Quote of the Day (W. H. Auden, on Propaganda)

“Propaganda is a monologue which seeks not a response but an echo.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning English-born American poet-critic W. H. Auden (1907-1973), “A Short Defense of Poetry,” originally delivered at the International PEN Conference in Budapest, October 1967, printed in The New York Review of Books, Jan. 30, 1986

Over two days in Beijing this week, two 24/7 practitioners of propaganda, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, met. These leaders of America and China, so used to employing this “monologue” on their countrymen, wielded it on their foreign counterpart.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that these efforts were aimed at establishing their countries as superpowers. Rather, in their blatant legacy-building, these septuagenarian strongmen were engaged in the final rites of their own cults of personality.