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Tuesday, March 01, 2016

HEADLINE: DONALD TRUMP RETWEETS POST WITH QUOTE FROM MUSSOLINI

by Lauren Wellman



Donald Trump decided to retweet a Benito Mussolini quote originally posted by Twitter bot that Gawker had made several months ago, expressly for the purpose of goading Trump into retweeting a Benito Mussolini quote. In sending out that one little tweet, Donald Trump proved the point we had in mind when we created that bot: to show that Trump’s rhetoric is often indistinguishable from that of history’s most vainglorious and authoritarian fascist dictators—Benito Mussolini, specifically. –Gawker, March 1, 2016


"It is better to live one day as a
lion than one hundred days as a sheep,"
Benito Mussolini railed. Has a
retweet awakened people from their sleep?

What Donald Trump, il Duce, quick observes--
his own reflection, parody revealed
("It is better to reign in hell than serve
in heav'n," from which John Milton's Satan's sealed)--

Is stained in colors of malignant love
of self profound. Releasing greenhouse gas
in every bite of sound, he sends above
such fumes that trap all reason under glass.

Now long from paradise the nation lost,
the world's sheep won't pay the lions' cost.


Lauren Wellman is a writer and editor living in Tijuana, Mexico. Her poetry has been published in The Bitter Oleander, City Works and the San Diego Poetry Annual.