Lament for the puppets and pawns

You dribble destinies like tears from your fingertips,
Holding hostage the feeble minds of ten million sleeping souls,
You offer for ransom your brothers and the truth
For the sake of a catchy phrase that will grab their attention,
Their emotion, their decisions.

You offer perspective and information, or so you claim,
But your perspective is skewed, your information chosen
And discarded on a whim, and your claims irrelevant.

You feed on mass hysteria, strengthened by shifting moods and trends,
You waver between whatever extreme is popular at the moment.

You tear open old wounds and wash them with cheap wine
That burns and stings but will never heal.

You fabricate empathy for villains and disdain for heroes,
You wake peaceful giants and then blame them for the havoc they cause.

You burn bridges like children play with matches,
With no concern for the damage you may create,
And then you build ten steps on a stairway to the stars
With no hope of ever seeing it complete.

You contemplate and speculate,
You satiate and devastate,
You abbreviate and aggregate,
And for reasons you've devised for your own selfish reasons
You lead the world you've blinded down your winding paths
To a dead end.