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| Jerome Berglund |
Masters of Educating & Agitating: Politiku &
Dissenryu as Pamphleteering
Setu Bilingual Journal’s Masters
Series Part VI
guest
edited by Jerome Berglund
INTRODUCTION:
In
our age of creeping oligarchy, deep state monopolies of policy predilections
predicated upon dark financing, quid pro
quo which translates frighteningly into insidious initiatives such as the
American Legislative Exchange Council, through a time of widespread
well-founded concerns over voting’s compromise, where the ostensible left party
selects its candidates for the highest office via an undemocratic backroom
arrangement and primaries or caucusing, popular vote has no bearing upon
ultimately designated leadership in the executive branch and consequent Supreme
Court appointments, when there are no feasible means for ensuring election
integrity thoroughly on a large scale as recounts and exit polls have quietly
been discontinued or made exorbitantly unaffordable to implement, where no
paper trail verifying purported results of crucial regions, dubious
gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, electoral colleges & superdelegate
systems intercede to tip the scales between anointed options where any doubt in
narrative exists, it is entirely reasonable for citizens in the United States
and across the world to doubt the promised participatory element in our
supposed republics, to feel interests are unrepresented by career politicians, duopoly
grifters, that due to deep-seated corruptions personal and institutional it is
guaranteed critical changes and improvements those empowered with the alleged
capacity to reform are unable, and more commonly unwilling to enact or even seriously
consider.
As
progressively minded individuals grow increasingly jaded by systemic
vulnerabilities and duplicitous promises offered, and then immediately reneged
upon and rescinded after entering office (in recent administrations including
such prominent bait and switches as universal healthcare, closure of
Guantanamo, widespread student loan relief, protecting abortion access, robust
stewardship for the environment and de-escalation of military interventionism
across the globe, objectives which could be readily accomplished in theory
through executive actions, a stroke of the pen might realize each day, and each
day a choice is made to permit our egregious status quos to persist) time and time again by bought and paid for
charlatans using tragedies opportunistically to secure votes and donations,
exploiting victimized populations (endangered women coerced into carrying
unwanted pregnancies to term at the behest of patriarchy and human resources,
demands for hegemony and priorities of consumption; desperate refugees created
by regime changing tumult and widespread destabilizing/expropriating patterns transformed
by tragic circumstances into compliant sources of inexpensive labor for predatory
captains of industry, dire conditions ensuring compliance and draconian dominion
over, dependence and subjugation sabotaging collective bargaining and enabling
wage stagnation or erosion) as hostages and bargaining chips to virtue signal
and argue for lesser evil positioning in various framings and races, this vile
and unacceptable state of affairs only seeming to worsen each day thanks to the
ratchet effect and continuing consolidation of capital, ownership/control of
media platforms, all these factors coalesce into a highly discouraging and
impractical juggernaut the average person has little hope of standing against
single-handedly in isolation, however expert they can become with stone and
sling.
The
disengaged rebel is hence behooved to explore alternative solutions for
enacting the people’s will, and study lessons from past generations who
succeeded at achieving monumental advances across sectors of civil rights,
labor regulating, self-determination, in the face of great opposition. There is
much wisdom in Martin Luther King Jr.’s comments upon the ‘language of the unheard’, and the IWW’s
familiar slogan and assertion that direct action gets the desirable goods.
Voltaire famously quipped that ‘Twenty-volume
folios will never make a revolution…It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are
to be feared’. Indeed, in the history of contemporary Japanese poetry
the New Rising Haiku movement, their interests in what Secret Police describe
as “promoting anti-capitalism and
anti-fascism”, “attempt[ing] to
attain their aims through…anti-war haiku” and “proletariat realism” provoked highly combative responses
and retaliations from the nation’s social architects. (See “The
Evolution of Modern Japanese Haiku and the Haiku Persecution Incidents” It├┤
Y├╗ki) Today there exists what amounts to widespread tacit censorship, permitted
through acceptance of terms & conditions of theoretically private,
non-state managed platforms, mirrored in carefully orchestrated relaying of
heavily redacted and perverted perspectives through print and news channels
owned by the same handful of accreted powerhouses. One can presume a predominant
assurance the truth and genuine samplings of public opinion, reports of
experiences and realities must be located outside of the twisted hallways of
mainstream popular discourse, the gagged and muted, co-opted seats of pundits
and selectively focus-grouped, severely vetted subjects permitted before a
microphone, on a record or canvas or bookshelf.
While
they persevere social media channels, independently produced publications,
podcasts, blog posts pluckily represent our last bastions of potential
integrity and transparency, where individuals may still call attention to our
emperors’ new fashion choices, a live-streaming cellular telephone recording can
disprove the false reports and testimonies, vindicate afflicted and witnesses’
realities. As Albert Camus warned us in the
Plague, ‘dar[ing] to say that two and
two make four’ can be one of the most hazardous, bravest and imperative
activities a person may execute for their country and planet, neighbors and
society at any given time. I applaud our valiant participants in this
thoughtful showcase for having the courage, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness to
focus their capable pens and caring minds upon these integral concerns, for
raising awareness and encouraging positive growth and development, rejecting
flawed logic and harmful philosophies which generate hate, injury, and
fragmentation of our species and earth. The international writing and arts
communities, and their haikai
offshoots, provide stunning opportunities for sharing viewpoints and unique
insights, organizing across borders and languages, rejecting divisions and
forging solidarity and fellowship, mobilizing to achieve common goals and
articulate shared interests via invaluable tools accessible conveniently and instantaneously,
connecting east and west, north and south, with impressive possibilities and
immediacy, offering promising instruments for facilitating humanitarian designs
presenting vast unrealized potentiality.
As
you navigate these poignant pieces composed from the most distant and diverse
locales, by haijin hailing from
America, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, I encourage you
to bask in this most laudable aspect of our electronic age, and feel a little
closer to our neighbors and friends at opposite ends of the maps, who share
corresponding kindness, cooperation, dreams of a better future, desires for the
pursuit of safety and comfort, who crave peace and respect and dignity for
themselves and others, want to preserve this world for future generations, to
continue refining our civilizations to usher in ages of newfound empathy and
sustainability, prosperity and goodwill. As we look up at the same stars each
night let us do so with compassion and awareness, wishing health and success to
our brothers and sisters of every nation, and with each action we take I hope
we can nudge things another millimeter the better direction. Each of our writers
has made some profound contributions toward the greater common goods in
crafting these activist verses, and our readers perform a critical service investing
your valuable time and attention to learning, considering and absorbing fresh
information, theory and points of view, particularly from outside your immediate
insular setting, spheres of collective and personal self-interest. I thank you,
one and all, for being a part of the solutions, and acting out the change we
want to see in this era. Each person is absolutely essential to the future’s
realizing. Posterity will remember, testify to and be deeply grateful for every
tiny flap of those delicate wings, which cause the rains allowing gardens to
grow. Yours sincerely with the utmost respect and encouragement from our land
of 10,000 lakes. m(_ _)m
Three microchapbooks and two fliers demonstrating political poems, which can be printed and folded or plastered prominently for display purposes!
February 5, 2024
Jerome Berglund has published book reviews and essays on poetry and poetics in Fireflies’ Light, Frogpond, Haiku Canada, Hooghly Review, the Mamba, North of Oxford, Setu, Valley Voices, also frequently exhibits poetry, short stories, plays, and fine art photography in print magazines, online journals, and anthologies.
Masters Series Part IV: Politiku & Dissenryu as Pamphleteering
