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Aug. 22, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:30
MITCH’S WORLD Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep397
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Coming up, I'm going to talk about Mitch McConnell's assertion that Republicans might not take the Senate in November.
Why would he say that?
The judge in the Whitmer kidnapping trial is making some strange instructions to the jury.
I'll tell you about that.
I'll also explore why the George Gascon, this is the L.A.N.D.A., recall effort failed.
And Debbie will join me. We're going to talk about Liz Cheney's presidential aspirations and also our forthcoming trip to Israel.
you're invited. This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
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How to account for the strange behavior of Mitch McConnell?
By the way, this is not the first time on this podcast that I've taken up this question.
I've taken up earlier in other contexts.
But McConnell is a Sphinx-like figure, and he says things that need to be unraveled, sort of parsed out, made sense of.
And most recently, he was asked about Republican prospects for the midterms, and he goes, I I think there's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.
Senate races are just different.
Their statewide candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.
Now, strictly speaking, what McConnell is saying is accurate.
And what I mean by that is that, A, the likelihood of the Republicans taking the House is very high.
The likelihood of taking the Senate is not so high.
So when McConnell says there's a greater likelihood, he's quite right about that.
Senate races are indeed statewide.
And who can deny that candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome?
Of course, your candidates matter.
But this is a strange statement on many levels.
The first reason it's strange is, if you think about it, why say it?
Even if it's true. Would you ever hear Chuck Schumer go, well, you know, the Democrats are going to take a real beating in the midterms?
He'd never say that.
Why? Because he doesn't want to demoralize his own voters.
He doesn't want to create momentum for the other side.
So even if you fear that Republicans may not take the Senate, it's better to put your efforts to preventing that and to making sure that Republicans have the best chance that they do to take the Senate.
And your comments obviously aren't going to be helpful in this regard.
Now, there are 14 seats open in the Senate, and two are considered safe for the Democrats, two are safe for the Republicans, one is leaning Democrat, one leans Republican, and the other eight are toss-ups.
And this is according to polls that have in the past understated Republican support and Republican prospects.
We all know that Biden is hugely unpopular.
More than 70% of people say country is going in the wrong direction.
So the Republicans actually would seem to be in pretty good shape.
The Republicans don't have, by the way, bad candidates.
Their candidates are not unflawed, but that is hardly a surprise.
Herschel Walker, you take even Oz in Pennsylvania, has some questions about Oz.
J.D. Vance, Blake Masters.
I mean, these are highly distinguished people in a variety of different walks of life, from athletics to the internet.
And of course, Oz in his own right, J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy.
And then the Republicans have some good senators who are up.
Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, Adam Laxalt, who's running in Nevada, capable attorney general.
So these are pretty good candidates.
And they're running against a discredited party that has proven its incompetence and has a lot of problematic candidates of its own.
I mean, Jim Fetterman, this ridiculous individual with his body covered with tattoos.
And this guy, he lives with his parents.
He doesn't have his own place.
Raphael Warnock, Mark Kelly.
I mean, this is not a time for McConnell, it would seem, to be complaining about candidate quality.
Now, there's a kind of a Machiavellian explanation which is coming from someone on the left.
I only mention this because it's kind of ingenious.
Don't listen to Mitch McConnell.
By downplaying Republican odds to retake the Senate, he's trying to lull Democratic voters into a sense of complacency.
So according to this view, Mitch is actually being cunning.
He's saying, oh, no, no, we're not going to take the Senate.
Democrats go, oh, okay, good, we can relax.
And remember, turnout is actually very important in a midterm election.
So lulling the Democrats into a sense of complacency is not out of the question that Mitch is thinking a little bit this way.
But there's also, I think, the other motive, and that motive is unfortunately not as pretty.
It is kind of ugly, and it is the motive of spite.
Trump is actually on to it.
Trump goes, why do Republican senators allow a broken-down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates?
And basically, what Trump says is, why doesn't he spend his efforts and money to help those candidates instead?
And I think the answer to that is that Mitch McConnell doesn't want Trump-endorsed candidates to win.
It's almost like an I told you so.
These Trump-endorsed candidates have been beating Republican establishment candidates.
I mean, think about it. Mitch McConnell has this now deep-seated grudge against Trump.
He didn't always have it.
He was kind of anti-Trump at the beginning.
He sort of warmed to Trump.
Then he kind of pulled away.
And then, of course, after January 6th, he's been raging against Trump.
This is, by the way, a Senate leader on the Republican side who has not said one word about the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Not a mention of it.
At least not that I've seen.
Not one word about Liz Cheney's defeat.
He said nice things about Liz Cheney earlier and when she was defeated.
So Mitch McConnell is not getting the message.
I don't think he likes the fact that there is a change underway in the Republican Party, a change away from the Republican traditional establishment to word, well...
A more magified or Trumpified Republican Party.
And I think McConnell's begrudging and really unfortunate comments are a reflection not just of Machiavellianism, but also of spite.
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So order now. I'd like to talk about the Whitmer kidnapping case.
Now to refresh your memory, this is a case that has occurred sort of in two waves.
There was a trial and two defendants, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, were found not guilty.
Not guilty on the basis that the FBI entrapped them into pursuing this kidnapping plot.
So it was the FBI that really did it, put them up to it.
And the jury just didn't believe the government, didn't believe the Biden DOJ, didn't believe the FBI. And so Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are walking free.
But the other two guys who were on trial, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, We're good to go.
A lot has come out in the trial, and by and large, once again, it's been shown that the FBI played a very active and I would say even aggressive role in driving this plot forward.
And the defense has been pretty effective in bringing this out.
The defense's theory is that you've got these yahoos, And a lot of them were very angry about COVID. They were very angry at Whitmer.
They were also high on pot.
They would meet together and basically get into these bragging sessions.
Oh, we're going to teach her a lesson.
We're going to do this. We're going to do that.
But it was all talk.
In other words, they had no ability and they showed actually no active intention to carry out this plot until the FBI got involved.
So, from the defense's point of view, these guys were essentially engaging in a kind of irresponsible fantasy.
They talked about, let's take Governor Whitmer and we'll leave her on a boat in Lake Michigan.
They even got the idea of taking her away in a helicopter.
I mean, think how stupid it is. These guys had no ability to get a helicopter, let alone get the governor and put her in a helicopter.
So, again, this was, and this is the basis of accusing these guys of, quote, conspiracy.
Let's remember, Governor Whitmer wasn't kidnapped.
So they can't accuse them of kidnapping Governor Whitmer.
They can accuse them of attempting to.
But the orchestration appears to have come from the FBI. Now, this has all been shown very effectively in trial.
And I think the judge, this is a guy named U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker, J-O-N-K-E-R. I think he's a little worried that these two guys might get off, just like the earlier two guys.
By the way, the judge didn't allow any mention during this trial that the other two guys tried for the same thing.
We're acquitted. That information was kept from the jury.
So the jury doesn't know what happened to the other two defendants.
Even though those defendants had to be named during the trial, nothing was said about what happened to them.
Now, the judge, in his closing instructions, has told the jury the following.
It's not entrapment.
I'm getting this, by the way, from the Detroit Free Press, which has been on the scene covering the trial.
The judge said that it's not entrapment if someone is already willing to commit the crime.
The judges also said that even if the government provides someone with a favorable opportunity to commit the crime, it's not entrapment if that person already had the prior willingness to commit the crime.
If an FBI agent persuades someone to commit a crime, it's not entrapment if that person is already willing.
And so I think that these statements, which, by the way, it seems what the judge is trying to do here is push the jury.
The judge would deny it. He would say, I'm merely stating the law.
But what he's doing by framing it this way is trying to push the jury toward obtaining some sort of a conviction, in my opinion.
Because what the judge knows is that the extensive FBI involvement is now shown.
And what the judge is basically saying is that in order for the defendants to get off, they should have shown from the beginning a reluctance or unwillingness to carry forward the crime.
Now, in fact, I think the defendants were boasters, and they had the, quote, intention to commit the crime in the sense that they said that they would do it.
But they didn't, A, take the actions to do it, or B, have the means to carry it out, and those were supplied by the FBI. The FBI actually moved the plot from, you may say, pot-boasting stage to where these guys were actually kind of in on it, and then the FBI turns around and busts them.
Now, the defense, I think, has correctly shown and effectively established that, hey, if it wasn't for the FBI, this plot would not have gone forward.
It would have remained empty talk.
And so what the judge is doing is he's using this concept of willingness.
I mean, one can be willing to do something.
Some guy in his rocking chair,"'I am willing to join ISIS.'" Now, he doesn't know how to join ISIS. He takes no steps to join ISIS. This is idle talk that he's making maybe for whatever purposes, boastfulness, just venting, whatever.
But it seems to me that a mere willingness, and by willingness here I'm talking about merely saying I'm going to do it, It means nothing.
And this can hardly be taken as evidence for a crime.
Remember, we're talking about the serious crime of conspiracy for which these two guys could get life in prison.
Think of how unfair it would be if the other two defendants are let off and acquitted.
And these two guys get life in prison, all four of them supposedly involved in the same thing.
Right here, you begin to see the problematics of the justice system here.
Because... I think, and I'm hoping that the jury, by the way, sees through this.
I'm hoping that the jury is in a position where they recognize that the FBI itself is a rogue operation, that the guy who runs that division is now running the January 6th operation.
This is a politically motivated operation.
Case for the FBI. They're going after these guys by and large.
They set them up and they're now going after them.
And this could very well have been a trial run for January 6th.
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If there was ever a horrible Soros-oriented DA, it is the Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.
He is cut from the same cloth as Chesa Boudin, doesn't have the same exotic family history, whether underground and being raised in Cuba, having gone down to Venezuela.
This is Jessa Boudin's sort of unique bio.
By the way, a lot of that bio left off of his resume.
But this Gascon guy is the same type of guy.
A leftist, kind of the criminal's favorite DA, almost like a cult hero to career criminals, and someone who has broken the hearts of many parents and families that have lost people to...
Attacks and to assaults and to murder.
And so a recall effort was launched against Gascon, and I'm sorry to report to you that it has failed.
It has failed due to the sheer incompetence of the group that was putting the recall together.
By the way, this was a group run by a woman named Cassandra Vandenberg.
This woman should be chased out of politics.
But they raised $8 million, so plenty of money.
They had to get signatures.
And the problem was they submitted 715,000 signatures and more than 195,000, think about almost 200,000 were found to be invalid.
Now, there are some conservatives who are blaming the, oh, this is the case where they're suppressing their...
Look at the Democrats.
They're challenging all these signatures and they're blaming this guy named Logan, Dean Logan, who is the L.A. County Registrar.
But this is a case where...
Logan is not to blame.
I'm actually reading an analysis by Jennifer Van Laar, by the way, a very good investigative reporter in Red State.
And she goes on to point out that this whole recall effort was carried out in a very haphazard way.
Basically, a lot of money went to crony companies that were not experienced in doing this kind of thing.
They were collecting signatures all over the place.
In fact, Red State reviewed a bunch of these petitions and they're like, wait a minute, the signatures have to come, by the way, from eligible voters in L.A. County.
You can't get signatures from anywhere.
And yet when Red State begins to look at it, they go, Red State finds signatures of people coming from Oakhurst, Mendocino, Berkeley, which is basically up near San Francisco, Del Mar, which is in the San Diego area, and even prior Oklahoma.
Wow.
Now this is rubbish.
You can't submit these kinds of bogus signatures.
So, what happens is...
When you submit the signatures, and by the way, it is a well-known fact in politics, when you need a certain number of signatures, you need to submit a lot more with a significant margin of error.
That way, even if a bunch are disqualified, no problem, you've got more than enough.
Well, these guys didn't do that.
And what's even worse, as the week's approach of submitting the signatures, it appears that they knew they didn't have the signatures, but they pretended like they did.
Why? So that money would continue to come in to fund the recall effort.
So they were not delivering on the ground, But because they wanted funding to continue, they pretended like they were.
And sure enough, when they began to look at these, what they do, they begin by looking at a small sample of the signatures, only 5%.
And they look to see what is the ratio of rejects, rejected signatures to accepted applications.
And by the way, the problem here is not even with the signatures.
Not that the signatures don't match.
The problem is that, and you get a very good idea here, Is that once they did the sort of full audit, 88,000 signatures came from people who are not even registered voters in L.A. County.
45,000 duplicates.
Same petition coming from more than one.
In other words, the same guy signed more than once.
Well, that can't count for two.
That's only one. So what happens is that these guys, once they knock out the bad petitions, they don't have enough.
And what that means is it's a blow for LA. It's bad news for LA. It's bad news for all victims of crime.
It means that this...
Horrible DA, Gascon, essentially continues in his term for two more years.
I mean, I think his future is bleak.
But nevertheless, it gives him a lease on life, a lease on continuing to, basically, continue these horrible policies in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is going rapidly downhill.
Anyone who's been to LA can see this is not the place it used to be.
It's certainly not the beautiful place that attracted so many people going west at one time in search of opportunity, in search of beauty, in search of a better life.
Today, if you want a better life, you need to get out of LA. The AARP is rallying behind the new tax and spend bill, promising members it will reduce inflation and bring relief from big pharma.
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Tavi and I were talking this morning.
Well, we're covering a bunch of stuff.
We always do. We always do.
Well, it's one of our...
We have a good routine in the morning.
Actually, you convinced me to do it, which is I get up early.
I work a little in the podcast.
I work out, which I didn't think I'd be able to pull off that early in the morning.
And then we sit down generally outside.
Yeah, except for today because of the humidity.
I was like, oh, my hair!
So we quickly scampered back inside.
Yeah. But we kind of covered the news of the day and some of the things happening.
And, well, I wanted Debbie's thoughts about Brian Stelter leaving CNN. I also did a tweet, which will probably make you roll your eyes a little bit because you think I'm a little obsessed with Stelter.
I think you're a little obsessed with Stelter and with Tubin.
And with Tubin. And with Swalwell.
Yeah. Well, that's because they all contribute a certain humor value.
And they all have a verb.
Well, I don't know about Stelter, but...
As if he was a reliable source.
He was an unreliable source.
Talk about a misnamed...
And then my favorite is he concludes by basically saying, well, the one thing I can say is that I had a one-of-a-kind show.
And that's really what got me, is sort of the idea of a one-of-a-kind.
And I thought to myself...
You know, as I remember from, this goes back to the 1970s when I was a kid growing up in India, there was an Indian prime minister in the 70s, a guy named Moraji Desai.
And he was controversial in India because he would every day drink his own urine.
So the reason this came to my mind is he was a one-of-a-kind guy.
Right? And what makes the analogy even closer is that he kept insisting on the medicinal properties of urine.
Now, doctors would tell him, this is not healthy.
You should stop doing this.
But he thought it was...
So it's like stelta. Did he die?
Everybody keeps telling. I'm telling Stelter, your show is horrible.
You need to pay attention to other points of view.
You're unbelievably dogmatic.
But Stelter, like Muraji Desai, kept thinking, no, my show has medicinal properties.
Here, I'm drinking my own urine.
Enjoy it. And no one else enjoyed it.
Everyone's appalled.
So anyway, I'm glad Stelter's gone.
Yeah, but you won't have anyone to make fun of.
Well, you know, interestingly, Chris Lick, the new head of CNN, apparently on his call to CNN, he said there's going to be a lot of other changes coming.
He goes, it's going to be kind of bumpy and some of you won't understand it, which is kind of, I think, his way of saying he's getting ready to give some more people the boot.
Very good news. That's very good news.
Now, what do you make, speaking of getting the boot, Liz Cheney?
Yeah, well, I think Liz Cheney, you know, we kind of talked about the fact that That anybody that is like just a normal person would know that if they did not get elected to an office, if people didn't vote for them, they probably should move on, you know, from politics, right?
So Liz Cheney is, I don't think she's that.
I think she completely gets it.
I think she knows that That she's not wanted because of what she did, right?
But see, I think Liz Cheney's thinking to herself, I could be the darling of the like...
Right. Right.
Right. Right. Right. Right. It's kind of like having a group of intellectuals and you include Bill Kristol and you say, we've got a... Oh, I forgot about him too!
These are all the names that come to my mind of dark figures from my own past.
Yeah, so anyway, but I think that that is her motive for wanting to, you know, because I heard that she's already starting her PAC, right?
Because she wants to run for president.
Right. She thinks that there's a group of Republicans that will rally behind her because she's the anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party.
And again, I mean, there are people that think that the Trumpian movement is just not for them because they're straight-laced and because they don't believe in doing to them what they're doing to us, you know, that kind of mentality.
But, you know, that kind of mentality is exactly what got Venezuela where it is today.
So we don't want that kind of mentality because we don't want America to become Venezuela.
Well, you're making, though, an important point, which is that Liz Cheney is not delusional in the sense that she...
Is not watching out for her own career.
She wants to be the Liberals' favorite Republican.
She's willing to play the role of being a Republican who bashes Trumpian Republicans.
And so she wants to be the leader of that movement.
And I think she realizes that that movement will be well funded, not by Republicans, but by the left.
It doesn't have a constituency in Wyoming, but it has a constituency in the media.
Exactly. Exactly.
Because she knows that the media will propel her because they want that kind of Republican.
They want only that kind of Republican.
That's all they want. They do not want any Republican that stands for freedom, stands for their own principle.
They don't want that. Think of it. A Republican who does the Democrats bidding is their favorite type of Republican.
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Debbie and I are going to Israel later this year, and you're invited to come with us.
This is a trip organized by a group called...
Well, the tour is called Stand With Israel Tour.
The website is StandWithIsraelTour.com, right?
Isn't that the website? I believe so.
StandWithIsraelTour.com.
Sebastian Gorka and I are the two sort of speakers that are going.
But by speakers, we're not the guides.
There will be professional... And academically competent guides throughout the trip who will take us as a group to various sites.
But it's quite an itinerary.
It's from November 30th.
That's the departure date. It goes all the way till December 9th.
But walk us through some of the things that we're going to be seeing.
In fact, it's our first trip.
Right. It's our first trip.
I mean, I've always wanted to go to Israel.
I sent mom to Israel about eight years ago, and she loved it.
She says that she's never read the Bible the same again, because the Bible comes to life when you go to Israel.
You've been there. Yeah.
I mean, so she's like, I mean, you know, she says it's an amazing, sometimes it's a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
A lot of A lot of people do go many times, but we're excited that we're going.
I mean, when you look, this looks like an itinerary right out of the Bible.
And by the Bible, I mean the Old and the New Testament.
So the initial part appears to be in Galilee, Golan Heights, and the northern boundary.
But look at this.
I mean, the Mount of Beatitudes.
Yeah. Yeah. The St.
Peter's Primacy.
Nazareth, where Jesus was born.
Baptism in the waters of Jordan.
Boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.
Yeah. In fact, I remember they were talking about maybe the idea of me giving a talk.
Yeah. On the boat.
I will need my relief band.
You will need your relief band. I will definitely be taking that relief band with me.
But you know what they actually said, and you remember this, that the boat was so close to the shore that you don't even lose sight of the shore.
And they said that the waters are very, it's like a lake.
Very calm. So let's hope that we don't have this turbulent storm.
Well, then we have the Old Testament.
Caesarea by the Sea.
The Israel Museum, which includes the Dead Sea Scrolls.
One of the most remarkable archaeological findings.
And then on to Jerusalem and the Old City.
And that is just unbelievable.
Look at this. The Upper Room.
I mean, all of these places.
The Jewish Quarter. Yeah, the Mount of Olives.
Yeah. Church of the Holy Spirit.
The Via Doloroso. It's supposedly the path that Jesus took.
That is the one place that I have been looking forward to the most.
Because I just...
You know, Good Friday, Jesus' crucifixion, that is all to me so incredibly important as a Christian.
And to walk...
The street where Jesus walked with his cross, I mean, I just, I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.
I can't wait. Well, the one thing I do want to warn you is don't buy pieces of the cross because it is true that when people are selling, they sell things and they pass them off as real.
Do they really say that it's a piece of the cross?
I mean, how many pieces, I mean, that cross must have been ginormous.
Yeah, it's, well, then you go on to Bethlehem And you have the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
And then also the Dead Sea.
You can swim in the Dead Sea.
I'm not sure if I'll be doing that.
They say you float.
Because there's so much salt that you float.
That that is a one place that you can just float.
even if you can't swim, which is kind of interesting.
Now look at this, there's the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's gonna be nice places to stay, good food, like-minded people, Jews and Christians.
I mean, people by and large who want to be, who see the historical importance of Israel, the political importance of Israel, because stand with Israel.
I think stand with Israel here means stand with Israel theologically, but also stand with Israel, a besieged country in a hostile environment.
And so this is something remarkable.
Interestingly, I've traveled a lot.
You've traveled a fair amount, not as much as me.
But neither of us have ever been to Israel.
So it's going to be, for us, a very eye-opening.
And right before Christmas, which is kind of cool.
Because, you know, it's so meaningful.
And this, you know, I was looking at Bethlehem, the manger square place.
Church of the Nativity.
I mean, that's going to be like super...
I don't think that I'm ever going to see Christmas the same again going here, you know?
Well, what you do is you learn about all of this through books and through rituals and, of course, in church.
Yeah, through the Bible. But it's a whole different thing to be there.
It's, I think, the sense of a living faith that has continued.
And think of the Jewish people.
They were dispersed around 70 A.D., when with the fall of the temple.
They went all over the world.
The Bible predicts that the Jewish people would come back and have their own nation.
And now they do. It's a miracle.
I think Israel is a miracle.
I do. And I think God is protecting it.
Because think about it. Think of how tiny Israel is compared to the rest of the Middle East.
And think of how vicious some of those players in the Middle East are.
They could have wiped it off the face of the earth.
And they haven't.
There have been multiple wars in which multiple countries have come together to wipe Israel off the face of the map, and it hasn't happened.
So if you want to join us, go to StandWithIsraelTour.com, check it out, and maybe we'll see you on the trip.
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After a council of the gods in which Apollo makes an appeal to the gods and says, listen, we've got to send a message to Achilles and tell him he has to release the body of Hector to Hector's parents, Priam and Hecabe.
And the messenger god Iris is dispatched to convey this message to Achilles.
And And Iris is fairly severe about it.
She says, the gods are indignant, and he, above all, he here meaning Zeus, is angry that in your heart's fury you hold Hector by these ships and will not give him up.
You have to, basically.
And Achilles, interestingly, at this point, is very short and sullen, and he just agrees.
He says, so be it.
Let them ransom the dead if the god on Olympus wills it so.
He's willing to do that.
So then Zeus dispatches the same messenger, god Iris.
To see King Priam.
And Iris tells Priam that Priam should go and recover the body of Hector.
Now, Priam's wife, Hecuba, is very upset with this.
She says, quote, This is madness.
Where is the wisdom you were once respected for at home and abroad?
How can you want to go to the Greek ships alone and look into the eyes of the man who has killed so many of your fine sons, savage and faithless as he is?
This is Achilles.
No, we must mourn from afar, sitting in our hall.
And Priam, interestingly, kind of scolds his wife a little bit and says, don't hold me back.
He says that he has seen a kind of omen sent by Zeus that has convinced him that he will be safe.
And moreover, he has had a direct communication with Iris representing the gods.
So Priam decides to undertake this journey.
And as he is going toward the Greek camp, the goddess Hermes comes disguised and also covers Priam with a kind of a mist, so he's not observed by the Greeks.
I mean, think about it. How else would an old man be able to make his way into the Greek camp without someone seeing him, grabbing him, capturing him?
But Priam is able to do this.
And Hermes also assures Priam that he shouldn't be perturbed that Hector's body is going to be defiled or torn apart.
In fact, here is Hermes,"'You would marvel if you came to see him lie fresh as dew, washed clean of blood and uncorrupted.
All the wounds he had are closed.'" So this has been done by the gods.
They've, in a sense, preserved Hector's body uncorrupted despite Achilles' efforts to corrupt it.
And Hermes also gives Priam some advice.
She says, Appeal to him in the name of his own father, Peleus.
In other words, you're a father.
You've lost a son.
Peleus is Achilles' father.
Peleus has been nowhere to be seen in the Iliad.
He's now a very old man.
He is alive, but he hasn't seen Achilles, and he's an old age, and he's apparently frail.
So maybe, this is Hermes speaking, um, You go in and clasp the knees of the son of Peleus and entreat him by his father to stir his soul.
And so Priam has gotten some kind of coaching, you might say.
So, he comes to Achilles' tent, and he says, there's Achilles, who doesn't even see Priam, because Priam is covered by this kind of mist, and suddenly Priam appears in front of him, and what he does is he touches Achilles' knees.
Here's Homer. He kissed the dread and murderous hands that had killed so many of his sons.
So this is Priam supplicating himself, supplicating to Achilles.
And Homer writes, So Achilles stared in wonder at Priam.
Was he a god?
Now, why does Achilles react in this way?
Because Achilles, in a weird sense, can't believe that this is actually the father of the man that he has just killed, Hector.
And Achilles has also killed, by the way, several of Priam's other sons.
And Achilles is struck with a kind of wonder that a prime can do this.
And then Priam does exactly what Hermes asked and says, remember your father, God like Achilles.
He and I are both on the doorstep of old age.
And Priam appeals to pity and he essentially says, give me back my son.
And now something very remarkable happens and that is Achilles is tremendously moved by Priam.
So think about this. Here's Achilles.
And he hasn't been moved by anything so far.
Nothing has appeased his rage against Hector and against the Trojans for killing Patroclus.
Defiling the body didn't help.
Even the funeral of Patroclus didn't help.
And keeping Hector from entering the underworld, none of it has really helped.
But here he sees the grief of an opponent.
Priam. And Achilles is deeply moved.
And then he says some very important things which we will take up in the next segment.
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Feel the difference. The fierce and unappeasable Achilles is finally moved by the supplication of King Priam and writes Homer,"...he rose from his chair and lifted the old man by his hand,
pitying his white hair and beard." And I'll pivot here before I read Priam's words to a line that I remember now from the movie Troy, where you have this scene, and Brad Pitt, who's playing Achilles, says to Priam, says something that's not in the Iliad, but is actually fairly appropriate to the occasion.
He says to Priam, you were a better king than the one I had, which is to say that Priam is a better king to the Trojans than Agamemnon ever was to the Greeks.
And And although that's not in the text, let's listen to what Achilles does say.
Ah, the suffering you've had and the courage to come here alone to the Greek ships and meet my eye, the man who slaughtered your many fine sons.
You have a heart of iron.
But come sit on this chair.
Let our pain lie at rest a while.
There's nothing to be gained from cold grief.
Yes, the gods have woven pain into mortal lives while they are free from care.
So think of how kind of wonderful this is.
This is exactly what lots of people have been urging Achilles to come to this conclusion.
This is human life.
Wars occur.
Soldiers die.
Patroclus was in battle.
He was killed in open combat.
And one has to accept the human condition.
So this has been urged upon Achilles time after time in the Iliad, and Achilles has refused.
But now, interestingly enough, in counseling Priam, he is telling Priam to do exactly what he should have been doing all along.
And here's Achilles in one of the, I think, very profound areas, sections of the Iliad.
This is, of course, toward the end.
He's talking about the gods.
He goes, they are free from care.
They have a different life than we do.
Why? Because their life never ends.
Ours does. That makes all the difference, you might say.
And he says the gods have woven pain into mortal lives.
So the idea here is that pain is a part of the human condition.
There is no such thing as a life free from pain.
Let's listen to Achilles here.
Two jars sit at the doorstep of Zeus, filled with gifts that he gives.
Zeus has two jars.
One full of good things, the other of evil.
So, a jar of good things and a jar of evil things.
If Zeus gives a man a mixture of both jars, sometimes life is good for him, sometimes not.
But if all he gives you is from a jar of woe, you become a pariah and hunger drives you over the bright earth dishonored by gods and men.
So think about this. Achilles is saying that Zeus really does one of two things.
Some people get gifts or anti-gifts, you could say, just from the bad jar, from the jar of evil.
And their life is miserable.
It's pain all the way through.
They suffer. They're hungry.
They're dishonored.
They're pariahs. They're ostracized.
But look at the other group.
The fortunate ones, you might say.
They don't get gifts only from the good jar.
They get a mixture of gifts from the good jar and the bad jar.
So what Achilles is saying is there's no one alive.
There's no human being that has a life free of worry, free of pain, and certainly free of death.
That doesn't occur. Either you get all pain or you get a mixture of pain and pleasure.
So, a mixture of bad things and good things.
That's about the best you can do.
And Achilles gives the example of his own father.
He says, he was the happiest and richest man on earth, king of the Myrmidons.
And although he was immortal, the gods gave him an immortal goddess to be his wife.
This is Thetis, Achilles' mom.
But even to Peleus the god gave some evil.
He would not leave offspring to succeed him in power.
Just one child, all out of season.
I can't be with him to take care of him now that he is old, since I am far from my fatherland here in Troy, tormenting you and your children.
So, even my own father.
Remember, Priam has appealed to Achilles in the name of his father, so Peleus is in Achilles' mind. And then says Achilles to Priam, no one could match you in wealth or in sons, but the gods have brought you trouble. The constant fighting and killing, you must endure this grief. You will not gain anything by torturing yourself over the good son you lost, nor bring him back.
Sooner you will suffer some other sorrow. So this is Homer's remarkable way of bringing not Priam, but Achilles back into the human fold.
Achilles has always had a kind of ambiguous relationship with the human community.
Think of how isolated he is in a society where isolation is considered almost a form of inhumanity or nonhumanity.
Man is a social animal.
So Achilles has been removed from the fighting initially, of course, by his own choice.
But he has also refused to accept the human condition.
But here he is accepting it.
And weirdly, he's accepting it not even for himself, but by urging Priam to do it.
And so, Priam becomes, in a strange way, a tutor of Achilles.
Priam becomes the one who shows Achilles.
That Achilles needs to himself get over the death of Patroclus, pretty much as Priam is going to get over, has to get over, the death of Hector.
And both of them have to move on, because in human life, we have no other choice.
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