07.12.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Cleaning the Code
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? █
ᶃ Gemini Space
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