The Art Of The Non-Deal

I have lived through eleven general elections.

In every one of them the party I voted for
did not become the party of government,
on many of those elections
the party that came to govern
was not even on the ballot where I voted
due to regional voting agendas
and partisan political party stances.

What I have noted most is where
a particular political agenda is on offer
then how easily it is misrepresented,
all the better to mis-sell it through a media
where the headlines tell folks
the most that they actually take in.

The headlines act like the public statues
that Victorian society put up everywhere;
The more we examine the deeds
of the men whose images are on the plinths
far enough out of reach of the public
to give them neck ache from looking up,
the more wrong we feel those men were.

And yet the wealth that these men created
through the misuse of power and trade
has become the bedrock of modern society.

How can we pay reparations
to those who are owed them
and keep the lives we now live,
built on the wealth of those times?

How much longer in our politics
will we settle for the headlines
whilst not reading the detail,
and denying the discomfort
our ancestors caused?

How long will we be as empty headed
as the statues that we refuse to take down
from their plinths, as we deny the telling, racist, details
of how we have lived, not-so-long-ago past and present?

Your guess is as good as mine
in answer to all those questions.