Every post a sermon,
every joke a trial.
Laughter is a landmine now—
step wrong and you're vile.
Eyes scan feeds like scripture,
policing tone and word,
where irony gets cancelled
before it can be heard.
They brandish rules like weapons,
etched in trending tags,
turning nuance into weakness,
and context into flags.
The crowd won’t storm the palaces,
real power lies ignored.
They sharpen tweets for jesters
and call that being “woke.”
A comic plays a prisoner,
mimics guilt with flair:
"Oops, I said the unsayable—now I'm locked up somewhere!"
But the mob won’t face the mirror—
they only see offence.
They trade in moral currency
and bankrupt common sense.
No one thinks a foam kiss
spits hate at someone's race.
No gypsy sauce condemns a life,
no schnitzel knows disgrace.
Intent gets tossed for optics—
a word becomes a sin,
if someone, somewhere, maybe
feels slightly bruised within.
This isn’t care. It’s cowardice
wrapped in a noble pose.
The kind that fears real conflict
but shouts at comic prose.
Yes, some words are rotten—
no one mourns their fall.
But lumping all in one bin
won’t help the cause at all.
To ban what doesn’t praise you
won’t free the world from pain.
It just makes speech a hostage,
and satire die in vain.
Beware the polished slogans
that punish thought and jest.
This path won’t lead to justice—
just silence, masked as "best."
Rolph David
Wed 9th Apr 2025 17:21
Thank you, Stephen and Uilleam, for your deeply considered and generous responses.
Stephen, I really appreciate your words. You’ve distilled a crucial truth — that the ability to disagree without silencing one another is the bedrock of any healthy dialogue. Yes, the line between offence and hate speech can blur, but you're absolutely right: shutting down discussion only deepens the divide. Thank you for standing up for nuance in a world so quick to flatten it.
Uilleam, your honesty and humanity shine through. Your reflections moved me — that reminder to look beyond appearances and celebrate the quirks and colours that make people beautifully different. There's far more kindness in a pub glass remembered or a smile on a bus than in a hundred moral tirades shouted online. “Vive la différence,” indeed — and a hearty hear, hear to your final line!
Thanks again, both of you, for reading — and more so, for thinking aloud with me.
– Rolph