When I read this essay about the early 20th-century literary critic Northrop Frye I didn’t expect it to be the sort of thing that would fit into this newsletter. But it is. First, because anything by the gifted scholar Alan Jacobs is usually worth recommending. And second because its primary concern is with myth, and how we think about the role myths play in literature, in human society, and in our conceptions of ourselves. The most important myths—by which Jacobs, like Frye, means not false tales but stories of enduring cultural and symbolic meaning—in human history may well be those of the Hebrew Bible. For Frye and his successors, for decades considered passé in English departments, myth was the key to understanding literature:

Should we regret the passing of the mythical method, of mythology in its etymological sense of discourse about myths and mythmaking? Perhaps the question is misleading: mythmaking is alive and well—if by that we mean the creation and sharing of stories that are meant to orient us, morally and emotionally, to our world and are resistant to restatement in straightforward conceptual terms. But taken differently, the question reveals just how the decline of myth criticism has tended to render our own myths invisible to us as myths. They may appear to us, but they do so in false guises, as science perhaps, or as politics, or as administrative procedure.

Though the study of myth emerged from the discovery of cultural diversity, the mythical method of the 20th century arose from a desperate hope to bridge the chasms of hatred and fear that separate humans from one another. Fact and argument alone cannot build forbearance and charity across racial and cultural and sexual boundaries; this requires image and event, the visualizable and the narratable, picture and story. One can see that the attempt failed while admitting and even embracing its nobility.

Offering a physical safe haven for Hamas’s leaders is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Qatar’s bad behavior. Danielle Pletka explains:

Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh and his cronies live a plush life in Doha. He is reputedly worth billions. Is all that dough under his mattress? Or in a bank in Qatar? I don’t know, but presumably the Treasury Department does.

Qatar has funneled billions to Hamas, an organization that currently holds 120—and five live American—hostages in Gaza. When the U.S. was playing the good guy in Afghanistan (before Biden’s disgraceful withdrawal), where were the exiled al Qaeda-loving emirs of the Taliban swanning about? Qatar.

Then there’s Qatar’s super-cozy relationship with Iran. Qatar’s cronies in the Washington lobbying world, at the Department of State, and—perhaps most importantly—at the White House, insist that the Qataris are only acting at America’s behest. Hamas? They wouldn’t be there if the U.S. hadn’t asked. Iranian money flowing through Qatari banks? Ditto.

Finally, . . . there’s Qatar’s nefarious influence on U.S. universities. Between the numerous “Qatar campuses” and the largely unreported cash gushing to U.S. institutions of higher ed, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Jew-hatred flourishing. And yes, there’s a direct correlation between that cash and anti-Semitism.

It’s way past time for the United States to get serious about this regime. And if the White House won’t, let’s hope that Congress will.