Demos Agonistes

What if it just breaks?
It probably won’t

Vanish overnight.
Monarchy rusted

Slowly in its links,
Taking centuries

To break a system
Of lines of descent

That millenniums
Had forged from chieftains.

Even today’s world
Holds scattered monarchs.

If democracy,
With its assumptions

Of equality—
Individual,

Mathematical,
Indivisible—

In voters, and trust
In counting ballots,

Broke into fragments,
Shattered samples still

Would likely linger
On for centuries.

How long they lingered,
Like lingering kings,

Might depend on how
Quickly contenders

Other than tyrants
Or mob rebellions

Entered the scene.
Without the model

Of democracy,
Hereditary

Monarchy might still
Totter in its chains.

Perhaps one-party
Bureaucracies lurk

Like dark furniture
In curtained futures,

Ominous shadows
To blunder into,

But they’re no models
For novel systems.

Right now, there are none.
Democracy sways

As royal houses,
Constrained, entangled,

Swayed, bound and fettered,
Lacking a better

Frame mythology
For social order.

If there’s an idea,
A better idea,

Its hasn’t appeared
To have escaped yet.