THE MADNESS OF KING DONALD

It isn't funny, and it hasn't really happened since the 1930-1945 period (so 80 years ago), and really one needs to go back to Napoleon to get a better flavour of the arrogance, swagger, and sheer vast enterprise of the imperial vision, that sense of divine purpose... but really, it's never happened before, because the US Constitution was supposedly designed to stop tyrants from taking power... and because the US in 2025 is the single strongest nation that has ever existed, economically, and militarily; and, given the dominance of its language and technology, probably culturally and technologically. Geographically, it is also probably the most various and widespread, from Hawaii to Alaska, touching on tropical storms and Arctic blizzards.

So, whoever is King of America, is truly the most powerful person alive.

And this time, for the first time, that person is insane, seemingly either stupid or evil or both, or worse, simply very very venal and dishonest and corrupt, without empathy or anything but self-regard. Imagine if the world's worst car salesmen, the emptiest at heart, the crudest, the least truthful, was suddenly made world's leader... well, that's where we are. Now imagine that person was allied to a Roman-saluting super-billionaire weirdo who controlled the fastest way to message everyone alive. All those weapons, all that money, all that communication -

and imagine if they had no plans to do anything constructive, but instead wanted to tear down every check and balance not even barely containing them anyway...

In a bestselling YA dystopian novel it'd be far-fetched. But it's real, and unfolding.

I don't want to add to the noise, but the Gaza statements are, until the next time when madness breaks loose again, tomorrow, or in a few days, so deeply crude, historically ignorant, cruel, criminal and disruptive as to ruin decades of precarious peace-seeking. How can any Arab nation in the Middle East ever trust Trump or America now? You don't offer to turn Hiroshima, still radioactive and smoking, into a holiday camp. To call these declarations a sick joke is inaccurate.

They're spellbindingly bafflingly disruptive of reality.

Like a master-mage, or charismatic hypnotic occult sociopathic evil narcissist - a CHOSEN - (one thinks of Manson or A.H. or Rasputin) - Trump's statements CREATE NEW REALITIES of confusion, chaos, and madness - he is a chaos magician and his power derives from maximum uncertainty - as he himself has often admitted.

What's extraordinary is how effective he is at impacting the world's media, elites, and ordinary people - infecting our minds daily with anger, outrage, division, hate...

How long will the world stand by and let this man disrupt us all?

Harmless? Only if you think words and ideas and threats have no meaning or power... otherwise, one of the worst leaders of all time. One of history's monsters.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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