murderers
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae
We are taught this poem in grade school.
This poem is about killing people.
We should remember this, as we honour them.
They do not sleep.
==================================================
Thank you very much. Wow. Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is
great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible
movement. This is a movement like nobody's ever seen before. And, frankly, this
was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been
anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond. And now, it's going to reach
a new level of importance, because we're going to help our country heal. We're
going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help and it needs
help very badly. We're going to fix our borders, we're going to fix everything about
our country; and we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to
be just that. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it's now
clear that we've achieved the most incredible political— Look what happened; is
this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before —
nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary
honour of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every
citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will
be fighting for you and with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have
delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, and
that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America. That's what we
have to have. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow
us to make America great again. And in addition to having won the battleground
states of North Carolina — I love these places — Georgia, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin, We are now winning in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Alaska, which
would result in us carrying at-least 315 electoral votes, but that— but it's much
easier doing what the networks did, or whoever called it, because there was no
other path. There was no other path to victory. We also have won the popular
vote; that was great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Winning the popular vote
was very nice; very nice, I will tell you. It's a great— a great feeling of love. We
have a great feeling of love in this very large room with unbelievable people
standing by my side. These people have been incredible. They've made the
journey with me, and we're going to make you very happy. We're going to make
you very proud of your vote. I hope that you're going to be looking back,
someday, and say that was one of the truly important moments of my life, when I
voted for this group of people. Beyond the president, this group of great people.
America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken
back control of the Senate; wow, that's great. And the Senate races in Montana,
Nevada, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, the great Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania were all won by the MAGA movement. They helped so much. And
in those cases, every one of them — we worked with the senators — they were
tough races, and I mean, the number of victories in the Senate was absolutely
incredible. And we did tele-rallies, we did tele-rallies with each one of them. And
sometimes we did two or three for— And it was amazing to look at all of those
victories. Nobody expected that; nobody. So, I just wanted to thank you very
much for that. And we have— you have some great senators, and some great
new senators. And it also looks like we'll be keeping control of the House of
Representatives. And I want to thank Mike Johnson; I think he's doing a terrific
job — terrific job. I want to also thank my beautiful wife, Melania, first lady, who
has the number-one bestselling book in the country; can you believe that? Oh,
no; she has done a great job — works very hard. Works very hard to help people.
So I just want to thank her, but I want to thank my whole family: My amazing
children — and they are amazing children. Now, we all think our children are
amazing — everybody here thinks their children are amazing. But that's a good
thing when you think they are. But Don, Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Lara, Jared,
Kimberly, Michael; thank you all. What a help. My father in law, Viktor, is
tremendous and we miss very much Melania's mother, Amalija. We miss Amalija,
don't we; huh? She would be very happy right now, standing on this stage; she'd
be so proud. She was a great woman, that one. Beautiful, inside and out. She
was a great woman. I want to be the first to congratulate our great, now I can say,
vice-president-elect of the United States, JD Vance. And his absolutely
remarkable and beautiful wife, Usha Vance. And he is a feisty guy, isn't he? You
know, I've said: "Go into the enemy camp," and, you know, the enemy camp is
certain networks, and a lot of people don't like those. "Sir, do I have to do that?"
He just goes, "Okay, which one?" "CNN, and MS-DNC," he'll s ay, "All right, thank
you very much—" He actually looks like— he's like the only guy I've ever seen
who really looks forward to it, and then he just goes and absolutely obliterates
them. Say a couple of words. Thank you very much. He's— he's turned out to be
a good choice. I took a little heat at the beginning, but he was— I knew, I knew
the brain was a good one; about as good as it gets. And we love the family and
we're going to have a great four years and we're going to turn our country
around; make us something very special. Lost that— lost that little— lost that
little— that little thing called "special." We have to make it so, we're going to
make this so great. It's going to— it's the greatest country and potentially the
greatest country in the world, by far. And right now, we're going to just work very
hard to get all of that back. We're going to make it the best it's ever been; we can
do that. We just— if we had to wait longer, I don't know, it was going bad and it
was going bad, fast. We're going to have to seal up those borders and we're
going to have to let people come into our country. We want people to come back
in. But we have to— We have to let them come back in, but they have to come in
legally. They have to come in legally. Let me also express my tremendous
appreciation for Susie and Chris; the job you did. Susie; come, Susie; come here.
Come here, Susie. Chris; come here, Chris. Susie likes to stay sort of in the
back, let me tell you. The Ice Lady; we call her the Ice Lady. Chris; come here,
Chris. Susie likes to stay in the background. She's not in the background. Thank
you; And thank you, Susan. Look at this, she's shy; I've never seen her be shy,
before. Susie! Oh, they've been— they're great. Everybody up here is great.
Everybody up here is very special. But the Trump— Who did you say? Oh, let me
tell you; we have a new star. A star is born: Elon. Oh, he is. Now, he's an
amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight. You know, he spent two weeks in
Philadelphia, in different parts of Pennsylvania, campaigning. You know, he sent
the rocket up two weeks ago. And I saw that rocket and I saw it coming down.
And I saw it. It was— When it left, it was beautiful, shiny, white. When it came
down, it didn't look so pretty. It was going 10,000 miles an hour and it was
burning like Hell. I said: "What happened to your paint job?" He said: "We've
never made a paint that could withstand that kind of heat." And— But I saw it
come down, and turn around. And it was, you know, it's like 22 stories tall, by the
way; it looks a little smaller than that, but it's big. And it came down, and down,
and you saw all that fire burning and— and I'm saying: "Only Elon can do this. It
must be an Elon." And I tell the story; I told it last night. I had a man on the
phone. I had the screen muted; no sound. I was talking to a very important man.
[He] happens to be here, and that very important guy, one of the most important
people in, I would say, the country, actually. But, you know, I was president, and
now it looks like I was going to be, maybe, president again. So I figured I could
ask him to hold. So I asked him to hold, and because — especially because
you're going to be president again — they hold. So I took the phone down, and
I'm looking at the screen. I'm seeing this crazy thing that's going around and
coming down and it looks like it's [going to] crash into the gantry. And I said: "Oh,
no," and I said, "Do me a favour; Do you mind holding for a couple? I want to see
this." I thought it was a Space-Age movie or something. I put the phone down,
but I didn't pick it up for 45 minutes, and he was holding. But this spaceship came
down and I saw those engines firing and it looked like it was over; It was going to
smash. And then, I saw the fire pour out from the left side and it put it straight
and it came down so gently. And then it wrapped those arms around it and it held
it. And just like you hold your baby at night; your little baby. And it was a beautiful
thing to see. And I called Elon, and I said: "Elon, was that you?" He said: "Yes, it
was." I said: "Who else can do that? Can Russia do it?" "No." "Can China do it?"
"No." "Can the United States do it, other than you?" "No, nobody can do that." I
said: "That's why I love you, Elon. That's great." And you know, when we had the
tragic Hurricane Helene and it hit— it particular[ly] hit North Carolina; they were
really devastated. The water, this was a big water, as big as we've ever seen;
what a hurricane. It built lakes out of nothing. Fields became lakes. And— and
the danger was unbelievable, and the people from North Carolina came to me
and they said: "Would it be possible, at all possible, for you to speak to Elon
Musk? We need StarLink." I said: "What's StarLink?" "It's a form of
communication." So I called Elon, and I'll tell you what he had— And it was very
dangerous. People had died. They had no communication; all the wires were
down. And I called Elon Musk. I said: "Elon, you have something called StarLink.
Is that right?" "Yes, I do." "What the hell is it?" He said: "It's a communication
system that's very good." I said: "Elon, they need it really, really badly in North
Carolina. Can you get it—" He had that there so fast; it was incredible. So… and
it was great. It saved a lot of lives. He saved a lot of lives. But he's a character,
he's a special guy, he's a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses. We
don't have that many of them. We have to protect our super geniuses. I want to
thank some of the— you know we have, up here today, The U.S. Open
champion; he's a fantastic golfer. Slightly longer than me; he hits a ball a little bit
longer than me. Just a little bit. Bryson DeChambeau is up here someplace.
What happened to Bryce? Where is he? Bryson! Oh, he was— He's hitting balls.
Oh, he's on the way. He's hitting balls. Bryson? Oh, look at him. He had a great—
He's got a great career going. Great U.S. Open, Bryson. That's a fantastic job.
And we also have a man, Dana White, who has done some job. He's a tough
guy. So Dana started UFC and he came to me: "Do you mind if I use your…"
Nobody wanted to give him arenas because they said it's a rough sport; a little
rough. And I helped him out a little bit. And I went and I said: "This is the
roughest sport I've ever seen." But I began to like it and he loved it. And nobody's
done a better job in sports. And, you know, he's a very motivational kind of a guy.
What he does, he gets these fighters and they— they really go at it, and it's
become one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere, at any time; it's
doing so well. I'd like to ask Dana just to say a couple of words, because people
love to hear from him. That is a piece of work. No, he's an amazing— He's really
an amazing guy. But most of all, I want to thank the millions of hard-working
Americans across the nation who have always been the heart and soul of this
really great movement. We've been through so much together, and today you
showed up in record numbers to deliver a victory like, really, I— probably like no
other. This was something, this was something special. And we're going to…
we're going to pay you back. We are going to do the best job. We're going to…
we're going to turn it around. It's got to be turned around. It's got to be turned
around, fast. And we're going to turn it around. We're going to do it in every way,
in so many ways, but we're going to do it in every way. This will forever be
remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.
So, I just want to say that on behalf of this great group of people, these are
hard-working people. These are fantastic people. And we can add a few names,
like Robert F. Kennedy Jr, he came here. And he's going to help make America
healthy again. And now he's a great guy and he really means it; he wants to do
some things and we're going to let him go to it. I just said: "But, Bobby; leave the
oil to me. We have more liquid gold — oil and gas — We have more liquid gold
than any country in the world; more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than
Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good
time, Bobby." We're going to be paying down debt. We're going to be reducing
taxes. We have— We can do things that nobody else can do. Nobody else is
going to be able to do it. China doesn't have what we have. Nobody has what we
have, but we have the greatest people, also. Maybe, that's the most important
thing. This campaign, this campaign has been so historic in so many ways.
We've built the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition. They've never
seen anything like it in all of American history. They've never seen any— young
and old, men and women, rural and urban. And we had them all helping us,
tonight. When you think, I mean, I was looking at it; I was watching it. They had
some great analysis of the people that voted for us; nobody's ever seen anything
like that. It came from— they came from all corners. Union, non-union;
African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Arab-American,
Muslim-American; we had everybody, and it was beautiful. It was a historic
realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of
common sense. You know, we're the party of common sense. We want to have
borders. We want to have security. We want to have things be good, safe. We
want great education. We want a strong and powerful military. And ideally, we
don't have to use it. You know, we had no war — four years, we had no wars,
except we defeated ISIS. We defeated ISIS in record time, but we had no wars.
They said: "He will start a war." I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop
wars. But this is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. Together,
we're going to unlock America's glorious destiny, and we're going to achieve the
most incredible future for our people. Yesterday, as I stood at my last stop on the
campaign trail… I'll never be doing a rally again; can you believe it? I think we've
done 900 rallies, approximately, from the— Can you imagine? Nine-hundred,
901, something; a lot of rallies. And it was sad. Everybody was sad. Many
people, I said: "This is our last rally, but now we're going on to something that's
far more important, because the rallies were used for us to put— be put in this
position where we can really help our country. That's what we're going to do.
We're going to make our country better than it ever has been." And I said that
many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason
was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now, we are
going to fulfill that mission, together. We're going to fulfill that mission. The task
before us will not be easy, but I will bring every ounce of energy, spirit and fight
that I have in my soul to the job that you've entrusted to me. This is a great job.
There is no job like this. This is the most important job in the world. Just as I did
in my first term, we had a great first term. My great, great first term. I will govern
by a simple motto: "Promises made, promises kept." We're going to keep our
promises. Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. We will
make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful and free again. And I'm asking
every citizen all across our land to join me in this noble and righteous endeavour
— that's what it is. It's time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us.
It's time to unite. And we're going to try, we're going to try; we have to try. And it's
going to happen. Success will bring us together. I've seen that. I've seen that. I
saw that in the first term when we became more and more successful, people
started coming together. Success is going to bring us together and we are going
to start by all putting America first. We have to put our country first for at least a
period of time. We have to fix. Because together we can truly make America
great again for all Americans. So I want to just tell you what a great honour this
is. I want to thank you. I will not let you down. America's future will be bigger,
better, bolder, richer, safer and stronger than it has ever been before. God bless
you and God bless America. Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you very
much.
Originally for this project I was going to experiment with a bunch of the different styles of poetry that we learned about in class. I was excited to do so.
And then Trump got elected. Again. And I was angry. Very, very angry. For some reason, I couldn’t let this anger go. So I killed my thoughts through writing.
The two blackout poems I’ve made here are related. I made the first one on November 6th, the day after the election. In Flanders Fields was the first poem I remember learning about in school, and for a long time was the only poem I even slightly understood. Looking back, it’s odd to me that we learn about such a bleak piece of writing as kids. If I remember correctly, the poem was literally written in the trenches. It is the crying of a soldier who despairs over how history will remember him. It speaks of an endless struggle, one that must be passed down generation to generation. And today, we still pass it down -- or we pass down the poem, at least, if not the understanding that goes with it.
I spend a lot of time on St Paul St, and this year they put up these little “Lest We Forget” signs on a bunch of the streetlights, each commemorating a different local soldier. I walked up and down that street and read each of the names on those signs. There was one thought I couldn’t get out of my head:
“These people killed people.”
And we celebrate them. Every year, we mourn their passing and honour their memories. Because they died killing the right people? That doesn’t feel right to say, but it’s true, isn’t it? As a society, we have decided that these murderers are Good People, and we mourn their deaths at the hands of the Bad People that they tried to kill.
I’m not trying to say that the people who gave their lives fighting the Central Powers or the Nazis or anyone else were awful monsters, nor am I interested in interrogating the ethical balancing act behind war. But I do think it’s important to recognize the exceptions that exist in our society. Murderers are awful monsters, unless they’re soliders, in which case they’re heroes. The line between good people and bad people is not straight, nor is it based on contextless action; it is jagged, and has many exceptions.
It is with this mindset that I made both of these blackout poems. If you haven’t figured it out by now, for the second work I blacked out Donald Trump’s victory speech he made at 2:30am on November 6th. If you read through the work, you can see me work through many different feelings towards the election. Each of the six pages has a different tone. I start with empathy, become self-righteous, lose hope, build anger, declare an enemy, and end with strength.
It is not a nice work. I do not like it.
It is angry. Horribly, terribly angry. I don’t like being angry.
It dabbles in the kind of mindset that makes monsters.
It is a dark day when facists are elected in America. The people we celebrate on November 11th, many of them died killing facists. They’re called heroes for it.
This is getting kinda dark for a creative writing assignment. I’d like to clarify here that I am well, and that this anger has since passed. But again, I think it’s important to acknowledge these emotions. The work that I have created here is the best I have ever done in capturing anger. And I have done it using no words of my own, which I think is really neat. I slightly wish I had done something else besides blackout poetry, but honestly most of the writing I do is what you would probably call stream-of-consciousness manifestos (kinda like what I’m writing here), so I think I’ve got a lot of the other stuff we talked about down pretty well. This was a new craft for me, finding my own message in someone else’s words, and I think I’ve learned a lot from this.
The blackout poems were done over a month ago, but I never had time to write this little reflection bit until now. As I write this on December 10th, the “Lest We Forget” signs are still up. I find that a bit odd. They were put up a week before Rememberance Day, and I would’ve expected them to be taken down a week or two after. Perhaps they’re intentionally leaving them up for a full month, and they’ll be taken down tomorrow, or the day after.
Or maybe they forgot.
Back
cyanLaStride