PrintAugust 21, 2009
The Revolution Has Not Been Publicized (a poem)
(With apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)
You may as well stay home, brother.
You might as well just power down, order in, and shut it out.
You might as well just call up your kids, show off some pictures,
and attend church regularly on Sundays,
because the revolution has not been publicized.
The revolution has not been publicized.
The revolution was not waiting in your inbox
with a cute little subject line to catch your attention.
The revolution was not spelled out for you in three
easily-digestible sound-bites voiced over an apropos video
of the President getting off Air Force One.
The revolution has not been publicized.
The revolution was not immortalized in stories
of effete liberals sucking out your children's brains
bit by bit every time you sent them off to school.
The revolution did not suddenly announce itself
as it slithered through the flickering screen in your
darkened living room and crawled inside your head,
because the revolution was never publicized, brother.
There was no shouting in the streets that could be heard
above the almost silent drone of the machine as it snipped
away-the almost silent drone of the machine as it snipped
away-the rest of what was left of Madison's great idea.
The revolution has not been publicized.
There were no pictures of thirty million bureaucrats
snuffing out the fire of liberty one entrepreneurial spark at a time.
There were no pictures of forty million bureaucrats
marching out of the yawning pit to extract minutes and seconds
and years from what will be left of your life when you get done
standing at the window.
There were no pictures of fifty million bureaucrats
wagging their fingers in your face and showing you
the back of the line-the wrong line, as it turned out.
There were no videos on YouTube showing your kids'
noses pressed to the window waiting for you to come home.
ACORN, MoveOn, and the ACLU did not
particularly mind if you saw them coming.
In fact, they would have liked a little recognition now
and then for their role in bringing down the juggernaut
of Judeo-Christian constitutional republicanism.
But the revolution has not been publicized.
NBC, NPR, NYT, and the rest of the acronyms
did not openly self-congratulate on their sublime indifference
to difficult facts or for their daring,
prophylactic cultivation of ignorance, envy, and greed.
The revolution did not announce its consummation on the lips of Andrea Mitchell,
Chris Matthews, Larry King, or Keith Olbermann.
The revolution has not been publicized.
The revolution did not leave a sticky note on your wallet
warning you that at 12:05 p.m. on the twentieth day of January
it would take possession of the empty relic that was
left to you after your parents and your grandparents
and your great-grandparents tore it open and gorged on its contents.
The revolution did not stick in your throat on its way to your belly.
The revolution did not cause vomiting or obvious weight-gain.
The revolution is not reversible by liposuction.
The revolution has not been publicized, has not been publicized,
has not been publicized, has not been publicized.
The revolution will not be scaled back in the next election, brothers;
The revolution is complete.
