The Rhetoric of Hope

Magda was getting close to him, becoming friendlier. The late Pope John Paul was polish too. She was making polish cookies for him. He’d have to invite her around sometime. She might have been a lonely polish immigrant. She didn’t seem the sort to be short of, friends or male company.  Harry hadn’t studied the relationship in depth yet, too busy and occupied by his Mission, TV task, seeing is believing isn’t that what it’s all about. He nibbled one of her cookies, chipping the biscuit, tasting a bit. More followed, soon the biscuit was done and in his stomach. He quickly followed it with a swig from the coke bottle, leaving a food splurge around the bottle opening. She’d all the attributes of a wife on one hand, a mistress on the other, magda that is. She was creeping more and more into his reality. Cooking, polite, seemed proud,  physically, all reich, right, young, mid twenties about, and blue eyes. He could have been describing the Arian race, perfect white folks. If only it was 1940 again, I a german soldier, and I and i.. and lots more I’s. It was 2013, history had dealt with the issue he hoped. Hitler might have encouraged eugenics, the world now practiced it. Every woman was a potential dyed bomb, blonde, whatever. Israeli casualties were counted down the line, sectioned by age, sex, and qualifications. Arab casualties were simply rounded up. The conflict on the ground was been fought out on TV too. Incitement and call to war on both sides, people with no or little formal education are easy to upset. They believe what they’re told. Sending boys to fight for god while the world looked on, the majority too busy to think, a second mortgage on the mind. Harry kept up his channel watch. Forcing himself to inhale the rhetoric of hatred again and again. Mullahs, generals, premiers, state employees, war hero’s, anyone who had an opinion, anyone likely to upset, anyone controversial, never anyone reasonable, harry didn’t hear the voice of reason utter that often. The stories became testaments to technology and branded war heads. The nuclear moment was getting nearer, when everything would be clearer, so it seemed to harry, either that or it was an expensive and emotive game of chess he was watching. It certainly wasn’t dialogue even though it was dressed up to appear so. His eyes tired, he’d been watching the shows for four hours without a break. He was so disturbed his JD remained undisturbed. Faces on screen have changed, the make up is the same though, as the news is the same, repeated threats, incitement, and encouragement, the media splurge unrelenting, the continuous repeat, the drums of war pounding in the background, the news wrapped in flashy presentations, who wouldn’t be impressed. Himmler managed it without technology. The old pie charts were now flash presentations, percentages moved as the newscaster continued to read aloud. The latest reader poll was 60/40 in favour of the limited use of nuclear weapons.  As long as they confine it there, not near us, not in our back garden, would we need medical insurance, would it affect our children. A little more excitement, woke harry up in fact. Everyone liked money. The cost of war blared the voice of a narrator. Zip zip, zip….zip. perfect animations of ammunition stock piles appear in a row. Tanks appear underneath, followed by another row of numbers, all the above underlined. A figure harry never knew existed appeared in big black capitals, something approaching a figure in the trillions, what’s a trillion, loads of big thrills, plenty of explosion for sure. Zero’s that go on forever, harry didn’t know that such an amount of money even existed. There’s money being spent in the middle east. Who was earning it, all this money, would have been much more helpful he thought, about to shoe it out of the small hotel room.