Branded Hypocrisy

There is blood and there are bones branded into the backs of these lands of Palestine and Syria. There is a conscientious scratching out vertebrate by vertebrate of the spine of a people abandoned by a will-less world because worship is made in mirrors for selves instead of to God for souls. This is not isolated by the borders of countries, it is emblazoned by irons on colour and skin and poverty and religion and otherness. We are our own idols made of flesh and plastic, collagen hearts and liposuctioned empathy dripping from Facebook and WhatsApp accounts. Coloured buildings and pyrotechnic emotions splayed on statues and statuses to ‘stand together’ to appease our last remnants of guilt. The virtualisation of our world makes the suffering of others a ‘hyper-reality’ that can be soothed by confessing ‘I am’s’; so many Charlies, so many Parisians, oh so many Belgians. But when you are being one thing you relegate all others to be losers not worthy of your button-pushing time; so few Turks, so few Syrians , so few Congolese. You are never Real Others; you are only those who are like you. Silence spells ‘I am not Pakistani,’ ‘I am not Iraqi,’ ‘I am not Palestinian.’ It is not a matter of human solidarity but the drawing of lines in the blood to distinguish them and us, good causes and bad causes, good pain and deserved pain, terrorists and peacemakers. The internetted world hauls us all in, captive to our own lies and perversions and myths all of which conspire together to write indelibly on our souls the truth of our insecurities. The distance turns us cold in a twisted sort of antidote to relieve us from the searing, burning brands of our self-imposed hypocrisies. In rage or outraged, I am only me.