Excuse the strain, we’ve been roundly Amerified. Our tastes,
waistlines, the secular statehood of our core antagonisms;
all have given up the canestalk for lashings of fructified corn.
Still broadly speaking metric, but the inches are creeping in—
rainfall, the lengths of gun barrels and male appendages.
Even yardsticks are benchmarked against the US standard.
That’s not all. Recently we’ve become nostalgic for war,
have felt our suzerain step-motherland tugging the glands
that transmit pleasure lobbying peace by livid antipathy.
It’s not that we crave violence, but that the lack we desire
is heightened by (and in opposition to) the theatre of gore
that American television has heightened our desires for.
The underlying condition, type 2 (acquired) exceptionalism,
is managed with regular doses of a tightly regulated drug*
that mediates the outpouring of sugar in the brainblood.
*Buy one get one free with the purchase of any sub.