The last post was a serious one and I know you expect lighter intellectual fare from me, mostly because I have no pretentions of being a heavyweight in the cognitive domain. Herewith the easier take on things in the field of reconcilations. But erase it from your computer as soon as you've read it, wash your mouth out with soap as soon as you've spoken it, and smack yourself on the head repeatedly with a hammer until you've forgotten all of it. Else the political correctness police will getcha.
And for the poets among you, my apologies as I know the vocal contortions necessary to maintain scanscion will likely bring on lingual cramping. Getting the emPHAsis on the right syllABle was beyond me.
Here 'tis
with thanks to my colleague in Ottawa.
TIT for TAT
First we have this from Chris in Ottawa:
I have a Reconciliation Equation to share.
The Doctrine of Discovery reduces to 'Take All Terrain' (TAT); to remedy that tort there should be a Turtle Island Tariff (TIT). So the needed reconciliation is a TIT for TAT law. The Terrain has been taken and giving it back is not going to happen. The Tariff would come in the form of a charge on every land transfer from here on in. To the current taxes charged on every real estate transfer a 2% TIT would be charged with revenues sent to a National TIT account, completely controlled by a seven member First Nation TIT Council, two of whom must be Indigenous Senators.
I responded:
You're asking a TIT for a TAT
but talking, I think, through your hat.
The Doctrine of Discovery
had no clause for recovery
of lands taken by papal fiat.
Sanctified by divine autocrat
(on the throne of St. Peter who sat)
was pillage, enslavement,
theft, rape and depravement
in every new-found habitat
A New World new aristocrat
defined the new term "plutocrat"
as confiscation in total
(though all rites sacerdotal
allowed Mother Church to grow fat).
There might still be this slim caveat
ensconced in the Magnificat
"Deposuit potentes de sede"* [*He has put down the mighty from their seat.]
bodes Aboriginal payday
as salvation's necessity, STAT
Every Vatican vain bureaucrat
would bow in agreement, whereat
everything would revert
whether live or inert
to Indigenous commissariat.
We started all this with the TAT
though troublesome times it begat
but suckling government TIT
has been such a fine fit
we might all want to leave it at that.