It Was Never About...

 

Image source: https://twitter.com/kpheaney/status/910414971279831040

© June 30, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

If it was about the babies,

Then the number one way of them dying wouldn’t be by gun violence in the “exceptional” United States,

You would have had universal background checks,

Raised the purchase age to twenty-one,

Eighteen-year-olds can’t buy alcohol,

They can vote and die in wars,

But they can impulse buy guns,

With no training and zero instruction,

And drive the profits of sadistic gun manufacturers,

Remington, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson,

Whose stocks after gun massacres skyrocket,

Murder of black people at Mother Emmanuel, Tops Supermarket,

Gay millennials at Pulse Nightclub,

Young people chopped to pieces in a caliber meat grinder,

From Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland to Uvalde,

In every instance,

It is just the cost of doing business.

 

Require instead people who insist on arsenals to carry liability insurance,

Like we do on homes and autos,

Proportional to the number of weapons of death that they own,

Like we do on homes and autos,

I didn’t touch the Second Amendment,

I’m going to let libertarian market forces

Make you hate-triots choose between

Arsenals, or eating,

 

If it was about the babies,

[Then] like most other industrialized western nations,

We’d have paid family leave,

Rather than up to six weeks unpaid in the US,

To discourage the proletariat from having sex

Producing babies is a distraction

To the corporate board of directors,

More focused on productivity and profits,

Who have never changed diapers,

That’s what immigrant nannies are for,

 

Denmark allows the mother to recover and bond with her child on PAID family leave,

ONE year after the procedure,

Dad gets six months,

 

Winston in “1984” who loved Julia

In defiance of the Thought Police and Big Brother,

He was turned from his lover with an iron rat’s mask in room 101,

No telling what they did to Julia in room 102,

Winston and Julia

Brainwashed by torture,

They never got to have children,

Returned to their roles serving an indifferent, totalitarian government,

 

If it was all about the babies,

We’d have universal healthcare so that families don’t go bankrupt

On medical procedures in the US,

Affordable everywhere else,

Birthing occurs with midwives and doctors in hospitals around the world,

Having humans isn’t cheap by a long shot,

 

Neither are student loans

The cost of education has also skyrocketed,

Public education used to be minimal, or free in some cases,

Just like they are in Germany and other European nations,

More designed to keep social climbers “in their places,”

[Than] facilitate life-changing career experiences,

“Conservative” has always meant maintaining the status quo,

Of white male patriarchy,

Everyone else in the lower taxonomy,

This Ponzi scheme is on our currency,

As the all-seeing eye of Horus,

The apex of the pyramid,

Symbol of the one-percent,

 

If it was about the babies,

Women wouldn’t be fleeing to Mexico,

Or blue states where the country their mothers knew for two generations still exists,

A digital Underground Railroad hastily constructed,

So their cell phones can’t be tracked by GPS,

Deputy sheriffs might as well start refraining:

 

“Under his eye.”

 

Where are everyone’s red robes and nuns’ habits?

 

Margaret Atwood’s nightmare actualized

By robed religious zealots,

Women

Praying to whatever deity who’s listening,

This kangaroo court will not hand down the 21st Century version of the Dred Scott decision,

 

I keep saying: vote.

But Abraham Lincoln

For blatant partisan reasons

Packed the Supreme Court,

During the Civil War,

(And started the National Academy of Science)

Adding two additional judicial members,

For the sake of holding together a fragile republic,

The number “nine” isn’t sacrosanct.

 

Joe Biden: pack the court.

It’ll goose your approval ratings, which are out of sorts,

If we give you two or four more senators,

Remove the antebellum filibuster.

We don’t care about Manchin or Sinema,

Give us three more sane Justices,

Like Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson

As a bulwark against six extremists,

I include Chief Justice John Roberts in this,

 

We voted for you,

For the same reason, we would have voted for Bernie Sanders

In 2016 and 2020:

Hillary Clinton was our reluctant default,

Her “pied piper” campaign,

Promoting an extremist in the Republican primary,

Backfired on the country spectacularly,

“Hope and change” won the day previously,

“Fear and loathing” that the other guy’s nuts did not!

Putin knew the American public wasn’t that smart.

 

So, why are the democrats repeating this unfortunate, unforced error,

Paying for the expenses of QANON cultists,

Paying for the campaigns of The Riddler and Joker,

Running to assume the reigns of government,

Are they promoting contrast extremists rather than policies that the DNC has to HELP Americans?

Yeah, that worked [really] well in 2016!

Are you afraid to hand the reigns of power from Nancy Pelosi to AOC?

 

Corporatism is still a pile of feces,

Painted gold to make it pretty,

 

Dark money flows 25% to democrats, and 75% to the GOP,

The Supreme Court made corporate bribery “free speech,”

NAFTA left red and blue states, urban and rural communities, ghost towns,

Introduced by George HW Bush,

Carried out by William Jefferson Clinton,

It’s why Hillary didn’t play well in coal country,

 

Sometimes the electorate, out of frustration,

Stays home or gives you a middle finger at the ballot box,

Picking Jack the Ripper for a lark!

 

The Republic is fracturing.

We’re IN a Civil War, just not on the battlefield yet.

 

Joe Biden and the EPA didn’t lose the ability

To regulate the nation’s carbon emissions:

It’s a bullet in the head of the planet.

 

The country with 4% of the world’s population is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions,

 

The country with 4% of the world’s population,

Killed 1 million of its [own] citizens during the pandemic,

 

The country with 4% of the world’s population,

Has an epidemic of gun massacres,

More suicide deaths by them than any other nation,

Having more guns than citizens,

ALL in the name of corporate profits,

 

Enough!

Stop it!

 

It’s

Either “we the people,”

Or them the oligarchs,

One facilitates democratic government,

The other option is a fascist dictatorship,

One ensures our species and all life’s survival on this planet,

The other, Entropic extinction.

 

Get your heads out of Ayn Rand’s fevered rectum and delusions,

Only thinking as far ahead as the next quarter’s profits,

 

Here’s a thought experiment:

Go to a graveyard,

And ask yourselves:

Which one of these corpses made money yesterday on Wall Street?

 

It was never about the babies.

It was never about Jesus.

It was never about “family values.”

You’re down with the temple money changers,

It has always been about your profits!

 

Our choices are stark:

It’s either “we the people” of planet EARTH or death cult oligarchs!