THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2026
We pretend to listen: This very morning, the evocative translation of the dramatic statement was banging around in our heads.
It was banging around in there again. We find this highly evocative:
"When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and withdrew from the wickedness of the times."
As we noted a few weeks ago, that statement, in translation, is drawn from Plato's Seventh Letter, which may or may not be authentic. The background goes like this:
In 404 B.C., in the wake of the Athenian surrender in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian democracy briefly fell. The Thirty, later known as The Thirty Tyrants, were placed in control of the polity.
In this less evocative translation of the epistle which may be authentic, Plato notes that some of these appointed rulers were personal friends of his. At first, he was intrigued by their rise to power, but soon he amended his view of the Thirty Tyrants:
The Seventh Letter
[...]
In quite a short time they made the former government seem by comparison something precious as gold. For among other things, they tried to send a friend of mine, the aged Socrates, whom I should scarcely scruple to describe as the most upright man of that day, with some other persons to carry off one of the citizens by force to execution, in order that, whether he wished it, or not, he might share the guilt of their conduct.
But he would not obey them, risking all consequences in preference to becoming a partner in their iniquitous deeds. Seeing all these things and others of the same kind on a considerable scale, I disapproved of their proceedings, and withdrew from any connection with the abuses of the time.
We prefer the more evocative rendering of that final statement. But so it went, in the youthful Plato's eye, as the democracy fell.
If history has taught us anything—and almost surely it hasn't—it has taught us that The Thirty stayed in power for only about a year. That said, sometimes there is no tribe that is perfectly wise. With respect to the Athenian democracy, here's what happened next:
(Continuing directly from above)
Not long after that, a revolution terminated the power of The Thirty and the form of government as it then was. And once more, though with more hesitation, I began to be moved by the desire to take part in public and political affairs.
Well, even in the new government, unsettled as it was, events occurred which one would naturally view with disapproval; and it was not surprising that, in a period of revolution, excessive penalties were inflicted by some persons on political opponents, though those who had returned from exile at that time showed very considerable forbearance.
But once more it happened that some of those in power brought my friend Socrates, whom I have mentioned, to trial before a court of law, laying a most iniquitous charge against him and one most inappropriate in his case. For it was on a charge of impiety that some of them prosecuted and others condemned and executed the very man who would not participate in the iniquitous arrest of one of the friends of the party then in exile, at the time when they themselves were in exile and misfortune.
After deposing The Thirty, the new government, in a period of revolutionary zeal, had proceeded to condemn and execute "the most upright man of the day."
Putting it a different way:
Sometimes, the very best, as well as the worst, may be "full of passionate intensity." Making it even simpler, sometimes—as President Lincoln said—sometimes it may turn out that we did this too.
Regarding that portrait of the fall of Athens, we wouldn't say it's that bad around here today. But we'd say there's a family resemblance to the way our own democracy, such as it has ever been, has been coming undone—is currently falling apart.
Have those of us in Blue America played a role in this fall? We'd have to say that the answer is yes! In our view, Colby Hall correctly identifies some of our Blue American blame in this admirably nuanced piece.
We Blues have played a part in this too! That said, it seems to us, the larger point would have to be this:
As we've noted in the past, we humans weren't built for this line of work! Eventually, empires and sprawling nation states are destined to fall apart. We humans are inclined to array ourselves in tribes. The fall then proceeds from there.
Yesterday, Attorney General Bondi appeared before the Congress again. As it was the last time, so too yesterday:
We've never seen anyone behave the way she's done on these two occasions.
In a recent profile in The Atlantic, Stephanie McCrummen sketches the way Bondi—who was once a Democrat who seemed to be fairly liberal—came to be the way she is. We recall part of this story:
WHAT HAPPENED TO PAM BONDI?
[...]
Florida politics was trending Republican with Jeb Bush’s election as governor [in 1998]. Though no one I spoke with could recall Bondi expressing strong ideological views—if anything, she seemed fairly liberal—it was around this time that she switched her party registration from Democratic to Republican. She became friendly with Sean Hannity. Soon, Fox News was sending black cars to drive her to the studio to talk about sensational cases such as that of Terri Schiavo, the comatose Florida woman who became the center of a national political drama over whether to end life support. Producers would give Bondi a tape of her appearances afterward, or she’d tell friends to record her segments, and they would gather in a living room and rewatch them. “She’d be like, ‘Did I sound stupid the way I said that?’ ” a close friend from that time told me.
[...]
As state attorney general, Bondi was widely praised for her crackdown on opioid pill mills and for her work combatting human trafficking. But more and more, her success hinged on her willingness to be a spokesperson for the party, especially on Fox News. She appeared regularly as a legal commentator on Hannity, Fox & Friends, America Reports, and The Five, where she had a three-day stint as a guest host. “She was an accomplished, well-spoken carrier of the message,” the GOP operative, who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, told me, recalling Bondi’s role as a Romney surrogate. “Pam was somebody you could put out for almost anything,” this person said. “She was somebody you could put on a Sunday show.”
We remember Bondi's generally fatuous guest spots on Fox. We recall our surprise in 2010 when she was elected attorney general of Florida—largely based, or so it seemed to us, on the prominence she had gained from those fatuous guest spots, in which she discussed those high "human interest" events.
Can you really get elected based on that? we recall wondering.
As for Hannity himself:
Last night, he again devoted the bulk of his program to the ongoing human interest / true crime drama unfolding in Arizona. On CNN, Jake Tapper was still out there in Tucson. Let us say this about that:
CNN has made some extremely good hires in the past decade or so. We were skeptics when they hired Kaitlan Collins in 2017. She had just turned 25, and she had a very thin resume—a resume which was largely compiled at Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller!
As it turned out, our skepticism was misplaced. Collins has been a sensational hire; we admire her competence and her character.
So too with the relatively recent hire of Audie Cornish, who always had a great voice for radio. As it turns out, she has a great voice for cable news too, along with an impressive amount of sanity, erudition and judgment.
Tapper, hired in 2012, was another very good hire. Yesterday, though, a somewhat odd situation obtained:
The democracy was coming apart right there in Washington, D.C. But for reasons which go unexplained, Tapper was still on the ground in Pima County, where he had been sent.
Last evening, Tapper and Hannity each continued with the mystification about the three-hour search of Annie Guthrie's home, followed days later by the search of the woods behind her home. Last night, Hannity and Tapper (and everyone else) continued the strange refusal to address those somewhat puzzling facts in an endless series of interviews in which the world's most obvious question persistently went unasked and was completely unaddressed.
At this site, we don't know what happened to Nancy Guthrie. As would be the case with any sane person, we hope that she'll be found.
This morning, the New York Times has published a classic "thumb-sucker" piece which pretends to explain the public's fascination with this profoundly unfortunate case. In a somewhat familiar fashion, the piece "explains" that fascination without ever demonstrating that any such fascination exists.
Meanwhile, will Tapper ever be allowed to come home? The democracy is crashing in D.C., not in Arizona.
With respect to those somewhat puzzling searches:
On CNN and on Fox, everyone—hosts and expert guests alike—agrees that the possible reason for those searches must never be addressed. Hosts keep reporting the fact that those searches have taken place, and everyone then agrees to show no sign of wondering why they have occurred.
Why has law enforcement conducted those searches? Hour after hour, night after night, everyone agrees not to ask!
In our view, it would be easy enough to answer that question in basically anodyne ways:
Law enforcement never rules anyone out! Until this horrible case has been solved, the FBI and the local police will be leaving no stone unturned!
It would be easy enough to say such things. Some experts have even volunteered the fact that family members are always checked out first.
(With apologies, we've even seen a few guests make a dangerous statement. They've said that 90 percent of such cases involve family members.)
That said, we assume that the specific explanation for this manufactured mystery lies on the public record. Again, we'll cite an opinion piece by Colby Hall. On balance, we disagree with him here:
Ashleigh Banfield’s Nancy Guthrie Reporting Shows How Clickbait Obstructed Justice
A media figure publicly named a family member as a “prime suspect” in the disappearance of an 84-year-old woman. Law enforcement said no suspect existed. The sheriff called the reporting irresponsible and reckless. The damage was already done.
Ashleigh Banfield, a former NewsNation host who remains affiliated with the network as a true crime podcaster, repeatedly identified Nancy Guthrie’s son-in-law as a prime suspect in her disappearance, citing an anonymous law enforcement source. She did so across platforms while authorities were actively searching and publicly saying the opposite. There does exist the possibility that sheriffs are obfuscating a real lead, which would make Banfield’s reporting no less irresponsible if it hinders an ongoing and active investigation.
That sequence captures the core failure of click-driven crime coverage. Speculation outran verification. Narrative displaced restraint. An active investigation was forced to contend with a media storyline it did not create.
And so on from there. On balance, we can't say we agree with that. We certainly don't agree with the fervor with which Hall states his view.
Banfield is highly experienced. She interviewed us at the 2000 Democratic Convention, when she was working for NBC cable—for what was then called MSNBC!
Banfield isn't a dope. Should she have voiced that report?
We suppose you could teach it flat or round. But the current compromise position strikes us as stone-cold braindead:
Hour after hour, pundits refuse to address the world's most obvious question concerning a "true crime" event with respect to which they've gone a million percent all in. They keep reporting the fact of those searches, then keep refusing to discuss why those searches have happened:
Have we been the only ones who have found this conduct maddening? Do other viewers fail to notice the obvious question lurking there==the question which never gets answered or asked?
If so, then we the people simply aren't up to this task. We think of the famous old joke from the Soviet Union, in which a worker says this:
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.
A wonderfully rueful, wry joke! Is something like that taking place as the Fox News Channel uses this occasion to wipe the sitting president out of the national discussion? As CNN sends Tapper to focus on true crime and human interest, even as the society is falling apart in D.C.?
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us? For us the people in our crumbling world, is the current arrangement possibly somewhat similar?
We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us! That was a wonderful Soviet joke. Is our reality more like this?
They pretend to discuss the news, and we pretend to listen?
Tomorrow: Miles to go
