<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Persistent Enlightenment]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://persistentenlightenment.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[James Schmidt]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://persistentenlightenment.com/author/jws02459/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[A Memo from Walt Whitman to the&nbsp;Donald]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>With the current semester winding down, I will soon resume posting on a more regular basis.</p>
<p>Until then, here is a poem by Walt Whitman that I stumbled across while getting ready for a class I&#8217;ve been teaching this term on the topic of catastrophe and memory.  It struck me as having applicability beyond his intended audience of boys and girls (yes, I&#8217;m thinking of you, Donald).</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Walt Whitman:  <em>Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy</em></h2>
<h3>YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!<br />
Remember the organic compact of These States,<br />
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights,<br />
life, liberty, equality of man,<br />
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States,<br />
signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by<br />
Washington at the head of the army,<br />
<strong>Remember the purposes of the founders</strong>,&#8211; Remember Washington;<br />
<strong>Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward</strong><br />
<strong>America</strong>;<br />
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (<strong>Cursed be</strong><br />
<strong>nation, woman, man, without hospitality!</strong>)<br />
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,<br />
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,<br />
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.</h3>
<h3>Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the<br />
hundred, or two hundred millions, of <strong>equal freemen and</strong><br />
<strong>freewomen, amicably joined.</strong></h3>
<h3>Recall ages&#8211;One age is but a part&#8211;ages are but a part;</h3>
<h3>The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow<br />
of things is great,<br />
And there is another paradox.</h3>
<h3><strong>Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea</strong><br />
<strong>of caste,</strong><br />
<strong>Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes</strong>.</h3>
<h3>Anticipate the best women;<br />
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to<br />
spread through all These States,<br />
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless,<br />
just the same as a boy.</h3>
<h3>Anticipate your own life — retract with merciless power,<br />
Shirk nothing —  retract in time —  Do you see those errors, diseases,<br />
weaknesses, lies, thefts?<br />
Do you see that lost character? —  Do you see decay, consumption, rum-<br />
drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?<br />
Do you see death, and the approach of death?</h3>
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