Marx went for a stroll, Freud right by his side

With Hegel and Darwin they ranged far and wide


The century 19th was fecund indeed

Monotheism challenged by determinist creeds


Those jolly white Euros (all men, don’t you see?)

Determining hist’ry, science, psycholo-gy


Formulae are all preset – no exceptions, not one

From peasant to worker, states withered and gone


Your own personality? Set down in stone

By age six it’s over, can’t change so don’t moan


And natural selection’s a given, quite fixed

Laws ne’er to be broken, all science transfixed


As for women, don’t ask! We’re dismissed with disdain

Hysterics and marginal, the feminine bane


Class struggle got swapped for original sin

Or Calvin’s elect, no way can you win


You’re chosen or not and the choice sure ain’t yours

No agency, none; history must be endured


Down, down you must trudge the path as ordained

Mapped out by them white guys (the dead ones with brains)


And now here we are in the century 21st

Marxism’s been battered, its wear much the worse


What happened? How came it that commies got trashed?

Rolled over – nay bulldozed – as civilizations clashed?


Was it mano-a-mano the battle royal?

That went down twixt the ‘isms and held us in thrall?


More like mono-a-mono as determinisms warred

Capitalism triumphed, the left barely scored


Smith, Bentham and Strauss emerged from the fray

Blood-stained and smirking, they established their sway


(And let’s not forget the clergy so pious

Agents provocateurs for the One G-d, the Jealous


Aiding, abetting with scripture and prayer

Supporting death and destruction, hatred, despair)


When determinisms clash as history’s now proved

Cash united with God flincheth not, is unmoved


Is fiercer, is nimbler, more cunning and mean

Marx couldn’t compete and his clock was quite cleaned


So where does this leave us for the next 100 years?

More blood and destruction? More death, sweat and fear?


The environment ravaged and poverty rampant

Midst the smoke of the battles Western leftists couchant


A good place to begin I must now profess

A long-standing motif and one key to this mess


A state founded by force with the Bible as deed

To the land and the houses, the West did concede


A determinist template by Yahweh’s command

The Zionist project simply stole all the land


The communist states were on board with the coup

Labor Zios seemed leftish, solidarity askew


“The conquest of labor!” Crowed the Zionists then

Masquerading as workers. Quoth the commies, “Amen”


(That slogan however was a trick, was a ruse

All labor and land was meant just for Jews)


As scripted by Christians the Zionists birthed

A religious and racist ideology, sans mirth


And so we see Israel o’er the years now become

A criminal wall-builder, the West’s gone quite numb


Using Yahweh as shield and holocaust as feint

They’ve established dominion; kinder, gentler they ain’t



Yet western progressives are unable to stir

Or open their mouths; they bow down, they defer


As I have rhymed elsewhere (it applies right here too)

This form of omerta cannot be pierced through


“It’s far more important the silence to keep

‘They’re like us, protect them! Let bereft mothers weep!’


Race and religion, white privilege doth flow

Through veins hypocritical, a covert quid pro quo


Except that there’s nothing to be got in return

For a complicit silence while the Middle East burns” [1]


Thus doth determinism becloudeth the mind

Free, critical thinking blown away in the wind


No ambiguity or context, determinisms produce

A depressive effect, a self-hanging noose


To replace these ‘isms both capital and imperial

It’s time to try something a bit more original


Wisdom, direction from black, brown and women

(After all ’tis white men who gave us the fix we’re in)


Race, gender, religion? Come, shove them aside!

Humanity straight up could be a new guide


Let’s ditch these old ‘isms and start using our brains

What’s the worst that could happen? Naught to lose but our chains!

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Endnotes

1. ‘Olmert and Omerta’, August 2006, PoeticInjustice.
http://www.poeticinjustice.net/guest%20contribs/ja_miller.htm

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J.A. Miller is a grandmother activist from the Middle West who spent many years traveling and studying in the Middle East. She has published essays on Counterpunch and DissidentVoice as well as poems in the manner of the Burma Shave highway signs of her youth at www.PoeticInjustice.net, some of which will be included in their upcoming anthology, Poets for Palestine. Miller is currently writing a book on the Protestant origin of the Zionist project. She can be reached at jsec_miller@hotmail.com

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