When in Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera”, the protagonist Macheath, a criminal with a soft heart for the lower classes of Victorian London, is being taken to the gallows, he recites a few iconic lines. Evidently, they make for a good copy-pasta template, for example as such:
MACHEATH: We will not keep the people waiting. Ladies and gentlemen, you see here the vanishing representation of a vanishing class. We <black people>, who work <in precarious jobs with no health or social security>, are being swallowed up by <a racist society> backed by <white corporations>. What is a picklock to a <corporation> share? What is the <looting> of a <corporation> to the founding of a <corporation>? What is the murder of a man to the employment of a man? Fellow citizens, I herewith take my leave of you.[…]
adapted from Bertolt Brecht: “The Threepenny Opera” [“Die Dreigroschenoper”]. Act III, scene 3.
Another of Brecht’s pieces, “The Solution”, gave a response to how the East German government dealt with the uprising of 1953. In a similar fashion, the short poem can become this:
After the uprising of the <26th of May>
adapted from Bertolt Brecht: “The Solution” [“Die Lösung”]
The <President of the United States of America>
Had <tweets sent out to the world>
Stating that the people
<had looted the country’s stores>
And could only <be met>
<with guns and violence>
Would it not in that case be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
However filled, the template connects the dots and gives a report on the present. In Brecht’s days as much as now, the demand for the protection of wealth and power is still being upheld when the protection of lives has long been given up – or sacrificed for the former.