Toil Beyond Need Always Create Waste

The icing is always the same, whether the cake is militarism
with a strong civil life built on weapons for export
or militarism for home use by more direct rule,
oligarchy in police states who import the weapons.
Both mean the right to vote but only for weak representatives,
with a highly censored media setting the agenda.
where good citizenship is knowing how to censor yourself.
Life has to be that way to maintain the sweet veneer
of civilisation through a popular selective amnesia.
There are some 21 counties in the world without armies
and they are all so small as to have no industry at all,
never mind a trade in arms, but their value comes
from being havens for the profits of arms traders,
whilst unknowingly we, and the planet we avoid
thinking too much about how we abuse,
absorb the sense of loss from this continually reversing alchemy.