TRANSFER OF POWER

It is only slowly dawning on the 'liberal elites' of the East and West coasts - the Blue Staters - as their enemies would consider them - that Donald Trump HAS won this presidential election, in a way, despite what facts and reality are or prove. Learning precisely from the 30s propaganda playbook, but powerfully enhanced by social media and years of 'disinformation' campaigns from foreign state actors, and the president himself, and for a while, Fox, this new campaign has managed what would once have seemed impossible...

As the statements, protests (manifestations as the French rightly call them), gather pace, what Trump has enabled, indeed, created like a Frankenstein monster, zapped with electricity and cobbled-together from 70 million body parts - is a rising tide of ignorant armies, willing to clash by day with Biden and the law.

The U.S. Constitution prepared for this moment for years, by protecting the rights of gun-owners to establish militia-level weapons caches - precisely establishing the sort of counter-government force, not meant to entrench a tyrant, but throw one out - but tables have ironically turned (proving irony is no friend), the weaponised proud boys and girls - infected with anti-vaxxer beliefs, and a desire to defeat a cabal of shadowy predators - now stand ready, armed to the teeth, to bite back.

Even if there is no actual 'revolution' - even if Trump 'leaves the White House' - in this new cyber unreality we all inhabit - this mediated landscape, that Trump has made himself King of (in the Twitter feed of the blind, the one-eyed Tweeter is king) - he will remain the undisputed champeen - the spoiled victor - the Undead Elvis.

Half of America is misinformed, irrational, and brainwashed. There may be good people there - as Trump would claim - but what there surely is are many many bodies, guns, dollars, and years of pent-up capabilities. How will Biden effectively run a government, a nation, so virtually divided?

As a commentator stated yesterday on the BBC - this is already a civil war in cyberspace. So let's call it what it is - a grotesque, bizarre stalemate or worse - the underbelly of the Queen's Gambit - an endgame of deadened values, but quickened instincts - so folks, here's the deal: Biden-Harris get the levers of approved power, to a degree - but wherever Trump resides will, forever more, be a second, very real, and present, dangerous source of ongoing destabilisation, a Vichy Government contesting the other, formal one. In this contest, there is no end, because it is beyond the physical, provable world. This has become a spiritual belief for dummies - Trump Won is now the 11th commandment in the Bible Belt.

How will this play out, in real-time and what does that even mean now? Unless I am mistaken, more troublingly than many now seem to think. Power exists in many forms, and the power cannot fully transfer to Biden, so long as so many constantly question his moral right to lead, online, where realities are now created. Trump tried to do this to Obama's legacy. Now he IS doing it, already, to Biden. he is cancelling the enemies of his state of mind.

There was a bumper-sticker sort of joke, It's Frank's World, We Just Live In It - about that vulgar American god of a former media past, Sinatra. Now, mobster Trump is the new Frank. He has made us live in his carefully-constructed, mediascaped fantasia. We can say we don't, but our protestations are just fake.

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....

"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...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...

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

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