In Defence of Bokassa

Noose Economy
Nov 4 · 2 min read

Hobnailed boots stamp down the stairs to the sound of a shaker — the SambaStaat is in full effect. It comes to drag you away to a death-camp intoxicated with equatorial humidity and motion — no vestige remains of northern Anglo-Germanic sobriety. Fascism is freed in pink and green; tribal rhythms and feathered dances of sword and club.

The sublime dictator wears leopard-print, spends entire yearly budgets on dart-frog poisons and jungle expeditions. More Napoleonic than feudalistic; a state in motion atop the coursing jaguar time-spirit. Piston-muscles spasm, expanding and contracting in lightning-fast concert — the front tyre grasps asphalt, hurls the motorcycle forward. Rage down the road — rip a wound across the earth, reach the murderous Kurtz-esque centre-man; fat and muscle ripple, stinks of tobacco. Cash-crop cigar-chompers rule the interior — fumes of empire waft off the plantations, fueling the delirium of motion. In the Jungle, any man can be king — build a throne out of coconuts.

Slash-and-burners shot, drop lifeless on the sand of an ever-grinding river-tributary. Gunshots loud, unconcealed — not nearly so loud as the cacophony of multicoloured rainforest birds. Swarmed over and eaten by incredible beetles and flesh-eating flies — stay out of the water. Dialectical frontier never really conquered, only held back with mosquito nets and river-barges — swat and hack through the steaming miasma, dense with branches and vines.

Who could make his home among this, but the bravest? Even the plants are at war, growing frantically; inch by inch they jockey for position, each sprout smothering its neighbours, groping desperately for a shaft of sunlight. Coil around jagged spines of rock, hold roots fast against roaring torrents of water — survive the blast of brutal downpours, the chittering masses of crawling saboteurs. Soil is rich, dark, volcanic — every leaf in a state of constantly erupting narcotic potency.

Paint your face, pierce your ears and nostrils — wear horrific inhuman headdresses. Dance a viciously inflamed flamenco, adorned with finger-bones and severed ears. Timor-coffee — banana superstate. Steel-drum mindset.

Noose Economy

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