Demagogue of the Day, deposed

No, we couldn't believe it, either.
Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56
straight games, one season, and
hearts sank, worldwide, when that
string was broken. Now, despite a
wonderfully full-throated roar of
self-praise (from the usual source)
for the most flamboyantly innocuous
act of righteous power since Gener-
al McClellan led the armies of the
American Union, a new claimant of
Demagogue of the Day recognition
has hit the ball out of the park.

A little context, for our innocent friends:
The United States is really a rather loose
association of 50 polities of scant mutual
interest, outside of resisting meddling by
the nation; and the education of children
is reserved to their sovereign negligence.

One such polity is called, Kentucky, a bas-
tion of poverty in every parameter except
the proof of its beverage and the hooves of
its thoroughbreds. The Governor, a Republic-
an of impeccable imbecility, has been at war
with educators and their ilk, and has drawn
repeated lines in the sand against learning
in public schools. Faced now with uprisings
among the teachers, he denounced their pro-
tests yesterday for causing the guaranteed 
molestation of children, indeed their fatal
poisoning, because the schools are closed.

Now, there's a real, adult male rôle model.

Aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter

    Ad hoc humanitarianism, amok.

    Menelaus, eat your heart out.

    From America, here we go again:

    neutering the Constitution and

    defying treaty accords we have

    authored, ourselves. This, to

    seduce our People into a self-

    abuse on behalf of a desperate

    incoherency of policy, to rat-

    ify the grotesque projections

    of a narcissist who's lost con-

    trol of a bad day's news cycle.

    From France and the United King-

    dom, verification that they are

    not documentarily restrained as

    America is, yet as incurably in-

    clined to claim the Levant as a

    sphere of disciplinary influence.

    

Suppose it were Friday clii: Kicking back in l'Amérique

  

Folies bourgeois

First one thought, hey, 

remove yesterday's entry,

given that the American

government had only been

practicing, or playing, 

or testing a pose it may

strike to its advantage,

where it's noticed any-

more. Then, no, it would

compromise the sequence

of Origins of Wednesday,

because they're numbered.

Not that anyone was seen

to have restrained the

American government from

the War Crime to which it

appeared to commit itself.

How suddenly, though, it

percolated about the web

yesterday, that the Amer-

ican government should be

expected to be a little

bit confusing, from time

to time, without the ben-

efit of pantomime excul-

pations of a loyal valet.

Not all clumsiness is con-

tradictory, yet much less

of either can be asked to

qualify as contrapposto.

Where government's intent

is to confuse, can it be

pardoned its instability?

Dancers of the Mariinsky

and Estonian National ballet

Origins of Wednesday lxvii: Bringing in the sheaves

 

   He that goeth forth and weepeth,

   bearing precious seed,

   shall doubtless come again 

   with rejoicing

   bringing his sheaves with him.

Then were we like unto them that dream.

Psalm 126

  fragments & variations

i    President of the United States

ii   Version of Knowles Shaw

iii  Book of Common Prayer, 1928

De stijl of the times ii

Oh, my. The new government's deliver-

ance of the legal profession from the

clutches of self-respect, celebrated

a mere three weeks ago, has entered in

the last two news cycles a fratricidal

interval of resistance, in raids that

are welcomed as an attack on our coun-

try, in the very same clocksweep as

horrid new images of chemical annihil-

ation in an overseas civil war again

inspire that same conscientious lament

which led to a demure riposte against

a naked airfield. True to form, it did

hurt us more than the absent respondent,

by carrying ostentatious discipline be-

yond ambivalence, into pale illusion.

So much depends on the pictures he sees,

and best not seen in those he shows.

We greet each other, then, suspended in

a veil of yet another frantic threat of

reprisal - in the overseas fratricide, 

as well as the indelicate domestic im-

broglio in the profession of justice -

with the figure of discipline superbly

foretold for us by Theo van Doesburg in

1919, the hero stalwartly lobbing mis-

siles in retreat, the artist's ingeni-

ous exploitation of the fleeing stride

only heightening the torsion in the bow.

A vision to savor almost for prescience.

Theo van Doesburg

The Archer

MFA Budapest

1919

What's become of mortification?

A kind of glee that's felt
upon a discovery of proofs
of a prejudicial suspicion, 
mortification has not only
seen better days, it's had
better exemplars than our
knights of belligerent re-
ligion, locked in embrace
with the new American gov-
ernment. We all prefer to
look the other way, even
mortifying as the spectac-
le must be, aesthetically;
for mortification, without
its ration of delight, is
championing only its lust.

Jose Wickert