NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day fourteen - Ways in which...

Ways in which some middle managers have that clue which politicians lack


It beggars belief or rather
belief it is beggars us all.  If there was a fall [citation needed]
then I hypothesize that what that was was when we first believed;
the time we first felt fear and in result
did not say show me the evidence.  If you learn only one thing

today, let it be to say:
show me the evidence when the magic cleaning liquid man accosts;
show me the evidence when somebody claims they've found a god;
show me the evidence when red or blue politicals declaim.
Do not let credulity be your ground state,

there are no self-evident truths, to think such things
is hopelessly naive, as if great lumps of verity
lay all around on the landscape, as if the reason for landing on the moon
was merely to pick up any stray nuggets of fact
that might have been lying around.  Worse than these, however...

are pronouncements which do not reveal
their inner workings.  Some nationalistic arsehole jerks
his followers around by tugging strings labelled "pride" or "history"
as if it wasn't a complete mystery
why one should be proud of previous generations...

you never met and who, probably,
sneered at your ancestors in the street.  Or again some tabloid
which tacitly and silently assumes that everything was lovely
at some moment in the pre-antibiotic past
and would be once again at last

if only all the wrong people would leave.  Or worst of all
the leader, good or bad, who implies: that when
they make this one, simple change
then everything will be alright, now and forever.  Amen.
Well think again, oh clueless one

it doesn't matter that you have a plan, unless you also have:
the feasibility study, impact assessment, safety report, budget (guaranteed,
with mechanism for finding more when there's inevitably need), staffing requirements,
recruitment plan, risk analysis with planned mitigations for major problems,
dedicated expert on tap, committed supervisors of skill

and a clear definition, in advance
of what the objectives are and how they will be measured and who will do that and who will check and who will report it to the public and who will get the chop when the whole thing flops
(by which I mean you) -- unless you plan all that
and follow through

then basically don't waste your breath.
There is still some oxygen left,
but I can think of better uses for it.