6 Comments

Bravo, excellent metaphor and framing! Will restack. Is this your narration? It's very good. Onward, indeed. This is no time for acquiescence or subservience.

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Thanks! not sure what you mean by narration? I wrote the piece, and interspersed the original poem.

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The audio voice-over was well done - clear, good emphasis in the right places. Or maybe it's AI generated? I do my own with audacity on Project: Pioneer. If the AI is that good, I'm wasting my time! Have to check if that's available on substack posts.

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This piece is so damn good. Thank you.

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Thank you for the wonderful text, Margaret. The parallels are understandable and probably the reason why some events seem to have to repeat themselves over and over again. Especially when one has forgotten one's own history, or rather that of one's class - insofar as one is aware of it...

Once again, my translation into German (1), not only because the German poet Theodor Fontane (2) translated the poem freely. (I took the liberty of using this translation for my work as well).

(1) https://www.trueten.de/archives/13505-Voran,-voran,-voran!,-riefen-die-Anfuehrer-im-Hintergrund-oder-der-Angriff-der-leichten-Brigade-und-ihr.html

(2) https://gedichte.xbib.de/Fontane_gedicht_Balaklawa.htm

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Loved it. One of my favorite incomprehensible old poems — y’all did what? And they’re proud of you?!

I know this is a little out of bounds, but I’m gonna do it anyway: the piece everyone forgets about in the “why did Reagan close the mental hospitals / why were there so many mental hospitals before then” puzzle is SYPHILIS. Third stage syphilis causes violent dementia, and oh my god, it was such a horrendous plague. Up to a third of the population slowly baking organic psychosis. So once we eventually figured out how to treat syphilis, there were a lot fewer incurable terminal psychotics, and a lot more people who could be treated and released, so to speak. SORRY! I just read a book about the history of syphilis and it explains so much!

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