what is history but constant recitations / of flawed people pushed
I am always fascinated by silent edits. Like the one that takes "wasn't as bad as some feared" and turns it into "wasn't as deadly as some feared".
Who is we remains the most useful, least-often asked question in journalism.
"A patient purchased a rifle at 2 p.m. and went on his rampage inside the hospital three hours later. In a letter found on his body, the gunman “made it clear that he came in with the intent to kill Dr. Preston Phillips and anyone who got in his way,” Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said Thursday."
Despite the endless drumbeat of deaths and despair, there's a certain universe of people for whom all of this "could have been worse".
How bad is bad enough, exactly?
Any politics based on empathy dooms all those we deem not our kind, dear - the opposite of the all-important people like us.
Ah, that we. Ever present. Ever dismissive. Ever deadly.
Attribution:
what is history but constant recitations
of flawed people pushed
over edges of boundaries of morality
pursuing wars pillage
enslavement of spirits is what most
nations do posing as governing
throughout cycles of world imagination
plunder means profit
everywhere religion is practiced on
topography as weapons used
as tools written in typography to
conquer minds to slaughter for gold
where entire civilizations become
flotsam floating across memory seas
heirloom trees cut down as men loot
the planet without remorse
— from Errancities by Quincy Troupe