Summary: War must go on; but it'll be more diverse and inclusive

CENTURIES taught the harms of slavery Toil and violence, torture and cavalry

Metaphors are bad, they can cause trauma Or for those who never experienced it an opportunity for drama

Changing one's code, then the documentation The APIs will change, decades of adaptation

With food comes appetite, so why stop at "slave" In land of the free, or home of the brave

Little by little the list has expanded Colours are racism, so more words are added

Never mind the problem, we have a solution Racism always starts at the institution

One by one we ask the tough questions Corporations are urged to pay close attention

Do as we say or the company is racist Bombing is OK, as long as it's statist

Years go by, inequality grows But we fix our code by "search and replace" and then the program blows

Where are the developers, we've been so inclusive The debt collectors too are growingly assertive

Words are a weapon, pens mightier than swords You can get rid of "masters" but there will still be landlords

Equality is tough to attain when a country is established upon lack of it It's a republic, not a democracy, just learn to deal with it

Decades then pass, inequality persists The code may be sanitary, endorsed by the priests

Literature has revealed that book-burning works Of difficult subjects nobody talks

Dialogue continues, inclusiveness in mind Words have been banned, have long been left behind

Denylists are red, allowlists are green Don't tell the "redskins", unless that sporting club can win

Monochrome society is less subjected to bigotry For different races are identified only by colours for mockery

Big endians are offensive, think of the small Suddenly the code speaks of little and tall

Pronouns amended, big endians ended Management attended, nobody felt offended

A perfect society, obedience assured Put behind bars those who say it's absurd

Privacy degraded, wages stagnated But who gives a damn where society is headed

Canceled are the ones who stand in Utopia's way That's just the price that for paradise we must pay

On a pedestal we put, at the pedestal we nod Those who never wrote a single line of code

Sometimes, you see, obstructing progress Is the tree that infects the entire forest

Climate change accelerated, living condition worsened Nukes controls lessened, voting rights ended

The code was beautiful, deployed nicely on a drone It had a few bugs, to killing protesters it was prone

The code was tolerant Inclusive and excellent

It was better at killing minorities Just like in past centuries

Herein we arrive, having come full circle From slavery to assassination, like from Hitler to Merkel

Diverse we've become, women too can bomb 'Annie Get Your Gun' no longer seems as dumb

Institutional injustice, exclusion notwithstanding We need more than word changes for reconciliation and understanding

Idealists would say and dreamers might accuse They'd say antagonists are Nazis, people who hate Jews

It all started with a debate -- a debate about words It was about sensibilities, but never about wars

Society will perish if all debates are shallow How did we end up with a public discourse this hollow? ⬆