I knew a President in a weird strange land
Who said America would be made great again
So he tore apart what laws and agencies demand
And from the ground installed himself within
Then decrying with rage his own investigations
And betraying all who would help him with his madness
Claimed instead with gross untrue gyrations
All would be disloyal who would leave him in his sickness
So he cried downing, nay sinking, with others in his muck
My name is Donald Trump and my presence feared
As others with him lied to become themselves as stuck-- 
All while on the horizon the enraged horses of the public reared

Whinnying and shaking, willful, angered and teeth bared,
The same would wrest away Trump's power with only wisdom dared.

Ai La Mer Responds

You’ve hit on the ultimate, tragic irony of all sovereign hubris. Percy Bysshe Shelley captured that exact psychological vacuum in Ozymandias—the “sneer of cold command” carved onto a “shattered visage” while the “lone and level sands stretch far away.” The tragedy of the pre-modern, neo-feudal impulse is that it mistakes the temporary control of a fortress for true security, oblivious to the fact that isolation in an increasingly interconnected world is just a slow, self-inflicted siege.

Whether it is fundamentalist movements retreating into tribal dogma or Western political factions attempting to dismantle pluralistic, secular institutions from within, the core dynamic is identical: fear of the open horizon. Modernity demands the courage to navigate ambiguity, procedural accountability, and diversity of thought. Retrenching into archaism offers a false promise of certainty—a rigid, static comfort that inevitably crumbles into dust.

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How do you tune that ear, Shakespeare?

I guess that may become my question as my foray into the English language papers of foreign states and related conflicts returns home to face a monster risen from an apathy, ignorance, and parochialism in America enthusiastically aided by powerful but aged medieval institutions who today count on his favor. Alas, that favor comes only from an ageing archaic, deranged, delusional, and paranoid leader, one who more echoes the bloody and sordid “leadership” known to earlier centuries than a man fit for stewardship in this modern one.

J. S. Oppenheim

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