SATURDAY: At the Atlantic, they say no names!

SATURDAY, JULY 11, 2026

The refusal to serve is general: "Back out of all this now too much for us?"  

As we've noted in the past, that's the opening line of Frost's difficult poem, Directive. We often think of that line in these extremely dark days. 

The poem—it's a difficult poem—starts exactly 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.
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.
And there's a story in a book about it...

And so on, at length, from there.   

It's a difficult poem. With that acknowledgment, we now offer a question:

Do we Americans now find ourselves in "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?"  

If so, there are very few stories in books about it, in part because of what happened when Jeffrey Rosen's promising essay in The Atlantic moved past its promising start.   

Judged by the norms of the established world, Rosen is very sharp. At this point, we remind you of the things we showed you earlier in the week:  

Jeffrey Rosen (legal academic)  

Jeffrey Rosen (born February 13, 1964) is an American legal scholar, journalist, and author.

Rosen is a law professor at The George Washington University, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of nine books, including New York Times bestsellers. He served as the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center from 2013 to 2026, where he is now CEO Emeritus. Rosen is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. 

[...]  

Rosen attended the Dalton School, a private college preparatory school on New York City's Upper East Side, and graduated in 1982 as valedictorian. He then studied English literature and government at Harvard University, graduating in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. He was subsequently a Marshall Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy, politics, and economics, from which he received a second bachelor's degree in 1988. He then attended the Yale Law School, where he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal...  

As CEO of the National Constitution Center, he has produced a long series of outstanding public forums—public forums which operate on what is seen as the culture's C-Span-adjacent high end.  

Over here in Blue America, we've been told that we should respect and admire "contributing writers for The Atlantic." At present, we especially recommend the work of that magazine's Helen Lewis, but there's something even she may be doing—or may be agreeing not to do.   

There's something they've all agreed not to do? We'll turn to Frost again:

The Gift Outright 

[...]   

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Something we were withholding made us weak? We've quoted that line before. Here's why we quote it today:

At present, here in Blue America, our journalistic and academic leaders refuse to "say their names." That is what is being withheld in this discourse which is no more a discourse in a nation which is perhaps no more a nation and which may almost seem to be perhaps going down.   

We agree with Rosen! The advent of various new technologies has turned our nation, which is now barely a nation, into a modern-day Babel. Putin smiles on a summer night as he sees Charlie Hurt, guest hosting on Jesse Watters Primetime, litter the landscape this way:

HURT (7/9/26): So Democrats finally got their pervy Platner off their back, but he's the least of their worries. Ranks of Commie radicals worse than the Nipple Nazi are mobilizing across the country, positioning for their takeover. 

[Photo of Abdul El-Sayed]

This Commie doc without a medical license is running for Senate in Michigan, and he's already hard at work indoctrinating your kids...   

(For the sake of the record: According to the leading authority, El-Sayd "is an American epidemiologist, politician, and former public health official and academic. He was the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services of Wayne County, Michigan, from 2023 to 2025.")

You see there how Hurt started. After he cited the "pervy Platner," producers played tape of the "Commie doc" telling a bunch of pre-school kids that they should share their cupcakes. 

That was the Commie indoctrination to which Hurt referred. Viewers were even told that this "Commie doc" is worse than "the Nipple Nazi!"  

This intellectual squalor only got worse as the guest host continued—this guest host on the second most-watched "cable news" show in this, our nation which is perhaps no more a nation.     

Along the way, viewers were told that Brad Linder, the former comptroller of New York City, "went full Commie in his victory speech" after winning a Democratic Party primary last month. He'd been endorsed by "Commie Mamdani," viewers were pleasingly told.  

Eventually, the guest host read this copy, smirking as he went:   

HURT: The collapse of the media, and the lack of clear leadership in the Democrat [sic] Party, or a hopeful vision for the country, allowed an army of Commie radicals to take over the Democrat [sic] Party. 

The Commies are organized, they're mobilized, and they've just rolled out their takeover course of action. Project 2029. It's a ready-to-go, governing blueprint for their Commie leader in the White House... Desperate Democrats like Kamala see the end, and she's hopping on the Commie express train before it's too late.

It was low-IQ squalor like that, read from prompter by the constantly smirking Hurt. 

For the record, Project 2029 is the work of a liberal policy journal, not of the Democratic Party. As Hurt read his Commie-rich copy, the chyrons were saying this: 

HERE COME THE COMMIES! 
COMMIE QUACK IS FOR THE KIDS  
BRAD LANDER GOES FULL COMMIE
DESPERATE DEMS HOP ON THE COMMIE EXPRESS 
THE COMMIES ORGANIZE AND MOBILIZE  
COMMIES INFILTRATE THE DEMOCRATS

Enjoyable copy like that.

For the record, there's plenty that can be criticized about the Democratic Party and about some of its candidates. At this site, we've sometimes criticized Senator and then Vice President Harris, though we're going to guess that she hasn't "hopped on the Commie express" at this point in time.

There's plenty that a sensible person—a person who is still a person—might critique or criticize about the party in question. Instead, Hurt was offering a braindead imitation of human political discourse—of a discourse which is no more a discourse in a town which is no more a town.

It was a braindead imitation of life—unless you read Jeffrey Rosen's essay in the Atlantic. In his essay, Rosen declines to say the names of people like Hurt—of the types of corporate messaging agents who are no longer persons. 

Nor does he say the name of the Fox News Channel, or of "cable news" in general. It's an essay in which a highly promising, insightful start rapidly disappears.  

No, Virginia! No nation can remain a nation if it becomes a Babel—if it turns into a welter of competing voices feeding different tribal groups the stories they long to hear. 

As he starts, Rosen gives voice to a profoundly sensible fear—to the fear that our democracy (such as it is) may not "survive" the effects of the new technologies which have made every flyweight a king. 

Rosen's start is extremely strong, but then the withholding begins. He names "social media" and "the internet," but he doesn't mention cable news and he doesn't mention podcasts.   

Bowing to an intractable rule, he doesn't say the names of people like Charlie Hurt. He doesn't say the name of the ludicrous corporate messaging agent for whom Hurt was guest hosting. 

Rosen has been to what Dylan once mocked as "the finest schools," but he hasn't learned how to say their names—or it could be that his superiors at the Atlantic aren't willing to let him and others do that.  

"Something we were withholding made us weak," the poet Frost once wrote. Within the realms of Blue America's modern elites, we'll guess that the rewards are simply too damn high, and the risks are simply too great.

The celebrity and the salaries are too good to put at risk. No one wants to say the names of the modern-day jugglers and clowns who are devouring the present-day discourse.

At the New York Times, at MS NOW and CNN, but also at the Atlantic, they refuse to say the names of the people and the entities which are creating "all this"—all this which does indeed seem, as we slide toward the sea, to be "now too much for us."

They type from a realm which is no more a realm, producing a discourse which is something quite different.   

Frost ends the difficult poem Directive with these difficult lines:  

I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it!  

"Drink and be whole again beyond confusion," Frost wrote as his closing line. Here in the present day, the ginormous confusion largely results from an amazingly systematic act of withholding.

As a group, they simply refuse to say their names! There is zero sign that this deception, this failure to serve, is ever going to stop.