Reckoning, or Ragnarok...

 

© August 4, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Asa Hutchinson regrets,

The anti-masking law he championed,

During the early days in Arkansas of the Alpha variant,

Now, he’s contending with constituents,

Who confuse liberty and license,

Delta variant raging,

Delta plus in South Korea up to bat,

 

Shouting their resistance at him behind his podium,

Asa nonplussed,

The citizens he gaslighted,

Resistant to vaccines or new knowledge,

His no-mask mandate encouraged,

As well as by governors like him,

Who used the tragedy to “own the libs.”

Instead of cheering razorbacks,

Arkansas is acting more like Arkham Asylum,

 

Death Santis has seen his polls drop,

As the Delta variant increased cases on the Florida peninsula,

Despite his falling percentages,

He’s gone for the goto migrants-at-the-border racist rant,

He’s doubled-down because

He frankly doesn’t care one wit,

And thinks his constituents are dumb as shit,

 

In Moscow Mitch’s state,

The electorate hated Obamacare,

But loved KY Connect,

Not bothering to understand,

They’re the same,

Through the Affordable Care Act,

 

You cannot have reparations without a reckoning,

Without an admittance of wrongdoing,

But that would go back to this nation’s founding,

 

European settlers identified with their home countries,

For centuries, English, Irish, Scottish, French, Belgium, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish warred with each other,

Bacon's rebellion,

Of European indentured and African slave servants,

Gave one percent landowners some concern,

They pursued a "divide, and conquer" strategy,

They had to unify the fledgling democratic republic under a new ideology:

 

White.

 

The designation happened officially in 1681,

Dr. Joseph Graves, Evolutionary Biologist wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in 2003,

Jacqueline Battalora, MD, JD wrote “Birth of a White Nation” in 2013,

The opposite of white is black, brown, yellow, or red,

Like the people from Africa kidnapped,

Or the new land seized from its original inhabitants,

Or building railroads,

 

Accidental explosions birthed the words

“Not a Chinaman’s chance.”

As many who laid steel fell to their deaths,

To connect a continent,

Steeped in the racist mythology,

Of “Manifest Destiny,”

Using Race to deflect the blame for

Recklessly allowing the progression of a deadly coronavirus,

Acknowledged he knew to Bob Woodward on tape!

 

There is no scientific classification called white, red, yellow, brown, or black,

It is not supported by biological theory or fact,

[Race] is a legal construction,

To justify a four-hundred years heist of resources,

Ross Perot called it a “vast sucking sound” up to the pockets of the one percent,

We’re all humans on the same planet!

 

Do you want a Star Trek future?

Don’t stop with a NASA warp drive field test,

Don’t just “build back better”:

Build a society with a real sense of justice,

Respect for all life and people, regardless of sexual orientation, or Melanin,

 

Apply science and reason,

To perplexing problems requiring

O’thia: Vulcan reality-truth,

Not gaslighting and sloganeering,

Let’s “make lying wrong again,”

An African proverb says:

“A lie has many variations, the truth none.”

Elevate empathy,

Not sociopathy,

Cooperation,

Not competition,

Will ensure species and life continuance,

You can’t let Bezos, Branson, Musk,

And phallic symbol spacecraft,

Be the foundation of

The United Federation of Planets,

Instead of a future utopia,

That starts looking more like “The Expanse.”

Labor disputes on Mars, or the Asteroid Belt,

Resolved by cutting off air and water,

That’s WAY more efficient than Amazon propaganda posters,

Lying to intimidate workers,

We can’t take on Klingons with bat’leths,

Until we bury OUR hatchets,

We can’t sail in starships,

Until we save our planet,

 

George Jetson,

Is forty,

In the year 2062,

Meaning somewhere on the planet,

A couple is busy conceiving him,

I’d rather have,

Flying cars,

Houses on stilts,

Be architecture and technology congruent,

With living creatures underneath, we share the planet with,

Not in anticipation of

once-in-a-century flooding

Every week by climate change,

Astro walking on a treadmill,

Because there are no longer any streets or parks for dogs to play in,

 

The Earth was here

Before humanity,

The sun rose and set,

Over volcanoes and magma seas of a lifeless planet,

Before comets pummeling the planet cooled it and gave us our seas,

Before simple plants started through photosynthesis manufacturing,

The planet’s first taste of oxygen,

Evidenced by the appearance of rust,

In the fossil record,

The record also shows,

Five previous mass extinctions,

As we barrel headlong into a six,

Like a zombie death cult

Cheering apocalypse,

 

The future is an illusion,

It isn’t guaranteed,

It’s the subject of speculative fiction,

And futurism,

Its foundation is in

The decisions WE make,

Today,

“Toxic positivity” can’t “name it, and claim it,”

Or wish problems away,

 

Reckoning: the action or process of calculating or estimating something; the moment of truth,

 

Ragnarok: the final destruction of the world in the conflict between the Aesir and the powers of Hel led by Loki, the god of lies and chaos — also called Twilight of the Gods,

 

NO ONE is rich without civilization or a planet!

 

The choice is obvious:

 

Life, or death,

Order, or chaos,

Vaccines, or variants, whack-a-mole, serial pandemics,

Alternative energy, or a hotter, more lifeless planet,

That does not require humans on it to exist,

 

The choice will be acknowledging,

 

Reckoning, or Ragnarok!