https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/151134/filthy-presidentiad-walt-whitman-in-the-aocracyge-of-trump?utm_source=Poetry+Foundation&utm_campaign=9043ea8aed-POFO-NOV-15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff7136981c-9043ea8aed-185545637&mc_cid=9043ea8aed&mc_eid=548544474a

EXTRACT

Walt Whitman is two hundred years old in 2019—and the bicentennial of democracy’s bard falls in the shadow of a demagogic presidency.

John Marsh, in his book In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself, has this to say about the poet and democracy:

For Whitman, democracy is a way of being; in particular, it is a way of being with others … it has much more to do with how you approach your fellow men and women. Do you respect them? Do you acknowledge their dignity? Do you identify your interests with theirs? In short, do you love them?

Whitman expressed his vision of democracy as “a way of being with others” in #24 of “Song of Myself”:

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from

     them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.