MADMEN: Yes, the commander actually said it!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2025

This is our own "night assault:" As we've noted in the past, the "night assault" which occasioned the death of sacred Troy isn't described in the Iliad.

That said, make no mistake—we're currently experiencing our own present-day "night assault." 

The Iliad is a story of the late Bronze Age. By way of contrast, we live in an era which is known as "the information age." 

That said, the madness in question is bred in the bone; it's part of the human inheritance. Once again, we think of Professor Knox's account of that Bronze Age "night assault," including his account of the lesson it was intended to deliver to succeeding generations of Greeks.

The assault in question follows the slaying of noble Hector by the madman Achilles. Within the verses of the Iliad, Achilles proceeds to drag Hector's body through the dust outside the walls of Troy, even as Hector's horrified parents look on from Troy's high walls.

With the upstanding Hector defeated at last, those towering walls could be breeched. In his 1990 essay in support of the Robert Fagles translation, Professor Knox offered this account of the assault which followed, and of the lesson this famous poem was intended to teach:

Professor Knox, Introduction

 [...]

The whole poem has been moving toward this duel between the two champions, but there has never been any doubt about the outcome. The husband and father, the beloved protector of his people, the man who stands for the civilized values of the rich city, its social and religious institutions, will go down to defeat at the hands of this man who has no family, who in a private quarrel has caused the death of many of his own fellow soldiers, who now in a private quarrel thinks only of revenge, though that revenge, as he well knows, is the immediate prelude to his own death. And the death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. 

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

That was a "night assault" carried out in the Late Bronze Age. Today, though, make no mistake:

We here in our "Information Age" are undergoing a similar night assault. The background to that earlier assault would be this:

From the opening verses of the Iliad, Achilles is the mightiest of all the warriors, but he's also a visible nutcase. Eventually, the madness of that time and place are expressed in the night assault his comrades inflict on the more civilized Troy:

A baby boy is thrown to his death. Hector's wife is dragged away. 

Hector's father, the generous King Priam, is butchered at the altar. Hector's sister is raped. 

These were the types of penalties performed by the madmen of that age. According to Professor Knox, this was the lesson this story was intended to convey to the (many) generations which followed:

No civilization, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

Even by the time of Classical Greece, "the power to meet force with equal or superior force" was a reference to military power. Today, we live in a messaging age. 

It's entirely possible those of us in Blue America have already lost this era's messaging war in a way which can't be reversed. Beyond that, it must be said:

Our own Blue American civilization was never anywhere near as "refined"—as intellectually brilliant and morally pure—as we Blues have always imagined and alleged. 

Simply put, we aren't the people we've persistently claimed to be, and we never were. A similar situation obtained in (the fictional) Oran, concerning which Camus (metaphorically) told us this:

Albert Camus, The Plague

CAMUS (page 36): The word “plague” had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor’s uncertainty and surprise—since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that come crashing down on our heads from a blue sky. 

He even used the term "blue sky!" Moments later, Camus continued

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard...

Our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. 

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. 

The people of Oran hadn't been able to see it coming! According to Camus, no one will ever be free "as long as there are pestilences" (with their attendant "night assaults").

We Blues! Like the people of Oran, we just kept believing our own twaddle.  Our blindness dates back at least sixty years, though we'll set that chronology aside for another day.

(By happenstance, we ourselves were physically present on the day the problem began.)

We didn't quite see it coming! Even today, our tribunes refuse to employ the language which describes what's currently happening. They refuse to acknowledge the presence of "madmen" engaged in a new form of "madness." 

(In fairness, a few of our tribunes flirt with an appropriate term of art, "coup.")

The Achaeans overran Troy's walls. Within the past two weeks, Elon Musk, a visible nutcase, has seized control of the instruments of the Information Age. 

Yesterday, as USAID fell, that nutball's commander was droning at the annual prayer breakfast, giving voice to such madness as this—and yes, this madman actually made the statement we've set out in bold:

TRUMP (2/6/25): We're doing really well. It's, I think—

In two weeks, they're saying—I'm reading it, so I'm not even saying it—but I feel it, that we've done more than just about any president ever. 

The first two weeks have been probably, they say, the most successful two weeks in the history of any presidency. Now what we have to do is keep it going for another couple of hundred weeks. But it's been very successful...

After years of decline, Americans are reasserting our true identity as a people ordained by God to be the freest and most exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the earth. But we weren't that for four years. I don't believe we were. And we're getting there very soon, very quickly. I'll be able to say it, and we'll be able to say it again, as I said in my inaugural address two weeks ago, a light is now shining over the world, the entire world, and I'm hearing it from other leaders.

I'm hearing it from leaders that have traditionally not been on our side. That there's so much more— there's such a good feeling in the air. It's so different than it was just a short time ago. Because here in America we are once again a nation that believes in ourselves. 

We believe in our destiny and trust in the providence of almighty God. And I can tell you the opposite side, the opposing side—and they oppose religion. They oppose God. They've lost their confidence. They've lost their confidence. It's a different group of people than I remember. 

His entire address was a tribute to an unexplored, undescribed version of apparent madness. But once again, here's that one thing this apparent nutcase actually said:

I can tell you the opposite side, the opposing side—and they oppose religion. They oppose God.

So went the unifying message at the annual Prayer Breakfast, even as the night assault raced along.

Almost surely, you don't believe that the commander actually said that. It's also true that Blue America's news orgs are weirdly refusing to report the fact that he made those highlighted remarks.

That said, the commander did make those remarks! To see C-Span's full videotape, you can just click here. The passage we've posted starts at the 12:30 mark. His statements about the way the opposite side "opposes God" can be seen at the 13:45 mark.

(Here's the New York Times report on that address. For whatever reason, Shawn McCreesh, or perhaps his editor, has chosen to disappear those astounding remarks.)

Our comments today have been occasioned by the night assault on USAID. This is a modern version of the Bronze Age assault described by Professor Knox. 

Also this: All across the Blue American dial, we still don't seem to know how to describe these events. 

For decades, we Blues have insisted that we were the very smart, highly moral people. Rather plainly, we aren't.

We aren't any smarter than anyone else. (In the language of Camus, we're "like everybody else.") Beyond that, our vaunted morality has routinely been a performative matter—an artefact of obvious public performance, visible to everyone but us.

We aren't the townsfolk we said we were! That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It means that we're people people.

Like the Trojans, we're being overrun. With no modern-day Hector around, it isn't clear that we 'll be able to find a way to resist.

We've earned our way out again and gain. Today, as before, that assault!

For extra credit only: According to Homer, who was Achilles? 

In the formulation of Professor Knox, he was "this man who now in a private quarrel thinks only of revenge."

Compare and contrast. Also, you can muse.