Mandate of the Mind

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Hamlet: Act I, Scene 5

(With apologies to the Bard)

Is this a mandate which I see before me,
My agenda all right-wing? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A mandate of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the drug-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this boil that erupts.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
My tongue makes me a fool in others' senses,
Or else worth not a smirk. I see thee still,
And on my nominees sprout gouts of scandal,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the Florida counting which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the realm of Sunshine
Voters' rights seem dead, and frauds abuse
The curtain'd vote; Ashcroft celebrates
Pale racism's offerings, and wither'd Rumsfeld,
Alarum'd by his sentinel satellite,
Whose blip's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace
With Cold War's ravishing strides towards his design
Moves like a tank. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones object to Norton,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, Gore lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the press invite me.
Hear them not, Cheney; for they are a knell
That summons not to heaven but to hell.

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