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Sept. 15, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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MAGA-FICATION Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep414
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Coming up, I'm going to talk about the MAGAfication of the GOP, something that we can see from the primary election results.
Concealed in John Durham's latest filing, a remarkable story of FBI collusion with Russia.
I'll tell you more. I want to find out, what is the motive of the FBI seizing Mike Lindell's phone?
We'll talk about that. And I'll argue that while Democrats are hoping recent polls will save them in November, I think it's Biden's actions that are sinking the Democratic prospects.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
We are seeing reinforced in the recent primary election results.
This is really over the past...
What can be called the MAGA-fication of the Republican Party, the MAGA-fication of the Now, this is something that the left is in some ways terrified of.
But in some cases, as we'll see, the left is pushing it.
And by pushing it, I mean the left has the idea that some of the MAGA candidates are not as strong in the opinion of the left and of the Democrats as Republican establishment candidates.
And so the Democrats themselves are trying to get some of these MAGA candidates to the forefront Because they think that they would be easier to defeat in a general election.
Whether or not that will prove to be the case, we will see.
Now, what do we mean by the magification of the GOP? Basically, we really mean two things.
One, we mean that the GOP is embracing the Trump ideology.
And the Trump ideology, by the way, is not radically different from, let's say, the Reagan ideology of the 1980s.
It is strong in foreign policy, it is free market oriented in economics, and it supports conservative and traditional values in social policy.
There's no radical difference.
The difference is more nuanced.
A disengagement from expensive and costly and fruitless foreign wars.
A recognition that trade should be in the benefit of America.
It's not away with the old assumption that trade is beneficial no matter what.
And the real difference, I think, between the MAGA types and the traditional Republican types is on the issue of style.
The MAGA movement is based on the idea that we're not living in the Reagan era.
We're in a much more troubling moment that calls for much more alert, vigilant, tougher tactics.
In some cases, we have to do to the left what they're doing to us.
So this is what we mean by the MAGA phenomenon.
Now, for the left, it's all about the 2020 election.
That's who the MAGA people are election deniers.
That may be a component in the sense that because the MAGA Republicans are tougher, they're not willing to let bygones be bygones in the traditional Republican way.
Now, we've seen two important Local—well, by local, I mean state—elections just occurred in New Hampshire.
The state Senate president, a guy named Chuck Morse, mainstream Republican establishment type, defeated by a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc.
And Bolduc is a Trumpster, although interestingly, Trump wasn't active in the campaign.
He didn't have a rally in New Hampshire.
But nevertheless, running on the Trump banner, Bolduc won.
And then, in a congressional race, very interestingly, we saw another big win, and that is Matt Mowers, who I'm going to try to get Caroline Leavitt on the podcast.
She's a 25-year-old.
And the interesting thing here is that Matt Mowers is not a bad guy.
In fact, he's a little bit of a Trumpster himself.
And as CNN describes it, it's kind of funny.
She goes, while Matt Mowers, quote...
said he had confidence in New Hampshire elections, not necessarily in national elections, but in New Hampshire elections.
Caroline Leavitt said she believed the 2020 election was undoubtedly stolen.
Maurer said that he wanted to have hearings, Republican hearings, to decide if Biden should be impeached.
Leave It said, unquestionably, he should be impeached.
So you're basically dealing here with Matt Mowers, who I'm going to call Push, and Caroline Leave It, who is essentially Shove, or kind of a harder Push.
And who wins? Leave It wins.
So now we have all these kind of MAGA candidates.
And by the way, we're thinking here about Herschel Walker in Georgia.
We're thinking of Blake Masters in Arizona.
Of course, in gubernatorial races, Carrie Lake in Pennsylvania, Dr.
Oz in Ohio, J.D. Vance.
Now, again, the Democrats seem to think, well, these are not the strongest candidates.
It remains to be seen.
Walker, although he was for a while there really trailing Warnock, has now gone past him.
Blake Masters is still a little behind, I believe, But catching up, that's a close race, and I think Masters will win it.
Dr. Oz, again, I think a little bit of a problematic candidate, but I think he's still going to beat Fetterman.
We're going to wait and see. I don't claim any expertise in this.
I'm a spectator, like everyone else.
And I think J.D. Vance will win in Ohio.
Now, interestingly, in Ohio...
The Democrat is trying to play like he's a moderate.
He's actually quite conservative.
But no, this is a guy who's voted consistently with Biden.
His conservatism, his moderation is completely a mirage.
Trumpsters have basically been sweeping the primaries.
This is what I mean by the magnification of the GOP. There are only a couple of cases where someone who voted against Trump or voted to impeach Trump has made it.
David Valadieo of California, Dan Newhouse of Washington State, Lisa Murkowski hasn't made it to the Senate, but she has made it to the final round.
And notice that she did it in a very strange kind of primary in which everybody in the state could vote.
There was no distinction between parties and the top vote getters basically make it to the final.
But in any normal primary situation, it's virtually impossible to go against Trump.
And that shows you where the sort of heart of the Republican Party is.
So the party is changing, maybe more slowly than we would wish.
But we are seeing the emergence of a new and indeed magnified Republican Party.
First, it was the box stores canceling Mike Lindell.
Now the FBI is after him for what?
Basically, for standing up for his beliefs.
This is crazy. We need to support Mike Lindell every way we can.
The best way is just to support his products.
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What you see is, what meets the eye is not necessarily what's going on.
I think this is especially true in a news report that just came out.
And the news report is that the FBI has had on its payroll for three years A Russian businessman, in fact, a kind of Russian agent, named Igor Danchenko.
Now, the reason this is disturbing, in some ways, well, not startling, because once we know what the FBI is up to, you know you're dealing with a corrupt operation.
But nevertheless, this guy Danchenko was a source for the Steele dossier, for Christopher Steele, the former M16 MI6 agent, and supplying false information for a dossier that is then used by the FBI to go after FISA warrants, to go after Trump and Trumpsters, people like
Carter Page and others.
So the FBI already knew that Igor Danchenko was a liar.
He had attempted to lie to them.
He was the source of false information.
And they already suspected, in fact, they kind of knew that he was a Russian agent.
Why? Because earlier, this same Danchenko...
He had tried to buy classified information.
He was basically inquiring about people that could supply him with classified information.
He said he knew people would be willing to pay for that classified information.
The FBI knew all this.
And yet they brought him on.
They brought him on as a paid informant.
Now you want to think about why they would do that.
Well, one reason is that when the FBI brings someone on as a confidential informant, That person is then in a sense protected.
They're removed from the public sphere.
In fact, it's difficult to go after them because they're not private citizens.
You can't in a normal way pursue them.
They're now in a sense within the orbit and under the protection of the FBI. What we're getting at here is that the FBI hires Danchenko most likely.
There's no kind of good reason to do it because they knew this guy was a crook.
In fact, they knew he was a Russian agent.
The only reason to hire him is to protect him.
And they're protecting him in order to keep going their crusade, their illicit campaign to get rid of Trump, to go after Trump, to keep the Trump investigation alive.
So, think about it.
They're accusing Trump of Russia collusion.
And what is the FBI itself doing?
Bringing on board, on its own team, a known Russian asset, a known liar, a known sort of disinformation specialist.
Now, all of this comes out because John Durham, who is going to be trying this guy, Igor Danchenko, in a court...
He's accusing Danchenko of lying to the FBI, several accounts of lying.
By the way, Danchenko is apparently the author, or at least the source, of the idea that Trump was in Moscow.
He stayed at the Ritz-Carlton.
He consorted with prostitutes.
And Durham has actually done his homework.
He's He's found the guy who was the manager of the Ritz-Carlton, who was supposedly the guy who told Danchenko that Trump was there and he consorted with prostitutes.
And this guy goes, I never told Danchenko anything like that.
Yes, Trump was at the hotel.
He didn't do anything like that.
So it's very clear here that Danchenko...
In this sense, it's a spreader of misinformation.
To that degree, I think, you know, Durham is correct.
Durham has kind of got the goods on Danchenko.
It's a clear-cut case where it's not just lying in an ordinary context.
It's not as if you're lying to someone on the street.
These are lies with consequences.
These are lies that are created to give the idea that Trump is compromised.
Has done things that could have been observed by Russian intelligence.
Trump could be, quote, owned by Russia.
The leftist was talking about this stuff for years.
All this stuff was leaked to the media.
All of this was part of official investigations.
Mueller was on it at one point.
So, this is a very serious business.
I think, however, that there is a kind of hidden flaw in all this.
And a hidden flaw in the Durham Project, if it is a flaw, Durham might actually know about it.
And this is what I'm talking about.
The whole premise of all this is that this guy, Danchenko, is, quote, lying to the FBI, misleading the FBI. But here's my question.
Didn't the FBI know that?
Didn't the FBI know that they were being lied to?
In fact, weren't they to some degree complicit in these lies?
Weren't they, in a sense, putting up with them?
Didn't they want to be lied to?
Didn't they use the lies as a pretext to go after Trump?
In other words, it looks to me like the real culprit is not Danchenko.
Danchenko himself is a pawn.
And so there is the startling and I would say disturbing possibility that what John Durham is doing is yes, he's going after Danchenko, but is he actually protecting the FBI?
Nothing John Durham has done yet has been going after the FBI, exposing corruption in the FBI, showing that the deep state itself was going after Trump.
With Durham, it's go after this guy, go after that guy, but in a strange way, leave intact, leave protected the malevolent deep state.
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The FBI has seized Mike Lindell's cell phone.
This happened on Tuesday.
Apparently Lindell was at a Hardee's drive-thru in Mankata, Minnesota.
Several, I believe three, FBI agents showed up.
They produced a warrant.
They asked Lindell if he had a computer and a phone.
Apparently, Lindell doesn't even own a computer.
He's like, I do everything on my phone.
And they confiscated his phone.
Lindell says, quote, they told me not to tell anybody.
Okay, I won't. Well, I am.
So Lindell is not willing to keep this private.
Apparently, Lindell was duck hunting.
They came back.
They were going to get a bite.
And then three cars with four FBI agents showed up.
Now, the FBI agents told Lindell, we're not arresting you.
We just have a warrant for your phone.
And Lindell said that they asked him some questions, including some questions about his website, Frank Speech.
And Lindell then, in an interview, said, quote, all I'm trying to do is get rid of voting machines and have our paper ballots hand-counted election.
So... This seems to be part of a kind of widening net of Biden DOJ going after various types of people.
The full story here is a little unclear because the government is not clearly saying what they're after here.
Steve Bannon had warned several days ago that a number of Trump people were kind of in the sights of the government.
He implied that some of this was connected with January 6th.
And initially, I thought that maybe this is why they were going after Lindell.
Trying to suggest that because Lindell had said, made remarks about the election that he was somehow complicit in January 6th.
But it doesn't look like that's the case.
least there's a New York Times report here that says that the agents who took the phone were interested in Lindell's ties to a woman named Tina Peters. This is the clerk of Mesa County, Colorado. She's evidently under indictment, not a federal indictment, but a state indictment because she was apparently trying to get some data from a Dominion voting machine. Now, looks like what Tina Peters is doing She was not trying to alter election results.
She was trying to maybe look inside the machine to see if it had the capacity to manipulate votes.
In other words, she was basically looking to validate.
Lindell's and other people's theories about the election.
She wanted to prove that these machines were, I guess, vulnerable.
By the way, we now know from CISA, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency, that these machines are vulnerable.
CISA just says, we don't know that in fact they were manipulated, but that they are manipulable is something the government now freely admits.
But evidently, this Tina Peters woman has had some ties with Lindell, namely that she attended a symposium with Lindell.
She was one of the speakers at the symposium, and according to the FBI, at least in the way they were questioning Lindell, Lindell showed an image of We're good to go.
He had made that public statement, but then he said upon checking, he realized that he had not done that.
He was funding a bunch of election stuff at the time.
He assumed that he had given money to this cause, but in fact, he did not do that.
So as far as I can tell, with closely reading what we know and what Lindell has said, and I haven't spoken to Lindell directly about this, it seems to me like the FBI here does not seem to be after Lindell.
They might be, but it looks like what they're asking him to do is to confirm or to corroborate ways in which Tina Peters might have had unauthorized access to these machines.
She was the clerk.
I think she actually did have authorized access, but whether or not she went beyond her authority in what she did with these machines, I don't know.
Lindell seems to be somewhat drawn into this.
The FBI probably wants to look into this phone to see the connections, if any.
And there will be some with Tina Peters.
Looks to me Lindell's own actions here are completely benign.
Here's a guy who strongly had a point of view.
He was looking for different ways to validate it.
And he has no direct involvement in anything that seems here remotely illegal.
Now, the FBI has a nefarious way of trying to sometimes say that any ties make you part of some sort of a conspiracy.
And so I don't know if they're going to try to pin something like that on Lindell.
But as of this stage, all we know is that Mike Lindell right now doesn't have his phone.
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Feel the difference. Democrats seem to be feeling a little bit better about the midterms and at least the left-wing media.
It seems to be celebrating the fact that Democratic candidates are looking certainly better than they were a month ago or two months ago, three months ago in the polls.
The media reports such as they are and polls such as they are seem to suggest Democrats have a decent chance of holding the Senate.
At least as of now and as the polls show.
And Republicans have a better than decent chance of winning the House.
Obviously, it'd be good for Republicans to win the House and the Senate.
There's really no reason they shouldn't win both.
Now, it's tempting on the first lines to say, you know, polls don't really say anything.
Obviously, that's not really a believable position because earlier when there were polls showing that Joe Biden had horrible approval ratings, I was quoting those polls.
So were other people. Republicans were like, look at his approval ratings.
So you can't say that when the polls are down, look at his approval ratings, they're horrible.
And then if his approval ratings move up or if Democratic candidates are doing better, oh, the polls don't mean anything.
But it is a fact that polls routinely, at least in recent elections, understate Republican support.
This is another way of saying that if polls are showing Joe Biden doing badly, he's actually doing terrible.
And now if they show him doing a little better, he's still doing really badly.
Just let's take a quick review of some recent polls.
The Susan Collins race in Maine, 2020.
According to a series of polls, it showed that Collins was losing.
Collins never led in any of the major polls in Maine.
And yet, not only did she win the race, she won decisively.
She won by nine percentage points.
This was also true Lindsey Graham in his race in South Carolina.
The race was about even.
It's a very close race.
The Democrat might pull it off.
Lindsey Graham slaughters him, slaughters the Democrat.
In the 2020 election, the Cook Political Report listed a number of races as, quote, toss-ups.
They could go either way.
This is like saying that the ball, you know, is hovering at the net.
It could fall on one side or it could equally fall on the other side.
Now, you'd expect if something is genuinely a toss-up, let's say there are 10 races that are genuinely a toss-up, Democrats would win about five with them.
Republicans would win about five.
As it turns out, every single one of the toss-up races was won by the Republicans.
Every single one. So, we have on the one hand the fact that historically the party in power does poorly in the midterm election.
That alone would be sufficient to give Republicans the House.
Not the Senate, but the House for sure.
But now you have on top of this the horrendous results of Joe Biden's policies.
I mean, this is not a case where people can claim to be, you know, blind about it.
I mean, every time you see Joe Biden, he sounds like he doesn't know where he is.
He sounds in a fog.
He does not seem in any way suitable to the leader of any country, let alone a great country.
And then when you look around at the effects of his policies, well, not everybody lives on the border, but if you live at the border, you can feel those effects directly.
If you live in cities, you can see crime rates soaring.
If you live anywhere in the country, you can see prices going up.
You can see your standard of living begin to be pinched.
And so all of this is...
This is about as clear empirical evidence as anybody could possibly have.
So it's not as if you can say, well, I didn't really know.
Because we're not, again, sometimes when we're talking about foreign policy, things happening in Afghanistan, you can say, well, there are a lot of ordinary Americans who don't know about that.
They don't pay attention to all that.
Yeah, there might be people falling out of planes, but that's happening in Kabul, not here.
And so people are going to sort of miss the boat.
They're not going to be aware of it.
It's not going to matter. And even if they know about it, their memories on that issue is going to be really short.
On the other hand, I mean, how stupid do you have to be not to realize that gas prices have gone up dramatically?
I mean, it used to cost $45 to fill your car.
Now it costs $90. And how stupid do you have to be not to see that there are ordinary things that we used to be able to get very easily?
I need a new washing machine.
There it is. I need some new fixtures.
There they are. I need some parts for my car.
There it is. And now suddenly, not one, not two, but many things just unavailable.
If they are available, you go to the grocery store, things are much more expensive.
Things are expensive across the board.
Airline tickets that used to be $400 are now $700.
So you've seen a kind of deterioration really on all fronts.
And now, the other thing to note is that pollsters who have been absurdly, wildly off in 2020 and even earlier, you would think that they would have revised their methodology, changed their methods, tried to figure out how do we make sure we're not oversampling Democrats.
But they've not really done any of that.
The pollsters are using the same methodological techniques.
And so for all these reasons, I think, That it is quite likely that the polls are understating Republican support, but also understating the typhoonic level of disgust with Biden.
If people are not disgusted with Biden, I don't really know what to say to them, but I have enough confidence in the American people that they are and will express it in November.
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That's 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. It's not very often that I report on internecine debates in the conservative intellectual movement.
And it's not because I'm not interested in the conservative intellectual movement.
It's just that the conservative intellectual movement today is in a bad way.
We are not in the era of Irving Kristol and Bill Buckley and Judge Bork.
We're really in an era where you've got a lot of navel-gazing, a lot of reflexive anti-Trumpism, and a lot of kind of envy-driven petty squabbling.
And even when ideological positions are put forward, they're often not put forward with sufficient thought, at least not in my opinion.
Well, nevertheless, that all being said, recently there was a conference.
It was called the National Conservatism Conference, NATCON 3.
And it had Americans, but also had some speakers from Europe and from the Middle East and other places.
And the emphasis really was on this idea of a kind of national conservatism, which is to say an emphasis on America, of course the idea of America first, an emphasis on American traditions,
a revival of America, and And the question is, is American conservatism so focused on nationalism, on America, that it is diminishing or ignoring universal principles?
At least this is the issue raised by the writer Peter Berkowitz.
In a recent article that I saw on the RealClearPolitics site.
Now, Berkowitz makes the point correctly that our national traditions Are, in part, universalistic.
He says, let's take the Declaration of Independence.
Does it say that all Americans are created equal?
No. It says all men, and clearly includes women.
In other words, there's an assertion here made about human nature.
And, of course, the Declaration also appeals to Christianity.
But, again, Christianity not as some kind of national phenomenon.
An American Christianity.
Not even as a kind of European Christianity.
These rites come from, they're unalienable, and they are a gift of the creator.
The creator of Europe?
No. The creator of the universe.
So what happens here is that there's an appeal to Christianity, but let's remember Christianity itself is universal.
To put it somewhat differently, Judaism was particular.
The God of the Old Testament is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He's the God of the Jews.
However, in Christianity, this Jewish God, if you will, is universalized.
There's a Clear sense that Jesus came to die for all mankind, not just for the Jews, not even just for the Gentiles, but really for everybody.
Now, the argument here that we're talking about is this, and that is that there is an emphasis, I think rightly so, on our own country.
Why? In part because we live here and in part because we cherish our traditions in America, traditions that for many people are a kind of a birthright, but also for people like me who are legal immigrants, there are traditions that we have adopted, we have incorporated into our own life.
And yet, Peter Berkowitz's point is that we shouldn't forget that there is a universalism running through our national traditions, and we shouldn't abandon that completely. In other words, in other words, nationalism is an important idea, but it's not kind of the be-all and end-all idea.
Consider something like the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Now, I'm not, as I suppose you're not, a fan of the UN. But the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted, I believe, 1940.
I'm not sure if it's 45.
I think it's 1948.
In any event, the Harvard legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon has a very good book on this, on the process of adopting these rights.
And it was not easy to do because you had people from different countries saying, how can we say that there are rights that are somehow universal that override our own national traditions?
And part of the accomplishment of the UN was to be able to convince these countries that there are certain things, a basic right to conscience, a basic right to free speech, a basic human dignity, the right against being arbitrarily arrested or tortured, that these are rights that really are universal.
And that no government can claim to override them or even to say, well, listen, torture is a tradition here in Syria.
Don't talk to us about universal rights.
We just, you know, we torture people around here.
That's our tradition.
So the affirmation of universalism is a way of saying that there are certain things that transcend national boundaries.
And the point is that Peter Berkowitz's point is that we as conservatives should not forget that.
Another point, and a subtle one, is that in emphasizing national traditions, we shouldn't wipe out local traditions or traditions that operate at the level of the family, communities, even at the state level.
Look at the way, for example, in which the Supreme Court has dispatched the abortion decision back to the states.
The idea here being that, look, you can't impose a kind of national rule that the court has tried to impose through Roe v.
Wade. Each state is a kind of moral community and has a right to make decisions for its own residents about this important issue through the democratic process.
Again, I don't take Berkowitz as somebody who is opposing America first or even questioning the idea that we owe an allegiance to our country.
He's simply making the point that there are, at the smaller level, local allegiances, and then at the international level, a kind of universalist commitment to certain principles.
And just because we're against globalism doesn't mean that we can't be committed to universal ideas in their true sense.
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Odysseus, tired, exhausted, in some ways broken, naked, has been washed up on the shore of Scaria.
And he has now been awakened by a ball splashing into the water.
And what's interesting is when Odysseus looks around, he initially is just a little disoriented, but then he realizes where he is.
And he asks himself this question.
He says, What is this country I have come to now?
Are the people here wild and violent?
Or good, hospitable, and God-fearing?
So, notice what Odysseus is doing here.
He is identifying Zania as the kind of defining feature of civilization.
He's like, here I am.
Are these people wild?
Are they savages? Are they barbarians who don't know how to treat a stranger?
Or... Alternatively, are they decent?
Are they hospitable? Do they fear God?
So, being hospitable, decent, God-fearing, these are the characteristics that he is hoping for, and to some degree, you can say praying for.
Now, Odysseus...
He decides to show himself.
Well, he has to if he's going to get any kind of help.
And so he breaks off a leafy branch, Homer tells us, and covers up, quote, his manly private parts.
So obviously he doesn't want to show up totally naked in front of some teenage girls.
He steps out of the bushes, and it's got to be a startling and to some degree fearsome sight.
The girls, the slave girls, all scatter.
But, says Homer, Nausicaa stayed still.
Athena made her legs stop trembling.
So Athena puts courage into Nausicaa.
She stands right there.
Now, even though Nausicaa is standing right there boldly...
Her legs were trembling.
Athena had to strengthen her.
Why? Because this is a very kind of, I wouldn't just say awkward, a little bit of a dangerous situation.
There is a kind of insinuation here of rape.
And I don't just mean the idea of a 40-year-old naked man, Odysseus, standing there.
We don't know Odysseus' exact age, but I'm estimating he's around 40.
Think about it. If he went off to the Trojan War at 20, he's been away 20 years.
He's about 40 years old.
And so there is that.
But in Greek literature and Greek mythology, by the way, the seashore is a dangerous place for women, for girls.
They don't normally go there, at least not normally, without nail protection.
This is a rare case, washing clothes, where the girls are there by themselves.
Now, Odysseus knows this, and he knows that he has to be very cautious, and he doesn't want to instill fear in these girls.
He doesn't want them to run away.
He actually needs one of them, and specifically Nausicaa, to help him.
So we now get a kind of masterful display of Odysseus' rhetoric.
He speaks to her.
Now, there's a lot in here, and all of it is very subtly calculated to appeal to Nausicaa and not to frighten her.
Let's look at it carefully.
First of all, there's flattery.
I have seen no one as beautiful as you.
And this obviously raises the question, well, if you see no one as beautiful as me, are you going to sort of assault me?
Are you going to attack me?
Are you going to rape me?
And so Odysseus says, no, you remind me if you are a goddess of the goddess Artemis.
Now, the goddess Artemis, a very carefully chosen example by Odysseus, is not only a virgin goddess.
There are just a few virgin goddesses.
In Greek literature and Greek mythology.
But Artemis is a militant virgin.
In fact, Artemis is the type of virgin where if she's in any way threatened by a man, horrible things happen to that man.
In one case, there is a Man who sees Artemis naked and he is turned into a stag and basically devoured by his own hounds.
And in fact, he has a human mind so he can feel all the pain of what's happening to him.
And what was his crime? Well, basically just looking at this naked goddess.
So, In choosing the example of Artemis, what Odysseus is saying to Nausicaa is, listen, since you remind me of Artemis, I wouldn't dream of harming you in any way.
I wouldn't even dream of approaching you.
See, now, Odysseus could be direct.
He could say, I'm not going to rape you.
But think about that. That's a very tricky thing to say.
If he says, I'm not thinking of raping you, then Nausicaa will know that the thought of raping her must have entered his mind.
Why else would he say that? So that is not exactly all that reassuring.
Odysseus chooses a better way.
He alludes to kind of a militant Greek goddess that was a virgin, a lifelong or an eternal virgin.
And he tells Nausicaa, you remind me of her.
And in this way, Odysseus is making it clear that I have no intention whatsoever of trying to harm you.
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Odysseus makes a direct appeal for help to the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa, saying, My lady, pity me, battered and wrecked, I come to you first, and I know no one else in this whole country.
So he's essentially saying, I depend on you.
And Nausicaa is very responsive.
She right away says, in effect, that since you have arrived here in our land, you will not lack for clothes or anything a person needs in times of desperation.
I will show you the town.
The people here are called Phaeacians, and I am the daughter of great king Alcanus.
So, Nausicaa is going to help Odysseus, and she begins by asking her slave girls to bathe him.
Now, this may seem a little weird.
A little earlier in the Odyssey, when Telemachus went to visit Nestor, Nestor had his own daughter bathe Telemachus.
Point here being that in the Homeric era, it was customary for women to bathe men.
So, it's not odd here that Nausicaa is proposing this, but Odysseus says no.
Odysseus says, in effect, he says, please let me wash in private.
I am shy of being naked with you.
So Odysseus recognizes how delicate the situation is.
He doesn't want to do anything that in any way crosses the line.
He's playing it safe, so to speak.
And so he bathes himself, and Homer tells us that Athena sort of beautified him, made him look even more...
Well, he's clean and strong and handsome.
And Homer tells us that when he steps out after having sort of cleaned up, Nausicaa is kind of attracted to Odysseus.
She says to herself, not to him, but to herself...
I hope I get a man like this as my husband, a man that lives here and would like to stay.
In a sense, Nausicaa is saying, wow, this guy is very handsome and very manly, the kind of guy I would like to marry.
And now at the beginning, we're beginning to see here, and we'll see a lot more of this in the Odyssey...
Various types of kind of temptations that are going to come Odysseus' way.
Temptations, in effect, they're not all harmful temptations.
Nausicaa has no intention of harming Odysseus at all.
She actually wants to marry him, or at least would consider that.
But these are temptations that will keep Odysseus from his goal.
His goal, of course, is homecoming.
Earlier, even with Calypso, there was a kind of initial temptation.
Remember, Calypso says to Odysseus, I'm offering you immortality.
Why don't you want to stay?
Is your wife more attractive than I am?
I'm a goddess. She's not.
And so we see here the second female temptation.
This, of course, coming from a human, from Nausicaa.
But Nausicaa doesn't say any of this.
She actually gives Odysseus some instructions.
She says, let's go to the town, but we'll go together...
But when we get to the town, she goes, I'll go on ahead.
Don't go with me. And think of how sort of how clever she is because she says, the people in the town are proud.
I worry they may speak against me.
Someone rude might say, who is that big strong man with her?
Where did she find that stranger?
Will he be her husband?
She seems to have gotten him from a ship.
So Nausicaa is very conscious of her social position, that she's of marriageable age, and even though she is attracted to Odysseus, she doesn't want gossip, she doesn't want rumors, she doesn't want innuendo.
So she's like, let's go together, but I'm going to walk on ahead into the town.
You wait back, and then you ask around for instructions.
Ask people, where's the palace?
And then when you get to the palace, Nausicaa says...
She says, don't talk to my dad.
She goes, my dad will be the Alkinos, but also my mom, her mother's named Ariti.
She goes, speak to my mom.
Appeal to my mom for help and see what happens.
So this is actually very good advice on many levels.
It takes into account the fact that Nausicaa doesn't want to kind of march arm in arm with Odysseus.
It also takes into account...
That Nausicaa is tipping off Odysseus, that her mom is kind of the person in the family who's likely to take the initiative in helping him.
So, Odysseus, in fact, follows this advice.
In fact, we see here, Homer tells us, and we're now into Book 7 of the Odyssey, that Athena covers Odysseus in a kind of mist.
So even though he's walking by himself, no one really sees him.
And then a stranger appears to him, and it appears to be one of the Phaeacians, but it's not.
It's actually Athena herself in disguise as a man.
And Athena gives Odysseus some further advice, essentially reinforcing what Nausicaa said.
There's the palace. Go to the palace.
But really appeal to the queen.
Supplicate her. And this is what Athena says.
No woman is as honored as she is.
She is extremely clever and perceptive and solves disputes even among men.
Now, this is a very kind of patriarchal society, so the very idea that the queen is adjudicating disputes among men shows her position of respect and authority in Phaeachian society.
And so here is Odysseus now getting some very good advice about what he should do to seek in this strange place that he is in.
The benefit of Zenia.
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