May « 2020 « CONNECT/HOOK

It is quite easy in art to decry rape, genocide, nuclear war, incest, drug abuse, racism, homophobia, etc. I mean, in arts circles the pro-rape, pro-genocide, pro-nuclear winter, pro-incest, pro-drug, KKK, & John Birch lobbies are so pervasive! I recall what Don Moss uttered after reading Carolyn Forche’s travesty The Angel Of History: “Y’know, Dan, before reading this book I never realized WAR IS BAD!”
You see, “Liberals” prefer being liked to being excellent. I like Maya Angelou’s sentiments—who wouldn’t? —Ted Bundy? But they’re trite & poorly structured. It’s part of a noxious trait that artists have— a desire to both show, yet shield their humanity from non-artists. Instead of merely acknowledging artists DO things differently &/or better than non-artists, artists adopt the hubris that they ARE different &/or better than non-artists. Artists KNOW implicitly that art is not a life necessity— go 2 weeks without garbagemen or 2 weeks without artists & tell me who you’ll miss more. Same goes for doctors, plumbers, & policemen. Art is not meat & potatoes like those pursuits. It is a chocolate sundae & artists resent this fact furiously (as a poet, trust me— few artists accept art’s superfluity as I do) so they concoct & construct grand rationales for art’s relevance/necessity. They then engage in banal homiletics— both poetic & prosaic— rather than engage with fresh wordplay, startling POVs, interesting & diverse subject matter. This is the dirty little secret artists (overwhelmingly liberal) dare not speak. This is why PC Elitists, nowadays far more so than conservatives, traffic in censorship— something, to his credit, even Bly excoriates. (I guess he’s not totally hopeless, after all.) But the sway of PC Elitism over contemporary art is just a passing phase. Multiculturalism will sort out its own in a few decades & the bad will fall by the hands of the next waves of Multiculturalists themselves. The Millennial era will be seen as one of laze, lost opportunity, & frittered talent.