Arrogant Prophecies -- The New Sex...

Today's installment of the "Arrogant Prophecies" begins with what seems to me a rather startling phrase, "When the New Sex was then declared...". Although the author's own notes, which you, as usual, can find at the end of each poem give some insight in understanding this piece, he is completely silent on how to understand the meaning of this strikingly graphic picture.

As you know, I have access to a rather large volume of information about the Third Galaxy in what is known as the Absolute Truth -- the 21st Edition, to be exact. Therefore I can shed a little light on the matter. Several years before that unfortunate land mutated into the United State of Arrogance, what passed for political debate had taken on a rather tenuous almost surrealistic air.

During what was to prove to be the last free elections held there, newspaper pundits and bobble heads on television were concerned, not with the opinions of the candidates on important matters of foreign and national policy. Instead, they blathered on about such things as how one candidate had spent four hundred dollars on a haircut.

Since such silliness is unheard of in our own world and I can understand if you think I am pulling your leg, but I assure you I'm not. Why, they even went so far as to muse whether or not that this fellow's concern with his hair meant that he was "gay" -- I'm not completely sure what is meant by "gay" in the Third Galaxy, but it seems to mean something more than "happy" and may even have sensual overtones!

When another of the main candidates, who happened to be a woman, gave a major speech, did they analyze what she had to say? No, instead they wankered on about her dress, whether or not it was too low-cut and if it revealed too much of her mammary cleavage. In fact, they even went on to pose such profound questions as, "What message is she trying to communicate?"

Finally, there was one fellow whose main qualification as a candidate was that he was tall and his rugged features were well known because he had been a police detective in a popular television series! They gushed about how "manly" he was, his deep, manly voice and how manly he smelled of old leather and cigar smoke!

So, whatever "New Sex" refers to it won't be what you think -- maybe it refers to how Ronald Rexona screwed the Groundlaw or maybe even the Imbuggeration of the Great She Goat!

When the New Sex was then declared
upon the White House Lawn by the President:

Few indeed, were those who shared
misgivings as to what it was he really meant!
Somehow, we seemed to have lost the thread
which held us close to what we knew, and now the dread...

The dread to open another page
and find, instead of dawnings to a bright, new age:
Chasms open to the abyss;
Primordial ooze spills forth from jagged rocks...

They obsidiantly preach death,
as life and love lie twitching with electric shocks.
The world totters upon the brink
and everything could change in one, sudden flash!

From east to west, in a twinkling blink,
all permutes to shining gold – or stinking trash!

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This poem deals with foreboding felt after the fall of the Wall just before the Union of Slovenly Socialist Republics collapsed, followed a decade later with the strange smells of communal insanity and the outbreaks of human virus after Terrible Tuesday and the events following closely upon it.

It is as if I saw the Land of Light and Liberty at a crossroads with one path leading to honor and glory, the other to arrogance, corruption and a terrible desolation. We will meet this theme again in "Arrogance, Wither Goest Thou?