Anger and the Tragedy of the West
How the Iliad Illuminates the Cost of America's Political Division
If you haven’t been living under a rock or in an otherwise news-free environment, you’ve probably read several articles or blogs about the unfolding drama in the US over its use of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in Minnesota. I won’t deign to bore you with another hot take. Instead, I think the moment offers a glimpse of how Homer’s Iliad can help us identify the larger problem in this story from a civilizational perspective, and inform a discussion about how to improve our present circumstances.
A Preamble of Sorts
I will not advocate for a political side in this matter, or in any other. The divisiveness within the United States represents a grave crisis that threatens to darken the great light of American liberty, which despite her imperfections, ushered in an unprecedented era of self-governance and natural rights for the betterment of mankind. That light has not yet gone out. But the persistent infighting between her people threatens a future in which the whole of humanity returns to the darkness of despotism; a future in which people willingly surrender the right to self-rule in exchange for the power to impose their preferred order through the language of violence. Some may argue that such a time has already come to pass, and in the hearts of many this may be true. Yet at present, our institutions still function, and our people remain free. This is not to say that I view the actions of ICE in Minnesota or the violent protests there as morally neutral, but rather to acknowledge that these events indicate that we lack a shared moral framework in the US that would allow for fruitful discourse in this regard.
As such, let us momentarily suspend our desire to see ourselves and our political affiliation as being legally or morally authoritative on this particular issue. Not because it is irrelevant, but because we cannot presently agree on what would constitute justice or legitimate governance on this matter. From this vantage point, we can employ the lessons of the Iliad to offer a substantive diagnosis of the situation in Minnesota, so that we can move towards a productive discussion of solutions that don’t revolve around the elimination of our political opponents. If you’re unfamiliar with the Iliad you can find some background information and a synopsis of the poem here.
Power and Legitimacy in the Iliad and the United States
A prescient insight the Iliad provides us with respect to the situation in Minnesota revolves around how restraint should influence both the use of power, and the response to perceived injustice. The Greek forces in the Iliad are a confederation of Greek kingdoms who are honor bound to an oath to seek the return of Helen of Troy. As such, their strength comes from their unity, which is immediately fractured when Agamemnon dishonors Achilles (one of the other Greek kings) by forcing him to relinquish a woman who was given to him as a war prize. Agamemnon does this to compensate himself for the loss of his own war prize, a woman named Chryseis, to appease the god Apollo in the hopes of abating a plague.
Today we rightly find it morally reprehensible to treat humans as objects to be won, but in the Bronze Age this practice was embedded within the Greeks’ honor-based social economy. The awarding of prizes, human or otherwise, functioned as a system of incentives that sustained loyalty, duty, and cohesion within the alliance. Agamemnon stands foremost among the Greek kings because he commands the largest army, and within this cultural context, power often served as sufficient justification for action. Yet by seizing Achilles’ prize without restraint, Agamemnon undermines the very honor system that legitimizes his authority, collapsing the moral foundation of his leadership.
A similar dynamic can be observed in the controversy surrounding ICE’s activities in Minnesota and the violent protests that followed. Regardless of who is legally or morally correct, it is clear that many protesters, and likely a broader portion of the public, perceive these actions as illegitimate expressions of unrestrained power. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have only intensified this perception. The widespread unwillingness to suspend judgment pending a full investigation only serves to compound the issue, further eroding confidence in our institutions and criminal justice process.
Anger Cannot Resolve Disorder
In a prior post, I discussed how Achilles’ anger signals that something has gone wrong. It is a response to Agamemnon’s actions and his growing perception of disorder in Agamemnon’s leadership of the Greeks. However, by withdrawing his forces from the war and praying to the gods to favor the Trojans, his unrestrained anger transforms a broken situation into a tragedy. In effect, he dooms many of his friends and compatriots to death, including his best friend Patroclus.
Similarly, anger over the perceived injustice of ICE activities in Minnesota has manifested in protests that have sometimes turned violent. As such, this anger has escalated a broken situation into a tragedy with the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents during these confrontations. This is not intended to justify their deaths, nor to assign sole blame to any one side, but rather to point out that anger, which has consumed much of the political discourse in the US for both sides on this issue (and many others), has no ability to resolve the underlying disorder it is responding to. Whether that disorder is a historical lack of enforcement of immigration law, or the perceived inhumane treatment of people residing in the US illegally, the larger problem is the perceived loss of legitimacy. The virtue of restraint (or temperance) is as important in how we respond to perceived disorder as it is in the exercise of power.
The Conditions for Resolution
So what, if anything, can we do with this? I’m not suggesting that the discourse over the enforcement of immigration law is irrelevant. However, in a world where we cannot fundamentally agree on its application, the debate is largely moot. Productive discourse, then, must focus on the deeper problem underlying this story: the shared perception across political lines that our laws and the institutions enforcing them are illegitimate or insufficient, compounded by our growing inability to exercise restraint—whether in the use of power or in response to perceived injustice. Like the Greeks, unity is our primary strength as a democracy, and the Iliad shows us, with sobering clarity, the price of losing it. So how do we restore the perception of legitimacy for our laws and institutions for both sides? And how do we cultivate the virtue of temperance broadly as a people?
Agamemnon’s primary mistake is that he uses power without restraint, which destroys the perception that his rule is legitimate. Achilles, similarly, does not exercise restraint in his response allowing his anger to create tragedy for himself and the entire Greek alliance. However, the perception of legitimacy isn’t exclusively about the use of power, especially in a democracy, but also about belief. Both the Greeks and the Trojans have a shared moral framework, which is why when Achilles rationalizes his withdrawal from the fighting in book 9, critiquing the entire honor-prize system itself, he becomes alien to his compatriots and cannot be reconciled to them. We have tragically lost a common moral framework in the West. A society that cannot agree on what justice looks like will never be able to agree on what authority is legitimate. Any way back to a semblance of political cohesion will require temperance and a recovery of shared values.
The only time order is restored in the Iliad is in the shared recognition of humanity, such as when the Trojans and Greeks agree to cease fighting to bury their dead, or when Achilles agrees to return the body of the Trojan king Priam’s son Hector, so he can be given a proper funeral. Unfortunately, these moments occur only after a profound amount of suffering. Maybe the real question is: what would enable us to acknowledge our shared humanity before our story becomes another tragedy?
Towards Reconciliation
Perhaps a starting point lies in how we construct our narratives about political opponents. In the Iliad, Priam’s journey to Achilles succeeds because he does not arrive demanding Hector’s body as a matter of right, nor does he condemn Achilles for killing his son, though he would be justified in doing so. Instead, he appeals to Achilles’ memory of his own father, creating a moment wherein he recognizes their shared humanity, which transcends their enmity.
In our context, this might mean: Can those who support ICE enforcement genuinely engage with the fear experienced by immigrant communities facing separation from their families and the networks of care that have formed around them? Can those who oppose these enforcement actions acknowledge that many ICE agents see themselves as serving their country by upholding democratically enacted laws, and that many Americans feel that their longstanding concerns about border security have been ignored? This isn’t to proclaim that both sides are equally right, but rather recognizing that people on both sides are responding to real human concerns, and not simply acting from malice or stupidity.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!