Thirty-Nine Minutes...

 

Langston Hughes: https://x.com/nettieb/status/1741340715353805107

© October 16, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

For 39 minutes,

He decided to stop taking questions,

Or talking,

He “danced” to what I guess was his Spotify list.

I got “It’s a Man’s World” by Godfather of Soul, James Brown because of his instinctual misogyny.

But has anyone ever told him the LGBT origin of the Village People disco hit, “YMCA?”

 

“Young man, there's no need to feel down

“I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground

“I said, young man, 'cause you’re in a new town

“There's no need to be unhappy

“Young man, there's a place you can go

“I said, young man when you're short on your dough

“You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find

“Many ways to have a good time.”

 

Because, when this song came out, he WAS young.

And now, he’s the oldest candidate to run for the office.

 

Freudian slip much, Sparky?

You’re kind of admitting that you’re sad, and broke.

My friend, Lost in Thought,

May have had his moniker “rhythmless nation” stolen,

With Propecia dead ferret head,

Bobbing and weaving like a rusty weathervane,

In a very public example of decomposition:

 

Definition: “Mental health decompensation is when a person's mental health worsens, often due to stress, and they can no longer maintain their normal functioning. It can occur when a person's coping mechanisms fail to handle a new stressor, or when there are changes in medication or treatment.”[1][2]

 

He doesn’t have a clue.

He’s not the “father of IVF,” he’s the grand dragon of abortion bans!

He doesn’t have a plan to solve the world’s complex problems.

Remember: He has “concepts of plans.”

For example: “Infrastructure Week,” which never happened.

He starts “weaving” when his mind loses the plot.

He would rather wave his hands and ignore problems.

He’d rather traffic in conspiracy theories than listen to experts and take instructions.

 

His latest public pancake at the Chicago business forum with Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait,[3]

He reminds anyone who ever taught any subject in high school,

When the student shows up unprepared and tries to bluff his way through it.

He’s the kind who would pull a fire alarm, or phone in a bomb threat to get out of taking a test.

 

Yet,

The election is a “horse race,”

Because that’s how corporate media wants to frame it.

Between an overqualified woman, and a mentally disturbed lightweight.

 

Who sees his path to victory diminishing.

Don’t take anything for granted and opt out of voting.

Like the “purists” in 2016,

Did they know that 2020 and COVID-19 would happen?

The “purists” who pulled the lever for the wasted votes on Gary “Aleppo” Johnson[4] and Jill Stein,[5]

The latter appears to be back to cash her second check from Putin and interfere with this election.

I have no idea what Cornel West is doing!

 

He decompensated for 39 minutes.

Because his mind terrifyingly couldn’t focus.

He was slurring before we all got to see his swaying dervish.

He knew he couldn’t talk anymore and opted for listening to music.

He focused more when he launched a mob on the Capitol,

And sat on his ass for 187 minutes,

He was watching the destruction of our secular temple on flat screens with DVR replay.

Because like pyromaniacs, he glees at watching everything burn.

 

Matthew Remski,

Has written about the connection between toxic yoga instructors and conspiracy theories,

 

As stated in his observation on “X”:

“Him surrendering tonight's Q&A to 30 minutes of his fave songs while standing on stage, awkwardly conducting at times, echoes MANY instances of cultic leaders who, exhausted, ill, and at the end of their cognitive rope, outsource their emotional dominance subroutines.”

 

Or, in this case, to music.

He promptly canceled a likely softball interview on CNBC.

 

Because his mind is broken.

Yet, some want this broken man to have the nuclear codes.

He or his campaign canceled the interview.

Because he would be compared to his more qualified opponent who agreed to an interview on his (former) FAVORITE news outlet!

 

He’s selling $60 Bibles MADE in China!

He’s selling $99 NFTs with his anatomy modified to superhero proportions!

He’s selling $400 sneakers that might as well be called “Air Treason!”

Taylor Swift wrote a 5 million dollar check for Helene victims, but “I’m [really] rich” had his staff start a GoFundMe!

 

Yes. This to a point, is sad, and funny.

But:

Don’t underestimate the Republicans.

They will try to drag him across the finish line, Fugue State,[6] or not.

And before he gets his narcissistic ticker-tape parade,

His hand-picked Vice President,

Will invoke the 25th Amendment,[7]

And install himself as President.

The orange fascist to save face will pretend that was the “plan all along.”

All the former “Party of Lincoln” cares about is power.

 

Despite his bluster, he’s aware that could happen.

Despite his bluster, he knows that he’s losing.

Despite his bluster, he’s worried that he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

So, Home Slice has a lot to worry about!

 

Check your registration.

Still vote, early if you can.

(The cool thing is, once you vote, you’ll stop being texted by both parties!)

 

“A vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and [for] our children, and I think our prayers are stronger when we pray together.” Senator Raphael Warnock

 

Vote for the future you want.

Vote for the climate.

Vote for bodily autonomy.

Vote for IVF.

Vote for Candi Miller[8] and Amber Nicole Thurman.[9]

Vote for justice.

Vote for democracy.

Vote for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

E Pluribus Unum.

Thank you, Langston Hughes: We too, are Americans. Let’s end this!

---

[1] Decompensated schizophrenia: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/decompensated-schizophrenia

[2] Related video: https://youtu.be/3d4vpYLi39Y?si=oicfHiTgp0luFunl

[3]  Bloomberg Interview: https://thehill.com/business/4934768-trump-bloomberg-interview/

[4] Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson: ‘What is Aleppo?’ https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/gary-johnson-aleppo-227873

[5] Jill Stein Defends Appearance At Russian Dinner With Putin, https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/jill-stein-russia-fbi-investigation-jon-keller-wbz-tv/

[6] Dissociative Fugue: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/22836-dissociative-fugue

[7]  The 26^th Amendment: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv

[8] Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died. Kavitha Surana, https://www.propublica.org/article/candi-miller-abortion-ban-death-georgia

[9] Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable. Kavitha Surana, https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-amber-thurman-death

Treason...

Benedict Arnold - Biography and image on Britannica 

© October 9, 2024, the Griot Poet 

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

Giving COVID tests to Putin when no other Americans had them?[1]

No vaccines and thousands per day were dying?

Our options were the horse wormers hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin?

Our options were shining lights up our rectums and drinking bleach?

That’s beyond special: It’s sadistic.

How many examples do you need to compare competence and insanity?

 

The GRU, Russian intelligence, is flooding your social media feed with bullshit.

Just like they did in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022.

You’re confused about what sources of information to trust: that’s the goal of it.

 

So-called “strongmen” are malignant narcissists.

They hide behind football field-length desks and take shits in golden toilets because they want to be worshipped as deities.

Satire, poetry, comedy, etc. is supposed to ridicule power.

For the “strongmen,” that is violence to their feeble egos pretending to be bigger than their fears.

Because of how they feel, they respond with actual violence.

 

By poisoning former agents in foreign countries.

Or, by gunning down opponents in red square or throwing them out of building windows.

By ignoring the death toll of a pandemic.

By tying assisting states with ventilators on which ones voted for him.

Or by pointing a mob at the Capitol to murder his Vice President.

Or by terminating The Constitution as soon as it’s inconvenient.

 

Treason (noun): betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.

 

Like on January the Sixth.

By the way:

Private citizens doing diplomacy is a violation of the Logan Act.[2]

Yo, Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland!

He’s stacking more crimes than he’s stacking Benjamin’s!

 

4,500 FBI tips, the previous administration said to “not find any corroborating evidence” of Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.[3]

Which put “I like beer” Brett on the Supreme Court,

Overthrowing 50 years of precedent,

And bodily autonomy for every single woman.

Remember, remember the 5^th of Roevember.

Because he wants poor women to die in childbirth,

And brute-forcing rich white women to goose the number of white babies to stave off the demographic time bomb set after the 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion.[4]

 

“Benedict Arnold’s” indebtedness led him to betray his nation in an act of treason.[5]

The Bard said in The Tempest, “Past is prologue.”

Reversing this Manchurian Candidate’s name is an action verb: “Trump Donald!”

This is what every cognizant citizen has to do with their votes this election.

 

Eugenics = great replacement theory.

Which was a philosophy of racist South Afrikaners.

Famous billionaire South Africans who “fled” as children:

PayPal founder, Peter Theil,

David Sacks, anti-Ukraine troll and fundraiser for the orange fascist,

And Elon Musk.

All left Apartheid South Africa after Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.

Which probably means they were okay with his 27-year incarceration.

 

Who joked with Tucker Carlson about the sitting president and vice president hasn’t been in an assassination attempt, because “why bother?”

I guess to the destroyer of the platform formerly known as Twitter, they’re not “important” enough.

Who leaped like a jelly-belly fanboy in Pennsylvania.

(Probably the ketamine kicking in on all cylinders)

The only reason “X” is his social media site’s symbol is because the swastika was already taken!

 

In case you were longing for “the party of Reagan,”

“The Gipper” gave us “young bucks,” “welfare queens” and “African monkeys” as racist tropes.

Bishop Desmond Tutu called Reagan’s policies towards his country “immoral, evil, and [totally] un-Christian.”

 

What conservatives call “freedom” is deregulation that benefits their rich donors.

It rips away bodily autonomy from women.

It means defining marriage as between one white man and one white woman (exception: their side-chicks).

Everyone else is serfs in this neo-confederate republic where the only votes counted are cast by “rich, propertied white men.”

 

It’s why they went from a B-Movie actor to a has-been reality show business grifter,

After six bankruptcies, THREE from casinos!

The original idea was to have rotating billionaires: no one else wanted to do it.

Mark Burnett gave a platform to a malignant narcissist.

In the SNL skit, “Hillary, Actually,” the actress, Kate McKinnon, gave a prophecy on cue cards in 2016: “But keep in mind, if Donald Trump becomes president, he will kill us all.”

After Leopold’s 10 million and Hitler’s 6 million murders, Mr. Fix It proudly declares “Hold my beer!”

His followers are a lethal combination of sociopathy, stupidity, bigotry, evil, and a chaser of willful ignorance.

 

Biggie Smalls said: “If you don’t know, now, you know!”

His cult says, “We don’t know, and we don’t want to know!”

 

His cult ignores his crimes as he openly admits to them.

All conmen despise their marks for being stupid enough to believe them!

By lying about FEMA in North Carolina and Florida, he’s jeopardizing areas that would vote for him!

 

“Owning the libs” might be our species’ epitaph.

“Dictators for a day” tend to extend their tenures to infinity and their progeny.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is utopia for morons!

Vote against this treasonous being.

Vote and save the human species.

I end this piece with the same quote I began with:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

---

[1] Kremlin Confirms Trump Sent Putin COVID-19 Tests While President, TIME

[2] The Logan Act, 18 U.S. Code § 953.

[3] Trump White House curtailed FBI's Kavanaugh probe, report finds, Avery Lotz, Axios

[4] Inventing Black and White, Facing History and Ourselves

[5] Benedict Arnold: A Name Synonymous With Treason, source: Intel.gov.

Othering...

 

Image Source: "How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice," Kendra Cherry, MS Ed. Very Well Mind Dot Com

© September 14, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

King Leopold,

Othered the Indigenous people of [the] Congo,

For the harvest of sugar cane, ivory, rubber, and minerals,

He commissioned the chopping of hands and limbs when they fell behind in production,

Making him insanely rich because of his callous disregard for them.

His monstrous behavior resulted in his murdering 10 million people.

 

Blood libel,

Was the false accusation that Jewish people used the blood of Christians in religious rituals.

Particularly, the blood of children.

Using it with Passover bread,

This lie was perpetrated throughout the Middle Ages until the early 20th Century.

When the othering by the Nazis resulted in 6 million deaths.

 

Labeling abortion healthcare as murder, “other’s” women who were the victims of incest, rape by biological or stepfathers, brothers, uncles and cousins.

It others the OB/GYN who went to college to provide it.

Self-righteous extremists screaming at women getting healthcare at abortion clinics.

Leading Scott Roeder to slaughter Dr. George Tiller in his church, on a Sunday, serving as an Usher.

Because Bill O’Reilly nightly referenced him as “Tiller, the Baby Killer” on Fox (not) News.

Like Sarah Palin’s “don’t retreat, reload” and gunsights on her website over Democratic headquarters causing Jared Lee Loughner to fulfill her twisted mantra,

Causing the permanent injury to Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Senator Mark Kelly’s wife, and the death of a nine-year-old girl on her ninth, and last birthday.

 

“Furries” was an Internet rumor.

It’s the crazy, insane notion that some children want to only defecate in litter boxes.

I didn’t believe someone could believe it until I heard this at a dinner party.

Most of us have photographic instruments in our pockets.

Where’s the evidence of this unique phenomenon?

It’s a tactic to other the trans community, especially children who we now know have Gender Dysphoria.

 

It sounds insane for a presidential candidate to accuse Haitian immigrants of eating dogs, cats, and recently added, geese.

Another Internet rumor that was fed to him by a 9/11 “truther.”

That he had with him at the New York memorial.

Question for evangelicals: Where was his wife?

9/11 “truthers” are as insane and othering as Obama “birthers.”

It sounds like the insane ranting of a madman.

Fun fact: “MAGA” means sorcerer in Latin.

His dark incantations have a desired outcome.

Haitian immigrants are being forced to pull their kids out of school,

In Springfield, Ohio, due to bomb threats.

Ohio is an open carry state, with self-appointed vigilantes anxious to “be a hero” and exercise the Second Amendment.

Haitian immigrants are legally in the United States for employment.

Fleeing the hell hole left behind by Europeans.

 

Othering (verb): view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.

 

Oneself is a member of the dominant culture.

 

Leopold was a proto-capitalist cum fascist.

Blood libel endangered the Jews.

Abortion as a monstrosity fostered bomb threats and murder of providers in churches.

“Furries,” that don’t exist.

Now, a new blood libel on Haitian immigrants, whose only sin is being descendants of the only successful rebellion against French colonizers.

Haiti is poor because of having to pay Paris “reparations” for lost property - ironic.

 

This is stochastic terrorism.

This is a mob boss “speaking in code,” as pointed out by Michael Cohen.

 

You can’t directly blame him for the heinous actions of his cult followers.

He’s several degrees of separation from the mayhem his dictation causes.

He’s going to exercise the emotionally disturbed, who have the same Second Amendment rights as normal citizens.

The same access to bomb-making materials.

Leaving him technically innocent.

Because his tiny hands are bloodless,

You legally can’t blame him.

 

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44

 

Jesus was bearing witness to the active plot to assassinate him.

After pointing out that his accusers were sinful when they wanted to stone a woman,

A woman caught in “the very act of adultery” they all had participated.

Before a kangaroo court of his Jewish peers in front of the Sanhedrin bruised him beyond recognition.

Before handing him over to the Roman state, which was occupying Jerusalem.

Before the Roman state hung him on a tree in an act of terrorism.

As lynchings for any man of color, betrayed by his own, has always been.

Southern, and Near Eastern trees have always borne “strange fruit.”

“Blood on the leaves, blood on the root.”

And no amount of pious handwashing by Pontius Pilatus, or feverous gaslighting by Combover Caligula absolves either of them of guilt!

 

Making your enemies monsters is the first step towards killing them.

Sometimes you must bear witness to the callous and evil act of othering.

Vote. Let’s end this.

Sane Washing...

 © September 10, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Matthew 23:27

 

That statement resulted in a man of color, the world’s first documented Civil Rights worker, executed by the Roman state.

 

Words like these are powerful and threatening to hierarchies and corrupt societies.

 

Mansplaining (noun): the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.

 

Because what he fears is comparison to a more qualified woman,

Finding him wanting in preparation and experience.

It’s a tool used by abusers, gas lighters, and colonizers,

Because to enforce a brutal psychological hierarchy,

You must constantly convince the designated pariahs to “stay in their places.”

The proper place is beneath their boots and contempt.

They must define themselves as being closer to godhood,

And the common folk can never be like them.

That’s why they isolate themselves in Ivy League colleges,

And Levitt Towns with restrictive covenants,

De facto by exorbitant housing prices,

When all they see are their Stepford selves,

It’s easy to get full of your self-importance.

Any threat to that contrived existence will be dealt with by social and actual violence.

 

He talks about “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

As if Thomas Harris’s cannibal psychopath was a real person.

He opines about whether he wants to die by electrocution on an electric boat or being eaten by a shark!

He tried to redirect [a] hurricane with a Sharpie!

He tried to blow up one with a nuke.

He told Californians suffering climate change forest fires to “rake them.”

At a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina he said: “Yesterday, we heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia…a Rhee, be, do, gah!”

He said illegal aliens were eating dogs and cats like he was quoting an episode from the TV sitcom Alf!

By the way: “Abortion after birth” is called a school shooting!

“Thoughts and prayers” haven’t solved that.

 

At the Economic Club of New York:

“Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because look, childcare is childcare is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you must have it – in this country, you [have to] have it.”

Excuse me: What the hell was that?

 

Dr. William T. Kelly from Penn State’s Wharton School of Business said that he was “the dumbest goddamn student [he] ever had!”

This is why “stable genius” had his [then] fixer, Michael Cohen, threaten all his schools to “not release his grades or transcripts.”

He said he graduated at the “top of his class,”

But he’s not listed Summa Cum Laude in his commencement address.

I would say he graduated “Thank you, Laude,” but he’s stuck at Two Corinthians.

Are “concepts of a plan” the new “binders full of women?”

 

But let’s push out his opponent, three years older who happens to stutter.

 

And, like Hillary Clinton, analyze his Vice President’s laugh, when her weird opponent never seems to.

 

Sane-washing (noun): The superfluous act of taking nonsensical word salad and blanching it like kale until it’s discernible as human speech.

 

Face it:

The Fourth Estate was on life support during the Vietnam conflict.

The Fourth Estate died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The corporate media was more interested in making money and pumping the profits of the military-industrial complex.

Bloggers were more accurate than the Washington Post and the New York Times.

So are their natural descendants, podcasts.

Poets have always put the truth on full blast.

 

Eric Blair, pen name George Orwell said it best:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

 

Why not “deconstruct the administrative state?”

Why not promote “alternative facts?”

Why not promote a bloody conflict if he lost?

Why not a personality cult zombie apocalypse?

 

He is a tool of the 1%.

Actual billionaires laugh at him.

The 400 million Daddy gave him would be 150 billion if he had sat on his ass and done nothing!

His “wheeling and dealing” has always been Ritchie Rich cosplay,

He never fully knew what the hell he was doing.

His father bought 3.5 million in poker chips at one of his three failed casinos (out of six bankruptcies), and never placed bets on them!

Some would call that money laundering.

 

He’s at the tail end of wealth distribution on a bell curve.

The only reason he’s rich is because he refuses to pay his creditors or do a profit and loss statement.

 

Every characteristic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder,

Particularly the malignant kind,

He checks off the DSM-5 list effortlessly.

Corporate media ignores his failings because they are acquiescing to fascism,

Before, the line gets too long to include them!

Before they wind up in the gulags with the rest of us.

 

Anyone worse than him is going to be our mass extinction!

Sane-washing is the last stage of patriarchy before Entropy collapses it.

 

Every movement that brought us forward has always been met with backlash.

Check your voter registration and vote early.

Volunteer and work through November 5^th.

Lower your shoulders and push back.

But as we embrace and shape the future:

“We’re not going back!”

Fact of Life...

 

Colt Gray, Colin Gray's Mug Shots Released After Georgia School Shooting, Newsweek

© September 8, 2024, the Griot Poet

“Tyrants overthrown: 0

“Co-workers, students, spouses, store clerks * et al: near ∞

“And we cower

“Kowtowed by lobbyists’ power

“NRA clout and dollars

“Make our representatives “want to holler”

Scoreboard, July 23, 2012

 

“Death is a sure thing, but life is just as certain. The problem is you can’t know in advance.

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Toni Morrison, February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019

Fuck your “thoughts and prayers!”

“I... can’t... breathe!”

“Between mass shootings

“Not 24 hours after twenty souls were

“Dearly Departed

“By another white domestic terrorist

“In El Paso, Texas”

Carnage, August 19, 2019

“Sports commentator

“Jemele Hill’s saved tweet,

“Sums up our national sociopathy:

“Quoting Dan Hodges: “In retrospect, Sandy Hook marked the END of the gun control debate. Once America decided that killing children was bearable, it was over.”

“Children,

“[Who] on December 14, 2012,

“[Had] every right to dream about a white Christmas: they lived in Connecticut,

“And New England is known for its winter weather.”

Killing Fields, February 15, 2023

 

Governor Bill Lee tweeted:

“I am closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant, & the Tennessee Department of Safety & Tennessee Highway Patrol are assisting local law enforcement & first responders at the scene.

“As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.”

“After three students and three adults,

A teacher, a substitute, and a custodian,

All in their sixties died in a Christian school,

“Thoughts and prayers” are oxymoronic,

“But so is signing legislation against drag shows, which to date:

“Drag shows are voluntary activities.

“No one’s died, ever.”

Thoughts and Prayers, March 29, 2023

 

I am tired of writing about mass shootings.

On the 58th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek.

A fantasy of society evolving to a “more perfect union.”

They’re becoming more frequent than Braxton-Hick’s contractions.

 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told grandparents to “take one for the team” during COVID-19 to open the economy as our corpses froze in eighteen-wheelers.

The libertarian fascist set wants to raise the retirement age to 72, to get us closer to death.

The answer to rising childcare costs is for the aforementioned “take one for the team” and work until you drop grandparents are supposed to “take up the slack” by being what: zombie corpses skilled at diaper changing?

The fact of my life is my granddaughter just started kindergarten.

 

Every piece I’ve written was to avoid the eventual day she started learning how to escape and evade,

Play the quiet game,

Text her parents to tell them that she’s okay until the PTSD nightmares begin.

 

A gun enthusiast [obviously] named Colt Gray.

Let me give some perspective:

At fourteen, I was in Army JROTC and joined the Rifle/Pistol Team.

To get on the rifle range, we all had to join the NRA,

Before Wayne LaPierre got his grubby hands into it, they took care of the gun range safety training, and that was it.

“Point the barrel of your weapon down range.”

“Always wear your eye and ear protection.”

“Practice BRASS: breath, relax, aim, slack (the trigger finger), squeeze (the trigger finger): repeat.”

And,

“Never point your weapon at anyone at any time.”

Most importantly:

“Put your weapon in the gun safe on exiting the range.”

We trained with 38-caliber pistols,

World War 1 M1A1 bolt action rifles,

And the Mike-One-Six long rifle.

Which has a muzzle velocity of 3,100 feet per second,

5.56mm NATO (.223) caliber cartridge

And has a maximum effective range of 600 yards. It has a rate of fire of approximately 800 rounds per minute.

This class scared the living shit out of fourteen-year-old me,

But I’m betting Colt Gray never heard it.

 

The precursor of this personal weapon of mass destruction was the Armalite 15 Assault Rifle.

The AR and the Mike-One-Six can punch a hole the size of a fist in front of a human body and rip the back out on its exit.

Which is why we had deep respect for the power that we wielded,

This is why we haven’t seen any aftermath photos of gun massacres from Columbine to Sandy Hook.

A Mike-One-Six in Vietnam could tear down concrete walls if you let it.

 

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.”

AP News: https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-georgia-shooting-7d7727a1aff8491f66914a4d8a14cd8c

 

Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde: all had “bolstered security” with resource officers.

 

Mr. Vance,

I must [respectfully] disagree,

Our society for letting this carnage go on and on is psychotic.

The fact of my life is my grandbaby who just started kindergarten.