Image by Pavlofox from Pixabay
in the discord bunker
crimsonclad says off we go
give it a second
the chain is catching up
hive has arrived
a balding aging white man
in the rose garden
stay at home
protect the nhs
drive 250 miles to durham
pretend you're still in london
the moral bankruptcy
of shit-posting
the chain barely stutters
old votes flutter re-appearing
a dislocated comment from ten months ago
ghost in the machine
hardfork twenty-three
Lines 2-5 are from the Palnet discord channel on Friday 20 March 2020, the day the hive blockchain was created. Lines 8-11 are from an article on 25 May 2020 by John Crace, political sketch writer for The Guardian newspaper, satirising the Dominic Cummings scandal.
Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister's senior adviser, broke the stay at home health regulations in place in the UK to take his wife and young son to another household (his parents) in the north of England. The rest of the UK population have been prevented from seeing loved ones while they were ill or before they died and from attending their funerals. Other people have been fined for breaking stay at home regulations.
In both the messy separation of the Steem and Hive blockchains, like an unfortunate divorce which has gone on for far too long squabbling in a war of attrition, and the appalling management of the COVID-19 pandemic by the UK Government, causing thousands of unnecessary deaths and much personal and financial distress to many of the population, there is a disconnect. The ghost in the machine and moral bankruptcy have in common a dislocation in integrity.