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From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: idiots walk among us
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 05:52:19 -0000 (UTC)
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Gary McGath wrote:
> Don wrote:
>> When the West weaponizes drama it becomes political theater. In answer
>> to the question rhetorical regarding rule of a democracy by drama (a
>> theatrocracy, in other words), Plato says:
>>
>>      Exposure to dramatic poetry nurtures and waters the passions
>>      instead of drying them up; it sets them up as rulers in us
>>      when they ought to be subjects. ...
>>
>>      The tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other
>>      imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and the truth. ...
>>
>>      Imitative art is far removed from truth and leads the soul
>>      away from the rational to the emotional.
>
> Plato despised democracy, was a huge advocate of censorship, and would
> have had an elite deciding what we should see. They'd replace vulgar
> poetry, no doubt, with edifying lectures on how grateful we should be to
> the philosopher-kings.

Allow me to extend a sincere thank you for your due diligence. You win.
It's best to move past Plato and peruse Poe.


    "The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time,
    it can be quietly led." - Poe


    THE CONQUEROR WORM by Poe

    Lo! 'tis a gala night

    Within the lonesome latter years!
    An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

    In veils, and drowned in tears,
    Sit in a theatre, to see

    A play of hopes and fears,
    While the orchestra breathes fitfully

    The music of the spheres.

    Mimes, in the form of God on high,

    Mutter and mumble low,
    And hither and thither fly-

    Mere puppets they, who come and go
    At bidding of vast formless things

    That shift the scenery to and fro,
    Flapping from out their Condor wings

    Invisible Woe!

    That motley drama-oh, be sure

    It shall not be forgot!
    With its Phantom chased for evermore,

    By a crowd that seize it not,
    Through a circle that ever returneth in

    To the self-same spot,
    And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

    And Horror the soul of the plot.

    But see, amid the mimic rout

    A crawling shape intrude!
    A blood-red thing that writhes from out

    The scenic solitude!
    It writhes!-it writhes!-with mortal pangs

    The mimes become its food,
    And the angels sob at vermin fangs

    In human gore imbued.
    Out-out are the lights-out all!

    And, over each quivering form,
    The curtain, a funeral pall,

    Comes down with the rush of a storm,
    And the angels, all pallid and wan,

    Uprising, unveiling, affirm
    That the play is the tragedy "Man,"

    And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.