Post-truth

[RiverNotch]

Post-truth Yesterday, I returned to world politics for a bit, and boy was I depressed. So of course, reading this title, I immediately thought such-and-such.

This reads like the sort of piece that defies criticism. I don't mean that it comments on criticism, or that it's in any way perfect -- the first one, well, it comments on criticism as much as what I assume is its subject comments on criticism, while the second one is something only time and a greater host of readers can determine. What I mean is that information is highly, highly compressed here, such that it's easy to apply multiple, equally valid meanings to this piece, and not in any vague or ambiguous manner. The axioms, depending on the critic, may be total opposites, but ultimately the logic, perhaps the manner of the conclusion, may be the same.

At first, I wanted to latch on to the what I assume to be more typical application of this being a Trump piece, but I think that may be a little too typical to be of any use -- rather, from my perspective, it may be too typical, with a lot of other members more qualified to make such an elaboration. So instead, I played around, until I found something more comfortable. And so:

Observe that screen The screen represents illusion.
I cracked—now The speaker broke the illusion. Trump broke the illusion of a clean ---- okay, not clean, respectable ---- okay, not respectable, sane ---- okay, not sane, but....uhhh....sane enough to not lead to a nuclear holocaust anymore? Yeah, let's go with that.

take a sun, the icon! The sun is the image on the screen, the ultimate representative of that illusion: the "icon". The sun could be many things ---- if I played my cards right, it could even be a reference to The Sun, however hilarious ---- but it's the actual statement, "icon!" that really got to me. Icon --- religious icons --- now that's a thing I've dealt with on this site before. But I suppose a possible nit for this is that it's "a sun", not "the sun", as if there's something more interstellar to all this; having it be relatively unspecific may distract from what I perceive to be the sun's function here.
& guffaw. And so I guffaw.

Offering you
god, I press peals Another possible nit is that "god" here is uncapitalized. At least according to how I've seen the word used, "god" is unconvincing; "a god", though somewhat more convincing for political philosophers and polytheists, is still not enough for all; "the god" is just incomplete; while "God" has that sense of universal divinity, of transcendent transcendence, that everyone usually wants, in particular a good chunk of the voters who played into it in the Trump interpretation. Of course, it could highlight the speaker's ultimate disrespect of the idea of God, but I think even the devil would capitalize God when trying to lure the victim away from Him, not because of any particular love or respect, but because the goal is to gain a follower, not to follow an identity.
Meanwhile, "peals" has a delightful sense of duplicity to it, with church bells ringing and awe-inspiring declarations deafening. Again, Trump -- and to clarify my adopted point of view, the trap that is the demiurge.

to peels, spectacles of all "peels", meanwhile, compresses the "peals", both literally, sonically, and symbolically -- of course, that's assuming most folks think like me, in that they forget the other meaning of "peel" (such as the baker's tool).
action as a dummy—my At this point, my interpretation begins to collapse, not I think because the poem is at fault, but because I don't have enough skill to really work like this. Instead, I fall on the more literal interpretation of the statement "spectacles of all / action as a dummy", contrasting it with its more symbolical aspects, then restarting from there. "spectacles of all action as a dummy", continuous, gives me the ridiculous image of reading lenses being applied to daily life, turning what once was clear into something blurred, a "dummy" -- or perhaps spectacles, coming from some explosive action, being put on a dummy, a manikin. Both are informative, I think, though the more symbolic aspect is more clear: essentially, dumb action presented as spectacles replace right action already existing, the peals of church bells becoming a surface-level action instead of the Christ's representative in sound, or perhaps the peals of traditional politicians becoming spin for its own sake, "peels" containing not even a mitochondrion of truth.

cast of dye as axiom "the die is cast", perhaps, and "axiom" as represented of truth. Also "dye" as obscuring hair's true color, "cast" as the process of forming an axiom, even a far lesser axiom "cast" from another, greater axiom. At this point, I think, it's not just my reading but the poem that deflates, although not by much -- and really, I find the deflation is necessary, as it seems to follow the rhythm of other, equally compressed pieces, which, at least when done well, all seem to deflate by the end. Really, it might just be "deflate", I confuse for "change" -- this is, I think, where the poem dips its toes the deepest into the abstract, just to emerge with the completely concrete at the end.
painted axiom. For I— I must note that Leanne's reading of this as also related to skin color also helped me, but again, even without that I don't think this needs much changing. I'm currently working on a thought about applying astrological theories on planets for a story based strictly on Joseph Campbell's idea of the monomyth, and for that thought, I'm thinking of Jupiter as a rainbow-banded orb containing all the fallen angels, with the fallen angels themselves being equally particolored, dazzling, spectacular, but, being fallen angels, having only darkness to their core. A proper nit, however, is the em dash at the end, for reasons presented below.

I am the son Ah, sun/son -- and the trap of considering the demiurge as God's Son (because if ever I were to think along a more Christian-Gnostic frame of thought, I would never dare to think of the Jewish God as the demiurge, but maintain my convictions on the Trinity). Along with the earlier nit, I don't think you need to repeat "I" here -- I feel like starting this sentence with "I am" enforces the speaker's conception of himself as being part of the I AM, and ending the earlier stanza with another "I" magnifies this narcissism, but the fracturing of "I am", I think, with perhaps the appropriate capitalization, enforces that ultimately, the speaker is not and can never be with the I AM. But of course, this is assuming the author actually judges the speaker so, so for a more aesthetic argument, I just think the repetition of "I" dulls the exclamation.
of nihilism! & guffaw. Ending the piece on "guffaw" reinforces the sense of the disgusting throughout the piece, especially with me further agreeing with Leanne on "guffaw" being an awful, awful word. But a final nit, and in this case I think a good deal more than a nit: "nihilism" really is too unsubtle. The piece is so perfectly compressed, its logic a straight road leading to a single sort of conclusion -- in both the Trump and the demiurge reads, that both speakers are villains -- that to end it with a statement so specific in its meaning constricts it a little too much, forces perhaps too many of the travelers going down its road to something they didn't expect. I do think there's a sense of "nihilism" behind both Trump and the demiurge, but where I diverge is that I don't think "Trump" is smart enough to break out of that rut, and the "demiurge" would never risk throwing away potential followers with such a peal. The possible speakers declaring, proudly, "nihilism", is simply a break of character, and again, it forces the poem down a direction that, ultimately, isn't just unsubtle, but also plain wrong. (Now, I bet there are other villainous speakers that would cry "nihilism", but they are in the majority, and the one speaker that I think would come to most readers' minds today would, as I have noted, definitely not, at least until he accidentally tweets his nation's nuclear codes, in which case such a mention would only be for providing some sort of justification other than "stupidity" to reinforce his ego.)

Conclusion? Lovely, lovely work.