This is Plahm’s most overtly political poem, and it arrives with the parenthetical subtitle “In absentia—just flush another toilet” signaling its irreverent, bar-room-debate tone from the outset. The opening stanzas build a logical chain: lack of education produces lack of words, which produces loss of historical perspective, which produces normalization of abnormal behavior. The anaphoric “Hateful” sequence is the poem’s rhetorical centerpiece, escalating from idioms to idiots to thoughts to influencers with the rhythmic inevitability of a prosecution’s closing argument. Each “hateful” entry pairs an abstraction with a concrete social role, and the progression from language corruption to prophet-making to reality-shaping to profit-making traces the pipeline of modern demagoguery with uncomfortable precision. The “Mamdani-idiots” parenthetical—with its definition of misapplied intellectualism and the sardonic “Bark Bark—Feed Me”—is the poem’s most intellectually aggressive moment, naming a specific strain of pseudo-scholarship that dresses ideology in academic clothing. The toilet-as-throne metaphor is crude by design, matching the vulgarity of the political landscape it describes. The poem’s emotional heart arrives in the final stanzas’ pivot to teachers: “Don’t retire, / You teachers. / Don’t leave us.” After pages of anger, this plea carries genuine tenderness, positioning educators as the last line of defense. The closing—”Those young’un’s need you— / They’re lost without you”—is Plahm at his most nakedly sincere, and the midwestern vernacular (“Wise up, ya educated Dipshits”) grounds the political argument in a specific American voice rather than abstract moralizing.

A poem that represents a significant departure for Plahm—from the personal to the political, from the intimate to the civic—and executes the shift with considerable rhetorical force. The anaphoric “Hateful” sequence is the poem’s strongest technical achievement, building with the cumulative power of a spoken-word performance, each entry ratcheting the stakes higher. The logical chain from illiteracy to instability to collapse is presented with the clarity of an equation, which is both its strength (making the argument irrefutable in its simplicity) and its limitation (reducing complex social dynamics to syllogism). The tonal range is impressive: the poem moves from academic argument to bar-room profanity (“Dipshits”) to scathing satire (swine rebranded as epicurean) to genuine plea (the teacher stanzas) without losing its thread. The “Mamdani-idiots” parenthetical is bold and specific, though it risks alienating readers unfamiliar with the reference while energizing those who recognize the target. The toilet metaphor is deliberately crude—matching content to form—though some readers may find it undermines the poem’s intellectual authority. Where the poem is most successful is in its closing pivot to teachers, which transforms political anger into personal gratitude and introduces vulnerability into what has been a combative piece. “We need your wisdom, / Your experience, / Your humility, / Your humanity. / Just… / You” is among the most moving passages in the catalog, and the shift from railing against the uneducated to honoring the educators gives the poem its emotional architecture. Not every line lands—some parentheticals feel over-explained, and the density of formatting (italics, bold, parenthetical asides) can make the page feel cluttered—but the poem’s passion and its willingness to engage with the world beyond the personal make it a valuable addition to a catalog that could risk becoming too insular.