Jim Eagle...

Image Source: NPR

 © March 27, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Fun fact:

Georgia was the first state to administer a poll tax,

Eliminated

By the Supreme Court,

In the rare times

They made judgments

That made practical sense,

 

Strike

Plessy vs. Ferguson,

Dred Scott,

Gutting Section 5 preclearance of the Voting Rights Act,

From this list,

 

John Roberts’ “Supremacy Court,”

In Shelby County vs. Holder,

Punted to Congress,

 

HR1, SB1, and HR4, SB4 being:

The "For the People" and John Lewis Voting Rights Bills,

Would fix this,

Save the obstruction,

By the south-favoring filibuster,

 

Brian Kemp,

Is a descendant of this,

The son of southern aristocratic sociopaths,

That got reparations from the government for the slaves they lost,

 

That after the war they lost,

Started a campaign of gaslighting,

Romanticizing the fabled “Lost Cause,”

Erecting idol edifices,

To murders, rapists, and criminal miscreants,

Dare I say: seditionists?

 “Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their memory, perception, or judgment.[1] It may evoke changes in them, such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs.”

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

Confederate soldiers ETCHED on Stone Mountain,

Busts of Nathan Bedford Forrest,

The first Grand Dragon

Of the Ku Klux Klan,

At the Tennessee and nation’s Capitol,

A bridge in Alabama,

Named for another,

Crossed by John Robert Lewis,

Named for Grand Dragon

Edmund Pettus,

Military bases named after traitors,

 

Rewriting American history is

Literal “cancel culture,”

Though the culture

They were trying to affect,

Was to eliminate

The voting franchise

From African American citizens,

 

Just like the draconian,

Authoritarian grab for power,

At the Georgia state Capitol,

Arresting state representative Park Cannon,

Fearing Stacey Abrams,

In the 2022 election,

And, the two Senators recently elected,

Jon Ossoff,

And, Raphael Warnock,

A preacher in the pastorate,

Occupied by Martin Luther King, and

A descendant of Jewish immigrants,

From Nazi pogroms,

 

White supremacy is [being rendered]

Impotent and torn,

Asunder by the inexorable diversity

Of demographics,

 

Georgia,

Is in the same space

As Virginia,

Ten years ago,

Who used to execute more prisoners,

Than any state in the Union,

This week:

Abolished the death penalty,

Because they had an election,

That put democrats in the majority,

 

There will be legal challenges,

Several filed already,

But we CANNOT surrender!

 

Jim Eagle is a dinosaur,

Right before,

The meteor hit,

Sixty-five million years ago,

They went from kings of the earth,

To peat moss sediment,

Allowing scurrying rodents,

To evolve:

To tree dwellers, from tree dwellers,

To Homo Erectus,

To Homo Sapiens,

Latin for “WISE human beings,”

 

It should never be illegal,

To give [a] human being water,

Instead of criminalizing acts of kindness:

Why not open up more voting precincts?

 

Why not make illegal long lines that exist in the first place?

Why not return to the voting rolls the citizens YOU removed because of Melanin?

 

Brian Kemp harrumphed,

Saying “he’s not racist,”

Signed the power grab off-books,

Live streaming on Facebook,

In front of a plantation portrait,

With six white men flanked,

Note to Brian: stop ACTING like it!

 

Brian Kemp is in the data.

Of republican governors

That botched the response to this pandemic,

With the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in WALKING distance of his office?

 

Kemp, in his cowardice,

Has “released the Kraken,”

 

You have RELEASED the Kraken!

 

We’re going to bring backpacks with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and water in them!

We’re going to bring lawn chairs, sunscreen, and umbrellas.

We’re going to bring cell phones and external battery chargers.

Our ancestors DIED for this right to vote.

We are the only reason this country is remotely Christian (“the least of these”) and a democracy.

 

Jim Crow/Jim Eagle/Brian Kemp:

 

You have RELEASED the Kraken!

 

We are NOT giving in,

We are NOT going back!

We WILL VOTE!

Because: “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” and DEMOCRACY depends on it!

Hassle-Free...

 

Image Source: The Guardian

© March 25, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Beto O’Rourke: “You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).” O’Rourke added: “If you’re looking for a crisis to cosplay Senator for, I’m happy to point you in the right direction.”

 

Fled Can Cruz

Said

“Owning firearms should be as hassle-free

As owning a car,”

 

Okay, “Cosplay on the Border,” Fled,

 

I recall:

It requires a salary,

Or, source of income,

Good credit,

A learners’ permit,

Driving with a licensed driver,

For one year,

Typically,

With a stint in Driver’s Ed,

Chauffeuring your guardians, or parents,

To the grocery store,

 

You have to take two TESTS,

And, annual renewal,

With a set passing percentage,

If you fail the first time,

No worries!

 

Study up, and retake it.

In some magistrates,

A second failure leads to a penalty,

Waiting, practicing, studying,

For the opportunity to

Take it yet again,

 

Since the 1950s,

Getting a license is a right of passage,

To American teenagers,

That isn’t in The Constitution,

But neither are mass shootings,

 

American teachers,

Have to pass

A state exam,

Fingerprints

And a background check,

 

In places like:

Chicago,

New York,

Philly,

Foreign countries like

England, or Japan,

 

Advanced public transport systems exist,

Sleek bullet trains

Sprinting commuters,

To-and-from

Home, and work,

 

The “exceptional” United States,

Left Amtrak in the 1950s,

 

Speaking of Japan:

Gun violence is 0.6% of their population,

In America, the highest at 10.5,

 

Japan: less than ten deaths annually,

America: 33,000 average,

 

After the Second World War,

Many Japanese,

Voluntarily gave up their weapons,

Neither do their police carry them,

They are required to study martial arts,

To defend themselves and others,

In public disturbances, they don’t present guns,

If a tourist or citizen is a public disturbance,

The martial artists

Wrap the offender in a mattress,

Comparing the countries is like entering The Matrix,

 

Japan does have gun owners,

The police visit the owners’ homes,

Annually,

Making sure that the guns are correctly maintained,

And access the mental health of the residents,

 

“Fled Can Cruz

Said

Owning firearms should be as hassle-free

As owning a car,”

 

Okay,

Require a job,

The administration of tests,

Registration of your cache of weapons,

An annual visit from your local police

Accessing your maintenance and mental health,

 

The right loves to talk about this,

Until pressured to put legislation behind it,

It’s just a squishy sound bite: they can give a shit,

In their exclusive enclaves with electronic keys and armed private security,

 

Fled Can Cruz

Said

Owning firearms should be as hassle-free

As owning a car,

 

Japan: less than ten deaths annually,

America: 33,000 average,

 

Maybe then,

With a little less shooting mayhem,

Could we afford bullet trains?

And give our attention to infrastructure,

Our civil engineering score a D-minus average,

 

As a veteran,

Who’s handled weapons,

I write this with sincere glee:

 

If we followed

The Japanese model,

I would enthusiastically agree!

Such an initiative would be hassle-free!

A History of Violence...

 

Five years after Sandy Hook: Is it still too soon to talk about gun control?

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?

A Bad Day...

 

People view a makeshift memorial to several people - most of whom were of Asian descent - at a massage parlor on Friday, March 19, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States [Candice Choi/AP Photo] Al Jazeera

© March 18, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Bishop Desmond Tutu

 

Robert Aaron Long, 21, had a “bad day.”

At least that’s what the Atlanta Captain Jay Baker said,

Who on social media called the pandemic a racist epithet,

And tried to sell merch on it,

Tried to humanize a murderous miscreant,

At the press conference after a three massage parlor shooting spree,

Leaving eight women dead,

Six of the victims of Asian descent,

 

He blamed it on a “sex addiction,”

The workers were his temptation,

A product of his Neanderthal Christian upbringing,

That stifled normal development and healthy sexual expression,

A new version of the excuse: “the devil made me do it,”

Over a two-county rampage,

 

He said it wasn’t “racially-motivated.”

Yet, he missed all the blue-eyes, blonde-haired, voluptuous vixens,

At majority attended strip clubs in the ATL metroplex,

It wasn’t “racially-motivated,”

But, Mr. Long missed all that,

 

Bill O’Reilly

On one of his Fox Propaganda shticks,

Threw out the missive,

“Tiller, the baby killer,”

Until Dr. George Tiller,

Legal provider of medical services,

Was gunned down by Scott Roeder,

An insane anti-abortion terrorist,

While Dr. Tiller acted as a servant

Usher in his church,

 

Sarah Palin’s

“Don’t retreat: RELOAD!”

Comment,

With gunsights on her website,

Inspired Jared Lee Loughner,

To do JUST that,

Maiming Congresswoman Gabby Giffords,

Killing six people,

Including nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green,

On her ninth and last birthday,

 

The Russian puppet,

Since he couldn’t admit his misstep,

And bungled handling of the Coronavirus,

South Korea took our plan: “Pandemics for Dummies,” and implemented it,

More countries are back to some normalcy,

Before they administer vaccines,

 

The failed Putin puppet,

Decided to go full-on racist,

Using an epithet,

To reframe the virus,

On its origin place:

All zoonotic diseases

So far, it occurs on the same planet,

We all happen to inhabit,

Putting a target on our fellow earthlings’ backs,

There’s been a 150% increase in violent attacks on Asians,

Almost 3,800 reported,

Against citizens and immigrants,

That had NOTHING to do with this pandemic.

 

If you think you’re in a particular class,

Please don’t act with smugness, and show your ass,

Fascism has fungible soft targets,

Ask “First they came” author,

German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller what I meant,”*

It just hasn’t happened in your neck of the woods yet!

 

Michael Cohen said to Congress,

He talks like a mob boss: in code,

He makes suggestions,

And, like the confident head of a personality cult,

He knows he has followers who will carry it out,

 

I’m guessing I know who Long voted for,

Did you ping his phone IP

At the January 6 act of treason?

We’re going from insurrection to insurgency,

Hitting soft targets,

Is the playbook of terrorists,

Not patriots, Ron Johnson!

 

Ask the senator

Where he was

July 4, 2018:

He was in Moscow,

With seven others,

Receiving instructions,

Directly from Vladimir Putin,

Before the 2018 midterms,

Despite this,

The “gang of Putin” was defeated,

Making all the changes, we’ve seen possible,

Not only is Portman an idiot for his continents,

He’s known for spouting Russian propaganda,

In the senate chamber,

Quoting Brian Williams of The Eleventh Hour:

“Translated from the original Russian,”

 

The Republican National Committee

For the first time in its history,

Scrubbed strong opposition to Russia,

From its platform in 2016,

 

The Republican National Committee

For another first in its history,

HAD no platform in 2020,

Except for fealty to a demagogue,

A mirror image of Moscow,

Showing its middle finger to democracy,

Wanting power not because they have great ideas:

But power for its own sake,

Incels like Long,

Loathe themselves,

Not once thinking

The reason their date calendar

Is empty, and forlorn,

It MIGHT just be them,

And their bizarre behavior around women,

It is not just a hate crime because many of the victims are Asian,

It’s a hate crime BECAUSE they’re women,

 

Robert Aaron Long, 21, had a “bad day.”

At least that’s what the Atlanta Captain Jay Baker said,

Who on social media called the pandemic a racist epithet,

And tried to sell merch on it,

Tried to humanize a murderous miscreant,

At the press conference after a three massage parlor shooting spree,

Leaving eight women dead,

Six of the victims of Asian descent,

 

But: no one’s asked up to this tragedy, how the women’s days went!

 

* First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Martin Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892. Niemöller was an anti-Communist and supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. But when, after he came to power, Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned. He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler. In 1937 he was arrested and eventually confined in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. He was released in 1945 by the Allies. He continued his career in Germany as a clergyman and as a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II. Wikipedia