The Emperor, The Bluebirds and a Clear Sky at Night

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© 2026 by Michael Fine
He thinks he can control the bluebirds,
who flitter in the underbrush after a snow,
their blue backs and orange breasts evidence
 that life survives in winter,
evidence that life itself will prevail.
He thinks he can rule the sky itself,
the stars bright in winter,
the air crisp, the white snow crunching underfoot, reflecting a brilliant moon.
He thinks he knows our price –
that some of us will be bought for cheap, because he thinks we are endlessly hungry, like he is –
and others, distracted, with the attention spans of houseflies, will not notice,
and others are just afraid –--
because he knows from his own life that all of us have sinned and all struggle with secret self-doubt
and that many fear having those sins and insecurities exposed –so we can be blackmailed into submission by a man with no conscience and no shame.
In this nation where too many of us want too much,
 and too few of us stand on our own feet,
and too most of us are afraid to speak up and speak out alone.
He thinks we are sheep, not people.
The emperor has no clothes.
The bluebirds survive the winter, on their own, without him.
 The moon rises and sets and shines bright in the night sky, rising at midnight, without him.
Gravity exists. The pendulum swings both ways.  It will swing back on him, and us, because it always does.
The emperor has no clothes
Because justice actually exists, despite what he wants us to think.
All things human turn around.  That that goes around comes around. The first one now will later be last.
Justice is the swinging back of the pendulum, the leveling of the playing field, the force that drives all flesh that creates us equal, enforcing that equality, as time, age and evolution file away the rough spots of our selves and our culture, elevating the poor and bringing the rich and powerful to heel -- and bringing us together to the grave.
As each of us will die of something and come to rest in the dust the same way, but this, our existence as a people, as one people, lives on, as the whole continues as greater than the sum of its parts.
As one people, indivisible, whether we like it or not.
Justice, justice shall ye pursue, because justice will find us all eventually and bring us all to heel.
The emperor has no clothes.
We are carried on the backs of one another.   Stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
Everything we have comes from one another
Comes to us from the strange, holy spiral of evolution, as we pass things back and forth – words, blood, body fluids, DNA,
the shelter we build for one another,
 the ideas we pass back and forth,
 words themselves,
 even the food we grow for one another – all of this, all of what we do for one another comprising love and thus hope itself. The air and water that sustains us.
The emperor has no clothes.
We love one another in spite of ourselves, in spite of our selfishness and greed.
Because we are built from that love of one another.
 Whether we like love or not.
Whether we own love. Whether we admit to love.
The emperor has no clothes.
We are drawn together by longing, by lust, sometimes by jealousy, hatred and greed, but more often by admiration and inspiration and the need for courage, which we get from one another -- and by our complete inability to have life or meaning without one another --
the complete inability to survive on our own, despite the illusion of some, without one another.
I and thou. I am thou and thou art I, inextricably intertwined, past and future, whether we like it or not.
We are made from atoms and molecules that are held together by the strong force of one another.
We exist in and through one another, regardless of what some of us want to think.
You cannot divide us, despite your attempt to divide and conquer, because we do not exist alone.
We do not exist apart. Cannot exist alone.  We do not exist in four-dimensional space as just objects, just bodies in motion.
No. We are made together, have been and always will be made together, as the warf and woof of one another, the sinews of one tied to the bones of the other, the womb of one giving birth to the womb of the next, forward and backward through and into time, ad infinitum.
The emperor has no clothes.
We falter.  We get distracted. We lust.  We hate.  We swear.  We mock. We taunt. We embezzle.  We bribe.  We take bribes. We are zealots for empty causes. We accuse others of what we do ourselves.  We hide behind false accusations of bias. We are biased. We kill.  We bomb. We missile.  We machine gun. We tear gas.  We threaten. We scheme.  We plot and we plan to take over, to deny this one the vote and that one the position that we all need them to have.
Even so, we do all this together.
The emperor has no clothes.
We leverage and we control. We manipulate and obfuscate. We create crises and false news and extravagant lies and use them to cover our tracks, to obscure our sins. We mask. We smash the windows of cars.  We drag innocent people out of cars and handcuff them or beat them or worse.
We expel. We arrest.  We deport.  We carry weapons and foul the commons.  We let ourselves follow the herd.
All of us, together and alone, the whole being greater and so much lesser than the sum of its parts, when we ignore this simple truth:  we do all this together.
 The emperor has no clothes.
We conform. We enable. We are complicit. We are hard-hearted. We impute our own evil impulses to others. We slander. We fear the stranger, forgetting we have been strangers ourselves, strangers in a strange land. We intimidate and are easily intimidated. We begrudge.  We are impudent. We exchange knowing glances.  We gouge.  We scalp.  We finesse. We profit from the misfortune of others. We extract rent from common property.  We make unfair laws in the interest of the few and let those few hide behind those laws.
But we make those laws, together, and break or ignore them, together, the whole still being greater and too often so much lesser than the sum of its parts.
The emperor has no clothes.
We scoff.  We lie. And then we lie about our lies.
The emperor has no clothes.
We live and we love and we work and we pray and we survive by taking care of each other, despite ourselves, most of the time.  We give glory to God and the good earth that made us, when we occasionally remember to do so, and no one, no one, can take that away from us, not now, not ever.  Not with threats.  Not with intimidation. Not with bluster or name calling or insults.   Not with fake news or made-up stories or memes.
The emperor has no clothes.
Government depends on the consent of the governed.
Despite our failings, despite our divisions, our jealousies, our sins and our failures,
 we are still one people and still have that voice that is great within us.
A people.  Not a marketing slogan.  A people.  Not a TikTok post or a meme.
One people, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.
One people, who praise, labor, and love.
One people, who rise each morning, grateful for our lives and for one another,
who try to focus, who get ourselves out of bed and out of the house in the morning, get our work done and come home again at night to rest.
The emperor has no clothes.
And we are a nation of immigrants -- the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, those of us who aren’t immigrants ourselves.  Because all human beings are immigrants.  Because our ancestors moved from place to place as we move from place to place, always seeking a better way, a better place, a better life.  We all hear the same voice: go forth, go from your place, where you are comfortable and known, and find or make a new place where things might just be better than they were.
And so we remember, deep in the recesses of our souls: we are all strangers in this strange land.
And were or are afflicted by this wanderlust,
but even so we came together to be one great nation, imperfect but indivisible,
as one people together, even when we weren’t
and we remember our forefathers and foremothers who struggled and died for this freedom, in the services of these dreams:
they were not chumps.
The emperor has no clothes.
Tyrants shall not rule us.  Demagogues shall not divide us. Nation shall not threaten nation. So that humankind shall not again know war.
The love we take is only the love we make.  The love and justice we make, which made us and this great nation, flow through us like a mighty stream.
 It is up to us to make the great peace that fills the earth as waters fill the sea.
Up to us.  No one but us.
We can’t wait for God in heaven.  We can’t trust in any king.
 Sic Semper Tyrannus.
The emperor has no clothes.
We stand on our feet so we don’t have to live on our knees.
We are full of fateful lightning and wield a terrible swift sword.
 A nation of angels, until you put our backs to the wall -- angels in America, who have made America great already.
One people, resolute, with that voice that is still great within us.
With the arc of history lifting us up, bending us back again to justice.
But we are not suckers.  Or cowards.  Not liars.  Cheats.  Or creeps.
The bluebirds survive the winter, on their own, without him.
 They fly alone but flock together on the coldest nights.
 The moon rises and sets and shines bright in the night sky, rising at midnight.
The hoot-owls are calling in the dark, reminding us who we are.
Government depends on the consent of the governed.
The pendulum swings both ways.
After sorrow comes joy.
It doesn’t matter who sits at the desk.  It matters who walks the walk.
Don’t you tread on us.
The emperor has no clothes.
Many thanks to Lauren Hall for all-around help and support.
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