Situational Nihilism...

 © September 21, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

I don’t take credit for the title,

Brian Williams coined “situational nihilism,”

On his aptly named show, “The 11th Hour,”

An apropos metaphor,

Democracy can’t exist,

In the presence of dark money super PACS,

Since 2013’s “Shelby vs. Holder,”

It’s been hanging by a thread ever since,

By the way:

 

Eliminate the filibuster.

 

Moscow Mitch in 2019,

Said, there’s no way they wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling,

Two years later, in 2021,

He’s ready to hold a gun to our collective heads,

For trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich,

This debt ceiling is his and his party’s debt,

Because he hasn’t paid a political price yet,

He stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama, and Merrick Garland,

Saying, “it was too soon before an election,”

That didn’t stop him from ramming through,

Inside joke “Fascism Forever Club” Neil Gorsuch,

“I like beer” pervert Brett Kavanaugh,

The Handmaid’s Tale’s hypocritical Aunt Lydia: Amy Comey Barrett,

They were willing to hold a Supreme Court seat open

For the death of Antonin Scalia,

Indefinitely, or until

The next Republican president,

 

John Meachum points out,

The caveat of democracy,

Is the willingness of election losers

To accept their loss,

Understand it,

Jettison what didn’t work,

Improve their arguments,

Give a reason citizens should vote for them,

Expand their margins in the midterms,

Answer W-I-I-T-F-M: “what’s in it for me?” to their constituents,

 

Every sports team is now more democratic than half of Congress,

Each player accepts the possibility,

As hard as they compete, they might fall flat,

There are some hard feelings, few brawls,

And, not one insurrection on the fifty-yard line or half-court!

 

Nihilism, from Merriam-Webster:

 

a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless

Nihilism is a condition in which all ultimate values lose their value.

— Ronald H. Nash

 

a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths

 

a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility

 

capitalized: the program of a 19th-century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination

 

Situational nihilism is the gateway drug to fascism,

Moscow Mitch won’t vote for raising the debt limit,

He did three times during Orange Satan’s administration for an eight TRILLION dollar deficit!

We now have a two-party system where one believes in democracy, and the other doesn’t,

They’ve been shrinking since W ran in the year 2000,

Halcyon days in retrospect comparison,

The electorate rolling their eyes on “traditional marriage” and “family values,”

When your party is shrinking, block those “others” from voting,

 

The road to January 6, 2021, began

With the Brown vs. Board of Education 9 to 0 decision,

The last time the Supreme Court had any relevance,

The right was upset because nine judges in 1954 followed The Constitution,

 

The right wanted to vote on separate but equal education,

The right wanted to vote on segregation,

The right wanted to vote on Civil Rights legislation,

The right wanted to vote on Voting Rights,

The right wanted to vote on Fair Housing Rights,

The right wanted to vote on a woman’s bodily autonomy,

To deny ALL of it!

 

Because “democracy” is only okay for certain people,

And they had the numbers to reinforce their racist, sexist, and xenophobic will,

George Orwell’s lines spoke prophecy:

 

“War is peace,

“Freedom is slavery,

“Ignorance is strength.”

 

“Lovecraft Country” got it right:

White supremacy is a form of witchcraft,

Their tendency towards violence the monsters of our nightmares,

Bending times, laws, and gravity to its collective will,

Sponsoring foreign wars,

Willfully ignoring poverty and inequality,

Marvin Gaye said, “It Makes Me Wanna Holler,”

Gil Scot-Heron said, “Whitey’s on the Moon,”

 

What do Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinima plan to do,

If the Democrats lose the House and Senate in 2022?

Nazis have no use for treasonous collaborators,

You bought places in the back of the line at Auschwitz,

Where the ovens will be their hottest after I go in,

 

Situational nihilism will demand that Moscow Mitch

After he gets another fascist, he can work with,

Expand the court to a 9 to 3 supermajority,

Kevin Q-Carthy will expend all resources,

For Benghazi 2.0,

To impeach Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,

A guaranteed conviction if Moscow is triumphant,

 

They are men and women of sin; sons and daughters of lawlessness,

Any Bibles they possess has thick layers of dust on them,

Any pocket Constitutions they possess never get past the Second Amendment,

Vigilantes seeking bounties outside of Texas’s borders,

You don’t quite know that in dysfunctional dystopias,

The sun rises and sets as it usually does,

As seas slowly rise, superstorms become commonplace,

Redwood forests become dried kindling,

Elysium is the next logical stage of this psychopathy,

What’s left hanging heavy in the air is voter apathy,

Births fall as indebted young can’t afford to raise families,

We careen from one climate change disaster to the next pandemic,

Alabama projects a future where the dead outnumber the living,

A cascade down a steep slope to extinction due to situational nihilism!

Societal Suicide...

 

Paper: Veiled Women: Religion, and Cultural Practice, Sarah Slininger

© September 17, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

The Economist said:

“Nations That Fail Women Fail.”

You’re neglecting fifty percent of your population,

Decisions in such municipalities,

Have the distinction

Of being chaired by,

Cisgender men,

Whether white males in Texas,

Or Taliban in Afghanistan,

Harsh penalties meted out

For the jealousy of something that we can’t do with our bodies: the gestation of life,

We plant the seed, and we think we’re finished,

We behave more like roaming polar bears than responsible citizens,

Once you make a baby, you’re on tap until you leave the planet,

If you levy penalties for fetal heartbeats at six weeks,

Levy child support payments to the lust pipe-slinging, irresponsible miscreants,

 

Such societies, Taliban, or Texas, tends towards violence,

From Dr. Strangelove to “Enduring Freedom,”

Very few if any women at the decision table,

Generals playing great games on grand chessboards,

Or more primitively: action figures with GI Joe’s,

Oblivious to the reality,

These sons and daughters exist,

Because a woman birthed each one of them on the planet,

They are the reason why the human family exists,

Yet they have no seat at tables in deciding war or peace?

 

What are you afraid [of]?

Perhaps that there would be fewer wars,

And fewer avenues to make profits,

From Jining up false bravado and patriotism,

Jingoism, and sloganeering,

Southern aristocracy penned through their lawyers,

The articles of secession,

Yet not a single one fought in the

“War of northern aggression,”

They made sure they got reparations,

After the conflagration,

Rachel, north, and south was weeping,

Because if their children did not return

With missing limbs, or shell-shocked,

They were “no more.”

 

Fifty percent of the population,

Isn’t at the decision table,

For decisions on their bodily autonomy,

For peace or war,

For the distribution of the common good and public services,

For universal health, free college, maternity, and paternity leave like Denmark,

Like reparations for plantation slavers,

We seem only to have time for tax cuts.

 

Boko Haram and Islamic State

Promise their followers “wives” for their allegiance,

Seventy virgins after a suicide bombing

You have to admit it is an excellent gaslighting trick,

Sheiks that can afford harems,

Frustrate 99% bachelors beneath them,

Oligarchs have honey pot orgies,

On yachts with airbrushed models and silicone booties,

China aborts the female fetus as useless,

To the chagrin of frustrated bachelors,

Quote from The Economist:

It’s “no coincidence

“That Kashmir has one of the most

“Unbalanced sex ratios in India,

“Or that all of the 20 most turbulent countries on the Fragile States Index compiled by

“The Fund for Peace in Washington practice polygamy,”

 

You didn’t spontaneously subdivide in a Petri dish!

The superpower of women,

Is every soul in existence comes FROM them,

I repeat:

Societies that suppress women have a propensity towards violence,

David’s seven wives, and three hundred concubines,

His son, Solomon’s preponderant one-thousand,

It’s no wonder Israel had wars:

There were no women left for the frustrated and poor males left!

 

Much [is made] of Joseph accepting Mary’s pregnancy,

He could have her stoned to death, in commitment to stone age lunacy,

But: nothing made of Jesus and his siblings raised by a single mother after Joseph’s apparent passing,

 

Warren Jeffs had several underage wives in West Texas,

Polygamy, as practiced by proto Mormons,

Shooed away younger men from their homes,

This act was violence.

Because older pedophilic miscreants didn’t want the younger competition,

Many confused young men with little education and fewer life skills,

Wound up depressed, opioid addicted, and homeless,

 

Suppressing the rights of women is societal suicide,

Women are seldom at peace talks, we’ve rarely tried,

Because there is for a sociopathic few more profit,

In making young women, and men dead soldiers,

But each of these soldiers is somebody’s child,

Societies that depends on fraternal bonding,

Choose the women their sons will marry,

Usually based on bribery dowries,

It’s no wonder they still see women as property,

It’s no wonder slavery existed 400 years in old and new Egypt,

It’s no wonder “peace on earth” is illusory,

With men having power over women’s bodies.

Dunning-Kruger Death Cult...

 

Training Peaks: Dunning-Kruger Effect

© September 16, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

In 1980,

Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),

Who gave us the infinitely useless “stand your ground” laws,

That empowered a psychopath named Zimmerman,

And murdered Trayvon Benjamin Martin,

Weyrich spoke to a group of conservative preachers in Dallas, Texas:

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.”

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

 

In 1999,

A prophecy of Nostradamus did not see its fulfillment

But a paper by Justin Kruger, a graduate student, and his advisor David Dunning, Cornell University

Caused a stir in academics before the end of the 20^th and start of the 21^st Century

Titled: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s [Own] Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,”

People who “hold overly favorable views of their abilities.”

They are not self-critical enough to know what they’re missing,

Like bulls in china shops, they’d rather “wing it,”

“Fake it until you make it,”

Causing ruination,

The circular logic is,

If you’re [totally] unaware of your limitations,

How can you tell if you’ve reached the summit of knowledge, recognize expertise, or your flaws in your process?

 

In 2020,

During the rising death toll of a global pandemic,

Our shared Nightmare on Elm Street

At the Resolute Desk said the quiet part out loud,

In a rare display of candor and honesty:

Dismissing the safety protocols during a pandemic: early voting, mail-in voting, and same-day registration: “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

 

The now-famous Dunning-Kruger effect

Seemed fulfillment of Bertrand Russell’s earlier assessment:

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

 

Karl Rove told reporter Ron Suskind: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ [...] ‘That’s not the way the world [really] works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our [own] reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to [just] study what we do.’”

Karl: that was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” insanity.

But it and Dunning-Kruger aptly explains our current calamity,

The modern “gang of Putin” is Paul Weyrich’s wet dream.

There is a through-line from Barry Goldwater to Weyrich, Weyrich to Nixon, Nixon to Reagan, Reagan to Orange Satan.

Goldwater got some disingenuous ads against him, painting him as crazy enough to start a thermonuclear war.

Lyndon Baines Johnson won 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52.

It was then Goldwater, years before Watergate, coined “you’ve got to hunt where the ducks are.”

The ducks were the disaffected southern Dixiecrats in deep depression because Civil Rights and Voting Rights from the US Constitution extended to African Americans.

When you have privilege, equal justice seems like persecution.

Privilege is a kind of willful blindness.

For white supremacist power, party insiders weren’t, and aren’t, willing to remove the scales or blinders.

 

Yesterday,

A diminutive number of domestic terrorists,

Marched for their seditionist brethren from January 6,

Pretending they are all political prisoners,

As if they’re behind the lines of the Iron Curtain,

No congressional cheerleader,

Even Marjorie Taylor-Green,

Bothered to show up in solidarity,

The California recall blowout was an indication,

Maybe they shouldn’t brace to their bosom the absolute crazy?

They’re all white grievance minstrels, performance artists, professional trolls, and nihilists. “Owning the libs” is all they do.

Name ONE piece of legislation they’ve proposed for the common good?

I hear the sound of chirping crickets.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t need another tax cut!

“Idiocracy” did not take 500 years of political Entropy: it just took the desperation of a party that sees its power waning, and is clinging to power at all cost, even if that wage paid is the republic.

Hypocrites...

 

© September 6, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“Pro-life,”

Would be 20 Sandy Hook teens starting high school this fall,

We didn’t forget.

A parent committed suicide because of “Sandy Hook truthers,”

Insisting the carnage by Adam Lanza wasn’t legitimate,

It was fake, you said, and staged by “crisis actors,”

Pumped by conniption fit king Alex Jones,

And other failed vitamin/survivalist hacks,

 

Other than stuntmen and stuntwomen,

No screen actors guild job posting as this exists,

 

Black Lives Matter,

Came into existence

With the killing of Michael Brown,

Eric Garner,

Sandra Bland,

And sadly, others,

 

“All Lives Matter,”

Sounds kind of cute,

On closer inspection, it’s obtuse,

If “all lives mattered,”

You had 1619 to the present to prove it,

You’d be wearing a mask during a pandemic,

Or, get a free vaccine versus bleach, flashlights, ivermectin,

You derisively call people who get it “sheep,”

Ivermectin is deworming medicine for horses, cattle, hogs, dogs, goats, AND sheep!

 

You’re Libertarian for your freedoms,

And totalitarian with everyone else’s,

You just reduced Texas women to second-class citizens,

The first act of authoritarians is reducing women to UN persons,

Only suitable for cisgender sexual gratification,

Or, quoting George Carlin, broodmares for the state,

Texas women have no options,

If raped by a brother, a father, an uncle, a cousin,

They must carry the fetus of their rapist even if unviable,

Or threatening the life of the mother,

A woman thrice assaulted by her ex-lover in Texas,

Has to share custody with him,

Praying her rapist won’t harm her son,

When did “personal freedom” include back-alley coat-hanger abortions?

 

It’s like George Carlin’s stand up,

Pegged you in perpetuity:

“If you’re pre-born, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re FUCKED!”

If they survive their Sandy Hooks,

After PTSD “active shooter drills,”

Stacking up chairs to barricade themselves,

From psychopaths

Whose Second Amendment rights

Overcomes theirs to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”

(Notice which is listed FIRST?)

Once they turn eighteen, they can’t drink legally,

But they can VOTE (the 1% don’t want them to do that),

Oligarchs would rather they go

To the contrived meat grinders,

Of endless wars to enrich their pockets,

Designed since WWI by the Creel Commission for defense contractors,

Marketing has been manipulating an entire population,

Noam Chomsky’s “manufactured consent” for generations,

Lining the pockets of robber barons,

Overlords would instead love to pick our leaders/puppets,

[Than] have a government responding to the public,

They didn’t fight the so-called “war of northern aggression,”

But they made sure they got paid reparations for losing "laborers,"

Instead of the actual slaves who bled and built this country,

It’s why they don’t want true history,

“Critical race theory” is just a slogan, the real reason:

Criminals don’t admit to crimes committed,

They’d have to return the lands stolen,

From its original citizens,

Reparations,

Would be the equivalent,

Of the gold and jewels,

Given to the Hebrews

Leaving old Egypt,

 

New Egypt,

Brought us here in ships,

Lying in bile and filth,

Never to see our motherland again,

Sold to our enemies,

Women and men,

Treated like cattle you had forced sex with (Deuteronomy 28:68)

 

The foundation of this psychopathic wet dream,

Is a steady stream of permanent pariahs,

It started with the British Empire,

Extended to the Dalits - the original pariahs in India,

Aborigines in Australia,

The Somali refugee in Europe,

The Uighur in China,

South Africans in their [own] nation,

Afghan refugees twenty years post “enduring freedom,”

It’s why Queen Elizabeth couldn’t fathom Diana, a commoner, or an independent black woman, Meghan Markle,

Every authoritarian needs necks for boots to rest on,

Scapegoats on which to lay blame,

Rather than solve problems that overwhelm them,

 

Because solving the problems they created,

Would be doing something to their great chagrin: 

 

It would entail sharing the wealth and resources around the WORLD that were stolen BY them!