Popular Mathematics

The more things change
the more they stay the same,
This is as true for Q Anon
as it is for every protest group
that is like them, through human history
who feel themselves to be impelled
to embrace a sense of disenfranchisement.

Whether the subject is statistics,
present day politics, religion/faith
or the grand sweep of recent history-
for them '2+2' will always '=5'
as they fail to decode mysteries
that are seemingly set up for them.

The Discomfort Zone

Since 1979 more walls have gone up
than have ever gone down, erections
made out of money as much as bricks.

The Construction Industry is in robust health,
with all the new divisions that it is expanding!
The new walls are better than the old,
they are less physical, and have less barbed wire,
with very few machine guns required for hire.

The 'no-man's-land' in between the divides
is now maintained by black ops manouveres
backed up by hidden security cameras
coupled with plenty of noisy propaganda.

From behind our wall we accept what we are shown,
democracy where the highest level performers
get the most bread, the rest just watch them perform.

Our screens define our histories as battles
between causes that haunt us like old ghosts.
Who did what and when they did it can no longer
be remembered well, but comes to us in fragments.

Our turmoil is both within and without,
there is barely the need for the knife in the back
to openly prove what the conflict is all about.

In the dying light our media shout for the shadows
of those in whom we once put hope,
looking for how to 'rediscover our traditions'.

When the walls seem high enough we stop listening,
and sit and mutter to ourselves instead.
No enemy can penetrate a mind so well divided
so in our madness we feel safe from all invaders.

The Less You Know The Less It Can Hurt You

Dystopias are many and varied,
but consistent;comfort is for the few
at the top who control everything,
particularly how they are understood.
Discomfort is the norm for all
beneath them who are controlled.

In societies built on secrecy around control
the censorship works like the first rule
in the film 'Fight Club'; 'Nobody talks about...  '

Units Of Detachment (2)

Here at Zombies Inc, the call centre
where whatever the public share
the script on the screen is always right,
we know that the recorded apologies
over the crass commercial music
that you hear before you get to us
are the apogee of insincerity
but they exist as a warning
-to prove how little we care.

Since we want to be market leaders
we trust that our customers
will come to see that we are right.
When everyone fakes their own sincerity
for themselves we will all be alright
-regardless of the consequences.

An Argument Towards Improving Democracy

The Ancient Athenian view of citizenship
was that mostly adult males who completed military service
could have it, though there were exceptions.
But it was absolute that in that direct democracy
that every vote represented the voter, nobody else.
Some women and children were citizens
without the vote. Slaves and foreigners
took part in nothing beyond their chattel-dom.

In my city state the right to vote,
implied in  full citizenship, would not
be about what one can take for oneself,
nor based on the anatomy and status you were born with.
But it would be built on how much rubbish you remove
from public view, how many trees the citizen has planted,
for the betterment of the area, and beyond.
What support anyone gives to the most poor
and needy, and lastly how much anyone contributes
to positive public debate. This is voting by doing and living,
and makes the actual act of voting a token well paid for in advance.