Tag Archives: Political commentary

Our Emperor’s New Clothes, for the Weekly Challenge, Aug 23, 2025

36 Replies

Our Emperor’s New Clothes

How do we mentor our burgeoning youth
in these times of unequalled stretchings of truth?
Teach them to sort out these rash acts of treason,
to approach them with heart and strain them through reason.
Teach them hating is wrong and exclusion is selfish—
that plastic’s destroying our coral and shellfish.
That medical care should be something for all
and that hoarding of wealth brings a country’s last fall.

Teach them the future is theirs to decide.
Teach them the truth of whom to deride.
Teach them that facts being taught by their teachers
may rival what they’re being taught by some preachers
and those who would rule to win their own gain,
lining their pockets again and again
with tax cuts that only extend to the rich
while the trickle-down theory develops a hitch.

Teach them to sort out rhetoric from fact.
Teach them to care and to vote and to act
to stretch out the privilege to blanket us all.
We are not alone on this spinning great ball.
Our former meddling and incredible gall
is why we’re considering building a wall
to keep out the hungry and frightened downtrodden
who come to us weary, exhausted and sodden.

They ask for asylum and our protection
from dictators who have prompted defection
much as many Americans are fleeing south
to avoid the stupidity and the vile mouth
of the dictator who is now ruining our land
with illogical thinking and truth that is canned.
Who will mentor whom in this crazy new world
once the last hateful invectives are hurled?

Our world has been sold out for profit and gain—
overseen by leaders opportunistic and vain.
Perhaps it’s our youth who will now mentor us
to sort out the truth from this internet fuss.
As in the old legend, They’ll teach the uncouth
to forsake propaganda for naked truth.
It’s hoped that our youth wake us up from our doze
to point out the truth of our Emperor’s new clothes!!

 

The Weekly Challenge Weekend prompt is “burgeoning.”

This is Rich!! Please read.

2 Replies

Please click on arrow to hear/see  this short video.

Thanks to Forgottenman for acquainting me with this commentator. FM has published more links to Rich’s pieces on his blog.

“Life” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 719, Aug 17, 2025

11 Replies

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: spiral craft signal draft shallow rule dense send shell sham slapping laugh

Nate White on Donald Trump

14 Replies

Someone asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”
Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response: Taken from his X post at https://x.com/Ipitythepoorfo1/status/1317856496647049217
“A few things spring to mind.Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
‘My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
With thanks to Rhonda Schrader, Ray DiFazio and Michael Lussier, who all republished this piece before it finally made its way to me.

Game of Cards, for dVerse Poets, Aug 12, 2025

42 Replies

Game of Cards

I would pay a pretty tuppence
to invest in his comeuppance.
His smug assurance, his galling preening.
He’s like a babe in need of weaning,
sucking at the teat of fame.
What other mortal needs his name
written on towers around the world?
He’s Ozymandias, stone lip curled
in cruel splendor, sure in his power
reasserted on every tower.
But remember, as he counts each coup,
how all the mighty have fallen, too.
False knights wear armor prone to tarnish.
His Midas touch will lose its varnish.
We’ll laud the day when he’ll be dumped—
That day when he’ll be over-trumped!

The dVerse prompt is Power.

“Coup d’état” For the Three Things Challenge 141, Aug 3, 2025

7 Replies

 

Coup d’état

Build up all your borders. Put truth behind a scrim.
Remove all your immigrants. Trim and trim and trim.
Box up all your freedoms and lock them safe away.
Amend the 10 Commandments to “Ye shall not be gay.”
Dumb down all our children to increase control
so you can assure that you’ll retain control.
Tear apart two hundred fifty years of “free”
to put into your control what once was liberty.
Subjugate your citizens and say it is God’s will.
Then provide the Kool-Aid to see if they will swill.

Prompt words for the Three Things Challenge are: BORDER, TRIM, BOX

New Political Era

1 Reply

Thanks, Forgottenman, for bringing this to my notice.

For The Sunday Whirl 711, June 22, 2025

11 Replies
                                                           Getty image 

War Games

Peaceful visions stream into space and speed along their way
as our president plays war games, deciding its the day
that he’ll become a soldier, bone spurs a lesser grief––
his soldiering tasks much easier as Commander in Chief
sitting in his desk chair, pushing buttons that
could bring about a world war (wearing his MAGA hat.)

These seeds of war he’s planted grow roots that quickly spread
around a breathing living world so easily turned dead.
Our freedom’s being stifled, the body of our nation
brought down by the curatailment of our health and education.
As this child plays his war games, are his minions listening
for the sounds of bombs in the sunlight swiftly glistening

speeding toward their targets in the good old U.S.A.
perhaps trained on the cities where your children play?
The Bible gives the message of an eye for an eye,
so as you hear the bombs they’ve returned swiftly going by,
will you finally admit that this man that you’ve elected
is one you might more wisely have summarily rejected?

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle #711 the prompt words are: sitting free space go roots body stream breathe listen seeds peace vision. (Getty image)

Don’t Miss This Possible Way Out of this Mess We Are In!!

3 Replies

Go here:  https://okcforgottenman.wordpress.com/2025/06/16/ohh-thats-rich/ to hear some of the wisest words I’ve heard concerning how the Democratic party can best act to overcome Trump’s attempted coup. (My word, not his.):

“Rote Learning” For the Three Things Challenge

2 Replies

Rote Learning

As education
takes a vacation,
alas, we know
that even though
thoughts that astound
may well abound,
thinking aloud
is not allowed.

The three words for the Three Things Challenge are: ALLOWED
ALOUD ASTOUND

Trump administration considers slashing federal education money.