Rambling on my mind

Today, in NZ, is The Queens Birthday holiday. We assume that this means that we take a moment to think about our sovereign in all her glory and the joy that being in the Commonwealth brings us. By and large, it is not so bad. We have an athletics meeting every 4 years when NZ can try to convince itself that we haven't gone backwards in world competitions and that focussed individuals can beat subsidized semi-professionals and professionals from other countries.
We get to feel that we belong to something bigger than just us, Australia ( who would rather not be associated with us) and assorted Pacific Islands (whom we would really rather not talk about) away down in a neglected corner of the Pacific Ocean.
The royals are an entertaining bunch, in the sense of "Neighbours From Hell" and really cannot be said to have all that much bearing on modern NZ, until we have a natural disaster when they always send a nice card and even have one of them come here. The current government, whilst not a natural disaster, should qualify us for a constant stream of cards, I'm just sayin'
But lately the empire that's dying on it's arse that has captured most of my attention is the US. I tread very carefully around the internet like a person in a custard pie minefield because a wrong step will expose one to the sort of deranged babbling that we would avoid in the street. And it's not as if the current administration is fixing any of the structural rottenness that has lead to the present malaise, if anything they encourage it whilst being decried for fixing it, which they are not doing. Meanwhile Colourful Krazies ping about the pin-ball machine of American politics re-arranging history, making shit up, trying to out crazy the opposition in the crazy stakes. I throws my hands up in horror!
New Zild, of course, has it's own band of loonies, buggerising everything they touch, tossing widows and orphans into the street from second story windows. Even if they lived on the ground floor they are taken upstairs to be thrown out. These people are proud of the damage that they have done to the economy and society and say that if they are elected they will do MOAR, because obviously we like it. Which is the worrying bit, because we do. The polls show that government support has decreased by only a marginal amount, New Zilders are taking it like the good strong folks they are and in fact bending over for more.
Never mind that Bhutanese refugees, here,  are beginning to think fondly of the camps they lived in on the Nepalese border and that Mumbai entrepreneurs will be out sourcing their call centres to here in a few years.
Talkback hosts who are angrily obsessed by their own rectums exhort us to be meaner to each other and not to have tolerance  for anything except Dominant White Male Culture.
Through the froth one can discern that dole bludgers (persons on unemployment benefit who do not really look for work) are still stealing valuable tax money that we could be giving to the Army or the Prison Service ( not that they do anything except "provide prisoners with a Holiday Camp"). Lotta anger out there and due to slick marketing it gets directed in precisely the wrong place.
 While the population is distracted by sports and Lotteries from thinking about anything more complex than the weather, outside, right now.
SIGH.
If it weren't for poetry, cute robot kittens and the intertubes life would get pretty bleak really.
Thanks