Babylon Votes

Notes

By the editor.

1. Babylon is Revelation's name for the great city of corrupt power: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen” (Revelation 18:2, KJV). Rastafari carried the word into modern use for Western society and the systems that oppress, and “Chant down Babylon” is their name for resisting it. The poem uses it for a state whose two parties are two faces of the same city. source ↩
2. Political scientists call this affective polarization: people feel warmly toward their own party and negatively toward the other, which raises hostility and cuts the will to compromise. It has risen in several countries, and a study of the 2022 US elections found that partisan animosity stayed high after the vote whether a voter's candidate won or lost. source ↩
3. The opening of Psalm 137 (KJV): “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” It is the exiles' lament after Nebuchadnezzar II's siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC. The poem closes on that weeping, turned toward neighbours instead of Zion. source ↩