FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026
...we're badly in need of a guide: "A guide...who only has at heart [our] getting lost?"
In recent weeks, the flooding of the zone has proceeded at a new and disturbing pace. This has created a world which may well be "now too much for us," in roughly a million ways.
At the center of this storm is (tragically) an apparent madman who is not a clinical madman. Last week, the fatal shooting of Renee Good, and the welter of claims which instantly followed, sent us back to the melodic opening passage of a difficult poem by Frost:
Directive
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town...
"Back out of all this now too much for us?" Plainly, we Americans seem to be in such a place right now. We live in a country which is no more a country, perhaps recalling a behavioral code which is no more any such code.
Frost referred to a house which is no more a house, in a town which is no more a town. And then, he spoke about a guide, a guide who might take us somewhere:
(Continuing directly from above)
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it...
And so on from there.
Where might that mysterious guide be able to take us? Presumably, back to that house when the house remained a house. Back to that farm when it was still a farm, in a town which was still a town.
The poem gets very difficult from there. But using that language as a guide, is it likely we Americans will be able to find "the road there"—the road back to a nation which, however imperfect it may have been, could still function as a nation?
Will we Americans find the road there? With an apparent madman who can't be described as a madman at the head of a building tsunami, we'd have to say that the odds don't seem real good. Any by the way:
Isn't this the way empires have always come undone, when the empire becomes too large and too complex, when things fall apart; the center cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world which is no more a world?
Last night, we watched the ugly madness of the Gutfeld! program—a "late-night comedy show" which isn't a comedy show and isn't a late-night show either.
This morning, we attempted to scan the New York Times. On the front page of today's print editions, this report sits in the upper right-hand corner of the paper's front page:
Trump Sharpens Threat As Clashes With Agents Continue in Minnesota
Says Insurrection Act Could Be Invoked
This article is by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Mitch Smith and Thomas Fuller.
How do we know that's the featured report on the front page of today's print edition? We know that because the Times presents a picture of its front page as part of its "Today's Paper" site.
That said, the New York Times is, in many ways, a newspaper which is no more a newspaper.
We wanted to read that featured report—the report which tops today's page A1—but the report can be found nowhere on either of the paper's two major sites. When we tried to find the report through the New York Times search engine, that engine which is no more an engine provided no link to any such report:
The engine which is no more an engine, inside the paper which no more a paper, doesn't seem to know that that featured report exists!
"Time just gets away from us." It's the closing line of the Coen Brothers' 2010 remake of True Grit. The Oscar-nominated film tells a story of devotion to task, at the risk of death, across the river and in the territory where no established order prevails.
In the current situation, the complexity of the time has helped create a world which is now too much for us.
How complexified is our failing world—our world which is no more a world? Consider the start of this news report—a news report which can be found on the "nytimes.com" web site:
Was Renee Good Obligated to Comply With an ICE Agent’s Orders?
Moments before Renee Good was shot to death on a Minneapolis street last week, a federal agent ordered her to get out of her Honda Pilot.
Was she legally obligated to comply?
The answer is contingent on many factors, experts said, including the complex interplay of power and jurisdiction among law enforcement agencies. While Ms. Good was compelled to follow a lawful order, it is not clear whether the immigration agents on the scene were acting within their authority.
“What were the ICE officers even attempting to do?” asked Rachel Moran, an expert on police accountability at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. “There’s a couple of key questions, I think. One is, were they involved in a legitimate enforcement operation at that point? And the second is, was she actually blocking their vehicles?”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said that agents had been trying to free a vehicle that was stuck in the snow when “a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in, shouting at them and impeding law enforcement operations.”
Putting aside the question that has driven heated debate over the episode—whether the agent’s decision to shoot Ms. Good was reasonable—agents would be within their powers to take action against anyone obstructing a legitimate operation, experts said. But whether Ms. Good’s actions met that test is open to interpretation.
Video of the episode shows that Ms. Good’s Honda was blocking at least one lane of traffic, but cars were able to pass.
That raises the question, experts said, of whether the agent who asked Ms. Good to exit her car was performing what amounts to traffic enforcement, a function of the local police.
Michael Feinberg, a lawyer and former F.B.I. agent, wrote in an article for Lawfare, a legal affairs website, that according to Minnesota statute, peace officers, defined as state or local law enforcement officers, are empowered to enforce the law against stopping on a road or highway, a misdemeanor. Federal agents may serve as peace officers only at the request and under the direction of a state or local officer. (Custody of anyone they arrest, according to the law, must be turned over to a state or local officer.)
Under federal statute, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have the power to make arrests for illegal entry to the United States, federal felonies or “any offense against the United States” if it occurs in the agent’s presence.
But the agents’ newly aggressive tactics seem to reflect an expanded view of their power, said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the deputy project director on policing for the American Civil Liberties Union, raising concerns about “ICE agents who are supposed to be doing civil immigration enforcement thinking that they’re empowered to take actions like criminal law enforcement.” She added, “There are important differences on the limits of their authority that they don’t seem to be observing.”
The complexification continues from there, a marker of the complexification which dogs every aspect of our governmental systems. According to experts, there's no way an empire so complex and so incomprehensible can be kept from falling apart.
Was Renee Good about to be arrested when she tried to drive away? The furious agent who tried to open the door of her car hadn't said she was under arrest—but it's at that point that a tsunami of legal complexity intrudes.
In a similar way, it's virtually impossible to explain any part of our government systems in a way we average shlubs can be expected to understand. In such ways, the towns which are no more our towns have instead become the home of general incomprehension.
(For the record:
Noem has also said that Renee Good "had been stalking and impeding [the ICE agents'] work all throughout the day." Is there any evidence in support of that claim? More than a week later, have you seen any attempt to report and examine that claim? Do even the most elementary facts ever get established as the zone is newly flooded each hour of every day?)
Last night, the clowning on the Fox News Channel was barely recognizable as human. This morning, the New York Times presents an exhausting welter of news reports—so many so that the Times, as it routinely does, has lost track of the principal news report which sits atop the front page of its print edition!
As we've frequently chronicled, this weird circumstance prevails at the Times a great deal of the time. Then again, also this:
The Times refuses to report or discuss the possible medical state of the apparent madman who isn't a clinical madman (because there's no such thing). Also, the Times refuses to report, or to discuss, the torrents of garbage which flow from gonzo pseudo-journalistic performers like Gutfeld and Watters, along with the corporate stooges who surround them, on a daily basis.
They keep presenting news content which is no longer any such thing. The New York Times keeps averting its gaze from their ludicrous misbehavior—from behavior which is no more the behavior of recognizable humans.
Nor is it true that we Blues have played no role in this state of coming undone:
We worked very hard, for years on end, to send the madman back to the White House. Over on our own "news channel," the corporate stars we're trained to love will never discuss those failures.
They're disappeared, removed from our view. They're persistently cited on Fox, disappeared from the view of us Blues.
Beyond that, the corporate stars we're trained to love won't discuss or discuss the gonzo conduct of Gutfeld and Watters and Hannity and the army of others. In this world which is no more a world, professional courtesy—and a dominant refusal to serve—guides those corporate multimillionaires to align with a creed which is no more a creed, in which such basic reporting simply never occurs.
The madman who is a sitting president has behaved inexcusably for fifteen years, from his birther years on. It has been fifteen years of increasingly crazy behavior, but so what? The editorial board of the New York Times has never been willing to make this obvious statement
This endless behavior is inexcusable. Simply put, it's time for this person to go.
On the editorial side, they've never been willing to say that! On the news side, they've never been willing to identify President Trump's endless array of crazy misstatements and vile accusations as the stuff of an ongoing front-page news focus—as the sort of astonishing (and disturbing) behavior which needs to go right to page one every time it occurs.
Forget the likely medical issues which may lie at the heart of this crazy behavior. At the Times, they won't even come to terms with the simple existence of the crazy behavior itself.
In short, we're served by journalists who are no more journalists inside a nation which is no more a nation. They bow to a code which no more a code as they refuse to perform.
In a wide assortment of ways, we Blues helped put the sitting president where he currently is. In this tribe which is much like other tribes, we remain unable to grasp that fact, and it's very hard to see where the flood takes us from here.
We regard the president's apparent medical condition as an obvious human tragedy. We also think it's very dangerous. And yet, the silence which is very much a silence continues to roll along.
We're all badly in need of a guide, one who might help us get found.
Closing music, True Grit: "Time just gets away from us?"
To our ear, the Coen Brothers played the story as devotion to task, by each of the two major characters, to the point of possible death, in service to unshakable codes, in the uncharted land across the river where there's no established order at all.
To our ear, this closing music just leaped off the screen. The singer there is Iris DeMent. For her full three verses, click this.
As you may know, there's a football connection, this very weekend. We hope they're both full of pure grit.
