The Candidates Are Evil
Their Policies Insane
“Whether we [novelists] are able to influence human conduct will depend very largely upon the number of people in a given asocial society who react by rational aggression towards that society rather than by irrational aggression towards their fellow individuals. The social role of the novel will depend very largely, in coming years, upon the persistence of sufficient rationally disobedient individuals to make novel-writing of the kind I have described possible.... Because of the essential humanity which a writer must possess to write major novels, I am confident that it will play a large part in the events which precede the end of asociality, and should it pass out of currency as a form, it will be replaced by the unanimous literature of tyranny or the spontaneous social literature of a free society….” -Alex Comfort, The Novel and Our Time (1948)
This new partisan poem against white Empire is a lot like “News From Little Rock” of decades past. It may seem odd to preface a poem with a brief bit of literary criticism about the potential of the novel and society by Alex Comfort, a scientist and physician (as well as prodigious author and “anarchist, pacifist, and conscientious objector”). I do so because Comfort seems to see past a former time of fiction and poetry, scholarship and journalism all the way to the social media age of today, the people’s media at its best, creating and circulating a new “spontaneous social literature of a free society.”
Social media as the people’s media is the new addition to the literature of the world that is profoundly feared and vigorously fought by the bigoted masters and financiers of tyranny who make monstrous profits destroying the Earth and its inhabitants. The more that people might contribute to “the spontaneous social literature of a free society” with partisan lit, liberatory video, audio of equality, images of justice, and revolutionary creations of all sorts the better the prospects for all. More from Comfort below about the key challenges for creators “under [the] barbarism” of our time.
The Candidates Are Evil
Their Policies Insane
I.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
At home the war is social — people robbed of brains and blood. No health care say the Liberals. Conservatives deny it too.
The immigrants are to blame — always immigrants to defame — people of color — who knew? Liberals say a shame.
Money would solve the nightmares. The ways are crystal clear — but banks take all the credit — to force the world indebted.
Capitalism thieves and bleeds — the plutocracy of the day. It bursts so many needs — flinging people off to pray.
II.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
The Army gets the money — the Navy — Air Force too. Marines kill folks of color — as old as it is true.
The One Percent is winning — drenched red in tooth and claw. Social services go spinning. Wealth buys all hope and law.
Education for the monied — prisons for the poor. The demons profiteering can only be deplored.
III.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
No safety — the climate implodes — flood fire killer heat — like officials who explode — and arrest you if you meet.
Poverty rages obscene — imprisons tortures and demeans. No housing and no money — no way to get the rent.
Sheriffs do evictions. Who dares to make a stand? Basic incomes — cruel fictions. Who will lend a hand?
In the red and white and blue — bashing you and you and you — crashing you and you and you — for the red and white and blue.
IV.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
The Police State unleashed — kills vast across the land. Military marauding — invading where it can.
Live humans are the target — blood dollars burning cash. Rich missiles maim and smash — pulping bodies no regret.
Pillaging all the way — that’s the noble USA. Not much of it is new — in the red and white and blue.
V.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
Human needs should be well-funded — not bought and sold like mad. People need what people need. What they’re owed. It’s not their bad.
Human rights are due to all — lives free equal and just. Great human rights or bust — a revolutionary call.
Congress should simply credit — with the power of the dollar. Liars claim forget it — then cash out while you holler.
So rise and fight — there is no choice. Lift your voice with all your might — against the red and white and blue — stalking you and me and you.
VI.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they send are lethal. It’s genocide in their name.
Palestine bombed to rubble and Lebanon burned the same. Gaza blown to ash — cremated. The West Bank slaughtered too.
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they fuse are deadly. And genocide is their game.
“The Candidates Are Evil” is a partisan broadside against white Empire somewhat similar to “News From Little Rock” though with more refrain.
“NFLR” has 8 syllable tetrameter units quadrupled within its lines rather than mainly the mix of 6 syllable trimeter lines and 7 syllable lines (heptasyllabic) quadrupled here — along with a few other differing details of form.
The approximate line and meter constraints help keep the expression simple and direct — as in the ancient epics.
The poem lacks a lot of the coherence of “NFLR” because not organized around a single event, and could be rewritten to that effect.
That’s the form. The content should speak for itself.
Another brief bit from Alex Comfort in The Novel and Our Time written immediately post World War Two that focuses precisely on the situation of writers, creators, thinkers in culture during this longstanding horrific counterrevolution that makes up the essence of Empire:
“The responsible writer sees everyone naked, and is as naked himself. He is not devoid of political and moral judgments, but he makes them equally. In reading, therefore, ask: Is this writer capable of recognizing a human being? Is he able to reject the art of diverse weights, for which an act identical in every respect is a heroic but regrettable necessity when done by Our Side and a contemptible atrocity when done by Their Side? Is his judgment of human decisions level or weighted: does he know filth from food, whatever the wrapper? If he does, he is capable of being a great artist under barbarianism, and if not, he is another part of barbarism made manifest.”
The battle in culture continues amid the gruesome and terroristic obliteration of Palestine and surrounds. The American conquest of Western Asia is carried out this time with its Israeli proxy. American establishment liberal President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are twin candidates for all-time genocidal infamy. American establishment liberalism has always matched American establishment conservatism in this regard. Though now more heavily engaged by social media, as the people’s media and its offshoots, the social and cultural challenge remains unchanged from the bloody wake of the American invasions of Turtle Island itself, including Mexico, and beyond the Philippines, Haiti, Korea (they still hate us), Cuba, Vietnam, Central America, Sudan, Serbia, Libya, Syria, and on and on and on, including Iraq and Afghanistan — nefarious and bloody, counterrevolutionary, tyrannical interventions in nearly every country on Earth — very literally, and repeatedly, year after year.
For those interested in the continued gutted state of lit, I noted the deplorable situation at the time of the invasion of Iraq in “The Vitiation of American Literature” and in much more depth elsewhere, quotation laden, building on the powerful insights of the great linguist, scholar, and activist Noam Chomsky and many others:
Establishment culture is complicit not least in the ongoing US atrocities against Western Asia and beyond and at home. The established culture is so complicit it forefronts the notion of the post-9/11 novel and buries the notions of, to take a few examples, the explosion of incarceration novel, or the lethal state of health care novel, or the conquest of Oila novel — these far more enduring, or far more reaching, or far more calamitous realities and crises than the post-9/11 sensibility, which essentially emphasizes our suffering at the hands of others and not the far greater suffering we inflict on those among us and on others abroad.
It’s a class thing. It’s an imperial thing. The USA was founded as an empire, Noam Chomsky notes:
“The United States is probably the only country in the world that was founded as a ‘nascent empire’ — it’s what George Washington called it. The colonies he said, were a nascent empire and they were just beginning their imperial conquest. They had to conquer the national territory. Thomas Jefferson [who] was the most libertarian of the founders effectively called for conquest of the Western hemisphere. The expansion of the colonies to what is now the national territory, is just imperialism. Historians of imperialism warn against what they call the ‘salt water fallacy’. Namely you only call it imperialism if you cross saltwater. But that is a fallacy. I mean if the Mississippi River was the size of the Irish sea, the conquest of the national territory would be called imperialism. From the point of view of the indigenous population, it’s the same whether you cross water or not. So yes the expansion itself was constant war against the indigenous population. The conquest of Florida, which was an undeclared war, the first executive war in American history without congressional authorization, the Mexican war conquered half of Mexico, then the expansion in the Caribbean, into the pacific, and after the Second World War, interventions everywhere. It’s hard to find a year of peace.”
Meanwhile the dominant literature of the Empire colludes, plays the imperial game, facilitates the conquests that ongo. By now at least, and long since for many or most imaginative writers and critics, they cannot say they do not know or could not know, even as their writing belies they do.
Even as they believe otherwise, there exists a certain connection between writers of a certain class and inhumanity, as Chomsky points out:
“If you have gone to the best schools and graduated from Oxford and Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled in you the understanding that there are certain things it would not do to say; actually, it would not do to think. That is the primary way to prevent unpopular ideas from being expressed. The ideas of the overwhelming majority of the population, who don’t attend Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, enable them to react like human beings, as they often do. There is a lesson there for activists.”
A lesson for novelists as well, and all authors, whether deeply invested in the liberatory or not.
America is an Empire of Lies — of guns and lies — as it must be to conquer in a world not wholly subservient to it. Stupendous and pathetic that most Americans don’t realize that they are the bad guys, the King thug nation. Or don’t care. And in their brainwashing they mistake who others are too. The American populace must be routinely battered and deluded for white Empire to better delude and batter at home and to simply batter abroad. The American populace knows that the establishment lies to them but not by how much and in how many ways — and from how many baselines of pure Evil. The deformation of the people and the country is monstrous. The only hope against ongoing, imminent, and impending horrific terminal catastrophe is in the progressive revolt toward the revolutionary.
And so, a creator’s “essential gesture” remains “revolutionary,” in the words of Nadine Gordimer — it must, because of the conquest and the bigotry of white Empire, and because:
The candidates are Evil. Their policies insane. The bombs they use are lethal. And genocide is their game.
