Cult of Ignorance...

 

Asimov’s original essay, Cult of Ignorance (PDF)

© September 9, 2023, the Griot Poet

 

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding [its way] through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

 

Isaac Asimov, 1980

 

I often hesitate to answer questions,

In casual conversations or on the Internet,

Posed by those who at first seem to be seeking knowledge,

Only to be barraged with epithets:

 

Grammar Nazi,

Smart ass,

“Uppity,”

“Woke.”

 

Because they weren’t seeking knowledge, but they were seeking an audience,

They weren’t looking for peer review but seeking validation.

They didn’t want information; they wanted confirmation bias!

When I would give my advice from experience,

That deflated what was already the fragile ego of a narcissist.

 

An analog from personal experience:

Major “Tommy” Tompkins and I were both stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas,

There wasn’t a day that went by that he would ask me:

 

“Well, Lieutenant Goodwin, what’s going on in Physics?”

I had a subscription to Physics Today magazine back then (I access it now on the Internet).

As he knew my background and major, Engineering Physics, I would gladly tell him,

Having conversations over coffee in a SCIF - a Special Compartmentalized Information Facility,

I was recently granted my Top-Secret clearance,

Entrusted with the nation’s secrets,

Attached to the 12th Tactical Intelligence Squadron as their Communications-Computer Systems Officer,

At Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas.

I saw the Internet in its infancy,

DARPA-NET sent the equivalent of text messages over Zenith computers with mainframes as big as small garages,

The IMP - interphase messaging processor - that we lugged around - 500 pounds, and as big as a gym locker: was the precursor to your 10-inch tall home router.

I made it my business to study all aspects of transmission: radio, microwave, and line of sight. troposphere scatter, and satellite,

I wrote communication plans for exercises and contingencies,

I took coursework on cryptography,

 

So, when I saw that Major Tompkins was about to call for frequencies outside our equipment’s bandwidth, I advised him against it.

 

“I don’t give a good goddamn about your ‘expertise’ lieutenant! I’m the major, and YOU’RE the ‘butter bar’: got it?”

 

Shocked at his Jekyll and Hyde personality switch, I said, “Yes, sir!”

 

Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”:

The exercise was a flop!

 

Neither our pilots nor Bergstrom flight control tower could talk to each other.

It’s a miracle that they didn’t crash into each other or commercial flights from Mueller!

 

Colonel Eugene Habba,

In charge of Command, Control, Communications, and Countermeasures,

 

Stormed into our tactical headquarters, bellowing:

 

“Who is responsible for this clusterfuck?”

 

To which, after saluting, I said:

“Colonel Habba, Major Tompkins!”

I got my hat and left!

 

I caught up with some pilot friends at the O Club,

They said, “Good, ‘WTFO,’” Air Force call sign for “what the fuck, over?”

I spilled the tea; their eyes rolled.

Major “Tommy” Tompkins was a boot licker, a ladder climber,

He was trying to take all the credit for the exercise,

Well, he got it!

Tommy, despite his narcissism, looked like a pear, especially from the snickering rear view of his butt,

They explained that their nickname for Tompkins because of his protruding stomach was “Jabba the Gut!”

For all of you “Star Wars” aficionados!

 

I laughed out loud - literally!

I needed that levity.

After Habba chewed what was left of his ass,

Major "Jabba" Tompkins put in for his retirement!

 

*****

 

It is a cult of ignorance when expertise is assailed as bullying.

 

It is a cult of ignorance when your side can’t admit to losing the Civil War or a presidential election.

 

It is a cult of ignorance when Dr. Fauci, Senator Romney, the FBI, the CDC Director, elected officials, and VOLUNTEER election workers must shell out dollars to protect their families from raving lunatics who believe every conspiracy theory Orwellian “truth-ed” at them!

 

It is a cult of ignorance when you print t-shirts that say, “fuck your feelings,” when put under the stress of information, YOU’RE the biggest snowflakes!

 

It is a cult of ignorance when climate scientists sounding the alarm to protect their families and the planet are supposedly lying to you, but fossil fuel companies are the “arbiters of truth.”

 

It is a cult of ignorance when everything about modernity you don’t like is “woke,” and you refuse to crack a book open out of sheer arrogance.

 

Banning books is a cult of ignorance. Yet, the number one way for the early deaths of children 0 - 17 is semiautomatic weapons - NOT libraries or drag queen shows - yet you refuse to do anything beyond vapid “thoughts and prayers” that you neither think nor utter.

 

Like Major Tompkins,

Your “Colonel Habba” moment is coming,

When the facts gob-smack you and bite you in the ass,

Ecclesiastes said, “There is no new thing under the sun,”

The Bard said, “What’s past is prologue.”

I await your retirement from public life,

As your stubborn stances have caused much strife,

Eventually, the true “children of light” will triumph,

As you fade away from existence,

And your destructive career in the cult of ignorance.

Cloth Diapers...

 

© September 11, 2023, the Griot Poet

Twin Towers image source: ABC Australia

Twenty-two years ago today,
The world was propelled unwillingly into the arms of blowback:
A Saudi Sheik, Osama Bin Laden,
Trained by the CIA in the Mujahadeen,
Convinced 19 men, 15 from his nation,
To willingly plunge top-fueled planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon,
Some "let's roll" Flight 93 passengers thwarted a fourth meant for the US Capitol.

Sixty years ago this week,
I was one year, one month and one day old,
On my mother's thirty-eighth birthday,
I was potty trained.
I was reminded of this,
Not that I would remember it after
I bragged to my big sister that my granddaughter was two and potty trained.

"We had cloth diapers back then. No one was playing with you, Reggie,"
Meaning: Changing cloth diapers, flushing the load, and WASHING them probably wasn't pleasant!
And the observation that disposable diapers might have delayed development.

On our mother's birthday,

I was one year, one month and one day old.
On that day,
Four girls were killed by white supremacists in the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, sixty years ago.

Growing old in my community is a privilege not afforded to many.
To this day, in 2023,
We rightly describe Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization,
Yet, the Department of Justice has no such designation for Nathan Bedford Forest's KKK,
Whose whole existence centered on terrorizing the newly freed and formerly enslaved into not voting in the best interests of their communities.

Two medical professionals,
Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider,
Shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Dr. Jack W. Szostak in 2009 "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

Let me translate:

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed.

Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/

The National Institute of Health found telomeres profoundly shortened in African Americans, corresponding to shorter lifespans of existence.

September 11, 2001, was on a Tuesday.
September 15, 1963, my mother's birthday, was on a Sunday.
Four little girls, who should be grandmothers, were practicing for a performance that day when domestic terrorists bombed their church.

Their reaction to the March on Washington on the anniversary of Emmitt Till's lynching.

And my mother and father, the day after, had to go to work on Monday.
(For them, "Father Knows Best," "Ozzie and Harriet," and Ward and June Cleaver in "Leave It to Beaver" did not exist as an option.)
After the news, they had to drop me off at the sitter and hope that they would see me again.
Attending church services (I was told) was understandably limited.
Living in fear of being killed for being black shortens your telomeres.
There is cause and effect, not "Curses of Ham" or divined magic.

Growing old in my community is a privilege.
We are 400 years tired of this terrorism.
For the "sin" of being brought here in chains for forced servitude.

It isn't "woke": It's history.
It isn't "book banning": It's psychopathy.

You CANNOT ban the book that is seared in my soul.

What's insanity is that the Department of Justice still refuses to designate Christian nationalists, the KKK, white nationalists, and white supremacist groups as domestic terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda.

As Americans finally experienced,
On September 11, 2001,
The psychological effects of the horrific fear of not knowing what calamity would end your existence.

Living in fear of being killed for the "sin" of being alive shortens your telomeres.

As my big sister observed:
This country needs more cloth diapers for our development.

Pools, Climate Change and Miscegenation...

 

Taken at Bethlehem Community Center by the author, spring 2023

© August 30, 2023, the Griot Poet

“Too few public pools

“There are more than 10 million private swimming pools in the United States, according to a C.D.C. estimate, compared with just 309,000 public ones. That figure includes pools that belong to condo complexes, hotels, and schools, so the number of pools truly accessible to the public is even smaller. The biggest reason so many Americans can’t swim is that they have too few places to learn to do so.

“Then the expansion stopped. In the 1960s, many towns across the South **filled or destroyed their public pools** rather than allow Black Americans to swim in them. Northern cities, strapped for resources amid suburbanization and white flight, struggled to maintain their pools. This is how public investment in pools withered, one more ghastly sacrifice America has laid at the altar of anti-Black racism and twisted fears about miscegenation.”

Mara Gay, New York Times

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/drowning-public-pools-america.html

I came to Earth via Kate Bitting Hospital,

Now, Reynolds Clinic,

On what used to be Seventh and Cleveland, now Cleveland and Martin Luther King Avenue.

The segregated hospital was named after the wife of RJ Reynolds, the tobacco magnate,

One of 12 hospitals for African Americans,

It’s where my mother worked as a nurse,

It, and all the others, no longer exists.

 

I attended Bethlehem Community Center for preschool and kindergarten.

It was, and is, right up the street from the hospital,

It was, and is, predominantly minority, with some immigrants,

We once had a pool where I learned to swim, to my big sister’s chagrin (she found out abruptly after I dove into the deep end of a then-segregated pool).

That pool is now closed.

On a recent visit to Bethlehem earlier this year, I saw the site where the pool once was now a surface cemented over.

 

My old neighborhood is still De Facto segregated.

I being a rare exception, some have been trapped in “The Racist Matrix” for generations.

A ghetto was brought over from Germany to the US.

After Germany put on steroids, American eugenics.

A place exquisitely designed to sequester possibilities and shatter dreams.

Black children are more likely to die from drowning,

Because if they HAD any pools in their neighborhoods, they’re cemented over.

If you’re lucky, someone’s dad (like mine) erects one of those plastic above-ground, temporary pools and invites your friends to come over, play, and cool off in it.

 

Occam’s razor:

Pair ceiled public pools with climate change,

The fear of water in black children,

The fear of miscegenation with white women,

Society has designed a slow crucifixion.

We’re barreling towards 3 degrees Celsius,

And the need for humans to keep cool in an ever-warming environment.

 

Who wins?

Which group has a survival advantage: 10 million private pools or 309,000 public ones?

Which groups are disadvantaged?

Are pools and universal healthcare inalienable human rights?

Or is this some National Security Study Memorandum 200/Thomas Malthus Eugenics strategy?

Or is their plan to keep a numeric majority to cook us before heaven or hellish eternities?

 

Who knows?

I just know that my granddaughter can swim because her parents can afford her lessons at a swim club [for] it.

It used to be that learning to swim didn’t require a middle-class wallet.

 

I just know that I attended,

Bethlehem Community Center from pre-k to kindergarten,

I learned how to read, how to swim, and how to grieve our loss of Dr. Martin Luther King,

As rifle shots rang out [and] confederate flags in the parking lot passed by our windows.

They were thrilled. We were devastated.

The same flag of insurrection was carried by their grandchildren at the US Capitol on January 6th.

The city of Winston-Salem left a cement surface like it was a marker to a tomb.

 

Even pre-k, to kindergarten:

Even there, in that innocence,

They couldn’t leave us alone...to swim.

Evilgelicals: an Update

Image Source: Amazon.com

 © August 10, 2023, the Griot Poet 

 

See my piece “Evilgelicals,” I wrote on January 25, 2021

 

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

 

Matthew 7:13 fulfilled.

 

After preaching a sermon on the words of Jesus,

Telling everyone to “turn the other cheek,”

You know,

The nonviolence on which Dr. Martin Luther King based his movement and philosophy,

Along with a sprinkle of Mahatma Gandhi,

The Sermon on the Mount that we all THOUGHT they believed,

A congregant asked the theologian:

“Where did you get those LIBERAL talking points?”

 

To which he replied:

“I’m [literally] quoting the words of Jesus.”

 

The reply from the congregant:

“Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak!”

 

Dumbfounded, the theologian didn’t know how to reply or speak.

 

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706

 

At one point, they considered swapping Jehovah for Odin,

 

Since the motivation is raw power, why not a barbaric deity to support it?

(But Jehovah, in all honesty, has had his moments.)

 

Source: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/1998/new-brand-racist-odinist-religion-march

 

To quote Russell Moore: “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”

 

Preacher, check this:

One out of six congregants have PAID for an abortion!

Let’s put some math to it:

The Southern Baptist Convention has 47,198 churches and 13.2 million members.

One divided by six is 16.7%,

This math means 2.2 million members have either had or encouraged an abortion.

 

Source: https://www.christianpost.com/news/1-in-6-churchgoers-have-had-or-encouraged-an-abortion-poll.html

 

“Scribes and Pharisees: Ye HYPOCRITES!”

 

Source: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023&version=ESV

 

We are beyond a crisis.

We have an influential religious sect that spouts conspiracy theories and intellectual pablum bullshit!

 

We are beyond belief that a religious sect,

That once claimed to be following brown-skinned Palestinian Prophets,

That once claimed to be about religious piety, “family values,” and “personal responsibility,”

Can with a straight face call themselves his sheep,

Sheep follow their shepherd,

Not go off half-cocked, QAnon crazy into the bizarro deep!

 

The “meek shall inherit the Earth,”

Not sociopaths strapped for combat,

Walking into Panera Bread and Starbucks,

With AR15s and grenade launchers slung over their backs!

 

Any movement, so armed to slay dragons,

When none, except Kimono, actually exists,

They are poised for violence,

They are poised for a tumultuous crash,

A crisis from which they will not recover [and] will likely no longer exist.

 

What they feared was enough for them to sell what was left of their souls to an orange devil,

 

Quoting myself:

“They should stop perpetuating the biggest lie,

They’re not following brown-skinned Palestinian prophets,

Who’s neck they’d stretch or likely stomp on,

They wanted to throw out the votes of the “least of these,”

The actual “meek of the Earth” that looks like him,

[And elevate the “thieves in the temple,”]

They’re worshiping their [own] lack of Melanin,

[They’re worshiping their [own] reflection,]

The “Golden Calf” in their Sinai Desert,

The altar of white supremacy,

Cremation altars of “I [really] don’t care” (do you?)

Separating brown-skinned youth from their parents,

Pitching children and the future through the flaming altar of Moloch,

Or, Rio Grande barbed wire death traps!

 

They are:

Anti-Arts,

Anti-Education,

Anti-History,

Anti-Immigrants,

Anti-Science,

Anti-BIPOC,

Anti-Love,

Anti-LGBT,

Anti-Muslim,

Anti-Semitic,

Anti-Woke,

Anti-Women,

Anti-HUMAN!

Following their cult leader over the abyss into oblivion,

 

Evangelicals: (n) “of, relating to, or agreeing with the Christian gospel especially as it is in the four Gospels.” Merriam-Webster

 

These apostates are EXACTLY the opposite!

 

Of the Roman Emperor Domitian,

The self-proclaimed “Lord and God” and ruthless dictator reigned from CE 81 to 96,

John on the Island of Patmos coded his critique,

By numbering his name as “Six-hundred, threescore, and Six,”

I don’t know if John was speaking about future events,

But it is [quite] obvious,

For there to be an Antichrist,

He must first have anti-Christians!