Politics And Vulgarity Poem by gershon hepner

Politics And Vulgarity

Rating: 5.0

Politics: disparity
between truth and emphatic
observance of fanatic
vox populi vulgarity.

Inspired by Michael Oakeshott’s ‘The Claims of Politics’, cited in an article in the TLS on October 24,2008 by Barton Swaim, ‘Little Meaning, Strong Word’:

A limitation of view, which appears so clear and practical, but which amounts to little more than a mental fog, is inseparable from political activity. A mind fixed and callous to all distinctions, emotions and intellectual habits become bogus from repetition and lack of examination, unreal loyalties, delusive aims, false significances are what political action involves. And this is so, not because the politically active are under the necessity of persuading the mentally obtuse before their activity can succeed; the spiritual callousness involved in political action belongs to its character…Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the concurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because the false simplification of human life implied in even the best of its purposes.

10/25/08

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