SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 2025
The Vances were already present: Sometimes, cultural schisms come into being—cultural schisms which cut too deep to be resolved in any short-term way.
These schisms may lead to wars. Sometimes the wars are military in nature. Sometimes the wars are political or cultural.
As of this very morning, we'd say the ongoing war between the Red and Blue American nations is at long last officially over. We'd also say that our own Blue America has lost.
We lost the war last November when the "landslide" numbers shown below came in. For the record, we Blues had been doing our best to lose this war for several years before that:
Nationwide popular vote, 2024
Candidate Trump (R): 77,302,580 (49.80%)
Candidate Harris (D): 75,017,613 (48.32%)
Those seem to be the official numbers. They're offered by the FEC. At its own site, the leading authority agrees.
No, that isn't a landslide! As far as we know, the winning candidate has actually stopped using that inaccurate term. On the other hand, he didn't win "by millions and millions of votes," the claim he made yesterday right there in the Oval Office.
In our view, yesterday's claim is also bogus. But to the victors go the spoils, and the war which was being fought within this country was a war of The Information Age.
That war was, and that war remains, an information / Storyline war.
The commander won by less than 1.5 points, but the fact is, he did win—and on that day, the die was cast. It led to yesterday's event in in the Oval Office. It also led to this summary by Rachel Campos-Duffy, offered at 6:18 this morning on an official show of Red America, Fox & Friends Weekend:
CAMPOS-DUFFY (3/1/25): In the end, I think what's remarkable is that we have a president who's willing to bring about world peace. Man! If he doesn't get the Nobel Peace Prize after this, that thing means nothing.
Peter Doocy quickly agreed. At that point, it was on to a different topic.
That account strikes us as daft—almost as a form of madness. But the other side won the war.
The other side did win! As a result, the winning candidate is now dismantling large parts of the federal government. He's also dismantling large parts of American policy.
As one example, in all likelihood, NATO is on the way out.
In Blue America, we worked hard, in the past four years, to generate this outcome. It started with the election of President Biden, which seemed to be a reprieve at the time.
At the time, it seemed to be a reprieve. But things spiraled downward from there.
For today, we want to advance one basic point. Here it is:
At a certain point, a schism will have become so vast that it can't be "discussed," negotiated or resolved between the warring parties in anything like the short run.
At a certain point, one side has won and the other has lost! It's pointless to continue to think that differences in viewpoint and messaging can still be resolved.
At some point, one side has lost! After yesterday morning's events, that's plainly where matters stand.
"The day of his death was a dark cold day." That's what Auden wrote.
To our reckoning, yesterday was also a dark cold day. But with respect to Auden's assertion, W. B. Yeats was still dead.
With respect to yesterday's events, Red American characterization of those events strike us as something akin to a type of madness. In the larger sense, we think of the deal which lay at the heart of yesterday's dispute in the following simplified way:
A guy was prepared to pay a certain price for a security guard to be positioned outside his hardware store.
But when he actually signed the contract which obligated him to pay that price, he learned that there would be no security guard involved in the deal!
That's roughly the way it looks to us. Spokespersons in Red America are going to tell the story in a vastly different way—and their agents are currently in full control, especially on the international front. They're changing so many things so quickly that no one can hope to keep up.
Citizens in Red America are going to hear that other account of yesterday's events. At this late date, there is no point in trying to reach some sort of agreement, across the two Americas, as to what "really" occurred.
On Blue America's cable news channels, they won't be telling us that. As is the case with the Fox News Channel, those channels still have a product to sell.
On the other hand, it's also true that many people at Blue America's channels may not realize that our own side has lost
In The Sixth Sense, the Bruce Willis character doesn't yet know that he's dead. At present, that's pretty much the way it is here in our own Blue America.
According to experts, we humans are wired to have a hard time understanding that wars have been lost. Also, when very unusual events occur, we humans will often have a very hard time seeing what has happened.
So it was in The Emperor's New Clothes, and so it is in the current situation.
At such times, we may be helped to see more clearly if we can find parallels in the works of literature:
Over the course of the past year, we've suggested that you consider the cataclysmic "night assault" which is prefigured in the Iliad. We've also noted Camus' account of the way the fictional townsfolk of the fictional Oran fail to see that a plague is underway in their city, even after the visible signs are entirely clear.
Regarding yesterday's Oval Office events, we'll offer two parallels from literature. To be clear, these scenes from literature capture the way those events looked to us. There is no point, at this late date, trying to influence Campos-Duffy or the people who stand in her thrall.
We start with the scene from the film Wiseguys where the Joe Pesci character returns to a bar to settle a score with a character by whom he feels he has been insulted.
He attacks the guy and knocks him down. As soon as he has his victim on the ground, the De Niro character joins in. Two (2) guys are now kicking the victim as he lies on the ground!
For us, we flashed on that famous scene as we watched yesterday's events. That's how it looked to us.
This morning, we also thought of the opening page of James Joyce's autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Yesterday, to our eye, an officious vice president jumped in to insist that President Zelensky apologize for an imagined offense. That's how it looked to us.
Meanwhile, are we all just toys of the gods? When we turned to Joyce's novel, we were surprised by one part of the passage we had flashed on.
In this early passage, Joyce is characterizing his life as a very young child. Presumably, "Dante" is the way the very young child understands the name of his aunt.
You can peruse the full passage here:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[...]
Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and mother but uncle Charles was older than Dante...Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper.
The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and mother. They were Eileen’s father and mother. When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:
—O, Stephen will apologise.
Dante said:
—O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.—
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise,
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise.
We Irish! But so it allegedly went.
Pull out his eyes, apologise! That's a scene which flashed for us in the course of yesterday's tag-team mugging.
That's a scene which flashed for us. There's no point in trying to convince Campos-Duffy or the other friends that something like that occurred.
By now, our own Blue America has plainly lost the messaging / narrative / information war. The other side is very much in power.
What do you do when a war has been lost? First, you have to train yourself to see that the loss has actually happened.
Meanwhile, are we all just a joke of the gods—a stage play constructed for their amusement?
We certainly didn't remember this fact. But when we looked at the opening page of Joyce's novel, "the Vances" were already present!
The Vances were already there, even way back then! The Vances were already present as a mob ganged up on Joyce and tried to make him apologize for having done nothing wrong.
Are we secretly just a joke of the gods? As we seek the comforts and the insights of literature, did Homer get that part right?
