{"id":151199,"date":"2020-01-13T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=151199"},"modified":"2020-01-05T09:01:40","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T09:01:40","slug":"pity-the-nation-after-kahlil-gibran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/01\/pity-the-nation-after-kahlil-gibran\/","title":{"rendered":"Pity the Nation (after Kahlil Gibran)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pity the nation whose people are sheep,<br \/>\nand whose shepherds mislead them.<\/p>\n<p>Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,<br \/>\nand whose bigots haunt the airwaves.<\/p>\n<p>Pity the nation that raises not its voice,<br \/>\nexcept to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero<br \/>\nand aims to rule the world with force and by torture.<\/p>\n<p>Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own<br \/>\nand no other culture but its own.<\/p>\n<p>Pity the nation whose breath is money<br \/>\nand sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.<\/p>\n<p>Pity the nation \u2014 oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode<br \/>\nand their freedoms to be washed away.<\/p>\n<p>My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.<\/p>\n<p>___________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Lawrence-Ferlinghetti2.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-151200 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Lawrence-Ferlinghetti2-e1578214780210.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a><em>Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, social activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers &amp; Publishers. He is the author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration<\/em>. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti\" >Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pity the nation whose people are sheep,<br \/>\nand whose shepherds mislead them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":151200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-151199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}