This morning a number of people sent me a recent video of the wonderful Sir Ian McKellen on some talk show, doing a monologue from what would have been a very topical political play back in the early 1590’s. Sir Thomas More.
It was by the feel of it a collaborative piece, with more Shakespeare in it perhaps than Arden of Faversham. Including the bit Sir Ian chose. That is in a handwritten revision, widely accepted to be by the man himself. He delivered a tightened version of a speech from this revision. “The stranger’s case,” the speech has been called by academics. He gets the audience to shout something like “REMOVE THE FOREIGNERS” because speeches are better with context. Then he launches in hard:
“Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding too’th ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you. You had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.”
There’s much more of it, but… Authentic Shakespeare that, and topical. Things never fucking change, do they? Power is only relinquished with great reluctance… Supremacy is contextual of course. People who wouldn’t last 3 days in Somalia hate Somalians over in this country right now. There’s always an other. If enough people club together against that other, it can be intimidating. It is never positive, never constructive. But the people who do it to as many people as possible have started to feel it reflected back now.
First they came for the middle aged white men,
and we said nothing cos they were smug fuckers and thought they owned the world.
Then they came for the gammons painting roundabouts,
and we said nothing cos they were thick as shit and nothing they thought had weight.
Then they came for the incels who abominate women because they base their expectations on whatever shit they’ve consumed while masturbating,
and we said nothing cos their only way into the gene pool was force.
Then they came for the tech-bros,
and we said nothing cos they burnt the water to line pockets that would never be opened.
Then they came for the ridiculous hateful empowered militias,
and we said nothing cos they shouldn’t have existed anyway.
Then they came for him.
And we said nothing cos it had been building up for such a long time it is almost impossible he got away with it for as long as he did, but it turned out the web was being strung hard and well and glued with his lies and in the end they caught up to him they caught up they caught up.
Then they came for his followers.
And we all said nah, that wasn’t me, never liked him anyway, I just got swept up in it.
And everyone knew they were a bunch of cowards.
I went to the Central High School Museum this morning. This is the state and we are near the town where the Little Rock Nine went to Central High School despite being black. The museum details the riots, the desperate protests, the mockery and hatred they had to endure in the name of dismantling segregation in this country.
Arkansas is a powerful place in terms of the history of the parasite country. The true country is gone forever so this is America now, with some “Native American Reserves.”
It was very moving to think about these nine young people and what they had to put up with. It was originally ten, but one student gave up immediately and it is… It is kind of the museum and correct, in my opinion, that they don’t dwell on whoever it was that immediately gave up on this equality stuff. History knows that the others didn’t give up.
Segregation… These hard faced white men and women angry about the kids going to the white school. It was hard to see them on videos, coming out on the streets just to exercise their hate of the other like it was righteous. It was only a morning, but I was in a very contemplative state when I went for my morning shit in the gents restroom in the museum.
AlBarclay 