[This is taken from our book Diary of an Adamant Seducer. This is the first portion of the chapter. Recently we added a long update, updating Donald Trump’s threat to our shared democracy: Trump & Democracy 2023.]

“Fly hence, deluding Dream! and light as air,
To Agamemnon’s ample tent repair.
Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,
Lead all his Grecians to the dusty plain.
Declare, e’en now ’tis given him to destroy
The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.
For now no more the gods with fate contend,
At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.”
…

Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet closed,
To armour armour, lance to lance opposed,
Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,
The sounding darts in iron tempests flew,
Victors and vanquish’d join’d promiscuous cries,
And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise;
With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,
And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.

…

“… Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.
Let me revenge it on proud Hector’s heart,
Let his last spirit smoke upon my dart;
On these conditions will I breathe: till then,
I blush to walk among the race of men.”

…

Such war the immortals wage; such horrors rend
The world’s vast concave, when the gods contend.
First silver-shafted Phoebus took the plain
Against blue Neptune, monarch of the main.
The god of arms his giant bulk display’d,
Opposed to Pallas, war’s triumphant maid.
Against Latona march’d the son of May.
The quiver’d Dian, sister of the day,
(Her golden arrows sounding at her side,)
Saturnia, majesty of heaven, defied.
With fiery Vulcan last in battle stands
The sacred flood that rolls on golden sands;
Xanthus his name with those of heavenly birth,
But called Scamander by the sons of earth.
While thus the gods in various league engage,
Achilles glow’d with more than mortal rage:
Hector he sought; in search of Hector turn’d
His eyes around, for Hector only burn’d;
And burst like lightning through the ranks, and vow’d
To glut the god of battles with his blood.

….

Where’er he moved, the goddess shone before,
And bathed his brazen lance in hostile gore.
What mortal man Achilles can sustain?
The immortals guard him through the dreadful plain,
And suffer not his dart to fall in vain.
…

Hector beheld his javelin fall in vain,
Nor other lance, nor other hope remain;
He calls Deiphobus, demands a spear—
In vain, for no Deiphobus was there.
All comfortless he stands: then, with a sigh;

“’Tis so — Heaven wills it, and my hour is nigh!
I deem’d Deiphobus had heard my call,
But he secure lies guarded in the wall.
A god deceived me; Pallas, ’twas thy deed,
Death and black fate approach! ’tis I must bleed.
No refuge now, no succor from above,
Great Jove deserts me, and the son of Jove,
Propitious once, and kind! Then welcome fate!
’Tis true I perish, yet I perish great:
Yet in a mighty deed I shall expire,
Let future ages hear it, and admire!”
Fierce, at the word, his weighty sword he drew,

…

So shone the point of great Achilles’ spear.
In his right hand he waves the weapon round,
Eyes the whole man, and meditates the wound;
But the rich mail Patroclus lately wore
Securely cased the warrior’s body o’er.
One space at length he spies, to let in fate,
Where ’twixt the neck and throat the jointed plate
Gave entrance: through that penetrable part
Furious he drove the well-directed dart:
Nor pierced the windpipe yet, nor took the power
Of speech, unhappy! from thy dying hour.

Prone on the field the bleeding warrior lies,
While, thus triumphing, stern Achilles cries:
“At last is Hector stretch’d upon the plain,
Who fear’d no vengeance for Patroclus slain:
Then, prince! you should have fear’d, what now you feel;
Achilles absent was Achilles still:
Yet a short space the great avenger stayed,
Then low in dust thy strength and glory laid.
Peaceful he sleeps, with all our rites adorn’d,
For ever honour’d, and for ever mourn’d:
While cast to all the rage of hostile power,
Thee birds shall mangle, and the gods devour.”

Then Hector, fainting at the approach of death:

“By thy own soul! by those who gave thee breath!
By all the sacred prevalence of prayer;
Ah, leave me not for Grecian dogs to tear!
The common rites of sepulture bestow,
To soothe a father’s and a mother’s woe:
Let their large gifts procure an urn at least,
And Hector’s ashes in his country rest.”

“No, wretch accursed! relentless he replies;

…

Then thus the chief his dying accents drew:
“Thy rage, implacable! too well I knew:
The Furies that relentless breast have steel’d,
And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.
Yet think, a day will come, when fate’s decree
And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee;
Phoebus and Paris shall avenge my fate,
And stretch thee here before the Scaean gate.”
He ceased. The Fates suppress’d his labouring breath,
And his eyes stiffen’d at the hand of death;
To the dark realm the spirit wings its way,
(The manly body left a load of clay,)
And plaintive glides along the dreary coast,
A naked, wandering, melancholy ghost!

Achilles, musing as he roll’d his eyes
O’er the dead hero, thus unheard, replies:

“Die thou the first! When Jove and heaven ordain,
I follow thee” — He said, and stripp’d the slain.
Then forcing backward from the gaping wound
The reeking javelin, cast it on the ground.

…

These fix’d up high behind the rolling wain,
His graceful head was trail’d along the plain.
Proud on his car the insulting victor stood,
And bore aloft his arms, distilling blood.
He smites the steeds; the rapid chariot flies;
The sudden clouds of circling dust arise.
Now lost is all that formidable air;
The face divine, and long-descending hair,
Purple the ground, and streak the sable sand;
Deform’d, dishonour’d, in his native land,
Given to the rage of an insulting throng,
And, in his parents’ sight, now dragg’d along!

Bartleby, alone upon the sands of fatal Troy. Sitting with sand chafing between buttocks and underwear. Waiting, with the ocean curling to and from his pointed toes. Bartleby, musing. Bartleby, speaking:

“I cannot stop the Evil. The ranging, restless, pointless cruelty. I cannot stop the crime — though I watch it slowly stand, pull shoulders back, stretch arms up and back, yawn and smile tall and sleepy-eyed; watch it, in boxers only, led cheerily by the smell of brewing coffee towards another leather-sofa filtered-water designer-shirts and climatized-air day.”

Bartleby hears the crash and din of a mangy tiny nothing war between a few scattered bundles of short, trim, scarce-bearded youths. Bartleby hears rambling poet roll and lift their meagre bones and empty offerings, hears the rounding rhythms and flowering phrases build from splashing mud puddles a raging foaming world-invading sea of warriors grand and gods involved and implicated, until the windy plains of high-towered wide-extended gods-defended Troy flow red with heroes’ blood and black with bound-Beauty’s sullen, heart-twisting idles.

“On the one flank: An election fairly won and duly closed. Betrayed, belittled, named a lie again and again until a lie’s the truth for minds that would rather lie in lies than stand and know, and also a lie for any who, through choice or circumstance, linger too long too near the lie-machine. And then, on the opposite, simultaneous flank, local laws of local lands perverted to silence those voters who’d voted for the winner of the fair, the clear, the standard, the two-hundred years of internal-peace national election. And how now these two flanks securely — bellies and brows sated on processed foodstuffs and prejudice-stoking pundits — offer pious oh-so-public, oh-so-oil-daubed prayers as they (strolling, ambling almost) close proudly, tragically, strong-for-the-people-y in on hundreds of years of struggling trust.

“An election won perhaps more by luck than the people’s wise intervention. But won nonetheless. An election won perhaps only because the by turns belying and bungling of an unprecedented plague exposed the uselessness of power-for-pridesomepower corruption to a degree and in a brightness that the many could not (though with faces still sternly slanting towards those troughs wherein they swill a rich and gooey well-powdered slop) help but notice. But won nonetheless. An election whose outcome stopped the consolidation of power by an enemy of democracy who had spent a huffy four years chaotically, incompetently and yet somewhat effectively (such are the advantages of the destroyer of order, dignity, and trust!) dismantling checks on his kingship.

“And a people so divided, so absorbed by the lint of their own bellybuttons, a people so tired of each other and their shared destiny.

“But these people that you love to blame. How wrong are they? How much was the would-be king’s initial victory owing to an already creaking-cracking system? These people that I cannot reach. The rabble on all sides of the grist mill that they both turn and fall beneath. These people so varied in their outlooks and their life patterns. These people just people like people have always been.

“What has rotted the system and culture of democracy that used to save them from themselves?

“And the game they win or lose is not just for themselves but for a world that feels their heavy-hulled ship-of-state’s wallows and rolls, a world that will perhaps with melting-flesh and scorched-earth know the rise and fall of this bulky, this steel-and-info, this nuke-and-dollar, this free-and-frolic, this faith-and-fantasy empire.

“It were better that democracy were preserved, calmer heads prevailed, democracy proved herself here in this giant sprawling mixed affair known here and there and far and near as The United States of America; that is to say, as The US; that is to say: where we’ve 300-million found ourselves with yet fingertips in itchy-reach of frayed but not-yet-spent ropes and strings to pull and steady our own destiny and thus to some extent that of this world of interwoven, inter-entangled yearnings.

“But I’ve no answer to this doubling-down of political evil which the US American Republicans now unfurl as their official answer to losing the election that for the good of all humankind they should have lost and which by the grace of who-knows-what?-since-God-has-allowed-arguably-worse-things-to-happen they did indeed lose. For I have no great wisdom. Nor can I even desire great wisdom. The truth is, I want only that succor that a child finds in his mother and a man in his wife. Where should I, self-spun yarn, find that familial respite? In a coffee shop’s playlist, comfy armchair or playful literature? Useless, useless am I in the face of Evil.

Useless am I, sore and o’er-useless against this human, this all-to-human, this salty, this sweaty, this happy-family- and/or friends-and-treasures-first, this ‘they’re-the-worst’, this moonlight dancing and starbright prancing Evil.”

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew Watson (I mean, the part from The Iliad was written by Homer and translated by Alexander Pope; and now, after so many layers of mortal witness, rests — as calm and ambitionless as the summer sun — in the public domain)
November 13, 2021

Update Sunday, December 17, 2023:
I have felt sick to my stomach for years and years now.
The take-over of state election oversight by Trump cronies was somewhat thwarted by the midterm election results. But the general drumbeat and marching in step to the destruction of US American democracy grows.

1. “Election Deniers’ Playbook for 2024: The Attempts to Undermine Safe and Secure Elections are Evolving” Brennan Center for Social Justice May 3, 2023 by Lauren Miller and Wendy R. Weiser

“For each tactic, the analysis walks through what happened during the midterm election cycle as well as new trends that have emerged in 2023. Its findings suggest that a number of these tactics will continue to play a significant role in the next election cycle — including conspiracy-driven attacks on election infrastructure, threats to election officials and workers, election police forces and other government-sponsored initiatives to target voter fraud, increasingly brazen measures to restrict access to voting, and disinformation-fueled efforts to undermine election results.”

“In Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming, election deniers now control statewide offices that oversee elections. In battleground states such as Nevada, they secured victories in local election offices in key jurisdictions, including Nye and Storey counties. And at the congressional level, after the midterms, the House now has at least 180 members who questioned or denied the 2020 election results, while the Senate has 17 such individuals.”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-deniers-playbook-2024

2. “A New Trump Administration Will ‘Come After’ the Media, says Kash Patel” NY Times 12/5/2023 by Jonathon Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Charlie Savage

“A confidant of Donald J. Trump who is likely to serve in a senior national security role in any new Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to target journalists for prosecution if the former president regains the White House.” Patel Interview]

Kash Patel:
“‘We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,’ Mr. Patel said. ‘Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.’ He added: ‘We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.'”

Donald Trump:
“‘I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.’ He added: ‘Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/us/politics/trump-kash-patel-journalists.html

Per Mitt Romney, Republicans afraid of physical danger if they vote against Trump
[From “Exclusive: Mitt Romney Says Trump is Such a Whack Job” Vanity Fair 10/26/2023
by Brian Stelter
From an interview with recent Trump biographer McKay Coppins:
“One of the biggest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans today,” said Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment—vote to convict Trump or vote to impeach Trump—and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety. They were afraid of what Trump supporters might do to them or to their families.” That “raises a really uncomfortable question,” Coppins said, which is “how long can the American project last if elected officials from one of the major parties are making their political decisions based on fear of physical violence from their constituents?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/10/mitt-romney-trump-whack-job

3. ‘Openly Authoritarian Campaign: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm” The Guardian 11/22/2023 by Peter Stone

“To craft a more powerful presidency, Maga loyalists at a number of well-financed conservative thinktanks led by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America have produced an almost 1,000-page handbook, dubbed ‘Project 2025’, to help guide a second Trump term – or potentially another GOP administration should Trump not get the nomination.

…

“One ominous plan Project 2025 has been weighing would allow Trump to invoke the 1871 Insurrection Act on his first day in office, greenlighting using military forces against political foes and demonstrators protesting a new term for Trump, according to the Washington Post.

…

“’The plans being developed by members of Trump’s cult to turn the DoJ and FBI into instruments of his revenge should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law,’ said Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the justice department.

“’Trump and rightwing media have planted in fertile soil the seed that the current Department of Justice has been politicized, and the myth has flourished. Their attempts to undermine DoJ and the FBI are among the most destructive campaigns they have conducted.’

“Bromwich’s point was underscored when days after Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled a four-count criminal indictment of Trump involving his multi-pronged efforts to subvert Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump posted: ‘If you go after me, I’m coming after you.’”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm

4. “Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden” Vox 12/13/2023 by Li Zhou

“House Republicans voted to launch an inquiry despite no evidence of Biden’s wrongdoing.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/9/13/23871948/biden-impeachment-inquiry-kevin-mccarthy

5. “Americans agree democracy is on the line in 2024, but disagree on who poses the greatest threat” NPR 12/15/2023 by Gary Fields and Linley Sanders

“The AP-NORC poll found that 87% of Democrats and 54% of independents believe a second Trump term would negatively affect U.S. democracy. For Republicans, 82% believe democracy would be weakened by another Biden win, with 56% of independents agreeing.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/americans-agree-that-the-future-of-democracy-is-on-the-line-in-the-2024-election-but-disagree-about-who-poses-the-biggest-threat

The lies are winning.
When the lies win, the liars win.
When the liars win, the people lose their say.
When the people lose their say, the lie grows bolder and more violent.

How to stop the evil?
Isn’t it on the way, now,
coming for us all —
Trump’s enemies now, his allies (or perhaps their children) next

Why?
What have we done to deserve
the exultation of crime
the perversion of justice.
?

When is it time to panic?
And when is it too late to panic?
The dead canary was a joke until the miners started tipping over, blue faced and finished.
But then it was too late.
Too late.
Where are we?
How much oxygen is left in this system
In our lungs
Between our noses?

How can my fellow-Americans be so evil?
What is the game they’ve settled into?
And me?
I just wanted a safe little hole to bury my heart into.
Same old sin.

You walk around feeling your insides
Gushing sloshing puking
From side to side
Desperate
For a home to sneak into,
Where the hurt might die,
Where the shame might fade.
And this wandering-collapse you called “looking for love”.

Everybody
Fiddling their thumbs
Resting their heads on their buddy’s belly
Pouring another drink, cheeseburger, or fantasy conundrum

In the
End
We
Did
Or Not
Do
The right thing
when