UNDISGUISED: Truly, an American Babel!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026

The president's excuse: Truly, we're all living is a wholly undisguised Babel. Let's recall the basics of the ancient, instructive tale:

Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures.

According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.

And so on from there. At any rate, we Americans are now living in a modern Babel, with competing storylines taking the place of the original profusion of tongues.

One set of those storylines originates with President Trump. As we will recall below, he at least has an excuse for the bewildering stories and the ludicrous claims on which he crazily insists.

The rest of us may not be so lucky—and that even includes us Blues! Let's run through a few basic parts of the Babel we Americans have chosen.

Footprints in the snow:

Yesterday afternoon, Director Noem was in New York City, where she held a press conference. As you can see by playing this short video clip, she was still stuck in the snow as he tried to describe Wednesday's fatal shooting.

("What happened is, our officers were out trying to get a car stuck out of the snow when they were surrounded and assaulted and blocked in by protestors...")

That's what the secretary inexplicably said yesterday in New York. Please don't make us transcribe the full exchange, but that's what the secretary inexplicably said yesterday in New York. Her capsule account of Wednesday's fatal shooting still involved a set of events which had no apparent connection to anything visible on videotape.

More than a full day later, the director was still describing the fatal shooting in a way which was hard to explain. That said, Secretary Noem has long been an active part of our current Babel.

Fuller disclosure! In this lengthy report from The Independent, a local resident named Caitlin Callenson is quoted making reference to some ICE officers trying to “zoom their car out of the snowbank," apparently at some location near the fatal shooting. That said, the account is still as clear as mud, and Callenson is quoted saying that the "ICE vehicle stuck in snow had been freed" by the time Good arrived on the scene.

(That report is sourced to this report from Minnesota Public Radio.)

More than a full day later, Noem was still stuck in the snow. That said, confusion and incoherence typify the discourse found within our modern Babel.

President Trump has an excuse. What explains the blanket of fog with which Noem is still obscuring Wednesday's key events?

Why was Renee Good present?

For the first time, we've started to see Blue American sources saying that Renee Good was, in fact, at the scene of the fatal shooting as an anti-ICE activist.

For the record, there's no reason why Good shouldn't have been functioning as an ant-ICE activist, if that's actually why she was present that day. But Blue American outlets were avoiding questions about her presence at the scene from mid-day Wednesday right through Thursday's Morning Joe and on into mid-day. 

Other outlets, The Independent included, were presenting factually misleading accounts which suggested that Good had only stumbled upon the scene of the fatal shooting in some sort of coincidence. This slippery avoidance was general over Blue America as yesterday wound on.

Again, there's nothing wrong with being an anti-ICE activist, if that's what Good actually was. That said, Blue orgs kept trying to disappear that possibility. As of last night and this morning, MS NOW seems to be letting people say that she was present on the scene as part of an anti-ICE activity. 

(We refer to Professor Tribe on last evening's The Last Word, and to Jeh Johnson on today's Morning Joe.)

Lessons possibly lost:

Was Renee Good an anti-ICE activist? There's no reason why she shouldn't have been! That said, we'll suggest that some basic lessons have possibly been lost within our own (self-impressed) Blue America, where—if you let us Blues tell the story—"all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the [adults] are all above average."

(That's drawn from Garrison Keillor's satirical portrait of Lake Wobegon, a fictional Minnesota hamlet.)

Question! Even among people as brilliant as we Blues are known to be, have some lessons been lost? We'll offer two possibilities:

Nonviolent resistance / civil disobedience:

As far as we know, it's perfectly legal to monitor, record and report the activities of ICE agents. ICE personnel don't like such activities, but as far as we know, such conduct is perfectly legal.

Other conduct isn't legal—for example, blocking roads with your vehicle to obstruct operations by ICE. Was Good involved in some such conduct during events on Wednesday morning? We don't yet know, but if she was, civil disobedience during the civil rights era involved a willingness to accept arrest for deliberate illegal conduct.

Elections have consequences:

As everyone knows and everyone says, it's also true that "elections have consequences." 

For better or worse, ICE is currently involved in operations which are perfectly legal, at least in their broader outline. We Blues don't approve of those operations, but when we managed to lose the last election, we managed to get a man elected who had openly campaigned on the goal of MASS DEPORTATION.

We Blues don't favor MASS DEPORTATION, and there's no reason why we have to. But as we stumbled and bumbled all during the Biden years—as we stumbled and bumbled in many ways in the years and decades before that—we managed to help create a world in which President Trump's priorities now define the federal landscape.

Like most tribal groups, we Blues tend to have a very hard time seeing the various ways in which our lack of perfect brilliance helped return President Trum to the White House. Our tribe is still locked in deep denial about the bungles of our past. We Blues will continue to stumble and fail until we create deeper insight.

President Trump is the most important architect of our modern American Babel. Kristi Noem id a key player too, as is the endlessly astonishing JD Vance.

That said, President Trump has an excuse for his endless astonishing conduct. We've cited that excuse many times. It looks exactly like this:

MARY L. TRUMP (pages 12-13): I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

Elsewhere, she calls them psychopathologies. It seems likely to us that President Trump is significantly "mentally ill," to use a (somewhat) outmoded term.

That would be his excuse for his astonishing behavior. Fellow citizens of Blue America, what the [frump] is ours?

President Trump nay be medically afflicted. He's the most significant part of our deeply destructive Babel.

That said, we Blues have been part of the madness too. Our bungles have been undisguised. They're invisible only to us!

That madness has been growing like Topsy this week. Noem and Vance and Miller oh my, but through our own relentless flawed judgment, we Blues have been part of this deeply dangerous societal meltdown too.

(Every empire falls apert. "The center cannot hold!")