A Civil Discourse

So it starts with a welcome to country
Which for some reason doesn’t sound too welcoming?
And seems to be about ownership & possession
And hidden behind the words is skin colour & racism
And revenge & hatred for the sins of the past
And the mistakes of the past still seem to be repeating
Only now they’ve been twisted around to the other side
And it’s all about sides & which side people are on
And the bigotry of the past is replaced by a new bigotry
So who is worth more now - black, brown, yellow, white?
And how is it valued – power, money, time, voices?
And how much ownership is enough & does it ever end?
And what of mixed races – do they divide themselves up?
Where their worth becomes a blood DNA percentage
And if a person travels or moves to another land
Should they be treated less well because of that?
Then it turns to gender just to complicate things further
And the treatment is similar to race via a sea of hate
And a long list of grievances which must be avenged
One form of sexism replaced by another in reverse
And similar questions can be asked as with racism
Which sex is better and which gender is worth more?
It used to be about equality but now its reverse discrimination
Still discrimination mind you but in reverse to compensate
And like race, now we have mixed genders & intersex etc.
So how do we value them if not all the same?
We can’t do it merely by way of chromosomes now
So how do we do it so that it’s fair to all?
Or is that simply not the idea because it’s about change?
And now it’s also about stories & believability
Where one side is supposed to automatically be more honest
And courts are no longer best qualified to decide
It’s no longer a judge & a jury in a courtroom
Now it’s via your favourite media channels
And now it’s via the angry Twitter or Facebook mob
And via your identity group protesting on streets
And the loudest most militant voices win
And if they don’t get their own way the looting begins
And the violence through words and actions
The cowardice of the mobs in masks & balaclavas
And they’ve been taught to settle things that way
By the lecturers in ‘humanities’ at universities
And we can’t use that word because it has ‘man’ in it
And we can’t say ‘person’ because it has ‘son’ in it
But we might say people because it might be non-binary?
Culture warriors & identity politicians please confirm
And now we’re supposed to say ‘Ze’ or ‘Zir’
Or all sorts of new & exotic made-up terms
And it seems like diversity is the apparent answer
Where we celebrate & respect all differences
And that sounds so fine until we disagree
And your opinion differs to someone else’s
And no we don’t have to respect their rights
Such as to free speech if we don’t agree
Because our opinions are worth more than theirs
And because we are correcting an imbalance
By putting extra weights on the other side
As has been done in the past with such & such
And we can play that game too, horrible as it is
And we can be just as bad & mad & sad
And hell we can be even nastier & really show them
And have all those rights empowered by our lecturers
And all those easy answers, totalitarian as they might be
For we are the tribe, and the tribe has spoken!