Letter from Seoul - 19
When I woke up today, Yoon was still the President of South Korea. Last evening, the impeachment effort to kick him to the curb went over like a fart in a phone booth. Yoon’s entire political party walked out of the chambers in disgust before the vote.
No accountability is necessary. “Fuck you. That’s why.”
Yesterday, Mr. Martial Law stood before live TV cameras for two-minutes, groveled on cue, offered the obligatory apology and promised to be a good boy.
I’m not casting stones. In my lifetime, I’ve made a bad choice once or twice and said: “Sorry, I won’t do it again.” Most of the time, I kept my word. There may have been a few occasions when I had an elastic sense of truth, but I don’t want to talk about it.
So, Yoon lives to see another day as a political hack.
And then Mark Fuckerberg shut me down because his Thought Police took exception with something I posted ... and locked me out because: “We saw unusual activity on your account, and just want to fuck you up.”
Apparently, Korean politics is taboo on Fakebook. Yet when a President of a First World country says: "Martial Law" with the enthusiasm of "toga ... toga ... toga” at Delta House, this cannot be ignored.
Yet ask me if I care. We are talking about Mr. Ben Dover, that dweeb who recently hired a private jet to fly to Florida so he could walk into the room backwards for a 78-year-old degenerate fat fuck.
I regard our billionaire oligarchs as Creep Clowns, people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Fuckerberg.
And then there is the JV squad of Sewer Clowns, like Peter Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, RFK, Jr.
This is another version of the Shock Doctrine that overwhelms us with such ghastly disbelief, we are left numb and shell shocked by the grotesquery.
George Carlin warned us long ago that America’s real owners were coming for Social Security pensions, that could be turned over to Wall Street racketeers to generate more money for them from 3-D scams: Delay, Deny, Defend.
This is part of Project 2025, and when it happens, this may be the catalyst that finally sparks a Second American Civil War.
It’s just a shot away.
Speaking of poetry, as both a subject of study and a pursuit of pleasure, the genre has never done much for me.
I did like the John Milton’s Paradise Lost. And then his sequel after his wife died, Paradise Regained.
My only interest in poetry is word choice and a turn of phrase. From time-to-time I take what I find from these writers – and so many more, and make notes for dispatches that I may write tomorrow, or the next day, or the next whenever.
My book collection is very thin on poetry, except for some works by John Berryman (1914-1972), Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), Allen Ginsberg (192-1997) and Robert Lowell (1918-1977).
None of these writers toed the line. That’s the basic starting point for me.
Berryman checked out of life with a splash, literally jumping to his death from the Washington Street Bridge in Minneapolis, on the western side of the Mississippi River. In between his start and finish, a lot of booze, three broken marriages, bouts of ordinary madness and a lot of raw but insightful writing.
Bukowski is the Hell-A cult writer of all time. His legacy speaks for itself. Bukowski lived life his way, all the way. Although published after his death, Bukowski’s three-volume collection of letters is titled: Screams from The Balcony. How I wish I thought of that title first.
Ginsberg, certainly a man of dubious character who favored hedonism of a degenerate stripe, is part of the Holy Trinity of the Beat Movement – filled out by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
Ginsberg would always be famous if he only wrote the opening lines to Howl (1956):
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix.”
Americans tuned into I Love Lucy to avoid the America Ginsberg described.
Lowell was among the Boston patrician class, with a genealogy linked to the Mayflower. He was one of the 20th century's most esteemed American poets. Lowell was also one of its most tormented because he was a manic depressive who experienced alternating bouts of depression and mania.
Like Berryman, Lowell racked up three failed marriages, gobbled a lot of lithium to tame his bi-polar condition, wrote a ton of poetry that garnered major awards ... and then died at age 59 while riding in a taxi from JFK to Manhattan in the hope of reuniting with his second ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, also a major league writer.
When he died, Lowell was holding Lucien Freud's painting of Lady Caroline Blackwood, his wife, whom he had just told he was leaving in favor of Hardwick. Blackwell had been married to Freud the painter in the early 1950s. He was the grandson of Freud the psychoanalyst.
As you note in Transitory Enchantment in Oklahoma, day-by-day, we are sliding closer to 2+2 = 5. And if we do not acquiesce, South African Nazi Elon Musk will have Americans consigned to re-education camps in the deserts of Utah, where everyone becomes Winston Smith.
Imagine an immigrant with that much power.
“Elon Musk is eating the dogs, he’s eating the cats
Of the people with U.S. passports.”
As an expat in Seoul, I’m not worried about Elon Musk. Yet it is still possible that one might hear: “Would you like a side-order of martial law with your kimchi?”
Here in Seoul; round-about 3:10 a.m. The former defense minister who resigned almost immediately after the martial law coup fell apart, has been arrested. While Yoon has escaped an impeachment charge, his own party leadership is strongly suggesting that he resign and go the fuck away. He is a Pariah. The political noose is coming for him. Everyone knows that to get the prime target, you must knock-off the lackeys. Everyone knows the captain lied.
[Old Delhi, Varanasi and Kolkata]