Political Theory

                             A Political-Economy Ideology

The basic problem

of all human groupings,

from families and acquaintanceships and tribes

to workplaces, governments,

and cultural and global systems,

has always been the same,

probably since before humans

evolved into the species that we are.

It seems so pointless to me

when people point fingers

and denounce the Left Wing or the Right Wing

or religious fundamentalism or soulless secularism,

or coalition, two-party, or single-party governance,

or any other genus or species of ideology or system.

Russians used to joke that

although under capitalism man exploits man,

in the Soviet Union it was the other way around.

The problem, of course,

is and has always been bullies.

Aristocratic bullies and theocratic bullies.

Capitalist bullies and state-socialist bullies.

Bureaucratic bullies.

Bullies with weapons.

Bullies who enjoy humiliating others.

Sneering bullies; sniggering bullies.

Pompous, self-righteous bullies.

Patriarchal-misogynistic bullies.

Corporate bullies.

Local-government bullies.

Workplace bullies.

Cyberbullies.

Fucking, dick-headed bullies.

Forget the other shit.

Bullies are bullies and they rule the world.

                             Other People …

These people really do exist –

I met one of them once –

and they make a big public deal

a big public deal –

Writing letters to the editor every week,

hijacking meet-the-candidates get-togethers,

badgering councils,

issuing press releases –

and all because they have this obsession

and all because they have this obsession,

that consumes their lives

that consumes their lives,

about other people having sex

(I’ll just say that once)

sex of which they don’t approve

sex in brothels

sex with call-girls and gay escorts –

women – presumably solo mums and divorcées – and queers,

turning tricks in their houses!

with children maybe living next door!

Or maybe two doors down.

Or maybe they’re just having heaps of one-night stands –

In exchange for what?

who can tell?

but what the hell – what difference does that make?

We have to legislate against loneliness and greed

and hammered self-esteem!

We have to legislate against mutual exploitation!

We have to legislate against fucked-up people being willing saps and mugs!

We have to legislate against sadness!

That’s always worked, hasn’t it?

Don’t argue – God wouldn’t like it,

and they don’t like it, either,

those people – obsessed with other people’s sex lives.

Me, I’d rather not think about other people’s sex lives.

It’d just make me jealous.

      Chicken Little’s Prescience

I used to be active in the Green Party,

holding provincial party offices,

going to national party meetings,

helping to organise protests,

escorting visiting party leaders

and other visiting MPs,

convening policy proposal groups –

including initiating a policy proposal

that parliament passed into law,

naming, then editing

the party’s national members-only magazine,

and so on.

All I do now is vote,

and stuff letterboxes when asked,

and that’s just going through the motions.

I don’t really believe

that all this is going to matter;

what I do believe is that

the Bad Guys are going to continue to win

until everything’s gone.

I don’t believe

that writing this shit matters, either.

My audience is tiny

and my impact is miniscule.

I do it sometimes anyway, though,

but with ever-diminishing enthusiasm.

It’s just a way to pass the time

until I get to die.

Chicken Little was probably right, after all.

                Politicians & Morality

Ever notice

how ego and empathy

seem to be inversely proportional?

The more a person has of one

the less that person seems to have of the other,

and vice versa, eh?

Yeah, and it’s hard to be politically ambitious

without having a potent ego,

isn’t it?

                          Freedom and Fashion

Some time around the turn of the century,

when I was working around the edges of the university racket,

the new, young, opinionated grad-student partner

of a false friend of mine whose job was lecturer

responded to a joke of mine

about the black-out attire of the crowd at an All-Blacks test

looking like a convention of Iranian women

by denouncing the hijab and all Islamic cultures as oppressive,

denying women the freedom to choose what to wear.

The thought entered my mind of one of my daughters

telling me that on the previous mufti day at Girls’ High

all but a few of the 1,200 or so girls

had been wearing red, white, and blue Russell Athletic USA sweatshirts,

and recalling this to her I wondered aloud

which culture was more oppressively conformist.

She responded by getting more pissed off than she’d been before.

I wonder if she would now.

               International Diplomacy

I like the way they squirm, these diplomats –

American or Russian, it doesn’t matter which –

when they know that what they’re saying

is obviously bullshit

and in the defence of cruelty

and nationalised criminality.

They sometimes look as if

they’d much rather be conducting

a graduate seminar in international politics

or be working on a farm raising ducks,

but they know that if they didn’t lie

and disavow the basic principles of humanity

for their political masters,

someone else would be all too keen to take their places.

I like the way they squirm, these diplomats,

but often I really don’t.

         Leadership

A baby dies of the cold;

he doesn’t give a shit.

Refugees have nowhere to go;

he doesn’t give a shit.

He torments a young woman

until she snaps and sets up a public howl;

he doesn’t give a shit,

and thinks that those who do are inferior.

He gets caught out lying continuously;

he doesn’t give a shit.

Solid evidence of serious corruption

within his government

sticks its head up out of the muck;

he doesn’t give a shit.

All the evidence reveals

large numbers of hungry kids in New Zealand;

he shrugs it off as ‘one or two’ because

he doesn’t give a shit.

The changing climate

brings more destructive weather events;

he doesn’t give a shit.

He sells out his country

to his greedhead mates

for not-inconsiderable sums of dosh,

even though it means fucking it up

further on down the line;

he doesn’t give a shit.

He knows that history

is going to barf all over his name;

he doesn’t give a shit.

              Bullshit & Tear Gas, 12-2014

Unlike the United States, Haiti, Turkey, Egypt,

and other police states,

in New Zealand the state doesn’t supplement

the ample amounts of bullshit that it spreads

with shooting tear gas at its opposition.

Yet.

It doesn’t stint on the bullshit, though.

Stars & Stripes

                 Staring Down A Barrel

It doesn’t matter what set it off,

so I’m not going to wrack my brain to remember,

but when we exited the expressway at Hildebrand,

both going east,

we were displaying our middle fingers at each other.

We stopped for the light side by side,

with about three cars in front of each of us.

It was a hot day, and our windows were down,

so he yelled something at me in Spanish

and I replied with a shouted, “¡Idiota!”

Then he pulled the gun on me.

It was a big revolver –

not being a gun person I couldn’t guess the calibre –

but the barrel I was looking down seemed fuckin huge.

It took me less than a second

to suss the situation:

being stuck in traffic he’d be a sure bet

to pad Texas’s bloated capital-punishment statistics

if he pulled the trigger,

so I shouted, “Shoot, motherfucker!

Go ahead, chickenshit, shoot!”

He put the gun away

and once again displayed his middle finger in my direction.

A few seconds later the light changed and we drove off,

he turning right on Broadway and me turning left.

              Big Countries

One of the main reasons

why the ruling classes

in Russia, the US, China, India, and Brazil

are so repressive and environmentally destructive

is that those countries

are just too damn big

to govern respectfully and responsibly

and can provide those ruling classes

with entirely too much plunder.

                            Nationalist Antipathy

I watched the Ireland-US pool match

in the 2011 rugby world cup –

with the sound off and some music on, of course –

because it was broadcast

in the afternoon,

free on the Maori channel,

and delayed, so I knew that Ireland had won.

If any of these factors had been absent

I would’ve just gone with the music and left the TV off.

It had to be on in the arvo because I go to bed early.

It had to be free, of course,

because although my pension means

that I’m not as impecunious as I used to be,

I still can’t afford pay TV.

It had to be on the Maori channel,

as even if I could afford Sky TV I wouldn’t have watched the game on it

because the militaristically American promos for their world cup coverage

turned me off completely.

I had to know in advance that Ireland had won

because I can only enjoy live sport if I don’t care who wins

and all that stars-and-stripes shit

disgusts me beyond words.

           The Little Things

A long time ago

I saw a photo

of an African-American man –

then called a nigger

and a boy –

surrounded by a mob

of self-satisfied-looking rednecks

who’d just lynched him

from the limb of a tree.

Most were grinning for the camera,

as people do.

His boots’ laces

remained neatly tied.

It’s impossible to know

what he was thinking

when he’d tied them

so neatly

that morning.

He’d shaved that morning, too, I suppose.

        American Cuisine

Y’know, I really don’t give a shit

if the hopelessly corrupt

American power elite

decided to classify pizza

as a vegetable for school lunches

in response to large political donations

from corporate interests.

If the US government

wants to enfeeble

the future cannon fodder

for its endless imperialistic wars

that’s its business.

  Right-Wing Politics and Underclass Culture

When the American ruling class

executed its de facto coup d’état

in the nineteen eighties,

for some reason

the primary secular music

of African American culture

began shifting

from soul to soulless.

This may or may not be connected –

although I tend to think it is,

since they both involve a shift

from community and compassion

to reptilian egotism.

  Southern Belle Back Then

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

when the only skills

that society allowed her

were graciousness and prettiness,

and all of the Suitable Young Men,

especially Simon Lee,

the one her folks preferred for her,

seemed to have minds

filled with huff-and-puff,

no ambitions beyond

their daddies’ businesses,

and pale, cold eyes

dead before their time.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

to know that the Boy

who did yardwork for her daddy,

whose mother, Mary,

was the household cook

and whose name was really Walter,

was the most beautiful man

she was ever likely to see.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

in love with a nigra

who was afraid

even to look at her,

no matter what tricks she tried

in order to get him to do so.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

who was obsessed with

dreams and schemes

of finding a way

to run off to New York or Boston,

or one of those places,

with her Walter,

while sitting on the veranda

with horrid Simon Lee

when he came to call.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

when the only way she could speak

to the man she loved

was to order him to do jobs for her,

and even then he’d just say,

“Yes, Miss,” with his eyes

firmly on the ground,

but somehow letting her know

that he felt it, too.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

when her brother Eugene was watching

the one time Walter looked up

and their eyes met

with meaning

before he dropped his gaze

back to the ground.

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

to hear Eugene and her daddy

tell her how they and Simon Lee

had got together with

some Good Ole Boys

and hanged that nigger

that’d been bothering her

from the old oak tree

out past the crossroads,

“and you shoulda seen

his eyeballs bulgin’ –

it was funnier’n hell.”

It wasn’t easy

being a Southern Belle

back then,

or afterwards,

living with this until she died,

even after

running away to New York –

and becoming the kept woman,

of a cruel Black drug dealer

and racketeer

up in Harlem,

who beat her no more

than she thought she deserved

didn’t help at all.

                         Unamerican

The more a person with an open mind,

intellectual honesty, and a modicum of intelligence

learns about the history of the United States of America,

the more glaringly obvious it becomes

that the nation and its official ideology

have always been more bullshit than substance.

Old Age

                             Okay, I’m Old

Okay, I’m old.

Although some people insist on insisting

that I don’t look as old as I am,

as far as I’m concerned that’s no

Big Fucking Deal.

Numbers may indeed be abstractions,

but numbers, meaning years of age, are scary,

and numbers, meaning years of age, are silly,

sometimes.

It all depends –

on how dependable

or dependent things are –

doesn’t it?

First, the scary:

I’m 71.

Scared the shit out of you didn’t I?

Oooh, I hope that filthy old fart doesn’t want any intimacy with me!

Next, the silly:

I mean – despite the numbers, I’ve always been who I am, y’know?

and part of me’s always been eight years old,

since I was eight,

and at moments still I’m that 10-year-old at camp,

or that suffering, clueless teenager,

and I don’t particularly like the part of me

who was at my idiot testosterone peak when I was 25,

and too much of me remains of the doormat I’d become 20 years later,

and have in some ways always been,

and of course part of me’s always 15 years old –

especially when I see long, well-toned female legs, and so forth.

And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Because that’s ridiculous

because I’m old,

and because I don’t think I deserve ridicule –

at least not for that,

but Big Fucking Deal, eh?

                                 Old

It gets right up my nose;

I mean, it really sticks in my craw

when, in the flow of conversation,

in regard to, say, riding on city buses,

I off-handedly refer to myself as being old,

and another party to the conversation,

usually with a patronising or condescending smile,

contradicts me and insists, ‘Oh, you’re not old!’,

or some crap like that,

and asserts the superiority of using some euphemism.

This always offends the shit out of me.

I know it shouldn’t, but not giving a shit

about what I should or shouldn’t feel

is one of the advantages of being old.

It offends me because it’s an affront to the English language,

to which I have devoted a large portion of my life.

Old means old, as in having stayed alive for a long time.

It disgusts me when they treat it as if it were a dirty word.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

A really ugly line is, ‘You’re only as old as you think you are,’

as if lying to myself were a virtue,

and personal honesty and integrity a loathsome deformity.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Another bullshit insult is, ‘But you have such a young mind!’

My mind right now is enormously superior to what it was 50 years ago.

As if my lifetime of curiosity and experience, and reflection on both,

hasn’t meant a constantly improving mind! Fuck that.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Being old also means having arthritis and cataracts

and other physical niggles. Okay. That’s part of it.

It’d be a real drag to have them if I were still young,

but I’m not.

                    Notes On The Slipperiness Of Days

The days slide by like turds along the endless cosmic sewer pipe,

never pausing, never looking behind, never looking ahead.

Wednesday? Friday? I don’t know and I don’t care.

My mind has continuously engulfed the experience

that the shit all around me has provided,

my growth in understanding and wisdom

as imperceptibly gradual as my body’s deterioration.

My emotional life, however, has remained stunted;

having the emotional development of a nine-year-old

has made being old doesn’t seem unreal to me;

I view myself with child eyes,

which helps to make my reality seem distantly unreal,

as the days slide by.

I walk my old dog daily,

elevated by the caress of opioids or opiates, plus cannabis,

and usually no more than a wee bit of pain;

the doppler-effect rumble and hraahoomsh of traffic lends its music

to the dancing molecules in my brain and nervous system,

connecting me with my own kind

better than most face-to-face encounters,

as the days slide by.

Even middle age, and all that entails

is a fading memory that won’t slip away,

although the septic emotional wounds of that time

remain encrusted on top of all the day-turds

from childhood and onward,

as the days slide by.

I bought my new coat about a half a year before composing this,

or maybe it was about a year, or more, or something like that.

The days do slide by.

                               Progress

As soon as I become accustomed

to the aches and pains and points of fatigue

that come with being how old I am,

I grow older still and have new ones to contend with.

                             That Old

I may have been whinging

about one or more of the ways

my body’s deterioration over time

has inconvenienced me or worse –

but anyway she accused me,

as many others have done

(why they have to make it sound like an accusation I can only guess),

‘Oh, you’re not that old!’

and I began to wonder, as I do,

being the type of person who wonders about shit,

how old is that old, anyhow?

By what units do we measure it?

By months and years?

By tastes and attitudes?

By technological competence?

By knowledge of pop culture, both now and then?

By speed going up and down stairs?

By body odour?

By the number of grandchildren?

By how long we’ve been telling the same old jokes?

By the amount of wisdom accumulated?

… and where and how do we set the line for any of these

between what is just not as young as we used to be

and being that old?

Old enough to know better, I suppose.

                    National Super

It doesn’t seem real.

After struggling for years to survive

both financially and psychologically at the same time

(the word simultaneously wouldn’t have worked there),

just as I was close to having to sell my house

in order to do so I

simultaneously

reached my sixty-fifth birthday,

and as much money as I’d been paid some months,

and more than I’d been paid in some months lately,

before taxes,

doing the demanding and difficult work that I do –

excellently, permit me to add –

began to appear, after tax, like magic,

in my bank account every other Tuesday,

and although I still had burdensome debts to pay off,

I began to have to suffer less from privation.

It seems extraordinary to someone, such as myself,

who has a generally low opinion of my species,

that anyone, let alone a country,

actually takes care of tired old people, such as myself,

without asking questions, stuffing up, or saying,

‘Nyah! Nyah! Just teasing! We’re taking it back!’

I still expect them to do these things,

being largely incapable

of real interpersonal trust.

                   Rice Isn’t A Daily Thing Here

I don’t panic over work pressure anymore.

If I can’t do my work at a leisurely pace

that’s other people’s problem –

it doesn’t matter to me.

My superannuation pension has provided me

with what the Maoists would’ve probably called

my iron wine bottle.

                                 Seventy

Floating, or sinking, along a footpath – or both or neither,

a cool breeze ruffling my forearms’ hairs,

the high grey clouds diffusing what light was left

as the daytime shaded into the evening,

I focused on the outlines of the trees, still full of green leaves

despite the equinox having passed a couple of weeks before.

I felt connected to everything but humans –

humans who feel compelled to try to impose their egos

onto phenomena ridiculously larger than themselves,

onto phenomena absolutely indifferent to themselves,

such as by believing that by throwing a switch or something

at midnight on the first day of March

they have magically changed the season from summer to autumn,

here in the Southern Hemisphere,

although midnight and March are both random cultural inventions

that they’ve invented for their convenience,

and have nothing to do with the Earth itself,

the changing of the seasons obviously being

a gradual and multifaceted process.

Flip a switch. Say it’s official.

The seasons themselves couldn’t give less of a shit,

less even than the official-season crowd gives for the actual seasons.

The same for anniversaries and holy days – or holidays –

take your pick.

Time slides by seamlessly, incomprehensibly, indifferently.

The difference between my last day of being 69 and my seventieth birthday

being neither more nor less

than that between any other two consecutive days,

the universe throwing no switch

and caring not at all about my personal bullshit.

Despite my knowing better, though,

my awareness of this particular seamless transition

stirred up my personal bullshit within me,

and weighed heavily and stupidly on my human mind.