#245 A Wake-Song

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There is a subtitle: “(K’s first administration seen in the light of the relevant history)”, but the relevant history after his assassination seems to amount to little more than accusing the government of being run by fools. And there are a pair of footnotes as well, the second going off about lawyers, and, “1) Our contempt for our government is mildly traditional, as represented by the communistic fascists Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Edmund Wilson, and other mad-dogs.”

It’s hard not to have some sympathy for contempt of government these days, since it has become so abundantly clear that elected officials, dependent as they are on a flow of liquid cash to keep them situated, aren’t beholden to the people who actually cast the votes that put them in office. It’s weird how money begets lies and lies attract votes. The more cynical politicians have learned to count on it. So they look upward to the money and take care of their daily business with that mainly in mind, heads back, mouths open, with their faces bathed in torrents of cash—the fundamental, supplicating pose. Meanwhile, as B. puts it, they “diarrhea about Democracy.” “Diarrhea” as a verb is pretty good. It’s a vivid metaphor and it completes the throughput: Money → lies → diarrhea. Then the diarrhea attracts votes like flies. In one orifice and out the other, as it were. It’s a nice contained alimentation. “I personally have voted Democratic all my life / and hate foreign ideas.”

Sometimes you just have to snarl it out, don’t you? I just got done with a day with a few unhappy moments, though nothing of any consequence, or that wasn’t the same old crap. I just find myself in a pissy mood over it. I’m resonating with this poem, too, and if I get started on Republican Senators from the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, then I’m likely to lose whatever readers I have left. It would be nice to have a Pulitzer Prize behind me, which seems to me would give one the confidence and authority to really let it fly. Call politicians fools, and the fools who vote for them fools, and accuse talk of Democracy (remember the Cold War context) of being just diarrhea. Communism was a foreign idea, since a German developed it and a Russian twisted it enough to turn it into a bludgeon for dictatorship. But B. doesn’t hate foreign ideas. That’s his persona, Henry’s, take on the world, and Henry is cowering under some table, usually, berating himself and in this case everyone around him with the most impolite phrases. He’s self-effacing, but there’s a bitterness to it. If you see someone on the street talking to himself these days, you just figure he has a phone in his ear. It used to be a clear sign of madness, and these people were usually pretty angry. Now with fake Internet personas, those are the people who go to the Web site of some online news source they don’t agree with and berate all the ignorant people in the comments section. If fame and accolades give you the confidence and authority to speak your peace, so does anonymity, turns out. Henry is anonyme, and a persona, that’s clear enough, though the opacity of the persona varies day to day, or more likely, he’s something to hide behind in some ways, but there are windows in the persona where the real Berryman pokes his head through and says something profound or outrageous or self-pitying. We’re supposed to laugh about it.