The Angry Exile: Words of wisdom.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Sunday, 12 September 2010

Words of wisdom.

One of Captain Ranty's best and since it gels with what I was writing about the Sept 11th anniversary, though the Captain's is far less gloomy than mine, I make no apology for quoting the whole lot.

It is time.

It is time to talk.

It is time to talk of war.

This is the war for our liberation. This is the war in which we really can win our freedom. It is a war that we have lost countless times. We lost because their sinister tactics worked. Did they come screaming at us in the dawn with automatic weapons? No. Did they snatch us from the streets and lock us away like some Iranian ayatollah would? No. Did they slaughter millions of us like Joe Stalin? No.

They are much smarter than that. They simply....divided us. They sowed seeds of doubt in the strong. They infiltrated and ridiculed and blackmailed. They made life difficult for us. Misinformation fed to the "right" people ensured that we had limited success in our chosen careers. Deliberate smear campaigns ensured that we backed down. If you want a topical example of this, look no further than the Wikileaks shenanigans.

We are human beings, and we are fallible. They isolate us and they frighten us. This is a classic technique. I should know. In preparation for a posting to NornIron in the bad old days I was trained to snatch ring-leaders out of a crowd of rioters. The method proved consistently to quell the problem. A leaderless mob is just that. Direction has been removed and the crowd quickly breaks up. Agitators are vital in any uprising.

That, I believe, is our problem. Here in Bloggyland we have hundreds, thousands, of hugely intelligent people. People that know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something stinks, and more importantly, that something has to happen. Something has to change. We all differ slightly on our tactics, but agreement is fairly broad. We allow ourselves to fall victim to that age old tactic of divide and conquer. Time and again I will read heart-stopping blog-posts, posts which move me, and inspire me, and on occasion, make my jaw drop with their originality and intelligence. I read, then I watch and wait. Sure as eggs are eggs, the trolls come. They throw in a negative remark, and run away. A casual hand-grenade lobbed into the discussion room and they're off. Only to reappear where they are sent (or paid?) to sow unease, to interrupt the conversation.

Who are these people? What is their motive? Why do they do this when they are victims of the same vindictiveness as us? When will they realise this? Where do these utterly controlled loons live and work? All legitimate questions and all slightly rhetorical. We could find the answers, but I know the answers are not important. Seeking the answers will only misinform and misdirect us. It is draining.

So draining, in fact, that members of our "army" suffer great battle fatigue and lay down their weapons. (In this case I obviously mean their keyboards). The words they wrote inspired and gave us cause to re-examine what we thought we knew, what we thought was true, and what we thought everyone agreed on. These casualties, a resilient bunch, usually recover and they usually return. The self-enforced break allows them to sharpen their tools in this nasty war and they come back with keyboards blazing, spitting bullets and hurling missiles at the righteous, the priveleged, the power-hungry, the controllers, the seriously deranged and the undoubtedly deluded. This is right. We are right. No matter how small the wound, it is a wound nevertheless.

It is my belief that we are winning. We are wearing them down. Our words, sometimes laden with sarcasm, sometimes with profanity, (mea culpa), but always with logic and common sense, hurt them. We expose these freaks, for that is what they are, never doubt that, to the sunlight, and they hate that. They are shadowy, secretive, and they imagine they are above the law. They are not, and a day of reckoning approaches fast.

They must be told that their behaviour has to change or the inevitable intervention will hurt them in ways they cannot conceive of. They must be told that they cannot continue to steal our children, steal our money, condone and cover up sexual abuse in the houses of the mighty and the powerful, that they cannot wage illegal wars and get away with it, that we will not be tagged, logged, tracked and controlled until we submit.

Into every life a little rain must fall.

What they are not expecting is a monsoon.

Some will merely contract pneumonia, but some, inevitably, will drown. We must steel ourselves for the bleating, for the pleas of "We were just carrying out our orders from above". That no longer cuts any ice. It is not a valid excuse. It will not wash.

We must be prepared, in many cases, not only to watch them drown, but we must also be ready to hold them down while they do. (This is metaphorical, of course, I cannot now advocate violence to other humans).

Until we reach that point, and reach it we must, take heart.

Know that you, blogger and commenter alike, are inflicting those one thousand cuts.

They will all die, eventually. Take comfort and solace from that.

Whatever else you do, prepare for victory. It is just around the corner.

The message here, if there is one, is this: if you are tired, take a break. If the words won't come, you need some downtime. You need to reboot. And you need to come back to the fray only when you are reinvigorated, refreshed, and rearmed.

Just never forget, soldier, that you are missed, that you are needed, and that we want you there at the end.

CR.