A day to live in infamy!

We interrupt our normal posting due to the protests / riot / attempted coup currently underway in Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that "protesters" have breached entrances to the Capitol building, we've neither seen nor heard reports of the use of tear gas, dogs, rubber bullets nor fire hoses by the Capitol Police or other authorities. It is no doubt simply a coincidence that the predominant color of the skin of the "protesters" is white.

Lawmakers given gas masks as protesters breach US Capitol

We wonder if what is happening in Washington today, and what has been happening since before the States were United, is what Carl Sandburg is writing about in the poem below. We hope not, although we have long been frustrated by how readily political charlatans have counted on "the People" to fail to pay attention to poetry, especially such as that in the penultimate stanza.

I Am the People, the Mob

By 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.

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