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Sept. 23, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:53
RELENTLESS PURSUIT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep420
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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. Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com. Coming up, Debbie and I will discuss the relentless pursuit of Trump by the left, Venezuelans in Martha's Vineyard, and whether digital platforms can save the censorship policies.
By appealing to the Supreme Court.
I'll look at a new study of the GOP and explain why the dismay of the left should be the cause of a little self-satisfaction on the right.
And I'll continue my narrative of Odysseus in the lands of the Cyclopes, the giants, and a sorceress named Circe.
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.
I want to discuss an article in the Washington Post.
I mentioned in the article...
It's called Trump's Big Life Fueled a New Generation of Social Media Influencers.
And the basic theme of the article is that That as a result of Trump and people like Rush, you've now seen a new generation of Trumpsters, if you will, who are supposedly doing all kinds of horrible things in social media, spreading all kinds of misinformation, disinformation, and so on.
The article is revealing, but not in the way that the authors intend.
It's revealing because we see as we read the article, first of all, that there's no misinformation or disinformation involved at all.
What we are talking about are disputed opinions.
And so, for example, at one point they talk about the fact that the social media influencers, us, will talk about who we mean in a moment.
Are complaining about grooming.
And the Washington Post goes on to say, well, while these right-wingers basically say that grooming involves inappropriate interactions with children and young people, in fact, they're merely referring to providing young people with sex education.
Obviously, that's their view of it.
That is not the conservative view of it.
And there are lots of examples that you can show to show that we're not just talking about clinical sex education.
We're not just talking about age-appropriate sex education.
We're talking about stuff that crosses the line.
We're talking about highly suggestive and adult and lewd behavior that is not only talked about to children but sort of shoved in their face.
So to the Washington Post, that is misinformation.
So we can completely discount and write off what they mean by misinformation.
They're not talking about misinformation at all.
The other thing is that you notice that with the social media influencers, we say what we do on social media on all the various platforms, and our megaphones are small compared to the left.
They have much bigger megaphones.
They have a whole army of disguised fact-checkers who aren't really fact-checkers.
They're leftist polemicists, but they're masquerading as fact-checkers.
They've got the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe.
They've got all of this to challenge our point of view, and evidently in the debate of ideas, they're losing.
They're losing in the sense that they keep talking about how we social media influencers keep growing, our influence is greater, our point of view dominates the right and the Republican Party.
And all of this is another way of saying that nobody believes the nonsense that the left is putting out on the other side.
So you can see that the underlying tone of the article is that But why don't these social media platforms censor these people more?
They talk about the fact some of them were censored, some of them were kicked off, but you know what?
Some of them having been kicked off are back.
And of course, people like me have never been thrown off social media, although from time to time I've had.
I've had at one point, I think I've talked about this on the podcast at YouTube.
Strike against me, in which they restrict my distribution.
For a week, I was off of YouTube.
And then Facebook, I've been in some sort of a Facebook, under a Facebook, what do you call it, a warning for...
I'm shadowbanned on Facebook for the better part of a year.
I think my shadowbanned is lifted officially in November.
So all this nonsense goes on.
I pay attention to it, not too much attention to it.
But the point I'm trying to make here is that, from the Washington Post's point of view, this is a very dangerous development.
Essentially, what they're saying is that they're losing the debate, and so they need censorship.
It's kind of like if I were going to go into a campus to debate somebody and I'm beating them in the debate and they're like, listen, let's shut the stage down.
Let's turn the lights off.
Let's move Dinesh off the stage and only let the other guy speak.
This is basically what this article is all about.
They start off by talking about this guy named Kyle Becker.
They talk about 77 spreaders of disinformation.
Turns out that this list of 77 was drawn from research by disinformation experts.
How do you become a disinformation expert?
What do you study to become a disinformation expert?
Exactly. Debbie's like, you're a Democrat.
Disinformation expert.
Disinformation experts at Stanford, Harvard, and Cornell.
Think about it. You've got professors at these universities who have nothing better to do.
They're like, let's go on social media.
Let's see what Candace Owens and Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec and Dinesh are posting.
Let's follow Cattered 2.
I mean, these are all the names in the article that they talk about.
And then, like I say, they talk about the fact that, you know, they say things like, YouTube banned just four of the 77, while Facebook banned only two, Trump and Bannon.
And Benny Johnson, libs of TikTok.
By and large, what this article is getting at is that a handful of people on our side are causing havoc with their side.
Despite their big megaphones, they want ultimately a monopoly of the discourse.
They want not just a one-party state, but a one-party megaphone with no one else being able to say different.
And we are very much right now in their way.
Mike Lindell, like Trump, seems to be fighting on all fronts.
They're trying to cancel him.
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There are just so many vectors or angles of attack against Trump coming from the left.
In fact, the New York Times recently summarized them.
They talked about the six investigations into Trump.
They talk about an investigation in New York State, an investigation in Manhattan, an investigation in Georgia, a congressional investigation, a January 6th investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents, the classified documents investigation.
But most recently in the news, the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, The latest investigation, apparently, into not just Trump, but also the Trump family.
Yeah, the Trump family.
I mean, this is just, you know, again, it's one of those things where they're just throwing spaghetti at the wall, and then whatever sticks, they think, is going to be what's going to bring him down.
They know that something's got to.
I mean, there's a little bit of a funny aspect to all this because it's sort of like, you know, we thought we got him on that one.
No, we've got to move over here.
We've got to move over there. It doesn't seem to occur to the left that there's something fundamentally wrong about identifying the man, Trump, and then going looking for crimes.
Right. So didn't we say that?
It's like, create the crime, put in the man.
Right. And if this one doesn't work, let's go to the next stage.
Because really, truly, if the feds want someone to go to jail, they will find something for you to go to jail for.
They will. And I think that they're really trying very hard.
They're very scared of him.
They think that if he's on the ballot in 2024, they're doomed.
Not we're doomed. Because America will be great again.
But for them, America will be horrible.
So they do not want that.
And I think that they are going all out.
I mean, look at this. Now, Letitia James is also going to file something in the Southern District of New York.
You know that I've called that many times the judicial branch of the Democratic Party.
That's the same court that got you.
It goes after conservatives.
I'm not sure that there's a single Democrat that that place has gone after.
You said something a moment ago that caught my attention, and that is you said that the left is afraid that Trump Mm-hmm.
DeSantis is kind of their second main target.
Notice that many of the other people who think of themselves as presidential material aren't targets at all.
That's because the left actually wants them.
The left is trying to create, and I said this, I guess, on the podcast a day or two ago, a veto power over our nominee.
And the latest thing appears to be the idea that the Trump family got really good deals from the banks.
Think about it. Letitia James is basically coming to the defense of these big banks as if they can't watch out for themselves.
The Trump family is presenting financial evaluations that are exaggerated.
Now, everybody tries to put their own finances in a good light.
You go apply for a loan.
What are your assets? What are your liabilities?
And so people go, well, I've got these really valuable assets and so on.
Yeah, I mean, they should be going after the mafia family, i.e.
the Biden family, because they probably have, I mean, again...
Not probably. I mean, there is all kinds of evidence, not just from the laptop, Tony, Bobby, Linsky.
We know that there's foreign money that's flowed directly into the coffers of the Biden family.
We have direct evidence it was distributed among the family members, not just Hunter, James and Frank Biden, Joe Biden.
This is a flat-out case of treason, really.
I mean, really.
And yet, they're not going after Biden at all.
Because why? Because Biden is their, I don't want to say this out loud, but Biden is their B-I-T-C-H, right?
And so they have to They have to make sure...
They have to protect him. They have to protect him.
They have to make sure that the Biden family, including Hunter...
And there have been some articles on the left about Hunter.
But notice, they don't make headlines, right?
Because... Why? Because if they made headlines, people would go, oh my gosh!
Think about the implications if, let's say, Don Jr., It was revealed that Don Jr., in his phone, when he talked to his dad, Trump, had the name Pedo Pete, or let's say Pedo Don, come up.
This would be news everywhere, blared everywhere, but it is muted on the left because they don't want to make it seem like their mafia boss is a pedophile.
Can you imagine calling your own father a pedophile?
Right. And he does.
I mean that is when the phone...
I mean it's not just Come Come Hunter either.
There's other evidence from the diary.
Yes, that basically his nickname for his own father was Pedo Pete.
And so anytime that he would call him on the phone, you know how your name pops up on the phone with your photo?
So apparently it was Biden's photo and Pedo Pete.
Not dad, not even the big guy, but Pedo Pete.
What? I mean, that is just like disgusting.
I mean, think of what it is.
Hunter is on to his dad.
Oh my gosh. You know, he knows.
I mean, Hunter's a pervert.
But in a way, I guess what Hunter's saying is that, look who raised me.
That guy's an even bigger pervert.
All that to say, Leticia, you're going after the wrong guy.
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Feel the difference. Debbie and I were talking yesterday about Texas and the group that is called LULAC. Now, LULAC stands for the League of United Latin American Citizens.
It purports to be kind of a group representing the Latino or Hispanic community.
In fact, it is a left-wing, far-left organization that is just part of the Oh, by the way, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, I'm wearing my little Mexican shirt.
Honey, I would have worn my sombrero and eating a burrito.
Well, I forgot about that. I forgot the maracas.
Back to LULAC. Back to LULAC. So when I was in college, I was pursued by the president of LULAC at the college, at my college, back then it was Southwest Texas State, but now it's Texas State.
And he kept, you know, why aren't you signing up for LULAC? I was like, because I don't want to.
Because you guys make it an issue about being a Latino, and I don't want to make it an issue.
And then he was, oh, that's because you think you're white.
That's because you think you're an Anglo.
And then I would answer him in Spanish, full-blown Spanish, because my Spanish was way better back then.
It's pretty good now. It's okay now because I don't speak it as much.
And if you don't use it, you lose it, right?
But in college, I was pretty fluent.
So I just rattled off to him.
He had no idea what I was saying.
He didn't even know Spanish.
So anyway, back to LULAC. So they are actually suing Abbott...
Because they think that Abbott's tactic of sending the busloads to D.C. and where else did he send them?
Not Martha's Vineyard. No, D.C. and New York.
D.C. and New York. So he thought, oh, you are just dehumanizing these people.
These Latinos from Central and South America, they deserve human rights.
They deserve to have rights.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
They are breaking the law, right?
So really, by that logic, that means that if somebody breaks into our house, what, we have to feed them?
We have to treat them with respect because they broke into our house?
Hello?
I mean...
Well, the situation here, though, is complicated, I think, because even though you're right that these are people who are not lawfully in the country.
In a way, they're not like people who broke into your house because you never collaborated with them to get in the house.
Think about it. The Biden administration...
Yes, but that would be like, say, our community, HOA, collaborating with them without our consent.
without our consent. Because that's what's happening is that the Biden administration is not asking the folks and the real grande if it's okay for these people to come over or anybody else.
Not to mention that Texas as a state doesn't want them and so Governor Abbott is in a sense saying listen you guys claim to be sanctuary cities. Yes. You are pushing for these guys. And the brilliant thing about this is that nobody and I mean nobody is down there at the border filming these people coming in.
So what Abbott did, what DeSantis did, is he's making it an issue.
He wants the reporters to report about illegals because otherwise nobody else is reporting about illegals.
No one knows there's illegals in this country.
But when they see it, and granted, this is only like 50 at a time.
This is not the thousands upon thousands that come in every single day from Central and South America.
Some of them even have Middle Eastern names.
And they pose as Mexicans to come in.
These are terrorists. And again, you know, where's LULAC when it comes to these little girls that are being raped on the way here?
Where's LULAC? Hello?
LULAC? No, they don't care about any of that.
No, they don't care.
Downright hostile if they need to be.
If the migrants suddenly started speaking the language of make America great again, upward mobility, the left would turn viciously against the migrants, basically say that the migrants themselves are racist.
They're bringing the racist traditions of other countries to the United States.
So the left would turn on them quickly if their political sympathies began to shift.
Yeah, I mean, like we, you know, for example, we came into this country.
They would deport us if they could.
I was 10 years old, but I knew that I wanted to be an American.
And I knew that the culture in America was you speak English, you celebrate all of the American holidays, you do all those things.
Now, that didn't mean that I... Suddenly forgot where I came from or my primary natal language was.
It was Spanish.
So I did speak Spanish and I wanted to make sure that I spoke both Spanish and English.
English with everyone else, Spanish at home.
And to be honest, I didn't even do that.
I just wanted to speak English and I just kind of went for it.
Yeah. We assimilated, right?
We assimilated. They don't want that.
They don't want that.
Well, what they don't want is, and again, it's not as if we assimilated the point where I've forgotten that I'm Indian.
I mean, you can't be with Debbie for six hours without the name Venezuela coming up.
So you retain a very, I mean, you retain, even though you left the country at age of 10, you have a close attachment to...
I have a close attachment to Venezuela and the Rio Grande Valley because I did grow up in the Rio Grande Valley.
A lot of my childhood was there as well.
And of course my mother is from there.
So you're going to hear me talk about El Valle and Venezuela a lot.
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Debbie and I are talking about the border.
The latest development with regard to Martha's Vineyard, let's remember that Martha's Vineyard was the venue to which Ron DeSantis sent illegal migrants to.
It's like, hey, you want them.
You're a sanctuary city.
Here, you have them. And it was just a small number.
I think 50 or so. Apparently a bunch of those guys were from Venezuela.
Mostly Venezuelan, it says.
And evidently, when I first read this, I sort of had to take a double take.
It says that the Venezuelans who are undocumented immigrants in Martha's Vineyard are filing a lawsuit against Ron DeSantis.
And I'm like, wait a minute. I thought these were like, these are guys who are destitute.
They're trying to survive.
Well, it turns out We're good to go.
Economic, emotional, and constitutional harms.
Now, this is right out of the playbook of the left.
It's kind of an operation.
Can we find a sympathetic judge, sympathetic jury?
Can we get a ruling in our favor?
Can we politicize this in a way that's going to result in a win for us?
That's why they're doing it.
Look, I know these are my paisanos, okay?
These are from my home country, but...
Listen, they are, as you say, they're being manipulated, and they don't actually understand the political parties in America.
They actually think that the Republicans are like the Chavistas, and they think the Democrats are like the opposition in Venezuela.
But in fact, it's the exact opposite.
The Democrats are the socialists.
They are the communists.
They are the ones that will turn this country into Venezuela.
They don't understand that because, again, they are being lied to and, of course, they don't like being manipulated in that sort of fashion.
And so they don't understand.
Now, my cousin, my cousin who is Venezuelan, he has been wanting to come to America for a while.
And every time he says, you know what, word on the street is that Biden says it's okay for us to go.
You think it's okay for me to go?
And I'm like, not illegally.
Do not come through the border.
Because not only that, but you will be kind of a pariah if you come.
You know, people won't understand that you are fleeing Venezuela because of political persecution.
They won't understand any of that.
And I don't know if he fits the description of a true asylum seeker.
Well, the point you're making here is that the Venezuelans, when they're trying to get out of a socialist hellhole, and we hardly blame them for that.
We would do the same if we were in that position.
And it's not to say that they aren't legitimate applicants for asylum, but there is an asylum process.
There's a process. And what Biden is doing is he's circumventing the process, not because he cares about Venezuela.
He hasn't lifted, the Biden administration hasn't lifted one finger.
No. Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly.
And that, to me, is the biggest takeaway from all this, is that, gosh, these guys need to be educated.
They left Venezuela because Venezuela was a socialist hellhole.
And they are coming to America because the Democrats want it to be a socialist hellhole.
I mean, they literally do, because that's the only way that people will be dependent on the government, just like they were in Venezuela.
But These people, I don't know if they're just too ignorant or too dumb to see it.
I don't understand it.
I mean, in some ways, I understand it because it's difficult to take the long view.
I mean, I think of myself. Let's say I arrive in the United States.
I'm 17 years old.
I know nothing about America.
And even though my values are conservative, I'm coming to a country where all I want is opportunity, all I want is a place for my hard work and my talent to be able to kind of exhibit themselves.
But the Democrats come to me and they say something like, you know, you're a victim of colonialism, you're a victim of, you're coming from a country that's so poor, we're going to help you to circumvent the process.
We have all these organizations that are going to file lawsuits on your behalf.
We're going to make sure that you get everything you're entitled to, that your rights are respected.
I would be like, wow, this is amazing.
Someone is on my side, not realizing that I myself have become now a pawn, an unwitting pawn in which my ignorance is now being played on for somebody else's political benefit.
Exactly. And to be honest, we have a lot of poor people in this country.
We have a lot of homeless people in this country.
So if we are feeding and taking care of all of these illegals coming in, what are we doing about our own poverty, right?
So this is just...
If people cannot see it for what it is, then maybe people deserve this kind of government.
I don't know. Well, I think people are getting the message.
I think we'll have to wait and see what happens in November because it seems to me that the country is in a very bad way.
The signposts of it are We're good to go.
15-20% of their value.
We like seeing home prices soaring, interest rates going up.
I'm speaking, of course, facetiously, but my point is if you like filth, if you like horrible crime rates, if you like homeless people coming up to you in a restaurant and grabbing food off your plate, well then...
And an open border. And an open border, then you are, well, let's just say you might just be a Democrat.
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Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. Dev and I were talking about the fantastic decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I've been talking about it the last couple of days on the podcast.
Basically, it says that in Texas, social media companies cannot censor people based on viewpoint discrimination.
We can say anything you want that is legal.
And if they do it, we can sue them.
And we've talked about it.
We will sue them.
And we will not only be restored by force by the court, but we will also be entitled to attorney's fees.
And I think that if this happens, it's going to set off a movement where lots of people are going to be doing the same thing.
And the thing we were discussing is the only way that these social media platforms can overturn this Texas law is to now appeal it to the Supreme Court.
There's only one more avenue to go to, but you were saying you don't think they might even do that.
Well, if they know what's good for them.
Let's say why. Well, because it would permanently, and across the nation, would make it illegal for them to censor opinion.
Because that's actually what they are doing.
They're censoring opinion.
They're not censoring facts.
They're censoring opinion. And as you said the other day, they can't even censor facts.
No. Right? Under the First Amendment, it is very clear that you are not only allowed to have errors of opinion, I have the wrong opinion, but you're allowed to make errors of fact.
If I were to go out and say something like...
The sky is green. The sky is green.
It's covered by the First Amendment.
It doesn't mean because if I'm making a factual...
I could be honestly mistaken.
It doesn't really matter.
But the point you're making, I think, is this, that if they go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court goes, not only is the Texas law legal, but it is legal for states to pass laws Declaring that these social media platforms are common carriers, common carriers like the phone company.
And just as the phone company can't intrude on your phone calls, restrict your reach, ban you, deplatform you, you pay your bill, you get your service.
They have to serve, not only serve everybody, they have to serve everybody equally.
Which means not just that they can't kick you off the platform, they can't even restrict you.
Because if they're restricting you and they're not restricting other people, they're treating you unequally.
So the point being that it will then send a message nationwide that any state, and certainly Republican states, can pass laws punishing these social media platforms for engaging in conduct that is, well, in this case, illegal.
Illegal, yeah. I don't remember YouTube or Facebook ever banning anybody.
On the left for saying that Trump in 2016 was illegitimate.
I don't remember that at all.
Does anyone remember that?
They haven't done that. That's because it didn't happen.
So the problem with these companies is that they are an arm of the left.
They tout everything the left tells them to do.
Oh, they don't agree with climate change?
We can't talk about climate change.
You don't agree with the election?
We can't talk about the election.
And it's only conservatives.
And the trans issue and abortion, there's a long list.
In fact, when you go to upload a video or a podcast on YouTube...
You have to go through AdSense and you have to go through community standards.
And it is the community standards that they agree with, not normal community standards, right?
I talked about how, you know, Facebook's defense and YouTube's defense is we're private companies.
We can do whatever we want.
And what's great about the appellate court, the Fifth Circuit Court, is they're like, that is flat out nonsense.
Companies cannot do whatever they want.
They are subject to all kinds of standards that they have to comply with.
You might have private banks, but private banks can't do whatever they want.
Private companies can't say just quite simply, you know, if you want to get a phone line, you've got to be at least five feet tall.
AT&T is a private company.
They can't say that. They can't decide that because you're black or because you're foreign born or because let's even say you come from a very poor area of town and you may not be as reliable and paying your bills.
They can't even do that. So the simple truth of the matter is that when they're common carriers, they have to offer their service on an equal basis.
To the general public.
And I think what's remarkable is we've had laws against racial discrimination, gender discrimination.
We have not had laws about viewpoint discrimination.
That's new. And that's exactly. And that's the most sorely needed.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because exactly.
They don't like your viewpoint.
They won't let you talk about your viewpoint.
They won't even let you talk about your opinion about the viewpoint.
I mean, if you're a black or Hispanic or gay, are you likely to be treated badly, let's say, in a university today?
On the contrary. Are your viewpoints likely to be suppressed?
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Odysseus doesn't know it, but he's in the land of the Cyclopes.
And he realizes that things look a little strange around here.
So he takes 12 of his men, kind of his favorites, he says.
He takes some provisions from the ship.
He takes a goatskin full of dark sweet wine.
And they go exploring in the caves in the island of the Cyclops.
I said last time it's believed to be Sicily, but a rocky island with a lot of caves.
And they're looking for the inhabitants of the island, but they don't see them.
The Cyclopes are actually out in the fields pasturing their flocks.
They're obviously agricultural people, or agricultural Cyclopes, I guess I should say.
And inside the cave, Odysseus and his men see all these crates weighed down with cheese.
And then there are also these pens where there are lambs divided up by age, the newborn, and so on.
And then just as Odysseus and his friends are looking around, there's a thunderous noise.
The cyclops is back.
This is the famous cyclops named Polyphemus.
And Odysseus tells us he lifted up the heavy stone and set it to block the entrance of the cave.
It was a rock so huge and massive, 22 strong carts could not have dragged it from the threshold.
So now we have a serious problem.
Here's Odysseus and his men, and they are trapped inside the cave.
The cyclops is not presented as a giant.
In fact, elsewhere, Odysseus will encounter a group, a race of men or giants.
But the cyclops is obviously unnaturally strong.
And he's able to, when he gets into the cave, roll a giant stone in front of it.
And Odysseus is like, there's no way for us to get out.
Then the Cyclops decides, let's light a fire so I can see better inside the darkness of the cave.
He does this and immediately, even though Odysseus and his men kind of move to the corner of the cave to try to hide, there's really no place to hide.
And so when the light flashes up from the fire, the Cyclops sees them.
And the Cyclops, now here we have a very interesting experience of, let's call it anti-Zenia.
It's not Zenia, it's the opposite.
The Cyclops goes, strangers, who are you?
Where did you come from?
Like, are you pirates?
Cyclops wants to know, are you here to steal from me?
The immediate approach of the Cyclops is hostile.
Now, Odysseus and his men try to sort of appease the Cyclops and appeal to hospitality.
Odysseus, we are Greeks, come here from Troy.
The winds have swept us off in all directions, across the vast expanse of sea, off course from our planned route home.
And listen to the response of the Cyclops.
Because Odysseus makes an appeal to Zeus.
He makes an appeal to the gods.
Let's remember the gods are kind of the enforcers of Zinnia.
The gods are the ones who sort of command that people treat strangers with friendliness.
But the Cyclops is not impressed.
Well, foreigner, you are a fool from some very distant country.
You order me to fear the gods.
My people think nothing of that Zeus with his big scepter.
They know who Zeus is, but they're not intimidated by him.
Cyclops goes on to say, I do the bidding of my own heart.
Another way to put it, the Cyclops is a law unto himself.
And then Odysseus says, Poseidon, the earth shaker, shipwrecked me at the far end of your island.
He pushed us in, wind dashed us on the rocks, we barely managed to survive.
Now this is actually very interesting because unknown to Odysseus, the Cyclops is actually a child, a son of Poseidon.
So the Cyclops is partly, you may say, the son of at least a father who is immortal, a father who is a god.
Odysseus, of course, doesn't know any of this.
Homer writes,"...but he made no reply and showed no mercy." The Cyclops.
"...leaping up high, he reached his hands toward my men, seized two, and knocked them hard against the ground, and the floor was wet with brains." So he just dashes them to their death.
He ripped them limb by limb to make his meal, then ate them like a lion on the mountains, devouring flesh, entrails and marrow bones, and leaving nothing.
Cyclops basically eats these two men from head to toe.
And this must give you an idea of how the Cyclops is, to some degree, a kind of hybrid of man and beast, because this is cannibalism, obviously, pure and simple.
Odysseus thinks he needs to strike back.
He says that the kind of the military impulse enters him.
He's a warrior after all.
And again, this is Odysseus now recounting this.
Remember, he's talking to the Phaeacians.
I thought I should get out my sword, go up to him and thrust right through his torso.
But then Odysseus realizes...
That would have doomed us all.
On second thoughts, I realize we were too weak to move the mighty stone, he said in the high doorway.
So Odysseus can't get out that way.
He needs to develop a crafty plan.
And so his craftiness, distinctive quality of Odysseus, comes into play here.
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Odysseus and his twelve men are now trapped in the cave of the Cyclops.
This is the Cyclops named Polyphemus.
And Odysseus, again, thinking a little bit about kleos or glory, I was left scheming to take revenge on him and hurt him and gain the glory.
But he then goes on to think, how am I going to do that?
Well, he does need a weapon.
So what he does is he sees a big club, a kind of walking stick for the cyclops that is there in the cave.
And he orders his men to scrape it down and make it smooth and sharpen the tip.
So he creates, if you will, a spear.
And... He says the cave was full of dung, so he was able to hide this spear now behind a pile of dung.
But his idea is very simple, to blind the cyclops, to essentially poke his eye out.
Remember, the cyclops has only one eye.
And so, in a sense, by poking the one eye, you've got him.
The cyclops is not going to be able to see.
But of course this doesn't solve the problem completely because Odysseus still has to figure out how do I get out of the cave if there is a giant stone blocking the exit.
The next evening the cyclops comes back and grabs two men for dinner.
And eat some.
So let's think of it.
Odysseus started out with 12 men.
Two of them were killed on the first day.
Two more have been killed on the second day.
Odysseus is now down to eight men.
And so Odysseus now begins to very cunningly unfurl his plan.
He goes, Hey Cyclops, you have eaten some human meat.
Now it's time to drink some wine.
And Odysseus, let's remember, he had brought this kind of sweet wine from the ship in a wineskin.
And so he gives the cyclops the wine.
The cyclops starts gulping it down.
Odysseus goes, yeah, have some more, have some more.
The cyclops has some more and is obviously feeling pretty good about himself.
And the cyclops says, what is your name?
And this is a very interesting story.
A development here. The Cyclops is asking Odysseus to identify himself.
And Odysseus, of course, is not going to give his name.
Odysseus comes up with a really devious plan.
He says, my name is Noman.
Noman. Kind of weird, but N-O-M-A-N. Noman is my name.
My family and my friends all call me Noman.
And Odysseus then says, now that I've told you this, can you extend some hospitality to me?
Can you be nice to me?
Odysseus even implies, can you give me a gift?
And the Cyclops says, yeah, I have a gift for you.
He says, I will eat you last.
I'm going to eat all your friends first, and after that I'll eat you, and that's my gift to you.
You're going to be the last to be eaten by me.
And Odysseus waits for the Cyclops, waits for the kind of alcohol in the Cyclops system to take a hold of him.
The Cyclops kind of collapses back and falls asleep and basically begins to...
To roll around and snore.
And Odysseus then goes, grabs the spear, and drives the spear into the eye of the cyclops.
Homer describes this very vividly.
Homer does not hesitate to give descriptions.
He tugged the spear out of his eye, all soaked with gushing blood.
And the cyclops begins to shout out loud.
And what the cyclops does is he He wants to get help because he can't see and he knows that he's surrounded now by adversaries and that he knows that Odysseus and his men have done this to him.
And so what does he do?
He goes to the entrance of the cave and he pushes the stone away and he begins to shout out to all the Cyclopes, his neighbors, to come and help him.
So in this sense, the Cyclopes are a community in the sense that at least in moments of distress, they may each follow their own laws.
But nevertheless, it's kind of like, you know, you help me when I'm in danger and I'll help you when you're in danger.
So there is some sense of tribal solidarity among the Cyclopes.
And apparently the Cyclopes all come out of their caves and they listen to see what this fellow, Paul Ephemus, has to say.
They go, Paul Ephemus, what's the matter?
Why are you screaming? Why are you waking us up in the middle of the evening, in the middle of the night?
Is somebody trying to hurt you?
And then, of course, in this very famous scene from Homer, Polyphemus replies, he goes, no man is hurting me, no man is killing me, no man is injuring me.
And, of course, the other Cyclopes are like, well, if no man is injuring you, what's your problem?
One of the Cyclopes basically says, listen, if no man is hurting you, then your problems, such as they are, you obviously are in distress, must be caused by the gods.
And we, the other Cyclopes, are not going to get involved in that.
We don't want to make the gods angry at us.
If they are causing you the problems, then it's your problem.
Listen, go pray to your father, mighty Lord Poseidon.
And all the Cyclopes basically go back to their own caves.
They're not going to help Polyphemus.
And then Odysseus says, I laugh to myself at how his trick has worked.
And so Odysseus and his men are able to get out.
They escape, they go to the ship, and they're about to sail off when Odysseus does something very interesting and a little out of character, and that is that he reveals to the Cyclops who he is.
It turns out to be a terrible mistake that many of his subsequent problems are going to be due to what Odysseus does now.
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