His fascism and anti-semitism are not "mad" ideas.  They're just ugly.  They
were popular.  They were supported by many intellectuals.  This is not news.

I believe the original discussion came from a simple question "Was Pound mad
and did it affect his poetry?"  I would say Yes. Yes. Yes.  Has anyone tried
to read the Rock Drill Cantos?  Have you read the radio transcripts?  This
is not rational thought on display but quite the opposite.  Why do we have
this need to apply pop-psychological analysis to our geniuses?  Churchill
bi-polar?  Says who?  How dare we do them such an injustice.  Is this
academia in its current state? "Willa Cather is a lesbian with mother
issues."  This is not scholarship.  It is a weak attempt to make ourselves
feel better about our own oddities and insecurities.  We should not drag our
poets down.  Pound's madness (yes MADNESS) was real.  He did have a
breakdown at Pisa.  This is not a theoretical breakdown but a documented
one.  Anyone might have experienced it under those conditions.  But his
prose, his letters, his rantings are not the words of a man who has seen
truth and is trying to explain it to the masses (Could China's economic
crises have been solved if only they had grown peanuts?).  And frankly, I'm
not interested in the fact that perhaps he delivered his crazed radio
speeches in a manic phase due to his supposed "bi-polarity"  (how can you
diagnose a dead man with such a specific illness with confidence?  how?)
Using common sense I feel confident in calling him crazy.  Sloppy or not its
a word we understand.  I'm not trying to do him a disservice but
unfortunately he lost the thread of his own ideas in the end.  It cost him
his true place in history.  He recognized that the Sigusmundo Malatesta's
temple may have been a "junk shop."  That's exactly what he made of the
Cantos.  Yet he registers something, thank God.  He registers an idea-- a
single man attempting to "explain the repeat in history."  Some of it gets
through beautifully, in spite of his ugly philosophy and in spite of his
madness.