The Carpentariat

The often overlooked power of poetry

I once had a ladyfriend who was quite talented not only in writing prose, but lyrical poetry as well. She lacked any route to pursue them professionally — family, jobs and all that — she told me. Damn shame. I also, on occasion, correspond with an American expatriate in Canada of impressive poetical power. And I think of them both when I read other gifted poets — among whom I qualify not — who combine the lyrical with the political (my gig), such as this segment from R. Rodriguez's partially titled "Better Angels."

 

   Hate must not break our sacred bond

of affection nor our will to love again

  Only love can take us far beyond

And break the curse brought by Cain

 

  The mystic chords of memory

Will swell when again touched as

  surely as they will awaken every

Passion for peace our country has

 

And then there are elegiac quatrains that are essentially nonpolitical — but with merely a smattering of one's imagination, they become transformative in these pivotal times, such as this one from Jay Ungar and Molly Mason.

 

Under the moon the mountains lie sleeping
Over the lake the stars shine.
They wonder if you and I will be keeping
The magic and music, or leave them behind.

 

I wish I could write like that. But it doesn't really matter. Because they can, and I can read them.

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”

The Washington Post has followed up with a few 2016 Trump supporters. Here are a few of the few; all of them are here. Some of the responses are genuinely heartening, some are near coherent, some are indecipherable, and some still call for large bulky men in white coats carrying butterfly nets.

“In 2016 … I held my nose and voted for Donald Trump. This time, I won’t be holding my nose.”

Jay Maynard, 60, FAIRMONT, MINN.

“However much or little you ascribe blame for the current restlessness of the country to Trump, he’s definitely not the solution.”

Max Mordell, 34, CINCINNATI

“If I were in a swing state, I might consider voting for Trump, but not Biden.”

Rhonnie Cough, 32, COLUMBIA, S.C.

“I don’t see either party working to fix …gen sygenucnely stemic problems. That’s why I’m putting all of my energy behind getting more options for our future.”

Kirsten Johnson, 35, MINNEAPOLIS

“I’m still glad the Clintons are not in the White House, but I will be voting for Biden in November.”

Howard Gaskill, 80, GEORGETOWN, DEL.

“President Trump’s foreign policy achievements in four years are impressive and have exceeded that of many two-term presidents.”

Mackenzie Gans, 32, LAS VEGAS

Biden, Michigan, Wisconsin

Keep in mind that these are just polling averages from FiveThirtyEight, but numbers-guru Nate Mahatma Silver observes with fair confidence that, with only a week to go, Joe Biden could take substantial hits in Michigan and Wisconsin, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and still win the states.

Clinton lost both, of course, yet in 538's final 2016 averaging she held precarious leads in them: 4 points in Michigan; 5 points in Wisconsin — neither of them far from the margin of error. She then went on to lose those states by less than 1 percent in each.

Biden, however, leads in Michigan by 8 points and by 7 in Wisconsin.

Which means — Ode to Joy: Freude trinken alle Wesen / An den Brüsten der Natur — that "Biden’s extra cushion means he could survive a 2016-magnitude miss," notes Silver. 

The little child shall lead him, and then kick Donald's butt back to his gilded, red-velvety, New Orleans whorehouse-fashioned Manhattan lair.

Lock them ALL up.

Should a deistic Providence, Satan or the Supreme Court (excuse the redundancy), or American karma permit Trump's reelection, this is what we are looking at. Next time, successfully.

Huge "LOCK HIM UP" chants erupt after Trump talks about the "Biden scandal" in Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/1DlzlEBxKr

— The Recount (@therecount) October 26, 2020

If they only understood: Jeffrey Toobin in "The Agony and the Ecstasy"

Vice.com's "Flash" news from 10/19:

"The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on….

"Two people who were on the call told VICE separately that the call was an election simulation featuring many of the New Yorker's biggest stars: Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans; Evan Osnos was Joe Biden, Jelani Cobb was establishment Democrats, Masha Gessen played Donald Trump, Andrew Marantz was the far right, Sue Halpern was left wing democrats, Dexter Filkins was the military, and Jeffrey Toobin [represented the parking-lot, open trench-coat voting bloc]."

My apology. I actually do feel sorry for the guy. Nature suddenly called? But still, what the fuck was he thinking? When was the last time you decided that a professional confab was an ideal opportunity for what they used to call "self-abuse"? I could understand if Jeff had been Zoom-interviewing Trump. I mean, after all, you'd need something on your mind as he prattled away. 

It gets better.

"New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote in an email to all New Yorker staffers: 'Dear All' — Oh My Gad, not again! — 'as you may have read [as you may have read] in various news reports today, one of our writers … was suspended after an incident [an incident] on a Zoom call last week. Please be assured that we take such matters seriously [in hand] and that we are looking into it [because we all want to see how it 'came' out].'”

Has the United States not become a Monty Python skit, or what? 

The NY Post endorses four more years of …

Just a few doozies from the esteemed rag's reelection endorsement of the only president to out-bottom James Buchanan.

"We can have economic freedom and opportunity, and resist cancel culture and censorship. We can put annus horribilis, 2020, behind us and make America great again, again."

I believe they mean Trump's anus horribilis, 2017-2020.

"A Joe Biden administration would be beholden to a socialist left that sees an opportunity to remake the nation in its vision, one more dependent on government debt."

Yes, it has started. Democrats love deficit spending, while Republicans remain loyal to fiscal conservatism. Always have, always will. No exceptions.

But here is the Post's most eloquent flapdoodle:

"Trump has rolled back the excesses of previous administrations."

Right, just as Adolph did to Weimar's excesses. But for Christ's sake, at least the little mustached tyrant got the trains to run on time.

What do we do about Q? What a puzzler.

The Washington Post has published what struck me as a kind of touchy-feely, Psychology 101 video produced by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, titled "What Do We Do About Q?" The question itself is worthy of ridicule — although Kirby strongly advises that we shun ridicule of QAnon morons. That only hurts their tender feelings and causes their entrenchment into whatever universe they live in.

No, instead we must "stay connected" with these bizarre ignoramuses, we must "share information" about reality with them — as though it's not already surrounding them — and we must "be patient," "kind" and "gentle" to Q-dupes who "will benefit more from our interest and respect."

Yes, respect. Respect for malicious clowns who believe Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are pedophilia hustlers (but offer complimentary pizza!).

My advice, Kirby, is to just let these paranoid freaks continue windsurfing in their Trumpian cesspools. Let them tweet and blog and share their crap-filled mental infirmities on social media with their fellow crackpots.

Let 'em rip. As the Irish academic and politician James Bryce wrote a quarter-century before Louis Brandeis wrote of free speech and disinfectants, "Sunlight kills many of those noxious germs which are hatched where politicians [and loony partisans] congregate. That which … we may call the genius of universal publicity has some disagreeable results, but the wholesome ones are greater and more numerous."

A book

(h/t Infidel1753)

What an elegant description of the printed word, "funny dark squiggles … binding together people who never knew each other." 

As a professor of mine once said to one of my seminar classes, in which, day one, the chairs were aligned in rows so as to position an all-knowing leader up front — "First, let's get these chairs in a circle, because we're all equal in the pursuit of knowledge." And it all begins with the printed word. 

We can thank Gutenberg for whatever advances we, as a once-illiterate, genuflecting species, have made.

There's no such thing as political polarization

Every day we read of America's political polarization and negative partisanship. Democrats vs. Republicans. We're trapped in an increasingly hostile national arena of liberalism vs. conservatism, the latter of which has lost its genuine meaning, but that's irrelevant here.

Democrats, as the gossamer narrative goes, are latte-sipping, overeducated, emasculated wusses dominated by radical-feminist Ilhan Omar and Bella Abzug types.

Republicans, however, have vacated their "wine and cheese" ways and transmogrified into gun-totin', pick-'em-up-truck-driving, "beer and blue jeans" voters, as the immensely offensive Rep. Jim Jordan has explained. (Doubtless he gives his "old lady" a ride on his manly Harley by day, and she rides his cryptofascist dib by night, once she finds it.)

These are the general impressions that one absorbs when it comes to the poundingly repetitive phrase, "political polarization."

And the phrase is bullshit. Meaningless. Misdirecting. Empty.

What we are undergoing is simply an amplified instance of decent, responsible, conscientious Americans vs. indecent, irresponsible, unconscientious Americans.

Party labels don't make the woman or man; the two make themselves. Democrat, Republican, Know-Nothing, Whig, Anti-Masonic, Greenback, Populist and Progressive labels have all been monikers of character, nothing more. They have never been an accurate signifier of, explicitly, political identification or combative polarization.

We're all just barely advanced primates trying to make our way, though some of us do much better than others.

The Trumpian tweet of the month

Do even his most devoted supporters buy this shinola? Could be. As Goebbels so insightfully reasoned, the biggest, most absurd lies are always more effective than little fibs. 

Debate Poll Average: 89% Trump. 11% Sleepy Joe Biden!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2020

Even Bibi is done with feeding Donald's gargantuan ego

In what has to be the funniest of diplomatic prudence vs. America's presidential buffoonery, here's a partial transcript of Trump's phone conversion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for having assisted in Israel's normalization of relations with Sudan — that well-known titan of world power:

TRUMP: Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi, Sleepy Joe?

NETANYAHU: Uh … well … Mr. President, one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America.

Not even right-wing Bibi is about to piss off Joe Biden, who is about to take Trump by his scruffy little neck and throw him into the legal clutches of New York's attorney general.

You have to love the "Uh … well … Mr. President," which also has to be the most sublime example of DiplomaticSpeak for "Fuck off, you absolutely worthless piece of olympic, slanderous narcissism."

If you've the stomach for it, here she be, all 22 seconds of it. 

And then there's Rudy, America's craziest uncle

Some crazy uncles are kindly old souls. And some are as scary as a six-foot timber rattler.

I report, and you decide.

A HUGE win for @realDonaldTrump last night! #KAG 🇺🇸

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) October 23, 2020

Debate polling results

​​​​​SSRS polling, commissioned by CNN, finds that "overall, 53% of voters who watched the debate said that Biden won the matchup, while 39% said that President Donald Trump did."

Of course Biden won the debate. His vast superiority was obvious to all those who hope to rescue the America that is hanging by its nails from Trump's precarious cliff of destruction.

The 53% of viewers who believe in competence and human decency wish not to see this venomous president replaced by just anyone (although "just anyone" outside a maximum security prison would be an improvement.) They want a man or woman who possesses both characteristics, and Joe Biden is unquestionably the embodiment of both.

But, that 39% of viewers responded in favor of Trump once again confirms that a frighteningly large percentage of our neighbors are the fiercest, most disingenuous of partisans — and are willing to countenance, among Trump's countless other crimes against humanity, the caging of children.

There has always been a sickness of the American soul. This is nothing new, just intensified. And we know what the sickness is, or rather, who.

Wow

Just wow.

All I can say, or need say, is that I think Donald was doing a Jeffrey Toobin routine behind that podium.

Frank Luntz, speaker of truth, for once

​​​​​I’ve never seen a campaign more mis-calibrated than the Trump campaign. Frankly, his staff ought to be brought up on charges of political malpractice. [Because] they think Hunter Biden will be a winning issue for them, [they have] their heads up their asses.

—Republican English-bullshit consultant Frank Luntz

Oh, Frank — ye of $15 million net worth by huckstering propagandistic language such as "death tax" (not "estate tax":); "illegal aliens" (not "undocumented workers"); "exploring for energy" (not "drilling for oil"); "gun control" (not "gun safety"); "tax relief" (not "tax cuts"); and "Washington" (not "government," since, as you have correctly noted, "most Americans appreciate their local government that picks up their trash, cleans their streets, and provides police and transportation services" — I once objected to your very existence.

But now I gather neither Trump nor his inept campaign staff hasn't called you, sent you flowers or chocolates, or in any way fattened your kitty. So you're peeved. Really peeved. Hence you have publicly turned on what is probably the final product — the Big Strutting Cheese — of your decades-long, bullshitting language-molestation. Therefore I can, at last, at least tolerate your existence.