SURROUNDINGS: A detainee tried to eat his own arm!

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2026

She said it not once, but twice: It's been said that Plato wrote it, if only in translation:

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

As we've frequently noted, Plato is said to have written that in the Seventh Letter, which may or not be authentic. Having said that, also this:

The lunacy of the current times was on display this week as Secretary Noem was shown the door. Regarding Secretary Noem herself, we'll make these brief observations: 

Her refusal to Go Full Bondi: To her credit, she didn't Go Full Bondi during this week's congressional hearings. In fact, she didn't imitate Bondi at all. By possible way of contrast:

It's our impression that Senator Tillis (R-NC) is a good, decent person. But in his shouted inquisition about the way Noem once shot her puppy and also a goat, we thought he captured the craziness of the times during the first of the week's two hearings.

Of all the things Noem had done or had possibly done in office, he was shouting at her about that!

Insinuate, insinuate: In our view, Lawrence O'Donnell almost seemed to follow suit on Wednesday night's Last Word. On three separate occasions during the hour, he teased an upcoming discussion of a question he seemed quite eager to discuss—the question of whether Secretary Noem and Corey Lewandoski have been engaged in a sexual relationship. 

He also offered an additional tease, this time (did he actually do it twice?) about "one of the most famous flying bedrooms since Jeffrey Epstein was grounded."

Just this once, we'll be honest. We don't especially care whether Noem and Lewandoski been so engaged. That said, after explicitly teasing Jeremy Raskin as the guest who would he discussing that topic, Lawrence never said a single word to Raskin about this thrilling question.

"Simplify, simplify," Thoreau once said. In the case of Lawrence's unfortunate outing, it was more like this:

"Insinuate, insinuate," especially about matters of sex. 

The collection of scholars on The Five have been playing this game in the past week with respect to the Clintons. Backsliding into one of his unhelpful days—they've been very rare in recent years—Lawrence followed suit on Wednesday night. He was absent last night. 

Costuming issues: It's been said that it was the massive cost of the Mount Rushmore ads which helped seal Noem's fate. In that instance, Secretary Noem had decked herself out, in some of the shots, as a wild west buffalo driver.

For our money, her most egregious costuming decision involved the pose she struck before a crowded cell full of half-naked male prisoners in the early El Salvador days. 

As of this morning, the New York Times was still pretending that it was Noem's expensive watch which made those visuals so inappropriate. Do we Blues have any sexual politics at all? We're forced to suggest that, rather plainly, it was actually something else.

In search of "domestic terrorists:" We'll guess that it wasn't Noem who invented the mandated practice of referring to DHS shooting victims as "domestic terrorists." We'll guess that that rhetorical lunacy came from Stephen Miller, although that's merely a guess.

Last fall, when Marimar Martinez was shot five times in Chicago, she too was instantly called a "domestic terrorist," even way back then. That was long before Noem made herself famous by attaching that insane designation to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the victims of fatal shootings in Minneapolis this year.

We'll guess that Noem was trying to stick to a pre-arranged messaging diktat. In the case of those fatal Minneapolis shootings, she instantly did so, in a way which took us toward the limits of previously known human dumbness.

The lunacy of the times has been on vivid display in these varied events. That general lunacy was part of the surroundings last week as we the people were moving toward our ongoing war in Iran.

We don't know how that war will turn out; we can imagine it flat or round. That said, the most puzzling episode in Noem's term was revisited a few weeks back.

They picked it up at Mediate. We saw it reported nowhere else. The lunacy of the times is lurking here. Michael Luciano's report started off like this:

Trump Official Disputes Kristi Noem’s Claim About ‘Cannibal’ Who ‘Tried to Eat Himself’ While in Custody 

A wild tale about an undocumented immigrant told by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “is completely false,” a senior federal law enforcement official told The Intercept for a story published on Monday.

Back in June, Noem went on Fox News and claimed that a U.S. marshal told her about a particularly bizarre deportation flight.

“I was talking to a U.S. marshal just yesterday, and he was talking about deporting a plane load of illegals, and one of them was a cannibal,” she said at the time. “He started to eat his own arms. He was such a deranged individual. This is the kind of people President Trump is getting off our streets.”

It's true! Inexplicably, Noem repeated that extremely strange tale during an appearance on Jesse Watters Primetime. How odd was her second-hand story about the cannibal who tried to eat his own arm, presumably as a means of escape? 

It was so odd that it even seemed to give Watters pause!

What could explain the fact that a major federal official had gone on the nation's second most-watched "cable news" show and had repeated this "wild tale"—had seemed to believe that this crazy tale actually seemed to make some sort of sense?

We don't know how to answer that question—but a few days later, Noem repeated the same story with the president at her side. She did so at the high-profile, televised unveiling of the infamous "Alligator Alcatraz" detention site in the Florida Everglades.

A detainee had tried to eat his own arm, presumably as a means of escape! In what world does a major official repeat such a lunatic tale—and not just on one occasion, but in two major settings? 

What can possibly explain the fact that Secretary Noem did that?

We reported those bizarre remarks by Noem in real time, when the remarks were made. In another peculiar sign of the times, the major news orgs of Blue America yawned and looked away. 

A cannibal tried to eat his own arm! She said it not once, but twice!

In conclusion, we'll offer this:

Kristi Noem has to be better than this. We hope she ends up showing it. 

Also, we don't believe in piling on people at times like these—for example, by nosing around about their sexual behavior. The lunacy of the current time really does start at the top—and for the record, we've long suggested that you should pity the child who became that powerful, dangerous man.

We've repeatedly praised O'Donnell of late. On Wednesday, we'd say he briefly crashed and burned, along with one or two guests.