Tuesday, March 23, 2021

A History of Violence...

 

Howard Moore, Chicago Now, December 14, 2017

© March 23, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Atlanta, Georgia to Boulder, Colorado,

A second mass shooting,

Within a week of each other,

During a pandemic,

 

Despite the disgraced

Corporate grifter,

(Not the one you’re thinking about)

But,

Not responsible anytime,

NRA’s

Wayne LaPierre

Armed societies are not “safer,”

Or, even remotely polite,

And, the NRA is broke as a joke,

Lacking cash infusion

From Vladimir Putin,

 

Active shooters,

Are the cousins of insurrectionists,

There has been a shooting

Of citizens,

Every year since the founding of the republic,

 

Chip Roy

Nostalgically remembers,

Texas lynchings,

Omitting

The racist caste system

That made its final decisions,

Or, the severed fingers,

Cut off ears and noses,

Burnt corpses,

Genital castrations,

Postcards with the images,

Of hanging men, and women,

Some of them visibly pregnant,

 

Native Americans,

Slaughtered by the same Union Army,

That won the Civil War

Abolishing De Jure slavery,

Southern terrorists,

In Klan hoods proto red hats,

Ensured De Facto slavery,

In the minstrel laws of Jim Crow,

 

So impressed were the Nazis,

At America’s history of violence,

Against its ethnic minorities,

Debates lasted hours, and days,

On how the Third Reich could implement it,

 

A 21-year-old man Robert Aaron Long, guilty of a hate crime, killing eight in Atlanta, Georgia,

Followed by a 21-year-old man Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, killing ten in Boulder, Colorado,

I guess, hypocritically,

With the name of the second shooter,

We might think this is a problem!

 

We haven’t learned or done anything different

From the UT Clock Tower sniper,

To Columbine,

Sandy Hook,

And Parkland,

 

Concealed carry,

Open carry,

In shopping centers,

And Starbucks,

Every surviving victim and parents,

Have to relive their traumas,

 

Making Jeff Bezos,

Other than Vladimir Putin,

The richest man in existence,

 

Caveat:

Malls and common spaces,

For humans to congregate,

Are slowly becoming,

Archaic,

Pretty soon,

Nobody’s going to go to the mall,

For their daily constitutional workout walks,

Or, taking strolls in the park,

 

The concept of “outside” will become a relic,

Of simpler times,

Something we’ll stream as we place orders online,

Answering every delivery door,

With 9mm Glocks,

AR-15s,

And Kalashnikovs,

Girl Scout cookies ordered on Zoom,

We are prophets of our [own] doom,

 

The assassinations of

Medgar Evers,

John F. Kennedy,

Malcolm X,

Martin Luther King,

Robert F. Kennedy,

The attempt on Ronald Reagan

By John Hinckley, Jr.,

To impress Jodie Foster,

(Who he now knows could have cared less about him)

Before Reagan in 1966,

Made Gene Roddenberry envision

A future beyond our petty divisions,

 

We can’t even get mask mandates right,

Admit climate change exists,

Let alone design starships,

 

The dumbest excuse

For not having gun control,

Is “criminals won’t follow it,”

 

News flash nitwit:

Criminals don’t follow ANYTHING!

 

We have laws against burglary,

Laws against murder,

Laws against theft of property,

Both natural and virtual,

Laws against cheating on your taxes,

That certain billionaires don’t think applies to them,

The purpose of laws is to set a standard,

Of what a nation won’t tolerate,

Setting out consequences,

If those rules [are] violated,

 

We established a national speed limit,

When I was eleven,

In 1973,

By Richard Milhouse Nixon,

By the time of his Watergate Waterloo,

Next year,

Traffic deaths dropped 17%,

After a LOT of speeding tickets,

More live than die with seatbelts,

We haven’t put airbags on a libertarian shelf,

 

So, let me know,

When the United Nations,

Declares an oxymoron,

The “United States,”

A banana republic,

Moves out of New York to Canada, or Europe,

The base of global currency changed from the US dollar to the Chinese Yuan:

 

And,

Anarchy reigns,

In the oxymoronic United States,

Roving bands of food raiders,

Resembling the zombie apocalypse,

Travel advisories,

Reading like documentation,

In third world countries,

To AVOID this nation,

 

Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” becomes a smoldering pile of feces,

Instead of “law and order,”

Badlands, and “survival of the fittest,”

 

Just let me know,

Whether your psychopathic fetish of the Second Amendment was worth it?


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