MYTHS, LEGENDS AND DESTRUCTION

Non-fiction! I chose it because it’s factual

Factual, it is; densely packed with detail

The story1 it tells us about the last 20 years

Every fearful, anxiety-provoking moment 

It’s supposed to inform, entertain

It fills me with dread

It’s a horror book. All the monsters are human

Committed to twisting reality and bringing destruction

I try and wrap my brain around it

Or, at least, to free up enough space to accommodate

Its contents; with little success

Why there are so many dying and dead

It’s not by accident; it’s by design

Why Putin’s not listening, why Russia is in Ukraine

The reason’s fantastic (the stuff of fantasy)

Truth and factuality are not the current buzz

Myths and legends; so quickly resuscitated

So quickly spread. Assumptions become actions

[do not ask “why”]. Why some things are permitted to happen

Or some did not. In the absence of 

Agreed terms; assumptions have been made. Assumption not understood

Or shared by the “other side” The result is chaos, the world tremors between

Nuclear war or ecological disaster, or whichever comes first. The battlelines

Are set between fascism and democracy. Does anyone understand the rules?

The fall of the USSR was celebrated; it unleashed its own demons

Across the world, helped set up Trump and Brexit.

That much I understood. Russia then started prodding 

the pressure points and vulnerabilities of western democracies

I am reading this [book]

It fills me with dread

Stephen King could learn a lot

From the serpentine plots

Why the world’s going backward

Why there are so many dying and dead

It’s not by accident; it’s by design

So our response is to act

To identify influences malign

And to counter them with the fact.

“The Road to Unfreedom”, Timothy Snyder