Linda's Literary Home

Tag: Propaganda

  • Graveyard Whistler Presents Verönique FlĂĽres’ “A Tale of Political Intrigue”

    Image:  Donkeyspeak – Cartoonstock

    Graveyard Whistler Presents Verönique FlĂĽres’ “A Tale of Political Intrigue”

    Graveyard Whistler posts primarily what he discovers in his literary studies research.  But a politico, Verönique FlĂĽres, sent him this piece, saying she thought it important to get this information out because she knows all the pertinent facts.  She changed names and dates to mask the guilty.

    A Pre-Foreword from Graveyard Whistler

    As my regular readers know, I plant most of my writings on my personal website, and I have gained a rather dedicated following.  However, one of my readers suggested that I might try posting articles on a site called Fulcrum Letters.

    The Fulcrum Letters outfit claims to be for writers and purports to feature only the best pieces of work in any field of endeavor and to pay writers for their efforts.  The reader/follower suggested that I might make a few extra dollars on my more worthy pieces.  I was skeptical but I thought I’d give it try.

    I discovered that the editors of the site have an obvious, political bias.  But more important was the discovery that they cannot distinguish between fiction vs non-fiction and literary vs expository writings.  

    Here’s how I know:  every article that I submitted that contained any negative view or refutation of their political bias garnered a red-flag, meaning they would keep the article up (because it receives lots of traffic and ad clicks), but they red-flagged them and admonished me to reconsider the “tone” and revise to a more “acceptable state of standard logic.”

    And that happened not only on expository pieces that did have an obvious political view, but even with literary fiction (even satire)—pieces that might have a character whose dialog identified him as leaning toward one end of the political spectrum.  

    In the “Conversations Area” of the site, I asked other writers if they had experienced such treatment, and many responded with the same complaint that I have, and some even stated that they actually had articles censored—poof, deleted from the site—even satire, that argued against or presented ideas against the bias of the FL editors.

    Of course, not all literary pieces are of equal value, but writers know their own works and when they see that their pieces are being unfairly criticized or censored, they know they are the victims of unfair bias.  

    I finally decided to remove all of my articles from Fulcrum Letters—close to 600 of them in all—and leave those biased editors to go after whatever it is they were chasing.  On the one hand, I feel guilty for allowing myself to engage in self-censorship, but on the other hand, I could not in good conscience allow my work to be used by those editors for their own financial gain, as I received just a pittance for my work. 

    Censorship is a travesty in a supposedly free country; unfree countries themselves are travesties.  But when we run up against any organization that engages in political bias and censorship, we must stand and push back against it.  

    Actually, political bias in and of itself is not the problem.  The problem is when editors allow their bias to unfairly criticize, denigrate, and censor their opposition.  We need to hear all sides of issues, and if we can’t, we don’t have enough information to make good choices.

    The piece I offer here—Verönique FlĂĽres’  “A Tale of Political Intrigue”—is an example of that bad “tone” and “substandard logic” that the editors of Fulcrum Letters found unsavory.  After wiping it form FL, I revised it and am now placing it here on my personal site. Verönique FlĂĽres wanted her message to get out, and I’m honoring her wishes.  

    Luckily, I don’t have to self-censor on my own site!  Have a happy!  And enjoy!  

    Foreword by Graveyard Whistler: On Verönique Flüres

    Customarily, I post things here only that I have encountered in my literary research.  But this gem came to me from a source, who says she just wanted to get this story out because she knows the true facts of the situations.  Still, she claims she has changed the names of people and places to protect the guilty.

    Her name is Verönique FlĂĽres; she is a citizen of Lichtenbourg but has worked for three decades in Washingtown, Metropolis District, and traveled overseas often between that locale and Mukabull, Krimelin-in-Russha, and she may be the only person in the world who actually knows personally all of the people involved with those two political items in question:  the dossier and the laptop.

    The “Tin-Pot Dossier”—aka the “Tambor-KiR Conspiracy Report”—and the “Numrod Frake, Jr., Laptop”—aka the “Computer from Hell-Hole”—will likely remain two of the most controversial items to grace—or disgrace, as it were—the political scene:  one is authentic, the other could not be more inauthentic.

    So I turn the floor over to Verönique Flüres:

    The Dutiful Dossier

    In July 20–, after business tycoon Reynaldo Manuel Tambor, declared his intention to run for the office of President of the Principalities (POP), the world-famous Britnish scholar and humanitarian, Professor K. S. Timmpott, began an in-depth research project to determine the eligibility and desirability of the noted businessman and former silver screen celebrity to hold that high office.

    Timmpott found himself embroiled in an undertaking of a lifetime, and he was thrilled to find that high ranking Principalities politicians, including  former Underwriter of the Commonweal, Murftry Brainfree, and her political allies in the Demon-Run-in Party (DRiP) were eager to not only verbally encourage Timmpott’s project but more than willing to support financially that important research.

    Important Findings

    In record time with the assistance of lucrative financial arrangements from the Brainfree Conglomeration and the DRiP, which allowed the hiring of an army of research assistants, Timmpott was able to finish his project, which culminated in the famous Timmpott Dossier, aka Tin-Pot Dossier. 

    The final report appeared by January 20–, just in time to begin throwing monkey wrenches into the machine known of the Tambor Presidential Campaign.

    The dossier was released and the upstream media organizations then began the vetting process, and again in record time were able to corroborate the findings that Professor Timmpott’s work had produced. Key findings include the following:

    1. A high level cohort of Tambor campaign workers, including the Tambor family and Tambor himself, were exposed as agents of the Krimelin-in-Russha (KiR).  Tambor was revealed as a puppet of Vladivostok Kagebee, strong man and dictator extraordinaire of KiR.
    2. During federal police raids on the Tambor campaign headquarters in every major city of the Principalities, the top spy agency retrieved a treasure trove of names, dates, and strategies coordinated by the Tambor campaign and Krimelin-in-Russha (KiR) agents.  Many phone and texts message between Tambor and Kagebee were seized.  
    3. Records were found involving emails, text messages, photos, bank accounts, and many lists of KiR requests for Tambor once he was installed in the Ovalish Office, for example, one of the most damning requests directly from Vladivostok Kagebee, was that a newly elected POP Tambor was to hobble the progress of the weakened but struggling government of YiTrane, a neighboring country to KiR.  
    4. Tambor’s main messenger, coordinating many of the meetings and communiques between Tambor and Kagebee, was Karen Suss-Wage, a high level operative who traveled to KiR over 30 times between July 20– and January 20–.  It is expected that Suss-Wage will be one of the first Tambor campaign operatives to be tried for treason after Tambor’s presidential term has ended.
    5. Not only did the Tambor campaign collude with KiR to win the 20– election, it also sought to say mean things about Murftry Brainfree.  For example, it was revealed that Kagebee had suggested that Tambor continually refer to Murftry Brainfree as “Mad Money Murftry,” which the presidential contender then did at every one of his campaign rallies.

    Conclusion

    Despite the findings of Professor Timmpott’s thoroughly vetted and widely reported dossier, Reynaldo Manuel Tambor did succeed to the presidency because of the many acts of collusion with KiR.  Evidence has even been discovered that three out of five voting machines during the 20– election process had been hacked and votes changed by KiR computer specialists.

    While many citizens of the Principalities have remained nearly oblivious to most of the credible information offered by Professor Timmpott’s dossier as the upstream media has continued to protect and cover for Tambor, their favored candidate.

    That protection and cover remains even now moving into the next election season, sources say that after Tambor’s term is over, he and the Tambor family will all be arrested and will face charges of treason, along with all of the other campaign operatives including Karen Suss-Wage.  

    Tamborian opponents in the government are waging a campaign to re-instate public hanging as punishment for treason.  Very likely the entire Tambor family and all government officials, including High Court picks, will hang in the public square—likely in the courtyard of the Emancipator Memorial.  Tickets to view the hanging will be sold on eBay, and sources say they expect to sell enough tickets to pay off the entire national debt.

    The Lurking Laptop

    In April 20–, Numrod Frake, Jr., brilliant, accomplished son of the beloved former vice-president, Numrod Frake, Sr.,—who humbly declared that Junior Frake is the “smartest dude he ever had the acquaintance to”—took a laptop computer that his father had given him for Christmas to a LapTop Computer Repair Shop in — (city retracted to protect residents), to find out why the computer was running so slow.  

    The LapTopRepairman, Jeff Johnus, saw immediately that the LapBook had too many files on the desktop, an operation notorious for slowing down computers. The LapTopRepairman noticed some of the filenames and became suspicious:  things like “Pops and the YiTrane Prosecutor,” “Pops or the ‘big lug’ as I lovingly call him,” “Uncle Jock and the Ching-Chang Comm-Brunch date,” and “list of big bucks for each of us Frakes—Yay!”

    Suspicious Repairman and the Malignant Mayor

    The suspicious LapTopRepairman hatched a plan to get into those files.  He’d heard on the conspiracy dabbling WOLFPACKnews Network that the Frakes had been pulling some shady deals in foreign countries to haul in big bucks by offering to those countries the influence of the big Frake name. 

    He also knew that the current president was finally being held accountable by being impeached for his quid-pro dealings with YiTrane.  So to get Junior Frake to leave his laptop, the LapTopRepairman told the brilliant but unsuspecting lad that he would have to keep the computer overnight so he could send for parts to help repair the slow-running machine.

    So Junior Frake leaves the laptop.   But then when he did not return the next day to retrieve it, the LapTopRepairman let the computer sit on his shelf for the 75 days required for considering the computer abandoned. After the 90 days, he tried to contact Junior Frake but was unable to locate him. 

    Waiting another week, he then tried to contact Junior one more time but again was unable to contact the very busy world traveling entrepreneur-now-turned Picasso-esque artist.  Then Jeff Johnus made several copies of the computer’s hard drive.

    Jeff Johnus, the LapTopRepairman, then decided to give the hard drive to a man named Cosmo Karakus, who had been the mayor of a large city, running that city into the ground—literally in that on one fine day in September some people managed to do something that exploded and brought down several of the tallest buildings in that city, killing over a million citizens and maiming many millions more for life.  

    So the disgraced mayor fiddled with emails, made them look like poor Numrod Frake, Jr., and his beloved father and world-class statesman, Numrod Frake, Sr., had done something mean.

    Conclusion

    The morally bankrupt mayor then peddled a concocted story to several smut magazines and waited for the stuff to hit the fan.  Of course, the stuff never did hit the fan because all of the legitimate news outlets were able to see that the stuff was just that—stuff, or more specifically “Krimelin-in-Russha disfornication.”  

    Thus, the country was finally made aware that Vladivostok Kagebee was still in charge of their country and likely would be until the country could safely elect Junior Frake’s beloved father as president—or perhaps evict the scoundrel Tambor, perhaps even installing the rightful heir to the Ovalish Office, the long-suffering Murtry Brainfree, who has sacrificed so much for her country.  

    The shame of all shames is that had Ms. Murftry Brainfree been elected and secured the Ovalish Office, none of the preceding would have even occurred.

    Well, that’s what I know for now.  I’ll report more as it comes in.

    Afterword by Graveyard Whistler

    Pretty bizarre story, but Verönique said she was glad to get it out there so folks can do with it what they will.  I’m glad I could be a platform on which she could offer her insights.  History is brimming with such subterfuge, and I am always glad that my concentration area is literature instead of hard history.  Too much politics for my blood!

    Literarily yours,
    Graveyard Whistler,
    aka Belmonte Segwic

    🕉

    Some good whistlin’ goin’ on!! Enjoy!

  • Cornelius Eady’s “RenĂ©e Nicole Good Is Murdered”

    Image:  Cornelius Eady 

    Cornelius Eady’s “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered”

    Cornelius Eady’s “RenĂ©e  Nicole Good Is Murdered” attempts an elegy motivated by political propaganda instead of poetic insight. With clumsy imagery such as “melted from / The ice pack” and melodramatic effusions such as “see what fucking / With the bull gets you,” the piece descends into propaganda which fails to speak to the gravity of the event to which it refers.

    Introduction and Text of “RenĂ©e  Nicole Good Is Murdered”

    Cornelius Eady is a fairly well-known American poet, whose work often exploits race and identity but also often focuses on music. Because the field of po-biz in its postmodern garb currently awards talentless and bombastic versifiers, who engage little more than identify politics, Eady can boast of having received Lamont and National Book Award nominations. 

    However, Eady’s 2026 piece “RenĂ©e  Nicole Good Is Murdered” falls flat because it focuses on political propaganda; it shows no characteristic of an authentic elegy and no formal poetic craft.

    A traditional elegy reflects and mourns the life of a well-known and/or well-respected individual, who has performed acts that support and defend a country or a set of widely well-regarded principles. Examples of traditional elegies are Audre Lorde’s “Father Son and Holy Ghost,” and Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “The Queen’s Last Ride,” and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

    The Subject of the Elegy

    Renée Nicole Good was a recent citizen of Minnesota, who, on January 7, 2026, was impeding the work of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they engaged in their task of locating and arresting illegal migrants for deportation, many of whom had criminal records for murder, rape, and armed robbery.

    As Good attempted to ram her Honda Pilot into an ICE agent, the agent shot and killed her.  The event has sparked national attention, with political activists exploiting the sorrowful event to score political points.  Democrats governor Tim Walz and mayor Jacob Frey have continued to gin up further violence, encouraging their citizens to continue to impede the ICE agents as those federal agents simply attempt to do their job.

    An Elegy Goes Astray

    It should be obvious that the subject to this “elegy” does not comport with the definition of a that form; the death of RenĂ©e Nicole Good is not a tragedy in the traditional, literary definition, but it is sorrowful event that we all mourn and wish desperately had not happened.  

    Good’s character flaw lay only in her failure to understand and/or accept the truth of  the political turmoil that currently grips the nation, especially Trump Derangement Syndrome, a condition that dictates that anything happening under the Trump administration is evil and must fought against by any means necessary–including attempting to run down an ICS agent with two ton vehicle.

    While Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s labeling Good a “domestic terrorist” has received pushback, it does seem that the definition of that phrase clearly speaks to what RenĂ©e Good was doing that day: 

    Domestic terrorism in the United States is defined by federal statute in 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5), which states that it means activities that meet three criteria: (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that violate U.S. or state criminal laws; (B) appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence government policy by intimidation or coercion, or affect government conduct by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within U.S. territorial jurisdiction. [my emphasis added: describing Good’s activism and actions]

    Serious Matter Captured by Propaganda

    The death of any individual causes concern and sorrow, especially when violence is involved, and the death of Renée Good is horrifying and remains particularly sad because she died because of the misguided urgings she believed from her fellow travelers—including the governor of her state and the mayor of her city.

    Now comes the verse maker Cornelius Eady adding more dreck to the filth that has already been spewed about this horrific event.  And this time the discourse is masquerading as an elegy—an elegy for an unfortunate, misguided woman whose action has been labeled domestic terrorism!

    The subject matter is grave, but Eady’s treatment of it as a elegiac poem makes a mockery not only the human subject but the art of poetic elegy itself.  The piece collapses into political sloganeering along with a clunky metaphor that undermines both elegiac seriousness and poetic craft. 

    Instead of focusing on complex human experience, the versifier substitutes  caricatures for genuine people and emotion, such as a “dormant virus” and the “super cops”; these phrases ring in as contrived mountebanks rather than genuine images. 

    Instead of engaging with any nuanced reality of Good’s actual life and violent death, the piece’s political propaganda sorely diminishes the ability to even grieve, and it has no chance to illuminate. 

    The piece conflates contrived imagery of viral ice-packs with law enforcement as it inserts overt hostility (“see what fucking / With the bull gets you”). Eady’s obscene, flabby phrasing sacrifices reality for blunt political postering, yielding a piece of discourse that sadly falls flat as an elegy.

    Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered

    Up rides the super cops,
    The cancellation squad.
    A dormant virus, melted from
    The ice pack,
    And the conversation
    Is end-stopped when
    The shell cracks her
    Car window, does its
    Dumb duty,
    Brings silence
    To a poet’s mind.

    The President says:
    You’re a terror bot
    If you don’t comply.
    Homeland security
    Puts on a ten gallon
    Texas size hat,
    Says see what fucking
    With the bull gets you.
    There is a picture of her
    Just before it tips rancid,
    Just before she’s dragged
    Into how they see her.

    I wish I could read the words
    As they blaze their last, unsuspected
    Race through her skull.
    A language poem that ends on
    The word
    Impossible.

    Commentary on “RenĂ©e  Nicole Good Is Murdered”

    The piece’s political sloganeering and awkward images undermine the gravity and craft of elegy, and diminish the gravity of the event it intends to mourn.

    First Movement: “Up rides the super cops”

    Up rides the super cops,
    The cancellation squad.
    A dormant virus, melted from
    The ice pack,
    And the conversation
    Is end-stopped when
    The shell cracks her
    Car window, does its
    Dumb duty,
    Brings silence
    To a poet’s mind.

    When a piece offered as a poem begins with a bald-face lie in its title, what can one expect from the rest of the piece?  The fact is that RenĂ©e  Nicole Good was not “murdered.”  She was killed by an ICE agent, acting in self-defense, as she appears to ram the agent with her two ton vehicle, a Honda Pilot.

    The opening stanza attempts to set a dramatic scene with bold imagery: “Up rides the super cops” and “The cancellation squad.” The labeling of ICE agents as “super cops” is talky and unserious, and calling them the “cancellation squad” is equal as vapid.  What’s with the grammatical error using a singular verb with a plural subject?  That one might be overlooked  and laid to an attempt at conversational dialect.

    Quite the reverse is true about the “cancellation” notation; instead of canceling anything, ICE’s work entails removing crime and restoring the social order that works well for its citizens.  The cartoonish labeling reveals more about the ignorance of real news, immaturity, and disingenuousness of the would-be poet than it does about the target of his ire.

    The next line—“A dormant virus, melted from / The ice pack”—is even more asinine. There is no connection between a virus and the Minneapolis shooting of Good. The phrase hangs out like a concocted political conflation, intending to bring to mind the pandemic era as it critiques law enforcement actions as disease-like.  Such a metaphor reduces real individuals to abstract threats and hazards. 

    Poetic metaphor and image require calibration: a powerful metaphor/image resonates with emotional truth. Here, the metaphors as well as the images feel arbitrary and jarring, unanchored to experience or sensation. It,  therefore,  becomes political propaganda rather than poetic reflection.

    The speaker of the piece  is undermining his thoughts by marginalizing them with clumsy syntax and incoherent imagery. Lines such as “The shell cracks her / Car window” attempt to point to violence but lack clarity or context, leaving the reader unsure whether the “shell” is literal or figurative. 

    These surreal pivots never come together to reveal any recognizable emotional reaction or narrative flavor.  Abrupt shifts, awkward line breaks, and absurd references place the verse into the doggerel category rather than with crafted poetry. 

    Instead of exploring grief or loss, the imagery functions to flatten any complexity of thought in favor of bald assertion. As a result, the piece establishes a tone that bespeaks propaganda instead of elegy.

    Second Movement: “The President says”

    The President says:
    You’re a terror bot
    If you don’t comply.
    Homeland security
    Puts on a ten gallon
    Texas size hat,
    Says see what fucking
    With the bull gets you.
    There is a picture of her
    Just before it tips rancid,
    Just before she’s dragged
    Into how they see her.

    The second movement intensifies these absurdities already presented in the first movement; it shifts into over-drive as is becomes pure political caricature. The claim about what the “President says” reads as hyperbolic ventriloquism rather than credible critique of actual quotation.  

    Effective elegy builds a sympathetic connection between public tragedy and private humanity, but this piece merely reduces the subject’s death to a cartoonish struggle between an imaginary oppressive state and a pathetically symbolic victim. 

    The reference to “Homeland security” donning a “ten gallon / Texas size hat” reduces would-be satire to stereotype, substituting fake bravado for engagement with real political language. DHS secretary Kristi Noem often dons Western style outfits, quite appropriately as the former governor of South Dakota.

    Profanity-laden lines aim for shock but dislocate the tone of a piece intended to elegize its subject.  This tonal imbalance further distances the piece from the contours of elegy. Even gestures toward tenderness—“There is a picture of her / Just before it tips rancid”—feel tacked on and tacky as they are aiming at rhetorical bluster.

    Third Movement: “I wish I could read the words”

    I wish I could read the words
    As they blaze their last, unsuspected
    Race through her skull.
    A language poem that ends on
    The word
    Impossible.

    The final movement tries to offer some introspection by the speaker,  but his attempt lapses into melodrama. Imagining words “blazing”  as they “race through her skull” aestheticizes the violent act rather than honoring the dead. 

    The closing epigram—ending on the word “Impossible”—feels unconvincing because it sounds so completely contrived, lacking the emotional grounding so necessary for resonance. 

    Through its three movements, the piece substitutes forced metaphor/image, political sloganeering, and abstraction for specificity, empathy, genuine emotion, and reality itself. 

    Because of all of those weaknesses, the piece fails to meet the demands of a true elegy, instead it collapses into rhetorically heavy, emotionally shallow doggerel that neither illuminates the horrific event, nor does it pay tribute and honor its subject.