NOW TOO MUCH FOR US: We Americans, badly in need of a guide!

MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2026

A road back out of all this: "Back out of all this now too much for us?"

We've cited the line several times before. It's the opening line of a puzzling poem by Robert Frost—a poem which starts like this:

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town...

Say what? Already, the poem may seem to be a bit hard—and, as the poem continues, its difficulty seems to grow:

(continuing directly from above)
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered....

In that passage, the poem cites "the road there"—some road which would lead you back to "a time made simple by loss of detail."  That road is a road you might find, and even proceed along, "if you'll let a guide direct you who only has at heart your getting lost."

At this point, matters get worse:

That road—this route of escape—"may seem as if it should have been a quarry!" Meanwhile, go ahead and try to decipher the reference those great monolithic knees!

Critics and scholars seem to agree—this is a difficult poem. We've cited it because of the contemporary relevance of that opening line—of that instant reference to "a time now too much for us." 

We Americans, Red and Blue alike, currently seem to be caught in such a time. We're caught in a time—in a cultural situation—which plainly seems to be "now too much for us."

Actually, to our eye and to our ear, it's substantially worse than that. To our eye and to our ear, the current situation seems to be vastly too much for us. 

Beyond that, the situation seems to be sliding downhill in rapid fashion—as, for example, with the fatal shooting of Renee Good last week, or as can be seen in these recent headlines from Mediaite:

Trump Bizarrely Posts That He’s the ‘Acting President of Venezuela’
For full report, click here

Trump Promises to ‘Do Something on Greenland’: ‘Whether They Like It Or Not’
For full report, click here

Trump Tells NY Times the Only Limit On His Power is His ‘Own Morality’
For full report, click here

Maggie Haberman Offers Grim Warning About Trump: ‘He Is Emboldened in a Way I Don’t Think We’ve Ever Seen Before’
For full report, click here

There's much, much more where those items came from. As a further marker of the times, we include this relatively innocuous report from the New York Times:

The Next Phase of Trump’s Renovations: A New ‘Upper West Wing’

It turns out there was another reason President Trump was memorably “taking a little walk” along the White House roof in August: “I was looking at doing office space.”

After tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a lavish new ballroom, Mr. Trump is turning his sights to a more famous section of the White House. He wants to build a second level on top of the colonnade that connects the West Wing to the White House residence.

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump said that he was calling the project the “Upper West Wing.” He said that it was currently under design and that if he liked what he saw, he would move forward. He said that West Wing aides could have additional office space there, or that it could be “first ladies’ offices for future first ladies.”

Later, during a tour of the White House residence, he said he planned to tear up the brick walkways in Lafayette Park and replace them with granite.

[...]

During a nearly two-hour interview, Mr. Trump described not only his plans for a large ballroom that has more than doubled in size since it was first proposed, but also his ideas for more building projects. Those include the renovations of the West Wing and Lafayette Park, as well as Washington Dulles International Airport, and the construction of a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery and a national garden of American heroes on the Potomac River.

Beyond this, he's placing his name in various entities, including the Kennedy Center. With respect to his plans for Greenland, this is the headline which appeared in the Times:

Trump Threatens to Take Greenland ‘the Hard Way’
For full report, click here

There's much, much more where those items came from! We see a dangerous pattern in this. That said, many, many people—many millions of people—disagree with that assessment.

"Back out of all this now too much for us?" In our view, we Americans are now caught in a time—in a cultural situation—which exceeds "our poor power to add," though not so much to detract. We've divided into rival tribes, neither of which seems to be pointing the way out of the current chaos.

We stress this significant point:

In our view, it isn't just Red America—the Red America of Trump and Vance and Noem oh my—who are way in over their heads, and way out over their skis, in the current situation. In our view, that's also true of our own Blue America—and we're willing to say that even after watching the jaw-dropping agitprop of Fox & Friends Weekend and The Big Weekend Show over the past two days.

At this site, we regard Red America as being almost completely lost at this point in time. (Many millions of people disagree with that assessment.)

We regard Red America as being almost completely lost—but our own Blue America is struggling rather badly too. We see no sign that our own Blue America, as currently constituted, is likely to serve as a guide to a road "back out of all this [mess]."

In the aftermath of Renee Good's death, we're recommending Frost's puzzling imagery for a reason we've tried to explain before. In our view, those of us in Blue America badly need to take a step outside the hourly turmoil of the time.

We need to take a major step back! We need to seek a better way to understand this time—and to understand our own Blue America's role in the endless turmoil.

Hoping to serve as a bit of a guide, we'll be trying to take a step back all this week. At this site, we think we Americans, such as we are, are currently living in a very dangerous time:

Friend, do you think, as we do, that the madness is all around us—and that this is a time of great danger? If so, how might we, as Blue Americans, help find a way back out of this mess?

Tomorrow: As heard on Fox & Friends Weekend