American Myths

The American Dissident
A Literary Journal of Critical Thinking
In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine
A Forum for Examining the Dark Side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex

Myths and Hypocrisies
Myths are created when orthodox discourse replaces logical argumentation and keen, unbiased observation.

The Common Reader
What is "the common reader"? Is it someone who reads Harry Potter books? If so, why does Curbstone Press blurb in the back of Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti's Little Stones at My Window, "His poems [...] are readily accessible to the common reader"?

How does one write so "the common reader" can understand? Should someone write in an effort to get "the common reader" to understand? Or should someone write without that in mind? Does "the common reader" actually exist? If so, does "the common reader" use dictionaries? If not, what words and terms should be avoided in order not to confound and otherwise turn off "the common reader"?

The Poet

Poets, especially, like to push the myth of the poet as some kind of deified Nietzschen superman, which is simply absurd, considering who the poets are today, at least the prize-winners and grant recipients... mostly comfy, safe academics. To thusly mystify the beast is to profit the beast, not literature. To label the poet an illustrious unknown personage for the simple fact that he or she is a poet is nothing short of gratuitous mythification. Why do academics seek to deify Walt Whitman and even more recently Beatniks Ginsberg and company? Ginsberg was a champion marketer. He sold out to Brooklyn College.

The First Amendment
Oddly poets, artists, academics, educationists, editors, publishers and others whom one would normally think liberal and open-minded tend in reality to be anything but that. Poet/academic Maya Angelou comes to mind. She castigated Bill Cosby for expressing himself in a manner other than black-liberal groupthink. "You know, Bill, you're a very nice man, but you have a big mouth."

As a poet parrhesiastes, I’ve often exercised my so-called right to free speech and expression. More often than not, the average citizen does not do this and will think anyone who does crazy or foolish... because doing so inevitably costs... and usually money. The Concord police locked me up in jail once for exercising my so-called First Amendment rights at Walden Pond. The faculties at Fitchburg State College, Bennett College, Elmira College, and Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School all ostracized me for doing the same... and so did the poets of Stone Soup Poets (Cambridge, MA), Concord Poetry Center, and Festival International de la Poèsie de Trois-Rivières. Diverse editors, publishers, other academics and poets dispersed throughout America (and Quebec) have either feigned indignation or were truly insulted by my daring to express opinions that did not fall within the scope of their liberal groupthink mindset (see Literary Letters).

The People
Communists and Marxists especially like to qualify "the people" as being good, intelligent, and courageous. In reality, "the people" are not so good, nor intelligent, nor courageous. If they were they would not so readily swallow the swill rammed down their throats by corporate marketers and educators. They would not be content to remain on the sidelines as idle worshipping wannabes of wealth and celebrity.

Racism and Money

America has changed radically since the days of slavery. It has gone from an overtly racist, wealth-ruling society to one more and more simply wealth-ruling. Black power does not want to recognize that many blacks today are indeed wealthy and do have power. It is against its selfish interests to do so. In today's America, wealthy blacks with power certainly have more rights than poor whites without it. It is in the interest of wealthy blacks to maintain unity via leftist orthodox discourse. Many such blacks draw their very wealth and power from that unity and discourse. Contrary to that orthodoxy, STUPID WHITE MEN are not the only ones who shamefully held and tortured slaves. STUPID BLACK MEN in America were also slaveholders. STUPID BLACK MEN in Africa hold and torture slaves... today! Open your eyes, black and white slaves of orthodoxy!

Drugs

Drug-pushing corporations seem to hold the most power in this country. The largest lobby is the pharmaceutical industry. Prime time everyday on TV is composed essentially of drug ads that instill the feeling in each and every citizen that he or she is sick and ever in need of chemical therapy. So why the government "just say no to drugs" bullshit? Go figure, as my mother says. Well, Eli Lilly sure knew where to put its money: Poetry magazine.

Getting Published

If your work is good enough, it will get published and distributed... so THEY say. But who are THEY? No doubt published writers... and by repeating this clichéd adage, they praise themselves, n'est-ce pas? Why not replace their adage with the true words of director of Meredith McColloch, Bedford Public Library: “Its subject is not in our scope.” That's what she said when I offered to sell her a copy of my novel on local high school corruption for half price. Go figure...

Immigration

Rampant illegal immigration exists in this country. The Democrat ideologues have their spiel on the situation and the Republican ideologues, theirs. However, simple supply and demand theory explains the issue: the greater the influx of available workers, the lower the wages and the harder the worker will have to work to keep his damn job. Evidently, corporate America wants it that way. Like it or not, illegal immigrants are exerting tremendous downward pressure on wages.