"Pity The Nation" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today marks the 91st birthday of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and one of the last surviving members of a scene which shook the literary establishment in the 1950s.

Best known for A Coney Island of the Mind, first published in 1958, Ferlinghetti's scorching indictment of the American bourgeoisie has been drawing criticism that the left is anti-American for half a century now, despite the fact that his has always been a criticism meant to inspire self-improvement of both citizen and state rather than the mindless devotion to national symbolism, which without vigilance is as prone to entropy as anything.

Or, y'know, whatever...
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