To be or not to be corrupt

“HERE by this brook we parted, I to the East
And he for Italy — too late — too late:
One whom the strong sons of the world despise;
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent for cent.
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.”

~THE BROOK; AN IDYL, by ALFRED TENNYSON~

Society has been cleaved in half … both halves are constantly at each other’s throats … why?

The hard right is all about money, the hard left is all about ideology, where does that leave you and me ?????

Where have all the jobs gone, stolen by those dastardly migrants and refugees according to the Trump and Dutton’s of this world … where have all the jobs gone, don’t bother us with reality, ideology is all that matters, according to those on the hard left.

The harsh truth is that the billionaires have exported all the jobs to countries with cheaper wages and less workers’ rights, all in the name of building shareholder wealth.

As long as those executive bonuses keep rolling in … well who cares about another few thousand retrenched workers … it’s all about my hip pocket … should I care if you can’t pay the mortgage or put food on your table … no that’s no concern of mine.

Out on your arse you go … I can build trains, and planes, automobiles and iPhones, computers and submarines cheaper somewhere else … time to wave goodbye to your jobs and to your security … it’s all about building shareholder wealth don’t you know … what you know or what you don’t know, that’s no concern of mine.

Iago, the villain who destroys Othello by making him believe his wife Desdemona is a whore, gets the award for the filthiest-minded character in Shakespeare.

Let’s think of Othello as the collective noun for the ninety-nine percent who are being manipulated and destroyed by the collective Iago who are the billionaires, politicians and CEOs who gain by our self-destruction.

There’s no reason why we should be at each other’s throats … we are all the same … we are all made of stardust … we are all struggling to survive … as the collective Iago’s get richer, we, the collective Othello’s get poorer, and more desperate … ultimately, we turn on ourselves rather than on the Iago’s.

Lobbyists and influencers Iago’s prostitutes. They dress in cloth made of dollars, to make them erotically desirable to politicians. The seduction begins, the dollars lay layer upon layer upon the politicians desk. Eventually obligations to constituents and country give way to those seductive dollars … let’s do away with diversity in media ownership … who cares about properly taxing the extraction industry … multinationals buy what you please, fiddle the accounts, export your profits tax free, who cares, we of the political class don’t, we’ve been seduced by the dollars … aren’t the Cayman Islands grand this time of year.

Retrench a hundred thousand more workers, close our industries, export their jobs overseas, what do I care, aren’t the Cayman Islands grand this time of year.

It’s time to defund health and education, time to militarise the police. Pass some draconian legislation, ban the right to protest, set citizen against citizen, send the militarised police in to break some heads … raise unemployment benefits … don’t be stupid … let’s build some more privatised jails instead … gotta look after those donors … human rights … they’re so overrated.

Bring on the nineteenth century … the smell of workhouses … intoxicating … those Othello’s are such fools??