This Is Not That

Bits and Pieces

Aug 05, 2026

Perhaps best captured in The Deer Hunter, with Robert DeNiro’s Michael’s “This is this,” we’re taking a look today at some examples of folks who seem to confuse this with that. Some are mundane; some are inspiring; some can hurt people.

Dangers at Sea

A 16-year-old lifeguard saved a young boy at Seabright Beach in California on July 25. The clip below, sans newscaster commentary, captures the lifeguard’s calm and competence amid and between the swells. The news videos with commentary take us further from the sounds of the waves and the people involved. Even this commentary-free video, however, is not the people, the ocean, the sounds, scents, tastes, feelings, and force of nature.

You might say, “Duh,” which I understand. Keep reading.

News reports of thousands of dark-skinned humans allegedly invading Spain featured headlines like: “Migrants Storm Border of Northern Spain” (the border was actually in the Spanish colony, Ceuta, which is in Africa). Many of the reports blamed liberal immigration policies for these frightening images of large numbers of poor people looking for better lives. Very few reports interviewed individual “invaders”. Almost no report said anything about what led some 50-60 thousand people to make this move at the same time. Here’s an excerpt from Anne Applebaum, who investigated:

“Last week, according to El Pais as well as other Spanish, international, and Moroccan media outlets, many Moroccans saw a TikTok video nevertheless claiming that “the Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” meaning they could reach the European continent. The video appeared to reference a recent ruling by the Spanish supreme court making it harder to return migrants who arrive by sea, but it was not the only encouragement. Other messages, many of which have now disappeared, told people where to buy wet suits, flippers, goggles, floats, and even waterproof bags for documents and cellphones. Screenshots from Google Maps told them which sections of the Ceuta beach might have fewer police. Moroccan border guards were either unwilling or unable to stop them.”1

It remains unclear who initiated the false social media message.

Applebaum continued:

“I watched this whole thing unfold with a strong sense of déjà vu:
For more than a decade now, European and indeed American politicians have known that real, fake, enhanced, or context-free pictures of migrants jumping fences will immediately create a wave reaction. Military rhetoric will be used—attack or invasion—and, to quote Vance, “radical left-wing globalist policies” will be blamed. Hardly anyone will ask why it is that so many people are so desperate to move that they will risk their lives. Few will mourn the dead.
And somehow, everyone is surprised, unprepared and intimidated when one of these entirely predictable waves begins. Maybe it’s time that politicians of the center-left and center-right start preparing their own messaging in advance.”

The news commentary, the videos, the incorrect location of the events, and the still unknown origin of the information that motivated the events—none of these were the events: the people, the hopes, the scents, the sights, the emotions, the intentions of participants.

Whose History?

Much has been written about the ongoing, and in some cases very successful efforts by the Trump administration to offer a white supremacist view of American history by pushing back on the more inclusive and honest history that includes the perspectives of women, enslaved people, and betrayed people (among others). Among those being canceled by the Trump administration’s extra-whitening strips are DEI programs in general and specific truth-tellers like the late Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Among the powerful voices who, fortunately, are privately funded and do not rely on government aid are organizations like the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), whose Legacy Sites include the Legacy Museum, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square.

In an August 3 opinion piece in the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, M. Gessen addresses these attempts by the Trump administration to unwrite and rewrite history. Gessen compares the current U.S. policies to past and current Soviet and Russian policies. After a visit to EJI’s Legacy Sites with his wife and “four…former colleagues from Russia who now live in exile,” and an interview with founder, Bryan Stevenson, Gessen noted the following:

“My traveling companions couldn’t help noticing that when Stevenson described actions the United States had taken to oppress Black people, he said “we” instead of “the government” or “racist lawmakers.” We asked him why. “I refuse to give America to anyone else,” Stevenson explained. That is one way to interpret the word “inclusion” in D.E.I.: a story in which your ancestors aren’t elided.”

Stevenson embraces a large “we” that is not understood by or is frightening to those who only thrive within a select “us” that exists to oppose a selected “them”.

The one thing missing from Gessen’s piece—and this is an observation, not a criticism—is any mention of Project 2025 and its many authors. I believe that volume’s title should be mentioned alongside almost every bit of news that emerges through Trump’s history revisions, memos, and executive orders. In his Foreword, Kevin Roberts presents “four broad fronts that will decide America’s future” that he later refers to as “promises”:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect
our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the
American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution
calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”2

Included under #2, are the following problems that need to be addressed:

A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental
Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through
difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes;
Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead
of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement
agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity;
Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American,
ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms;
Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to
undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists;
Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training”
seminars about “white privilege”; and
Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with
woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.3

Trump gets to self-enrich and self-aggrandize in exchange for putting his Sharpie squiggles on whatever these people put in front of him. Many of his memos and executive orders emerge almost verbatim from Project 2025. Maybe you used to know this. We need to be reminded of it every day.

Trump is a dangerous tool in the hands of a few hundred men who want to go back to a great, white, Christian America that never existed.

The Idiocy and the Odyssey

Tell me of the man, Muse, the simpleminded man,
skilled in all ways of manipulation, greed, and deceit,
who, embodying the worst, plunders the best of America,
traversing, and lost amid, the incoherent CAPITAL
LETTERS of social media, while seated on his golden throne.
Loyal only to himself and incompetence, he is held in high
esteem by the frightened, ignorant, and incompetent.

For anyone who’s never read anything attributed to Homer, you still haven’t.

For anyone who’s not heard or read about the gnashing of teeth surrounding Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey, I wrote a bit about that last week and you can go beyond my ramblings, if you choose, here.

Here’s a final look at the difference between this and that.

Disclaimers for what follows:

I don’t make my living as a poet.
There’s a big difference between adapting a 2,000-plus-year-old, 12,000-plus line poem that has been translated multiple times into multiple languages in different eras into a 21st-century film, and adapting a several-week old photograph into a 15-line poem (known as ekphrasis, if you’re interested).
NOTE the photograph that inspired the poem below appears later in the post. It may be disturbing, so scroll skillfully. The poem, “This Open Eye” was the title poem for my 2006 collection of poems on the Iraq war, This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do. It was also included in my 2018 book of poems, Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence, and Greed.
An old, long, amazing, much-studied and celebrated poem and a 2026 film are two different things. Classicists have every right to want a film to be true to their understanding or translation of The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan did not want to make a 50-plus hour film or maxiseries (I’m guessing), so there was no way he was going to capture the entirety of plot, character, theme, texture, etc. on the screen. He was making a new work of art and was informed by the poem, both current and past times, his expertise as a filmmaker, and his worldview.
Here’s a brief, perhaps simple, example of creating a poem from a photograph. Two thisses that do not meet as a that. The poet’s twofold intention was to attempt first to capture the essence of the image in words; and then to provide brief commentary. This poem does this in 47 words.

This Open Eye

Swollen shut the right
eye seeps semi-clotted
blood that streams
and blotches a map of
hell across the three-
year-old face. Wide
open, the left eye
appears injury-free –
untouched, but
ultimately more
lethal.
Through this open
eye the child sees
the world that has
closed the other.

The first 8.5 lines attempt to capture the visual image in text—an attempt at objectivity that is nonetheless, inevitably, a subjective interpretation. The final 6.5 lines offer my interpretation and commentary. The photograph is truthful and striking. The poem attempts to convey that truth in its own medium, but it’s a poem and not a photograph. (A final duh).

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Thanks for reading.

The photo is below the music video.

We’ll depart with Janis Ian’s 1990s “Searching for America”: