Person A tells person B fact C. Person D kills person
B because he/she knows fact C. Who is responsible?
I sat at the bar at the little Cambodian restaurant, preparing to read my poetry aloud to the assembled poets and writers.
A man asked me, "So, are you going to kill all of these people?"
His assumption was that it was my belief that my poetry contained such
secret information that the government would kill everyone and anyone
who heard it.
His statement to me was, of course, an attempt
to get me to censor myself; really, an attempt to censor me. It
is my considered belief that this statement was an absolute outrage and a violation of my First Amendment rights.
What interests me in this is the way that a homicidal agency of the United
States government just disappears from the scene of the hypothetical crime
which would happen, and the way in which I, the poet, become the author of the hypothetical death.
Clearly, education is never homicide.
A former diplomat and Professor Emeritus of English Literature has as his personal motto, Sapere Audit (Dare to Know!)
On September
12th, 2001 a terrible Zeitgeist came on the scene, deeply vengeful and racist,
and a federal judge has ruled that the United States can imprison people solely on the basis of religion or nationality, and with that decision America slipped into a deep slumber full of
nightmares: Guantanamo, Fallujah, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions
Act, Bagram...
Everything sacrificed on the altar of Continuity
of Government...
No, this is not an age in which any good American
is afraid to know anything her or his government is doing!
