Ed Go
Groupthink, a Downright Moron and the Hammer of Thor
“. . . when the field is nationwide .
. . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and
mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his
mind is a virtual vacuum . . . As democracy is perfected, the office
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward
a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will
reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a
downright moron.”
—H. L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
I never bought into the idea that people get the leaders they deserve—nobody deserves what we’ve got now, not even those who voted for it—but I have no doubt leaders are a reflection of the people. The mind of an individual is not the same thing as the collective mind of a society. The collective mind is its own entity, and it’s reflected in the living flesh the collective chooses to lead it, even if a majority does not support it. It takes only one small impulse in the system of a body to move that body in any direction—or even collapse it, destroy it entirely. A butterfly flapping her wings in Malaysia causes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico; it makes no difference what you call it—a rose remains a rose and a hurricane is a typhoon. And it doesn’t matter what the intelligence of each individual in a society is, whether most or many or some or even just few are idiots; the fact is the collective intellect, regardless of why individuals decided as they did, has sent a moron to the oval office.
The Idiot-in-Chief might even be harmless (he’s not) but that’s irrelevant; he’s surrounded himself with smarter (he would be hard-pressed to find anyone dumber than him), power-mad and self-serving sycophants who bow to his whims while pushing an agenda that serves one demographic only: wealthy white men. When I taught literature as a college adjunct a white male student one time expressed his concern that white men’s voices were being silenced. I assured him those voices were not going to disappear anytime soon. He argued that they were being demonized as an entire group, and I agreed that entire groups of people should not be held in contempt and assured him that no reasonable person believes that being white and male is inherently evil. The issue is not whether certain people have inherent value over others, it’s that there’s been only one perspective valued for so long—a singular point of view from a minority population that wields all the power. Identity itself is a social construct and the constructors have been the only valued voice for too long. Viewing the world through a singular viewpoint leads to narrowmindedness—the focal point of ignorance. Other voices are needed if a society is to grow intelligent again.
One of the smarter people the president has put in charge of, seemingly, the entire government, is an immigrant. The irony of an immigrant being given so much authority by a man elected on an anti-immigrant platform is lost on those who support him. Indeed, the irony of creating an entire governmental department to put an end to government excess appears to have gone over their heads, or worse, perhaps the concept of irony itself is no longer perceptible to the collective mind. Perhaps many believe irony to be merely a literary device that has no bearing in an increasingly less-literary world, but lack of perception of irony will be our undoing. Like Oedipus investigating his own crimes, we will remain blind until we are made to see, and in seeing we’ll blind ourselves in penance for allowing the world’s richest man, who comes from a country where he was raised to believe he was superior to other humans based on the color of his and their skin, who now gives Nazi salutes and loots the fruits of our labor to fill the bottomless pit of his own coffers, to determine, with no authority of actual law but by the whim of his would-be dictator lapdog, the fate of Democracy.
In elementary school I learned the basics of American Democracy Monday through Friday and on Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings. It was the 1970s and we were taught that if we had a WWIII it would be against the Russians. In the 80s our president called them the Evil Empire; we were coming to the climax of the Cold War and I never imagined it possible that an American president would bow to a Russian dictator like a submissive ready to take what he’s got coming. And yet his most faithful stand by him, make excuses and pretend they’re Vikings fighting for a heritage they barely understand, unwilling to admit their king is a coward who would’ve been slaughtered by the weakest of Viking warriors. Like Nazis before them who called themselves Aryans—ignorant of the fact that the Aryans were the Indo-Iranian people—they have a misguided belief the Vikings were white people even though they existed before such an identity had been constructed. They think of them only as a military culture who plundered and conquered others, but wannabe Vikings of today, claiming a supremacy the culture they idolize never claimed, wouldn’t know Mjolnir if it hit them on the head, nor even recognize its name. We know who the Vikings were not because of their deeds of conquest, but because of their poets.
Misappropriation of ancient cultures to serve a political agenda is a tactic of all evil regimes. Fake history, like fake news, can be used to justify anything. If the current regime has their way future generations will view Trump and Putin as heroes that saved the world from Zelensky, that Ukrainian Attila the Hun—just as King Atilla became synonymous with “barbarian” after the genocide of his people, the Huns, by the Romans. Even genocide can be justified if enough people accept a false narrative. The loudest voices are often the most heard, but the loudest voices are not the collective voice of the people; we may have a collective mind, but there is never a collective voice. The loudest may be construed as such, but only because other voices are silent or have been silenced. Nowadays, the loudest voices come from the biggest pocketbooks; one of the quieter voices today is the voice of the poet. But poets have always been the voice of progress and change—verily, the voice of the poet is the voice of language itself. I recently stated that I still believe poetry can make a difference, and another poet replied he wasn’t sure it could. Maybe he’s right (he’s not), but no matter how quiet its voice may be, poetry must speak now, for as the voice of language it will force its will into future memory and alter the course of human events. And societies based on lies cannot stand for long, as long as its poets speak, for poets are the makers, skilled smiths who forge meaning in the wor(l)d.
Bragi Boddason (9th Century), Viking Poet
from “An exchange of verses between Bragi and a trollwoman”
Skald kalla mik, They call me poet,
skapsmið Viðurs, Odin’s mind-smith,
Gauts
gjafrǫtuð,
grepp óhneppan,
Yggs ǫlbera, Yggr’s ale-server,
óðs skap-Móða,
hagsmið bragar.
Hvats skald nema þat? What’s a poet if not that?*
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* Ed Go’s interpretation, based on translation from The Skaldic Project:
Kalla mik skald,
{{Viðurs skap}smið}, {{Gauts gjaf}rǫtuð}, óhneppan grepp, {{Yggs ǫl}bera},
{skap-Móða óðs}, {hagsmið bragar}. Hvats skald nema þat?
‘They call me poet, smith of Viðurr’s <= Óðinn’s> mind [(lit. ‘Viðurr’s
mind-smith’) POETRY > POET], getter of Gautr’s <=
Óðinn’s> gift [(lit. ‘Gautr’s
gift-getter’) POETRY > POET], unscanty poet, server of Yggr’s
<= Óðinn’s> ale [(lit. ‘Yggr’s
ale-server’) POETRY > POET], creating-Móði <god> of
poetry [POET], skilled smith of poetry [POET]. What’s a poet if not that?’
Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.)
2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, An exchange of verses between Bragi and a
troll-woman 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises
on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout:
Brepols, p. 64.
https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=verse&i=1945
