Saturday, February 18, 2023

Killing Fields...

Image Source: Instagram


© February 15, 2023, the Griot Poet

Inspired by “An Economic Civil War to Stop Mass Shootings,” Countdown With Keith Olbermann’s podcast, I-Heart Radio, 2/15/23.

 

Sports commentator

Jemele Hill’s saved tweet,

Sums up our national sociopathy:

 

Quoting Dan Hodges: “In retrospect, Sandy Hook marked the END of the gun control debate. Once America decided that killing children was bearable, it was over.”

 

Children,

[Who] on December 14, 2012,

[Had] every right to dream about a white Christmas: they lived in Connecticut,

And New England is known for its winter weather.

 

Children,

[Who] on December 14, 2012,

[Had] every right to dream about what they would be when they grew up: a scientist, a writer, a poet, a musician, a lawyer, a teacher: all possibilities lost.

 

Children,

Who were six,

You do the math: they should be graduating from high school and getting ready to be first-year students in college.

We don’t get legislation,

We get the reflexive “thoughts and prayers” shtick,

Knowing full well that the only gods these monsters respect are Mammon and Moloch!

Personifications of greed and avarice,

And the sacrifice of innocents on “cremation pyres of care,”

 

Children,

One of which, her parent,

An IBM researcher,

I witnessed his mad dash out of the facility at the news of another gun massacre:

His daughter didn’t make it.

 

Children,

Another parent at Sandy Hook,

A jazz musician,

Jimmy Greene,

Composed in his, and his wife, Nebla Marquez’s grief,

An ode to their daughter, Ana Grace Marquez-Greene.

 

Twenty children, who should be freshmen in college,

And six teachers, who should be with us, and eleven years closer to retirement.

 

Alex Jones made mountains of cash,

That would make Midas blush,

Saying that Sandy Hook was staged,

That there were no dead children,

That they were “crisis actors,”

 

Where are the teachers, Alex?

Where are the children enrolled in college?

Why are you filing for bankruptcy to escape accountability?

 

The day before the fifth anniversary of the Parkland massacre,

We get Anthony McRae,

Who should not have been allowed to purchase or possess a weapon,

He goes to Michigan State University,

With no affiliation,

He killed three and severely wounded five,

Before the police could arrest him alive,

The coward took his own life.

 

One of Anthony’s victims,

She was a survivor of Sandy Hook.

Jackie Matthews,

A senior at MSU,

“We can no longer allow this to happen. The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have lived through is just incomprehensible. We can no longer [just] provide love and prayers. It needs to be legislation; [needs] to be action. It’s not OK.” [1]

 

David Hogg,

Survivor of Parkland,

“I’m just so frustrated at the fact that we’re still in the same place. I have a special message for the Republicans and conservative gun owners who don’t agree with me in the first place. Look, I can respect people who don’t agree with me, but I can’t accept that there is nothing that we can do as Americans to keep the number one thing we all care about, which is our loved ones and especially our children, safe.” [1]

 

The debate is over: we’re a nation led by sociopaths.

 

They are part of a ghoulish death cult cheering for the apocalypse.

Which means that we can’t do anything about gun violence or climate change,

The kind that pimps out their gas-guzzling trucks with smokestacks to “own the libs,”

Like they’re breathing oxygen on another planet!

 

Ghouls don’t mind a good bloodbath,

Because if you look at the stock market after,

Every gun massacre,

Indexes like Smith and Wesson,

After the smoke clears,

Perform at their peak,

They care far less about their voting constituents,

And more about the Gun Lobby,

Who, after the Orwellian “Citizens United,”

Are getting bags of money from government lobbyists,

Who have their conservative audience-tested talking points,

So, like automatons, they don’t have to think about it when they recite them.

 

Young women in high school are showing signs of depression,

Heterosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender,

Some have expressed suicidal tendencies,

This phenomenon has nothing to do with their sexuality [2]

Maybe it’s because

Since kindergarten, they’ve been doing “run, hide, and fight” drills.

Some of it you can blame on social media,

Creating avatars not reflecting reality,

 

Or maybe,

The girls realize that they live in killing fields,

Each morning they say, “I love you, mommy,” which might be their last.

That the young man whose affectionate advances they’re not feeling,

He might bring a weapon to class to express his Incel grievances,

 

People who tout the Second Amendment,

Live in gated communities and Cul de Sacs,

In “Leave it to Beaver Villes,"

Nothing ever affects them, or ever will,

All the massacres are the byproduct of doing business,

Who cares if your children are massacred?

“Thoughts and prayers” are free; legislation isn’t.

 

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

 

Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas,

All of you aficionados of “original intent.”

 

Riddle me this:

Where are the words “purchased” and “ownership?”

 

For the security of a free state,

The people have a right to see their babies grow up,

For the security of a free state,

We have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”


It shouldn’t be a matter of deep philosophy,

To experience liberty and happiness, LIFE is a prerequisite!

 

I have a right to see my grandchildren enter college,

I have a right as a citizen to see them pursue their dreams and knowledge,

Freedom for gated communities and killing fields everywhere else is tyranny,

If you cannot [just] “be," then freedom isn’t freedom.

This aspect of American life has always been what freedom meant to my ancestors and me,

And as sad as my grandchildren may be,

I’d rather live to see them say goodbye to and bury me.

Vote these fascist ghouls out of office for our children and democracy.

In Swahili,

Hebu Uhura pete: let freedom ring.

 

Sources:

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/michigan-state-university-senior-who-also-survived-sandy-hook-shooting-its-not-ok/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/teen-girls-sadness-suicide-violence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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