Poem: "Oaths of Office"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the June 4, 2019 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by Anthony Barrette. It also fills the "Breaking the Rules" square in my 6-1-19 card for the Cottoncandy Bingo fest.


"Oaths of Office"


All politicians, as public servants,
swear oaths of office to serve
the country and its laws.

The Republicans don't
seem to take that seriously.

Trump himself has called
the Constitution a nuisance.

The neoconservatives don't
feel that it's something they
are obligated to support.

Why, then, would they
swear those oaths
in the first place?

Considering their actions,
it looks like they want
to sweep away what
came before and put
themselves in its place.

That is more than merely
a betrayal of trust:

it is the definition of treason.

* * *

Notes:

Despite the fact that politicians are requires to swear to uphold the Constitution, #45 routinely ignores it and has called it a nuisance.

treason
noun
trea•son | \ ˈtrē-zᵊn \
Definition of treason
1: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family
2: the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY

Comments

[siliconshaman]

One of the Republican's top stratergists [ Thomas B. Hofeller] died not so long ago, and his progressive daughter has been combing though all the hard drives where he rather unwisely kept all his documents. [link]

Apart from them having a 'master plan' to do a end-run around voting laws and gerrymander the political map in order to "restore America to the principles laid out by the founding fathers" .. i.e eliminate voting for all but middle-class to rich white men, they also have plans to gut democracy itself, once they've secured the vote, and effectively replace it with a strong man totalitarian regime. I.e, a one party system with an unelected appointed leader.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is hardly a surprise. It matches all their actions. But I do not think it has much chance of succeeding, in the long term, within a country where white people will soon be the minority compared to all the people of color. That shift underpins both the growing power of black, Hispanic, etc. people and the panic of racists.

Re: Well ...

[siliconshaman]

Minority rule is possible... for a time. It never ends well however.

Re: Well ...

[dewline]

And the demographics-induced panic of the white-supremacist Republicans continues to build its evil...

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yes, that's a problem.

If it only affected racism, I wouldn't mind as much, because for all the damage it does, we have time -- we're not going to run out of distinct races any time soon.

But the same nutjobs also promote policies that are destroying the Earth, and we're already out of time to fix that before it sucks -- it's already sucking -- and we only have a few years left, if we hustle like hell, to avert the really catastrophic shit. We don't have time to wait for them to die off, and if we don't manage to oust them more-or-less immediately, they have motive-means-and-opportunity to wreck the planet and civilization with it. >_<

Congratulations, assholes, you're the party of Let's Make Humanity Act Like a Comet. We should call them the Comet Party.

Since we're revisiting that question of eco-responsibility

[dewline]

I cannot shake the feeling that fascism has also been revived with an additional goal: to put a permanent stop to environmentally responsible behaviour in as many nations as possible.

Re: Well ...

[bairnsidhe]

Not to mention that the internet is making it easier for queer folx to find each other, and for women to speak out anonymously to avoid reprisal for truth-telling, and for neurovarient people to reach out in ways that aren't too painful, and poor communities can share advice for survival.

Basically, now that we live in a world where ALL the "minority" populations are able to meet and collaborate, it's kinda hard to ignore the fact that straight, white, cisgender, neurotypical males within a certain income are SUPER outnumbered. They always were (when you're that specific about exclusion, you aren't gonna have a big group), but now we can make sure they know it. Which also fuels the knee-jerk fear of sexists and homophobes and other varieties of bigot.