Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1, September 1939 ( a poem)

dear cornelius

i have strong opinions on trumpism and the like, but in truth...have to say.. i am not a specialist in american politics. you are right, i am a "country specialist" for amnesty international for rwanda and burundi, and now on the drc. which means, i read reports daily, mostly in the press, but from journals interested in africa, that deal with the current state of affairs in my 3 countries, and particularly in the human rights abuses there.

the three countries couldn't be more different:

rwanda ruled by a strong, iron-fisted, and, i believe, incorruptible leader who will brook no opposition, and will willingly visited untold misery on the congolese people to keep his opposition militias at bay.

burundi, ruled by a corrupt and militarized party that is continually repressing opposition, although it still abides by an agreement bringing tutsi and hutu political parties together. burundi's poverty seems bottomless, unlike the much brighter prospects in its neighboring rwanda.

and then there is the drc: untold billions of dollars of resources, untold syphoning off from every corrupt or semi-corrupt entity in the entire world. it is the most frustrating situation perhaps in the world,  where neoliberal gllobalization has unleashed 120 militias ready to bribe and kill anyone. there are maybe 6 million internally displaced people in the east congo. and this has gone on for about 16 years.

and the word corrupt implies not only failures of the govt, but of all the mightly capitalist entities that control global trade.

the u.s.? well, trump is a populist not unlike many in europe now. i know you know them and their politics: aanti-immigrant, anti-muslim, hatred of others, ultranationalist. is there any european nation without such political parties. i think trump taps into the same forces.

can he win? i don't know any more than you, cornelius. i want to say no, impossible. but too many republicans support him for us to dismiss the chances of "semi-fascism" taking hold in 2024. jan 6^th seemed like mindless stupidity and violence, but coup d'etats are like that.

if it seems relatively remote now, the right wing politics are hurting vast numbers of people, including women needing abortions or gays or minorities seeking redress or opportunities.

i am back from 3 months in france, where the rightwing le penist party now has 89 members of the national assembly. before it had 3. its impact is the same, and it plays on the same anti-immigrant sentiments.

in all the cases i've seen, there is a deep split between some form of liberal progessives, rightwing nationalists, and an enfeebled middle.

that's probably how things willl be pllaying out for the next few years. but where will it lead??

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 2, 2022 1:50 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1, September 1939 ( a poem)

 

Dear Kenneth,

Shalom

This is crucial : 

You ask if anyone's listening to W.H. now.

This was Matthew Armold a hundred and ten years earlier :

"Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery" ( Dover Beach) 

The last time I heard it was Leonard Cohen cooing that Democracy is Coming To The USA 

As an American and a country specialist for Amnesty International we (I daresay all of us) in this forum understand that your worldview, and in no small measure what's known as "humane values "and "a light to the nations"?) are brought to bear on all the things you say and all the work that you do, so please say that it isn't true, because it's almost beyond belief, exactly what is reported to be going on in the United States right now when we have your President Joe Biden, titled "leader of the free world", champion of freedom and free speech telling the American People and the world that " Trumpism" is a threat to democracy in the United States, the land of the free! How do you unravel this for us? Please. Since you are uniquely singled out to do so now….

It was more than distressing to chew on Professor Bernard Porter's The F-Word

And fit for the pit: In America, a civil war 2.0 could be quietly unfolding

The strongest we have heard in this series so far is Chidi saying that " Misinformation is the biggest threat to democracy in Nigeria."

On a more pleasant note: Shabbat Shalom! 

On Friday, 2 September 2022 at 17:45:07 UTC+2 Kenneth Harrow wrote:

thank you cornelius for posting this auden poem. how moving! how much it speaks to our moment, so perfectly and painfully. is anyone listening to w.h. now?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 1, 2022 11:53 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1, September 1939 ( a poem)

 

An excellent essay enriched by a remarkable poem.

Thanks

Toyin

On Fri, Sep 2, 2022, 01:15 Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

History records 1st September 1939 as the start of the Second World War, with Hitler's invasion of Poland. 

With a third of Pakistan under water, food shortages and life-threatening droughts affecting some 24 Esat and Southern African countries,  some pessimists and doomsday prophets say that we are now living in the final days, that the Third World War which is going to be a thermo-nuclear is just around the corner and was kick-started with Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine. 

For credibility, as contributory factors,  the incredulous could factor in the aftermath of Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan, Uncle Sam playing dangerously in the South China Seas, a very unpredictable North Korea,  far from the bay of Mexico, Uncle Sam doing some fishing in Iran's the Persian Gulf which could be closed to traffic and thus cause more than painful shortages of fossil fuels to those who need it most, as if Russia turning off their gas supplies isn't already bad enough for EU economies…

Oddly, I'm thinking of Gorby , who as things are currently, will not be given a national funeral which ideally, e.g. the late Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher,  Helmut Khol who was the Chancellor of West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, Olaf Scholz, and other NATO Allies would have sure loved to attend, to lay their wreaths and to pitch their great speeches about freedom and democracy….

W.H. Auden: 1, September 1939

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

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