It Is Election Season

It is Election Season in the U.S.A.
The Right knows exactly what it hates
but not what it supports. What passes
for the Left knows exactly what
it supports but not what it opposes.
The sheer weight of cash
breaks the back of democracy's
bridge: boom--into the river.

In the meantime, no fundamentals
will change.  You could say it was
lost in the Constitution. Or later,
when railroads took over.  Or
even later, when no one listened
to Eisenhower's farewell address.
You select your starting point,
your ending, your epistemic closure.

It is lost. Those who would challenge
the fundamentals were exposed
as noble but impotent: Occupy.
Those who should be occupied
pretend to be our close personal
friends: the media. Those

who work too much for not
enough will always
and forever get The Shaft.
It is Election Season in
the U.S.A. White men
are hanging chairs from
suburban trees, a most
safe evocation of lynching,
indeed, sir. Indeed sir.


Hans Ostrom, 2012