Propaganda poetry: the poet & the professor

 Tuesday, March 13, 2018 

If anyone needed to know how educated people can be just as deluded as the so-called “unwashed masses,” attending the poetry reading I went to this week where a poet and a professor would have provided them with a doctoral thesis on self-delusion.

We have all had our share of radical profession in college, people we ached to please in order to be accepted in their extremely popular classes, little realizing how such exposure would taint our world view later.For poets like this one who took her classes then, she had a profound affect on their lives, since she managed to get into their heads at a time when they were still vulnerable to persuasion, steering them up path – not just least taken, but from which it is nearly impossible to return.This may explain the political dribble the poet spouted, demonstrating how well he could ape his professor and how little he understood American history – and worse, how little he wanted to.For the most part, the poet issued watered-down platitudes gleaned from biased media such as NPR, The New York Times or still worse, the Washington Post, reinforcing the party line, grossly inaccurate, and grossly glossing over historical fact – something typical of political poetry in general, more propaganda than verse.The professor, of course, was batter at it, a real crafts person from decades of practice in the classroom, molding students minds on what to think, rather than teaching them how to think for themselves.This is no unique to poetry or colleges or even to left-leaning social groups from meetups to coffee clutches. From warehouses to Wall Street, from the NRA to MeToo, groups are groomed to specific beliefs or exiled.
Blaming the professor is somewhat unfair. Education is supposed to expose young minds to alternative views, even radical ones, only what transpires in academia hardly resembles what actually happens in the real world, and so explains in part the anti-Trump rhetoric the poet spouted, demonstrating more about how well indoctrinated he’s become than any real knowledge of political reality.This poet’s purpose, however, was to paint the president as unstable and to decry the political system that allegedly cheated Democrats of their own choice, the first self-serving drivel, then second factually incorrect.The poet doesn’t even know real politicians. His social set is a group of radicals who think and talk the way he does, and rarely disagree fundamentally with his views.He clearly did not study American history well enough to understand the terror the Founding Fathers felt, caught between mob rule and a fascist king, or how they set up the government in order avoid either extreme.The poet largely repeated the silly rhetoric the left has been spewing ever since Trump beat Clinton in 2016, that there is something wrong with an electoral college that gives the same voice to smaller conservative societies as it does to those mass city liberal cities.So naturally, when the cities poured out votes for Clinton, liberals like this poet and the professor expected to win and were frustrated by a system that helps protect minority communities – in this case, white conservative minorities who live far from the city and who would not have a voice in elected a president without electoral college to protect their interests. How different would the poet and professor sound if the cities were conservative and imposing their political views on small towns filled with people of color?America has been caught in the middle of two strains of political thought since its foundation. Small communities give more voice to individuals and so better reflect participatory democracy. But like all small social groups, liberal or conservative, they also tend to exclude people who do not agree with their point of view.Large government has a broader umbrella, so it can provide for a wider range of diversity, but individuals then to get lost in the crowd. Special interests groups from the NRA to Planned Parenthood have more influence, than individuals do, and we are often forced to accept a representational form of government that may not reflect or will often ignore individuals, especially small population centers which may have other issues that politically powerful cities might not or will not address.The forefathers set up a system that would allow senators to serve the needs of a national agenda, while having members of the House of Representatives serve more local needs.The electoral college also reflects this need to protect minorities whose geographic location make it more difficult to organize than in the cities, and whose interest are different than the mass population centers. The electoral college regionalized the selection process so that it doesn’t become skewed by a singular political agenda often generated in the city centers, protecting the right of a minority to have equal voice as the majority.But since the majority in this case is a liberal majority and have come to reflect a mob mentality not much different from that which the forefathers feared, the electoral college becomes the last refuge against political tyranny imposed by large liberal groups on smaller and scattered conservative ones.The poet and the professor, of course, being part of this new moral majority, clearly do not want small communities to stand in the way of their new Liberal agenda, and so promote the idea of abolishing the electoral college so they can push their views down the throats of people with opposing views.Poems by the poet and the professor were all about discrimination, and how unfair the system is, while their little poet society fully reflects the small community flavor they often call “red neck.” While this little reading on this particular day promoted diversity, they limited their diversity to what they agree with, and would exile anybody who decided maybe to read a poem that might sing the praises of Trump or raise questions about the morality of abortion.But the poet and the professor twist complicated issues into easily digested talking points, and their purpose in the world is to spread a particular gospel and to make certain that those who belong to that particular religious understand the scripture we are expected to follow – proving that propaganda is still propaganda regardless of how pretty the package it comes in.