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!

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

Endnotes

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