in the Caller, which added:

"The ban of religious symbolism on eggs as part of the White House Easter egg art contest has been longstanding, dating back decades, and the Biden administration did not make any modifications to this rule. While the Caller did not explicitly state at any point that the rule was new, this additional context rendered the main thrust of the article misleading to readers, who could reasonably have come to the conclusion that the rule was new.

"With that additional context included, the news value of the article was significantly diminished, leading the senior leadership at the Caller to the decision to retract. We sincerely regret the error and are taking the necessary steps to ensure similar mistakes can be avoided in the future."

Someone at The Daily Caller decided to do the right thing. In this war-strewn world of people people, very few people do!

The Daily Caller is a highly partisan Red America site. Even so, the site decided to issue a full, formal retraction of a set of statements—made in the partisan tribal heat of an allegedly sacred morning—which the site now acknowledges to have been advanced in error.

Our best guess? You'll see Rachel, Pete and Joey Johnny make some similar acknowledgement when the cow jumps over the moon. 

For one thing, we'll guess that ownership wouldn't allow it. At any rate, we aren't prepared to denounce the three as terrible people—but if we believed in terrible people, we'd do so in their case.

Tomorrow morning, we're going to show you one of the things this devoted trio of hard-liners did on the morning to which we refer, a morning which they all said was overwhelmingly sacred to them. 

We're going to show you the way Rachel Campos-Duffy, an extremely cheerful person who seems to lack the first scintilla of the nuance (or forgiveness) genes, proceeded to add the term "pagan" to the list of inflammatory terms she likes to drop on the heads of those who don't agree with every syllable she emits.

As we've noted in the past, Campos-Duffy is a very genial person—until the tribal difference hits the fan. At that point, she spies "Communists" and "Marxists" under pretty much every bed, with "Trader Pete" (Hegseth) constantly rushing to affirm her assessments.

On Easter Sunday, Campos-Duffy added the term "pagans" to her list of denunciations. Trader Pete and Joey Johnny rushed to join this act of tribal war, even as they declared how thoroughly sacred that sacred day was to them.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. As Cummings seemed to suggest in a bitter poem, our human nature seems to incline us to go to war.

Given the nature of the late Bronze Age conflict, propaganda wasn't needed when men fought on the plains outside Troy. Today, though, the situation is different:

As we try to divide our large, continental nation into a pair of warring nations, propaganda is badly needed to attract viewers to the ranks.

Within the prevailing framework of "cable news," people people rush to provide that propaganda! They're very well paid to perform such spear-chucker tasks, and our imperfect, pre-rational human nature strongly inclines them to do it.

That doesn't necessarily make them terrible people; it may just mean that they're people people. As we told our young assistants on Easter morning:

"Forgive them, analysts. They know not what they do!"

Tomorrow: Lacking the slightest hint of those genes, Campos-Duffy uses her words

Gutfeld returns to "Tampon Terror!"

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2024

Prime time "cable news:" Does there (still) exist a "national discourse?"

Such myths may still be believed by some. To consider the actual state of the disintegration, consider what we saw on two of our nation's "cable news" channels last night.

We'll start with the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld. Last night, in his program's opening segment, the troubled termagant was toying with teenagers and tampons once again. 

In doing so, the "cable news" star was returning to the sad non-topic topic he and his panel of flyweight friends explored at the end of last week. Last night, he gave the pitiful segment a name:

He called it "Tampon Terror."

We won't even try to explain the background to last night's opening segment. Nor will we attempt to describe what last night's panel of Fox News "analysts" said.

Instead, we'll simply suggest that you take The Gutfeld Challenge. To see what was being "discussed" during the first eighteen minutes of this prime time "cable news" program, you can start by clicking here.

The sheer stupidity of Gutfeld's program continued through the course of the 10 p.m. hour. But if you want to ponder what has happened to your fading nation's very limited discourse, we advise you to click that link and watch the full segment unfold.

There are two parts to the story of that prime time pseudo-discussion. On the one hand, Red America's "cable news" channel is willing to stage such braindead presentations on a nightly basis. 

Fox News is eager to broadcast that crap! But also, Blue America's upper-end orgs are willing to ignore the fact that such ugly inanity is now being broadcast on a regular basis, packaged as prime time "news."

Go ahead—click that link and see where you'll be taken! Can a modern nation expect to function when such inanity, and such remarkably poor taste, are being packaged to millions of people as an example of prime time "news?" When 59-year-old termagants hate young people so?

We urge you to take The Gutfeld Challenge. These disordered follies take place each night on the Fox News Channel.

 Go ahead—click that link. Attention should be paid!

Also last night, George Conway tried to break through a certain wall concerning the discussion of Donald J. Trump. To watch his attempt, click here.

Stephanie Ruhle—she says each night that she's making us smarter—declined to react to what Conway said. The Goldwater Rule is still in effect over here in Blue America. Perhaps for better or maybe for worse, such discussions just aren't allowed.

 Does there (still) exist a "national discourse?" On balance, we'll go with a very strong no. 

Where we once had a (very weak) discourse, we now see dueling strands of propaganda. Meanwhile, can a nation survive the likes of a Gutfeld?

As our own blue tribe averts its gaze, we'll once again tilt toward a no.

(We lost a lot of time today—medical plus automotive! We're doing the best we can.)

CADRES: Red American cadre moves towards war!

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2024

American Egg Board involved: Who ever knew there was some such organization as the American Egg Board?

As it turns out, there is! To peruse the group's web site, just click here. Their "About Us" page includes this background information:

History, Mission & Funding

The American Egg Board (AEB) was created by an Act of Congress in 1976 at the request of America’s egg farmers, who desired to pool resources for national category-level egg marketing.

Home to The Incredible Egg and Egg Nutrition Center, AEB is dedicated to increasing demand for all U.S. eggs and egg products. For more than 40 years, America’s egg farmers have supported this mission by funding the AEB. The AEB is 100 percent farmer-funded, and those funds directly support the research, education and promotion necessary to market eggs.

We are honored to serve America’s egg farmers.

So the group's web site says. They've been around since 1976—but this year, the Egg Board has been used as a means of marching two nations off to war.

On Sunday morning—on Easter morning—the Egg Board posted the formal press release shown below. 

The release was posted at 8 a.m. At that hour, the shazam from the gang at Fox & Friends Weekend was already hitting the fan.

The press release describes an event the group has conducted ever since the Egg Board came into being. Below, you can see the text of the press release. 

Full disclosure! The release was posted at 8 a.m. By that hour, on the Fox News Channel, Joey Johnny, Rachel and "Trader Pete" had been propagandizing about the "pagans" for a full two hours:

Special Easter Egg Exhibit at the White House in Collaboration with America's Egg Farmers Celebrates National Guard Children

NEWS PROVIDED BY

American Egg Board 

31 Mar, 2024, 08:00 ET

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2024—As part of the many Easter traditions celebrated at the White House, America's egg farmers are proud to have collaborated with the White House on the "Colonnade of Eggs," celebrating First Lady Jill Biden's commitment to supporting those who serve our country and their families. Appearing in the East Colonnade of the White House, the exhibit features eggs designed by children from National Guard families across the country.

Children from National Guard families across the nation submitted egg designs to be featured at the 2024 White House "Colonnade of Eggs" exhibit. Designs crafted by National Guard children from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will be on display.

[...]

Annually for the last 47 years, the American Egg Board, on behalf of its egg farmers, has presented a Commemorative Egg to the First Lady that reflects each individual First Lady's passions, causes and contributions in service to the nation. These eggs are produced by talented egg artists identified from across the country by the American Egg Board. For the last three years, the American Egg Board has collaborated with the White House on larger exhibits that showcase egg art during the spring season.

It's been happening for the past 47 years—but then again, so what? On this particular Easter morning, the propagandists at the Fox News Channel had decided to march our dueling American nations off toward as undeclared war.

The release was posted at 8 a.m. By that time, we'd been watching the friends at Fox advance their undeclared war for a full two hours.

Two hours later, CNN posted a news report in which the channel quoted the CEO of the Egg Board. By now, Rachel, Pete and Joey Johnny had completed their Easter blitz. Headline included, CNN 's report included a reference to the Egg Board:

Republicans slam Biden for proclaiming Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter, though it’s yearly observed on March 31

Republicans are taking aim at President Joe Biden for proclaiming Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility, though the two days only coincided this year by chance.

The Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, is held annually on March 31. The date of Easter, meanwhile, changes from year to year.

But several Republicans seized on Biden’s proclamation to attack the president.

[...]

Some Republicans–including Johnson and Trump–also claimed that Biden banned religious-themed designs at the White House’s Easter events. The American Egg Board, which partners with the White House on Easter events, said the procedures in place this year haven’t changed.

“The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations,” Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, said in a statement.

"Several Republicans" were attacking President Biden, the CNN report said. So, of course, were the three "cable news" stars on Fox & Friends, as they advanced the undeclared war which now exists between our two American nations.

We're not sure we've ever seen a worse morning of "cable news." (Full disclosure: We can think of other cable news segments which were pretty much as bad, including several on MSNBC, Blue America's "cable news" channel.)

The three warmongers on Fox & Friends had been propagandizing Red American viewers on three separate fronts. One front involved the American Egg Board. The other two fronts did not.

In late January, the New York Times' Peter Baker accurately described the current state of play. Once again, headline included, we'll present his accurate thumbnail:

The Looming Contest Between Two Presidents and Two Americas

Each of them has sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signed bills into law, appointed judges, bartered with foreign leaders and ordered the armed forces into combat. They both know what it is like to be the most powerful person on the planet.

Yet the general election matchup that seems likely after this week’s New Hampshire primary represents more than the first-in-a-century contest between two men who have both lived in the White House. It represents the clash of two presidents of profoundly different countries, the president of Blue America versus the president of Red America.

Our sprawling nation, such as it was, is now two separate nations. An undeclared state of war exists on the two nations' "cable news" channels.

We're losing a chunk of time today; medical service calls! In part for that reason, we'll leave today's report right here.

As we do, we'll note the fact that CNN was willing to say that "several Republicans" were attacking President Biden as o Easter morning. For whatever reason, CNN didn't discuss what was happening on the Fox News Channel.

That Sunday morning, the three stars on Fox & Friends Weekend were marching our two nations off towards a still-undeclared war. It's very, very hard to capture the depth of pre-human behavior involved in the acts of warfare they authored.

At this site, we don't believe in terrible people. If we did, the people we saw on the Fox News Channel would be truly terrible people.

In our view, it's more likely that they're just people people. As such, they're the farthest thing from "rational animals," as is often true of the various stars on our dueling "cable news" channels.

As we'll explain as the week proceeds, we humans have always behaved in the ways the friends behaved this day. We humans have long been the war-seeking animal. With apologies for today's limited effort, we will close by telling you this:

The devoted warmongers on Fox & Friends Weekend were part of one leadership cadre. They're numbered among the "thought leaders" who propagandize Red America.

Blue America has its own leadership cadres. That includes group of political leaders, and groups of journalists as well.

That said, journalism's traditional norms disappear when we humans march off toward war. Long ago, we humans behaved in these same ways on the plains outside the towering walls of Troy. 

In this case, the American Egg Board found itself drawn into the mess! So was a murdered police officer in New York, concerning whom Brian Kilmeade had an exciting story to tell. 

So was the Transgender Day of Visibility, a day in which, or so Red American viewers were told, the "pagans" found in Blue America take a great deal of delight. 

On Fox, the term "pagan" was added to the long list of tribal insults. The name-calling is general over our nation when people people of this pre-human type reflexively move towards war.

Tomorrow: Brian Kilmeade tells Red America what he says he heard

Hegseth and Kilmeade and Agamemnon oh my!

MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2024

In our view, they're just people people: If we believed in terrible people, they would plainly be terrible people.

Luckily, we don't believe in terrible people! We would suggest that you stop believing in such fever dreams too.

Hegseth and Kilmeade and Campos-Duffy? The pure, undisguised imitations of life we saw them engage in yesterday morning, then again today, starting at 6 a.m.?

We refer to imitations of journalistic life—imitations of rational life, even of so-called human life. Beyond that, we refer to imitations of the types of programming you might expect to find on an actual "cable news" channel.

What we saw was an imitation of life. On Fox, the tools were deeply involved in such conduct starting at 6 o'clock yesterday morning. Right there on Easter Sunday, starting at 6 o'clock sharp! 

If we thought they were capable of something different, we'd describe them as terrible people. In all honesty, we don't really think they are.

We think this is the best they can do. We think this is all they actually have. For one especially grisly example, consider this:

Yesterday morning, Campos-Duffy added "pagan" to "Communist" and "Marxist" on her list of all-purpose terms of invective. She criticized the pagan behavior again and again and again!

We can think of a few cable news segments over the past twenty-five years which were equally awful, but we can't necessarily think of one which was worse. That said, we'll remind you of this one key point:

Everything You Really Need to Know You Can See On Display in The Iliad

The fury, the rage, the devotion to the honor of the clan? This is what we humans are actually like. We actually aren't "the rational animal," and we never have been. 

(For the record: We believe in tribal people, some of whom may also be [severely] mentally ill.)

More on this dangerous conduct tomorrow. For an overview of one topic concerning which the children raged, you can start with this overview from Kevin Drum.

For the record, that wasn't the only topic at issue. At any rate, the imitations of journalistic life went gruesomely downhill from there.  

Donald Trump seems to be out of his mind, but you won't hear about that problem on Fox. The channel is clogged with true people people.  

As when men fought on the plains outside Troy, they're in thrall to the ways of the clan. 

STARTING TOMORROW: (Leadership) Cadres!

MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2024

American leadership meltdowns: Last night, then again this morning, the poisonous conduct continued.

The parodies of "journalism." The imitations of life.

We're speaking of such people as Joey Johnny Jones. Also, we're speaking of Rachel Campos-Duffy. 

(Yesterday morning, she added "pagan" to "Marxist" and "Communist" on her list of most commonly uttered invectives. To our eye and to our ear, Campos-Duffy is fully sincere!)

Also, who invented the new Lisa Boothe? We're speaking of her as well! Concerning Princeton and Harvard's Pete Hegseth, who can explain what he does?

Needless to say, Brian Kilmeade was at the heart of the imitations of life. He was "reporting" what one unnamed person had allegedly told him. All the others rushed to affirm it:

What Kilmeade said this person had said simply had to be true!

So the imitations went. Last night, then again this morning, the poisonous conduct was general over the Fox News Channel. The poisonous conduct was general, but also the imitations of life. 

This afternoon, we'll offer some links. Below, we'll outline our pre-existing, provisional plan for the rest of the week.

As learned in kindergarten:

Everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten!

We refer, of course, to Robert Fulghum. More specifically, we refer to Fulghum's famous 1988 book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. 

The Wikipedia entry gets snarky real fast. That said, the entry starts like this:

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a book of short essays by American minister and author Robert Fulghum. It was first published in [1988].

The title of the book is taken from the first essay in the volume, in which Fulghum lists lessons normally learned in American kindergarten classrooms and explains how the world would be improved if adults adhered to the same basic rules as children...

The world would be better if adults did that? We can't really say that's wrong!

From that point on, the snark and the snide come fast. That said, a publisher notes the fact that Fulghum's book became a "phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller."  In Wikipedia's entry about Fulghum himself, the site even tells us this:

"His first collection of writings, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, stayed on The New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years."

We can't verify the perfect accuracy of that specific statement, but Fulghum's book was huge. At any rate, according to Fulghum's basic thesis, he could have dropped out of school in first grade and proceeded quite nicely from there!

In the past few months, we've been shaping a variant on Fulghum's powerful theme. Our own implied claim has been this:

Everything You Really Need to Know You Can See On Display in The Iliad

As the leading authority notes, the famous, ancient poem of war "is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature." Over the course of the past few months, we've been asking you this question:

Can we inhabitants of Blue America learn to see ourselves more clearly by perusing the martial tales contained in this ancient war poem?

As (almost) everyone has acknowledged by now, our own modern nation is currently coming undone. We've already divided into Red America and Blue America—with other subgroupings within each nation—and rarely the twain ever meets.

Each of these modern nations has its own news orgs and its own battle cries. As is routine at times like these, citizens find it easy to spot the flaws of those in the rival America, but may not be able to spot the flaws on their own side of the divide.

The Iliad is a largely fictional account of a war which is said to have taken place in the late Bronze Age. Cultural frameworks have changed since that time:

Human nature possibly hasn't.

Human nature may not have changed since the days when men fought on the plains outside Troy! On that basis, can we possibly see ourselves more clearly by stepping outside the modern context and returning to the behaviors put on display in that first poem of war?

All this week, we expect to be talking about contemporary leadership cadres. As our nation, such as it was, continues to fall apart around us, we'll be evaluating the failed leadership of these four basic groups:

The group of Red America thought leaders found on Fox & Friends Weekend.

The former president who will likely be the Republican Party's nominee in this year's presidential campaign (and the rest of his leadership cadre).

The sitting president who will likely be the Democratic Party's nominee in this year's presidential campaign (and the rest of his leadership cadre).

The group of Blue America thought leaders found on MSNBC programs.

That's what we plan to do as the week proceeds. We'll start today with the leadership meltdowns suffered by Agamemnon, lord of men, at various junctures during the last few weeks of the siege of Troy. 

The Iliad begins with one episode of violent rage—an episode which creates the central conflict, within the clan, which drives the rest of the poem. By the time we reach Book Nine (out of 24 books in all), we find the lord of men behaving in a remarkable manner.

The Achaeans (the Argives; the Greeks) have been laying siege to Troy for more than nine years. But now, the force of the battle has turned against them—and Agamemnon, lord of men, suffers an emotional meltdown during a nighttime gathering of the troops:

Lord marshal Agamemnon rose up in their midst,
streaming tears like a dark spring running down
some desolate rock face, its shaded currents flowing.
So, with a deep groan, the king addressed his armies:
"Friends—lords of the Argives, all my captains:
Cronus' son has entangled me in madness, blinding ruin—
Zeus is a harsh, cruel god. He vowed to me long ago,
he bowed his head that I should never embark for home
till I had brought the walls of Ilium crashing down.
But now, I see, he only plotted brutal treachery:
now he commands me back to Argos in disgrace,
whole regiments of my men destroyed in battle.
So it must please his overweening heart, who knows?
Father Zeus has lopped the crowns of a thousand cities,
true, and Zeus will lop still more—his power is too great.
So come, follow my orders. Obey me, all you Argives.
Cut and run! Sail home to the fatherland we love!
We'll never take the broad streets of Troy."

Tears streaming down his face, the lord of men advises his men to cut and run—to sail for home, to admit that their siege has failed.

Let's be clear! It isn't just that the lord of men has suffered an emotional breakdown. Beyond that, he believes all kinds of crazy things concerning the reasons why his siege of Troy will never succeed.

For unknown reasons, he has come to believe that Father Zeus deliberately tricked him in the past. Beyond that, he suddenly sees that Zeus (the son of Cronus) will never let his efforts succeed.

Spouting an array of unfounded beliefs, Agamemnon has melted down as the troops look on. No modern American political leader ever suffered a nuttier breakdown—not even, let us say, at 2 o'clock on a typical morning, offering poisonous social media posts composed completely in caps.

Within the clan, Agamemnon is regarded as king of the Argives. That said, he engages in bouts of rage at various points in the poem.

Now, in Book Nine, he completely melts down. Imagine what he might have posted on social media had he only been given the chance!

Agamemnon has melted down in a massive leadership failure. What happens next is a reminder that leadership often comes from leadership cadres, not from monarchs alone.

"Tonight's the night that rips our ranks to shreds or pulls us through!" Eventually, that's what one member of the Achaean leadership cadre tells the troops on that fateful evening. 

A second member of the cadre is now dispatched to reason with Achilles, who has been sulking in his tents ever since Book One. Agamemnon has melted down, but seasoned members of his cadre manage to pull the clan through.

Sure enough! Even way back then, even with someone as mighty at this, a political leader is only as great as the cadre with which he's surrounded. In Saturday morning's New York Times, Frank Bruni applied that basic framework to the political choice confronting our own failing nation.

Headline included, Bruni's column started like this:

The Overlooked Truths About Biden’s Age

In terms of optics and in terms of energy, I wish President Biden were younger. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. And from the casual conversations all around me and the formal polling of voters, I know I’m in robust company. A great many Americans consider his age unideal, and that belief is why there’s no wishing away the focus on it. The swell of attention to it over the past few months is more beginning than end. There are tsunamis yet to come.

Even so, aspects of the subject actually get too little consideration, starting with this crushingly obvious and yet frequently overlooked fact: The presidency isn’t a solo mission. Not even close. It’s a team effort, and the administration that a president puts together matters much, much more than his brawn or his brio.

[...]

He’s not Atlas; he’s POTUS. And the president of the United States is only as good as the advisers around him, whose selection reflects presidential judgment, not stamina.

We acknowledge as much when we discuss how a president might fill or has filled his cabinet. We recognize that many vital decisions are made—and that most important policies are realized—outside of the Oval Office.

Will the president's cadre be able to pull him through, along with our own Blue America? Will they be able to do so through the application of their wisdom and their competence—wisdom and competence which exceeds that of the Trump leadership cadre? 

Bruni seems to suggest that the answer is or should be yes. This week, we'll be prepared to admit that we hold a somewhat less sanguine view.

Full disclosure! We expect to unveil a set of gloomy assessments as the week proceeds. We expect to announce that all four cadres under review seem to lack what it takes to pull our nation, such as it is or was, through.

By the rules of the game, one of the two major candidates will end up in the White House next year. But our nation's troubled history will continue from there—and after that, will anyone be able to pull us through?

Even in the late Bronze Age, Agamemnon, lord of men, was saved by the skill and wisdom of a leadership cadre. As our own nation splits in two, we have no expectation of similar conduct in the months and the years ahead—not from our political leaders, not from our groups of thought leaders.

"The day will come when sacred Troy must die!" Prophetically, Hector of the shining helmet makes that declaration in Book Six of The Iliad. 

Human nature remaining unchanged, do you know of any reason to suppose that our current bifurcated America will be able to pull itself through?

Fulghum thought he knew it all by the time he reached first grade! Sadly, our various flailing leadership cadres seem to think they know it all too!

Tomorrow / as seen on Easter morning: Just about as gruesome and faux as "cable news" ever gets!