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Sept. 16, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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SICK ELEPHANT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep415
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
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Coming up, I want to show why the GOP, the Republican Party, acts like a sick elephant, incapable of meeting the challenges of today.
I'll try to lay out a path for the party's return to health and spiritedness.
Debbie's going to join me. We're going to talk about events of the week, including FBI raids, the new Trumpified GOP, and why Tom Brady is not content to stay at home with his supermodel wife.
I'll also continue my account of the adventures of Odysseus in the land of the Phaeacians.
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.
When we think about the perils that are facing the country, and make no mistake, we are in a perilous period of American history.
I can't think of a time in my adult lifetime when the country, the American Dream, our own future and the future of our children and grandchildren hung more in the balance.
I'm not saying that all is lost, but I'm saying that we are kind of in danger of losing a lot, if not all.
And certainly America is in danger of losing its position in the world.
Now, In this, we are tempted to, and I focus normally, on the left, on the Democrats.
They are certainly the mechanism, the instrument of causing the weakening, the downfall, perhaps in the end, the destruction of the United States.
But part of the problem that we're dealing with is that we don't have an alternative party, a Republican party, And we should be really clear because sometimes out of frustration or just disgust and perhaps despair, people imagine, well, maybe we should create a new party, a third party.
But I don't think that those alternatives are viable.
America, by and large, has functioned really from almost the very beginning as a two-party system.
Originally, of course, there was just one party, the Washington's party, the Federalists.
But ever since you had the Federalists and then Jefferson's party, we've kind of had a two-party system.
Sometimes a new party shows up, but then one of the older parties falls by the wayside.
And so the Republican Party is kind of all we've got, is what I'm saying.
But the Republican Party just seems to be feeble, unimaginative, unenergetic, not equal to the creativity and ruthlessness of the other side.
And so a lot of our job, in my view, is to focus on our own party and build it up, try to infuse in it The intelligence, the strength, the resourcefulness, and the resources that it needs to be able to thwart, defeat, overcome, and put its own ideas in the place of the bad ideas that the other side is trying to implement.
If you ask right now what are the ideas the Republican Party is putting forward, I would have to say that there are virtually none.
The Republican Party is saying, let's reverse Biden's border policy.
The Republican Party is saying, let's stop this promiscuous spending.
Let's not engage in fruitless adventures and costly and dangerous adventures abroad.
But this is a kind of a negative agenda.
We will not do this and we will not do that, leaving the impression that you're not going to be doing anything at all.
You're merely going to be abstaining from bad things that the other side is doing.
And this, it seems to me, is hardly adequate.
Now, the fault of not having a clear vision, a clear set of ideas, a clear set of policy proposals...
Isn't one of the GOP alone.
It's also the fault of the conservative, you may say, intelligentsia, the conservative policy community, the intellectual movement that has really fallen short at a time when it too is sorely needed.
So many of the conservative intellectuals are wasting their time in internecine battles.
They're jostling for position at various think tanks.
They're trying to carve out their own niche on social media.
You don't have the idea that we're part of a movement.
When I was in the Reagan, not just in the administration, but just in the Reagan years, we all felt we were part of a conservative movement.
In other words, we were fighting together.
We had people on the legal front.
You had people who were journalists and writers.
You had academics. You had people who were foreign policy experts.
You were people who were in the entrepreneurial or the business field.
But we were a team. And that sense of being a team, I don't have a sense that that really is there anymore.
We have to remember when we think back to the 1970s and 80s, that Reaganism, what we call Reaganism, didn't come full-blown from Reagan.
It wasn't just that everybody was really confused, there were no ideas, and then Reagan came marching along and said, hey, How about tax cuts?
How about privatization?
How about deregulation?
How about funding and supporting guerrilla movements fighting for freedom in other countries?
How about the MX missile?
And how about missile defense program to bankrupt the Soviet Union?
No! Virtually all of those ideas were devised by a conservative intellectual community and policy community prior to Reagan.
So the point I'm trying to make is that Reaganism preceded Reagan.
And then Reagan came along, grabbed onto these ideas, obviously became their exemplar and spokesman.
And so... For those people who are waiting for a conservative savior to show up on the scene with all these ideas in his back pocket or her back pocket, I guess what I'm saying is it's not going to happen quite that way.
A lot of us have a lot of work to do in putting forward a positive agenda for the Republican Party, and then we persuade leaders who are effective messengers of those ideas to grab onto those ideas and to carry them through to victory.
The FBI has been looking inside Mike Lindell's phone.
I think they're trying to find out if he's hiding classified information inside his pillows.
Or could it be that he's got secret messages written in invisible ink on his sheets?
Very tricky. The FBI is some real experts on the case.
Well, let's not worry about all that nonsense.
I think our job is just to support Mike Lindell.
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To get the discounts, you need to use promo code DINESH. Debbie and I are here to do our, well, a periodic Friday roundup of things going on in the week and around the country.
I want to start. We've been laughing about the illegals that are being dispatched by Texas, Governor Abbott, and also Florida, Governor DeSantis, to liberal precincts around the country.
Honey, you just showed me this.
Yes, this morning. This made us both chuckle.
Two migrant buses arrive outside Vice President Kamala Harris's Naval Observatory residence in D.C. Well, and you know why, right?
Why? Because she says that the border is secure.
Oh, right. She's the one that said this, which, of course, got great criticism from those people that live along the border and know that that is complete and utter BS. Because it is not secure.
In fact, it's never been worse.
So, you know.
So Abbott has sent dozens of buses with these illegal border crossers to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago.
And apparently this group was part of 75 to 100 people picked up in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Migrants from Venezuela, Uruguay.
Uruguay. Uruguay. Colombia and Mexico.
And, look, this is a genius move.
Now, I'm not sure, honey, do you know, did DeSantis begin this, or did Abbott start?
I think Abbott started it.
I think Abbott started it, and DeSantis thought, oh, great idea.
Great idea. Right.
Well, see, this is a way in which these Republican governors should learn from each other.
DeSantis has been first in doing a number of things, and I'd like to see Republican governors around the country go, that's the way it's done.
And so, similarly here, DeSantis jumping on a really good Abbott idea.
Yeah. And...
And they've been sending migrants to, I mean, Martha's Vineyard.
You just got mad at me a little while ago.
I didn't get mad at you. Because I stopped you from tweeting something.
Well, I think you see your job as putting the reins on me.
Because basically, here's what I was about to say.
I have to give you the uncensored version.
And then you tell us who you agree with.
Yeah, this is a good point. So I said...
Future venues for both Governor Abbott and Ron DeSantis.
I said, to dispatch illegals.
And then I said, parentheses, gang members, rapists, and murderers preferred.
Yeah, and I was like...
And then Debbie's like, you can't say that.
I'm like, well, why not? She's like, no, no, no, no, no.
You've got to say, you can say hardened criminals.
So I kind of, I must say, kind of weaken the tweet.
Yeah. To gang members.
He goes, that's where the sting was.
And I go, yeah, but that's not the Christian thing to say.
We shouldn't say that.
I know, but you have to remember, it's not me talking.
It's my Twitter persona.
I keep telling Debbie that there's Dinesh, but then there's Dinesh with that little tiddly mark over his name.
I don't think I like that Dinesh as much.
Because I know how...
You're a sweetheart.
You are a teddy bear.
And when I see these tweets, I'm like, who brought This should not be...
Who wrote this?
We may have to cut this out of the podcast.
It's very bad for my reputation to be thought of as a teddy bear.
I'm supposed to be...
You're the kindest, most wonderful human being, and I don't want people to think that you're mean.
Well, anyway, to continue with my tweet, I lay out all these locations.
So, for example, we have...
We have the Hamptons, Aspen, Colorado.
I list about six of these.
And I think that our side needs to go crazy in dispatching thousands of illegals to all these places.
In other words, look at it this way.
The left says we love these people.
They say there's no such thing as borders.
But they don't happen to live near the border.
So let's bring the border to them.
Right? Exactly right.
And again, the left, you know, they're a little hypocritical about all this because they know that they don't want these people living anywhere near them.
But they're okay with them being, you know, inflicted on other people.
Exactly. Exactly right.
They don't quite like it.
And it's really funny how they protest it.
You know, like Lori Lightfoot, or what's her name?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, she was like really upset about this whole thing, and it's like, really?
You know, she can't even...
Or Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., acting as if it's some kind of a nefarious plot on the part of these red states to do this.
And they always premise it by saying, well, we love these people, but...
But don't send them here.
But don't send them here. Yeah, in other words, let's remember the red states, states like Florida and Texas, have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these people, and they're sending a tiny fraction.
It's almost like a symbolic move.
I guess what I'm saying is we need to make it less symbolic and more of a real, let's call it a mass deportation within the country.
Now, when I say deportation, these people actually are not being sent against their will.
They're actually being sent with their consent to put on a bus...
Yeah, but these people don't know.
They don't know where they're going. But, as I told you before, word on the street in Venezuela, I know a lot of these are Venezuelans, word on the street in Venezuela is that because Biden is the president, it's okay to come to America.
That it's okay to cross the border illegally.
And this is word on the street.
I get it firsthand from my cousin, who is dying to come to America, and I keep telling him, you cannot do it this way.
This is not the way to do it.
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Debbie and I were talking this morning about these FBI raids. Of course the Mar-a-Lago raid on Trump and then the, not really the raid on Lindell's home, but rather the confiscation of his phone.
And clearly the point here isn't just to go for them to be doing individual inquiries.
They're clearly widening their scope and they're kind of going after people for being, you can say, Trump supporters.
I mean, look at Bannon, right?
Look at Bannon. They're going after the Southern District of New York, the judicial arm of the Democratic Party, as we know.
They are out of control.
Yeah, he'll probably plead double jeopardy because they're accusing him of exactly the same things that he was pardoned for.
So, you know, can he be tried twice for the same offense?
Now, of course, New York is going to say, well, these are state laws and there are federal laws and the two are different.
We're not trying him. Yes, we're trying him for the same action, but we're trying him under a different set of laws.
And I don't quite know how that will all play out.
I don't either. Yeah, the reason I brought him up is he said that he has heard that the FBI is going to raid everybody connected with Trump, any MAGA supporter.
And that's why I was like, honey...
You're like, honey, are we going to be seeing the FBI at our door?
And Debbie's also like, have you backed up your phone?
Yeah. And probably that's something that is worth considering.
Look, I mean, these people do have to get a warrant, which is not hard to get, because a warrant is based upon probable cause, and that's all fairly good.
They can create probable cause.
They can create probable cause.
I mean, to give an example, we had nothing to do with January 6th.
We weren't there. We didn't communicate with anybody.
We have no part of it.
But what happens with these federal laws is they're always able to find some sort of a tie.
Well, didn't you talk to so-and-so who talked to so-and-so who talked to so-and-so?
Who did go? Doesn't that now make you part of a ring?
Didn't you have somebody on your podcast who was talking about the election?
Yeah. So that's my fear.
My fear is that we've been helping these January 6th defendants.
We've talked to some of them from jail.
Their parents, their spouses.
I mean, we're a threat on all kinds of fronts, honey.
You love the movie. I know, the movie.
So it just, you know, to me, it follows that because you're a threat, they're going to find something.
And that is my, that's a fear of mine.
It really is. What I told Debbie is I said, look, if they kind of go after you for making a film, And the government does this.
This is a blatant violation of your constitutional rights.
So I said, look, we would have not just the opportunity, but we would have a very strong case in suing the government for basic deprivation of constitutional rights.
We have the right to make a movie.
We're protected in the First Amendment as Congress, which is to say the whole government, can make no law restricting freedom of the press, which includes the media.
That includes us. We're covered under that protection.
But like a very good regime, we may not have done anything wrong, but like a good regime, they find something.
Well, this is, you know, I think the last time around with the campaign finance thing, I did something dumb.
You gave it to him on a silver platter.
Yeah, it was a technical violation, but I still shouldn't have done it.
I didn't know there was a campaign finance limit.
I obviously was trying to find a way around it to help my friend.
Who was running for the Senate.
But obviously, as you know, we are very careful now.
I remember a piece of advice.
I think it was David Dewhurst who gave us a few years ago.
And that is, he said, when it comes to tax matters, he goes, have a professional, reputable accounting firm do your taxes.
And similarly, don't undertake any actions without a reputable law firm telling you that it's okay to do this.
Mm-hmm. And then it's very difficult to go after you for any kind of criminal violation because you go, I was following the advice of a reputable law firm.
I was following the advice of a reputable accounting firm.
No, that's all true, but we live in an America...
Where the left rules the coup.
Well, they certainly control the deep state.
They control the deep state.
And worse, we have our side, which is the Republicans, that doesn't protect us.
I noticed this, by the way, even during my case, was that you had people on our side who were actually acquaintances and friends of mine who were like, they didn't want to be involved in any way.
They would sympathize with me in private, and the Republican establishment was zero help at all.
And as you know, I'm friends with the delays, and the same thing happened to Tom DeLay when it came to the charges that he was being charged with and everything back in the early 2000s.
So to summarize, he was accused of taking gifts, and these were the ones.
He got a clock here.
In other words, gifts that are the thing.
Things that are actually of small significance and fairly routine, but they criminalized it in his case.
So it was clearly a political hit.
They did, and they ruined his life and his wife's life, and I will never...
That, to me, was when I was like, okay, this...
We are living in a third-world country because they can do this to political opponents.
And I thought I had seen the last of that, but, you know, then your case, many other cases came forth, and so...
It's a little bit scary living in today's America when the regime of the left can pretty much make up any rule they want and get their political opponents like there's no tomorrow.
And they don't pay a price for it.
They can try.
They might fail. But even if they fail, they're never held accountable for it.
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Again, that's hometitlelock.com, code RADIO. I talked yesterday on the podcast about the MAGAfication of the Republican Party.
But interestingly, there appear to be at least one and maybe two objectors to this MAGAfication.
And they happen to be, respectively, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate and possibly the leader of the Republican Party in the House.
So we're talking here about McConnell and McCarthy.
I think McConnell here is the bigger offender, by which I mean he's actively not only working but using his considerable access to resources, money that Republican donors have given for this.
He's using it in primaries to defeat Yeah.
I call him the relic, by the way.
Well, let's be fair and summarize his way of looking at it.
The way he's looking at it, he thinks that the strongest candidates are the non-MAGA candidates.
So, for example, he does not think that Oz is the best candidate in Pennsylvania.
He does not think Blake Masters in Arizona.
He does not think J.D. Vance in Ohio.
But they've already won their primaries.
They've won their primaries, but I think his point is that they are weaker in the general election because they are, quote, more extreme.
Yeah. So he's deploying his resources against them.
He tried to defeat, even at the more local level, I mentioned, for example, Caroline Leavitt in New Hampshire, a congressional race.
Yeah. And she's a 20-something.
But the thing is, she's dynamic.
She tells it like it is.
And she's got an army of volunteers who are ready to work for her side.
The other guy's an establishment guy who sort of kind of come up through the ranks.
So I'm not sure McConnell is right in thinking that his candidates are the strongest.
Right. I don't think they are. Well, you know, if you remember back when we had the Tea Party movement, and there were some Tea Party candidates, and they were super gun-ho in the primary, but they were really weak in the general, and we lost a lot of seats because of it.
Right. So I agree with the principle that we would rather not have kooks on our side win the primary and lose the general.
I will take an establishment Republican any day over a losing candidate that may agree even more with me, but is not a strong candidate in the general.
So we agree on that point.
Yeah, and I think people sometimes forget about, for example, a candidate like the woman, what's her name in the Senate?
I just had a brain fog.
Who were you thinking of? You know, the Rhode Island.
What's her name? Oh my gosh, in the Senate.
I can't remember her name now.
The Senator. She's on our side.
She's a Republican, but she's a rhino.
Oh no, you're thinking of Susan Collins.
Susan Collins! But you said Rhode Island.
I know. Okay, Maine.
So what I'm saying is that people are like, oh yeah, we can't have her on there.
But what people forget is that some of these states are not conservative states.
And so someone like her, that is a Republican, is better off than somebody like a complete MAGA person.
Because they would never win in the general.
Without a doubt. Without a doubt.
So I think, as you say, that's why McConnell is...
I mean, I do think that these guys...
I mean, look at someone like Oz in Pennsylvania.
Now, I don't think Oz is actually a MAGA candidate across the board.
Not at all. I think probably the reason Trump endorsed him is because Trump knows him.
And second of all, this is a larger than life guy.
This is a guy who actually has a huge following.
And so I don't think he's a bad candidate as a candidate.
We've had J.D. Vance on the podcast a couple of times now.
I think J.D. Vance is a very impressive guy.
I'm not following his campaign day to day to see what he's exactly like.
Does he have the work ethic of a candidate?
I think he does.
And he certainly has the gravitas.
He has the gravitas. He's a really intelligent guy.
And also, there's a kind of moderation in his tone, which I think is very Midwestern and very appropriate to the state he's running in, Ohio.
You have to suit the state you're running in.
There's a Midwestern style that is a little bit more circumspect.
You're not going to find a guy like Trump coming out of the Midwest.
Trump is definitely a New York guy.
His style is a New York guy.
Every time we go to New York, we laugh because we find...
You know, limousine drivers and hotel doormen.
And they're all little Trumps.
Yeah, they are. They sound like Trump.
They talk like Trump. And to be honest, somebody from the South...
And they love Trump. Somebody from the South going to New York will think that a lot of people in New York are rude.
Right, because they've got this kind of brash style.
Yeah, yeah. But anyway, Trump, and it's really funny because everybody in South Texas loves Trump.
And they don't care that he's like from Queens, you know?
I mean, that's the funny thing is that the New York style appeals to both rural and urban Hispanics who like the tell it like it is.
They don't like this kind of polished, manicured, political language that says absolutely nothing.
They don't like the insincerity where politicians say things like, I will never rest until every American who wants a job has a job.
They want someone that's real, you know, that tells it like it is, that is not afraid to tell it like it is, and that is, you know, gangsta.
I think that a magnified Republican Party, not only in its ideas but also in its style, has a better prospect of winning than the kind of antiquated, umbrella-carrying, toothbrush-mustache-wearing GOP establishment.
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Feel the difference. There's a story in the news, not normally the topics we cover on the podcast, but this actually has to do with the football superstar Tom Brady and his marriage to the supermodel Giselle Bunchen.
And you were telling me that Gisele Bundchen is sort of had it with Tom Brady.
Talk a little bit about what her issue is and then we can talk about the underlying.
What her beef is. What is her beef?
So first of all, so they've been married 13 years.
They have a couple of kids.
And her beef is that, you know, she's always been there.
She kind of like let go of her career to stay home with the kids, to be a mom to her kids, and support him in his NFL career, right?
Stardom, yeah. Stardom. For 13 years she's done this.
So apparently...
Tom Brady, and we don't, just so you know, we don't follow football at all.
I mean, we just don't. But apparently he retired, like semi-retired or retired, in February, I think.
And then soon after that, came back.
Like, I think he was retired for like two months.
He announced his retirement and he came back.
And so he starred again in this season's NFL. And...
So she's upset because she feels like, hey, wait a minute, you said you were going to retire, that we were going to, like, you were going to be a family man, we were going to be a family, we're going to travel, do this and that with the kids.
Whatever. And he just decided, wait, I'm not done.
I want to go back and play football.
So here are a couple of thoughts I have about it.
One, obviously this is nothing motivated on their part by money.
They are both independently, extremely wealthy.
She apparently had several hundred million dollars.
He has a fortune of his own.
So this is not motivated by money.
The second thing about it is that He probably has, I won't say an addiction to football, but I would say an addiction to fame.
And so I think what's happening with him is that he was a superstar.
Everywhere he went, it's Tom Brady, Tom Brady.
Now, you remain a well-known figure when you exit, but there was a book, and I think I mentioned this in the podcast before, it was written about the post-presidency of, I think it was Truman.
If I'm not mistaken, it might have been another president.
But the biography was titled, When the Cheering Stopped.
The point being that when you exit the public stage, and this will happen, you know, this will happen to Serena Williams in tennis.
It'll be like, there's Serena Williams.
Everyone knows. Hey, Federer just retired.
Federer is officially now retired.
I mean, these are people who are legends.
They're not going to be forgotten.
I don't think it's going to be the people like, Serena Williams?
Who's that? No. They'll know who it is.
But on the other hand, it's no longer she who's winning the Grand Slam.
She's not the one to watch at Wimbledon.
She's just somebody that people recognize in the stands.
Tom Brady doesn't want to be that guy.
He's 45 years old.
He's 45 years old.
He's 45 years old. So basically they're saying, okay, this is his last season.
But I think that she's ready to move on.
And it'd be a real shame because, you know...
I mean, if they have a good marriage, and I mean, their pictures look absolutely idyllic, right?
They look like the... I mean, look at this photo.
This is like the picture-perfect American family.
Yeah, they make the cutest couple ever, and so it's really, you know...
And with the kids. And with the kids, they have...
No, they have three kids, not two.
They have Look, I mean, if this guy's got a bug and he wants to play one or two more seasons and that's all he can do, I would say let him.
Let him get it out of his system.
It's not the end of the world.
You know, you have to look at the larger perspective of life.
I mean, interestingly, you know, we were married in 2016 and I still remember this is when we were courting And you were talking to the guy who was kind of managing my schedule and he showed you my forthcoming list of travel and events.
And I said that was insanity.
You said your heart sank.
You were like... It did.
It really did because I was like, okay, first of all, from an outside perspective, I thought this is not good for any human being.
Yeah. Well, it was at a time when I was doing 40 to 45 lectures a year.
I would fly cross-country at the drop of a hat.
Yeah, so I was like, it's my goal to get you to calm down a little bit.
Which actually you have, but you did it in a bit.
Not as much as I'd like.
Well, Debbie's views it because I have the podcast.
I should really be moderating my speaking and doing maybe an event a month.
No, I didn't even say an event a month.
That was your thing. You want to do an event a month?
I was like, no, you don't need to do any of it.
Right. But admittedly, like the next couple of months, almost every weekend, I'm doing something.
Part of it is driven by, of course, the midterm election.
Things should quiet down after that.
But I mean, this kind of balancing act.
Now, it's also the case, we should add, that you were traveling with me 80%, maybe 90% of the time.
Yeah, and I don't like it. So that's why I was like, okay, I can't do that.
That is just not for me.
So I go with you now, maybe...
Well, you also have the COVID and the germophobia, which has kicked in.
Yeah, which is hilarious. Which has slowed you down.
I mean, yeah, it has.
But just really the travel and the flight.
And as you know, I don't like flying.
So that's kind of bad.
But... But yeah, maybe someday you'll sit back and enjoy your golden years because we're not getting any younger, honey.
We're going to get there at some point. Well, Debbie's point is that you also have to remember that your work is for your life and not the other way around.
You don't live just to work.
And it is true.
It's easy to lose sight of that.
I know I think men in particular are very driven to succeed in the kind of world out there.
I think that to some degree this is naturally even more true of men than women.
Women will often balance things out or take a step outside of the legal world, raise kids for a few years, go back into it.
And that seems to be a transition that women manage certainly better than men.
We can certainly see this in the case of Tom Brady.
So I actually hope that they don't part ways just because they disagree about what to do in the next football season.
They look at the longer term, and if their family is as strong as it looks like, it is from the pictures.
I hope that they keep it going.
It's pretty colorful at the grocery store and the produce section.
All the vibrant colors of fruits and veggies, the reds, the yellows, the greens.
Well, our friend Dr.
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That's 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. We're now in Book 7 of the Odyssey and Odysseus has approached the palace of the Phaeacians.
He has been advised both by the young princess Nausicaa and also by Athena to approach the queen.
This is Queen Arete.
And this is exactly what Odysseus does.
He approaches the queen.
He supplicates her.
He tells her that he is a foreigner.
He has been shipwrecked.
He has been lost at sea.
He needs help getting home.
He does not say who he is.
And even though she asks him, and he does say that he was a prisoner on Calypso's island.
But that's all he says, adding only that all of his comrades, his brave friends have been killed, and he is the only one left.
Now, the queen, as expected, responds with magnificent Zania.
She says, in a sense, not to worry.
We will provide for you.
We will feed you.
We will give you a bed to sleep on.
We will give you a ship to take you back home.
So, Odysseus is really very lucky to be here.
And what follows in books 8 and 9 are essentially the wonderful treatment that Odysseus receives at the hand of the Phaeacians.
And this treatment really takes two forms.
The first is they staged some games to entertain Odysseus.
Now, although these are called games, we should be very careful and recognize that for the ancient Greeks, there were no such things as games for games' own sake.
In other words, this is not like our Olympics, which is a sort of a display of athletic prowess and entertainment, a kind of physical exercise that's good for the body.
No, for the ancient Greeks, the games are essentially training for war.
In fact, when we look at the games even today, we can see their roots in warfare.
Think of something like throwing a spear, which would be the javelin throw.
Or, you know, we have scenes in the Iliad where people are throwing boulders at each other.
Well, the discus. Throwing a large object as far as you possibly can with a certain amount of directionality and purpose.
Well, that was a kind of a war maneuver.
For the ancient Greeks, chariot racing, running, jumping.
These were, yes, displays of physical prowess, but they were all part of martial training.
So, the Phaecheans staged these games.
And Odysseus is present.
And at one point, one of the athletes, a guy named Euryalus, comes up to Odysseus, the stranger, the person who is watching the games along with the king and the queen.
And he kind of says, why don't you come join us?
Come and play. And Odysseus is like, no, I don't think I will.
And then Euryalus, perhaps speaking a little out of turn, says something like, well, I'm not really that surprised because you don't really look to me like an athlete.
Now, this offends Odysseus.
Why? Because, as I said, for Odysseus, this isn't about games per se.
These are preparations for war.
And to say to Odysseus, you're no athlete, is very much like saying to Odysseus, you are no warrior.
You don't have the gait, the look, the appearance of somebody who knows how to fight.
And so Odysseus, very uncharacteristically here, kind of loses it a little bit.
And by that I mean that this normally cautious and circumspect man explodes with anger.
He says... Essentially, you have stung my heart.
He jumps onto the field, picks up a discus, flings it further than any other of the Phaechaeans have, so just showing that, yes, he does know what he's doing.
He knows how to throw the discus.
And then he kind of gloatingly says, Odysseus does, That he is in fact not only an athlete, but also a warrior.
And then he goes on to say, At Troy, when the Achaeans shot their bows, the only one superior to me was Philoctetes.
So here Odysseus is talking about archery.
He's talking about the bow and arrow.
And he's saying that in the Trojan War, there was only one Greek archer, Philoctetes, who was better than him.
Now, In a way, Odysseus here has perhaps unwittingly or blurtingly given away who he is.
And remember, he hasn't told the Phaeacians that he's Odysseus.
But if the Phaeacians know about the Trojan War, that they happen to know...
About the major figures of the Trojan War, they would know that the best archer of the Greeks was Philoctetes, that the second best was Odysseus, that the best of the Greek warriors on the battlefield was Achilles, that the second best was Ios or Ajax.
So here is Odysseus, as I say, in a kind of uncustomary way, acting in a kind of non-Odyssean way and revealing his identity for people who are shrewd enough to notice.
But evidently, no one does notice, or at least no one comments on it.
And thus, the athletics games, they end.
But they're not entirely a success, because they were supposed to be to please Odysseus.
And as we see from this comment with Euryalus, there was at least a moment in which Odysseus, far from being pleased, was offended and provoked to display his own physical and martial prowess.
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We are in Book 8 of the Odyssey, and the Phaeacians are entertaining Odysseus.
They put on some spectacular games, and the other part of the entertainment is they bring in a bard, a poet.
Like Homer. And this is the only time, either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, that we actually see a kind of Homeric performance.
In other words, Homer is singing the Odyssey, and inside of the Odyssey we have a bard.
And this bard is named Demodocus.
And the Phaeacians produce Demodocus, and they ask him to sing some songs.
Now, Demodocus actually sings three songs, and I want to talk briefly about all three.
The first two are Demodocus's own choice.
The third song is a song that Odysseus requests.
In fact, Odysseus sort of gives Demodocus a tip.
And he also tells him what to sing about, and we'll come to that.
But in the first song, Demodocus sings about a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus at a splendid sacrificial feast.
So they're having a feast, and apparently a quarrel arises between Achilles and Odysseus, two of the greatest of the Greeks.
And even though they're fighting, which would normally be somewhat unpleasant, according to the song, Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek expedition, is very pleased because there was evidently a prophecy that a quarrel between the two of the greatest of the Greek fighters,
Achilles and Odysseus, We're good to go.
So, here is Demodocus singing about this.
Now, remarkably, it should be mentioned that nowhere in the Iliad do we know about this kind of a quarrel.
In fact, not in all of extant or existing Greek literature is there any reference to this so-called quarrel.
We don't know if Homer here just kind of, quote, made it up.
Or we don't know if the quarrel was talked about in other Greek literature of the time, but we don't have it anymore.
That Greek literature has been lost, and so we have no way of knowing if this is a Homeric invention.
Homer just decided, well, let me just kind of imagine that there was this kind of quarrel, and let me refer to it here, or if this is something that was part of the original story, and Homer is merely picking it up and deploying it here.
Odysseus is very moved by this.
I think the reason he's moved by this and moved, in fact, Homer says to tears, is because it establishes Odysseus as one of the two greatest Greek warriors.
Remember that By convention, the two best Greeks on the battlefield were Achilles and Ios, in that order.
Odysseus was not the strongest, but the cleverest of the Greeks.
But here, in this story, by saying that, in effect, the two greatest Greeks...
fought with each other, Achilles and Odysseus.
Odysseus is being put in the same league with Achilles.
And so the reason that Odysseus is moved by the story, I think, is that it emphasizes his own kleos, his own glory.
And notice here that we see how kleos is important in the Odyssey as it was the central theme in the Iliad.
In the Iliad, when people talked about kleos, they talked about, what are people going to say about me when I'm dead?
Here, Cleos is relocated from the next world into this world.
Here, basically, Odysseus is really happy that even though he's alive, people recognize him, along with Achilles, as being the greatest, one of the two greatest of the Greek fighters.
And then we turn to a second song that is sung by Demodocus.
And this seems like a very strange song.
It's a song actually about adultery among the gods.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who is actually married to another god named Hephaestus.
Nevertheless, he has an affair, an adulterous affair, with Ares, another god, the god of war, who is unmarried.
And Hephaestus surprises the two and is outraged and goes and complains to all the gods.
And all the gods listen to this and they laugh heartily.
And they basically say, Hephaestus, you really caught him.
You really surprised him.
You really got him.
And at first glance, this strange story of kind of adulterous liaisons among the gods appears to have nothing to do with either the story of the Trojan War or of the Odyssey.
Why is it here?
We'll see... Next week, actually, Monday, when I pick up the story, that far from being irrelevant and peripheral, this actually goes to the central themes of the Trojan War story, which, of course, began with an adulterous affair, Paris and Helen, but also comes to, by kind of contrast, the story of the Odyssey, where the fidelity of Penelope is absolutely central to the story.
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