Gunnar wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 5:39 am
Maybe one could argue that my comments were a bit too harsh, but I saw the telephone footage of the Trump instigated violence on Jan 6. I heard what he said to the crowd of rioters. I saw how they attacked and beat law enforcement officers who tried to protect the legislators and heard them shout out "hang Mike Pence" and search for Nancy Pelosi. I saw how even Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Mark Meadows and others denounced what Trump, only to subsequently crawl cravenly to Trump in Mar Alago and "kiss his ring." I can't forget or condone his
Access Hollywood comments and his disdainful attitude towards women, nor his unlawful and potentially dangerous acquisition and handling of sensitive, classified materials. Some of the most damning evidence of his malfeasance comes inadvertently from his own mouth and actions. The evidence against him was enough to convince a jury of his peers to render a unanimous verdict of guilty in his recent trial. As I understand it, some of those jurors had actually voted for him in the last election. Any other person who had done the things he was rightfully prosecuted for would be in prison. Yes, there really is a 2-tiered justice system, as Trump and other wealthy and powerful people like him are treated with much greater leniency than ordinary folks guilty of the same things.
I would be every bit as disgusted with Democrat leaders guilty of the same things Trump has done. I honestly think that the evidence of Trump's guilt and unfitness for public office is every bit as compelling as the evidence that the world is a spinning globe that is one of several planets revolving around a central sun approximately 93 million miles away, it boggles my mind how many conservatives can't or won't see it!
I understand what you are saying. It seems to me that something has gone horribly wrong.
There is a powerful scene in the Odyssey, in which the son of Odysseus comes into a banquet of the suitors who have taken over his father’s house, hoping to win the hand of Odysseus’ wife. They banquet at the expense of Odysseus’ estate day in and day out.
Telemachus approaches the banqueters after a journey. He is accompanied by a young man who is a kind of seer. As the suitors party and banter, the seer sees the same scene but with blood spraying from the suitors all over the walls of the banquet hall. The seer sees an ominous future, Odysseus’ revenge, but the suitors enjoy themselves, treating the seer who warns them like a fool.
What always struck me about this scene was the two starkly different perspectives on the same situation. The suitors are unable to see what the seer sees. They think he is a fool. The reader knows where the story is headed, so the reader knows it is the suitors who are being foolish. Of course, the suitors would still have broken the moral code of Ithaca’s society, even if Odysseus had failed, and one of them would have probably married Odysseus’ wife Penelope and taken control of the remainder of his fortune.
The suitors argued that Odysseus had been gone too long and Penelope needed to be married. So, it is not as though they lacked any argument to justify, at least in their minds, their actions. It is important not to overlook that fact, too.
The outcome, a violent bloodbath in which the returned Odysseus kills all the suitors, vindicates the vision of the prophet. But the death of the suitors is awful, and Odysseus’ reaction seems excessive. The gods intervene to stop further conflict when the families of the suitors are prompted to seek revenge for the deaths of their young men.
Ours is not a simple situation, and the outcome is uncertain. I sometimes feel like those of us who see Trump for what he is, do see him for what he is, but that perspective is doomed to have little impact on those who do not see him. Unfortunately, the blood on the walls of this banquet is more likely to be our own, and we are frightened because that is our vision. The wickedness or foolishness of others not ending in their failure but in our suffering.
The suitors felt justified partly because of the unusual set of circumstances. Remember that the Odyssey follows the Trojan War, so many of the men of Greece had been gone for a decade or more, leaving the sons of Greece without paternal guidance. Here I would emphasize the disruption to lives that interferes with and interrupts the usual patterns of life. Our current or recent disruptions have also been significant. What impact does this disruption have on our values or our ability to find unity in them?
I think that is the key to understanding the disjuncture between the perspective of the suitors and that of the young seer. The disruption fragments the community view. In the Odyssey the disruption was so severe that it took an outsider, a seer from another land, to reintroduce what the author saw as the proper moral perspective. So the parallel isn’t perfect. Still, I find the story useful to think with, and, even though it is fiction, I believe it contains real insights based on actual experiences of societal schism and its impacts.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
