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Sept. 30, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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Coming up, Debbie and I will discuss issues of the week, including how Venezuela seems to be emptying its jails and sending criminals to America, the self-destructive pathology of Liz Cheney, and the irony of COVID in the D'Souza family.
I'll also talk about the case against common sense and why this supposedly common virtue has become all too rare in America.
And I'll begin my discussion of the cast of characters encountered by Odysseus in the land of the dead.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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On yesterday's podcast, I did a short introduction to the thinking of the British SASGK Chesterton.
And I only mention that because one of Chesterton's points is that we live in an age.
Now, Chesterton wasn't just talking about The 21st century or, you know, 2022.
He was actually talking about the modern age, but what he says is especially true of now.
He says we live in an age where common sense seems to have become uncommon.
Now, how odd is this?
Common sense, in a sense, is not the knowledge of specialized intellectuals.
It's not the knowledge of deep-thinking philosophers.
It is called common sense because everyone is supposed to kind of have it.
It is the sense of living in the world and there are certain things that you know and take for granted and it's obvious that they're true.
And so common sense is nothing more than the widely distributed shared knowledge that allows you and me to look outside the window and say, there is a tree.
Think of how odd the world would be if I looked out of the window and said, there is a tree and you said, no, there is a bear or there is an antelope or there is a mountain.
And we couldn't even agree on what our own two eyes were suggesting to us.
Common sense, I think, has been the deposit of practical wisdom in the world.
The problem with today is that common sense seems, in the modern age, to be unreliable.
And by unreliable, what I mean is that there are so many things that people throughout the centuries took to be obvious, took to be true, never really even questioned.
And yet we know now that those things may not be true or are not true.
I've been talking about the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example.
It's taken for granted in the Iliad and the Odyssey that monarchy is sort of the only form of government.
Perhaps even the only imaginable form of government.
It never seems to occur to anyone in the Iliad or the Odyssey that there's an alternative way to organize society.
Society is hierarchical.
There's a king. And you might be the king over here.
Another guy may be a king over there.
But that there is going to be a king over every territory is kind of assumed.
If we think historically, we see that people, as part of common sense, have believed that the Earth is flat.
Why? Because it looks flat.
That there are only a handful of stars in the sky.
Why? Because that's all we can see.
That the Earth is stationary.
Why? Because if you jump up in the air, you don't end up 30 feet away.
You end up just where you started.
So the Earth doesn't seem to be moving.
It looks like the sun is going around the earth.
Why? Because in the morning we have a sunrise, in the evening we have a sunset.
And it appears common sense to people that the normal state of things is inertia.
If you see a stone, it's just lying there.
That's its natural state.
If a stone is moving well, then something must have moved it.
So these are all beliefs of common sense.
All swans are white.
Why? Because every time you see a swan, it's white.
You never see swans of any other color.
You assume that all swans are white.
That's common sense.
If someone starts talking about swans of a different color, you think, wow, what's wrong with you?
Or simply the idea that matter is solid.
Here I'm sitting with a table right below me.
I can knock my knuckles on the table.
It's solid. Now, what's happened is that we've seen through modern astronomy and modern science and modern physics that a lot of these once commonsensical beliefs are, in fact, as I say, either inadequate or wrong.
In fact, what we consider to be solid matter isn't so solid after all.
There's a lot of gaps when you begin to look at things at the subatomic level.
Obviously, it is the Earth that moves around the Sun, not the other way around, and so on.
So Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, about 100 years ago, He called common sense, quote, the metaphysics of the savage.
And I think what he meant is that common sense is, in a sense, unsophisticated.
But I want to argue that this is actually wrong.
And the reason it's wrong is this, that yes, human beings can be commonsensically wrong or mistaken about things that they are not in a position to ultimately verify.
If I look out at the sky...
I don't know what's beyond the 7 or 8 or 30 stars that I can see.
They could very well be a whole lot.
I just don't have good enough eyes or a telescope to be able to tell me.
So where common sense really works is when we are talking about the practical wisdom with which we run our own lives.
And so things as simple as, hey listen, I actually asked Debbie and she goes, well here's a good one.
Don't go for a run without tying your shoelaces.
That's common sense. And on that, that commonsensical view is completely correct.
It's just as correct in the 21st century as it was, let's say, five centuries ago.
Or, to quote the comedian Jeff Foxworthy, he goes, If you're coming home after a long drive and you really have to go to the bathroom, he says, don't start unbuttoning your pants like 30 yards before you get to the bathroom because bad things are going to happen.
Your body will take a cue that you're already there and will actually start doing its thing.
So, again, use good sense when you are performing this kind of an operation.
Well, the broader point is that today we need the common sense that says things like, The family is the best way to raise children and to organize society.
We need the common sense of recognizing that we can say things about the world that we know to be true through accumulated experience Direct experience.
When we see crime going on all around us, we say, why is there an upsurge of crime?
Can't just be because human nature is evil, because the crime rate has gone up.
Human nature has been constant all along.
Why is the crime rate so much higher now?
And the answer is, Democrats!
Or to put a different set of policies in place that have emboldened the criminals and weakened the influence of law enforcement and of the cops.
So, We need common sense.
It is in short supply these days.
We can conclude by saying, alas, that common sense is not so common.
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Debbie and I are here for our Friday roundup.
And we want to start talking about who's coming across the border.
Now, there's an increase of Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans coming across the border.
And House Republicans have been raising the alarm that a sizable number of these characters are bad guys, are criminals.
The question has been raised, are criminals.
Are the Venezuelans opening up the prisons and letting out the worst of the worst and sending them to America?
So needless to say, our Venezuelan expert right here has been checking this out and has been checking it out with a relative of hers in Venezuela who has his ear to the ground.
And so pick it up. Talk a little bit about what you've been able to find out.
Who's coming across the border?
Yeah, so apparently...
Thugs. And, you know, my cousin likes to send me these little videos of these Venezuelans that are like in Dallas or in Miami or in one of the cities in the United States.
And they're literally wreaking havoc in the neighborhood.
You know, they're either driving their trucks and they're burning the tires, making smoke, just being, you know, disorderly, drinking, being drunk on the street, whatever.
But he says that there are a lot of Very bad people, very bad players that are coming across the border.
And he said, you guys need to seal those borders because, you know what, they wreak havoc in Venezuela.
And so it's no surprise that those people are wreaking havoc in America.
I mean, quite apart from the criminal element, I think the point being made here is that we're not getting the best of the best.
Let's just put it that way. Under normal immigration, you can be fairly confident that people who come particularly a long distance away, imagine someone who comes here from, let's say, Thailand or from India.
Well, it's not easy to get here.
It's not easy to stay.
And if you abide by the rules, you've got to have a tremendous amount of persistence and creativity, and in some cases, resources to be able to do that.
So you're getting a person who really wants to come.
Yeah, like my cousin. I feel really, really bad for my cousin.
My cousin is a very intelligent guy.
He's an engineer.
He got his degree in engineering.
I believe he's a mechanical engineer.
Yeah. And he would love to come and work and be an engineer in America because obviously it's not working out for him in Venezuela, although he's very resourceful.
But he told me that these people are basically selling everything they have, all their assets, whatever it is, and they are paying $1,500 to about $2,000 for To come across, and they come across this Darien jungle, which is the border between Colombia and Panama.
Very, very dangerous.
There have been many deaths.
Okay, these people do die.
And there have been videos circulating.
My cousin gets them all.
And it's really sad because some of these people actually are good people.
They are families.
but a vast majority of them are adolescents, men, and bad, bad guys.
And so if Maduro is doing this, and apparently there's been some intelligence that he is doing this.
Well, our friend Troy Nels.
Yeah, he's actually, he wrote the Department of Homeland Security and basically said, you know, that there are violent criminals coming from Venezuela among the migrant caravans heading towards America.
And 14 House Republicans led the way by my friend Troy.
And we'll see how, you know, how this has played out.
Well, I mean, you know, we don't have high hopes.
I don't think Debbie does either.
That Mallorca, so the Biden administration, is going to do anything about this.
No, of course not. They don't seem to mind.
In fact, it seems to be...
They seem to recognize that, look, this is a dangerous operation.
The cartels are involved.
So what?
The benefit to us of getting these people to America with the long-term political gains, we can just...
They're not going to cause havoc on the White House lawn.
Yeah. And word on the street, my cousin says, is that...
Because these people have nothing, right?
So word on the street is that Biden will give them an apartment, a car, a job.
I mean, come on.
They have nothing to that?
So they see that as their only opportunity.
I mean, it's tempting to blame, when we're talking not about criminals, but ordinary, it's tempting to blame these foreigners for showing up.
But think about it. When before has a country issued a kind of open invitation, has almost worked hand in hand with cartels to get you here?
I don't really blame those people as much as I blame the Biden administration.
They are the authors of all this chaos.
They absolutely are. And any chaos, any harm, any blood...
that is shared is ultimately on their hands.
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It's patriotmobile.com slash Dinesh or call 972-PATRIOT. I talked earlier this week about Liz Cheney, who has announced, and this is kind of interesting, that if Trump, she's going to make sure that Trump is not the nominee, she says. How she's going to do this is another question.
But I guess by using the power of the January 6th committee to go after Trump.
So that's why she's on the committee.
That's why she's agreed to be, you know, what, the vice chair of the committee.
But she says that if she fails and Trump becomes the nominee, quote, I won't be a Republican.
I won't be a Republican anymore.
She's not. So right now, she evidently still thinks of herself as a Republican, but she's like a Republican hanging by a thread.
And she seems to think that really what is at stake here, this is just her rhetoric, is the peaceful transfer of power, the, quote, unraveling of the republic.
So evidently, according to her, this is the Liz Cheney philosophy, It is Trump out of power who is threatening the unraveling of the Republic.
And Biden in power is not.
And so Liz Cheney is happy objectively to help Democrats and help Biden.
You know, right now they've got no majority in the Senate.
They've got a very thin majority in the House.
So it's a little difficult for the Biden people to get everything they want.
But if Liz Cheney has a way, they will.
Well, Liz Cheney, so as you, you know, you talked about her a few days ago and her motive behind this vendetta, you know, that she has against Trump.
And so, to be honest, looking at her objectively, I mean, I see a woman that really does not care about party politics at all.
You know, she and, not to mention...
The Democrats don't want her.
So she can't run as a Democrat because she's not a Democrat.
But she's obviously not a Republican either.
So what it is, is again, it's this vendetta that she has against Trump, this hatred of Trump that drives everything she does.
She doesn't do it for her party.
She doesn't do it for her constituents or her people.
She does it for herself and her family.
And I think that it's a very, I mean, I have never seen such a weird and strange reason.
It's a little pathological. Now, I want to contrast here.
I think your point is bringing this out.
Liz Cheney is different than, on the other hand, David Brock.
Or Bill Kristol.
A lot of these never-Trump Republicans are funded by the left.
And there's a careerist motive.
They're trying to advance themselves.
They realize, listen, it's very useful to CNN to have an anti-Trump Republican.
That's the Republican who's going to be on CNN, other Republicans are not.
And it's very useful to go to billionaire donors and say, hey, listen, I've got an R at the end of my name.
You can say, even the Republicans think that So, these people are very slyly advancing themselves, but you're saying that's really not Liz Cheney, that it's at the bottom, it's that primitive human desire that you find, you know, in the mafia.
I mean, this guy betrayed us, take him out.
Family honor! Even if it means that we are likely to be caught.
And her dad, family honor, you know how he came out against Trump and his entire campaign for his daughter Was the vengeance against Trump, which, I mean, I just thought that that was just the most bizarre thing I've ever seen.
It was like listening to a mafia boss.
And the thing is, remember, when I was at AEI, Dick Cheney was at AEI. I don't remember what title he had or if he was on the Board of Trustees, but he was frequently at our events.
I had a pretty good relationship with him.
But when I saw him in that ad, it's almost like I was looking at a different person.
Well, again, I don't understand.
I mean, well, I understand.
It's their hatred for Trump.
I mean, that drives them.
And it's really sad because she, you know, I've told you many times, she is a woman without a party because she abandoned her own party, right?
When 90% of her party is against what she has to say, I mean, come on.
Her party doesn't back her.
And the Democrats hate her as well.
So she's a, you know, they say a woman without a country.
Well, I say a woman without a party.
Well, I think what makes it strange in a democracy, you know, it's not unusual for someone who's a count to say, I don't care.
I'm the count of Kent or I'm the, you know, I don't care what the people of Kent think they're peasants.
Right? But if you're a Democratic leader, and you have been brought to power by your constituents in Wyoming, and those same constituents tell you, we don't like anything that you're doing, and even though you're our heroine, we put you forward, we made you a national figure, we would rather vote for Harriet Hageman, who, quite frankly, no one had really heard of before, over you.
And normally, that's a chastening thought.
Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe my constituents know better.
I'm supposed to be their leader.
But no, the arrogance of Liz Cheney as if to say, you know, in that case, I'm obviously right and all these yahoos in Wyoming are obviously wrong.
And not to mention setting up a pact because she wants to run for president.
I mean, is she that stupid or that out of touch with reality?
Unless it's a continuation of the vendetta.
She's like, I'll be a spoiler.
But Yeah, I guess.
I'll run as an independent. Quite honestly, if she runs as an independent, I'm not even sure she'll take Republican votes.
I don't know, but you know how...
She'll probably take Democratic votes.
Yeah, but you remember how Bill Clinton won.
With Perot, but she's no Perot.
I think it's a different situation.
That's true. With the consumer price index, the CPI increasing again, the stock market has been in absolute turmoil.
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Oh yeah, spending more money and adding to the burden.
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Do it today. We now want to talk about hurricane politics.
I've never seen the Democrats so excited about a hurricane.
And they're excited because they have been unable to land any blows on Ron DeSantis.
And so they think, well, at least the hurricane will do our work.
And so, you know, just this morning you have CNN and they're literally interviewing people to try to find inconveniences.
Like, oh, at my apartment complex the pool was closed.
There's a really long line to get food.
Yeah, but to be fair, this is a catastrophic hurricane.
It's a catastrophic. No, no.
And we were just there.
We were just in Naples this past weekend.
Dinesh had an event there on Saturday.
It was a really good event.
And the funny thing was, Debbie heard about the hurricane even before the event.
Yeah, so on the flight to Florida, I go, oh my gosh.
There's a hurricane headed to Florida.
There's a hurricane headed to Naples because at first, that's where the trajectory looked like it was headed to Naples.
Now, I have been around hurricanes since I was 10 years old.
I've lived on the Gulf Coast of Texas almost all my life.
And so I have lived through many, many hurricanes, including some here in the Houston area.
And I know that they're nothing to laugh at because they are very catastrophic.
And especially if you live near the coast, there's a storm surge, which could be 10, 20 feet high, sometimes depending on the size of the storm, on the category of the storm.
So it's very detrimental.
The winds are horrific.
And if it sits over the area for a long period of time, like Harvey did back in 2017, It creates catastrophic flooding for the area.
So I know that...
I mean, the funny thing is we did the event on Saturday, no problems.
In fact, beautiful in Naples.
And then we got out on Sunday to come back, do the podcast.
And in fact, when we left...
The hurricane appeared to be missing the Naples area.
In fact, interestingly, we were talking to a woman at the hotel, and she's like, I guess I bought water, I bought gas, I guess I'm getting prepared for the next hurricane.
But then the hurricane had other plans.
Yeah, and our friend Jay, he drives us when we're there, and he's a great guy.
He bought water, he was prepared, but you know, he was having a barbecue that night at his house.
He was like, yeah, You know, I think we dodged a bullet.
And I texted him yesterday to see how they were doing, and he said, they're on generator power, and...
Downtown Naples is underwater.
Well, Debbie is, as some of you know, a germaphobe, but she's also like a kind of...
I call her a catastrophist because she follows weather patterns, certainly in the United States, but even in other parts of the world.
She'll show me, there's a hurricane in Sri Lanka.
Take a look at this video.
Stop it! So, you seem to have like a fascination...
It's a hobby of mine. Yeah, with the swirling of the seas.
I love all that. I love the creation.
What creates a hurricane...
The recognizant airplane that flies inside the eye of the hurricane.
Can you imagine? Oh my goodness.
I mean, I would need more than one relief band if I was in that airplane.
But it's just amazing.
And what it does and how...
But here's the thing.
So yes, it hit Florida.
But they couldn't have been more prepared because they have an amazing governor who was on it before we even knew that there was a hurricane going to Florida.
Yeah. And so people like that that are in control of the state, the Floridians are very lucky that they have a great governor because he's probably going to get things up and running pretty quickly.
Well, I mean, the hurricane is out of its control.
It's the response to it that's what matters.
And it looks like the response is measured.
It's well-planned.
It's efficient. And so the left will try to make hay out of this.
They will try to do their very best to make it look like...
In fact, I saw one essay to the effect of, you know, the $12 million that DeSantis spent sending those migrants to Martha's Vineyard could have been used to fight the hurricane.
Oh, my God. But just the pathetic nature of these kinds of points shows you that these people have nothing on DeSantis.
I mean, they're trying to go after Trump.
Multiple investigations, which as far as I can see, are all going nowhere.
By the way, the latest revelation, I don't know if you've seen this on Mar-a-Lago.
So the government said that we took 11,000 documents.
Right. It turns out that they took over 200,000 pages.
So they were creating a false impression, the government was, the Biden DOJ. We took 11,000 items.
There's a big difference between 11,000 and 200,000.
So they took a lot of stuff, seemingly, to go on this big fishing expedition.
Let's see what we can find over here.
Oh, these are his tax returns.
Let's check into those. So they are after Trump and DeSantis like nobody's business.
Oh, my God. And it shows you who they're scared of.
They're not scared of anyone else.
And quite frankly, they're not that scared of Kristi Noem.
Why? Because they're not going after Kristi Noem because they don't see her as a threat.
It's very telling who they go after.
The people that they go after are the people that are threats, I think.
Totally. And the people that fight back.
And you know what? We need more of those people.
I mean, one of the ways you know that 2,000 mules are so effective, look at the number of debunkings, fact checks.
They go chasing after Bill Barr.
They get Liz Cheney to weigh in.
They go after it because it's a danger to what they represent.
This is really why pretty much all the things I've talked about, the big switch, the fascism of the left, they bitterly go after all this stuff because it represents a sort of, it detonates something inside of them.
No, but You know, the other thing, back to the Venezuelans, is my cousin thinks that the opposite is true.
In other words, he thinks DeSantis and Abbott are the bad guys.
Because that's the...
Yes! And it's like, no, no, no, no, Miguelito, my cousin.
It's actually the opposite.
The Chavistas are like the...
What did I say this morning?
The... No, not Chavez.
Biden and Maduro have a lot in common, if you get my drift.
If you get my drift. Yes, it's true.
Sorry about that. I messed that whole thing up.
Anyway, all good.
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Debbie and I have a funny story to tell you about COVID. Now, the background of the story is that my wife is a serious germaphobe.
And what this means is that really, in a way that she's not really able to kind of get beyond or even control, You know, it creates a certain kind of paranoia in you.
It's almost as if Debbie puts it like the, it's like discovering that the demon is real.
The monster is real. The monster is real.
And you have a real epidemic.
And so the thing you feared is something you now have to deal with.
And so Debbie's been somewhat, you know, cloistered.
Not, I'll go do speaking events.
Yeah, but you know, to be honest, I've been like this person.
Pretty much 20 plus years.
You know, I, as I told you before, when we first met, I was constantly Purelling and I was constantly cleaning the seats of the airplane and people would look at me like I had two heads, you know, because they're like, what is she doing?
I've always been that way.
I kind of avoided large groups of people in clusters just because I knew that that was probably a recipe for a cold or even the flu.
So I've always been that way.
So when COVID came and the CDC was, you know, talking about wash your hands for 20 seconds.
Okay, check. I've done that like 20 years.
Don't rub your eyes or your face.
Check. I've done that for 20 years.
But the new one, of course, was that it was airborne.
So, of course, it was another paranoia for me.
But every time Dinesh – and I really, honestly, I stopped going to events with Dinesh because of it.
I was just too paranoid to go.
So, Dinesh would go. For well over a year.
Oh, yeah. Now, the thing about it is I had less speaking.
Obviously, there were – because of shutdowns and things.
Yeah, but you still had – But I still had quite a bit.
And so I remember the fall of 2020, I did a bunch of events.
And the funny thing was, every time I would get ready to go to an event, not only would I be heavily equipped with Purell, all kinds of wipes, you have your masks, how many masks?
Do you have your Purell in your pocket before he would go to the event?
Like, I would text him. I'd go, is your Purell in your pocket?
Remember, after like five answers.
All right. So, but despite all that, Debbie would always say, you know, you're going to get COVID. You're going to get COVID. You're going to get COVID. Yeah, you're going to bring home COVID. And to be honest, I kind of assumed that at some point I probably would get COVID. But you can kind of pick up the narrative from there.
So yeah, so the long story short, I guess, for that is that I finally went to an event with Dinesh.
You're in Texas. Yes, near our house in early August.
And they wanted me to sing the national anthem, which I gladly did.
And I knew some of those people because of my interaction in politics in Fort Bend County.
And so anyway, so I knew some of them.
And it was great to see them again and all that.
But so I was like, you know, I went with him and I was like, okay, well, you know, I think I'll be okay.
And guess who gets COVID? Well, before you lead up to that, what happens is, so then there's a VIP reception where I shake a bunch of hands and take some photos.
And Debbie's like, you know, you go ahead and do the VIP. I think I'll just sit here at the table.
This way I'll avoid like an extensive interaction with people.
So I go, march along, do the VIP, meet all these people and so on.
And then what happens?
Yeah. And I stayed behind.
You stayed behind. I stayed out in the open.
And so what happens is that I get COVID and I go, hey, Well, the funny thing was when Debbie first got COVID, I wouldn't say she tries to pin it on me, but she assumes that I probably got it and gave it to her.
So she's like, do you have any symptoms?
I'm like, no, I'm fine.
And she goes, well, I've got a scratchy throat and I'm starting to feel a little feverish.
And I'm like, you may want to take a test.
Yeah, I know. And it was such a bummer because we were actually going on vacation for four days, you know, that weekend.
So It was the literal day before.
You were very disappointed.
I was very disappointed. And Dinesh thought it was kind of comical at the fact that it was me that got it.
Ironic. Ironic.
Me that got it and not him.
And to be honest, you're probably going to get it.
Our doctor said you probably will get it at some point.
Well, even since then, I've done probably four or five events subsequently.
And to be honest, I've got events almost every week.
Not this weekend, but almost every other weekend until the election.
And every time I go and come back, Debbie's like, how are you feeling?
Yeah. Any sneezes?
Any watery eyes?
And I'm like, no, I'm totally fine.
So I'm beginning to joke that I'm actually immune to COVID, but according to Debbie, there's no such thing.
No, you're not. There's no such thing as...
No, you're just very lucky.
Very lucky man.
I'm lucky in many ways for sure.
But I'm also lucky not to have gotten it because I probably have had far more interaction with people than most just because of being in the public domain.
That's not to say you haven't gotten other illnesses because, you know...
You have, and that's another story funny as well.
Yeah, to be honest, Debbie never gets a cold.
In all the years I've known her, I think you've only...
20 years maybe? You have, you have, you rarely ever get a cold.
Yeah, no. And yet the last time that both of us got a cold...
So in May, I got a really, I got a really bad one in May.
And then, and then I got COVID in August.
And actually, I had not gotten sick in like probably 20 years.
And so that was just kind of shocking.
And it was the same thing.
She goes, do you have any symptoms?
Thinking I must have gotten it because I got it from some surface or fomite as Debbie calls it.
And I'm like, no, I have no symptoms.
So she got it and gave it to me.
I think you've heard me say it.
I'm not a super fan of the flavor of veggies.
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We are now beginning a journey with Odysseus into Hades, the land of the dead.
Now, this by itself is pretty remarkable in Greek and even ancient literature.
There are only the greatest of Greek heroes while alive.
End up going to the land of the dead.
Hercules or Heracles did that.
Orpheus did that.
Theseus did that.
Now later, after the Odyssey, we will see that in In the Aeneid, Aeneas does that.
He, following in this great tradition, makes a journey to the land of the dead.
And by the way, thinking ahead, before I talked about Homer, I talked about Dante— Notice how Dante is putting himself in this kind of ancient tradition.
Of course, Dante is doing it within a Christian framework.
He's going through hell and purgatory and then making his ascent to heaven.
But Dante is undertaking himself a journey that was previously described in ancient literature by Homer, by By Virgil and so on.
So this is remarkable in and of itself.
Now, I mentioned the last time that it's a good narrative device for Homer because he He uses this journey to have Odysseus meet with a prophet named Tiresias.
And Tiresias can sort of update Odysseus on what has happened in Ithaca since he's been away and describe the threats that faced Odysseus before he returns.
Odysseus is instructed by Circe when he gets to Persephone's island to sacrifice some animals, some rams, and he does this so that the dead can kind of show up as ghosts.
Drink the blood and speak to Odysseus.
I mean, a kind of rather creepy but effective narrative device.
And we'll see that in this Nequia, the journey to the land of the dead, Odysseus meets a rather wide range of people.
Famous characters from the Iliad.
He meets his own mother who has died.
His father is still alive.
He meets some relatively minor or seemingly minor and unknown figures who play a kind of, in one case, as we'll see, even a slightly comic role in the Odyssey.
But it's a remarkable episode.
By the way, this Nakia, this Journey to the Land of the Dead, occurs in the exact middle of the Odyssey.
It's book... Well, 10, 11, and 12.
And so, what we see in this journey is Odysseus, in a sense, undergoing a kind of transformation.
In a quite literal sense, Odysseus, although he doesn't, quote, die, we can metaphorically see this as Odysseus' rebirth.
Odysseus goes to the land of the dead.
He comes out. And you can almost see it that before he went to the journey to the land of the dead, he was the Odysseus of the Iliad.
He was a warrior. He He was the Iliadic Odysseus.
But when he comes out of the land of the dead, after the Nequea, he is the Odyssean Odysseus.
And the rest of the story is going to be about Odysseus basically getting back home and dealing with the problems in his home country of Ithaca.
So, one important aspect of this Nequea is this contrast between the old Odysseus and the new.
Now, for us, as an audience of the Odyssey, the journey to the dead is important because it connects the Iliad to the Odyssey.
We meet important characters in the Iliad.
We not only get to see them now, meaning after they are dead, But get their kind of very interesting reassessment or summation of how they look at things now.
Specifically, as we'll see, you might remember from the Iliad that Achilles was faced with a choice.
Do I want to go back and live a long life and be an old man and die obscure in my home country?
Or... Do I want to die gloriously, go out in a blaze of glory, if you will, in Troy, and have my name remembered forever?
Well, we have Achilles weighing in on that topic here in the Odyssey, giving, if you will, a second, maybe even a different take on it than we've heard from the Iliad, choosing differently.
Now that he's sort of dead, now that he's in Hades, he can sort of...
Give a different point of view than he did when he was alive, not yet killed, where, of course, Achilles made the choice to go out in a blaze of glory to kill Hector in the full recognition that his own death would soon follow.
So, for us, the audience of the Odyssey, we get a chance here to kind of connect the Iliad to the Odyssey and see some familiar figures like Agamemnon reappear here in the Odyssey.
The last point I want to make is the dramatic effect of this Neuquia, this account by Odysseus of his journey on the Phaeachians.
Let's remember, all of this is taking place in the form of a flashback.
Odysseus is sitting with the Phaeachians and they're like, tell us about your travels, tell us how you lost your men.
So Odysseus is giving them the scoop.
And in giving them the scoop, Odysseus isn't just, you know, I'm a storyteller, I'm a bard like Homer.
No, Odysseus has a concrete goal.
And his goal is to get the best possible hospitality, the best possible zinnia, to convince these people, the Phaeacians, to kind of go all out to help him to get back safely home.
And so we should understand even this narrative.
So think about it. Here's Odysseus.
First of all, he discloses, after some reluctance, I'm Odysseus, the great hero of the Iliad, or one of the great heroes of the Iliad.
And number two now, not only have I had all these adventures that I'm telling you about, but you know what?
I went to Hades.
I went to the land of the dead.
I saw people who are already dead, and I've come back to be able to tell you about it.
So think of the gaping The astonishment of the Phaeacians and the effectiveness of this part of the narrative in Odysseus being able to convince the Phaeacians that he is the real deal and they should give him every possible zinnia in making his way home.
Hey, we've got hurricanes here, but we have the resources to deal with them.
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Today is the last day of the campaign.
Many families have lost everything and anything you can do will help Food for the Poor bring aid to these families.
As one of the largest faith-based international relief agencies in the U.S., Food for the Poor responds quickly and efficiently to disasters like this.
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Text Dinesh to 91999.
Odysseus makes his way to Persephone's island, which is the gateway to the underworld.
And he's looking for the prophet Tiresias, but the first character he encounters in the underworld is a little bit of an odd surprise, and there's even a sort of slight element of humor here, because the guy who shows up is a fellow named Elpinor.
And Alpinor is a very minor character in the Odyssey, but sort of a little bit unforgettable because when Odysseus sees him, Odysseus is really surprised and says in effect, why are you here?
I didn't even know you were dead.
And Alpino goes, yeah, that's because I didn't really die in the fighting at Troy.
He goes, I was actually one of the members of your ships.
And when we were at Circe's Island, this is Alpino talking, he describes to Odysseus that it was a rather...
So I went to sleep on the roof of Circe's palace.
This, by the way, not an uncommon practice in ancient Greece, sleeping outdoors on the roof to cool off a little bit on a hot night.
And El Pino goes, but the problem was that when I heard the noise of all the men getting ready to board the ships, in my hurry of coming down the ladder, I slipped and I fell and I broke my neck.
So, wow, this guy, Alpinor, essentially falls off a ladder and is dead.
And his body is still lying there.
So, Alpinor's ghost is, in fact, not in Hades.
Alpinor says to Odysseus, basically, look, this is really terrible because...
I can't go to Hades.
I can't be a full inhabitant of Hades until I am properly buried.
So he actually wants to ask Odysseus to do a favor.
He says to Odysseus, will you go back to Circe's island and just bury me?
Because that way, this was a belief, and we've seen this, by the way, in the Iliad.
The notion of people in an in-between stage, between death and Hades, they're dead, but they haven't been properly buried, so they can't be admitted as a kind of full residence of Hades.
By the way, this happened to Hector.
Achilles refused to bury Hector, and so Hector couldn't go to Hades.
Similarly, Achilles, out of grief, refused to bury Patroclus.
And Patroclus was in the same position as Hector, and as this guy, Alpinor, they were unable to gain full entry into Hades.
And so here is Alpinor begging Odysseus.
And as we will see, Odysseus does do this.
As he makes his onward journey, he stops at Circe's island.
He goes and buries Alpinor, thus guaranteeing that this poor fellow Alpinor...
Odysseus, who again, did not die in glory or in battle, is so obscure.
No one even knew. No one even thought to make a head count.
Where's Alpinor? He's missing.
He fell off the ladder.
He died. And the men just basically kept going.
And this is why Odysseus assumed that Alpinor is still around.
He's still alive. He's a little shocked to see him in Hades.
So here is a slight narrative.
Well, you'd have to call it a little bit of a digression.
But it's a very interesting digression, as I say, because Alpino occupies this middle status between death and being an inhabitant of the underworld.
And now, as we go into Book 11...
We're going to see, or as we go through book 11, we're going to see Odysseus encountering first Tiresias, the prophet, who will give him a full account of what to expect when he gets home to Ithaca.
But Odysseus will also meet his mother.
He will meet a number of other prominent heroines from Greek He will meet Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek expedition to Troy.
He will meet Achilles.
And there's this remarkable, he will meet Ajax, the second greatest fighter of the Greeks.
And so, in the next couple of days, next week, we'll be talking further about...
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