Were there a king, perhaps it would be different.
More obvious at least. Fifty million courtiers,
A hundred fifty million well-fed house servants,
Would understand the privilege of living in the palace,
Where even the beggars have rich palace garbage
To pick, where the dungeons, if vicious
As only palace dungeons can be, have law libraries,
TV, even plumbing. But there is no king
In Palace America. The courtiers are so many,
Have so many of each other to preen with;
The servants are so smartly attired; so many foreign
Field hands so desire to join their ranks,
In wondrous Palace America where poor people are fat!
Why should anyone hate us, proclaim holy doom,
Seduced by what they cannot have...but would if they could?
A vast palace full of opulent idiots surrounded by
Refugees and slaves starved and land-mined mad with envy,
And ascetics whose only answer to greed is wholesale hate,
Palace America proclaims the sanctity of shopping.

- Uncle River