The Temptation Of America

Europe has the old Roman Empire
as their tempter, a supermarket full of religions
bound together by a crude military authority
and an unstable continuity of leadership.

Asia and Russia have their ancient tempters too,
the latter held together by an authoritarian
version of Christianity that makes belief
more consistently dishonest to itself
than it can ever admit that it is.

Meanwhile the place of wealth and tech, America
is being tempted by an old tempter-fascism
in the guise of a renewed 'Christian Nationalism',
in which 'America first' means an 'America only',
which excludes inclusive Americans who believe
in neighbourliness of whatever colour, gender,
and religious origin. In this new pecking order
whoever is white, male and wealthy comes first,
where science has to be made unfit for human
decision making if it allows 'inferior' minorities
to live, and thrive, outside white male hierarchies.   


   

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. 

The Don't/Do Conundrum

Is a human contrariness that proves
more consist the more it is tested,
and recently it has been tested a lot.

How it works is simple enough
A minister will prohibit something
and ban all talk of it in the media.

Then the minister will be asked 
by a journalist who will raise the point
and the negativity of the minister
will be all the encouragement
the public to want do the opposite.

Majoritarianism

is the lunatics
taking over the asylum
and redefining sanity
by what pleases them.

Populist majoritarianism
is insanity with a higher approval rating. 

Canine Democracy

Countries are like dogs, the bigger they are
the more fearful human beings are of them.

The bigger they are the more closely they are watched
for how they behave, as if for being poorly trained
they could do anything to each other,
and they would do everything they could
to the humans who make up the rest of the world.

Small dogs are like small countries,
they are seen as friendly, manageable, biddable.
Their civilisation makes them relatively easy
to negotiate with, both internally and from without.
Though put a lot of them together in a pack,
or even a pact, and they will form a firm order,
a hierarchy that is harder for their enemies to beat.