MONDAY: Tomorrow starts a new narrative year!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2025

Michael Palin, but also The Dead: There are various types of year.

The calendar year starts on January 1. The fiscal years starts three months earlier, on October 1.

Within our own experience, the school year always started on the Tuesday after Labor Day. Southern and southwestern states often started earlier than that.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting the new narrative year. We'll be trying to define the state of play here within our own split nation as the existing United States continues to come undone. 

We've described the ongoing circumstance as a "revolt from below." By our own reckoning, this involves an ongoing war which we denizens of Blue America have quite possibly already lost.

Tomorrow, we'll start to try to sketch that scenario with greater clarity. We'll continue along with this award-winning premise:

To understand the ongoing situation, we need to step back from our failing culture's 24-second news cycle.  Instead, we need to understand the nature of the current warfare through portrayals which already exist in the pages, and in the verses, of pre-existing literature.

Borrowing from Frost, we need to step "back out of all this now too much for us"—back out of that bewildering flooding of the zone. 

That's our prescription for a fuller understanding of what has already occurred. For the record, we know of no reason to think that any such strategy might allow Blue America to withstand the ongoing "night assault."

Along the way, we've worked from various literary texts. Readers groan when these titles reappear:

The Iliad: Homer
The Plague: Camus
My Antonia: Cather
humanity i love you: Cummings
People: Yevtushenko
I Pity the Poor Immigrant: Dylan
The Gift Outright: Frost

Also, we've frequently cited this text—the most ignored text in the cosmos:

Too Much and Never Enough: Mary L. Trump, Ph.D.

This week, we'll be adding two titles to the list:

The Dead: Joyce
Michael Palin in North Korea: Palin

Michael Palin in North Korea? The leading authority on the program tells us this about that:

Michael Palin in North Korea

Michael Palin in North Korea...is a travel documentary presented by Michael Palin and first aired in the UK in 2 parts on Channel 5 on 20 September and 27 September 2018.

Program history

The program was made by ITN Productions, who had proposed a North Korean documentary to various channels under the title Let's All Go To North Korea. Channel 5's Director of Programs Ben Frow was not interested in the project at first, but after Michael Palin was hired to front the program, he changed his mind and decided to commission it for the channel.

Michael Palin in North Korea recorded viewing figures of 4.5 million viewers and was nominated for two BAFTAs...

International airings

The documentary aired on 30 September 2018 in North America on National Geographic with the title North Korea From the Inside With Michael Palin.

Episodes

In the first episode Palin arrives in North Korea on a train from China. He is greeted by his guides, a woman named Li Soo-young and a man named Li Kyung-chul. Palin's guides bring him to sites across Pyongyang, including statues of the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, and his son and the DPRK's second leader Kim Jong-il.

In the second episode Palin celebrates his 75th-birthday in North Korea, and travels to the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea, the ancient Korean capital at Kaesong, Mount Kumgang, and the coastal city of Wonsan. Palin then flies from Wonsan to Mount Paektu on the border with China before returning to Pyongyang, where he visits members of the North Korean national taekwondo team.

The synopsis omits the core of the program—Palin's friendship, and his barely disguised romance of the heart, with his charming young North Korean minder, Li Soo-young (spelling uncertain). Late in Episode 2, that narrative backbone culminates in the scene which YouTube presents in full:

Michael Palin: North Korea—Criticizing The Leaders Is Criticizing Ourselves

It's part of the way we humans are wired. For ourselves, we're inclined to see Brother Palin as smart and very wise.

At some point, the program migrated from National Geographic on to PBS. When the program re-aired on a local PBS channel this weekend, we sat there and watched it, fascinated, for the second time. 

It seemed to us that it gives us a way to describe the furious foot soldiers who are currently waging war from within the "hermit kingdom" ruled by President Trump. 

(We're speaking here about employees of the Fox News Channel and other such figures. We are not talking about the tens of millions of neighbors and friends—and fellow citizens—who voted for President Trump.)

Online, you can watch the entire program—through the auspices of National Geographic—simply by clicking this.

What's actually happening here at home, within our failing nation? We think Palin's fascinating program starts to provide a bit of the language with which that question can be answered. 

Starting tomorrow, we'll also be returning to The Dead to describe the "paralysis" which infests our own Blue American nation. We'll be moving past Gretta Conroy and on to Joyce's apparent view of her husband, Gabriel.

According to Camus, the citizens of his fictional Oran weren't up to the task of recognizing and addressing a plague which had come upon them. Here at this incomparable site, we see that same problem infesting us in Blue America as a furious group of angry foot soldiers keep coming over the walls in an endless night assault.

Tomorrow we start a new narrative year! Knowing how way leads on to way, we think it may be late for any such effort to help.

Tomorrow: "Paralysis," he said

That one additional text: We should have listed the account by Professor Knox of the death of sacred Troy. 

We've cited that portrait again and again. We think it's highly instructive.


39 comments:

  1. "We are not talking about the tens of millions of neighbors and friends—and fellow citizens—who voted for President Trump". Actually Somerby should be. The minions are brainwashed by their media and have undying love for dear Shitzhizpantz

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  2. Go for it, Bob.
    We still won't be distracted from the fact that the Republican Party is a global pedophile ring, but we enjoy watching you spin your wheels.

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    1. Well, he has to spin something.

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    2. anon 11:33, the republican party is a "global pedophile ring"?? you're an idiot.

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  3. "Along the way, we've worked from various literary texts. Readers groan when these titles reappear:

    The Iliad: Homer...."

    For the nimrod who says Bob thinks the Iliad happened as written. He calls it a literary text.

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    1. Nimrod was a mighty hunter.

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    2. Generalizing from a literary text to reality is a waste of time, especially if you are trying to understand reality. Notice that Somerby generally only reads the first chapter of any book he quotes, in some cases only the preface.

      Why do you think readers are groaning?

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  4. Chicago shootings leave at least 7 dead, dozens more injured as city insists it doesn't need Trump's help

    It seems irrational for a city ridden with crime to actively resisting federal help. Why do they do it? Implausible Theories
    1. They unthinkingly oppose anything Trump does
    2. City leaders are concerned that the National Guard might unearth corruption that they're involved in.
    3. City pols don't want locals to realize what a poor job they're doing at crime prevention.

    Any other suggestions?

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    1. 4. Distract from Trump’s own corruption and allow him to illegally arrogate power as an autocrat.

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    2. David, the feds are not coordinating their "help" with anyone locally, from the Gov to the police themselves. What makes you think they would be any help without coordination of effort?

      As in LA and DC, the national troops will stand around looking pretty in public places (such as near federal buildings or parks) and go nowhere near where the crime happens -- because they won't know where that is. When there are protests, the troops will harrass the protesters who are exercising their 1st Amendment rights. With any luck, someone will throw a sandwich at them and the govt will get a photo op out of the millions they are spending to engage in this farce.

      Meanwhile, the legitimate local authorities will be distracted from their duties and crime in neighborhoods may go up. Trump will claim victory and invent his own stats and anything counter to their narrative will be declared fake news.

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    3. @2:46 I don't know enough to evaluate the National Guard's tactics in DC. I do know is that crime is down substantially.
      https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2025/08/29/trump-dc-police-crime-arrests/85864285007/

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    4. It was already down before the troops got there and they did nothing to reduce crime. Note that restaurant attendance also decreased as did foot traffic and sales in local businesses in the areas where the troops were located.

      But here is an important question. If you could eliminate crime entirely by locking people in their homes 24/7 would that be a good idea? Is it a good trade-off to sacrifice important freedoms for lack of crime? If you divide the reduction in incidence of crime by the cost of the troop occupation of DC, you will get a cost-per-crime figure. Is it worth the money being spent by Dear Leader. At some level of crime you will reach a point of diminishing returns. Have we perhaps gone way past that point when it comes to placing these over-armed and under-trained military troops in the capitol mall.

      How many school groups have been allowed to go visit the Lincoln Memorial since the troops were placed in DC? What about the impact on tourism? There are important values being set aside to perhaps decrease crime by a negligible and temporary amount, in a performative show of force meant to intimidate, not reduce actual crime.

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    5. That can't be. I have it on good authority that Chicago is a Gun-Free Zone.

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    6. All I know is that if you listen to Trump, you're a fucking moron, and deserve to be stupider.

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    7. 'I do know is that crime is down substantially."

      Based on a 7-day snap shot presented by the Police Union, who are not the official keepers of crime data for DC (that would be the Police Department).

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  5. No one reading Somerby for the first time will have any clue what he is talking about because of his shorthand coded references thrown into sentences without explanation.

    For example, what does it mean when Somerby says: "we know of no reason to think that any such strategy might allow Blue America to withstand the ongoing "night assault." It wasn't clear when Somerby first assigned Blue America to the role of Troy in Homer's fictional story. One reason it doesn't make sense is that some of us also know the story of the wooden horse that allowed enemy soldiers to sneak into Troy in order to open the gates. That, not anyone climbing over walls, was what we were taught happened when Troy fell. Why are these stories so different? Because they are both FICTION, made up by storytellers who weren't in Troy and have no idea what happened there, any more than Somerby has. And what is the point of comparing "Blue America" (whatever Somerby means by that never-defined term) to a city that was sacked? We had Joe Biden in office when Somerby first started with this garbage, so how were we sacked then? And what about the midterms, which it looks like may be a landslide victory for Dems? Is that sacking?

    Somerby doesn't make any sense. The deeper you try to go in following his "discourse" (for example, by actually reading his book list, which he has mostly not read himself), the less sense anyone makes.

    So what is the point of this exercise? I suspect it is an excuse for Somerby to pretend to be rooting for Troy while casting aspersions on Blue America and advancing talking points that no respectable Blue voter would pay any attention to, since they come from Gutfeld and other Republicans.

    And another day passes without Somerby saying a word about Epstein. Here would be his reading list if he really were interested in politics:

    Lolita by Nabokov (not the movie version)
    Down Girl by Kate Manne
    Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
    Right-Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin
    My Antonia by Willa Cather (read the ending)
    Performing Masculinity by Emig and Rowland
    Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women by Claudia Goldin

    Too bad Somerby only reads comic books and the first chapters of books assigned at Harvard in the 1960s.

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    1. Forgot Lady with Lapdog by Anton Chekov (read the ending of that one). Somerby only ever quotes the first sentence.

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    2. Really dumb comment. Misreads metaphor as literal argument. You can't get any dumber than that.

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    3. I’m dumber than that.

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    4. I like it better, when Bob calls Republicans reactionaries, who are too emotionally stunted to be reason with.

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  6. The latest from the Democrat party is "TRUMP IS DEAD."

    They really believe this.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, there is something wrong with ALL Democrats. A party completely defined by mental illness.

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    1. No, there are clear signs that something is wrong with Trump. His hands, his ankles, his uncharacteristically staying out of the public eye for days. When Biden so much as coughed, the press wrote endless stories about his decline. With elderly Trump in office, crickets from the press.

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    2. Trump was out of the public eye 3 days
      Biden was out of the public eye 3 years

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    3. No, he wasn’t.

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    4. DiC, again, you are commenting at a blog where the blogger says, almost every day, that there is something wrong with Trump, and the press won’t cover it. So where do you get off making these snarky Trump-fluffing comments here? This isn’t newsmax.

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    5. There is something wrong with Democrats. Look how they run like a brainless gullible herd of rats when their tarot card reading female base starts another round of unhinged hysteria. Over and over and over.
      We should be grateful for the gift. It delivered us a second Trump
      Presidency, maybe a third.

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    6. Democrats don't even have a problem with child rape. They just pretend they do, because the Republican Party is a global pedophile ring.

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    7. Trump was dead for 17% of his Presidential term. That's way more than 3 years (75%), if you learned Right-wing math.

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    8. David in Cal, TDH's own future Holocaust Denier, doesn't understand basic mathematics.

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    9. Trump has issued an affidavit.

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  7. Rudy Giuliani will be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    Deserved if late.

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    Replies
    1. The late Rudy Giuiliani has a nice ring to it.

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    2. Giuliani will be the first person to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Moscow.

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    3. Was the working with Ruskie spies in Ukraine, plotting the autogolpe, running around the country losing his law license lying about the election, or moving the NYC command center to the WTC Rudytootooties most deserving action?

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    4. Hello i have it queston of the new make money system . Will system provide the money to me? Also, maybe it help with schwantz. I have small schwantz.

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  8. Let’s hold Bob to some clear and concise answers to the questions that he has raised.

    “Our own split nation continues to come undone.” Split nations tend to come undone, do they not? We once had a civil war. So how and why did it become split again?

    What is the “plague which had come upon them(us)” ?

    What is “the "paralysis" which infests our own Blue American nation?”

    How should we”describe the furious foot soldiers who are currently waging war from within the "hermit kingdom" ruled by President Trump? (We're speaking here about employees of the Fox News Channel and other such figures)”, And why will that make any difference?

    It shouldn’t take another year for Bob to answer the questions he has raised and to form a program of action. Sadly, he concludes with this vague and cowardly nonsense, so I don’t expect much:
    ​“Tomorrow we start a new narrative year! Knowing how way leads on to way, we think it may be late for any such effort to help.”

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  9. Thus spake Mister Fanny, beside his wife - the esteemed Fanny Titus.

    A growl and snarl from down under, hardly a wanton blunder.
    A rapturous rolling thunder, would lead the others to wonder.

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