England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley
Some things never change, I'd like to say, or perhaps intone, albeit ironically, Mr. Natural's blunt mantra "Twas ever thus," but sadly, here in the 21st century, it's maybe gone from worse to worsted. Consider poor Percy B. Despite having penned the above sonnet during the tyrannical reign of George III, he remained unfettered to romp about Europe, corrupting the continent with his freethinking, free love philosophy & verse. Nowadays Shelley might be sharing a piss-stained cell with a badly beaten & bruised Mr. Natural (who, an emaciated shell of his R. Crumby self, is used here to represent real world personages) charged under the UK's terrorism law that criminalizes & seeks the imprisonment of anyone, from journalists & activists (as opposed to charlatans & state-sponsored shills) to wise-cracking schlubs on social media who post as much as a glib one-liner skewering the hegemony.
Surely you jest, one might be tempted to say, but given these consequences, you'd better not because the same sort of repression is coming to a country near you--if it's not already arrived. Et tu, France? Et tu, Brazil?
Just how loosely defined, far-flung, & well-up-the-ass are the new definitions of "terrorist" & "terrorism"? For starters, apparently by saying you're against war & violence wherever they're manufactured, you could be designated a terrorist, demonstrating yet again that the powers that be just don't understand irony. Well, what can I say? You can't spell SUCK without UK. Meanwhile, back in the US--or rather, more like THEM--it's all headed long & strong in the same hellbent direction. You can't vote your way out: Republicans don't believe in a republic, Democrats don't believe in democracy. Both parties serve only the 1% & are unified in crushing even the tiniest bud of dissidence under the selfsame oligarchical iron heel. They defenestrated habeas corpus a decade ago to codify indefinite detention, & our so-called "self-evident" & "unalienable" rights have been commodified & repackaged as privileges that you may lose in a snap if you don't zip your lip & support the corporate greed of the war machine.
One can but hope Shelley's glorious Phantom bursts the troubling Bazooka Joe bubble before it's too late.
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