Apophasis with White Rabbit

You must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”—Richard Feynman

Remember! Souviens-toi! prodigue! Esto memor!—Baudelaire, "The Clock"

Unthinking spendthrift, we don't roam,

Or aspire to, a Bel Air earth—

Like the fox hunters whose venery

Prolongs this manufactured dearth!

Banished from the present scenery,

Country's grate and fame’s disgrace,

Can't harm a lyrical refrain—

Phone has gleanèd my teeming brain!

Doubtful traveler ("It's all bunk!")

With lots to learn, these long drinks drunk,

Dumbly dissing what once we bought

So soulfully, if sense untaught,

The jewels of ancestral habit,

Quit running down that Dead White rabbit!

Apophasis: "A [rhetorical] figure in which we feign to deny or pass over what we really say or advise" (OED, sv). What politicians do for a living.

Tip o’ the phone to John Keats' “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be.”