# Vicaragestock: A Circle of Blame Dialogue on Literary Censorship¹
Being a Most Instructive Discourse on the Suppression of Scribblers in the Digital Age*
**Setting**: A virtual literary salon somewhere between Berlin and Substack's servers, where the ghosts of literature gather to discuss the modern predicament of C.J. Hopkins, that peculiar American expatriate who has discovered that writing satirical observations about totalitarianism while residing in Germany can lead to rather more excitement than one typically desires from one's literary career².
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## The Circle Convenes
**WILL CUPPY** *(moderating with characteristic detachment)*: We are gathered here today to discuss the curious case of one C.J. Hopkins³, who appears to have committed the grave literary sin of noticing things and then writing them down. This practice, once considered the basic requirement for authorship, has apparently become somewhat controversial in our enlightened age⁴.
**PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY** *(floating in with revolutionary fervor)*:
*"We are all Greeks—our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece"*⁵—but it seems our censorship has its roots in something far less noble! This Hopkins fellow faces the same tyranny that drove me from England's shores!
**ALEXANDER POPE** *(adjusting his wig with satirical precision)*:
*"The proper study of mankind is man"*—yet when this Hopkins studies mankind too closely, particularly the managing sort of mankind, he finds himself rather like my Dunciad's heroes: "And Universal Darkness buries All"⁶!
**WILLIAM BLAKE** *(eyes blazing with prophetic fire)*:
I see the mind-forg'd manacles⁷! The same chains that bound my London now stretch across the digital realm! Hopkins writes of "New Normal" totalitarianism⁸, but 'tis the same old Urizen⁹ in new digital robes!
**EDGAR ALLAN POE** *(from his shadowy corner)*:
*Quoth the Platform: "Nevermore"*¹⁰! The raven of censorship perches upon the bust of Free Speech, and its shadow grows longer with each passing day. Hopkins discovers what I knew well—that the most terrifying tales are often the truest ones¹¹.
**JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE** *(with Germanic gravitas)*:
*"Mehr Licht!"*¹²—More light! Yet here we see the deliberate dimming of illumination. Hopkins, dwelling in my beloved Deutschland, finds that the land of Dichter und Denker¹³ has become somewhat less hospitable to actual thinking than one might hope.
**EZRA POUND** *(controversially present)*:
The real trouble with Hopkins is that he's making it NEW¹⁴—too new for the comfort of those who prefer their dissent safely historical. They'll tolerate criticism of dead tyrants but grow nervous when one notices the living variety¹⁵.
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## The Blame Begins to Circle
**CUPPY**: Now then, let us proceed with our customary efficiency to assign blame for this literary predicament. I suggest we begin with the obvious culprits and work our way down to the more creative explanations¹⁶.
**SHELLEY** *(declaiming passionately)*:
The fault lies with those "unacknowledged legislators"¹⁷ who have forgotten that poets—and satirists like Hopkins—are the true lawmakers of humanity! They fear his pen because it writes truths that make their carefully constructed narratives crumble like Ozymandias's statue¹⁸!
**POPE** *(with cutting wit)*:
*"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"*¹⁹—but in this case, it's the angels who are rushing in to silence the fool who dares to speak! Hopkins commits the cardinal sin of our age: he makes people think, and thinking, as we know, leads to most inconvenient questions²⁰.
**BLAKE** *(prophetically)*:
The Nobodaddy²¹ of our digital age seeks to bind the human form divine! Hopkins sees through the "Single Vision"²² that would make us all alike, all compliant, all safely predictable in our responses to authority!
**POE** *(melodramatically)*:
It is the beating of the hideous heart²³! The guilty conscience of power cannot bear the steady rhythm of Hopkins's observations, each one a telltale reminder of their own moral decay. They would wall him up like Fortunato²⁴, but the internet makes poor mortar.
**GOETHE** *(philosophically)*:
*"Was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine"*²⁵—What binds us all is the commonplace. Hopkins's crime is refusing to be commonplace, refusing to accept the mediocrity of thought that makes governance so much easier for the governing classes.
**POUND** *(economically)*:
Follow the money²⁶! Hopkins threatens the carefully constructed economy of attention and consent. His words are usury against the established order—they compound interest in dangerous ideas²⁷.
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## The Literary Diagnosis
**CUPPY**: Having established that everyone is to blame except Hopkins himself²⁸, let us now examine the literary dimensions of this persecution. After all, we are dealing with a writer, and writers have always been troublesome creatures, prone to noticing things and then, even more annoyingly, remembering them²⁹.
**SHELLEY**: Hopkins writes in the tradition of Swift's *Modest Proposal*³⁰—his satire so sharp it cuts through the comfortable assumptions of his readers. Like Swift, he suggests that perhaps eating babies is preferable to the alternative policies on offer³¹.
**POPE**: His work exhibits the classical satirical virtues: *brevitas*, *claritas*, and *veritas*³²—brevity, clarity, and truth. Unfortunately, these are precisely the qualities that make modern authorities most uncomfortable, as they prefer their criticism *longus*, *obscurus*, and *mendax*³³.
**BLAKE**: Hopkins possesses what I call "fourfold vision"³⁴—he sees not just what is, but what was, what might be, and what should be. This makes him dangerous to those who profit from single vision and Newton's sleep³⁵.
**POE**: His essays possess the unity of effect I demanded in my criticism³⁶—each piece builds inexorably toward its conclusion, like the pendulum descending upon the victim. The reader cannot escape the logic, which is precisely why the authorities wish to escape the reader³⁷.
**GOETHE**: Hopkins demonstrates *Bildung*³⁸—the cultivation of self through experience and reflection. But in an age that prefers *Ausbildung*³⁹—mere training—such cultivation appears subversive, even revolutionary.
**POUND**: His prose exhibits the imagist principles⁴⁰: direct treatment of the thing, economy of language, and rhythm that corresponds to emotion. When applied to political subjects, these techniques become unexpectedly explosive⁴¹.
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## The Poetic Justice of Injustice
**CUPPY**: It seems we have reached that point in our discussion where we must acknowledge the delicious irony⁴² that a writer living in Germany—a nation with some historical experience in the suppression of inconvenient literature⁴³—should find himself facing censorship for criticizing... the suppression of inconvenient literature⁴⁴.
**SHELLEY** *(with revolutionary fire)*:
*"Rise like Lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number"*⁴⁵! Hopkins's persecution only proves his point—that we have indeed entered a "New Normal" where dissent is pathologized and resistance is medicalized⁴⁶!
**POPE** *(satirically)*:
The situation exhibits perfect poetic justice in its complete lack of justice⁴⁷. Hopkins writes about authoritarianism and is promptly treated to a demonstration of it—rather like criticizing the weather and then being struck by lightning⁴⁸.
**BLAKE** *(mystically)*:
He dwells in the land of the Gothic cathedral⁴⁹ yet finds himself in a gothic novel⁵⁰—pursued by mysterious forces, threatened with unnamed punishments, all for the crime of seeing too clearly in the darkness⁵¹.
**POE** *(atmospherically)*:
The irony is worthy of my tales⁵²—the man who writes about the death of free speech finds his own speech dying, not with a bang but with a whimper of terms-of-service violations⁵³.
**GOETHE** *(with Faustian insight)*:
Hopkins has made his bargain with truth⁵⁴, and like Faust, he discovers that knowledge comes with a price. But unlike my hero, he cannot simply retreat to the classical Walpurgisnacht⁵⁵—he must live in the modern world he describes.
**POUND** *(modernistically)*:
The whole thing is a palimpsest⁵⁶—scratch away the digital surface and you find the same old patterns of power and suppression, dressed up in new technological clothing⁵⁷.
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## The Footnoted Conclusion
**CUPPY**: And so we conclude⁵⁸ that Hopkins's situation is simultaneously unique and utterly predictable⁵⁹, much like the weather or the behavior of politicians during election season⁶⁰. His crime is the ancient one of telling inconvenient truths in convenient prose⁶¹, and his punishment is the modern one of digital exile⁶².
The circle of blame, having completed its revolution⁶³, returns us to where we began: with a writer who noticed things and wrote them down⁶⁴. That this should be controversial tells us everything we need to know about our age⁶⁵, and nothing we particularly wanted to learn⁶⁶.
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## Cuppy's Footnotes⁶⁷
¹ The term "Circle of Blame" derives from the Vicarage dialogue experiments, where participants sit in a circle and systematically blame everyone else for whatever has gone wrong. It's remarkably similar to a faculty meeting, except more honest.
² Hopkins's literary career appears to have followed the classic trajectory: obscurity, recognition, controversy, persecution, and presumably martyrdom, though he seems to be skipping the martyrdom part by continuing to write.
³ C.J. Hopkins, American playwright and satirist, currently residing in Germany and discovering that satire travels poorly across international borders, rather like cheese or political refugees.
⁴ Our enlightened age being defined as any historical period that considers itself more enlightened than previous ages, which is to say, all of them.
⁵ Shelley was fond of grand pronouncements about Greeks and laws, though he spent most of his time avoiding both.
⁶ Pope's *Dunciad* predicted a world ruled by dunces, which shows remarkable prescience for an 18th-century satirist.
⁷ Blake's "mind-forg'd manacles" from "London"—he saw mental chains long before anyone invented social media.
⁸ Hopkins's term for the post-2020 authoritarian consensus, which is rather like the old authoritarian consensus but with better marketing.
⁹ Urizen, Blake's symbol of oppressive reason and law, would have loved terms-of-service agreements.
¹⁰ With apologies to Poe's raven, who at least had the courtesy to limit himself to one word.
¹¹ Poe understood that the most effective horror stories are those that could actually happen, which explains why his tales remain terrifying while most modern horror films merely induce laughter.
¹² "More light!"—Goethe's alleged last words, though he probably meant he wanted someone to open the curtains.
¹³ "Poets and thinkers"—Germany's traditional self-description, though recent evidence suggests they may have misplaced both.
¹⁴ Pound's modernist slogan "Make it NEW," which he applied to poetry and politics with equally controversial results.
¹⁵ Pound's own experience with controversial political opinions makes him something of an expert on the subject, though not necessarily a reliable guide.
¹⁶ The obvious culprits being, in order: the government, the media, the public, human nature, and the weather.
¹⁷ Shelley's famous description of poets as "unacknowledged legislators," which sounds better than "unemployed troublemakers."
¹⁸ Reference to Shelley's "Ozymandias," where even the mightiest rulers end up as broken statues in the desert, though their terms-of-service agreements apparently survive intact.
¹⁹ Pope's observation about fools and angels, which has been empirically verified by anyone who has ever attended a public meeting.
²⁰ Thinking being the gateway drug to questioning, which leads to doubt, which leads to the dark side of actually paying attention to what's happening.
²¹ Blake's term for the false god of institutional authority, who would have loved surveillance capitalism.
²² Blake's "Single Vision" being the reduction of complex reality to simple, manageable categories—rather like content moderation algorithms.
²³ Reference to Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," where guilt manifests as auditory hallucinations, much like how criticism manifests as "hate speech" to the guilty.
²⁴ The victim in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," who was walled up alive for the crime of being annoying, which is now handled more efficiently through deplatforming.
²⁵ "What binds us all is the commonplace"—Goethe's observation that mediocrity is humanity's most universal characteristic.
²⁶ The classic investigative principle, though in this case the money leads to advertising revenue and the need to keep advertisers happy.
²⁷ Pound's obsession with usury and economics, which got him into considerable trouble but wasn't entirely wrong about the corrupting influence of financial interests on culture.
²⁸ This being the standard conclusion of all Circle of Blame dialogues, where the person being discussed is invariably found to be the only innocent party.
²⁹ Writers being notoriously unreliable citizens due to their habit of observing reality and then describing it, often in unflattering terms.
³⁰ Swift's satirical essay suggesting that the Irish poor sell their children as food, which was considered shocking satire in 1729 but would probably be flagged as misinformation today.
³¹ Hopkins's satirical suggestions about public health policy being roughly equivalent to Swift's modest proposal, though with less cannibalism and more face masks.
³² The classical rhetorical virtues, which are taught in schools but discouraged in practice.
³³ The modern rhetorical vices: long-winded, obscure, and mendacious—the preferred style of official communications.
³⁴ Blake's concept of expanded perception, as opposed to the "single vision" that sees only what it's supposed to see.
³⁵ Blake's term for the mechanistic worldview that reduces everything to measurable quantities, much like engagement metrics.
³⁶ Poe's theory of the "unity of effect" in short stories, where every element contributes to a single emotional impact—a principle that works equally well for essays and propaganda.
³⁷ The authorities preferring to escape the reader rather than address the reading, which is more efficient though less intellectually satisfying.
³⁸ The German concept of self-cultivation through education and experience, as opposed to mere job training.
³⁹ Practical training or vocational education, which produces useful workers but inconvenient citizens.
⁴⁰ The imagist movement's principles, which Pound helped develop before moving on to more controversial pursuits.
⁴¹ Clarity and economy being dangerous qualities when applied to political subjects, which prefer obfuscation and redundancy.
⁴² Irony being the literary device most frequently employed by reality, though reality rarely gets credit for its artistic achievements.
⁴³ Germany's historical relationship with book burning and thought control being well-documented, though apparently not well-remembered.
⁴⁴ The situation being so ironically perfect that it seems almost scripted, which it probably is.
⁴⁵ From Shelley's "The Mask of Anarchy," written after the Peterloo Massacre and still relevant, which says something depressing about human progress.
⁴⁶ The modern tendency to treat political dissent as a mental health issue, which is more sophisticated than simple persecution but achieves similar results.
⁴⁷ Poetic justice traditionally requiring that virtue be rewarded and vice punished, which makes it largely irrelevant to contemporary events.
⁴⁸ The comparison being apt because both weather criticism and lightning strikes are largely beyond human control, though one is more immediately dangerous.
⁴⁹ Germany being famous for its Gothic architecture, among other things.
⁵⁰ The Gothic novel being a literary genre featuring mysterious persecution, unexplained threats, and atmospheric dread—rather like modern digital life.
⁵¹ The crime of clear sight being particularly dangerous in an age that depends on collective myopia for its smooth functioning.
⁵² Poe being the master of ironic reversals and unexpected consequences, though he usually confined them to fiction.
⁵³ With apologies to T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," though Eliot probably didn't anticipate terms-of-service violations as a method of silencing.
⁵⁴ The Faustian bargain traditionally involving the exchange of one's soul for knowledge or power, though modern versions often involve privacy policies.
⁵⁵ The classical Walpurgisnacht being Goethe's vision of timeless beauty and truth, as opposed to the modern version involving social media algorithms.
⁵⁶ A palimpsest being a manuscript where the original text has been scraped away and written over, though traces of the original remain visible—rather like internet censorship.
⁵⁷ The patterns of power and suppression being remarkably consistent across different technological platforms, suggesting that the problem is not technological but human.
⁵⁸ All good dialogues must conclude, though the problems they discuss rarely do.
⁵⁹ Hopkins's situation being unique in its specific details but utterly predictable in its general pattern, which is the hallmark of most human drama.
⁶⁰ Politicians during election season being remarkably predictable in their unpredictability, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn't.
⁶¹ Inconvenient truths being those that interfere with convenient lies, and convenient prose being that which makes inconvenient truths easily digestible.
⁶² Digital exile being the modern equivalent of physical banishment, except that the exile can still be seen and heard, which makes it less satisfying for the exilers.
⁶³ The circle of blame being a perfect geometric form that always returns to its starting point, much like political discussions.
⁶⁴ The fundamental activity of writers throughout history, which remains controversial despite centuries of practice.
⁶⁵ Our age being characterized by its intolerance of characterization, particularly unflattering characterization.
⁶⁶ Learning being generally overrated as a human activity, particularly when the lessons are unpleasant.
⁶⁷ These footnotes being in the style of Will Cuppy's "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody," where the footnotes often contain more wit than the main text, which is saying something.
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*This dialogue was conducted in the spirit of the Vicarage experiments, where literary figures gather to discuss contemporary problems with the benefit of historical perspective and the disadvantage of being dead. Any resemblance to actual literary criticism is purely coincidental and probably actionable.*