From: Fifth Period, VII.
The world goes to hell in a handbasket, but we are saved from the threat of pronoun dysphoria.
Oh, Wisconsin! Score one against the terrible Trumusker! It would seem that if Elon had spent more money the margin of victory might have been greater.
The idea that our descent into chaos is all part of Trump’s big-brain strategy is belied by the obvious fact that he has the bandwidth of a bumper sticker and the attention span of a gnat: one shiny object at a time, please. One might suppose that his large head indicates the presence of a large brain, but if the case, one devoted to his own glorification to the exclusion of thoughts of any degree of perspicacity regarding the national interest.
(Cartoon recycled from the third year of Trump’s warm-up lap: March, 2019.)
“Russia, Russia, Russia …”, a leftist conspiracy theory, no doubt, but of unusually high degree of correlation between Trumpian policy and Putinian ambition. Occam’s Razor might suggest a simpler explanation: a meeting of reptilian minds as to the proper order of the world wherein the will of a nation may be brought to that of the autocrat. Louis XIV is quoted as having said, “I am the nation.” As the American led world order of the last eighty years is systematically torn asunder, apparently to be replaced by a transactional, premodern balance of great powers, one is drawn for comparison of the emergent new order to Orwell’s vision of a future world (1984) in which perpetual war is equated with perpetual peace. Wars, within diplomatically agreed upon limits between empires defined by spheres of predatory interest, serve mutual interests of roughly equivalent powers, are justification for autocratic rule, for central control and for plunder of vassal states within their respective realms, for perpetual suspension of individual rights, and the establishment of a state of martial law. The police powers of the state are absolute, “justice” swift and unappealable. Naysayers and transgressors are sent to the front as fodder for choreographed spectacles of slaughter well documented, premixed with jingoistic propaganda and distributed as infotainment, via iPhone implants, to avid consumers monitored as to their degree of receptivity as measured by the brands they buy. Unity is maintained by hyper-awareness of threats from imperial enemies beyond the nation’s recognized sphere of influence and by the fear of individuals as to the consequences of what might be construed as disloyalty, equated as it is to treason.
Russia, Russia, Russia, February 2017, from beginning of Trump’s first term, in which the new president shares his anxieties with mentor and role model.
Even to the Western Sea
i.
Once upon a word an edifice was built
of earth, of stone, and steel,
and amber shards from northern seas,
pride spun from germ of inspiration,
germ sprung from ancestral loins
by others joined to make its children,
recombinant sequences repeated
as a syncopated drumming
of sound against the sky,
reverberant against a wall of silence;
pride that drew the willing breath of strangers,
drew them to its purpose,
that rolled across a continent,
even to the Western Sea.
ii.
Once they sailed beyond the Western Sea,
charged affairs to others care
or left them where they lay,
fought wars on foreign shores,
broke like waves upon those shores,
“Mars… up to the ears in blood.”
Many there were left to graves
on hillsides looking back across the sea.
Of those returning some were wiser,
others wondered to what purpose.
Of those who never went
and those returning, many prospered,
most got by, made new children,
charging every one with hope,
carried on their moment
with some measure of contentment.
iii.
But with contentment,
with the languid ease of plenty,
with no further worlds to conquer,
came contempt of such contentment,
of peace hard won by those who’d gone before.
Those once joined to common cause
now turned upon each other,
each seeking for themselves advantage.
Elders dozed while children ran amok.
Ancestral fires no longer tended,
first to embers then to ashes,
an age of heroes passing now to one of whimper.
The tide that carried all before it
now receded but to leave a cluttered shore.
iv.
Now in mortal form,
demons make their mischief in the world.
For a thousand miles a highway runs
through lands where truth is made of lies,
forgotten promise in a shattered land,
honor spilt from broken cups.
For a thousand miles the highway runs
past boarded windows, tilting,
sagging houses that envelope
imprisoned forms of half-human souls,
all value vacuumed from the land
by the hydra-headed god of branded orifice.
v.
Jesus saves next to the adult video
in the strip mall by the dollar store.
And five miles down the road
repeats with variation,
Jesus saves beside the vaping shop,
next to the marijuana store,
just past the tattoo parlor
and the nail salon,
before the massage parlor,
where Oriental girls in underwear
give head for tips.
For Bubba’s Barbeque the billboard reads,
Never Sausage a Place.
vi.
One must speak for children yet unborn
or smothered by a heavy hand,
a gentle heart betrayed by kindness,
your absence unexplained;
for every sin goes clean round the world,
infecting innocence,
returning from behind to whisper,
“This is all your fault, you know.”
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Thanks again for reading!
Still right on!