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The Proper Hecatombs · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:26
The. One of the reasons we studied
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the past is because we're trying to learn things that we then use
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and apply to our lives today, to not just understand what's going
0:52
on, but to figure out how we can do better.
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I suppose in the book The Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey, there
1:05
is a depressing story about Telemachus.
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He's the son of Odysseus, who is desperately trying to find his
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father. I'm not going to tell you the
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whole story, but there's a reason why he wants to know, is
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my father alive or is my father dead?
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Because it's going to affect what's happening in his home.
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And so he goes to all the places that the other Greeks who had
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fought in the Trojan War and subsequently arrived back home.
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He goes to all those places to talk to those people, find out
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what's what happened. Have you seen my father?
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Have you heard my father when he arrives at the Spartans and goes
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to Sparta where he talks to Menelaus?
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Now Menelaus again, I don't want to, I don't want to rehash Greek
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history here, Greek mythology here.
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But Menelaus is the king who was married to Helen, who was stolen
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by Paris of Troy, who then took her to Troy, which is what
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caused all of this nonsense in the first place.
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By this point, though, 20 years later, Helen is back with
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Menelaus. She's, you know, by all
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accounts, they are a, a very happy couple.
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They're very much in love. They're very mature.
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They're aged. And as Telemachus arrives there,
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he sits down to talk to Menelaus.
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Menelaus is recounting his story to Telemachus.
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And one of the things he tells him is in my attempt to get
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home, I was be calmed by the gods.
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The gods chose to withhold the winds from my sails.
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And even though it really isn't that far from Troy to Greece,
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despite it, it would take him many, many months to get home,
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he got stuck on an island. The island is called Pharaohs.
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You've probably heard of it. It's where the the lighthouse
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was, was built, one of the seven wonders of the world.
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And it was a frustrating experience for him because this
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island was very it. It didn't have a lot of food.
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It didn't have a lot of doesn't, didn't have a lot of people,
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didn't have any people. What it had was a lot of seals
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and frustration. And every time he tried to leave
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the island, something would stop him from leaving.
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And his ships and his men and his wife, Helen, were very
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distraught because they've been there for weeks trying to get
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off this island. And one evening he decided to
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mentaleas decided to take a walk.
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And as he's walking down the beach, he runs into one of the
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immortals who, Because this is what you know what in the story
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they call a Mac Guffin tells him.
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Look, you here is how you can get off the aisle.
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You need to catch my father Proteus.
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It which isn't going to be easy by the way, because Proteus is a
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shape shifting deity and he likes seals.
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I'm not trying to explain it to you.
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I'm just trying to tell you what happened.
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So the next day, Metal Aus four of his men hide in a cave
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wearing disgusting seal skins. They managed to catch Proteus.
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It's a long story, doesn't matter.
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After they've caught Proteus, who is a deity, he explains to
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them that he asks him why can't I get off this island?
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What's what's keeping me here? Now, the answer might surprise
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you or it may not. If you know anything about Greek
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mythology and if you know anything about the The Olympian
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gods, you can probably already guess what the answer is.
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This is Metalius. This whole war was for him to
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get Helen back from Troy, which he's done.
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Helen is, is right there. The entire thing was about this.
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The gods chose sides. And when the war was done, when,
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when, when Troy fell because Odysseus's plan to bring in the
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the Trojan Horse, Metalaeus, Odysseus and others took time
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after the war to plunder everything they could find, load
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ships after ship after ship full of treasure.
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And Metalaeus does this, he loads up all these ships with
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treasure, says thanks. Zeus gets in his ship and sails
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home, tries to anyway. He gets be calmed.
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And then he gets, you know, essentially marooned on
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Pharaoh's island. And when he asks Proteus what
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what's happened here, Proteus gives him a very it.
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It's both a surprising answer and not a surprising answer #1
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He tells him, look, the gods like you.
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If they didn't like you, you know, you would have ended up
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like some of these other people who died on the way home.
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So you are favored by the gods, the, the gods like you, your
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constituents like you. But he did something
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inappropriate. What was that thing that he did
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that was inappropriate? He failed to make tribute to the
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gods. And that might seem like a
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really simple explanation. He said thanks.
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Thanks, Zeus. Appreciate it.
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Thanks, Dia. Athena, thank you.
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But he did not make the appropriate sacrifices.
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He did not make the appropriate propitiations.
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He didn't do the things that he knew he was supposed to do
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because he was busy, just won the war trying to get all his
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treasure loaded up. And so the God said, you know
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what, put him on that island for a while until, until he figures
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it out. And that's the the thing that
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Proteus tells him is he can't believe you can't figure this
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out on your own. You know, maybe another month
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here, get a little hungrier. Maybe you'd figure it out.
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Proteus fails to remember who it is that he serves.
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And because he forgets who it is that he serves, he is not
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allowed to enjoy the spoils of his war.
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Other than his wife, Helen. What's that have to do with
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anything? I hear you cry.
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This week we've seen three stories, I guess.
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One was on the Bill Mix show. It was about how to lose a
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Republic. Maybe you heard the show, maybe
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you didn't. Bill's reading an article about
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this disconnect between leadership and the people, and
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how in the past this has led to the establishment of a Caesar.
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And while there is a whole lot of meat on that conversational
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Buffalo that I don't have time to get into, there are some
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angles of that that maybe someday we need to explore that
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the principle is correct. The Roman Senate became
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convinced, increasingly isolated from the average Roman, that
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they served. The leadership became
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increasingly unpopulist. In fact, the optimates is what
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they called themselves. You had the optimates and the
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populist. And Caesar, Julius Caesar was a
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populist. Second story we had was about
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Marjorie Taylor Green, who And I'm going to say this.
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I'm, I'm just going to say it. Some of you aren't going to like
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it. Some of you love it.
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I don't care. Marjorie Taylor Green is one of
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the least significant people in the history of our country, as
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far as I'm concerned. I have paid very little
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attention to anything that she has to say.
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From day one. I just didn't care.
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She impressed me as being an opportunist.
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She impressed me as essentially A populist.
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But she announced this week, this past week, that she is
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leaving Congress. Why?
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Because she had an argument with Trump over the Epstein files and
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it made her feel like nobody loves me, everybody hates me,
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nobody loves me, everybody hates me.
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I'm going to go to the garden and eat worms now.
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I'm going to take my ball and go home.
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But she made sure to make it clear that while she has no
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political plans in the future, she wouldn't mind some Kush job
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somewhere not making that up. And then we had a story about
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Lindsey Graham, as Rush Limbaugh used to call him.
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Lindsey Graham took action during the shutdown solution.
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Remember the bill that solved the shutdown?
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He had something removed from that bill and that's something
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was a provision or actually I take that all back.
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He didn't have anything removed. He stopped something from being
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removed from that bill. In that bill is a provision
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which allows US senators who may have been targeted by the Biden
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DOJ. Remember this whole thing where
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the the DOJ was trying to get Trump and so they were spying on
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on Congress people and senators, and they put into this bill a
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provision the Senate did that allowed senators to sue the
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federal government for up to $500,000 per occurrence to
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punish the government, I guess, for spying on them.
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Now, there's two keys here. Number one, it's $500,000 per
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occurrence. At least one senator is on
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record saying that he plans to sue for millions, 10s of
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millions of dollars. The second point about this
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particular thing that they put into the solutions air quote air
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quote to the to the shutdown was it's only for Senator.
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You understand, there's no no allocation in this for any house
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member that was spied on, nor is there any allocation for any
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citizen that was spied on unless you happen to be a United States
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senator. When the House found out about
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this, they wanted it removed. They said fuck that, and Lindsey
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Graham threatened to derail the whole thing if it wasn't left in
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there. And because it was such a late
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hour, and because everyone had already announced that the
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shutdown was over, and because the president already said he
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was going to sign it as soon as at his desk, It's still in the
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scene in the Odyssey. The metal ass recounting that
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sojourn on the island. Pharaohs is all about how
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Menelaus forgot who he was actually serving.
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The core lesson is, of course, that even when one is outwardly
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successful, when the essential duties are neglected, the
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results are not good. Stagnation, entrapment,
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vulnerability. Service is like sacrifice.
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We elect people to serve us, to represent us, Who, by the way,
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we're also spied upon by the Biden DOJ.
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They owe their tribute. They owe they they owe that
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propitiation to us, the public, to the Republic and when they
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enrich themselves instead of serving we get a mentalist like
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moment, don't we? Rich ships but no wind.
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Now the deal with Marjorie Taylor Green as I said, I don't
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care if she quits Congress or not I look I left Georgia 20
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years ago, more than 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago.
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I haven't talked a lot about my time in Georgia.
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It's, it's one of those periods in my life that I'm not.
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It's not that I'm not proud of it, it's just it was a mistake.
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I made the best of it, but I shouldn't have been.
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It's not where I belong. This is one of the reasons why
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people start telling me what God wants me to do.
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I just say, look, God's got my phone number.
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If he wants to talk to me, he can talk to me directly, much
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like he did mentally. It's otherwise I don't take
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other people's word for it anymore.
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If I hadn't fanned, I wouldn't have been in Georgia.
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Now, I love George, don't get me wrong.
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A lot of things like about Georgia, including, by the way,
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where I really got involved in Republican politics.
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One of my best friends there was a Republican state senator who
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also had happened to serve as a navigator on AB 25 during World
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War Two. We became very good friends.
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He was someone that I worked very closely with and I really
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like the place and he got me involved with those things and,
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and it was, it was an interesting time. 96 election
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special. I loved people there.
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I love the the countryside, the food is fantastic.
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It's kind of where I became something of a Falcons fan, got
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to go to a lot of baseball, really like, but I shouldn't
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have been. That said, because I was
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involved with the politics, I kind of understood it.
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I shouldn't tell you the story, but I'm going to tell you the
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story to show you how involved in the politics I was At the
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time. We had a congresswoman by the
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name of Cynthia McKinney, as Neil Bortz used to call her, the
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cutest little communist in Congress.
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One day I was sitting at lunch. I had gone to a local place for
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lunch. It's a little pizzeria that was
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big down there. And I was just sitting there by
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myself because I often did. I was reading something, had my
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head in the book Da Da Da, And I'm just reading and I'm eating.
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And the next thing I know, there's someone sitting at my
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table across from me. And this person hands me a
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button, you know, campaign button, and says, Cynthia
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McKinney for Congress. It was an election year.
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I believe it was 96, as a matter of fact.
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And I looked at this person over the top of my glasses, like my
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dad used to do when he was annoyed, you know, that kind of
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look. And I said, no, thank you.
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And he said to me, you are not voting for Cynthia.
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I said, if I wouldn't vote for Cynthia McKinney if you had a
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gun to my head, in fact, I I wouldn't vote for her if she was
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the only person running. If she was the only person
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running, I'd run against her just to make sure that someone
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is pointing out her problems and her mistakes and her fallacies.
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I handed the button back and I said, now if you'll excuse me,
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I'm trying to read. Went back to the book that I was
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reading and a few moments later, someone else sat down at the
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table. I looked up and sitting directly
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across from me was Congresswoman Cynthia Mckenney, wanting to
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know why I didn't vote for her. And when I was done, the manager
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of the place came over and picked up my check and said,
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watch this on me today. I was involved with Georgia
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politics. I used to know Georgia politics
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pretty well. I'm, I, I really don't anymore.
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So I can't tell you what's going to happen with Marjorie Taylor
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Green's seat. I don't, I do know this, she's
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going to leave the Republicans in Congress with A5 seat
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majority, which is enough, I guess.
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I mean, they passed Obamacare with A2 seat majority, right?
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I don't know what district she's for.
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I don't know. So I don't know what's going to
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happen. I do know that she has announced
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that her resignation will take place effective January 5th.
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Why does this matter? Because on January 5th, she will
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have already cast her vote for the Speaker of the House and she
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will be fully vested in the retirement fund.
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By fully vested, I look this up. She is capped at 80% of her
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congressional yearly salary as her pension as her annual
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pension. All right, look, I'm fully
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vested in the retirement that I company I used to work for, but
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I guarantee it ain't nowhere near 80% of what my salary was.
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It's a couple 100 bucks. That said, 80% of a
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Congressperson salary today is $139,000 plus a year.
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Yes, you heard that correctly. She is capped at a retirement
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pension of $139,000 per year. And because Congress has
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exempted itself and written laws the way it has, she could,
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theoretically. I don't know her work history.
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I don't know what she's going to do.
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I don't know what she's done. Then I don't even know how old
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she is. Don't care.
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She could collect Social Security.
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Yes, that is correct. Theoretically she could get full
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Social Security and her congressional pension, both paid
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for by us, the people that she is supposed to be serving now.
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If you know anything about Social Security, you're not
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getting anywhere near $139,000 a year on that, are you?
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In point of fact, went to a lecture the other day where the
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guy explained to me that at best, at best, assuming you live
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to the averages and still you might collect, you might over
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the course of your retirement collect 1/4 of a million over
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the course of your your retirement from Social Security.
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You might if you retire young enough and you live long enough
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and you made the right contribution, blah, blah, blah,
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blah, blah. She's going to make $139,000 a
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year from a pension in Congress on top of whatever other
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retirements she would get. And by the way, if she gets that
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government job, that pension goes up.
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Lindsey Graham wants to be able to sue the government.
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He wants to be able to sue us, we the people, the government.
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Because the Biden administration probably spied on at $500,000
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per occurrence, Is that really in the public interest or is
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this a personal enrichment opportunity?
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Is is Lindsey Graham was Lindsey Graham.
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Look, I despise what the Biden administration did.
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What they did is despicable. What they did should be
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punished. What they did was UN American.
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It was illegal, and for God's sakes, it has to be corrected.
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But in the real world of things, how was Lindsey Graham hurt to
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the tune of $500,000 per occurrence, any more than any
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other American ones? His goal is to safeguard the
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Republic, the rule of law, the public trust.
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And instead of writing a law, instead of doing something to
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prevent this from ever happening again, he's crossing the line
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between self-serving blunderbloss and it's personal
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enrichment. This isn't about these two
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individuals, by the way, folks. It's symptomatic of an entire
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Congress that often treats service, sacrifice, tribute to
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the people as an afterthought, and benefits as the front door.
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When you read that piece about do you want to say it's Caesar?
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Because this is how you get a Caesar.
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It draws A sobering warning, doesn't it?
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When lawmakers fail in their duty to the citizens, eventually
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we're going to end up with someone who acts like Julius
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Caesar, a strongman who will take over because the
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institutions fail. The House won't legislate.
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Congress won't legislate. When when the courts are
24:52
blocking things, agencies are rebelling, the body politics
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turns to someone who literally can just act.
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And that's the end of a Republic, not its renewal.
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And it's that lack of sacrificial service, that lack
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of understanding who it is you serve.
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It is in the the self enrichment, the neglect of your
25:14
duties that when they open wide enough, the ship of state goes
25:20
down. Now we all agree we need better.
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We all, we all say it. We need better.
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We need better people in office. I think that's pretty obvious.
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But do we deserve it? Color me stupid, but why do the
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people of South Carolina keep sending this numb nuts back to
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Senate? Back to the Senate?
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You already know the answer to the question, don't you?
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Either they don't care, or they're getting something out of
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it. The same reason your
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congressperson keeps getting sent back is because you either
26:02
don't care or you're getting something out of it.
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And so we're tolerating. We the people are tolerating
26:08
this enrichment with 0 accountabilities.
26:12
We've become the enablers. We've become the men and women
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of Menelaus who are just standing there on the beach of
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Pharaohs Island with him because we're not holding him
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accountable to properly do the sacrifices.
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Are we calling that out? Are we saying anything?
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No, we're not. Look, this story from the
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Odyssey, and this is what I keep telling people.
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We, we, we use the word mythology.
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I hate the word I I really hate the word because there's a,
26:52
there's a, a mindset that goes into our head mythology.
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Well, that's just, it's just fake religion, right?
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I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just a story just made-up.
27:02
No, it's history. It's being used to teach us
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lessons that we should be learning.
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And this story in the Odyssey, Sorry, I just spilled my coffee.
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That's how fired up I am tonight.
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This story in the Odyssey, it's not just some story, it's a
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warning. It was a warning to the Greeks.
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Don't neglect your proper duties to the gods.
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To us, it is a reminder we cannot move forward as a
27:44
Republic if our rituals of service and sacrifice are
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allowed to be forgotten. We're just going to be stuck on
27:58
an island till somebody comes along and says one thing or the
28:03
other and either kills us where we stand or rescues us.
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The challenge to us is to demand the sacrifice.
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The challenge to us is to say to her point blank, you're
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enriching yourselves at the taxpayer expense.
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You don't need a pension or you don't need.
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So one of the two and you people passed laws that made it
28:31
possible for you to do both. The Senate has said we, we, we
28:43
can sue, but no one else can. Even though there were far more,
28:49
many, far more Congress people, far more American citizens that
28:53
were targeted by the Biden DOJ than there were Senator.
28:59
So either open it up to everybody or strike it because
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it is just self enrichment. That's all it is.
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It's just loading your treasure ship full of treasure and
29:13
neglecting your service and your duty.
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My friends, the this winds will not fill our sails until we
29:26
return our institutions to the altar of service, until we pay
29:31
the proper tributes to our people and to our to our
29:34
Republic. You stop enriching the idol
29:40
while the ship drips.