W. G. M...

 

Amazon.com: The Ways of White Folks, by Langston Hughes (a photo of my copy)

© February 19, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Conservatism is a political clown show,

For modern GOP political theory

“Owning the libs” is the primary thesis,

Boiling down to white grievance minstrelsy,

 

For minstrelsy, I’m not talking about what you’re thinking:

 

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American form of racist entertainment developed in the early 19th century, consisting of comic skits, various acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people of African descent. Performed by mostly white people in make-up or blackface, depicting us as dim-witted,[1] lazy,[1] buffoonish,[1][2] superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.[1]

 

No, no, no!

 

I’m talking about the original meaning:

 

A minstrel was a medieval European entertainer. Initially describing any entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer, or fool, the term later, from the sixteenth century, came to mean a specialist [entertainer] who sang songs and played musical instruments.

 

“Little Bob Corker,”

“Jeff Flakey,”

“Low Energy Jeb,”

“Little Marco,”

“Evan McMuffin”

Added by Joe Scarborough: “Moscow Mitch,”

“Weird Rand Paul,”

“Mr. Peepers” (Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Atty General),

“Mike Pounce” (his Vice President!),

“Little Ben Sasse” (who voted for removal),

“Crazy Arnold Schwarzenegger,”

“Big Luther Strange,”

And, these are just the republicans he nicknamed!

 

“Lying-Ted,”

Another pet,

Self-labeled now as “Can Cruz,”

Decrying refugee immigrants,

Supposedly taking his daughters to Mexico,

Chief complainer when President Obama took deserved vacations,

For a tough job, he couldn't begin to relate to,

 

The original white minstrels,

Puppeteered by Orange Satan,

 

He recognized the “gang of Putin” for what it is:

 

A racist, grievance reality show,

More performance art than policy,

TS Eliot couldn’t envision men so hollow.

Their previous complaints about vacations

Were deflections, and projections,

Said nothing for four years about their criminal president,

Bearing “true faith and allegiance” to his oath and theirs, both were derelict,

 

Saying “no” to your daughters, Can Cruz,

It is in parental vocabulary,

And one syllable less than yes,

 

Coward!

 

Did you throw the GIRLS under the bus for your poor decisions?

Do yourself and me a favor:

DNA test them to see if the pool boy has been with the missus,

 

Speaking of which,

You didn’t even defend Heidi.

From Orange Satan calling her ugly,

Or, the honor of Cruz senior,

When he intimated he killed John F. Kennedy,

 

A Hispanic male,

Father from Cuba,

Born in Canada,

To an American mother,

Wants to be president,

Of a nation of immigrants,

 

Doesn’t want immigrants,

Fleeing violence birthed by U. S. policies in Central America,

Yet, FLED to Mexico,

For shelter, water, and power,

 

The things many of his Texas constituents,

Lack at this hour,

In Amarillo, Austin, Dallas, El Paso,

You’re a STATEWIDE senator,

Not just for Spring, Texas, and Houston,

Or, the rabble you abuse on Fox Propaganda News,

They don’t have 1,600 dollars,

For four plane tickets,

They didn’t leave a poodle named “Snowflake.”

In an unheated home to freeze to death,

(Thankfully, he didn’t),

They don’t have 300 per night,

For Five Star rooms at the Ritz,

 

“Lying Fled, Can Cruz” away,

He might as well let go of his ambitions to be president,

 

Like his grifting political party,

He’s a white grievance minstrel performer,

He and they have lost sight of public service!

Accountable...

Image source: Corporate Finance Institute

© February 18, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

You have had the reins of government,

The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, two Senators, the state legislature,

 

Yet,

During a cold snap, you should have anticipated,

You’re blaming AOC and the “Green New Deal,”

 

News flash: it’s an idea; it doesn’t exist yet.

You’re opposed to legislation that hasn’t been introduced yet,

No feasibility studies by engineers, or scientists,

No budget has been proposed, or appropriated,

At this point: you’re chasing windmills,

Which only counts for ten percent of your energy output,

Eighty percent is from oil, fossil fuels, nuclear power, and natural gas,

 

News flash: as far as windmills, you didn’t bother to weatherize them,

A simple application of SLIPS, an acronym that stands for slippery liquid infused porous surfaces,

The subject of my Master’s Thesis,

Which makes the surfaces of plane wings, ships, and windmills ice phobic,

Like in Iowa, Russia, Finland, and Denmark,

A LOT colder than central Texas,

On the Texas-Arkansas border,

One road clear, the anti-parallel covered,

Which side do you think has its roads plowed?

 

News flash: the last time you acquitted a criminal,

We all went into pandemic lockdown,

This last time, you got pimp slapped,

By Mother Nature and the Polar Vortex,

Freezing climate change denying governments,

In the failed state of Texas,

 

“Dancing with Doofus,” former Governor Rick Perry

Suggested,

We push fossil fuels and fusion reactors,

 

Another news flash:

One: you’re no longer the Secretary of Energy, thankfully,

Two: fusion reactors only exist on Star Trek,

I am in complete support of this innovation,

But creating a mini-sun is so far difficult,

And it would make your fossil fuels industry a hulking relic,

 

Frozen under Texas tundra unexpected,

Grandpa Munster - Ted Cruz - didn’t stay around in Houston, Texas,

To shovel snow like his constituents,

But took his family to Cancun, Mexico,

Like a sniveling, jelly-boned Marie Antoinette,

“Let them eat cake,” “let them freeze to death,”

The same spirit of a sociopathic epithet,

 

“Laissez-faire economics is defined as a situation with minimal government intervention. Under laissez-faire, governments and regulators’ leave alone’ private firms to allow them to make decisions about production and output.”

 

ERCOT’s admission,

Of the “big lie” on Fox Propaganda by Greg Abbott,

That windmills only account for ten percent,

Of their state energy expenditure,

 

Backtracking two days after,

Means,

They are desperate,

To change the subject,

That zero in on their incompetence,

 

10-to-17,000-dollar electric bills charged,

To Texas homeowners,

 

ERCOT was a secession,

From the national energy grid,

All bills paid by customers,

Turned into profits

For board members and investors,

No investment in infrastructure,

Paying off their slave concubine elected officials,

 

Like

 

The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, two Senators, the state legislature,

Grandpa Munster wants to be president,

 

You have the reigns of government,

And yet,

 

The party of “family values.”

Enthusiastically voted for the privates’ grabber,

 

The party of “a strong military.”

Helped Putin install a five-deferment draft dodger,

 

The party of “limited government”

Got caught with its pants down

During a global pandemic,

Recklessly opening up bars and restaurants,

Closing voting precincts,

In predominantly minority districts,

Restricting to one drop off box

Per county in Texas,

 

And during a snowstorm

Generated by

The lack of polar icecaps,

Due to global warming,

Whipsawing a formally stationary polar vortex,

People in Texas are without heat,

Some less well off are starving and dying,

 

The party of “personal responsibility,”

Are collectively all malignant narcissists,

A Congress of sociopaths,

Who cannot admit to one faux pas,

 

The first mistake was: “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,”

 

Reagan’s first inaugural missive,

It was a proto-fascist American Carnage speech,

 

You’ve misinterpreted laissez-faire economics,

For you, it should just be lazy,

A grift that through hate radio jocks,

Like the recently-departed Rush Limbaugh,

It has now hurt the voter base that usually,

Votes for your non-policies,

And, against their own interests,

Because of Rush and his many clones,

Made homophobia, misogyny, and racism “redneck chic,”

 

2022 is going to be interesting,

As well as 2024,

And beyond,

They will close voting precincts,

Change laws,

Because “voter fraud,”

Means too many,

BIPOC, LGBT, women, and saner young people are voting

For their opponents,

As the criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party

Enjoy the eventual fates of the Whigs, and Know-Nothings,

Their freight train fate eventually to be finally held to accountability.

Pyrrhic Victory...

Image source: Pyrrhic Victory TV Trope

© February 13, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

"We didn’t need more witnesses; we needed more spines.”

Representative Eric Swalwell, House impeachment manager

 

Encapsulating the end of the second impeachment,

Of Orange Satan,

With a second acquittal,

 

“Stable genius” with his limited vocabulary,

Immediately called it a “witch hunt,”

 

If Moscow Mitch,

Didn’t want 1/6,

He should have admitted to a Biden/Harris win,

He and forty-two cowards gave cover,

To lies unchallenged for months,

That escalated to a day of violence,

Insurrection,

Sedition,

And desecration of the nation’s secular temple,

 

The Secretary of War,

Was impeached,

Minutes after resigning his position,

From President Ulysses S. Grant,

Impeached in the House,

Convicted in the Senate,

AFTER he left his office,

 

There was legal precedent,

And standing to pursue justice,

Against judges and other elected representatives,

 

Just so far, not presidents,

Even those clearly on the sociopathic spectrum,

 

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,”

 

To which, Kev-O had a brief spine infusion:

“Who the FUCK are you talking to?”

He went on Fox Propaganda News,

Pleading his case televised to you-know-who?

 

We discovered after 1/6,

No Senators or House members

Receive Secret Service protection,

They earn considerably more than us,

 

But security-wise, they’re sitting ducks,

To quote Reagan, speechwriter,

 

Peggy Noonan,

 

“History will see 1/6 for what it was. Those who vote to acquit are voting for a lie. Conviction would be an act of self-respect and of reverence for the place where fortune has placed them.”

 

The forty-three members of the gang of Putin,

Voted for the “big lie.”

In a criminal’s acquittal,

They have nullified,

Impeachment as a tool

To hold presidents accountable

For actions more egregious than

Consequential blow jobs,

 

They have inaugurated

Rule of the mob,

Assassinated the tradition

Of the “peaceful transfer of power,”

 

Once again, Peggy Noonan:

 

Here’s a human question. I don’t understand why I haven’t heard a single story of a member who supported the president in refusing the Electoral College certification who stood with him, and who, hearing what was happening in the first stages of the riot, went into the halls to speak with the rioters. Why did they not do that? They knew there was a rally and expected a march, presumably peaceful. Why didn’t they go into the halls where the clamor was and tell the people, “Friends, I share your beliefs, and I am arguing for them on the floor, but what you are doing is wrong and unlawful, and you must leave.” Instead, they were spirited from the floor by the police and hid in their offices and other rooms. Why didn’t they go speak to the crowds, their own people?

 

Is it that they actually didn’t understand their own people? Or, in barricading themselves in, were they showing they understood them all too well?

 

I’m looking at you,

Ted Cruz, and Josh Holley,

Looking more like Grandpa Munster,

And an Aussie Joey,

Than viable candidates

For the presidency,

 

“Nature abhors a vacuum,”

Is the metaphor,

But this one isn’t party leadership,

Whose titular head you expect

From his legal jeopardies,

Soon in prison:

The current vacuum is the party itself.

 

They have ridden this Kraken,

From the pit of hell,

For forty gaslit years since Reagan,

They are as much host of it,

As hostages to it,

 

Fierce speeches in the Well of the Senate,

Decrying the sociopath, you just acquitted,

It doesn’t grow the party one standard inch,

Or, a spine for it,

Or, absolve forty-three cowards in your complicit involvement,

Giving credence to the “big lie.”

Is

Self-immolation,

Forty-three

And one hundred and forty-seven

Opposition ads are being crafted,

In this fashion:

 

“So, Senator/House member, if I win this election, will you invite a violent mob to overthrow the will of the people who voted for me?”

 

Since the “January 6 exception” has become a political tactic,

That is now a legitimate political question to ask,

Not one of you can dodge: it’s on record,

 

140,000 previously affiliated republicans,

Left the party, registering,

Themselves independent, or non-affiliated,

Since the insurrection on January 6,

 

He has to give DNA evidence,

To E. Jean Carroll

To match what she has

On another saved dress,

The NYS Attorney Letitia James,

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance,

EDNY, SDNY,

The Fulton County Attorney General in Atlanta, Georgia,

All have pending lawsuits,

That you have to give more answers than “I’m not familiar with this,”

 

You did not heed

A saner Leningrad Lindsey Graham,

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it,”

 

Or

Plutarch’s warning

From King Pyrrhus of Epirus:

 

“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”

 

Notes:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

 

Pyrrhic victory is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus. His army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC and the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, during the Pyrrhic War. After the last battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

 

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.

 

— Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus

Party of Insurrection...

Image Source: Daily Fitz Cartoon: The Party of Insurrection

© February 11, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

The Republican Party is

A criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party,

They are a party of Neo-Confederates,

They have less in common with Abraham Lincoln,

And more with John Wilkes Boothe,

 

They are the party of “alternative facts,”

Robert E. Lee after Appomattox,

Called his Civil War defeat “fake news,”

Stop me if this sounds familiar,

 

Revisionist “lost cause” narratives,

Bust of confederate generals festooned across US Capitols,

Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens’

Relief in the Capitol Rotunda,

Famous for the “Cornerstone Speech”:

 

An excerpt:

 

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

 

Fuck that bullshit!

 

If we were inferior,

You would have survived your first seasons,

On these shores without First Nation People,

You would have plowed your fields,

You wouldn’t have needed Benjamin Banneker

To design clocks and the US Capitol,

Or, BUILT your own damn “White House.”

 

Surnamed after a visit to Teddy Roosevelt

By Booker T. Washington,

Cementing that the overriding philosophy,

It is one of white supremacy,

 

Despite the evidence presented,

You’ve acquitted a criminal president again,

Because your allegiance was never to The Constitution,

But, to your vacations and next elections,

 

You’ve learned the wrong lesson,

Big lies are better than hard truths,

Better to keep the herd bewildered,

Angry at conveniently-labeled “others,”

 

Overturning elections lost

By violence,

It is now a weapon of choice by Neo-Fascists,

The “January 6 exception.”

 

I poetically hang this albatross around

Forty-three cowardly necks:

 

Cowardice,

Preening,

Pretend patriots,

Fascists,

Violent insurrectionists,

 

Don’t hide from it now: you OWN it!

Three Monkeys...

Source: Meme Generator dot net

© February 10, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Thirteen minutes,

Images from the Capitol insurrectionists,

They put out on Parlor, Facebook, and other social media platforms,

 

Republican Senators,

Were reading novels,

Checking text messages,

Or, their shoes,

Otherwise, trying to ignore the evidence,

 

The last time they acquitted a criminal,

We were weeks from lockdowns in this pandemic,

I’ll never forget,

Brown babies in cold cages weren’t enough to remove him,

 

Sadly, [a] President Pence might have won the election,

He probably would have listened to Anthony Fauci,

And republicans held onto the undemocratic senate,

 

Rather than continuously undermine him,

Rather than making not wearing masks a “badge of honor,”

He might have saved republicanism,

Now, splitting into two factions,

 

Between insanity and reality,

They both fear and still attempt to ride this dragon,

A Frankenstein of their own creation,

Forty years of endless gaslighting,

 

Fearing black and brown Americans,

Women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender,

Let’s not forget Muslims,

Immigrants, Asians,

And those whose heritage is Afro-Semitic,

 

Hear no evil,

See no evil,

Speak no evil,

 

It is a cultural metaphor,

For deplorable, willful ignorance,

Knowing what’s going on,

Knowing between right and wrong,

 

Hiding behind a “different perspective” guise,

And choosing otherwise,

Because of the prize,

Is to stay in power,

Doing [as] little work, or public good

As possible,

 

South Carolina,

Censuring your closeted representatives,

Lindsey Graham, and Tim Scott,

Because they recognized this was a free and fair election,

Punishing them for not showing allegiance,

To your Adult Depends, Adderall sniffing “dear leader,”

 

As a political party,

They’re not even on the level of the Whigs, or the Know-Nothings,

More like their third eye is blind, having no vision, or “sixth sense,”

Like the zombie apocalypse: they don’t know they’re dead yet,

 

The minority turtle, Moscow Mitch,

Despite his disappointment with the orange nitwit,

Voted with the insurrectionists,

Telling his faction out of power,

To “vote their conscientious,”

 

How can they vote for something,

That they don’t first possess?

They would rather look at their shoes,

Return to fundraising,

Regurgitating slogans, racist innuendo, and talking points,

Endlessly campaigning,

 

For re-election for power’s sake,

Red meat racism

For the rubes who they convinced,

To vote against their own interests,

 

Fealty to their real constituents,

The Fortune 500, and the one percent,

The lie that all the time they supported The Constitution,

Until it just doesn’t work for them,

 

Like monkeys, they resort to flinging feces,

A defensive measure when they cannot bend,

 

Laws of physics,

Laws of science,

Laws of reality,

Laws of common sense,

Laws, period!

 

We’re either, in the words of President John Adams,

 

“A nation of laws, and not of men,”

Or they are recreated in the fascist image of three deplorable, willfully ignorant monkeys.

Q-Bacca, Q-California, and QAnon Sense...

Jacob Anthony Chansley, a QAnon believer, speaks to a crowd of Donald Trump supporters in Phoenix on Nov. 5, 2020. | AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills. Article by Ben Leonard, Politico

 © February 6, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Jacob Chansley, a sham Shaman,

Demanded organic sustenance,

An injunction filed by his defense,

As a condition for his confinement,

Relating to his participation,

In the insurrection against the Capitol,

On January 6,

 

It was a month ago from this writ,

He and 30,000 insurrectionists,

Spurred by the urging of their fake president,

To storm the Capitol,

Deliberately disrupting,

The “peaceful transfer of power.”

Practiced

From George Washington,

To Joseph R. Biden,

With the exception of one psychopath,

 

Jacob, whose name ironically means “trickster,”

Wearing the helmet of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalos,

Bastardizing my childhood memories of “The Flintstones,”

Believed the QANON lies he was sold,

He participated in spreading lies, feces, and urine,

In the halls of US power,

He participated in the hunt.

For the Vice President and Speaker of the House,

 

He denied the 1619 Project,

Aligned with the 1776 lie,

A pitiful middle school project,

Dropped on Martin Luther King Day,

As if gaslighting written,

Erases actual history,

 

Similarly,

The “lost cause” narrative,

Is historical bullshit,

Kept alive with the dodge of “state’s rights,”

To own fellow humans as slaves,

Their state documents

Talk to

Dismissing Africans as savages,

Their reason for treason to the Union,

Was the right to keep that “peculiar institution,”

In perpetuity,

 

Kevin McCarthy,

Is never going to be Speaker,

He’s just a squishy surfer dude from California,

Who thinks that the only talents he needs,

To succeed,

Is to wear expensive designer suits,

And jutting out his chin,

On-cue,

For press cameras and videos,

 

Stripping Marjorie Taylor Greene,

Of her committee assignments:

It was a layup,

That he flubbed,

He went from last summer saying,

“QANON has no presence in the Republican Party,”

To complete cowardly capitulation,

To a woman

Who looks like,

Flashpoint Joker,

The speedster hero

Created in an alternative timeline,

Going back in time,

To save the life of his mother,

 

Speaker Pelosi,

In her official press release,

Labeled him “Q-California,”

And the party he fecklessly administers,

“GQP,”

No one believes his lies,

Not even Marjorie Taylor Greene,

Who now feels free,

Since she’s not on any committees,

Wasting the time of the constituency,

Who sent her to Washington, DC,

To spout her conspiracy theories,

Violating Twitter policies,

Fundraising for a long shot re-election

Campaign,

In 2022,

For a “job NOT done,”

Because the first priority

For any elected official

Is to “bring home the bacon.”

 

The Republican Party is dead.

 

The first death pangs were in 1968,

When Lee Atwater and Richard Nixon,

Spearheaded the “Southern Strategy,”

Pulling dispirited Dixiecrats,

Who disapproved of Civil Rights,

And, Voting Rights,

For those, their fathers taught were “inferior beings,”

The second assassination of the Party of Lincoln,

 

Then, Phyllis Schlafly,

A conservative attorney,

She conspired to keep her sisters,

Barefoot and pregnant,

Deep-sixing the Equal Rights Amendment,

 

Jimmy Carter was America’s,

First evangelical president,

Who ran afoul with Bob Jones University,

Who had a policy against interracial dating,

Known by the arcane word miscegenation,

He said they violated federal policy,

Against discrimination,

 

So, they turned on him, and elected,

Their first secular president,

A “B-Movie” actor named Ronald Reagan,

Whose faculties were already declining,

In his first term as president,

We got Iran-Contra,

Financed by selling crack in Compton,

 

He ignored the first coronavirus pandemic,

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus,

Became Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,

Ravaged the LGBT community,

Except for his friend, the criminal lawyer, Roy Cohn,

Frontman for Joe McCarthy, and Donald Trump,

Only Cohn received AZT therapy,

A little too late for him,

It didn’t become a priority,

Until it crossed to heterosexuals,

 

After plumbing the depths of gun nuts,

They’re left with birthers, crackpots, flat earthers, fascists, homophobes, racists, and science deniers,

They wonder why their electoral chances are dwindling,

Purging voter rolls, closing precincts,

In districts of BIPOC,

If you’re a fascist,

A  diverse future is an existential crisis,

“Free speech” to them is the ability,

To freely express their bigotry,

 

Only ten voted for impeachment,

For a psychopath inciting insurrection,

Against his own government,

Because he lost a free and fair election,

 

Sixty-one voted to strip Liz Cheney,

Of her House leadership duties,

Because she was one of the ten,

 

One-hundred and ninety-nine (including Liz Cheney),

Voted to keep Flashpoint Joker,

On the Education Committee,

 

This party can’t read the US Constitution,

Past the Second Amendment,

 

This insurrection started with Sarah “mama grizzly” Palin,

With Michelle Bachman’s “Betty Davis Eyes” crazy,

And a chaser of a one-hit-wonder,

Ted Nugent pedophilia,

 

QAnon

Is just another monster from the echo chambers of Breitbart, Fox, News Max, OAN, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity,

 

[And] The only human in existence where, if you switched the first consonants in his first and last names, it sounds like a dirty word: Tucker Carlson.

 

Either GOP or GQP,

 

The Republican Party can be,

The party of limited government,

Strong military,

Fiscal discipline,

Personal freedom,

Social mobility,

 

As documented in their own,

2021 autopsy,

 

Or,

They can be the party of Neo-Confederates,

Birthers, crackpots, flat earthers, fascists, homophobes, racists, and science deniers,

Led by a disposed of, malevolent president,

 

The minority leader isn’t Kevin McCarthy:

 

It’s Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

 

You have to choose:

 

Rationality, or insanity,

True reality, or gaslighting,

No matter what pretzels they twist themselves in,

They can’t support democracy AND fascism.