partisans and idealogues

I am in love with partisans and idealogues. They make me feel smart. I used to admire anyone with the stones to choose up sides. But both sides have become so thoroughly and equally ridiculous--the alienation is now delicious. The middle of the road is just as ugly, and non partisans were once relegated there. But the hot, fetid, rancorous and ignorant breath expelled by both sides now has the effect of billowing up the balloon of the observer. Breathing the purer air, one sees the abject foolishness of modern partisanship. All of it.

Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh are the same person. Ever seen them in a picture together?

Partisans on both sides have sucked the comedy out of the process. Leftist comedy is merely propaganda in a pitiful disguise. Rightists are rarely funny outside their little circles. And the aforementioned rancorous, fetid, ignorant breath from both sides obtrudes real laughter. So there you are. Go there at your peril. The Onion pulls it off. But they have been at it for a century.

Even Poetry suffers: in the Holier-than-Thou area of the world where poetry readings and the like are likely to occur, one begins to wonder how delightfully politically charged the scene is going to be before it implodes. This exceeds politics now. This is a poetic misgiving. If people are going to use this venue to propound their politicality, then it is a desecration of poetry that I have no interest in. Orpheus did not charm the trees into uprooting themselves by expressing his love or hatred for any political figure or matter.

In short: POLITICAL POETRY IS NOT POETRY. IT IS FECAL MATTER. And I'd rather flush it down than clean if from my ears.

It would take too long to formulate a full exposition, but I should clarify that I fear no opinion, and revel in the earnest expression of a well founded one. But poetry being sacred, we must ensure that the practioners thereof are pure in heart. Assuming eloquence, a lady with the tribute to the fighting boys, whether she leaned to the right or left, has a place. Greenday's American Idiot is compelling. It's a delicate issue, to be sure. Art is what the artist says it is. Poetry embraces all of life. But the poetic impetus is absolutely opposed to the political modus. Mixing them destroys one or the other, and it is usually the poetry that dies. Much of what is out there is interesting. Maybe even worth a listening. But it is decidedly antipoetical.

People must have and express opinions. The process is dynamic, necessary. Even beautiful. But the majority of today's entrants in the "Arena of Ideas" are so unqualified as to make the entire exchange ridiculous. I like subversive, but only when it is substantive. Let ideas be lived, and lived in, rather than ranted. That's where Morrissey lost me. He used to be a poet. He described. He took a deep feeling or an event and put it in a poetic context that the listener had to decipher, but was beautiful even if one didn't get it. Now he simply pontificates.

Emily observed:
Tell all the truth--but tell it slant

Poet types might generally lean, in their views, to the left. But true poets, in their poetry, lean ONLY toward poetry. In this sense, poets, and poets only, are to be forgiven for channeling thoughts through narrow banks.
A similar focus, when brought to bear in the form of partisanship, makes a mind like a car with the tires deflated on one side or the other. A passenger in such a car only wants out. Onlookers would be wise to give it a wide berth.

I am now officially bereft of sass. Time to put on the pants.