Rewards
Ensuring wrongthink remains restricted in its travels to rutted country lanes the Overton window — with a view to dissuading any straying from its frame — has its limits skilfully reinforced by the thought-funneling power inherent in the awarding of awards trophies promotions positions honours laurels distinctions instruments all of subliminal control; discourse-circumscribing icons of ego-stroking gold grown-up versions of those glistening stars teachers stuck in notebooks of old; grown-up diversions supplied by the powers that are but should never be or have been; widely-publicized highly-prized ribbons issued in all too shrewd recognition of obedient behaviour; issued by servants of the pseudo-elites like so many fetchingly flavoured hypnotically-Pavlovian treats prestige-wielding tools whose principal use is the nudging and sculpting of culture; sought-after symbols bestowed to induce an implicit ideological submissiveness bestowed as tacit rewards for either lending support or for merely refraining from taking exception to establishment agendas — symbols of alleged progressiveness whose very acceptance lays bare their thrilled recipients' servility-signaling deafness to the blaring dissonance of their dissent-squelching influence.


This poem was revised on DEC 30, 2024.
Yes indeed. Those shiny awards, those framed pieces of paper, those little pins and statues and igNobel prizes...signify staying in your lane all the way to hell, which is behind them in theirs.