Literary roundtable

I can't see any difference, or very little difference, between China and the USA, only that the Chinese leadership is a little better, i.e. speaks better English in translation than USA leadership speaks English in translation. USA leadership speaks Chinese poorly, and its English is even worse, as evidenced by the impromtu presser D Trump held on the White House Lawn yesterday when, answering a reporter's question about His Adminstration's Immigration Policy--the one raising young Hispanic children in range-free chicken cages--said, "It was Obama that brought the families apart."

The Chinese political model--a Dictatorial Technocracy salvaged from the ruins of Dictatorial Communism--is now outperforming the American political model--a Decadent Technocratic Democracy resurrected from the ruins of slavery--in a frantic race to seize the spoils of Greenland. The delusional narrative the Leadership of each country is offering its citizens is more or less the same: that once the frozen shipping lanes in the far north thaw out (not a consequence of Global Warming but a temporary Flare Up of the Northern Lights), one of the two Dictatorial Technocracy's will be declared the Winner by an Independent Poll of B-list celebrities on Dancing with The Stars, at which time the world will come to an end.

I listened to C-SPAN last night as a panel of literary experts--including the estimable Michael Neumann of Die Zeit, publisher, who claimed more than once of publishing more than one Nobel Prizewinner--spoke about the influence of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media available to Technocrats for use in the financial exploitation of their subjects, on the publishing industry. The experts inquiry became more or less interesting when the question, what gets published and what doesn't?, started to bubble up: my notes reflect the bubbling:

--4 of the 7 panelists admitted to Tweeting, and 4 of these 3 because they "had to" i.e. their bosses, publishers, thought Twitter increased book sales. 

--The consensus among the group was that Twitter et.al. offered nothing of real cultural or civic value, only the news of the moment, and that the news Twitter presented did not offer the space necessary for context or informed critical analysis. 

Michael Neumann, a publisher who sounded capable of critical thinking, a German who once sought political office, was one of the 3 panelists who didn't Tweet: Neumann ventured even furthur, claiming he was without a presence on Facebook. Neumann also reminded listeners that there are very, very few books that change the world, that publisher's today really aren't interested in seeking material that in any way threatens established political power, and that Karl Marx's "Das Capital" sold a measly 3,000 copies in its first printing.