Mr. Interlocutor,

    "'I see its relation to one thing,
                      Yu sees its relation to ten.'
    Monetary literacy, sans which a loss of freedom is consequent"
                        _Canto 103

  No, Yu is not a misspelling for You. As a "self-indulgent obscurantist"
Pound used a palette of language for communication with nuances of color
which most likely would appear "obscure" to the half-educated who hear a
BBC English accent and automatically think, authority. So the
understatement of the "hick" or the "hayseed" could have its dramatic
effect, and as Jon points out "anti-intellectualism has a democratic streak
in it". We like answers like "Nuts" to the demands for our surrender.
Another way of putting it is to say that besides the vertical polarities of
social and economic classes by the laws of radial contrariety the
hinterlanders are under less direct control than urban underdogs. Or to some
there is nothing but mid-west between NYC and LA. Fred McMurray stuck in a
cow pasture. But I would say that deeply rooted regional writers like
Tolstoy, Dreiser, Twain, and many  worked with value contrasts in
interesting ways. In some ways Pound remained very American despite his
being hypercritical.
    And as for "crackbrained political rants" even non-literary politicians
themselves like Huey Long could manage some at times. How about this one
from 1932-
    "They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of
Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters
brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall
Street kitchen."

*note, the word "grub" is an obscure Americanism for victuals, oftentimes
simple but stable.

    Someone has requested I summarize Pound's politics in one succinct
statement. While I do not think this is possible of course without
including all the pedestrian Jew invectives, nasty insults to FDR, and all
that other "see I told you so" rhetorical garbage found in the broadcasts
which are essentially a pathetic lashing out at avarice no intelligent
person would have ever taken seriously, never caused one soldier to defect,
and not even today's various neo-nazis groups pay any attention to as Carlo
discovered for us, I do believe that one central idea to his, Pound's,
politics is that a man should have the right to have his ideas examined one
at a time.
    Anyone want to take on the one above? i.e. Does monetary literacy have
anything to do with freedom?
    Another of Pound's "rants" which is apposite to our times is that the
manufacture and sale of arms has a lot to do with the cause for wars.
 See http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton1230.html

-Moyer

----------
>From: Tim Bray <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: 2003 hope
>Date: Sat, Jan 4, 2003, 8:41 PM
>

> R.Gancie/C.Parcelli wrote:
>> Once again, this list points up the fact that Pound could not have been on
it.
>
> Really?  EP was given to indirection, to refusing to address the point
> the interlocutor thought he was raising, and to self-indulgent
> obscurities in syntax and vocabulary.  Not to mention crackbrained
> political rants.  I think he'd fit right in. -Tim