Didn't Earn It...

 

Image Source: Threads

© March 27, 2024, the Griot Poet

 

Quoting Qasim Rashid, Esquire:

“MAGAs are labeling DEI as “didn’t earn it,”

“Which is wild, because, in reality,

“Generating historic wealth through two billion acres of stolen land from Native Americans,

“Enslaving black people for 300 years,

“Banning Asian immigration until 1965,

“And banning women from financial access until 1974,

“All without paying a single red cent in reparations or restitution,

“Is the living, breathing example of ‘not earning it!’”

 

Qasim Rashid gave us the codex.

This cryptography doesn’t even require a degree in hieroglyphics.

 

All of this has always been gaslighting.

Because painting reparations as only going to black people hides the crux of the problem.

 

You gave George Takei, Mr. Sulu of “Star Trek,” and Japanese Americans compensation for illegal internment.

You now allow Asian immigrants to go to universities and top STEM positions.

You need to give reparations to the once-enslaved people’s descendants.

You need to give the land back to Native Americans.

You need to give bodily autonomy BACK to women.

 

If you’re familiar with knitting,

Pulling out one strand can unravel the fabric pattern.

The entire system is corrupted bullshit.

The prohibition against the enslaved reading George Washington (yeah, THAT one) was enacted right after the Haitian Revolution.

Kicking out your French weapons suppliers probably caused consternation at the constitutional convention.

You couldn’t maintain an economy based on free labor when the enslaved realize that they don’t have to put up with it.

 

Why are they always opposed to raising the minimum wage?

It’s the same reason why they’re banning books!

Scientia potentia est: “Knowledge is power.”

And the self-assigned royalty doesn’t want you to have any.

 

George Orwell said: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

“1984” was the transposition of the last two numbers in 1948.

It was never a year; it was a mental state.

It was a warning for future generations to avoid the allure of totalitarianism and fascism.

Fascism is for lazy people.

Such people are prone to conspiracy theories.

 

A massive cargo ship unexpectedly

Lost power,

A Mayday went out,

Ninety seconds is all the time they had to shut the bridge down from drivers crossing,

Thanks to sailors from India, there could have been more casualties.

 

The Dali is a Singaporean ship, 948 feet long, weighing 95,000 gross tons or 213 million pounds.

Plowed into the bridge support structure at nine miles per hour,

That’s enough mass and momentum to cause a disaster.

 

But,

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was brought down by,

 

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion,”

A euphemism like “let’s go Brandon.”

Baltimore’s Mayor, Brandon Scott, is black,

Maryland’s Governor, Wes Moore, is black,

The Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is gay, married, with adopted fraternal twins.

DEI did it,

Or,

You’re just racist, homophobic idiots.

It has to be:

“Open borders,”

The Texas-Mexico Border is 1,392 miles from Maryland.

The immigrants from Central America and Mexico worked in the middle of the night, filling potholes and doing jobs most Americans won't do!

If “DEI” to MAGA means “didn’t earn it,”

How did it knock down a bridge?

Ahem: That’s because it’s called an accident.

The laws of physics don’t bend to your conspiracy theories.

Species survival has little to do with billionaires funding space exploration but [mutual] cooperation.

Never mind trying to find other planets when you can’t work out your differences on this one!

 

D-E-I-A means “diversity, equity, inclusion, AND accessibility!”

Because,

We want to include our sisters and brothers with disabilities.

Transpose the “I” forward, and you get the “IDEA.”

Because inclusion is the lynchpin,

You can’t invent a warp drive until you understand this.

I get that DEIA might be too triggering.

It’s been around since humans.

It’s an idea more ancient than writing.

It has two simpler words describing it: fairness and sharing.

This is something billionaires have a considerable problem with.

 

The banana meme says:

“If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat, while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to find out what the heck is WRONG with it.

“When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Source: @welcomewords

 

Fairness and sharing,

 

The former words are anathema to ayatollahs, billionaires, emperors and empresses, kings, Grand Pooh-Bahs, oligarchs, popes, potentates, presidents, prime ministers, queens, sheiks, in comparison to the 99% rest of us,

Trying to live out our lives in relative peace and comfort.

 

Question: Who are the actual people who “didn’t earn it?”

Answer: The one percent.

 

And we,

Who built this country,

Every ethnicity, every religion, every nationality, every sexual orientation,

We, who have the votes to choose David Hogg’s “leaders we deserve” and change the narrative, the nation, and the world:

 

“We The People,” not “Citizens United,” deserve it!

Because,

“We The People,” not “Citizens United,” EARNED IT!

VOTE!

Fahrenheit 2024…

 

Source: Facebook meme. Also see Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

© March 12, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

Fascism thrives on what the Kremlin calls a “firehose of falsehoods,” more accurately and colorfully described by the Leninist Steve Bannon as “flooding the zone with bullshit.”

 

The reason why it seemed like Chris LaCivita swift boating John Kerry’s Vietnam record had no point: there wasn’t.

The reason why it seemed like there was no point in the Barack Obama Birther conspiracy was because there wasn’t.

It seemed like there was no point in the eleven hours of Hillary Clinton’s testimony to Congress because there wasn’t.

It seems that there was no point in the Hunter Biden hearing because there wasn’t.

Robert K. Hur didn’t do himself, Jim Jordan, or James Comer any favors because that wasn’t the point.

The reason why Senator Katie Brit’s lies were so evident that Scarlet Johansson didn’t have to work too hard for SNL’s “scary mom” skit is because,

She wasn’t there to rebut the president’s State of the Union speech.

She wasn’t there to tout a different perspective on her party’s policies.

She wasn’t there to support her arguments with facts.

Fascism doesn’t care about that.

Mary Poppins sang, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,”

Fascism presented with pretty faces is kind of like that.

She’s in a kitchen wearing a cross like a swastika.

Flat out LYING about a rape that happened twenty years ago when W was president.

The victim, assaulted in Mexico, NOT on the Texas-Mexico border, said Mama Christian was full of shit!

 

The point is,

What they say doesn’t HAVE to be true or even make sense. 

It’s a firehose of falsehoods.

It’s flooding the zone with bullshit.

It’s out there, in the ether, allowing Reich Wing news outlets to repeat it ad nauseum as IF it were true.

The goal of authoritarianism is to destroy truth, the foundation for democracy.

Parties that agree to a shared reality debate on policies addressing common issues.

The goal of fascists is to destroy any form of fact-checking.

The goal is to destroy your desire to understand anything.

The goal is to get people so tired that they give up trying.

 

You’ll escape to illicit drugs or alcoholic beverages.

You’ll escape [to] the myriad streaming services.

You’ll escape to meditation at temples, synagogues, mosques, and churches.

This is Marx’s “opiate of the people” on steroids!

 

All the while,

The one percent Hoover up all the money and assets,

Because they’re selfish bastards suffering from Hoarding Disorder and avarice!

 

I repeat:

Bernie is who we wanted.

But now,

 

The stage is set.

An aged Bruce Wayne had to come out of retirement.

The Dark Knight Returns as Dark Brandon.

Because the Joker staged a jailbreak at Arkham Asylum.

He pointed a mob at the U.S. Capitol.

He tried to hang Vice President Riddler!

The Joker wants to spring out 500 inmates in Arkham Asylum.

“Hostages” he calls terrorists.

Imagine “Killer Croc” in your living room!

 

He wants to ban books and not assault weapons.

He wants a Muslim ban re-instituted.

He wants the LGBT community to be invisible.

He wants women out of the workplace, no bodily autonomy, and back in the kitchen,

Because he needs [that] “Leave it to Beaver,” “Father Knows Best,” and “Ozzie and Harriet” propaganda bullshit!

Where mom can look gorgeous, hang clothes behind white picket fences, make a souffle, clean the house, help the kids with their homework, and have kinky sex with her alpha male even though she knows that he has a side chick!

 

I need Batman.

Throw in Catwoman.

I need Dark Brandon.

I need the Bat family with all hands on deck!

We need the Batarang, the Bat Rope, the Bat Boat, the Bat Wing, the Watchtower in orbit, and the Bat Swiss Army Knife utility belt!

 

We need to win THIS election.

Or, we won’t have any others.

What we’ll have is a public ceremony with a foregone conclusion,

Like the “election” in Russia, where Putin murdered his only opposition.

Like watching the Washington Generals versus the Harlem Globetrotters!

 

That last line was meant to be funny.

I’m using humor to get you to focus.

 

But that’s what happened in countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Hungary, Iran, and Iraq when Saddam Hussein led it.

 

If we fall, what’s left is a world of warlords.

What’s left after the death of the “rule of law” is WHATABOUTISM.

Where fascists make up the rules of who dies and who lives.

 

Four years ago, we were running from Covid.

We were using eighteen-wheeler refrigerator trucks for mobile morgues.

1.13 million Americans were killed by negligence.

All we got from the germaphobe-in-chief was the quackery of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Oh, and let’s not forget injecting bleach and shining lights up our rectums.

AI and deepfake have already been deployed in this year’s elections.

From a fake Biden ROBO call telling people not to vote,

To Kate Middleton and the British crown putting out a photo taken years ago,

Orange Bone Spurs accused Democrats of using AI in the House testimony of former attorney Richard K. Hur,

Not realizing that the only “artificial intelligence” is his!

 

Before Project 2025,

There’s Fahrenheit 2024,

The attack isn’t just on democracy.

The attack is on our shared reality.

Confusion is where fascism thrives and spreads like a malignant virus.

 

Suggested antidotes to the firehose of bullshit:

“Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills” is an audio series by Yale School of Medicine Neuroscientist Steven Novella (The Great Courses).

Question EVERYTHING that you see on the Internet,

Particularly your feed on social media platforms,

See “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix.

Watch less news and more documentaries.

Go to a library, pick up a book, and READ it (too few of us are doing this).

 

After Fahrenheit 2024,

They will enact Project 2025,

In Star Trek, the Third World War starts in 2026. Coincidence?

 

Lastly,

Come to open mic for Spoken Word, music, and comedy venues.

The oligarchs want us to be angry at each other’s throats, not cooperating and plotting against them.

While they drink champagne in their exclusive Cul de Sacs.

The oligarchs want to burn your past,

The oligarchs want to steal your assets.

The oligarchs want to burn your futures.

While lining their pockets and destroying the planet.

Take your power back by voting,

“We The People” terrifies the terrorists!

Then, go to Spoken and Heard for your secular sermons.

Notecards...

 

Image source: Libre Office Extensions - Index Cards

Notecards

© February 23, 2022, the Griot Poet 

 

This spell was written on an iPhone 11 XR.

It was emailed to the author using Gmail.

It was edited using Word and Grammarly.

It was finally uploaded to Griot Poet dot Blog Spot dot com,

Annotated with an appropriate picture relating to the topic and subject,

It will be performed at an online venue called Spoken and Heard at Kick Butt Coffee in Austin, Texas.

 

As a member of Toastmasters International,

I’m tripping that the New York Times and Axios,

Wasted ink and digital media to say that “the president uses notecards at a fundraiser.”

 

Toastmasters encourage notecards.

They allow you to organize your key points in a speech.

 

This poetry piece is a notecard.

Like the actual 3 x 5 analog,

It allows me to cover the topics, subjects, and themes I’m concerned about.

 

In Nashville,

Where the Nazis marched,

The twice-impeached,

Four times indicted,

The ninety-one counts felon said this:

 

“Everybody on both sides” agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

And:

“They want you to say what they want you, what they want to have you say. And we’re not gonna let that happen. You’re going to say as you want, and you’re going to believe, and you’re going to believe in God. You’re gonna believe in God because God is here, and God is watching.”

And:

“If you think about it, you have men, you have women, and you have religion. If you look at it, you have more than the men; you have more than the women. You have such power.”

Finally, yesterday, in Greensboro:

“Yesterday, we heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will: Rhee, bee do, gah!”

 

Before that, he couldn’t even pronounce “evangelical” without slurring!

 

He bragged about putting the three mullahs on the court that axed Roe vs. Wade and said he supports In Vitro Fertilization.

 

Has he talked to the fascists in Alabama yet?

Where a baby chick is now, an unscrambled egg?

 

This is the guy that you want to have the nuclear codes.

He wanted to use one against a hurricane!

He might test one against a tornado (over YOUR city or rural municipality).

 

He wants to build concentration camps,

Because his psychotic hero in Russia has gulags,

Where he assassinated his rival, Alexey Navalny.

Who “died” of natural causes after a walk,

On a subzero continent,

With a windchill of minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

Every other word out of the mouth of this psychopath is a word salad.

 

Yet,

The New York Times,

And Axios,

And the mainstream media 

Are getting worked up because:

The president uses notecards.

 

The guy who enacted “Project Warp Speed.”

At “all deliberate speed,”

To get vaccines into the arms of Americans to stop the deaths and bleeding,

 

The guy who did “Infrastructure Week” was the president who uses notecards!

 

At this writing:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 39,131,

The RECORD used to be just above 30,000.

The Standard and Poor is over 5,000,

Both are records set by the current president,

Inflation is by the 1%,

To politically wound the “No Malarkey” guy who GAVE you this,

 

But the New York Times and Axios are getting their journalistic panties in a wad,

 

That the guy who regrouped NATO,

The guy who is standing up to Putin instead of performing political fellatio on him,

The guy who’s trying to win the Ukrainian war so that the next invasion isn’t into Poland and the rest of Europe.

The guy who had to console Navalny’s widow and daughter,

While “Orange Bone Spurs” made it about HIMSELF!

However,

The REAL scandal is that the president uses notecards!

 

By the way:

I learned Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Programming, Nano Materials, Nano Physics, and Nanoengineering using notecards.

SORRY to disappoint you!

 

By the way:

If great speakers are always supposed to “riff it,”

Nailing their soliloquies with relative ease,

I hate to be the one to tell you:

Home slice ain’t even doing it with a teleprompter, a fake tan, fake hair, and lack of sleep!

 

My warning to the 4th Estate:

Fuck around and find out!

Both candidates are old: so is Bernie. But we can’t have him.

These are our two options:

One candidate uses notecards.

The other uses [word] salad and is audibly slurring!

 

You’re going to “both sides” us into what might be our last election.

He called you “fake news.”

His cult called you “Lügenpresse” (lying press),

Just like Hitler and his Nazi cult did.

If you haven’t noticed, his Brown Shirts call themselves Proud Boys and Oath Keepers!

 

This is Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols’ wet dream!

Janet Napolitano’s 2009 warnings about right wing extremism is still prescient.

 

Your smarmy “both sides” commentary will land you on cell block six!

You’re going to “cutesy” yourselves into CIA black sites!

With a comforting picture of Stephen Miller like “Big Brother” watching you!

 

Don’t worry, though.

Poets will be right there with you.

We promise to whip your asses if we’re on the same Gulag cell block,

And scrawl some verses on the walls about it before they throw us in the furnaces,

Comedians will kick your ass and make jokes about it.

Because the two things we know about Baby Huey:

He can’t take a joke, and he can’t handle the truth!

 

Fourth Estate: You want to “both sides” this?

You want to expend paper and electrons on the fact that the president uses notecards (and ignore the mental illness of his opponent)?

 

Fuck around and find out!

Along with the First Amendment,

You will be the cause of your own extinction!