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Big Chair #3
Leadership, Dictators & Identity
a poet asked many moons ago: “where are all the love poems for dictators?”
i think of a faculty meeting, a moment as dumb as a bag of rocks. napoleon is dumb. mugabe was dumb. bush bush. reagan clinton obama thatcher blair cameron, did i say reagan is dumb? ketchup is dumb. it is not a vegetable. everybody is dumb and is here at this meeting eating subway or quizno’s. i drink water. i check my facebook. i log onto twitter. i text my daughters. i check out reddit, do an “ask me anything.” no one asks me anything. i am good with that. if someone would have, i would have laughed myself into a coma. i walk the halls, go talk to a maintenance worker. he has never read any love poems for dictators.
in fact, he hasn’t read any love poems.
My favorite British album of the 1980s is probably Songs From the Big Chair by Tears for Fears. It is a record that defined my life in the 1980s. It is a time of growth, soul searching, and shaping my personhood.
The song on the album, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” is the song that sold me on buying the album too. I do not know what the song is about but it feels like authoritarian ideas.
I felt it is a song about control, state control. Of thoughts, beliefs, and day to day living. That is why I called…