Reality TV, Infotainment, and Apocalypse...

Infotainment Systems Can Turn Some Car Owners Off, Wards Auto

 © August 26, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

We are living in a “Twilight Zone” episode,

Rod Serling never wrote,

You went from hydroxychloroquine,

To drinking bleach,

Shining flashlights up your ass,

To “Billy Bob, Cooter, and Skeeter’s” medical advice,

In your “dimensions of sight, sound, and mind” Facebook groups,

On the horse dewormer, ivermectin,

Instead of wearing a mask or taking a FREE vaccine,

Are you all insane?

 

Facebook meme: “insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibility isn’t freedom; it’s adolescence.”

 

Laura Ingrate, Sean Insanity,

And The Three Stooges Curly Howard’s distant cousin, Tucker Carlson,

Have all been vaccinated,

As well as their oligarch boss, Rupert Murdoch,

Yet, they’re encouraging you not to.

 

That is the textbook definition,

Of sadism: “the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others,”

Laughing at you in the coffee room,

After passing company-mandated COVID protocols,

Fully-vaccinated,

On the Avenue of the Americas,

They are fascists,

Like Ingrate’s father, Nazi sympathizers,

Mike Lofgren and George Will were the first to leave this circus,

None of Fox Propaganda’s anchors are conservatives,

They aim to overthrow our democratic republic,

 

Penguin Random House book description lead:

“What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment?”

 

Neil Postman’s central research question in his polemic,

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,”

 

Ted Turner’s “great idea” of 24-hour “infotainment.”

Attractive, model-like female news anchors like Robin Meade,

Misogyny well before Roger Ailes,

Ted tried to get the same cinematic effects,

Like“HBO,” “Star Wars,” and the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,”

CNN’s “Crossfire,” the prototype of orchestrated conflict,

He largely succeeded,

The infotainment echo chambers followed as clones of him,

 

It’s easy to blame everything on social media,

It’s just a digitized version of Postman’s warning screed,

Richard Nixon,

Won re-election,

On his “law and order” mandate,

Instituted the racist “war on drugs,”

Sweeping 49 out of 50 states,

Watergate felled him,

Due to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s,

Investigative journalism,

With the help of

Three television stations,

Radio and print media,

The corporatists had to control the flow of information,

Were the same fascists who substituted,

Civics with what Frank Zappa pointed out as “social studies,”

Began a decades-long campaign,

To shape the opinions of citizens,

Consolidating ownership,

From 150 independent media outlets

 

To six, controlled by:

AT&T (who bought Time Warner), CBS (Big Bang, and Star Trek), Comcast (think MSNBC), Disney (owns ABC), News Corp (Fox Propaganda), and Viacom (BET, MTV, VH1, all of who no longer plays videos),

 

But cheered on our failed deployments,

In Iraq and Afghanistan,

As it lined war profiteers pockets,

 

Apocalypse: It’s a great title to a movie, story, supervillain, or blog post.

It means “to uncover” or “to reveal.”

 

Here’s your revelation:

This nation has profited from war and carnage since its inception.

Looking forward to a rapture,

Encourages laziness,

No need to solve climate change by applying science,

“Mutually Assured Destruction” in this warped Cartesian thinking isn’t madness,

 

All Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Women, immigrants

 

Are all being affected by the anti-democratic efforts of Republican legislatures to either pick the voters they want to be counted or if elections don’t quite go their way, THROW out the results!

 

Dr. King referred to that as “interposition, and nullification.”

 

The filibuster has been adjusted, carved out, flipped, manipulated for less than our ability to call ourselves a federal republic than for billionaire Oligarchs’ tax cuts.

 

Both parties are invested in the “status quo.” It is ghoulish.

 

Continuing it would be self-extinction and foolish,

 

The whole intent of Dr. Neil Postman’s warnings of simply 24-hour “infotainment” cable news;

Before social media proliferated;

Before phone apps were invented,

Before our news outlets consolidated,

And morphed into self-deluding echo chambers kowtowing to Nielsen ratings,

Before politicians became craven liars in stark evidence of insurrection,

And would instead rule over a smoldering ruin of feces than serve in an actual democracy.

 

Democracy (noun): a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives: rule BY the people,

 

Our nation and the world deserve better.

Our nation and the world get better when “we the people” demand better.

 

 

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, Margaret Atwood, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” translation: Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

 

Demonstrate,

Protest,

Do comedy,

Sing songs,

Write poetry,

Perform skits,

Speak the truth about reality, politics, and science,

Come to venues like “Spoken and Heard” to fight for democracy, and above all:

Vote!

Put the bastards to flight,

Representative government is fascism’s kryptonite.

Blowback Racket...

In Trump's Plot to Seize the White House, Who Will Be Our Smedley Butler? Jonathan M. Katz

© August 23, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Hillary Clinton,

In a moment of clarity with Greta Van Susteren

When Fox Propaganda was actually “news,”

A video that has recently gone viral,

She detailed how

 

Dr. Zbignew Brezinski,

With the peanut farmer,

President Jimmy Carter,

Gave the Soviet Union

Their [own] version of Vietnam,

 

The United States and Pakistani intelligence created,

The Mujahideen,

Especially,

Empowering,

A young Osama Bin Laden,

And my Aggie classmate, Khalid Sheik Mohammad,

Gave them training from the CIA,

Courtesy of the School of the Americas,

Enabling butchers like Pinochet, the Contras, and others,

Supplying stinger missiles in Pakistan,

As they, with Saudi Arabia,

[Bought] the free press,

News dumbed down to the common denominator: fomenting rage,

Radicalizing the local people and clerics,

In each instance, telling “good Muslims.”

 

To kill the atheist Soviets,

To kill the atheist serving the Iranian Shah,

In the 1960s, women wore miniskirts,

Not burkhas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran,

What happened?

 

Check out the formula:

Get control over the news outlets,

Radicalize some religious zealots,

Overthrow the democratic government,

Install a puppet dictator,

Empower

Defense contractors,

And weapons manufacturers,

To bribe corrupt politicians,

And cash in on this Golden Calf,

Drink Courvoisier Cognac,

Smoke stogies lit with "hundred dollar bills y'all" in their White Citizens Council Cul de Sacs,

It works well when you target some usually brown, un-godless “other,”

Rinse. Lather. Repeat!

 

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.… It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

 

Major General Smedley Butler penned this,

In 1935,

Earned two Congressional Medals of Honor,

Fighting wars for the racketeers,

Whistleblower for the corporate fascists,

Who tried to overthrow the US government,

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

And install Butler as a dictator,

 

Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes apply it,

Nightly as a rage manufacturing machine,

For the altar of Moloch Nielsen ratings,

It’s why we can’t reduce mass shootings,

After each massacre,

Check out the stock value of Smith and Wesson,

Gun manufacturers aren’t “free-market capitalism,”

Less than one percent of our population,

Owns enough firepower,

To outfit all the rest!

When are you going to accept that you’re being gaslighted?

 

News flash:

Franklin Roosevelt didn’t take your guns,

Harry Truman didn’t take your guns,

John F. Kennedy didn’t take your guns,

LBJ didn’t take your guns,

Bill Clinton didn’t take your guns,

Barack Obama didn’t take your guns,

 

For your manufactured fear, you have corporate robber barons to thank,

Weapons and gun manufacturers are “kissing cousins,”

Laughing all the way to the bank!

 

Rupert Murdoch will continue this game,

As long as your eyes stay glued to his and Roger Ailes’ refrain,

Of grievance minstrelsy as propagated,

By Sean Insanity, Laura Ingrate, Tucker "Three Stooges" Curly, and Steve Doocy,

With a name that already sounds like a pejorative,

Without adjustment or artistic commentary,

 

Fox Propaganda has a vaccine mandate,

For every employee at Avenue of the Americas,

Rupert Murdoch can self-isolate,

He and Orange Satan got the vaccine, for goodness sake!

What “Twilight Zone” episode are we in when you’re willing to take,

Hydroxychloroquine,

Shine a light up your ass, drink bleach,

De-worming medicine for cows and horses,

Rather than just getting vaccinated?

 

We could have let you eat Tide pods, but we didn’t!

 

Along with hydroxychloroquine and drinking bleach, we could have left you in the loving arms of Darwin and Karma, but we didn’t!

 

Because unlike you, we’re compassionate.

 

What are you proving with your sacrifice?

Death cults encourage such tripe,

 

You’re being radicalized for violence,

For overthrowing a democratic government,

Geoffrey Chaucer in “The Parson’s Tale,” and Malcolm X said:

“Chickens come HOME to roost,”

 

Now,

Religious zealots,

Here in America,

Want to kill atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Deists, liberal Christians, Muslims, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender,

And a multicultural democratic government,

They don’t want to participate,

Since they know, no one wants to vote for their hate,

Instead of wearing burkas,

These fascists fancy red coats and nun habits,

Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has tried to warn us,

 

Evil deeds, and curses,

Boomerang back,

And hurt the originators who launched them,

Celie told Mister this in “The Color Purple,”

Blood baths can enrich no one in their aftermath,

If your functional republic is a pile of crap,

Oligarchs raided in their cul de sacs,

The rebellion led by their well-paid security staff,

 

That is the recipe for dystopian nightmares,

Humanity’s progress wasted,

And has absolutely nothing to do with “greatness!”

Domestic Terrorists...

24: Kiefer Sutherland Hopes for Jack Bauer Closure Someday, TV Series Finale

© August 20, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“24,”

The heartbeat-themed opening a novelty,

Is where the Cheney/Bush administration,

Got its best ideas from,

From stress positions,

Sensory deprivation,

Electric shock non-therapy,

Waterboarding,

Off-books black sites,

To Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib,

 

Cheney swore,

On his superheterodyne pacemaker,

Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer,

It was [TOTALLY] based on him,

 

Because of W’s approval ratings,

Were below 50%,

The Taliban offered Osama Bin Laden,

Immediately after 9/11,

Would justice juice his numbers,

Or, a war of pure convenience?

 

We know the path they took,

“Sexed up” the intelligence,

Lied about weapons of mass destruction,

In Iraq,

That had nothing to do with 9/11,

2004, despite being selected in 2000 by [a] 5-4 Supreme Court vote,

A controversial election decided by his father’s sexual predator pick, Clarence Thomas,

Despite decisively losing all three presidential debates, he “WON” re-election.

 

Trillions of dollars and un-replaceable treasure spent,

Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters in body bags,

In Afghanistan, Iraq, and flag-draped coffins,

So ashamed, we brought them home under cover of darkness,

The only “winners” were weapons and defense contractors,

But as we’ve seen recently,

The facts don’t matter, really,

 

Before the election of 2008,

African American actor,

Dennis Haysbert prepped us,

Playing a US president in “24,”

Then, Barack Hussein Obama showed up,

 

Suddenly, the opening, heartbeat-themed novelty,

Became national,

Myocardial infarction,

Manifested in the flesh,

He was now beyond Nielsen ratings,

The embodiment of a changing electorate,

The crossover changing,

 

From 2050 to 2040,

The dominant population decreases for the first time since 1790,

With a purposely early-ended 2020 Census,

How much would it have been if we had fully counted?

Evangelicals became a numerical minority,

In 2017,

You can see why they’re in a wholesale panic!

 

I hate the phrase “majority-minority,”

Because it doesn’t make numerical sense,

How about “new majority,”

And respecting a new electorate?

 

Orly Taitz,

Herself an immigrant,

Proffered the conspiracy,

Without evidence,

That President Obama was born in Kenya,

 

Picked up by the right-wing echo chamber,

Magnified by a carnival barker,

And his Russian GRU masters,

Our nation’s sadism is easy,

For a Master KGB spy to manipulate,

 

Demand for his short-form birth certificate,

Followed by the long-form equivalent,

But this isn’t about facts or reason: it’s pure fear and emotion.

 

Amplified by,

A 30,000-plus count serial liar,

Twenty-seven women accused him of sexual assault and one of rape,

A six-time bankrupt and failed real estate magnate,

644,763 dead Americans,

Reality show court jester,

Up to his eyeballs in debt to Russian oligarchs,

The money he laundered in Florida for a lark,

 

Which is why he never said a single [crass] word,

About, or to Vladimir Putin,

 

The “Manchurian Candidate,”

Asked for help,

On-camera to source 30,000 emails,

Against his opponent,

His “crime-o-MATIC” technique:

Flood-the-zone with criminality,

Keep them dizzy,

Too busy to convict you of one crime

Before charging you for the next,

 

Sabotage Afghanistan,

Release 5,000 Taliban,

Use Mike Pompeo to

Free Mullah Baradar

Who will eventually rule the “graveyard of empires,”

Knowing that he would lose,

Months before the election,

Knowing that Kandahar,

Would fall utterly into chaos,

Purposely,

Keep the new administration TWO MONTHS

In the dark,

From classified briefings,

 

Occam’s razor:

Why wouldn’t such a man,

Orchestrate domestic violence,

Tweet from suspended account:

“Come to the Capitol. It will be WILD!”

To challenge a free and fair election that he LOST?

 

Floyd Ray Roseberry is a domestic terrorist,

From North Carolina,

In I’m afraid, a long list of lone wolves to come,

Just like the crowd, the Grand Pooh-Bah of bullshit,

Summoned on January Sixth,

Don’t sanitize this idiot,

With the “mental health” shtick,

The dude was on Facebook live for five hours,

Before Zuckerberg took the video down,

Dominating news coverage like his orange-god-emperor-narcissist,

While I get called out defending myself from a MAGA idiot for bullying!

He misspelled “dinosaur.”

(But I digress)

 

An unpunished insurrection,

Becomes practice for the next,

We’re either “a nation of laws, and not of men,”

Or, an anarchic cluster fuck,

Good luck with libertarian, free-market capitalism,

When we can’t maintain a republic!

Terrorism (noun): the unlawful use of violence and intimidation especially against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. Definition from Oxford Languages

 Floyd Ray Roseberry is a terrorist,

So was Ashley Babbit,

And everyone who tried to overthrow our democracy January Sixth,

The only solution:

Convict and sentence the insurrectionists and their treasonous president!

Critical Thinking...

Damien G Jackaman, Facebook

 © August 13, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“No shoes, no shirt, no service,”

“Click it or ticket” after its implementation in 1973 dropped highway fatalities from a high down to 17%,

When working in high-risk areas, it’s advisable to wear personal protective equipment,

Before getting on a plane;

It would help if you took off your shoes, belt, laptop,

Walkthrough an x-ray machine and metal detectors,

Wear your seatbelt, and place your tray tables in an upright, locked position before landing,

 

Where are my civil libertarians?

 

Oh, yeah!

Please wear a mask,

While in the store shopping

To stem the spread of a deadly pandemic,

 

How DARE you take away my [personal] liberties and rights?

 

Please [go] fly a kite,

In a lightning storm,

With conducting wire,

Since you “don’t believe in science,”

 

Death Santis:

What the hell is a “biomedical security state?”

You had to back-the-fuck-up on the “no masks” mandates,

As will your Texas Wheelchair Nazi idiot clone,

Neither of you is going to be president,

Or governors for long,

We have this thing in 2022 called elections,

Charlie Crist in Florida,

Beto O’Rourke in Texas,

Are your replacements,

 

The Census your president slowed,

Ended early,

Reported karmically:

So-called white people are shrinking,

Probably because rural moonshiners,

Don’t trust the GUB-MINT revenuers,

There’s a simple explanation for this gap,

It might be less about sex and more about math,

Russian disinformation is capitalizing on it,

Rather than telling the truth,

To their rural constituents,

The “gang of Putin” is lying to them,

Since they’ve lost seven out of eight popular votes in presidential elections,

They’re taking their marbles home and not participating,

More willing to blow up democracy,

[Than] moderating their message,

 

Deplorable ingrates,

Yelling at medical professionals,

Trying to keep children,

Who can’t get a vaccine,

From getting sick,

Intubated,

Or dying,

Because you think William Wallace cried “free dumb.”

(That’s two words, he only said one),

They forget Will was drawn and quartered,

His kinsmen fought for freedom in his name like Scotsmen,

 

But you’re

Upset,

At a piece of cloth,

Over your nose and mouth,

Trust me: no one likes this shit,

But you’re the ones extending this pandemic,

Needlessly by not wearing it,

Or getting a FREE vaccine,

You act like you’re constantly insulted,

This fact is why we call you a death cult.

Don’t interrupt!

 

You were the same “stable geniuses.”

That wanted to open up the classrooms

Unmasked during the alpha variant,

With NO vaccine [in] sight,

When you were saying that it was all a hoax,

That it would magically “disappear.”

After November 3,

Well, Einstein,

“Reinstatement” is [apparently] a moving target,

The Delta variant is here,

What’s your “plan B?”

 

You “don’t trust what’s in the vaccines,”

But you’re in the drive-thru on Fridays at Wendy’s,

You shovel Big Macs

Like there’s no tomorrow:

“Two all-beef patties,

Special sauce,

Lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions,

On a sesame seed bun.”

Question:

What’s in the “special sauce?”

What are you swigging that’s in moonshine?

 

You “did your research.”

Ahem: I can quote chapter and verse:

 

Did you read papers,

Summarize them in a literature review,

Cross-check references,

Ask questions,

Form hypothesis,

Alternative hypothesis,

Design experiments,

Analyze results,

No? You just saw a video?

 

By definition:

 

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, [and/or] evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.”

 

The Foundation For Critical Thinking: Defining Critical Thinking

 

If you did none of this,

You have NO idea what critical thinking is!

The Power of Their Poverty....

© August 13, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“You will never defeat our poverty,”

 

A Bedouin tribal chieftain said,

To Alexander the Great,

The first western power

Attempting to control the area near

The Hindu-Kush mountains,

 

He led the [greatest] fighting force in existence,

Wept when he thought,

There were no more worlds to conquer,

He could not resist the challenge,

Put down by a Bedouin,

Alexander had battering rams and catapults;

The chieftain knew the mountainous terrain,

His warriors had courage and heart,

Spears, arrows, and slingshots,

 

Guess who won?

Rumi, the experimental poet, and Sufi master, actually,

Conquered Afghanistan with words of harmony,

Overcame ignorance without firing a shot,

 

Part of a succession,

Of western powers,

That saw defeat,

Their kryptonite being

Abject stupidity and arrogance,

The British Empire tried three times before us,

 

The USA,

Is addicted to “winning,”

Starting with the Revolutionary War,

Robert E. Lee surrendered,

To Ulysses S. Grant,

At Appomattox,

We got through the War of 1812,

The other time

Adversaries stormed the Capitol,

The War to End All Wars,

Resulting in the League of Nations,

Preceded the United Nations,

And World War II,

After Fat Man and Big Boy,

Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

A sailor and a damsel’s kiss,

In Times Square,

Immortalized on Life Magazine,

We were invincible!

 

Then came South Korea,

Technically, in armistice since the 1950s,

So, you can’t say we “lost” a war,

That technically,

[Hasn’t] really ended,

 

On the heels of this,

Indochina,

Known popularly as Vietnam,

Images of helicopters,

Evacuating,

Ho Chi Min City,

Replication,

Thirty-six years later,

Near the grave of a smiling Bedouin,

 

Osama bin Laden took ideological guidance from Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, and Sayyid Qutb.

 

He subscribed to the Athari (literalist) school of Islamic theology.

 

We have American y’all Qaeda zealot analogies,

 

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Post our obvious defeat in Vietnam,

Suggested to President Carter,

To let the Soviet Union have a taste,

They slogged it out nine years,

Until their economy collapsed,

 

No western power has ever defeated their poverty,

The Taliban existed,

Before we entered to get Osama Bin Laden,

After 9/11,

Whom THEY offered,

Along with terms of THEIR surrender,

Meaning: we didn’t have to go get him,

We lost talent, lives, and treasure,

How many flag-draped coffins could we have avoided?

Fighting an unnecessary war,

Trillions of dollars spent,

Potholes and bridges still needing repair,

Free college, and universal healthcare,

Instead, this dysfunctional dystopia of despair,

Guantanamo would not exist,

Except for sadism and arrogance,

 

The Pentagon budget,

Which never gets cut,

Is greater than,

The combined equivalent,

Of twelve other western nations,

 

Rome fell,

When the empire,

Overextended,

Itself,

It’s why we study about it in museums,

Shakespeare penned “Julius Caesar,”

It is arrogant to believe,

We don’t have a time limit,

 

Homo sapiens is supposed to mean “wise men,”

“American exceptionalism” is a façade for bullshit,

We behave more like Homo Stultus, “stupid men,”

 

We “will never defeat their poverty,”

It sounds like a law of physics,

As inexorable as,

The Second Law of Thermodynamics,

 

Order without maintenance,

Eventually goes into chaos,

Overextended empires eventually collapse,

 

Sadly, we don’t recall George Santayana’s wisdom,

Or heed it:

“Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”