I just got out of a diary. It's quite interesting like a train wreck is. But I'm making a side note about a quote I read.
Someone brought up the career of a very successful pol and his current difficulties, using Swift's epigram about the mark of the emergence of a genius being the "confederacy of dunces" arrayed against him.
Now, unlike this poster I've read a bit of Swift. And read this essay on the fate of clergy in particular.
http://www.readprint.com/...
the poster's clear implication is that the politician in question is a genius and critics mere dunces.
wherein, one Oxford grad called Corusodes, is a bit of a dull worthy, never laughs at jokes, never participates in social activity and secures an eventual Bishopric after being known to support, whole heartedly, Independent congregational Liberties for many years. He's also frugal councelling against spending but he also becomes a money lender. He attaches himself to powerful family groups and ends up running the Anglican church as his reward.
Eugenio another grad, is a genius of sorts. He enters the clergy he has a poetic sensibility, sensitive, good natured, incitefull, quick witted, prone to dramatic sermons, is caught dancing, fails to get good appointments, runs up unavoidable debts though he's not a spendthrift, bounces from one minor post to another and dies forgotten.
you have to read the original essay to understand Swift's subversive point.
The poster of course compared the temporary political trouble surrounding a certain well known high ranking official and suggested the Dunces (professional marxileftitards? ) were at their work 'confederating' against his genius.
The point of the epigramme of course is to point out that genius is IMMEDIATE disqualification from the rewards of the system.
Swift's character of genius fails to achieve high office, instead toiling away in obscurity on a Northern windswept moor. The Dunces were arrayed against Eugenio imediately upon graduation from Harv...Oxford. I can forgive the obsequeous hero worship, but I cannot forgive the mockery of a travesty that was said poster's misreading a satire. A satire that reads as fresh today as when it was penned.