KAFKA'S DESCENDANTS: "I didn't expect the killings," she said!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2026

A hint of the Kafkaesque: For one person with whom the New York Times spoke, her experience of the past year may have become Kafkaesque. 

It's as we noted in yesterday's report. The Times spoke with thirteen Democratic or Dem-leaning voters for an "America in Focus" report. Concerning the current state of the nation, one of those voters said this:

CANDY, 46: I would say it’s exactly what I imagined it was going to be like. I called out a lot of the things that are currently happening, and I keep calling out things that I feel are going to happen that haven’t happened. Maybe I didn’t think citizens were going to get killed. But my thoughts and my feelings about what was going to happen are close enough.

On balance, this woman—age 46, a Nevada resident—says she hasn't been surprised by the past year's flood of events. On the other hand, she says she "maybe" didn't think that two people were going to be shot and killed in the streets of Minneapolis as part of the overall deal. 

(Earlier, in Chicago, how did Marimar Martinez manage to avoid being killed? She was shot five times by federal agents, but somehow managed to survive. It's fairly clear that those federal agents proceeded to lie about what Martinez had supposedly done before one opened fire. We'll guess that Candy, a good decent person, also may not have foreseen conduct like that.)

For Candy, a Nevada resident, did those killings start to make the state of play perhaps feel a bit Kafkaesque? We can't necessarily say that they did, Yesterday, though, we cited these statements by two other people with whom the New York Times spoke. 

KATIE, 36: I wake up in the morning and I look at my phone, and it’s another headline. I saw something on Facebook the other day that was from The Onion. And I had to double-check to make sure that that’s where it was from because, the reality that we’re living in right now, it’s hard to tell the difference between real life and satire, which is not a good place to be in.

[...]

JOHN, 43: If you asked me this 12 years ago, it was something no one really talked about. And now it’s a daily conversation...It’s like, daily, you could have three or four things that you would never even think 10, 15 years ago would happen. 

For that 36-year-old Virginia resident, "the reality that we’re living in" may no longer exactly feel like "real life." Meanwhile, John, a resident of New Jersey, says things are happening every day—things you never could have imagined not that long ago.

Does this rise to the level of Kafkaesque? Not necessarily, no—though the ghost of Rod Serling may be around and about as Blue Americans occasionally flirt with hints of The Twilight Zone.

Below, we'll offer the strangest example of shattered presumptions of which we ourselves are aware. First, though, we turn to something Wes Moore said on CBS this past Sunday night. 

Governor Moore (D-Md.) was interviewed by Norah O'Donnell. The gentleman is unmistakably sharp. At one point, he even said this:

Gov. Wes Moore argues Biden "needed to do more" on immigration but blasts Trump's crackdown

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told CBS News immigration is an issue the country has "punted on for a very long time" amid the nation's heated debate over federal enforcement.

While he has publicly condemned the Trump administration's immigration policies as a "cruel and reckless political agenda," he told CBS News senior correspondent Norah O'Donnell that former President Joe Biden "did not have this right."

"We needed to do more. That, I don't think anyone can argue that we had the system worked out under President Biden—that immigration was worked out," he said during a town hall that aired Sunday. 

Say what? Under President Biden, the southern border was handled so poorly that "I don't think anyone can argue that we had the system worked out?" 

Is a fellow like Governor Moore really permitted to say that? Apparently, yes, he is. Just last weekend, over in Munich, Hillary Clinton may have said a somewhat similar thing—or then again, she may not have.

For us Blues, the world has gone borderline Kafka during this second Trump term. For Reds, is it possible that some such dislocation occurred during the Biden years? Did some such dislocation occur as they watched footage of unauthorized immigrants streaming across the southern border—footage we Blues were neither asked nor allowed to see on our own cable channels?

Fellow citizens, we're just asking! Experts say that we the humans, being heavily tribal, aren't wired for such ruminations. 

For our money, we think that Moore is on the right track when he inexplicably decides to state the obvious. For ourselves, the world hasn't exactly gone Kafkaesque during this second Trump term. 

At times, the world has gone full Witness—has made us long for the type of internal exile the Harrison Ford character undertakes during that Oscar-nominated 1985 film.

In that film, Ford's character—a Philadelphia police officer—flees to Pennsylvania's Amish country in an echo of what Plato said in The Seventh Letter:

"When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I grew disgusted and withdrew from the wickedness of the times."

Ford's character flees from the wickedness of the times, partly in hopes of saving his own life. Eventually, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, he sees that he has to "return to the fight."

(Like Bogey, he leaves the love of his life behind in the person of Kelly McGillis. "We'll always have Amish country," he might as well have said as he heads back to Philadelphia at the end of the film.)

We ourselves have felt that longing for withdrawal as the flooding of the zone has rolled on and on and on. We agree with John, age 43—it's reached the point where there are so many bizarre events each day that it has become almost impossible to even pretend to keep up.

Still, as we Blues watch the Trump agenda unfold, has the world gone full Kafkaesque? In fairness, Kafka's protagonist, Gregory Samsa, had to adjust to the fact that he had somehow turned into an insect. 

Has the epistemic dislocation been that extreme for us? For most people, the answer is presumably no.

(Then too, there are all those people in Red America. As we Blues have sometimes proposed and done weird things, had the world gone Kafkaesque for them before the return of President Trump?)

For Blues, flickers of Kafkaesque have possibly come into view as the society's normal procedures have been upended again and again. For ourselves we flashed on Kafka this Monday morning as we struggled with two fell weeks of pseudo-coverage of the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, age 84, from her Tucson home.

Two "cable news" channels had gone all in on the pseudo-coverage. Around the clock, all day and all night, the channels had presented repetitive pseudo-discussions, in which observers who had nothing to say were sent on the air to say it.

When the very occasional factlets popped up, the channels persistently bungled them. As we grew disgusted by the incompetence of the times, we found ourselves thinking of Kafka's hoof.

We suddenly flashed on Kafka's hoof? Tomorrow, right here, we'll explain.

On the whole, we're looking for ways to understand the very unusual world within which we're currently being flooded—into which we've all been thrown. Last week, Jamelle Bouie, who's very sharp, said it's racism, complete full stop.

The columnist said that's what it is. We think it goes beyond that.

Tomorrow: Fleetingly, Kafka's hoof