Jeffrey Alexander Martin

People play games with words. The word fascism is commonly used as a play thing. Everyone seems to agree it's bad, but not what it is. If we don't know what it is, it's hard to say whether it's good or bad, and what the opposite of it would be. Fascism emerged in the early 1900s in Italy with Benito Mussolini as the leader. Let's start with a clear statement from him. On 26 May 1927 Mussolini gave a speech. Here is a quote, "We here solemnly reaffirm our doctrine concerning the State, here I reaffirm no less energetically my formula from the speech at the Scala in Milan: everything in the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State." This is a clear and direct statement of belief about what fascism is from the leader and founder of fascism. We can work with this. Let's directly reverse it first. That would be: nothing in the state, everything against the state, everything outside the state. That's a good definition of anarchism. Now...

I used to have poetry come to me spontaneously. It would just pop up in my mind. While I spent four years as a politician working on doing a government turnaround that faded. Now, I've been out of office for six weeks and it seems like it's coming back. Three days ago while I was laying in bed falling asleep something came to me. I just ignored it at first, like I normally do. But then, I had to get it out of my head, so I rolled over, turned on the bed lamp, grabbed a notepad and pen, and wrote it down. Cynical Hope by Jeffrey Alexander Martin I hope you become jaded, and skeptical, and cynical. That you see all the bad, as pervasive and pervading. That hope seems only an illusion, and the hopeful as gullible. Then, I hope, you recover. Because then, then the hard pain of life and the ignorant hate of people will not surprise you, or throw you, or suppress you. But the good things, of beauty and kindness, these will impress you more. Some ideas for short fiction stories have b...