Our secret alliance.
They’re the ones we’re thinking for. They’re the ones who place we keep. Whose memory we serve.
They’re the ones we nearly are. Who belong to the non-university. To the non-institution. Who are neither in education nor in work.
The unincludable: that’s who they are. The uninvolveable.
Bartlebys. Refusers, who’ve never refused anything. Opters out, who never opted for anything.
The ones outside. Who never wanted to be inside. Who never wanted anything.
Unreachable. Though the state has all their contact details.
Untrackable, though the state can track and trace them anywhere.
Unprogrammable, though the state pumps out everything they watch.
Unrecruitable, unconscriptable, unmobilisable.
Because what they are is unorderable and unmanageable. Because they are the unmanageable and unorderable in us.
The truest resistance shows a complete lack of resistance. The real resistance is indifferent to resistance, as it’s indifferent to everything.
Inglorious, uncelebrated, disliked, rude. Faintly scary, or just outright scary.
Disliked – by everyone. Disjecta. The equivalent of slurry. Of industrial waste.
Who don’t know how to live, but just live.
Stubbornly. Persistently. Who just are.
Who can’t be counted. Can’t be identified. Ontologised.
That’s who we write for, read for. They’re the true idiots – not like us, pretend idiots. Who can only fail – not like us, who only pretend to fail.
All the bad batches were sent their way. All the opiates. Every attempt was made to addict them. To cancer them. To sterilize them, at least.
They’re invisible, even in their visibility. They’re inaudible, even though you can hear everything they say. They’re unknowable, even though we know everything about them. They’re secret – even though they keep no secrets. They’re hidden in their very unhiddenness.
They’re unthinkable. Untheorisable. Uncapturable.
The all seeing eye can see everything but them.
The surplus population. The too-many. The uncountable.
The undisciplinable. Repeat offenders. With low IQs, probably.
Human refuse. Populist enablers. Refuseniks. Vaxx conspiracists.
The psychologically toxic. The spiritually rank.
The first on the extermination list.
Pollutants of the human river. They should be culled for public health.
How long are they for this world? Before they develop some prole myxomatosis. Before they spread it to the rest of us?
The ones the left hate most of all.
Innumerable.
Offered every opportunity, which they won’t take.
Obese, no doubt, with all the wrong habits.
Degraded. Embarrassments to the human race.
Not even pitiful. For who could pity them?
They’re the ones we nearly are.
They’ve long since been declared exterminable. Declared murderable. Declared extinguishable. Declared poisonable. Declared destroyable.
Ineducable. Unprocessable.
Background noise. Noises off. Extras of life. Human magma.
The exasperating. Who won’t follow rules. Not defiant, just … recalcitrant. Unreformable.
The unbusy. The unoccupied. Who can’t even look after their own interests.
Loiterers without plan. Guileless. Witless. Standing there, catching flies.
They’re the void – the human void.
They’re the true idiots.
They’re the useless population. They’re what uselessness looks like,. Good for no one. Good for nothing.
In the way. Like dementia patients. Like bed blockers.
Living obstructions. To a useful society. To an efficient society.
Stubbornly surviving. Simply living on. Going on.
Having only their idiosyncrasies to show. Their weirdnesses. Their legitimate and illegitimate strangenesses.
With no answer as to why they exist. Or what they are. Or what they’re for.
The useless people scrapheap. The discarded people pile.
Human cul-de-sacs.
Our shame. Abused, probably. Stutterers. Stammerers. With deep speech defects.
Negligible. Neglected. Neglecting themselves. Their self-care.
Our people. Our brethren.
Micro-plastic’d. Chem-trailed. Geo-engineered.
Mercury’d. Aluminium’d. Borion’d. On multiple fronts.
Causalities. Collateral damage.
Who belong to the anti-uni. The non-uni.
Those who the uni cannot possibly include. Those beyond the reach of diversity. Of EDI. Of DEI. Of equity.
He despicable poor. The disgusting poor. The no-one-knows-what-to-do-with-them poor. Ripe for culling.
Who can’t stand up for themselves. Can’t advocate for themselves. Who need help filling in forms. Who aren’t even online …
But still alive! Still breathing! Still conscious – just about.
Unheroic. Unremarkable. Not even standing out in any special way.
They’re the true idiots. They’re everything we say of ourselves. They’re the real imbeciles.
Repellent. Filthy – spiritually. Polluted – the most deeply.
Unworthy of even maternal instinct.
Who need upgrading. Who need new human software. And hardware! Who need a reboot. A CTRL ALT DLT thing.
Ultra-provincials.
A call for eugenics. A justification of eugenics. A rationale for elimination.
Not even pitiful. Not even arousing the feeling of pity.
Not even calling forth human compassion. Not even summoning good Samaritans.
The exasperating. The plain annoying. Who’ll make you run out of patience.
Not wily. Not grifters. Not even out for themselves. Not even taking advantage. Not even on the take.
Just impossibly demanding. Neighbours who its impossible to love.
Problem children and problem adults.
A perpetual affront.
Racists, probably.
What can we want but to dilute their numbers?
No campus could enclose them. Nothing can be done for them. Nothing can be given to them.
They’d only vandalise it anyway. They’d only soil their own nests. They’d only wreck what was given to them.
The ones who will not be brought on board. Who cannot be brought on board. Who are incapable of it: being brought onboard.
Recalcitrant. Playing truant from life – from middle class life.
Serfs. Low lifes. Who cannot be otherwise.
A problem. A question.
Chipped and tagged and monitored.
Liveability is predicated upon their exclusion.
The campus has to keep out those who wouldn’t benefit from it. Who it would be wasted on. Who couldn’t be trusted with freedom.
The poison didn’t work. They survived. Too many of them!
They might be sterilized, but they’re still there.
Next time, they’ll have to do better. More targeted.
Work in Progress 