The government isn’t a circus.
A circus at least has clowns with shreds of self-awareness
Clowns who admit they’re clowns.
This?
This is daylight robbery, with the national anthem for background music
A crime so smooth, Michael Jackson would be jealous
A thriller so well devised, you sing along as they take your wallet.
And when it’s all gone, you’ll still be waving the flag,
Because false vanity disguised as nationalism sells cheaper than first generation wealth.
The trick is simple —
Keep the chaos loud, the people dumb, and the news irrelevant enough for distraction.
Make them clap while you pick their pockets,
Then sell them their own money back at twice the price.
With interest.
Call it economic growth.
Call it patriotism.
Call it "development" — it doesn’t matter.
As long as you call it something, they’ll believe it.
Because that’s the trick, right? You can make people believe anything
As long as you lie with the confidence of truth
"See that line going up? That’s progress!"
Never mind that line reflects inflation, unemployment, and a rapidly declining national IQ
Blindfold them in cooked up faiths, imagined divides, and monopolised history, and they are Gandhi's monkeys
Except this time, they're dystopian: see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except what has been approved by the masters
But, dare you call it out! You’re a paid gig by the opposition.
But, dare you speak the truth? You’re a fucking anti-national.
But, dare you fight back? Your existence is illegal.
And now, you are the headline.
And it’s funny, because you never really mattered.
Not to them, not even to the ones who aren't them.
But the moment you become inconvenient? Suddenly, they care.
Your face is on the television, plastered across social media forwards and reposts, like a bunch of hate-mongering billboards
Your stories from a forgotten adolescence, dug up by jobless men so old they're closer to death than they're far from adolescence
Rotten, decayed old twats, who haven’t read a book in twenty years but will write eight paragraphs on your morality, like they were critically acclaimed authors at least, if not the messiahs of morality, the same morality you'd expect from the land that taught the world how to fuck in sixty-nine different ways
The news will question your flesh and bones, the hashtags will sweepingly remark on your bastardry,
And by the time your voice reaches anyone... who are we kidding, your voice won't reach shit
It will sink in your epiglottis like a cancerous lump
The dumb ones are now deaf, and you're dumb
Your dumb and their dumb, not the same, but how do you explain grammar to the gods that failed graduation
History will not remember your name, because history doesn't give a flying fuck about matters of facts
History is a bunch of sales people, the very best of them, pitching you a series of stories suited to tongue-fuck your egos so good, once they're done, you can't tell the difference between facts and fiction
History will not even mention you as a footnote
Because they’ll rewrite it while they slice you up, head to toe, in the name of contempt
They’ll cut you in three,
One for each word of your favorite phrase: freedom of speech.
They will fuck your mother,
Invoice you for services rendered,
And slap a 28% GST on top.
Because happy endings are a privilege, you see.
And you’ll pay.
Because you always do.
Because you were raised to.
Because they convinced you it was an honor to, it's what nationalists do.
And in the end,
When your pockets are empty,
When your children’s future is crowdfunded by foreign loans because nationalism doesn't sign cheques,
When your delusions turn sober because patriotism is like cocaine, but on a stopwatch
You’ll do what every generation before you did.
You’ll clap anyway.
