Vendors of the Faith
Let's tap into that famous imagination of yours; close your eyes and picture;
Prince Andrew struts around his palace, boasting he set the record straight in that TV interview, and people know just how firmly he stands against sex trafficking, and the awe which they have for the incredible bravery he displayed during his decorated military career. How he proved all allegations fallacious; we believed him entirely. How he regaled us with the story of how his sweat glands took the hit as a tactical decision in battle, leaving him with dry hands and brow to save our boys! "I know one is considered to be a hero viciously slandered by the gutter press, guilty of only association in my attempts to strengthen British enterprise" he says to his staff, chest puffed out and dripping in medals earned via nepotism and heredity. "The British public have never loved nor needed me more, and they see I am the victim of a scurrilous crusade". The servants are a little rigid with awkward disquiet, but they hold it together, only exchanging glances when he has left the room, and only gathering the courage to talk to each other after hearing the Queen, Prince Philip and the rest increasingly bluntly refer to him as arrogant, imbecilic, delusional, a liar, a cretin. A few ex courtiers may speak out in the press, but no one knows their names and the palace dismiss them with stone-faced dignity. But once enough do so they will gain a name all of their own, they will become a force, momentum will gather. The integrity of the royal family is creaking. Bits fall off, cracks appear. What was once a treasonous heresy only uttered in secrecy is now being shouted in the street. The crown has slipped.
That, guys, is you. You've an air of the unassailable about you, but only because the charade, the social status you gained through propaganda, assassinations and insidious force. We have for years been stunned at your power and influence; how on earth you are deemed worthy of such celebration and power; how, why, anyone would take you so seriously as a moral arbiter or guardian of truth?
But you can only hold court for a limited time when those emporers' clothes are seen day after day, when the sweat begins to trickle off and reek. Even the most obsequious, sycophantic, pageantry obsessed royalist will one day realise they're being treated like clueless, simpleton plebs. Even they will lose the script (and the plot) when their children return with missing parts, broken with shell shock and denounced as traitors. It's an unsustainable path when the grandiosity is so clear, the atmosphere so contemptuous and dishonest and authoritarian.
The critical mass of those who refuse to play the game becomes overwhelming. All the neutral figures finally sidle up and take a position they've long held in their sights. In all the years of bullshit, aggression, violence and authoritarian decree those knives get sharp, closer at hand and, my goodness, hasn't it got dark?
Under all of those gaudy mottos, your misogyny is flapping in the wind. Opportunist pigeons roost in the formerly impenetrable edifice, and make close inspection a risky affair. No one enjoys being shat on by cooing illiterates who knock all the pieces over and fly back to their flock, boasting of their delusional success. All the hangers-on seeking shelter under your name, the ones you invited, or, with complicit laziness, allowed in, they eventually catch wide attention. You can claim no association if you want, but when they return night after night your word is meaningless.
Which is why you shout, from loudhailers mounted up high, from radio stations, TV studios and headlines, with a flourish of trumpets.
The words you use mean nothing and you cannot logically defend any of it. It requires faith, and faith requires more comfort than you can provide. No one actually understands the language you use, and the seal of approval and endorsements held back criticism for a while, but eventually people realise meaningless phrases written in the most artful calligraphy are still meaningless.
So you make those demands louder, hammer that anthem into their heads and don't leave pause for questions. Incorporate military regalia and teach them by rote.
Better still, all that noise, all the undesirables you foster, keeps everyone but the ordained back, it looks imposing and unimpeachable.
Like the tower of London, we all know what it looks like but few ever go inside without a guide to steer us or areas roped off. It means the shite facade is never examined, never exposed to the public or the harsh light of normal scepticism.
Those pigeons are overshadowed by ravens, wings clipped and dependent. Never gaining autonomy or the beauty of a full, adult ability. You can't let the public up too close, not without hazing them first, but the photo opportunities are fantastic.
You claim the Olympian gold in victimhood, when the dirty secret is you're as safe as it gets, when your witch trials torture women and every mishap is some bitches' fault.
The brave warrior history is long gone, swapped for seats in the Lords and pomp. You were surrounded in protection every day of your service, by nameless subjects of no importance. Wearing your fatigues and posing for the camera, out of shot were the people who really do the work.
Your only hope to maintain it is with relentless propaganda, more spectacles and fear. Making sure the devil is named, how you are hated for protecting your noble subjects, the enemies plot your demise, laugh at your tragedies and can muster evil of all kinds.
Scheming and invading the souls of innocents, you can never be safe and if you fall so do we all. They are watched and reported on by neighbours. The paranoid plots run out of control, you hear their whistling everywhere, soon you won't stop washing those hands. The ceremonial executions warn and entertain the public, the charges are fantastical, and you make certain the children know the mantras and pledges in school.
You curse the media, but your press office has all the right numbers on speed dial. You fill our world with headlines on exclusion and erasure, the hatred and agony, the victimhood and annihilation - you keep us rapt with fear and pity. Even battered women, desperate of one, solitary, same sex space to heal, are monsters, bigots, bitches, dangerous, dried up whores.
They manipulate the nation with their woes, spinning lies and everything is a coded attack. Meanwhile you, protected by laws against heresy and a corporate endorsed, social media speech-restriction and vilification campaigns sit on your throne of accrued wealth and fire off missives.
Two women a week in the UK, 137 a day worldwide are murdered by family. Seven to eight thousand women and girls are murdered annually in Indian dowry disputes alone. But you, with a global three hundred and thirty-one martyrs, get thousands of headlines, days and weeks of recognition and have the veto on every public debate.
You will not dignify the other side with a response, with argument. Let them bleat rape; One owns the spaces. All while spending millions of hours harassing, censoring and defaming the very same people. You incite violence and sit on your pedestal, winking with complicity and duplicitously issuing statements calling for decency and respect.
You claim spectacular moral supremacy, even when you kill more than you are killed, when even you mercilessly punish the faintest wrongthink and scour the land for wrong-thinkers.
You claim every hurt feeling as a treasonable act - an enticement to suicide, genocide, homicide. You misappropriate feminism, centre males in it, then make real feminists an evil, regressive subset of their own movement like the colonial invaders you are.
You take the folklore of your colonies and have them spun into the best examples to tell the children; celebrate the diversity of more labels and subdivisions, get them all picketed into your hierarchy; they always have such big wide smiles and sing so happily, don't they? You send rape threats, death threats, sexually degrading harassment daily, form armed groups ready to terrorise the crones, and you call us dangerous to society. The snide, corporate-sponsored duplicity as you masturbate to your own image, flying flags and spit at women burning on pyres. You are to the vulnerable what Carter Pewtershmidt is to the working class.
Using taboo like an abusive priest, you try to censor discussion you'll never hear and blame the natives for savagery. How could anyone want to hear such blasphemy? You're frightened of everything you can't control, any conversations that go off-script. You must dominate all acceptable discourse and forbid anything outside of it. Everything must be yours and you, the wife-beater, singing 'I Will Survive' in the spotlight, requiring North Korean-standard applause, goose stepping minions in their own weird uniform.
It’s the apex of toxic masculinity and your celebrated martrydom tells us something critical about you; you know no victimhood. Victims do not see their vulnerability as a battering ram, it is not the most special, powerful thing they have, it gives them no protection or status.
As the people, as feminists, built women's spaces, hostels, rape crisis and networks of support, what have you built? Nothing. You build nothing. You take the land and the names and set the rules and you put your fucking flag on top.
You make children into soldiers to terrorise their own. You greedily appropriate everything you see. Like ancient art in the British museum, you know it best, you are the one to preserve and honour it. You are the guardian. You are the curator and arbiter of culture. You appear to a desperate press under orders, held back by velvet ropes, they're all you special correspondents.
Shaking some hands and singing your hymns, your charity work is done. You can slink away with the aid of former soldiers and spies, their lifelong service is yours.
Enjoy it while it lasts, I see you've had a ball. It's an untenable luxury, however. While you gorge on the stolen riches, are massaged by pretty young slaves, the clock will keep ticking and the old guard are angry. The peasants are revolting and those natives know the landscape more than you ever could.
