Kill As Many As Possible

In April 1941, four years before he was to become president and eight months before the United States entered World War II, Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri reacted to the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union:

“If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”

"Kill as many as possible" is the unofficial motto of the United States of America whether it be a virus or another proxy war...

Ode to Empire

Ode to Empire
[for John Hobson]
 
Wars without
pause
pride without
cause
Occupations
free of laws
mass murder
just because
no contrition
no remorse
all a prosaic
matter of course

Where self-critique
is heresy,
where, the scope
for apostasy?
not democracy,
nor autocracy:
but ersatz Realm
of Hypocracy

It's the Rule of the Hypocrite:
where the human
soul is split:
by bad faith
and suborned wit
possessed of every human sense
save the hallowed grace-
of conscience

forged their gaudy
Taj Mahals:
palisades, and
gilded halls
swathed in dun blood and
sweat of an entire
World's Precariat

So It Is:
and so It Was:
Endless Scourge
without a Pause
debauchery will stalk
the land
where guilt is writ
on every hand
yet still think it
blessed to live :
in dank bosom of
western civ -

O what immutable
parody
can frame its
sordid asymmetry?

© R.Kanth 2021
(my remarks reference the ruling elites,
not those who carry them on their backs)

My Mask

source unknown
 

Russia

To the Slanderers of Russia (1831)

Why rave ye, babblers, so — ye lords of popular wonder?
Why such anathemas ‘gainst Russia do you thunder?
What moves your idle rage? Is’t Poland’s fallen pride?
‘T is but Slavonic kin among themselves contending,
An ancient household strife, oft judged but still unending,
A question which, be sure, you never can decide.
For ages past still have contended,
These races, though so near allied:
And oft ‘neath Victory’s storm has bended
Now their, and now our side.
Which shall stand fast in such commotion
The haughty Liakh, or faithful Russ?
And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean? –
Or il’t dry up? This is point for us.

Leave us!: Your eyes are all unable
To read our history’s bloody table;
Strange in your sight and dark must be
Our springs of household enmity!
To you the Kreml and Prága’s tower
Are voiceless all, you mark the fate
And daring of the battle-hour
And understand us not, but hate.

What stirs ye?
Is it that this nation,
On Moscow’s flaming walls, blood-slaked and ruin-quench’d,
Spurn’d back the insolent dictation
Of Him before whose nod ye blenched?
Is it that into dust we shatter’d,
The Dagon that weigh’d down all earth so wearily,
And our best blood so freely scatter’d,
To buy for Europe peace and liberty?

Ye’re bold of tongue — but hark, would ye in deed but try it
Or is the hero, now reclined in laurelled quiet,
Too weak to fix once more, Izmail’s red bayonet?
Or hath the Russian Tsar ever, in vain commanded?
Or must we meet all Europe banded?
Have we forgot to conquer yet?

Or rather, shall they not, from Perm to Tauris’ fountains,’
From the hot Colchian steppes, to Finland’s icy mountains,
From the grey, half-shatter’d wall,
To fair Kathay, in dotage buried
A steely rampart, close and serried,
Rise, Russia’s warriors, one and all?

Then send your numbers without number,
Your madden’d sons, your goaded slaves,
In Russia’s plains there’s room to slumber,
And well they’ll know their brethren’s graves!

Alexander Pushkin                                                                                 translator unknown