I Am Avoiding News Bulletins At Present

Less because what we are being told
redefines 'doom scrolling' better
than reading the book of Job, whole
and considering the effects on his life
from his listening to so many false comforters,
and more because, well....
What I read most, and wish it were different,
is a few rich men in hyper wealthy America
fighting each other to wrest control over,
an extortionate prostitution charter,
where each of them wants to smear their enemies
with, and keep their own name out of,
as if managing an sextortion racket
was a natural extension of 21st century capitalism.

If only that was the worst of their meanness...

Distance And Thought

In countries with an open media
politics will always be divided by diversity. 
Citizens can use any political label they like
to describe themselves and other people,
though it might help for them to find
a choice of words that does not sound
so defensive as to shut down all argument.

In societies that defend the right
to carry a gun, the distance in thought
from words that can trigger further,
less healthy and more illogical, arguments, 
and words that can trigger lethal actions
is shorter than many people discover.

I Used To Be Relatively Comfortable

ignoring virtue signalling:
It was a media fad backed up
by a catch phrase where whoever
was sending the signal, the point
was they were not backing it up.

What was more interesting
was the content of the message
that was actually sent, decoupled
from any gussied up 'virtue'.

In this new age of nastiness,
we are getting the opposite
and it is far more dangerous:
vice signalling where the message
implies a real but unspecified threat
where the less accurately
the vice or threat is interpreted
the more lethal the hidden intent
inside the signal becomes
when made impossible to retreat from. 

Professional Or Amateur?

When I was aspiring to be a grown up
in the 1970s the adults whose example
it was left unsaid I should emulate
presented themselves as if they were
born professional adults, who had never
had a childhood and never been anything
other than the apex characters
they presented themselves as
to who they brought into the world.

Whoever they brought into the world
could only ever be amateurish, children,
even when they were capable, well formed, individuals.

I remember feeling repelled
by this locked in professional view
of what parenting ought to produce:
a replication of itself from different circumstances.
Where what parents held onto most
 was how amateurish children
would never relive the past
to be anything like them. 

Have You Ever Been Sold Cynicism?

Not knowing while you were sold it
that your salesman was even more
cynical than their salesmanship
was leading you to believe? 

Then don't be ashamed.
That is how these people work!
The cynic uses how you don't know
to deepen the depth their cynicism
puts you into, with them.

So you don't know who else
to turn to when you need help.

We can all learn, particularly 
when we start with learning
what we don't know before
and have to understand now.

Cynicism teaches everyone it touches
both impatience and contempt.
The more the pupil unlearns them
the more they will improve
on what their teacher taught them.

Americaphobia

Right now and for the foreseeable future
a phobic and critical response to all news
coming out of America will seem natural.

There capitalist opportunism has taken
a new, more toxic, turn where the wealthy
and powerful are playing 'chicken'. There one
of them tries to 'out' another for their name
being one of many in The Epstein Files,
whilst hiding that their own name is there.
Whoever's name is in the files, who can hide it,
they will maintain its high value. Like a unit
of currency in some hidden crypto currency.

The defensive hysteria with which America politicians
approach The Epstein Files reminds of McCarthyite America
but unlike the 1950s, which was an attempt at smearing many,
those in the files were there and are finding their former,
seemingly rational, self interest hard to explain with hindsight.

Perhaps money, power, and secrecy have always been like that.
Those who have invested, and made such things their treasure
 have good reason to hide the nature of their investment. 

And investments in secretive and abusive sex are similar. 

Signs Of Greater Age (44)

You go to the supermarket less often 
than you used to: diminished taste buds
eating alone so much of the time,
and a shrinking appetite lengthen
the times between each visit you make.

And when you go your knees and hips
don't work as smoothly as they used to.
For what you want to buy you don't need
a trolley but where you have a handle
to grip and press down on, holding it
is more of a comfort than you at first realise.

The last time I was in the queue to pay for my food
the retired woman in front of me told me about
what a friend of hers saw last week: Her friend
saw man die whilst in a queue almost in front of her.

I had to ask the lady in front of me
'Did he choose the wrong checkout?'