Stuff About the News, Public Affairs, & the Future

            News Avoidance

I’d chosen to have similar holidays

from the news before,

but since whenever it was

that New Zealand’s crypto-fascist

prime minister announced

that he was dishonouring

a campaign promise

by playing Robin Hood in reverse

and giving rich people huge tax cuts

whilst raising the tax take

from poor people like me

I haven’t listened to the radio news

or watched the news on TV –

not even the animated isobar map,

which I do so enjoy – at all,

and my life is more liveable for it.

I’m too old to appreciate

feeling outraged and futile.

I’m still exposed, though,

to far too much news

on facebook, anyway.

The News And One Of My Shortcomings

I try to avoid the news

as much as I possibly can.

The amount of smug, stupid, self-righteous,

incomprehensible, and pointless

cruelty

that exists in the world

– New Zealand, too, especially the government –

is more than I can bear

finding myself exposed to.

I suppose that I should front up

and go down in flames

fighting the good fight,

but I don’t have it in me any more,

pessimistic old wuss that I am.

          All the News That …

When I sold newspaper advertising

to various local retailers

my eyes automatically scanned

the bottom of each page

to see who was buying

what size ad,

and the so-called news at the top –

what we advertising jerks and creeps

called “editorial” –

was just a blur.

I don’t read newspapers anymore –

haven’t for years –

but I reckon that

I still know more

about serious shit that goes down

than most of the people

who do read them.

Horoscope, anyone?

How about some celebrity gossip?

Letters to the editor from the rationally deprived?

             No Consolation

I don’t know why I ever watch Aljazeera,

even with the TV on Mute and music playing.

After all, I see no need

to have my nose rubbed into

how unimaginably cruel

insecure egotists with power can be.

I could find consolation

in knowing that what they do

will in the not all that distant future

bring a shitstorm down on our species –

if I didn’t have daughters.

              What Works

Although I don’t watch

the TV news anymore,

because I dislike being pissed off,

whilst watching a harmless rugby match

on Prime one Saturday arvo

I saw a promo for Prime News

delivered by a gorgeous newsreader

with blond hair and pale eyes

and a kinda flirty way

of saying what seemed

to be serious stuff,

although I had, of course,

touched the ‘Mute’ key

as soon as I saw that it was the news.

I wondered if she’d got her job

due to her

journalistic and communication skills

both being superior to those

of all the other applicants.

    Almost Lapidary Geology

The image

was of some

young Middle-Eastern fellow

in camouflage drag

crouching behind some drab,

greyish-brown desert rocks

(or were they brownish-grey?)

aiming an assault rifle

across a drab, brownish-grey desert landscape

(or was it greyish-brown?),

and my eyes focused

on the configuration and faceting

of one of the rocks,

which struck me as interesting.

  Systemic Globalised Acne

I wonder at how

the history of my species

has during my lifetime

careened so far out of control

that the whole shebang has become

like a giant whitehead zit

just about to pop.

              Perspective

It’s so obvious,

and yet so inevitable –

the bad guys are gonna keep winning,

just as they’ve always done,

until the whole global system collapses

with horrifying destruction and casualties.

Yet another civilisation will end –

this time ours.

New bad guys, of course,

will take over,

because those embodying the cuvée

of ego and ambition and aggression

and psychopathy and testosterone

always triumph.

And the flowers bloom,

and the birds sing,

and the insects go about their business

outside my open door.

          Progeny and the Long Term

I wonder whether it’s all gonna turn into hellshit

during my daughters’ lifetimes,

and I comfort myself that my not having grandchildren

means that my progeny may avoid the worst,

because the worst, from a human perspective,

seems likely to arrive in the not-all-that-distant future.

                   The Future

It says something

that the three-day forecast

and the first three days

of the six-day forecast

on the NZ Met Service’s website

are usually different.

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.

Political Stuff

     Greed & Mean-Spiritedness Are Boring

Every time

any government

anywhere

brings up the idea

of raising the minimum wage

bosses’ mouthpieces squeal

that it’ll put ’em out of business

and make workers lose jobs,

and they get red-dress economists,

people with degrees

who’ll say anything

that anybody who pays them enough

wants them to say,

to tell the newscasters

the same crap,

and it never happens,

businesses thrive and create more jobs,

but that doesn’t stop ’em.

The Nazis called the technique

The Big Lie,

and it it worked real well for them, eh?

Of course, the whole thing

is ugly and stupid and predictable and boring,

but it’s the pointlessness of it all

that makes me turn it off

and go pour myself a drink.

                    Huh. Ponytails.

I cut off my last ponytail about a dozen years ago.

In 2k3, I think it was,

so that part of our recent national cause célèbre

didn’t make me feel threatened at all.

What did strike me – and I do mean strike me –

with unresolved outrage deep down in my soul

was the part about ‘horsing around’.

Just horsing around. A bit of banter.

These are variations on the mantra of self-justification

spewed out by bullies everywhere,

with unconvincing displays

of injured innocence with just a touch of nobility:

‘I had enormous fun using my superior power

to torment you, you lesser being,

which makes it okay, because, well, I had so much fun.

Wassa matta, can’t you take a bit of fooling around –

a bit of teasing?

Can’t you take a joke?

Sheesh!’

It doesn’t matter if it was only fun for the bully,

and not for his or her victim,

because the bully matters and the victim doesn’t.

Bullies are the source of all evil on Earth.

This is personal.

   Government Credibility

If Prime Minister Key

were to tell me that the sun’s shining

I’d grab my brolly

and open it before going outside.

               Demilitarised Zone

I saw a TV news story

about that endless crap between Korea and Korea

and one more set of what the reporter,

who was from Argentina,

called, of course, ‘high level talks’

in Panmunjom, on the border –

the thirty-eighth parallel and all.

The camera zoomed in

on the actual border itself,

which at this key spot

is composed of a long and narrow

storm drain with horizontal grating.

I wondered in which direction,

north or south,

the rainwater drains

when indifferent nature

drops it there.

                   The Monarch

Okay, so Her Majesty Betty Windsor

is a teddibly nice and ridiculously rich old woman

in an absurdly bizarre situation

involving numerous people doing hideous things

in her name.

         The Lesser

From what I can tell,

Barack Obama is probably

a truly nice person,

but his job is to hold together

a hopelessly corrupt, cruel,

destructive, and hypocritical system.

He also seems to be intelligent,

so he must know this;

he must know this,

mustn’t he?

              Death by Artillery Fire

I’d been avoiding the news for years,

but I opened the door to my office

to drop off some clothing

on my way to the shower,

so I heard the newsreader 

saying from the safety 

of her bland, educated, slightly lilting Kiwi voice,

“… killed by artillery fire …”

as I dropped off my gear and closed the door.

She was clearly unconcerned

about the possibility of artillery fire

someday causing her demise,

and apparently unconcerned

by the horror of it causing

the recent demise of others.

I could say the same for me

about one of those two propositions.

            Choosing Sides

Maybe it’s media manipulation,

but reports of deeply divided societies

often make me end up preferring

one of the factions involved,

even though it’s really none of my business.

One seeming oddity

is that in the case of Venezuela

I favour the underclass majority

to the upper-middle-class protesters,

but in the case of Thailand

I favour the middle-class protesters

to the underclass majority.

Maybe this is because

from my disinterested perspective

I see these divides not in terms

of rich versus poor

or left versus right,

but in regard to my perceptions

of relative honesty and integrity

versus corruption and cynical insincerity.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Maybe it is media manipulation.

         History Class

As I ground my way

through the campfire stories

that passed for history lessons

when I was a schoolboy,

I tended to buy in to the narrative

that the whole run of affairs

consisted of a series of conflicts

between good guys and bad guys,

and that the good guys generally

won in the end.

Now, of course, I know

that the history of nations and states

and kingdoms and empires

and republics and other organisational forms

of dominance and oppression

has always been a matter

of bad guys against bad guys –

and guess who always wins?