“We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.”
Thus quipped Benjamin Franklin as the American colonies joined against the tyranny of George III, the phrase hangs heavy in the imaginations of today’s political opposition. Laden with fears of violence, Chairman Osro Cobb of the Progressive-Federalist National Committee announced the cancellation of the party’s presidential primaries and the formal acquiescence of the party to the Committee for the Preservation of the Republic’s call for a joint presidential nominating convention with the American Liberty League. Yet, with the organization’s President Thomas Schall, once seen as the nearly prohibitive favorite for the nomination, dying in an unforeseen car accident and populist contender Eduardo Chibas taking his own life on live radio, the attempt to unite the opposition must find a candidate able to carry both banners in the face of Philip La Follette’s campaign for a third term.
​
Clare Boothe Luce waves to her supporters.
Major Candidates:
The following candidates are seen as frontrunners for the nomination.
Clare Boothe Luce: 49 year old Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut rose to prominence as Henry Luce’s scandal-ridden yet massively popular First Lady, whose charisma would lead to a popular joke that every Luce voter wished they had voted for Clare despite widely known allegations of mutual marital infidelity. Marrying Henry after divorcing her first husband and entering high society as the author of an all-female play, Luce would become First Lady at the young age of 38 and soon emerge as a face of the American home front amidst the Third Pacific War. Describing the nation as having become a “dictatorial bumbledom,” Luce has echoed the anti-New State ethos of the party and is seen as the candidate of establishment conservatives. Criticizing the very slogan of President La Follette, she has argued that the United States cannot “win the peace” as it has not truly won the war until the defeat of international communism. Clare has supported the Zionist project in Alaska, a unified military command to replace the Department of Peace, and the creation of a defense pact among American allies in the Pacific as the centerpiece of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy declaring “if we are no longer willing to fight for it, our Christian democracy is finished." Yet, Luce has also opposed the creation of a stronger international United Nations to replace the powerless Parliament of Nations.
Driven to Catholicism in 1946 following the death of her daughter, even as her ex-president husband gallivanted about with a girlfriend a thousand miles from his wife’s baptism, Luce has emerged as a changed woman, reportedly abandoning her affairs and entering a career in electoral politics with her 1946 election to the Senate. Though Aaron Burr Houston maintained a private devotion to the Church of Rome, Clare has taken her faith with a zeal heretofore unseen in American politics, using the Senate as a pulpit to preach against “materialism” and a spiritual decline as the root of both communism and fascism, slyly suggesting that the rise of the Pentecostal, Immannuelite, and Mormon faiths has come hand-in-hand with the nation’s fascist surge as she has publicly wished that “the whole world would be Catholic.” Despite defenses from Presbyterian former President Luce, Clare’s faith has weakened her amongst convention delegates fearing the alienation of firmly Protestant voters. Yet her charm, wealth, and ability to attract millions in funding from backers such as Henry Ford II while winning key endorsements such as that of Richard Nixon has catapulted her to the front of the field.
W. Lee O’Daniel: 62 year old Senator W. Lee O’Daniel, better known as Pappy, rose to prominence in his late 20s as an architect of domestic policy during Aaron Burr Houston’s third term, being largely credited with the introduction of an old age pension system funded by a consumption tax. After making his way to the fore of Texas politics on his own through the integration of musical numbers and a widely popular radio show with his political antics, O’Daniel would turn from an upset gubernatorial defeat in the 1938 midterms to organizing Aaron Burr Houston’s campaign for a fourth term in the White House as the nation’s last hope against Charles Lindbergh. Accused by critics of puppeteering a dementia ridden 86 year old out of his own lust for power, O’Daniel would serve as Secretary of the Treasury for a year before being unceremoniously removed from the cabinet by Henry Luce for his critique of the American attack on Pearl Harbor and opposition to the draft, leaving him in political isolation as the Texan distinguished himself by demanding the execution of striking laborers as crucial to the war effort over his radio show.
A steadfast isolationist, O’Daniel’s foreign policy views have made him a favorite among Liberty League libertarians. Depicting himself as nearly as conservative as Luce on domestic issues with an isolationist foreign policy able to appeal to the Midwest, O’Daniel has emphasized ties to the legendary ABH and anti-alcohol views he claims can over the rural South. O’Daniel has also sought to use Luce’s Catholicism into an issue, seeking the support of Ben Gitlow through their shared membership in the Evangelical Christian Right. Yet, O’Daniel has been seen as the least committed among the candidates to the Committee’s pro-democracy ideals, while others question his fitness for office based on his eccentric manners as a cabinet Secretary and Senator, with Eleanor B. Roosevelt’s 1936 running mate Dan Moody remarking that “Pappy is as lost at the Treasury as I would be in a circus trapeze.”
Lucius D. Clay: A distant relative of former President Henry Clay, 54 year old General of the Army turned banker Lucius D. Clay of Georgia has been the subject of a draft movement seeking to secure a candidate with the allure of a war hero after an attack on right wing generals such as Harold George, “some of whom are my own classmates,” accusing them of leading the party astray with the nomination of the ultra-conservative Benjamin Gitlow. Clay has portrayed himself as the candidate of order, supporting, as the others do, the prosecution of Blackshirts and the freeing of prosecuted opposition politicians. However, Clay, a former administrator of Lindbergh-era public works programs, is the only candidate to stop short of supporting the abolition of the New State, with backers instead focusing on the renowned administrative talent that led Douglas MacArthur to quip that Clay “could run General Motors or General Bradley’s army.” Despite his reticence to campaign at the convention, Clay’s moderation, vague platform, connections, and war hero status have won over a significant segment of delegates.
John Sampson Cooper: Named for martyred Admiral William T. Sampson not long after the First Pacific War dramatically ended with the Second Battle of Hawai’i, 50 year old Kentucky Senator John Sampson Cooper has led an underdog campaign of moderate liberals led by young activists Mark Hatfield and Chuck Mathias and Tannenbaum territorial delegate Jacob Javits. Returning home from Yale to find his father on his deathbed and his beloved Pulaski County burned to the ground amidst the Revolution, Cooper would be elected to county leadership at age 24, famously responding to a legal requirement that he evict the impoverished by personally paying their debts, earning the moniker “the poor man’s judge” as he emerged as a major figure in post-Revolutionary reconciliation in Kentucky. Returning home once more from service as a military attache in the Third Pacific War, Cooper would oust incumbent Farmer-Laborite Jerry Spencer in a 1944 upset, delaying taking his seat to serve as a legal advisor to hundreds of thousands of displaced Indonesians before emerging as a Senate leader in bringing the United States closer to India and other nations newly liberated from colonialism.
While eschewing the isolationism of O’Daniel, Cooper has demonstrated a far more relaxed stand on foreign policy than Luce, opposing aggressive anti-communism abroad while depicting the United States as a great mediator of peace in situations such as the violence in Palestine or partition of India. The reported favorite of Fulgencio Batista despite Cooper’s criticism of Batista as insufficiently committed to democracy, the Kentuckian has managed to maintain a widespread popularity with labor that has led many to speculate that Cooper would be the only candidate able to win the endorsement of organized labor and an imprisoned John L. Lewis. Lacking the celebrity draw of Senator Luce, Cooper has countered with a far more detailed platform, calling for the opening of American borders to the world’s refugees, massively increased federal aid to education, and, in stances that have left him anathema to many party conservatives, support for universal health insurance, coal subsidies, and public housing. A self admitted “truly terrible public speaker," Cooper’s political independence has won him the support of Will Rogers Jr. and made him a favorite of the modern liberal wing of the Liberty League.
​
Roy Acuff strikes up the band.
Minor Candidates:
The following have significant support, but lag behind the frontrunner candidates.
Luis A. Ferre: Among the most grim results of the 1948 elections emerged from the Caribbean, where states once considered the most loyally anti-Farmer-Labor in America crossed the aisle for the first time in history. With strategists seeing the path to the presidency running through the island states, many among the electorally minded have flocked to 48 year old Puerto Rico Senator Luis A. Ferre, publisher of the nation’s largest Spanish language newspaper, El Nuevo Dia. A classically trained pianist who has focused his senatorial career on securing funding for the arts, Ferre has referred to the United States as the “moral summit of the world,” while aligning himself in the middle on economic policy, calling for “addressing the inequalities of society” by selling off public land at a low price and supporting federal public housing with an emphasis on rural revitalization, in addition to a call for a 4% Christmas bonus on the grounds of the Jesus Amendment.
James A. Rhodes: "Every time I take a position on an issue, I lose two percent of the people. If I do that 50 times, I have everybody mad at me," the quip encapsulates the philosophy of 43 year old Ohio Governor James A. “Jim” Rhodes and his backers. Emerging as the favorite of many convention delegates who have argued that the best path forward for a united campaign is a steadfast focus on bread and butter issues, Rhodes has remarked that “there are only three issues in this campaign: jobs, jobs, and jobs,” and has argued that any anti-La Follette campaign must focus on people’s lives and the economy, not vague notions of democracy and American ideals. Born in the hills of Appalachia, Rhodes would be forced out of college after failing every class, only to work his way into the Mayoralty of Columbus, before unexpectedly catapulting himself to the Ohio Governorship before the age of 40, where he has governed with a moderate conservatism focused on local issues such as water rights and a program to "put a college education within 25 miles of every boy and girl” that has been praised as a national model.
Roy Acuff: 49 year old Roy Acuff of Tennessee was christened “The King of Country Music” for smash hits such as Wabash Cannonball, leading fellow musician Hank Williams to quip “book him and you don’t worry about crowds…for drawing power in the South, it’s Roy Acuff, then God.” Yet, after a rumor that Governor Buford Elington had labeled his music “disgraceful,” Acuff would embrace the label “king of the Hillbillies” in the 1948 election cycle to trade his acoustic throne for the Governor’s chair. Declaring that “any business must be put on a business plan, and so must a state government,” Acuff has cut the budget while requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in government buildings, increasing state pensions, instituting a free school textbook program, cooperating with the La Follette Administration on the hydroelectric Tennessee Valley Authority, and has controversially called for additional restrictions on firearm ownership. Widely considered a possible frontrunner for his celebrity status if a primary were to have been held, Acuff has supported O’Daniel at the convention, yet has evasively refused to disavow a draft movement arising from his pro-union sympathies that many suspect could bring Fulgencio Batista into the fold alongside John L. Lewis, Jimmy Hoffa, and the opposition Farmer-Laborites.
Henry S. Breckinridge: The only member of the Liberty League at the fore of presidential consideration, 66 year old New York Congressman Henry Skillman Breckinridge ran alongside Al Capone in 1936 in the campaign that doomed the Commonwealth alliance, but has reinvented his career since by working to ally Federalist and Liberty League causes against La Follette and serving as the organization’s House leader. Advocating a heavily internationalist vision in line somewhere between that of Cooper and Luce, Breckinridge’s commitment to small government classical liberalism and a strict construction of the constitution has made him the favorite of Liberty League loyalists and some party conservatives. However, it is considered unlikely for a Liberty League member to win outright due to Progressive-Federalists comprising a majority of convention delegates.
Eleanor Butler Roosevelt: 63 year old former President Eleanor Butler Roosevelt was promoted for the nomination for months by her former counsel turned the “voice of impeachment,” Richard Nixon, who has noted that her re-election would have stopped the rise of fascism in its tracks. However, content with retirement, the writing of her memoirs, and the promotion of Nixon’s career, Roosevelt has categorically refused to seek the presidency. Nonetheless, she is expected to receive votes on the convention’s opening ballot from admirers.
​
Richard Nixon with the California delegation.
The Convention:
District of Columbia police scattered the Immanuelites, holding fliers declaring that their savior had prophesied nuclear armageddon on October 3rd of 1952, but they did not touch the Blackshirts. Ominously, they milled about in the blocks surrounding the convention, brandishing small arms and chants for Phil, as, within, the national convention of the Committee for the Preservation of the Republic proceeded without the pomp and circumstance conventions thrive in, a veil of despair lying over the nearly two thousand delegates in the plaza as they longed from their windows for days past. Further, a rule requiring two thirds of the convention for nomination, instituted by Liberty Leaguers fearful of a tyranny of the majority, would practically guarantee balloting periods stretching long into the night.
The first ballot would open with a surprise, as Roy Acuff rose to rebuff the acolytes of Fulgencio Batista. Pointing to the imprisoned Cuba Governor’s permissive policies towards gambling and prostitution, Acuff would draw a firm line between his pro-labor Christian conservatism and the “moral and political corruption” of Governor Batista. With the vociferousness of the singer’s vituperations and an unexpected willingness to attack Batista personally where other candidates stood largely silent, Acuff would find himself winning extensive support. With the rise of Roy Acuff splintering Pappy O’Daniel’s support, the former Secretary of the Treasury would find himself performing unexpectedly weakly, the beginning of a hemorrhage that would see his support move to Acuff in the first several rounds of balloting. Meanwhile, Clare Boothe Luce would take a lead out of the gate, but soon find that the collapse of Pappy O'Daniel's campaign following a wholesale defection to Acuff would lead other O'Daniel backers to rally behind Clay as an electable alternative. With Luce's lead dwindling, Cooper would swiftly capture her momentum, driving her to second place as a draft movement for Eleanor Butler Roosevelt peeled off dozens more Luce votes.
​

Ballot	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Lucius D. Clay	512	513	549	601	632	637	656
Clare Boothe Luce	646	641	619	599	529	515	514
John Sampson Cooper	277	282	308	310	366	368	369
Roy Acuff	46	101	112	165	187	188	170
Pappy O'Daniel	351	299	247	143	89	88	87
James A. Rhodes	58	58	58	58	58	58	58
Luis A. Ferre	42	42	43	42	43	44	46
Eleanor B. Roosevelt	1	1	1	19	31	38	38
Henry Skillman Breckinri-dge	21	21	21	21	19	17	15

With 1,310 delegates necessary to win the nomination, another half dozen rounds of balloting would bring no candidate anywhere near the necessary supermajority. Luce delegates would fiercely resist the rise of Lucius D. Clay, with Luce's manager Walter Judd and friend Anna Chennault illicitly spreading pamphlets accusing the General of being a plant of the regime to take control of the opposition. Yet, with his eyes on leading a reformed State Department, Pappy O'Daniel would stand back as his collapsing campaign gave its strength to Lucius D. Clay. Flatlining after several ballots with delegates consternated at the unwillingness of their chieftain to actively rally them, Roy Acuff's support would soon begin to bolt to Cooper and Clay, leaving Cooper to peak on the 11th ballot. However, a core of loyalist Acuff delegates would hold back the Kentuckian's momentum, as Lucius D. Clay covered ever closer to a majority. Yet, Clay would find himself having exhausted every avenue, with Acuff delegates reluctant to switch, and the block of Cooper and Luceites unwilling to come to the table. Further, a movement would begin to circumvent the squabbles of the major candidates and nominate General Curtis LeMay, the young face of the Pacific War. Yet, LeMay's role in the atomic bombings of millions of Japanese civilians would leave Senator Will Rogers Jr. to implore the convention not to proceed with the General as a compromise.
​

Ballot	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Lucius D. Clay	659	661	692	712	739	744	744
Clare Boothe Luce	514	513	512	512	513	516	516
John Sampson Cooper	368	392	397	439	438	435	433
Roy Acuff	168	144	141	99	71	61	61
Pappy O'Daniel	83	81	28	8	2	2	3
James A. Rhodes	58	58	58	58	58	58	58
Luis A. Ferre	46	47	61	61	61	61	65
Eleanor B. Roosevelt	45	45	45	45	48	48	47
Henry Skillman Breckinri-dge	10	9	7	6	5	4	2
Curtis LeMay	1	2	12	13	13	13	13

The Convention would lock itself in deadlock as three ballots passed. The night as black as the shirts of the threatening bystanders, it would become clear that, with neither's supporters willing to concede to the other, neither Clay nor Luce would prevail. From Haitian Senator Elie Lescot to Convention Chair S.I. Hayakawa and General Claire Chennault, delegates would attempt to draft a compromise. On friendly terms with Luce and Clay alike, Chennault would nearly prevail, yet his dogged loyalty to the Liberalism of his youth would hold back his chances. The Liberals could veto a candidate, but they could never nominate one. Yet, Chennault would telegraph his wife Anna with a suggestion, a protege of his whose famed dogfights over the Pacific and haughty demeanor had bought him fame. A protege drummed out of his beloved Air Force for opposing the "Bomber Mafia" consensus of Curtis LeMay only to purchase a baseball team. A protege who survived eight airplaine crashes. A protege who had once been an aid to Hugh S. Johnson and who counts Charles Lindbergh among his friends, but who donated to the re-election campaign of "the voice of impeachment," Representative Nixon. A protege married to the heir to the Pulitzer fortune and media empire. A protege by the name of Elwood R. Quesada, but better known to friend and foe alike as "Pete." Bankers Fred Akers and George Garrett, friends of the dashing commander, would throw themselves in pre-organizing on his behalf, hiring demonstrators to spark what seemed an almost spontaneous movement.
Kate Quesada, once the young Kate Pulitzer who had defied high society to marry a hot tempered Major League Baseball player turned fighter pilot, would awake her husband before dawn to inform him that Professor Chennault from his Academy days had entered his name to be nominated for President of the United States, with delegate Milton Eisenhower casting the first vote. In the Convention's recess between the 16th and 17th ballots, Anna would go about printing hundreds of "Can't Beat Pete!" buttons, while working behind the scenes among those such as the Ohio delegation, long loyal to Jim Rhodes, winning second choice. Most importantly, she would win over Richard Nixon among the Luce delegates and Jimmie Davis among the supporters of Clay, portraying Quesada as capturing the party platform while holding the war hero's mystique. Taking things a step further, Chennault would pitch the ex-General as a moderate, a liberal, and a conservative at variance, refusing to let policy distract her from her central argument: the 48-year-old Quesada could win, Clay and Luce had proven they couldn't. The 18th ballot would see the deadlock broken as hundreds of supporters abandoned Luce and Clay alike for Quesada, by the 19th, Clay and Luce themselves would step back from their campaigns. With Luce admiring tales of Quesada's pre-flight rosaries and Clay on friendly terms, both would accept the compromise as supporters of the minor candidates such as Ferre and Rhodes rallied behind him. On the 20th ballot, with other candidates excepting Cooper falling behind Quesada, he would win the nomination, narrowly surpassing the 2/3 requirement before a motion to declare his nomination unanimous on the 21st ballot.

Ballot	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Pete Quesada	0	0	1	368	734	1,379	1,954
Lucius D. Clay	744	744	743	503	402	98	0
Clare Boothe Luce	519	517	513	489	365	101	0
John Sampson Cooper	430	427	407	387	354	355	0
Roy Acuff	57	57	56	49	49	11	0
Pappy O'Daniel	3	3	3	3	3	3	0
James A. Rhodes	58	58	58	58	0	0	0
Luis A. Ferre	65	69	86	46	46	0	0
Eleanor B. Roosevelt	47	46	49	48	3	0	0
Henry Skillman Breckinri-dge	2	2	3	3	3	1	0
Curtis LeMay	13	12	12	1	0	0	0
Claire Chenault	2	3	3	1	0	0	0
S.I. Hayakawa	1	1	3	3	1	1	0
Elie Lescot	1	1	1	1	0	0	0

Louisiana Governor and former country musician Jimmie Davis, famous for "You Are My Sunshine," would come in third to S.I. Hayakawa, with California Senator Will Rogers a narrow second. Yet, many would worry that Hayakawa's Japanese ancestry would risk racist attacks so soon after the Third Pacific War, even as Americans reconciled with the now fallen sun across the ocean. Hayakawa's chances would be further weakened with the remark that “I would encourage insurrection in those poor crushed countries that have been under tyranny all these years.” Further, the death of Rogers' father by a fascist bomb and his military service would be contrasted with Davis's lack of either to paint Rogers as more compatible with the theme of a heroic ticket to rescue the nation from fascism. With the eccentric linguist's support set back, Hayakawa would endorse Rogers in the name of party unity, securing the Senator a third ballot victory despite significant support for Jimmie Davis across the South. Thus, at four o'clock in the morning on August 14th of 1952, the Committee for the Preservation of the Republic would adjourn its first national convention.
Senator Will Rogers Jr. of California, Cincinnatus nominee for the Vice Presidency.

Ballot	1	2	3
Will Rogers Jr.	838	947	1,329
S.I. Hayakawa	906	801	4
Jimmie Davis	209	208	523
Happy Chandler	1	1	1

​
A DC native, Pete Quesada would be in the convention hall at ten as it convened anew, meeting kingmakers and strutting through mobs of delegates as the party considered a series of resolutions on names. With a breakaway group led by legal Chairman Frank Chodorov suing the merger faction of the Liberty League, affiliated delegates would vote near unanimously to drop the title in favor of christening themselves anew with the old moniker of Liberal. Further, in an attempt to stress the status of the Preservationist nominee as a military hero, the convention would vote to adopt for its presidential ticket, and presidential ticket only, the partisan line of "Cincinnatus," after the New Order of Cincinnatus operating among oppositionists in Washington state and Alabama, and, of course, the Roman statesman who transformed his swords into plowshares after a brief tenure as leader of his republic in a time of crisis. With every delegate declared a member, the New Order of Cincinnatus would go national as the campaign vehicle of the Quesada and Rogers ticket.
A narrower vote would approve the use of the name "Law Preservation Party" for those candidates running without Progressive or Liberal affiliation.
Further, the party would approve a short platform, rejecting a suggestion from Quesada to enshrine an age limit for holding office while vowing:

• First and foremost, to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the law.
  • To bring about a renaissance in politics and to promote a Spartan-like devotion to honesty, cleanliness, efficiency, and economy in government.
  • To clean out graft, corruption, and hypocrisy in our public offices.
  • To modernize state, county, and local government and to eliminate all duplicating phases thereof.
  • To eliminate waste in governmental machinery and to work for a substantial reduction in the tax burden the average taxpayer is forced to bear.

​
Elwood R. \"Pete\" Quesada in flight gear after a demonstration of his aeronautical prowess to eager delegates.
With the end of procedural matters, Pete Quesada would rise to the stage for the first time, a handful of cheers greeting him. Omar Bradley once wrote that the dashing young Air Force General "could have passed for a prototype of the hot pilot, with his shiny green trousers, broad easy smile, and crumpled yet jaunty hat, but he was a brilliant, hard, and daring air-support commander on the ground," and his youthful smile upheld that characterization today, yet his face would soon turn grave as he began.
“I think a military officer, regardless of what service he’s in, is improved if he handles unusual assignments...I look forward to being assigned by the American people to the White House! I believe every person has been put on this Earth for just one purpose—to serve his fellow man. It doesn’t matter how he does this. He can build a bridge, paint a picture, invent a labor-saving gadget, or run a gas station. The point is, he should try to leave the Earth a better place than he found it. If he does, his life will have been worthwhile. If he doesn’t do what he can within his own limitations, he is destined to be unhappy.” Comparing himself to his longtime friend Lindbergh, Quesada would continue with a chuckle, saying that “I'll have something to bounce off Lindy whenever he boasts too much about that little term he served.”
Promising without elaboration to defend “integrity, Americanism, fiscal responsibility, and courage,” Quesada would speak on foreign policy, declaring that the United States had won a war on tyranny, and that “Korea remembers. Indonesia remembers. The Philippines remember..to abandon them is to tell the Free World that they cannot depend on the United States.” Further, he would note that while "“I abhor war," he stands firm in a belief that "we can maintain peace only through strength.”
Moving to domestic matters, Quesada would claim that “a government is the servant, not the master,” declaring that “Fascism has been wasted effort...middle class, sincere decent people, need to regain the influence they’ve lost over the past decades," while arguing that “there are too many intellectuals in government who have no experience in management in which the majority’s will is to be followed.” Quesada would accuse the government of being led by “men of limited imagination" and “those who postponed making decisions," promising to “weed out the incapable and inefficient." Then, in a tacit move of comparison between the man the convention styled as a latter day Cincinnatus and the incumbent dynamo who had energized so many Blackshirts, Quesada would declare that "the more I see the more I realize there is a difference between men.”
Quesada would turn to the party's past failures and shock many delegates by placing them directly at the feet of the opposition itself, claiming that "an examination of these failures reveals contributory negligence on the part of ourselves, discord and a lack of confidence in our forces.” The convention looked on with bated breath as Pete Quesada, infuriated by the fear among the delegates assembled, raised his voice for the shouted words that have entered immortality as the most famous words of his campaign, screaming from his microphone into millions of American homes and newspaper headlines that:
"Our whole country is stopped by a tinpot dictator that tossed a few dozen of us into jail! Follow the light which leads to truth and we will prevail, history will show we saved the day...
THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF!"
​
\"THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF!\"

Author: What do you think about this short observation?
"An anonymous individual recently stayed in an affordable room in the 02907 zip code. They like to observe the world around them.
On their third morning of their stay, after noting how the 'real' economy works in the area and being sick of the sirens ringing nearly 24/7, they took a walk to grab some coffee and a particularly striking event occurred:
They saw what appeared to be a military unit running through the area; approximately 2x10. The banner they were carrying: the local police force.
Anecdotally: this individual knows who actually associate with in these areas so as to maintain safety.
Using publicly available data, can you theorize on why this type of 'sight' is unlikely to occur in the 02912 area code? (Commentary: about a fifteen minute walk across a "natural" divide {a body of water}, and/or an "artificial" divide {a highway}.
Try to strip your analysis from racial biases as much as possible: "It really isn't about the color of your skin. It's more about whether you 'have money' or don't (input( personal analysis, 'in real life it's... much more complex.') + "balance").
Thanks."
AI(ChatGPT-4): 'Your observation raises several interesting points that can be explored using publicly available data, particularly focusing on socioeconomic factors, policing practices, and urban geography. Here's an analysis that aims to strip away racial biases and focus on economic and structural differences:

1. Socioeconomic Status:
   
   • 02907: This zip code, which includes parts of South Providence, is known to have a lower median household income compared to other areas in Providence. The lower income levels often correlate with higher crime rates and a more significant police presence.
   • 02912: This area includes parts of the East Side of Providence, which encompasses Brown University. It is generally an affluent area with higher median household incomes, lower crime rates, and consequently, a different style of policing.
2. Policing Practices:
   
   • In areas with higher crime rates, like 02907, there is often a more visible police presence. This can sometimes include coordinated efforts that might appear militarized, particularly if there are ongoing initiatives to combat specific types of crime.
   • Conversely, in more affluent areas like 02912, the policing strategy is often less visible and more focused on maintaining the status quo and addressing minor infractions to preserve the area's perception of safety.
3. Urban Geography and Divides:
   
   • The "natural" divide (body of water) and "artificial" divide (highway) serve as physical barriers that also often demarcate socioeconomic divides. These barriers can limit the interaction between different socioeconomic groups and contribute to distinct policing strategies and community dynamics.
   • The 02912 area is physically and socioeconomically separated from 02907, leading to different community expectations and policing methods. The affluence and institutional presence in 02912 (e.g., Brown University) create a buffer that often insulates it from the challenges faced by neighborhoods like 02907.
4. Economic Influence:
   
   • It's important to recognize that economic disparities are a significant driver of the differences observed between these two areas. Wealthier areas have more resources, both public and private, which can influence the level and type of services, including policing, that they receive.
5. Community Dynamics:
   
   • In neighborhoods like 02907, community dynamics might necessitate a more robust police presence to address more frequent and severe crimes. In contrast, areas like 02912 might have more community-based initiatives and private security measures, reducing the need for a visible police presence.

Conclusion

The likelihood of seeing a military-like police presence in the 02912 area is low due to the higher socioeconomic status, different community expectations, and the overall lower crime rates. These factors create a context where the local police force adopts a different, less visible approach to maintaining order. In contrast, the economic challenges and higher crime rates in 02907 necessitate a more visible and sometimes militarized police presence.
By focusing on these socioeconomic and structural factors, we can better understand the dynamics at play without attributing them to racial biases. The observation highlights the complex interplay between economic status, urban geography, and policing practices.'
Authors note: housing suuuure is affordable.

I wanted to make a separate post from my personal review/analysis of the Dr. Stone anime here.
In Dr. Stone, Senku read a biography of Thomas Edison (11 February 1847 – 18 October 1931), the famous American inventor who created the modern-day lightbulb, as a child. Reading about Edison's feats helped inspire his love of science, and his goal of becoming one of the world's greatest scientists.
https://preview.redd.it/891bggdjo33d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fd9a4b6297a8f0f9e2e8d207d6c98873275bb32
However, one of the aspects that not many people know is that the storyline of Dr. Stone, in which Senku helps the quiet Ishigami Village become technologically advanced, was also likely based on a little-known, but true story involving Thomas Edison, one of Senku's primary role models and idols.
In 1885, Thomas Edison moved to a quiet, sparsely-populated village named Fort Myers in Southwest Florida, buying a home called "Seminole Lodge" to reside in during the winter. At this time, Fort Myers was a sleepy "cattle town" of just 350 people, including a mix of white, Black, and Latino settlers and homesteaders. Edison, however, decided to bring the power of science to improve and refine the backwater locale. This would later give rise to the City of Fort Myers, my hometown and birthplace.
https://preview.redd.it/ccuwrclzo33d1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=126bc88d5b4c0c2b4a403e4ae9e2d8cd134325c1
Over 50 years, from 1885 until his death on 18 October 1931, Edison would build a "Kingdom of Science" in Fort Myers, to the point where Edison himself became a godlike figure to the town. Called the "Wizard of Menlo Park", Edison brought electric light, movies, phonographs, and other inventions. Upon his death in 1931, one source called Edison and his wife, Mina, the "King and Queen of America".
Not only is Edison himself associated with two of the symbols of the town - the lightbulb, which appeared on old "Welcome to Fort Myers" signs, and the palm tree, with Edison planting hundreds of royal palm trees, giving the Fort Myers the name of the "City of Palms" - but there are countless landmarks, businesses, and events named "Edison". These include "Edison Bridge", which Edison himself oversaw the opening of; "Edison Park", a 1920s-era neighborhood across the street from Edison's house, still relatively unchanged for 100 years; "Edison Mall", Fort Myers' first shopping mall; the "Edison Festival of Light", a parade held every year in February in Edison's honor; and more.
Edison also planted an entire botanical garden in and around his house in Fort Myers, including a small banyan tree from India that he imported and planted in 1925; which, in 2024, is now one of the largest banyan trees in the United States. In 1927, Edison co-founded the Edison Botanic Research Company, and planted thousands of plants, all with one purpose: To discover a domestic source of rubber that the United States could use after WWI. In 1928, a well-equipped lab, perfectly recreated from Edison's Menlo Park laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, was built adjacent to Edison's Fort Myers home, with research begun in early 1929, largely by Edison and a small staff of attendants.
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After testing more than 17,000 plant samples, Edison selected the Goldenrod plant as the most suitable, developing a 12-foot-tall strain of the common plant that yielded 12% latex [normally, the plant would only grow 3-4 feet tall, with a 5% yield of latex]. Edison worked at both the Fort Myers lab and at his chemistry lab at West Orange up to his death in October 1931. Thereafter, his brother-in-law John Miller led the research operation; but, in 1936, other company co-founders - Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Edison's widow, Mina - dissolved the Edison Botanic Research Company, as they could not make artificial rubber production from the Goldenrod plant economic, versus vulcanized rubber.
Other references to Thomas Edison in Dr. Stone:

• Senku puts strings of lights in a tree around Christmas. Edison is regarded as a co-inventor of Christmas tree lights, with Edison using a string of electric lights to advertise his lightbulb in 1880; his colleague, Edward Johnson, put a string of lights on a Christmas tree in 1882.
• Senku stating that he creates and invents scientific devices through trial-and-error, as well as his "10,000,000%" catchphrase. One of Thomas Edison's famous quotes is this, referring to the lightbulb: "I have not failed 10,000 times. I've successfully found 10,000 ways that won't work."
• Senku also adopted Edison's view of science. To quote Leonard DeGraaf, the author of the biography Edison and the Rise of Innovation (2013), "[Thomas] Edison's not a guy that looks back. Even for his biggest failures, he didn't spend a lot of time wringing his hands, and saying, 'Oh my God, we spent a fortune on that!' He said, 'we had fun spending it' [and learned new science]."
• Senku using chemical solutions in a jar for his Stone Age batteries. When inventing the electric pen - what would later become the tattoo gun - Edison did the same, but it became "too messy".
• Senku's decision to create a "Stone Age smartphone, more like a regular phone". By 1877, Thomas Edison had abandoned his electric pen idea, and instead got involved with telephones.
• Senku creates a Stone Age-era record player to play a glass recording from 3,700 years prior; similarly, Thomas Edison created the phonograph, a device for recording and playing sound.
• The use of Morse code by Senku and Gen to communicate over the Stone Age telephone. Thomas Edison, who was deaf, also communicated with others, including his wife, through Morse code. (Edison personally taught Mina how to use Morse code to propose marriage to her.)

The phonograph, invented in 1877, would be Edison's personal favorite invention. Per Wikipedia:

"Thomas Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to 'play back' recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone. His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on 21 November 1877.
In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor, without any ceremony whatever, turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present, the machine said: 'Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?' The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph.
The music critic Herman Klein attended an early demonstration (1881–82) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities, he wrote...
'It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, although there was little of the scratching that later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn, and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me, and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct.'"

In the show, Gen also correctly identifies that Senku's Stone Age telephone has lower sound quality.
As for Thomas Edison's Fort Myers laboratory and home, both were sold to the City of Fort Myers for $1 by Mina Edison, his widow, after Edison's death in 1931, and were preserved for posterity as a public museum. The home and laboratory are pristine and practically unchanged from a century ago, with the museum housing many of Edison's inventions and artifacts in display cases. Under the 100-year-old banyan tree that Edison planted in 1925 is also, quite fittingly, a stone statue of the inventor.
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Intraday trading is a method of investing in cryptocurrencies where the trader buys and sells cryptocurrencies on the same day without any open positions left by the end of the day. Intraday traders aim to either purchase a cryptocurrency at a low price and sell it at a higher price or short-sell a cryptocurrency at a high price and buy it at a lower price within the same day. This requires a good understanding of the market and relevant information to help them make the right decisions. In the cryptocurrency market, the price of a cryptocurrency is determined by its demand and supply, among other factors.Tools such as candlestick chart patterns are very helpful to traders. We will discuss these candlestick charts and offer steps to help you read them.
Candlestick Graphs/ChartsCandlesticks are a visual representation of the size of price fluctuations. Traders use these charts to identify patterns and gauge the near-term direction of prices in the cryptocurrency market.Composition of a Candlestick ChartThis is what a candlestick chart pattern looks like:
https://preview.redd.it/f94h7ztmnl2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=a285d657af4bc0b39680460ce613468a83909e37
As you can see, there are several horizontal bars or candles that form this chart. Each candle has three parts:1. The Body2. Upper Shadow3. Lower Shadow
How to Analyze Candlestick Chart for CryptocurrenciesThe body of the candle in a candlestick chart represents the opening and closing price of the trading done during the period for a particular cryptocurrency. Understanding this is crucial for candlestick trading. Traders can quickly see the price range of the cryptocurrency for the said period by looking at the chart. Moreover, the color of the body indicates whether the price is rising or falling. For instance, if a candlestick chart for a month with each candlerepresenting a day has more consecutive red candles, then traders know that the cryptocurrency's price is falling.Vertical lines called wicks or shadows above and below the body show the highs and lows of the traded price of the cryptocurrency. Traders can use this information to analyze the sentiment of the market towards thecryptocurrency.Candlestick Chart PatternsCandlestick charts are an excellent way of understanding investor sentiment and the relationship between demand and supply, bears and bulls, greed and fear, etc., in the cryptocurrency market. Traders must remember that while an individual candleprovides sufficient information, patterns can be determined only by comparing one candle with its preceding and next candles. To benefit from them, it is important that traders understand patterns in candlestick charts.Let's divide the patterns into two sections:• Bullish Patterns• Bearish PatternsAnalyzing these patterns can help traders make informed decisions about buying or selling cryptocurrencies.Bullish Patterns• Hammer patternThis is a candle with a short body and a long lower wick. It is usually located at the bottom of a downward trend. It indicates that despite selling pressures, a strong buying surge pushed the prices up. If the body is green, it indicates a stronger bull market than a red body.
https://preview.redd.it/rptd1sbznl2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=1930c3fc0dfaf3b1c186478733d2626e69a65d8b
• Inverse Hammer patternThis is a candle with a short body and a long upper wick. It is usually located at the bottom of a downward trend too. It indicates buying pressure followed by selling pressure. It also indicates that buyers will soon have control.
https://preview.redd.it/nw88g9qeol2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f6b6570ad0e7b736479f0a50fc9c5879cfb9028
• Bullish Engulfing Pattern: This is a pattern of two candlesticks where the first candle is a short red one engulfed by a large green candle. It indicates a bullish market that pushes the price up despite opening lower than the previous day.
https://preview.redd.it/cl2i3r1mol2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6803fba3d6592c136ccaf55cfb4355a42dd8501b
• Morning Star patternThis is a three-candle pattern that has one candle with a short body between one long red and a long green candle. There is usually no overlap between the short and the long candles. This is an indication of the reduction of the selling pressure and the onset of a bull market.
https://preview.redd.it/6bar6xkool2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=9aa3de3f69ba0740061810328194df7c2e2b5dfb
• Hanging Man patternThis is a candle with a short body and a long lower wick. It is usually located at the top of an upward trend. It indicates that the selling pressures were stronger than the buying thrust.It also indicates that bears are gaining control of the market.
https://preview.redd.it/v4ut4svrol2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ecc2681745cf1370d7034279213bd687976a004
• Shooting Star patternThis is a candle with a short body and a long upper wick. It is usually located at the top of an upward trend too. Usually, the market opens higher than the previous day and rallies a bit before crashing like a shooting star. It indicates selling pressure taking over the market.
https://preview.redd.it/e9atp02uol2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=d76a140eaf7ef4786eabb8dc460a33311856a96d
• Bearish Engulfing patternIn candlestick chart analysis, this is a pattern of two candlesticks where the first candle is ashort green one engulfed by a large red candle.It usually occurs at the top of an upward trend.It indicates a slowdown in the market rise and an upcoming downtrend. If the red candle is lower, the downtrend is usually more significant.
https://preview.redd.it/z78wts7wol2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=332b6029d9152f402434893fea83bf0407faffd3
• Evening Star patternThis is a three-candle pattern that has one candle with a short body between one long red and a long green candle. There is usually no overlap between the short and the long candles. This is an indication of the reversal of an upward trend. This is more significant if the third candle overcomes the gains of the first candle.
https://preview.redd.it/9ki3syd0pl2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6da5590bf6849a24cdb8533041a2796c6253cf24
• Three Black Crows patternThis is a three-candle pattern that has three consecutive red candles with short wicks.These candles open and close lower than the previous day. After an upward trend, this is a strong indication of an upcoming bear market.Potential.
https://preview.redd.it/109ruqv2pl2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=43495c7ca43469e47a18d9867e532b849d18271b
Pattern Definition: A bullish harami is a two-candlestick pattern in technical analysis.First Candlestick: The first candle is a large bearish (red or black) candlestick.Second Candlestick: The second candle is a small bullish (green or white) candlestick that is completely contained within the body of the first candle.Market Indication: This pattern indicates potential reversal of a downtrend.Significance: Suggests that selling momentum is decreasing, and a possible upward move may follow.Confirmation: Traders often look for additional bullish confirmation on the third day or subsequent trading sessions.
https://preview.redd.it/njpvead5pl2d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=27c7ba20b9e8cbde827cde16972efd73cf921994

Taylor Swift’s music has long been branded “confessional.” When people call Taylor’s work “confessional,” they might mean that her music is emotionally confessional. But when it comes to Taylor Swift, this belief that her music is emotionally confessional is closely tied to the belief that she is delivering an autobiographical accounting of her life through her lyrics. Her music is perceived as grounded in real events and real people, peppered with “clues” that, if followed, will lead you to the True Story she is telling.
Interesting to consider in light of TTPD, the term “confessional” as applied to art actually has its roots in poetry. The confessional poets were a small group in the late 1950s-1960s who changed the face of American poetry, shifting towards a much more personal, autobiographical style. They included Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and most well-known today, Sylvia Plath - amongst others. The central breakthrough of their work was in “removing the mask” that had previously hidden the poet from view in their work. The confessional poets grounded their work in their own personal experiences and laid bare the most intimate details of their inner lives, delving into “taboo” subjects like mental illness and childhood trauma. This was seen as a major change for poetry to be so grounded in the poet’s interior life and personal history as the explicit subject. These poets became literary celebrities with much attention paid to the details of their personal lives - or in Plath’s case, her death.
After falling down a rabbit hole learning about the confessional poets, I believe that Taylor drew inspiration from this group on TTPD and crafted the album, at least in part, as a meditation on the concept of “confession.” I think her treatment of confession on TTPD is multi-layered - simultaneously pulling back the curtain towards a sincere unveiling of inner truth, while also, on a more meta level, examining what it means to create confessional art and, more broadly, what it means to confess. I’d argue that TTPD is all at once a personal act of confession, a performance of confession complete with a clue package so on-the-nose People Magazine only needed a day to crack it, and - if you’re keeping an ear out for those red herrings - a subversion of the expectations for confessional art. Which, as it turns out, is not so different from what the confessional poets themselves did.
After examining TTPD through this lens, I also revisited Midnights - and I hear the beginnings of this confessional journey stirring on that album, laying the groundwork for TTPD. Within the 321 “exile ends” countdown theory, this means that she began this confessional journey at 3 (Midnights) and ramped it up at 2 (TTPD). Where do we go from here? She just might be on the road to confessing her truth in swooping, sloping, cursive letters.
So, my fellow Gaylors, if you’d like to join me down this rabbit hole - I stand before you with a summary of long-ass dissertation on my findings!
Disclaimers:

• I was inspired to do this research based on initial connections between TTPD and Sylvia Plath I've seen percolating (i.e., these posts), plus the Ted Hughes poem, Red, that Florence posted as "recommended by Taylor.”
• I am not an expert on the confessional poetry movement. I learned a lot through my research for this post, and I'm sure I've still barely scratched the surface of this rabbit hole, so I'd welcome anyone with more expertise who can build on these connections!
• My main goal in this post is to analyze Midnights and TTPD through this confessional lens. When drawing connections to the confessional poetry movement, I’m going to deal with the movement broadly and focus on how this work was collectively understood, perceived, and talked about - both by the literary establishment and by these poets themselves. Dealing in broad strokes means I’ll be missing nuance in the specifics of each poet, and it is not my intention to mischaracterize any of their work. It’s just the only way to keep the post manageable.

What is confessional poetry?

The term "confessional" was first used to describe Robert Lowell's Life Studies, which was considered a "tell-all" on his troubled youth and ongoing mental health struggles. In his review of Life Studies, M.L. Rosenthal defined confession as an act of “removing the mask.” He wrote, “[Lowell’s] speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal.” (Source)
Robert Lowell became the top literary celebrity of his time, and the confessional genre the most popular genre of poetry. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were Lowell’s students at Boston University and this group all drew inspiration from one another. While the trope of the tortured artist certainly predates this group, it’s notable that, for these poets, “tortured” was and is a central part of how the public understood their identities as artists. Interestingly, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton were all hospitalized (repeatedly) at the same psychiatric hospital, McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and wrote about their experiences. Plath wrote of her experiences there in her famous novel The Bell Jar. One of Lowell’s most famous poems, Waking in the Blue, was written based on his experience at McLean. McLean was described as “America’s most literary hospital” in this article from The Atlantic titled "The Mad Poets Society."
There is a complicated legacy to the term “confessional” in art, beginning with these poets. Most of them absolutely hated the term. There was a sense that it reduced their art to a mere regurgitation of feelings without craft. There was a tendency to treat their work as very literal autobiography, to reduce it to a reporting of facts, though these poets themselves repeatedly said that, while their work was grounded in personal truths, it was not necessarily always literally factual. There came to be a mythos around these artists - not on the same scale as the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, but the parallels are there.
At the same time as artists resisted the word, the public is undoubtedly hungry for these personal confessions. Today, we need only look at Taylor Swift’s massive star power to see the draw of so-called confessional art.
Note before we move on: I’m going to use the word “confessional” throughout this post because, right or wrong, it’s the word that is commonly used to describe this type of art, and I also think Taylor is specifically playing with different meanings of the word. I don’t mean any disrespect towards the poets who didn’t like the term.

What Makes Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department Confessional Works

MIDNIGHTS: "Meet Me At Midnight"
A return to autobiographical writing was a central part of the sales pitch for Midnights. She wove this message into promotional appearances, for example the Jimmy Fallon interview where she describes Midnights as her “first directly autobiographical work in a while.” The album announcement branded Midnights “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” She closes the announcement with “Meet me at midnight.” This return to direct, explicit autobiography, combined with the promise of personal revelations implied in “Meet me at midnight,” places us squarely within the confessional mode.
This messaging is especially interesting when we consider that Taylor’s previous work, with the exception of folklore/evermore, is widely considered to be a faithful autobiographical recounting of events from her life. Fans receiving this invitation to meet her at midnight might ask themselves: But haven’t we already met you? Haven’t you already revealed your innermost feelings and the private details of your life in your songwriting for years? The implication seems to be: no, you haven’t met me yet, but you will. The implication is that she is on the road to revealing herself in some new way that will invite us to truly meet her. This calls to mind the imagery of “removing the mask” from Rosenthal’s review of Life Studies, pulling back the veneer to reveal what is underneath. Pulling back the curtain, perhaps?
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Importantly, it’s not just us, the public, who are implied to have not met Taylor. It’s also implied that she is estranged from herself: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve, we’ll meet ourselves.” Midnights represents her first step down the road towards meeting herself - and an invitation for us to join her.
While we did not meet her on Midnights, the songs on this album did begin to pull back the curtain. The entire concept of this album, exploring things that keep her up in the middle of the night, suggests a new kind of vulnerability. Taylor herself said of Anti-Hero: “I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before…this song is a real guided tour through all the things I tend to hate about myself…I like Anti-Hero a lot because I think it’s really honest.” (Source) We also have Maroon and Hits Different - the two most obviously sapphic songs she’s released that she herself classified as “autobiography.” We have Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, a searing exploration of lost girlhood.
Towards the end of the album and into the 3AM edition, she starts to explicitly grapple with the concept of confession. Interestingly, Taylor has not used the word “confess” that often in her discography. Midnights contains two mentions of the word, the most of any TS album at the time of release.
The first mention comes in Mastermind when she says: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless / This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess.”
Mastermind closes the standard edition of Midnights on this note - that this is the first time she’s felt the need to confess, signaling a new type of revelation. In this context, she is playing with legal imagery. She’s been scheming like a criminal, and now she is confessing to the “crime” of masterminding her career to make everyone love her.
Then we transition into the 3AM edition, which contains even more themes of confession. We get our second use of the word on Paris, where she longs to confess her truth: “I want to transport you to somewhere the culture’s clever / Confess my truth in swooping, sloping cursive letters.”
Finally, the 3AM edition closes on Dear Reader. While she does not explicitly use the word “confess” here, she is very much operating in the confessional mode. The bridge, in particular, recontextualizes the entire album as an act of confession. She describes the songs on Midnights (“these nights” that she wanders through) as the “desperate prayers of a cursed man spilling out to you for free.” She is spilling confessions out to us on this album in the form of desperate prayers. And then she makes a further confession - “you wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking.” She begs her audience not to take her at her word, to instead hear her “desperate prayers” and see what she is “hiding in plain sight.” Dear Reader is arguably the most confessional song on the album - and it tees us up perfectly for TTPD, where she will take these confessions even further.
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
“Confession” is a word with several meanings. I believe that Taylor is exploring all these different meanings of the word on TTPD:

• Most broadly, a personal intimate revelation
• A religious sacrament: the confession of sins
• A legal statement: confessing to a crime

It’s apt, then, that the term “confessional” was first applied to Lowell because he existed at the intersection of all definitions of the word. His struggles with mental illness were well-known in the literary community. He was a Catholic convert. And he was well-known for having served time as a conscientious objector to WWII. The other poets who came to be dubbed “confessional” tended to share some of these traits with him - a lengthy public struggle with mental illness, a preoccupation with religion, and/or brushes with the law. These subjects were explored in the confessional poets’ work.
I’m going to focus below mainly on how TTPD is exploring these different facets of confession. There are layers to the treatment of confession on this album. I would argue that TTPD is all at once a sincere act of confession; a performance of confession, targeted to the public; and a subversion of that performance in the form of “red herrings.”
She is so productive, it’s an art! Let’s dive in.
CONFESSION AS “REMOVING THE MASK”
The confessional poets pushed the boundaries of what you could say in a poem. Particularly at the time, the topics they were known for writing about were considered quite taboo and improper - and this was part of what made this “breakthrough” new and exciting. Consider this quote from Sylvia Plath, then an up-and-coming poet, and how she describes Lowell and Sexton’s work:

I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much. These peculiar, private and taboo subjects…I think particularly the poetess Anne Sexton, who writes about her experiences as a mother, as a mother who has had a nervous breakdown, is an extremely emotional and feeling young woman and her poems are wonderfully craftsmanlike poems and yet they have a kind of emotional and psychological depth which I think is something perhaps quite new, quite exciting. (Source)

On TTPD, Taylor is similarly pushing the boundaries of what you can say in a song - and she is certainly pushing the boundaries past what she has previously said in a song. She is delving deeper into the most intimate and painful elements of her interior life, evoking imagery and subject matters the confessional poets are known for with lyrics like:

• “I was supposed to be sent away / but they forgot to come and get me / I was a functioning alcoholic / til nobody noticed my new aesthetic”
• “If I can’t have him / I might just die, it would make no difference”
• “Stitches undone / two graves, one gun”
• “I want to snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”
• “The hospital was a drag / worst sleep that I ever had”

In addition, Taylor delivers some of her most explicit lyrics on Guilty as Sin. We have unbridled rage in Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, even the way she calls out “the most judgmental creeps” on But Daddy I Love Him. We also have a healthy dose of homicidal ideation with lyrics like: “Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her” and “I did my best to lay to rest / all of the bodies that have ever been on my body / and in my mind, they sink into the swamp.” “Is that a bad thing to say in a song?” she asks. She says it anyway. The mask is off.
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CONFESSION AS A RELIGIOUS SACRAMENT
Art as a Sacred Catharsis: “This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
The word “confession” calls to mind the religious confessional, where one confesses their sins to be absolved of them. In the Catholic tradition, it’s only through confession that one can be free of their sins, achieve holiness, and re-establish communion with God. Sin constitutes a separation from God; confession allows for “wholeness.”
The above excerpt from Taylor’s post about TTPD evokes this religious imagery, where writing music is the act of confession. Our tears become holy when we shed them as ink on a page; when we confess our saddest story, we are free of it. TTPD is that act of confession - a sacred catharsis.
She spells this out on the album’s concluding track, The Manuscript, where she describes the catharsis of channeling agony into art. Once she’s confessed this story, she is free of it. It isn’t hers anymore.
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In this religious context, TTPD as an act of confession implies the existence of a sin to be confessed. She explores this theme heavily on the album - what it means to be guilty as sin and what it means to be holy.
Love as Holiness: “What if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”
The true nature of holiness and sin is a major theme on TTPD - contrasting traditional notions of holiness and sin against how the author defines these words for herself. While this theme is absolutely rampant on TTPD, it’s not the first time a TS album has asked these questions. This theme blossomed on Lover before reaching new heights on TTPD.
On Lover, her love is positioned as sacred. She sings on Cornelia Street: “Sacred new beginnings that became my religion.” False God expands on this theme by drawing a contrast between this sacred love and the concept of a “false god” - an act of idolatry, a sin. She seems to say: even if they consider this love to be a sin, WE will still worship this love. We will still make this love our religion. “Confession” on False God is the act of making amends with her lover, re-establishing communion between them. “Got the wine for you” calls to mind the act of receiving holy communion, the body and blood of Christ - which, according to Catholic tradition, you are not allowed to receive when in a state of mortal sin. You must first receive the sacrament of confession before you can partake in communion. On False God, this love is her God - and they make confessions to break down the separation between them and achieve oneness.
This contrast from False God - between how others perceive her love as sinful, while she considers it her true religion - carries forward onto TTPD. On Guilty as Sin, she contrasts the “long-suffering propriety” they want from her with “the way you hold me” - and she insists this is actually what’s holy. She takes it a step further on But Daddy I Love Him. Here, she points an accusing finger back at those who would accuse her of sinfulness. She casts the Sarahs and Hannahs as the guilty ones - guilty of hatred, raising you to cage you, “vipers in empaths’ clothing.” They don’t need to pray for her because she is not the sinner. They are. This condemnation carries forward onto Cassandra, where she castigates the pure greed of the “Christian chorus line” who “never spared a prayer for [her] soul.” On The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, this man wears a “Jehovah’s Witness suit” - a predator peddling a false idea of holiness.
What began on Lover as honoring the holiness of her love transforms on TTPD into a castigation of those who would say it’s a sin. Lover is reverence; TTPD is a righteous fire of judgment sent to engulf a fallen world, a la the End Times.
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So, we know what TTPD doesn’t consider to be her sin. The question remains - if she is confessing, then what is she confessing to? What sin is she seeking absolution for?
The Original Sin: “Forgive me, Peter.”
Peter is the only song on the album where we hear her ask for forgiveness: “Forgive me, Peter.” This evokes the words you would say in a confessional: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
What is her sin? Leaving Peter behind - her “lost fearless leader in closets like cedar.” Preserved in the closet where she left him. She asks Peter to forgive her because she didn’t truly want to leave him there: “I didn’t want to come down / I thought it was just goodbye for now.” She believed that Peter would grow up and come find her, that they would be reunited - but it hasn’t happened.
The second and final time she asks Peter for forgiveness comes at the end of the song. She asks his forgiveness for turning out the light: “Forgive me, Peter / Please know that I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine / But the woman who waits by the window has turned out the light.” Here, turning out the light symbolizes giving up hope for Peter’s return.
Her sin, then, is two-fold: leaving Peter behind and then giving up hope that they could be reunited. And I’d argue that this is no ordinary sin - this separation from Peter is the original sin of the TTPD universe, akin to the original sin of Adam and Eve that separates mankind from God - the root of all suffering. On Peter, she compares herself to Adam, missing a rib: “The goddess of timing once found us beguiling / She said she was trying / Peter, was she lying? / My ribs get the feeling she did.” The implication is that Peter is the Eve to her Adam, carved out from her rib - and, in their separation, she feels the hollowness of this missing part of her. The Prophecy evokes this same Adam and Eve imagery: “I got cursed like Eve got bitten. Was it punishment?” This is a direct reference to the concept of original sin and the punishment that followed. The punishment is exile - being cast out of the garden. She can only return there in her mind (“secret gardens in my mind”).
This all gets very interesting and poignant if we posit that she is singing to a lost part of herself on Peter - that she is in exile from herself. (There have been a number of great analyses of this song through that lens; i.e., this one.) Her original sin of denying herself created this rift within her, which caused her suffering. She confesses in order to return to communion with herself. To become whole again. “Forgive me, Peter.”
This calls back to the Midnights foreword, the sense of estrangement from herself and the search to find herself: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve, we’ll meet ourselves.”
Importantly, in the Christian tradition, the crucifixion/resurrection was God’s answer to original sin, building a bridge for humanity to once again be one with God. So, these lyrics from Guilty as Sin are quite relevant here: “What if I roll the stone away? They’re gonna crucify me anyway.” The willingness to be crucified in the name of rolling the stone away - revealing this reborn version of herself - is the answer to original sin. Rolling the stone away is how she meets herself. And, in this context, rolling the stone away is, in essence, confession. It’s removing the mask, revealing what lies underneath. It’s exiting her tomb of silence.
Is TTPD the act of confession that will bring her back to herself and allow her to return to the garden? God, I hope so.
CONFESSION AS A LEGAL STATEMENT
I said earlier that while I think TTPD is a sincere piece of confessional art, I also think that it is intentionally crafted as a performance of confession. By this I mean - TTPD is crafted to give the people what they want and expect from confessional art, particularly Taylor Swift’s confessional art. And what do the people want? They want the scoop. The gory details of her personal life. They want her to name names and tell them exactly what went down. In other words, they want to trace the evidence.
The performance of confession on TTPD hinges on the evidence she feeds the audience and how she directs us to use it. To understand this performance, we have to explore how TTPD navigates the third definition of the word “confession.” It’s time to go to court.
The Hearing: “At this hearing, I stand before my fellow members of The Tortured Poets Department with a summary of my findings.”
Since announcing TTPD, Taylor has been teasing the concept of this album as a hearing. She spoke of “entering into evidence.” She presented the artifacts. And now here she is, standing before the public, making a “plea of temporary insanity.”
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This imagery introduces yet another layer to the concept of this album as “confessional.” Here, we are in a courtroom, and she is confessing to a crime. She is presenting us with the evidence to support her plea.
I think there are two layers to the courtroom imagery. The first is the defendant herself trying to make sense of the losses she has sustained, sorting through the evidence. Hits Different off Midnights introduces this language: “I trace the evidence, make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” This language continues onto TTPD - i.e., in So Long London, she asks, “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?” This is in line with how Taylor has spoken about using music to make sense of her life.
But the second layer is that this isn’t just Taylor trying to make sense of things on her own. She is confessing directly to an audience - her fellow members of the tortured poets department, the public. She is again breaking the fourth wall, like on Dear Reader.
Importantly, this courtroom imagery bookends the listener’s experience of the album. It served as the audience’s first introduction to the album at the start of the promotional cycle. And she closes the album with this imagery via the epilogue poem. The whole album is framed as a court hearing.
This is fascinating within the context of the Taylor-verse because this framing directly parallels the way the public engages with her music. Her lyrics are treated as a factual, autobiographical accounting of her life (particularly her love life), which the public scours for evidence in an investigative mission to uncover the True Story she is telling vis-a-vis what we know of her personal life. And her music is, in fact, often reduced to an investigation into her love life. To most media outlets and fans, analysis of a Taylor Swift song seems to mean examining which man the song is about. The lyrics serve as evidence, rather than art.
So, when Taylor tells her audience that she is entering something into evidence, we are primed; we know what to do. Time to pull out the magnifying glass and every pap photo of Taylor taken in the last two years. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that she gave us so much “evidence” to work with over the course of the last year? So many public sightings of her to expertly match up with the lyrics on TTPD. Not to mention the Eras Tour as an opportunity for non-stop Easter egging. She presented her information-hungry audience with a veritable buffet of evidence to pick through and match up with the album.
And the album itself is chock-full of “clues” linking lyrics back to real-life figures in the TSCU. She already knows that her audience will follow those clues; it’s what happens every album cycle. But this time she doesn’t just lay the bait and wait for everyone to take it. She lays the bait and tells us to take it. She says that she is entering this evidence for us to review. She stands before us with a summary of her findings. She directs us to conduct the post-mortem.
When was the last time she so brazenly invited speculation? I’d argue that this brings us right back to the beginning of her career, hiding secret messages in the liner notes and directing her audience to decode the messages to find out who or what the song was about. She said she wanted people to read her lyrics. But the end result was that people read her lyrics without really reading them. Her lyrics that she was so proud of were not treated as art. They were reduced to clues, evidence linking the song to this man or that. And we need only read the Reputation prologue to know how she came to feel about that:
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So, it begs the question - Why is she directing her audience to follow the trail of evidence she laid out? Why evoke the language of the courtroom if she doesn’t want her music to be paternity tested in the court of public opinion? Why enact this performance of confession that seems to play directly into the public’s worst impulses?
Well, you know what they say: if it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Red Herrings: “And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms; my muses, acquired like bruises…”
Along with teasing the concept of TTPD as a court hearing from the very beginning, Taylor also introduced the suggestion of “red herrings” the same day she announced the album. This is no coincidence. A “red herring” is both a literary device AND a rhetorical device used in legal settings to distract or divert attention away from the main issues of the case. (Source) So, red herrings are a perfect fit for an album that centers on confession, playing in sandboxes both literary and legal.
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If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely believe that Taylor has been using red herrings in her work for quite some time as a tool to obscure and distract from her real-life muses. Naming a song “Style” is a perfect example of how she might very overtly hint at a public-facing muse in order to distract from the true inspiration. But, importantly, no matter how obvious we think these past red herrings were, TTPD marks a first: the first time she has explicitly pointed to red herrings in an album as part of the promotional cycle. The Rep prologue took us halfway there with the assertion that everyone who tried to paternity test the songs would be wrong. But now she’s saying: I am entering this evidence for you to review, but the evidence itself contains red herrings. I am planting evidence that is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion. Again: If it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Why do this? Why intentionally misdirect and then TELL us that’s what she’s doing? I can only assume that she wants us to see it. If she directs her audience to trace the evidence and tells us there are red herrings - well, then we will look for the red herrings. Or at least some of us will. And if we look closely enough, we’ll find them.
thanK you aIMee is a perfect example. There are three layers here: First, we have the subject of the song identified as Aimee. Then we have an old-school Taylor “hidden clue” in the title of the song - capitalizing letters to spell out Kim. Everyone sees that very obvious “clue” and pats themselves on the back for “solving the case”: the song is about Kim Kardashian. But then we have this line in the song: “I changed your name and any real defining clues / and one day, your kid comes home singin’ / a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” Seems a bit contradictory, huh? She says she changed any real defining clues, but surely capitalizing letters in the song title to spell out someone’s name is a pretty defining clue. I smell a red herring. It could be that the capitalized letters are a red herring. It could be that the line in the song about not leaving any defining clues is a cheeky misdirection meant to cast doubt on the “clue” she left. I’d argue it’s probably both. Either way, the obvious contradiction built into this particular song serves to cast doubt on the history of Easter egging song subjects in the TSCU. This song takes us right back to the early days of Easter egging, capitalizing letters in lyric books to spell out secret messages. If this is a misdirection, who's to say there weren't misdirections built into the Easter eggs from the beginning?
The Alchemy is another example. This song falls near the end of the album, the final “muse-coded” song of the standard edition of TTPD. And if you’ve been tracing the evidence through the songs up until now, you’ll find matching “clues” in this song that seem to point at Matty Healy: themes of returning to a lost love, drug references in “heroin but this time with an E.” But wait - now she’s using a bunch of football references? There’s beer sticking to the floor while your friends lift you up over their heads because you just won the big game? The football imagery is so heavy-handed that it took very little time for every entertainment media outlet in creation to post a carousel of TayloTravis images along with lyrics to the song. But if you can keep yourself from getting distracted by the “Tayvis” fanfare, you might ask yourself - what the heck is going on in this song? Is it about Matty or Travis? Is it about both of them? The inherent contradictions point to another red herring, “clues” planted to mislead. And, well, if there are misdirections about the identities of her romantic muses built into this song…then who’s to say there aren’t misdirections built into the others? Who’s to say that anything you think you “know” about the identities of her muses is true, even if she’s the one who planted the evidence? Who’s to say that she is telling you the truth?
This line of questioning cracks open the entire foundation of muse-driven Easter egging in the TSCU. Following the trail of evidence to the red herrings she planted about muse identities will lead you to question the entire enterprise of following the evidence in the first place. And I think that’s precisely the point. You’re in a trap, and she wants you to know it. Because this practice of attaching public-facing male muses to all of her work has Taylor in a trap, too. As she says in Mastermind, she’s spent her whole career “scheming like a criminal to make them love [her] and make it seem effortless.” This is the first time she’s felt the need to confess. She’s copping to the scheming, pointing us to the red herrings. She’s asking us to accept her plea of temporary insanity on account of her restricted humanity. Asking that we understand the plight of the caged beast, driven to do the most curious things.
And if we’re going to understand, then we must understand this: we’re all in a trap. If her fans are going to embrace her rolling the stone away, they have to first see that tomb of silence for what it was: a trap ensnaring us all, limiting her artistic expression, and preventing her audience from hearing the core truth in her music.
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Confessional Art: How much is confession? How much is art?

So, we’ve established these core precepts of the TTPD Universe: TTPD is a sincerely confessional album, representing a continuation of our anti-hero’s journey towards “meet me at midnight.” At the same time, TTPD is not necessarily based in literal, factual truths - and Dr. Swift has confessed that to us, too.
Is that a contradiction? Do the red herrings she planted exist in opposition to confessional art? I would argue, no, they do not.
The public’s foundational understanding of confessional art is that it is faithfully, literally autobiographical. It tells us the factual truth about the author. But just how true is that? For the confessional poets, when it came to truth in art, facts were besides the point. Consider this quote from Robert Lowell about his artistic process (emphasis mine):

“They're not always factually true. There's a good deal of tinkering with fact. You leave out a lot, and emphasize this and not that. Your actual experience is a complete flux. I've invented facts and changed things, and the whole balance of the poem was something invented. So there's a lot of artistry, I hope, in the poems. Yet there's this thing: if a poem is autobiographical—and this is true of any kind of autobiographical writing and of historical writing, you want the reader to say, “This is true.” In something like Macaulay's History of England, you think you're really getting William III. That's as good as a good plot in a novel. And so there was always that standard of truth which you wouldn't ordinarily have in poetry—the reader was to believe he was getting the real Robert Lowell.” (Source)

Here, Lowell seems to say that a core part of his artistic mission was to write poetry that would be experienced as true. He crafted his poems to deliver the experience and impression of the “real Robert Lowell.” And this is separate and distinct from delivering factual truth. In fact, he “tinkered with fact” as part of this artistic choice - to create a poem that would be experienced as true, even if it technically was not in the strictest sense of the term.
Anne Sexton made similar comments about her poems - that she did not always adhere to literal facts. In one interview, she described these untruths as “little escape hatches” so she would “always have an out.” She goes on to say: “I can tell more truth than I have to admit to because I can tell the truth and say, after all, ‘This was a lie’ or ‘Of course not all of my poems are true.’” These escape hatches, then, opened up room for her to tell more truth. Perhaps not always the literal kind, but the sincere core truth that audiences recognize and respond to as “true.”
The use of “red herrings,” then, is not in opposition to the confessional mode. Red herrings can actually enhance confessional art when changing factual details allows room for the author to share pieces of themselves that they otherwise would not. And, further, the experience of truth for the audience does not hinge on strict adherence to literal facts. The audience needs to feel that they are getting the real Robert Lowell. The real Taylor Swift.
Maybe we haven't met the real Taylor Swift yet. But I think TTPD brought us several steps closer.