50 Comments
Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Thank you for your analysis. It's a pep talk, if you need to know. And I appreciate it.

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Thanks, Julie!

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Oh! and thanks for the credit of the artwork at the end! I was wondering.

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Thank you Greg for the poem. It’s certainly spot on. I always watch Eight in Five and the last one with Nadine was most enlightening. I think by now most of sane Americans know the plan all along was to have JD be President as soon as Trump gets elected. His campaign knows he’s decomposing right in front of our own eyes. JD is evil incarnate, to use Roy Cohen’s phrase from The Apprentice which my husband and I went to see last week on your recommendation. He created the “Rough Beast”. Apropos this book, if it’s available in audible on Amazon I shall get it.

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Thanks, Rusalka. Cohn did indeed create the Beast.

And yes, there is an Audiobook:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Rough-Beast-Audiobook/B0D8K41S3T

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Thanks Greg, just got it!

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Agree totally about Vance…Heather Cox Richardson has this today.

It seems clear that a vote for Trump is really a vote for his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who if he becomes president will be the youngest American president in our history. At 40 years old, he is two years younger than Theodore Roosevelt was when he took office in 1901 at 42. Vance would also be one of the least experienced presidents ever. His 18 months in the Senate has given him only slightly more experience in office than Chester Alan Arthur.

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It's good to see everyone openly talking about Vance, and how this will be a Vance presidency. Arthur was good for nothing but sartorial fussiness.

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Excellent analysis, Greg. For me, this poem is a reaction to WWI, the ‘war to end all wars’, a horrific, bloody cataclysm.

My grand uncle Geoffrey was killed by the Germans at Flanders Field at the age of 19, and is buried at Marfaux British Cemetery nearby. This November 11, please keep a moment of silence for the millions who died in that war. We now carry the torch of freedom, and we must prevail.

The final stanza of “In Flanders Fields“ by John McCrae:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

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The eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I often wonder what the emotions were for everyone in that moment: the relief, the despair, the gratitude, the anger, the love.

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All and then some

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‘Taint no crime not to rhyme, but not to reason is mindly treason.

I think dat is the best I have writ.

Loved your find and wonderful analysis! Billserle.com

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I love that one, Bill!

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Ah, I was with you right up until the last line reminded me of another gift from these heinous election cycles. A medical practitioner guessed last week that I'm 58. Next month, I'll be 75. But as long as we blindly toss endless swaths of human beings into those worthless "old men" and "old women" categories, we can wonderfully keep assuring that more and more lives become wasted, religated to rocking chairs no matter their remaining potential. Thank you to Trump and Biden for increasing hatred in that arena, as in so many others.

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The history books will record that Biden, at his advanced age, was the greatest president of the last 50 years. By then, the sneering, ageist pundits will be forgotten.

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Helicon (Helikon) is a river in Greece - its mythh is that part of it sank when Orpheus' killer tries to use it to wash her sins away. I think this river better matches his image of the fast-flowing gutter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicon_%28river%29?wprov=sfla1

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Oh, I like the river/gutter parallelism. Good call. I thought Helicon because of the Muses, but this one works just as well if not better. Either are better than the gutter, of course...

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Love the poem, and its relevance.

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You hit it out of the park with this poem by Yeats and your video about who Trump is, Greg. It is the master plan for the MAGATS to replace the DJ Trump with the more miserable JD Vance. White rich guys want to place autocracy and plutocracy throughout our precious nation. We see through their veil of secrecy. We will vote Kamala and Tim in and we MUST win the House and the Senate to function properly and fairly.

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Thanks, Marlene. Fifteen more days, and at least we will know. The suspense is killing me.

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Excellent poem and your summation of it….but Second Coming..still my favorite of all time.

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Not gonna argue with that!

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Can’t resist the from Jeff Tiedrich (I cleaned it up a tad)

You know who’s watching Donny deteriorate in real-time and pissing himself with glee? Donny’s running mate, Vance, that’s who — and not just Vance, but also Peter Thiel and the Space Nazi. these vile mofos have a plan.

Donny wants to be a Day One Dictator, but that’s unlikely to happen — not at his current rate of physical and mental decline. Donny’s going to be a Day One Guess Who Got 25th Amendmented While Sleep-Farting During His Inaugural Ball. and then Project 2025 — as well as Thiel and the Space Nazi’s own creepy vision of a tech-bro crypto utopia — will be implemented by someone every bit as evil as Donny, but with a functioning brain.

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Vance is scarier than Trump, I think. A Vance dictatorship would be miserable and last sooo looong potentially.

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

History doesn't repeat itself but the patterns sure do.

I'm thinking now about how the demagogues come to power by dividing us. Most of us are guilty of contributing to that division, even if we are on a side that realizes the delusion of the other side. We say yes, I'm not gullible enough, or stupid enough, to fall for the delusion, and so we reinforce the division.

Yesterday I took a ride up west of Port Huron, in Michigan's thumb, and seeing all the Trump signs made me really sad for the ignorant people who displayed them in their front yards. The signs could just have well said "hey look at me, I'm willfully ignorant and damned proud of it".

I don't know if the Harris-Walz campaign realizes it or not, but their effort to reach across the aisle might turn out to be much more valuable than just wrangling more votes. Somehow we need to find a way to heal the divide.

Sorry about the ramble, but once again your Sunday Pages gets my mind going off in all directions. Thanks!

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Thanks, Rick. I always enjoy your rambles. My wife reports so many Trump signs in the U.P. And I agree, Kamala going on Fox news in particular is a big deal. It signals that she is willing to talk to them as real people. At least, that is my hope.

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

I enjoyed this very much. Yeats is da bomb. I had never read this particular poem. Thanks!

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Thanks, McLain. It was new to be, too. It's two poems before "Second Coming" in the book. In between is one called "The Demon and the Beast." It's not as polished, but I love the last line: "What had the Caesars but their thrones?"

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Timeless! "The Leaders of a Crowd" most certainly fits that description. Whereas "The Second Coming" is about events, the former is about those who create events, evil events. Diverse historical strongmen such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler were all evil leaders. Today the likes of Putin, Kim Jon Un and Xi Jinping qualify. Somehow dipshit 45 in my mind falls outside of these groups. All named people controlled, 45 is controlled. The likes of Putin are accountable to no one, 45 is accountable to anyone willing to stroke his fragile ego. His appeal to his followers is comedic relief. His deterioration has as much to do with needing to go to lower and lower levels to get the laughs and attention. Be it hating Taylor or Arnold's schlong size, it's about the laughs, his belief that when followers laugh they are adoring him. When has Putin addressed a crowd acting like a stand up comedian?

We are facing a "Weekend at Bernies" moment. 45's handlers, the truly evil force behind him need to keep him viable such that he is upright on November 5th. They know JD has no chance whatsoever to beat Kamala. The true evil we face, elect 45, he becomes Pope John Paul I, sadly we shall not get a successor like Karol Wojtyla, rather a Khrushchev.

One thing 45 says that rings so true, the real evil is within. Hopefully enough We the People will quietly contemplate and avoid the disaster staring us in the face.

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I can't believe that in the time I wrote this, I learned about the Arnold Palmer comment and the McDonald's stint. Crazier and crazier it all gets.

There is an urban legend that Arnold Palmer's life went on Johnny Carson, and he asked her if she did anything to give her husband good luck. She said, "I kiss his balls." And Johnny said, "Well, that'll make your putter flutter." I bet Trump had that in his mind somehow.

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Lordy, never crossed my mind when my husband played golf

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I sometimes watch Carson videos on YouTube, he is the master, none of the current late night hosts can touch him. 🤞 for November 5th, my nails are down to the knuckle

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

Thanks for this as I failed the dumbell diagram sentence

Junior college class.

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We didn't diagram them per se, but move the clauses around a bit.

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Clauses?

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I loved diagramming, made sense to me.

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U. Must have a better than 98 IQ

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Thought it might mean the opposite. Mine would be really high since I used to administer the Wechaler. Had all the answers…

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I looked up Wechaler.

I meant my tested IQ at 16 was 98.

And 99 at 17.

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Having the answers helps, lol

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Oct 20Liked by Greg Olear

What do I know of publishing? Nothing, that's what, but I think subsequent editions of your book, Greg, should be titled, "Rough Beast, Flushing." Don't forget the comma!

Like an idiot, I tried to fully understand "The Leaders of the Crowd" myself. After about ten minutes, I decided I'd gotten it, and then continued reading only to find that you'd graciously done all that work for me. A good exercise for me in that I touch on poetry about as much as I touch on sports. And just an aside, I was very close on the poetic interpretation, but nowhere near ready to watch a football game.

I'm finding that in the past week, I've become overloaded on the election and have retreated to things not having to do with it; dog videos, movies, TV shows I haven't watched, commentary channels on YouTube talking about ANYTHING but politics. I'm hardly engaged with news at all these days. It's simply become too much. It took a day and a half for me to find out Liam Payne was dead. That's the kind of week it's been. I'm OK with that. I think I'm just recharging for Election Night, when it seems at least SOMETHING will be known for sure.

If Rough Beast is re-elected, JD will be president by early next year, and I believe THAT'S been the super-secret internal plan all along. But, like a 12-step program, we can only take one day at a time. In the end, the ONLY thing we can do is VOTE, and vote we must because we are not only looking to prevail over the people running to, for lack of a better word, DESTROY what we know as our country, but also the 71 million who voted for HIM in 2020.

"So the crowd come they care not what may come." As long as these people exist, THEY'RE the ones we're fighting against, not the fools and conmen that are running. VOTE!! Don't boo, VOTE!! It's what we have.

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Thanks, Steve. It's fun to analyze and interpret the poems, I think. I also think it's good for our brains, broken as they are by the streaming and the doomscrolling of social media, to focus on a short burst of words for a little while.

I will add "Flushing." Ha! It's such a funny name. I went to a men's room one time in NYC, and there was a magazine page taped to the wall above the urinal. It said, "Remember all the neighborhoods of New York. Especially Flushing."

I can't wait until Election Day. The not knowing is breaking what's left of my brain.

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