“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”

Captain Ahab’s words, spoken for him by Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, explain his quest for Moby-Dick, the white whale.

Soon after leaving Nantucket Island, Ahab gathers the crew and tells them his true purpose is not the whaling voyage the ship’s Quaker owners planned and for which the crew joined, but one of revenge on Moby-Dick, the sperm whale that bit off his lower leg during his last trip to the whaling grounds.

He nails a gold doubloon to the mast, to be given to the first man who spots Moby-Dick. The entire crew comes to share the obsession for the whale and are filled with the dark passion for revenge as their captain. Even the skeptical first mate, Starbuck, is soon under his sway.

It becomes clear that Ahab is a tortured man whose personal injury corrupted his soul. He can’t look ahead – only able to look back to the personal injuries he suffered and his need for revenge on the whale that injured him.

While on the voyage, another whaling ship, the Rachel, asks for assistance in searching for missing crew including the captain’s son.

But Ahab will not pause in his revenge and abandons the Rachel and her fearful captain to their own fate.

Later, Ahab and most of the crew of the Pequod are killed in a battle with Moby-Dick. Only Ishmael survives, rescued by the Rachel as it continues its forlorn search.

While Moby-Dick is now considered a classic of American literature, it wasn’t in Melville’s time. There were difficulties in editing and publishing as well as critical reviews of the novel in both the US and Britain.

Ultimately, it took over 70 years for the novel to be recognized for its brilliance by writers such as William Faulkner and DH Lawrence.

Its themes of the universality of friendship; questions of the self and truth; obsession and death, and questions of good and evil – all make it a novel that speaks to any age.

And today 170 years after its publication, we have our Ahab and our own white whale.

At one point, I might have made a comparison of Ahab to Joe Biden, or even more appropriately, Donald Trump.

But now I wonder if the novel can also be speaking to something more in our time than an obsessed individual –  and that is to the obsessions of U.S. partisan politics.

Each side has its own Moby-Dick that must be destroyed.

For the Democrats, their Moby-Dick is MAGA and its nativism, gun-loving ‘crazies’, and ‘pro life’; for the Republicans, their white whale is the party of ‘anti American extremists’, abortion rights, open borders, and transgender rights.

Both have their Ahabs – one with domestic issues in mind; the other with clearing the international ocean of all enemies.

Admittedly, Trump is the more perfect comparison to the original Ahab.

With his dark obsessions and personal grievances, and with his persuasive speaking skills, he’s able to sometimes mask his need for revenge by speaking to the economic injustices that exist.

Biden, while he was a candidate, spoke for what was to be a better life for all once they killed the white whale; yet his real obsessions lay in a world view that meant destruction of his personal Moby-Dick: Russia.

Harris is the replacement for her party’s quest against their white whale. Beyond that little is known – but given the crew that will be guiding her, it seems she will be made to share the same dark journey as Biden.

Both Harris and Trump have nailed their own gold doubloons to the masthead –  we will be rewarded if we join them, as they will make America great again or a better place than it would be if their Moby-Dick survives.

I did not mention Israel in any of the above – both sides share the same obsessions of their Ahab – Netanyahu, and their gold doubloons for doing so.

For the party activists and compliant media on both sides, destruction of their own white whale may be seen as a victory – for their means all seem sane.

But their motives and object – mad.

For the destruction of the white whale will be mutual – there is only one Pequod, and we all sail on her, including those of us shanghaied aboard.

And there will be no Rachel to gather the survivors.