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 ample amounts of bullshit
that it spreads
with shooting tear gas at its
opposition.
Yet.
It doesn’t stint on the
bullshit, though.
