Johnson’s stones in the US election
George Franklin
George Franklin es autor de dos poemarios: Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2018) y un poemario bilingüe, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, traducido por Ximena Gómez al español (Katakana Editores 2018), además de un folleto que publicó Broadsided Press (2019). Obtuvo una Maestría en Poesía de la Universidad de Columbia y un Doctorado en Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana de la Universidad de Brandeis y sus poemas han aparecido recientemente en Into the Void, The Threepenny Review, Salamander, Pedestal Magazine, Cagibi, Twyckenham Notes y The American Journal of Poetry (próximo a publicarse). George Franklin es abogado, practica el derecho en Miami e imparte talleres de poesía en las cárceles del Estado de La Florida.
The entire Trump presidency was an exercise in the manipulation of perception.
I’m fascinated by the ways objective reality has reasserted its claims this year. The defining characteristic of the Trump presidency was the proposition that «nothing exists but as it is perceived» or, as put more succinctly in Kellyanne Conway’s famous phrase, those are just «alternative facts» (used in defense of Sean Spicer’s obvious lie about the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd). The entire Trump presidency was an exercise in the manipulation of perception, using both the traditional media and social media. Then, Covid arrived, and much as they tried to spin it and control the perception, people still got sick and many died–and many continue to die. Now, the election results are in, and Biden and Harris have won. Trump has lost. He has tried to alter the perception of those numbers (massive fraud, etc.), but the numbers don’t listen to him. It reminds me of Boswell’s account of his discussion with Dr. Johnson about Berkeley’s claim that material objects don’t exist. Johnson famously kicked a stone and said, «I refute it thus.» The numbers in this election are Johnsonian stones.
