Confession...

 

© April 15, 2024, the Griot Poet

 

Source: https://www.britannica.com/technology/thermonuclear-bomb

 

September 15, 2001, was a Saturday.

We were all still reeling from the attacks on the Twin Towers that no longer existed,

The Pentagon had a sizable hole in it,

Every news outlet had “theme music,”

As pundits pontificated about Flight 93’s purpose when some “Let’s Roll” brave souls scuttled it.

 

“Pop, isn’t that where you went to school?”

 

My youngest son said it.

His older brother was at Prairie View, trying to figure it out.

We were in H-E-B getting groceries,

Before me, on the shelf,

On the top fold of the Austin American Statesman,

There was a photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, my classmate.

Under the caption of his photo was where he went to pursue his Mechanical Engineering degree:

North Carolina A&T State University.

The largest HBCU in the country and our Alma Mater.

 

Khalid and I were STEM majors,

He was in Mechanical Engineering, I was in Engineering Physics,

I was in my senior year, and he was a transfer student.

[And] we were taking a graduate-level course in Nuclear Physics.

The course was taught by Dr. Amin Haque (may he rest in peace),

Who explained that the reason why we were taking this upper-division course was to ensure the country had enough STEM students to manufacture thermonuclear weapons in case of a war with Russia.

 

“Who would SURVIVE a first exchange to manufacture ANYTHING?” I thought.

I kept my concerns mum.

I have since realized that the government used a competitive, captive audience of STEM students working on the same issue across the country, HBCUs, and PWIs, a youthful “think tank” with no salary.

 

Khalid and I were as different as two people could be,

 

He was a child of wealth; I was born into designed poverty.

He drove a Porch; I drove a Chevy.

He wore Birkenstock; I wore sneakers.

 

It wouldn't be an understatement to say that we said two words to each other throughout the semester.

 

We were both trying to graduate.

We both learned the intricacies of fission reactions,

Chain reactions are like billiard balls,

That fact was the basis for the Manhattan Project.

A fusion reaction requires enough force to push hydrogen atoms with the same positive charge into each other.

How would you do that, you wonder?

A mechanical disturbance causes the fission reaction,

Uranium 235 is the element,

That can happen in a laboratory or in a reactor.

The Hydrogen Bomb is a step above the ones,

Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

The fissile material is caged around a Nickel Cadmium core of Plutonium 239,

The explosions must be simultaneous,

For the fission chain reaction to compress the atoms in the Nickel Cadmium core,

A description I recognized reading the Tom Clancy novel, “The Sum of All Fears.”

"600 megatons of TNT,"

"Concussive shockwaves at supersonic speeds,"

Enough to flatten any municipalities,

Capable of murdering populations by the millions,

And the radiation: Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years.

And my senior project improved this killing machine by eleven percent.

 

Source: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

 

Khalid, my colleagues, and I were mastering the intricacies of Doomsday Devices.

Tearfully, I recounted the Vedic scripture,

J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted at the first test explosion:

 

“If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky.

That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...

(Now)

I [am] become Death,

The destroyer of worlds.”

 

I wept then for the children who hadn’t been born yet.

 

“Pop, isn’t that where you went to school?”

 

Yes, it was.

I was snapped back in the present, then September 15, 2001.

Still reeling from the attacks on 9/11,

And this was the face of my classmate, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,

Number three in Al Qaeda,

And I was dumbstruck in H-E-B.

I had to move along because someone behind me insisted on getting on with their shopping day.

 

I realized that for Khalid,

Everything he needed to accomplish his dark deed was public knowledge,

Figuring out how to burn down buildings was a mechanical engineering problem.

Not nearly as intricate as it was to build a thermonuclear device.

 

I recall getting an “A” in the course and for my senior project.

I assume Khalid did as well; he seemed intelligent.

Our paths diverged after graduation:

I took an oath to defend my nation,

Khalid joined Osama Bin Laden in the CIA-backed Mujahideen,

Encouraged by President Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Defending Afghanistan from Soviet invasion,

In what would soon become the textbook definition of blowback.

 

I stared at a familiar face.

I connected with him over the time and space of memories.

We were both in the same class in Nuclear Physics.

Like most upper-division majors, we were both just trying to graduate.

I was a pauper, and he was a prince.

We’re about the same age.

Khalid, my classmate, is in Guantanamo Bay.

My penance is Environmental Engineering.

After military communications and the semiconductor industry,

Using my STEM knowledge to make the world better for humanity,

And my family,

But for a moment in Greensboro, North Carolina,

Khalid and I were studying earnestly how to build Doomsday Devices.

Split Screen...

Was OJ Simpson's arrest and trial the beginning of reality TV - and Donald Trump's rise? Nick Bryant, BBC News, New York

 © April 12, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

I saw the Bronco Chase,

June 17, 1994,

We all watched it like a dark, communal ritual,

The eclipse of our innocence.

The slow meander on the California interstate,

I was witnessing the birth of sensationalism and spectacle.

I witnessed the rift between black and white citizens and how they would perceive the trial proceedings.

 

The trial lasted a year.

It was the “trial of the century.”

A “made for TV” drama.

This was the prototype for Court TV, “reality TV,” and streaming services.

We’re not quite processing how sociopathic this made our society.

 

My Frat brother, Johnny Cochran, was the lead attorney,

And on his team, a name that would go down in infamy: Robert Kardashian,

As his widow and his daughters would make a billion-dollar empire,

On the Shakespearean equivalent of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Contributing to the public disdain for being an expert at anything,

“Cosmos” by Carl Sagan lasted three years.

“Keeping Up With the Kardashians” has droned on for two decades.

 

Why learn a profession where eyeballs can make you billions?

It’s a strange way to remember the patriarch of their family.

It's ironic because Robert Kardashian was an excellent lawyer.

It's ironic because Robert Kardashian was part of what was dubbed “The Dream Team.”

 

Because of Detective Mark Fuhrman,

And the racial epithet he casually used,

Television censors were on point then,

And the “n-word” entered our lexicon.

 

Orenthal James Simpson,

He was the first post-Civil Rights sports superstar.

He made it a part of his persona to ignore its significance.

He was "respectability politics" before the term came into existence.

He wasn’t as militant as Cassius Clay cum Muhammad Ali,

Or Lou Alcindor cum Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

He reduced his moniker to “just OJ.”

From unusual names to two letters.

He proved himself to be a marketing genius.

 

He advertised Hertz Rent-A-Car.

Running through the kiosks,

So, he naturally had a part in Alex Haley’s semi-plagiarized autobiography, “Roots,” the original seven-part series,

When we thought, then, finally, there might be recognition and reconciliation before reparations.

That, of course, passed.

He was an actor, to boot.

He is as recognizable in “The Naked Gun” series as the star, Leslie Nielsen.

 

He was a guest on variety shows and celebrity interviews.

He dated Nicole Brown when she was barely legal.

Despite being the mother of his second marriage’s children, he was jealous of her beauty.

One domestic violence call to 911 found her with an imprint of his hand on her face.

The police shrugged and left.

 

I wept at the verdict.

Because I saw the eyes of so-called “white” people roll so hard to see their brain stems.

Because I saw so-called “black” people cheer, not that “The Juice” got away with murder but for my Frat brother, Johnny Cochran.

It was the fact that OJ could pay for expert lawyering, which many of us could not possibly afford.

 

Most of us go into the jaws of the beast,

Each time we go into the criminal “justice” system,

The Central Park 5 were almost railroaded into the electric chair by a full-page ad in the New York Times,

Exonerated by DNA evidence,

And the real predator confessing,

 

Kalief Browder, however, was mauled by the beast, committing suicide after three years of confinement without a “speedy trial” in sight.

He was framed for stealing a backpack that he didn’t steal.

 

Because we so-called “black” people have always known:

The system is broken.

It was always rigged against us and for the so-called “white” and privileged.

“1681,” the Bacon Rebellion, is when they invented a lie to divide us.

 

We have been waiting:

Since Crispus Attucks in 1776,

Since Medgar Evers in 1963,

Since Malcolm X in 1965,

Since Martin Luther King in 1968,

Since Rodney King in 1991,

After OJ in 1994 drove a Bronco in slow-mo.

 

Maybe,

After the slow white Bronco “chase,”

After an acquittal, that just didn’t seem right,

When he got sentenced for civil liability, you cheered just like you did when he was on the gridiron.

Did you cheer when the token respectability “golden boy” got off scot-free?

Dying after prostate cancer isn’t exactly dying peacefully,

But he did die, surrounded by family.

We thought:

Maybe you could finally see how a system rigged by rich people,

It might blow back in your collective faces.

 

But you didn’t.

And here we are,

Waiting for another rich celebrity to game a broken system on a “Stormy” Monday.

A former president goes on trial,

For hiding his secret affairs with an adult film actress and a playboy centerfold.

It wasn’t “hush money”: it was FEC violations, denying American citizens the RIGHT to know what character the man who arranged the scheme had who was RUNNING for president AFTER the Access Hollywood tape!

 

“Absolute immunity” is absolute nonsense.

But I expect that from a criminal whose only time he is not committing crimes is the few hours he’s sleeping.

Fingers crossed, on “Stormy Monday,” for justice.