Viva Death
It started as a Viva Bush campaign pin — the Spanish cheer on an American button, handed out by the thousand to court Spanish-speaking conservatives. Inclusive language, in place of equitable policy. Swap the name and the same cheer votes for something else: Viva Death, long live the one outcome no campaign has ever run on. Red, white and blue changed to greyscale.
Blown up to a drawing, the button stops being a button. What is left is a circle split into positive and negative, each half carrying the other's mark — a yin-yang. The slogan supplies the two halves: viva is life, long live, and death is what it is asked to celebrate. Life and death set in the same ring, each holding the other in place, which is what the pin was quietly doing all along.
Thirty-two inches square, thirty-three framed. The number has its own following — the masonic degree, the age, the figure people reach for when they want a measurement to mean more than it does.
Series: Entropy