There's something salemi about that rag!

http://pennreview.com/

Let's not go there, Ralph.

I posted that reference in answer to Nigel's request for Charlie to produce a poem that reflected his views. It was the familiarity of the pâté remark that made me think of it.

I am astonished, Ann, at your intelligence (maybe that's not le mot juste) service. Wow! But ducked and dodged away in the murky depths of the Pen. Review is not the same as coming clean (not le mot juste this time) on a self-declared thread on the Sphere. So my question stands.

Is 'Charlie' real - and if so, let him meet the challenege of Cecil Day Lewis here.

There is tendency on my part to answer Charlie's gibberish for the sake of anyone actually trying to work this out from a position distant from my own. If anyone actually cares to discuss decentralized and participatory forms of social organization and anarchist theory or the successful forms of that type of organization I have been involved in or studied I am happy to start a thread with someone. Anarchism as a political idea is unrelated to anarchy as a synonym for chaos or disorder. It always has been. They aren't laughing about anarchist theory in Rojava or Chiapas. They are doing their best to imagine a different world.

Charlie, the only way you can write these things in public and not feel ashamed is that your inability to grasp political concepts extends far enough to blind you from wreckage of your hubris colliding with your stupidity. People aren't listening to your ideas, they are gawking at the unbelievable damage that your ideology can do to simple facts, even at the slow speed you are driving. Except maybe John. He is the car seat in the back though. Safely belted in to his moral dementia routine.

Ann, thanks for sending folks to that Journal, The Pennsylvania Review, and more specifically, that poem. I have a new poem there too. I don't think I could bear to read any more of the America bashing New Verse News, where some here fall all over each other with some of the worst poetics I've ever read, just to reach for some distant point of irrelevance. Trump-bashing seems to be in vogue over there.

It's OK, Andrew M, as long as you get my drift...

Nigel, I write about nearly everything. Is there a problem?

Well, then, Charlie, how about taking the Cecil Day Lewis challenge?

Ya know, Nigel, wouldn't it be just as easy to go to The Pennsylvania Review and read my current poem there? Would that satisfy you? And if not, why not? How many Trump poems would it take to satisfy you? Does anyone here on Eratosphere really want to see Trump poems? Please, respond to Nigel's quest. If the vote is affirmative, I'll write some and post them.

Ah, I must disappoint you, Charlie and Nigel. My Intelligence was merely Google. I live a sheltered life by many people's standards and so when I come across somebody within my poetry purlieu whose worldview seems terrifyingly alien, I look them up. "Charles Southerland poem" took me to that place. When I saw that part of the text of the poem had been expressed in almost the same terms in a post on this thread, I thought I had found an example of what Nigel wanted. I seek only to serve and in doing so I often transgress.

Is this a digression from the Trump theme? I think not. I have been following this thread because I want to understand. Trump seems like the antithesis of everything I would wish to support, but the point that Charlie (and John, though he relates his views to Brexit) are making is, to me, the most terrifying aspect of this. That there is a large number of people who truly believe in, and are determined to create, a future that looks to me like hell.

I freely confess I do not have the political vocabulary or the fiscal nous to discuss this on what many would consider a proper level. I am not even fully clear about Leftliness or Rightitude in this context. I am reduced to my own linguistic devices. I have all my life espoused causes that I truly believed would benefit humanity and the planet we inhabit. I worked in the sixties for the PPF, supporting Greenpeace and the CND. Pretty well everything that I believe in is about to be trampled by a regime whose criteria for excellence I simply do not understand.

So I come here to read and attend and listen. I hear John saying “the people have spoken” and the “remoaners” must accept that “we won”. It isn’t so much the “we” that scares me, it’s the extension of the thought to the question. “What, then, are they who are not “we”?

Charlie’s cockroach references appal me. That satisfying crunching sound. The assumption that everyone takes pleasure in it. The headspace of the hunter…

But then I am a superannuated old hippie, who was once proud of having mended a broken snail. There is no place for me in this new world of America (or Britain) First. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to live in it anyway.

Wotthehell, Charlie. Wotthehell.

Oh, I've read it, Charlie - and I can see why you didn't post it here.
AND - everything that Ann said. Come north, Ann. We are trying hard to win the same kind of country you've always sought - and I have every reason to believe that we are going to succeed.

And the best of luck, Nigel. You will be poor but honest.

Thanks for the "honest", John. The poverty is what we will be leaving. As Kanga would have it, "We'll see."

You talk on the only level that matters, Ann. All the old categories are nonsense in the face of the age of consequences that is being ushered in by a thirst for criteria that is, in the end, incomprehensible because it ultimately acts against the interests of its shepherds as well. Your "linguistic devices" are a breathable air after the smoke. Thanks.

Thanks Ann for putting things into perspective and speaking from the one place we so desperately need to hear from -- the conscience.

Ah Nigel. Having your cake and eating it. Well, why not? Whence will this wealth spring, if I may ask. From the blood, sweat and tears of the Scottish people? From the largesse of the European Union? From England perhaps?

We'll make our own way well enough in Europe, John. Meanwhile, I suggest you read and reflect on Martin Wolf in today's FT. Sobering stuff for 'South Britain'.

Quoth Charlie:

Words directed at Andrew but a pretty good indication of why I make the point of not taking Mr. Southerland too seriously. Charlie can run to the moderators with every case of mild butt-hurt (which rather casts a pall on claims of anti-authoritarianism, by the way), but a blatant admission that one neither knows nor cares where someone is coming from tends not to be conducive to civilized discourse. Sometimes that's fine. I doubt Charlie and Andrew will convince each other of very much. But if one is interested in a flame war (which is really the only way to go from Charlie's admission--he doesn't know what communism, socialism, and anarchism, are, but he knows he doesn't like 'em, by golly), it's probably best to be open about it.

Oh dear, Nigel. They won't let you into Europe, haven't you heard? As for the FT, nobody believes the FT.

Charlie, thanks for pointing out "The Pennsylvania Review". My God, I never stopped to wonder where [He Who Must Not Be Named--Edited by Julie Steiner] and Joseph Salemi had gotten off to. The Journal's web page is like a game: how many Salemi poems can be featured on one web page (plus an interview)?

Perhaps he will become Poet Laureate.

Hey Quincy, I didn't run to the moderators. Several people have, but I haven't. Unlike some here, I'm for free speech. So is Trump.

"I refer my disgruntled friend to the answers I gave earlier."
In a phrase - we are staying while you are 'Brexiting'.
Perhaps your memories of Edinburgh extend to that modest building with three Palladian palace fronts, on George IV, the Royal Mile and facing St Giles, recently acquired by the French government for their... 'consulate' - and clearly actually for their coming Embassy. We are becoming even better friends with our oldest allies - among the very countries your lot are busy p***ing off.
Before you go on cheering for those who are doing all this, I'd read the FT - just a bit, John. As Obama just said at Rutgers, "In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It's not cool not to know what you're talking about. That's not 'keeping it real' or 'telling it like it is'; that's not 'challenging political correctness'; that's just not knowing what you're talking about."

At least that quote gets us back to where this thread is supposed to be going. The start of his neat summation of why Trump and his 'team' are a disaster, starting with their cult of ignorance and their contempt for the truth - and contrasting that with the vast potential of a new generation of graduates. Like the miserabilist Unionists/Brexiteers and would-be Empire revivalists here, the Trumpers have no vision for a future that is other than the exhumation of the corpses of mythic pasts. Along with all their other vices, they are simply rotten historians - and that's a failing with very high charges.

I don't know how many places (Taking your cue.) {He who shall not be named} is published in, but it's a bunch. It's pretty impressive really. Dr. Salemi gets around as well. Good poetry is welcome in both journals they are editors of. Several members here are published in them, including Ralph, I think. I bet both editors would welcome your work.

Oh Christ, must we discuss Joe Salemi. The guy is a Grade A piece of (add the descriptive metaphor of your choice, and it probably still won't be insulting enough). Once again - you guys are wasting a massive amount of poet-hours arguing with Charley about Charley's distorted world. And now we have to discuss Joe? And we've got John popping up now and then to do his legendary Colonel Blimp imitation. Surely we've all got something better to do.

Michael Cantor: I am happy to hear of your conversion, Michael.

hahahahahahhahahahahahaha!!!!!!

https://youtu.be/fbhz3XcNzGU

Yes, Mary, I saw it weeks ago. I thought it was hilarious, delightfully so. I love good parody.

Neverminded

So much for Charlie Watch.

Neverminded

Moments ago, I got into an argument with two Russians and a sympathizer from a former satellite state. When freedom of the press came up, it got markedly more aggressive. More alarming was that a Trump supporter took their side. False news, fake news, etc. When Dan Rather's lit fuse goes boom (and it will), it'll be a struggle, still, to separate fact from fiction.

John, if you wish to express your approbation of someone who is besotted with a childish, contemptible, dangerous, deceitful, destructive, fraudulent, greedy, mendacious, paranoid, racist, sexist, xenophobic piece of garbage who pretends to be President of the USA (although in reality, it is the wholly evil Bannon who pulls the strings), that is, of course, your right. Free speech still exists in England, even if Trump and his repellent gang would love to suppress it in America.

But please do not use the royal "we", as though you speak for anyone but your own inimitable self.

I can't improve on Mary Meriam's comment: "hahahahahahhahahahahahaha!!!!!!"

Someone on Facebook recently asked: "Who is now shutting down free speech?" Well, actually, it's Donald Trump, who wants to silence anyone who dares to criticize or disagree with him, and bans from his press conferences any reporters who won't lick his obscenely obese arse. And that, as we all know, is one of the first steps to a fascist dictatorship.

As for someone higher up the thread who called Charlie a pig, I must protest. This is an "ad porcem" attack.

Free speech, when you are the president of the USA, does not include the right to make up lies about the former president and, with literally zero evidence to back up those lies, demand that Congress investigate (all the while bitterly opposing as "political" an investigation into your own campaign staff who have been caught red-handed, as it were, telling lie after lie about their contacts with Russian agents).

Surely everybody thinks Blair is something you scrape off your shoe.. Except his mendacious crew, and I am sure you, Brian, are not among them.

Michael, you write good poetry but your political opinions are ridiculous.

Excellent article, Andrew. Iona Craig really knows her stuff. Still no evidence of the valuable intelligence the U.S. supposedly gathered in that attack, but there is plenty of evidence for the pointless destruction of lives. As for Trump, his failure to mention their deaths speaks volumes.

More and more, we'll find that the Trump administration is a better recruiter for jihadists than anything the ISIS propaganda machine could have come up with. It's as if certain key players want to throw gas on the fire, to create an excuse for all-out American-style blow-the-f*#k-out-'em warfare. Bannon's fundamentalist view of history is all the rationale that's needed to do that, conscience-free.

Andrew, that article on Bannon's favoured racist reading matter is by far the most chilling that I have read - and it clearly shows that this insane tide of prejudice, a word which hardly seems adquate in these circumstances, runs deep within the Trump administration. The exchange with Sessions is jaw-droppingly awful. How on earth has this vile book been allowed to circulate? I am beyond appalled and not a little scared. This is the language of lunacy, no whit different from that of the racist ideologues some 50 million died to stop by 1945.

Yes, Nigel, it's profoundly disturbing. To add to it, the similarities between Bannon's views and those of Anders Breivik (the Norwegian white supremicist mass murderer) are pretty hard to overlook. Breivik's dystopian novel of choice was The Turner Diaries, also beloved of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Creepily enough, Breivik timed his slaughter to memorialize the halting of the Ottomans at Constantinople in the 15th century, an event mentioned in the French novel as well.

Some wonky history here - not surprisingly from these characters! Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453 - and in May not July. I think this is a scrambled version of Breivik's mad notion that 'the muslims' (sic) would be driven from Europe on the 630th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople. All too crazy to be worth comment - except, of course, that such a dangerous lunatic was able to do so much hideous harm.

My bad, Nigel. I'm not good at remembering historical dates. What I was recalling in a vague way was something I read in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, by Mark Juergensmeyer, where the author writes about Breivik's manifesto that Breivik posted on Facebook just before he set out to slaughter all those people:

I hope this posting is not misconstrued by any Mod., but I felt that it was only fair, having challenged Charlie to 'fess up with an offering as a 'Trump poet' (he sent us to the Penn Review), that I did the reverse in relation to the dis-ease of this side of the pond. I did and it's up on the Metrical Thread as "Job's Lot" - all brick-bats accepted.