THE PROXY HAS EXTENDED ITS AMBIT, MAN

With the right music behind them, these lines from Jonathan Green would sound exactly like terrible beat poetry written by a sad teenager. Presenting Green’s spoken word masterpiece, “What We Mean When We Talk About Stopping Boats”:

It's a sign, a sign of the near collapse. And so we confront the shadows that confront us and skirt the substance of the problems themselves. The proxy has extended its ambit, become an excuse for not actually having a plan, a sweeping gesture instead of meaningful specifics. Our political leaders must surely have some sense of this country's deep, and growing, incapacity to service its sense of self. Blithe silence seems the consensus response to all of it, to burgeoning inequality, climate, and the end of work. The resulting vista is of a political inertia that extends to the horizon.