"I Am the People, the Mob," Carl Sandburg

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Marie Foolchand:

“I am the People, the Mob,”

Carl Sandburg

"As Richard Crowder notes in Carl Sandburg, the poet, 'had been the first poet of modern times actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression. ... Sandburg had entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a curiosity. ... He was at home with it,'”  

Carl Sandburg, The Poetry Foundation.

Lost in the Crowd

"We've been talking about universal health care for 100 years. 

...We have not had the courage as a people to take-on 

the greed and the corruption of the health care industry

-the insurance companies and drug companies,"

Bernie Sanders, 2-7-2020.

Suffice it to say, I'm not the one with ulterior motives in spite of those who might say otherwise. To be very clear, my goal is not to diminish anyone's right to a fair trial-just the opposite is true. 

In contrast, why are some of us liberals including but not limited to fellow leftists and progressives no less creating a martyr for health care reform from the carcass of another enraged young White man while villainizing conservative vigilantes when it suits our collective agendas?

Courtesy of a thirsting social media, Luigi Mangione has been reduced to a meme, a product to consume in one way or another. Maybe Mr. Mangione is fine with being exploited by the masses via the very capitalist system he seems to otherwise abhor? As stories go though, the mob beast will lose interest, eventually seeking fresh prey. Then we won't be as concerned with Luigi Mangione spending the rest of his life in prison due to a delusion for which simping fans will never suffer any consequences for exacerbating.

Truth is that for decades, we Americans have had our chances to make better choices. Yet we have forfeited our agency due to anger, fear, and polarization. We have no one else to blame but ourselves. We haven't taken responsibility for-anything.

It easier to cheer-on the mad idealism of a alleged shooter than be held accountable for our own personal misery as well as dubious on-line entertainment.

"Mercy,"

Suzanne Santo

"Sometimes I don't know how to be

How to shut my mouth,

how to let things breathe

And it gets so hard to see,

with my history standing in

front of me..."

T.A.B.S.

A word, phrase,

or acronym-

Reductive,

Diminished.

Snap shots 

Serve and Protect

A fast-paced world.

Intimacy takes

Time-

Vulnerability:

Courage by another name

Evolving

From a place of 

Fear and Expedience,

Becoming

"Authentically Bonded"-

Unified in Trust

We have the power

To Be Free.

"Why we stereotype each other, and

how we can stop," 

David Locher

Snow Day in Austin, Texas!

"Let It Snow,"

Asleep at the Wheel

Mob Social

“We must think;

  We must refuse to be

  Swept Away,”

  Alexander Reid Ross

"ROCKMAN"

Live-SNL

Mk.gee

"Killers," Carl Sandburg

    

    I am singing to you

Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:

    Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.

    And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing
         and killing.

    I never forget them day or night:
They beat on my head for memory of them;
They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
To their homes and women, dreams and games.

    I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines—
Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,
Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of
         killing.
Sixteen million men-

Carl Sandburg

"Tomorrow Belongs To Me,"

Cabaret

"The Drowned Children," Louise Glück

"This is what I want to learn: 

That there can be sharp precision in numbness. That sometimes we need that thick blanket of snow to cover every last thing up before we can even attempt to make sense of it all

 and look for that healing, and yes—hopefully swift, solution. 

Also: That darkness is an okay place to dwell,"

Sarah Gerkensmeyer

You see, they have no judgment.

So it is natural that they should drown,

first the ice taking them in

and then, all winter, their wool scarves

floating behind them as they sink

until at last they are quiet.

And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms.

But death must come to them differently,

so close to the beginning.

As though they had always been

blind and weightless. Therefore

the rest is dreamed, the lamp,

the good white cloth that covered the table,

their bodies.

And yet they hear the names they used

like lures slipping over the pond:

What are you waiting for

come home, come home, lost

in the waters, blue and permanent.

Louise Glück

"Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator...," Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1783.