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...

It Seems Rather Late

to contemplate the words of Lutheran pastor
theologian and concentration camp survivor,
Martin Niemöller, as they were written in 1946.

Many know how they start 'First they came for....  ' 
and then comes the list of people 'they' arrested,
in order, Communists, Socialists, Trade unionists,
Jews, until I was arrested. Because I had not
spoken up for others when I could have spoken,
and there was nobody left to speak up for me. 

Contemplating this in the light of the new
high speed 'Act/shoot first, think later,
deny the error by making more, all whilst
quietly repairing the damage' kingship 
of Donald Trump what the public have to learn
the most is react fast, and act collectively, 
to actively defend the courts-the branch of the executive
they have easiest access to, to defend their rights,
presently sorely abused by executive (dis)order. 

Taking The 'Arian' Out Of 'Authoritarian'

Whoever becomes the next president
of the United States, everyone knows
that they will have immense power
and they will need all the human skills
that could be accumulated in one person
to manage the complex levers of power
integral to the running of American Democracy.

Whoever wins the most votes in the electoral college
they will seem authoritarian and on the wrong side
to a substantial minority of voters, who will want
'once and for all' the question of race to be decided.

But whether a non-white woman wins the popular vote
and the electoral college or an elderly man wins both
for the first time in his history of standing for office
neither will be the last word on the matter of race.

They will be the last word until the next election,
surely be his last, the campaign cycle for which
begins fairly soon after the winner's inauguration.

Donald Trump Explained To Non-Americans

I couldn't quite tell whether it is me
or whether it is a mere side-effects
of the choice that youtube presents,
but I have succumbed to the vice
of watching American political news.

I think I know why I fell for it,
because what is presented works
as a self important soap opera,
where the more self important
a politician's comments seem
the more they suck the viewer in,
where the viewer senses the jeopardy
in the politician's public comments
will before before the politician does.

Does this explain the gravitational pull
of the black hole that is Donald Trump?

Other human black holes
full of empty noise are available,..

A Colour Blind Politics

is only as possible as a colour blind history,
which is to say it is not just impossible,
it is also absurd.  

Any history where sight
is it's witness and informant
will always be a history of colour
whilst being a register of social class.

In the USA citizens vote for flawed Utopias,
in elections where they accept 
that the flaws will never be fixed
but may be made 'manageable',
if the right president achieves office.

No president has ever taken on the history
where non-citizenship for the many
was part of the constitution, then it wasn't.
When the government broadened citizenship
it divided the country in a war
in which the losing side denied defeat
and saw no need for reconciliation,
no president has taken on all of this and won.

Now it seems to be too late
to expect such a person.

  

God Does Have A Sense Of Humour

That we can trust in when times prove hard.

He made a germophobe 'the leader of the free world'
and left loose a virus that it very hard to stop
for said leader to limit the spread of, to keep afloat
his economic hopes in the year he hoped to be re-elected. 

Clean Elites

When Lyndon B. Johnson said
of F.B.I. head, J. Edgar Hoover

'It's probably better to have him in the tent,
and pissing out, than outside of the tent pissing in',

Johnson was merely making sure
that Hoover's piss
landed anywhere except on him
or on his supporters.....
  

Double Vision

Benjamin Franklin is the person most credited
with the invention of bi-focal glasses,
the better to both see clearer at a distance
and read legal and social texts close up.

Was this his greatest gift to the presidents
who followed him? A way of losing the focus
in their political vision, from their prescription
needing renewal. This unclear view of society
was what enabled them to pursue legal arguments
with pin sharp logic with which to perpetuate
the inferior status of non-whites and immigrants.

The clearest vision was always for the few
and they were best expressed with economy,
the better to avoid the broader implications.

Those who read and wrote most
were The Few who owned everything,
particularly the deeds of the state
on which all ownership was based
which they read with the close part
of their bifocal lenses, whilst being blind
to the bigger world around them.

Shoot The Message

In the U.S. Primary Elections
there is only one winner;
the advertising industry,
through which candidates
and voters alike practice
making targets of each other
in preparation for the real vote.

America

-the cherry pie of chance and democracy
that offers itself as Hope for The Free.
Hope and freedom are the two words
most devalued by overuse,
where for all who get to vote their votes
are all of equal value, very little
compared with what money buys.
By a serendipity beyond honesty
the richest pick, the ripest cherries
and the biggest slice of the pie-
the whole wide world-
go to the richest democracy.
Thus that country calls itself a meritocracy....

A Long Gone Presidential Candidate Wrote

'As Long as there is a lower class I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element I am of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison I am not free'
-Eugene Debs 1855-1926*



*four times charismatic socialist candidate for the president of the USA.
At his peak in 1912 he polled 6% of the popular vote, 900,000 votes.
The last time he ran for president he did so from a prison cell for his
'espionage and sedition' towards the end of WW1, in which he, like
thousands of others who were caught up in the loss of civil liberties,
he was also barred for life from voting. He won 3.5 % of the vote.