World Mis-Leadership Made Personal

It is strange how much I try to keep faith
with the worlds of language, news, and politics
when so many weak world leaders remain in power
because they disappoint-as if if they led from the front
they might show others how to lead and be ejected
from their role in a shot. They remind me of my father,
a man who had far more right to ownership
and far more choice in law and custom
than I would ever have, both as a child and adult.
Such that what he mentored me in most was error
hidden and sustained by anonymity, more than I knew.

I don't blame him for not wanting to be parent,
any more than I blame world leaders for leading
their countries astray. The news still interests me
through it I see more clearly how the world is misled. 

  

Grief Is A Road Some Navigate More Than Others

After the scorched earth war policy
comes the self congratulatory ceasefire
where nobody knows how long the arms
will remain silent, but everyone hopes
it will be long enough for the living
who investigate, to clear away the rubble
that was once housing and retrieve the dead
from where they were crushed and died instantly,
so the living can own their sense of loss with dignity.  

The Common Currency

Overstating the case, or the argument,
is the common currency in modern politics,
where, aided by an overspun media,
there is no opposite to being 'in emit mode',
where in person, people might speak, think,
and listen - all at once - to make a conversation.

Thus 'A peace plan', as it fills the news,
is much nearer being 'A framework for a ceasefire'
than it's planners can admit, and 'a 20 point peace plan'
where 19 of the points remain bare outlines
for future government actions
that are not even at the planning stage. 

Thus who speaks to who
and what they might say to each other,
and who might chair such meetings, 
remains unimagined and unexplained.

The Common Currency remains
the ability to speak about the future
without listening for where it will start from,
where people wish that their leaders lead
through listening to their people instead. 

The Last Gasp Of Pink Floyd

was released 29 years ago this week when keyboard
player and writer of the band, Richard Wright,
released his second solo album 'Broken China'
to acclaim from fans of the band, with none of hyper
-promotion of the last full band album
'The Division Bell', but an EPK and interview.
Please left click here to hear 'Broken China'
in all it's chilly electronica-style grandeur for yourself.    
     

 

If A.I. Was Your Girlfriend

Elon Musk and every other billionaire tech bro
have redesigned human relationships as the best
a man's money can buy, with the available technology.

Their new fashion for avowedly heterosexual men,
who fantasize about real women, the reality of whom
ensures that the unreality of the men do not stand a chance,  
is the ever amenable and always changeable A.I. girlfriend.

There the man chooses her design, based in real life models
he has met where men can think once, twice, and think again,
about the design of the ideal A.I. woman of their choice
who will never complain that the man is a fantasist: if she did
then the A.I. woman would cease to exist as the man's fantasy.

  

Competitive Insanity

As The Autocrats Club selects new members
from across the world, neighbour of Russia -
Georgia - is the latest where the vote has been counted,
and consensus as evidenced with the shrunken freedom
of the press in the reports that do get released, the competition
for the most destructive and insane leadership of the year
still remains a hot race between the hidden hand of Hamas,
the military and propaganda power of Likud, and the lameness
of The Republican Party in America. There, for all three,
every reason why they can't do exactly what they want
is somebody else's fault, for anyone other than them to fix. 

Between Words And Actions

As world leaders pronounce
about the world they want to see,
putting the 'me' into the media 
before an audience that is tailored
by the advertising revenue their words earn,
we should note that whilst speeches
start and stop on television, the wars
that are started by all these words 
take a lot more than mere speech
to stop once the arms are taken up.