Competition 3366 took inspiration from the Bandar-log in The Jungle Book, those monkeys who chant: ‘We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.’ You were invited to riff on this last sentence. Donald Trump cropped up a bit, presumably because his utterances have a Bandar-log ring to them. There were a lot of excellent entries, and too many runners-up to namecheck everyone, but the winners get £25.
Like wolves we keep within the pack,
Cohesion’s our priority,
We’ve no desire to stray off track
Or break from the majority.
We think as one, we act en bloc
And follow where the others go,
It’s never wise to run amok
Or fight against the status quo.
Kipling’s ‘If’ is not for us,
We’re safer sticking with the clan,
Why risk one’s neck and cause a fuss
In order to be called a man?
Best toe the line, go with the flow
And never take one’s own sweet way.
It’s common sense, we all say so
And so it must be true, we say.
Alan Millard
Walking on the moon? Give us a break!
‘A thirty billion dollar swindle’ grew,
We theorists know the whole thing was a fake,
We all say so, and so it must be true.
Reptilian humanoids are now in charge –
No, don’t dismiss our words as ballyhoo,
The lizard people keep their camouflage
And rule the globe; we know it must be true.
When Paul McCartney died in sixty-six
You settled for a lookalike, that’s who
They hired to fool you with their scheming tricks –
We all say so, and so it must be true.
The world’s a sphere? Forget it, you’re deceived,
It’s pancake-flat, that’s the enlightened view,
So cheer up, folks, I’m sure you’ll be relieved
You won’t fall off, we say it so it’s true.
Sylvia Fairley
We all say so, and so it must be true.
We know more than the ‘experts’, more than you.
If proof we need, then proof is what we’ll find
From So-and-so or What’s-her-name, whose mind
Reflects our thinking and our own world view.
We need not check the facts nor look anew
At whether what we think is madly skew.
When doubters ask for sources of some kind
We all say ‘So-and-so. It must be true.’
We throw off other theories, though they grew
From ‘scientific thought’ – and ‘logic’ too,
But sometimes I suspect that we’re inclined
To take on board stuff that’s best left behind,
Asking: is what we think that’s been formed through
‘We all say so, and so it must be’ … true?
David Blakey
Stiffing Kipling, our shop steward, Sid Cudgel, claimed the phrase as his own by right of repetition. ‘We all say so,’ he would bellow, bludgeoning closed yet another meeting at which he had been the sole speaker, ‘and so it must be true.’ What had ‘we all’ said by means of composite motion, enforced hands-up vote and peroration from Cudgel? That we were overworked, underpaid and stood inexplicably foursquare behind Nicaraguan baristas,we gathered thereafter. In the end, disgruntled at the pub, we conceived the idea of forming a break-away Union, isolating the bullying Cudgel. Carefully, collegiately, we penned a letter to Sir Greville, the factory’s Managing Director, requesting recognition without the ludicrously excessive demands Cudgel pressed. Having consulted the Board, Sir Greville strode into the pub the following night. ‘Are we recognised?’ a shout went up. ‘We all say so,’ Sir Greville smiled, ‘and so it must be true.’
Adrian Fry
Roadsong of the MAGAs
Here we are on the hottest day;
Everyone’s welcome but not if you’re gay.
Don’t you envy our face paint, our Jim Crow flags?
They call us weird but we weather those tags.
We live by the rule of alternative facts
And boo the hundreds of fake news hacks.
Our truth is bestest – so give us our due –
We all say so, so it must be true.
Wouldn’t you love to have friends like ours?
Rows of us marching through sunshine and showers?
Baloo, Bagheera, Akela and Kaa,
All gathered to worship from near and afar.
Our guru King Louis’s tweets motor the polls;
They’ll keep him on top in spite of the trolls.
If not he’ll win bigly by staging a coup,
We all say so, so it must be true.
Ralph Goldswain
I poked my head round the door. ‘Is this the Independent Thinking seminar?’ I said.
It was. There were 20 people inside, sitting in rows facing a young woman speaker. I took a seat.
‘…no one can tell you what to think,’ the woman was saying. ‘Independence is your most precious possession. What’s our mantra?’
Twenty people repeated: ‘We all say so, and so it must be true.’ I sniggered. They stared at me.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked the woman.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s like the Monty Python scene where the crowd chants “We are all individuals” and one guy says “I’m not.”’
There was silence. No one laughed.
‘You are a disruptive element and must be dealt with,’ the woman said.
‘What?’
‘Disruptive element. We all say so, and so it must be true,’ they chorused in a menacing monotone.
Someone got up, walked to the door and locked it.
Joseph Houlihan
No. 3369: Smalls miracle
Recently there was an ‘underwear storm’ in Chongqing, when freak winds whipped bras and pants off laundry lines and into the air. You’re invited to imagine the telling of this or some other similarly strange real event centuries hence, once it has become legend (150 words max). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 25 September.
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