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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

AMERICA RESPONDS TO THE CRISIS

by Jon Wesick


 Not FDR but Herbert Hoover not the Marshall Plan but the Great Leap Forward not a doctor but an eviction not a bandage but another wound not Thomas Edison but Charles Ponzi not Henry Ford but Bernie Madoff not Apple but Enron not Lincoln but Torquemada not Jefferson but Joe McCarthy not Churchill but Milosevic not Hannah Arendt but Adolf Eichmann not Mandela but Mobutu Sese Seko not Mother Theresa but Gordon Gekko not Mahatma Gandhi but Indira Gandhi not the Bill of Rights but the Alien and Sedition Acts not Habeas Corpus but the Nuremburg Defense not the First Amendment but the Salem Witch Trials not Mr. Smith Goes to Washington but Wag the Dog  not Citizen Kane but Happy Gilmore not Hemmingway but JT Leroy not A Brief History of Time but The Secret not oxygen but phlogiston not biology but phrenology not Galileo but Ptolemy not Einstein but Lysenko not tortillas but cornbread not Louis Pasteur but Typhoid Mary not penicillin but thalidomide not Jonas Salk but iron lungs not 60 Minutes but Access Hollywood not Edward R, Murrow but Perez Hilton not Miranda but Dred Scott not Frederick Douglas but Jefferson Davis not MLK but Father Coughlin not Dublin but Belfast not Rome but Carthage not Paris but Mogadishu not Spartacus but Crassus not a republic but an empire not Patton but Montgomery not Grant but McClellan not D-Day but Diem Bien Phu not Appomattox but the Maginot Line not the Interstate but the Trail of Tears

NotFDRbutHerbertHoovernottheMarshallPlanbuttheGreatLeapForward
notadoctorbutanevictionnotabandagebutanotherwoundnotThomasEdison
butCharlesPonzinotHenryFord butBernieMadoffnotApplebutEnronnot
LincolnbutTorquemadanotJeffersonbut


Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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