Friday, July 26, 2024

One More Thing...

Image Source: Wikipedia

© July 25, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be **one more thing**."

Toni Morrison

 

“DEI hire” and “colored” are both their “one more thing.” Don’t get distracted.

They’re trying to get you mad, so you’ll be defensive.

They based their efforts on pointing out the age of their previous democratic opponent.

They now have the distinction of having the oldest candidate in history,

Who also happens to be a 34-count convicted felon.

Who also has an election interference, insurrection at the Capitol, and an espionage case (once it’s reinstated) pending.

 

When you must urge your House members to stop using racist language, it’s probably because (Occam’s razor) they’re racists.

DEI, for them, is the N-word.

DEI means diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“Diversity isn’t their issue.

They don’t have a problem with tokens.

Their issue is with the last two words of the acronym.

Adding “accessibility” brings out their closet eugenics.

Their convicted felon candidate told his brother’s son that he should let his grandnephew DIE rather than financially help him,

After all, he must focus on grifting off his cult to afford the court cases I mentioned.

 

It’s a distraction. That’s why they’re doing it.

Seeing the Crypt Keeper, Stephen Miller, freaking out on Fox Propaganda is worth it.

For a Masters graduate from Duke University, he’s obtuse.

It’s sad that their only election strategy is to scare white people and “own the libs!”

 

But don’t get distracted!

They’re focused on Project 2025.

We’re about a week or a month out from their removing all doubt and calling our candidate both the N and B-words.

Ignore it!

Put your head down and work on through November 5, 2024.

 

Don’t get extracted!

Project 2025 is what they’re after.

This is a dark political synthesis of a shell game, whack-a-mole, and WHATABOUTISM.

They’re focused on what they’re doing.

If whites are going to be the next minorities, they’re planning to be the minorities who rule.

Project 2025 is the blueprint.

 

Don’t get distracted!

“But we’ve never had a black president.”

Problem solved. Next!

“But we’ve never had a woman president.”

We would have it if not for the Electoral College.

“She’s a DEI hire!”

We know that’s your latest “let’s go, Brandon.” We’re ignoring it. We have to work.

“She slept her way to the top!”

Your convicted felon:

Sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll and myriad others.

He raped his first wife and had an affair [against] her with the second.

He had an affair on his second wife with the third,

Then he had an affair on the third with a porn star,

As she was nursing their infant son, his FIFTH child by three women,

And paid the porn star $130,000 for sex he said didn’t happen!

“She’s antisemitic!”

Her husband’s Jewish!

“She’s anti-Catholic!”

Eh: Joe Biden?

“The lonely cat lady used to be a man!”

Your “lonely cat ladies” are Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott!


A political earthquake happened on November 4, 2008,

When we elected the first black president.

Until then, their gaslighting assured a hegemony of forty-three white male presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush!

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Paraphrasing the pig in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” white men have been more equal than others![1]

 

New definition:

DEI = Delusion, Entitled, Idiocracy (hat tip: Charlemagne, the god).

Delusion, because your desperation led you from The Constitution to a deranged demagogue and convicted felon.

Entitled, like Brett Kavanaugh crying under his confirmation, cross-examination by soon-to-be President Kamala Harris!

Idiocracy, that didn’t take 500 years to come to fruition,

It won’t be a comedy starring Maya Rudolph and Owen Wilson.

Project 2025 will END the American experiment.

 

We are an essential nation that is consequential to the health and survival of the planet.

Remember what our ancestor, Tom Morrison, said:

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

 

Call for candidates.

Phone back.

Pass out flyers.

Post signs.

Check your voter registration.

 

“One more thing”:

Your “black job,” your white job, your Asian-Pacific Islander job, your Hispanic/Latino job, your LGBTQIA job, your naturalized citizen job, and your men’s and women’s work are to VOTE!

Vote down the ballot.

Vote for your Congressional Representatives and hold them accountable.

Vote for your Senators to represent your interests.

Vote for children and common sense gun laws.

Vote for women’s bodily autonomy.

Vote for the future and democracy.

Vote for the planet and the human species.

Vote for freedom and “the soul of America.”

Vote against tyranny and fascism!

White male patriarchy is terrified of losing power.

 

“One more thing”:

“We’re not going back!”

Not to the back of the bus, back in the closet, back in the fields, and back in the kitchens.

We’re ALL American citizens who know our power and who’ve had our taste of freedom.

 

“Do your work!”

We’ll rest later.

We’ll sleep better on November 5, 2024, when we all become their worst nightmare!

“We, The People,” have the power!

This is our finest hour!



[1] “All animals are equal, but some [animals] are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

 

Saturday, July 20, 2024

The Minds of Oligarchs...

Image Source: Facebook meme


© July 17, 2024, the Griot Poet

“We know what direction to go. We need a president to sign this stuff. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to be president of the United States.” Grover Norquist

“Grover the Grouch got his wish!

 

“Anal Musk and Danger Yam had a derp on X,

After 45 minutes of technical difficulties from the self-described stable geniuses.

They couldn’t blame this on NABJ.

Both laughed at the thought of firing workers.


Think like an oligarch:

Plantation oligarchs published pamphlets,

So that southern peasants would be motivated,

To “fight the war of northern aggression,”

For their “right” to hold people of African descent in perpetual enslavement.

The South lost, but no matter:

The peasants reaped missing limbs and “shell shock,”

The oligarchs, not the formerly enslaved, received US government reparations.

Digitize the media:

Why do you think their descendants own media and television stations like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Facebook, and “X!”

 

Think like an oligarch:

The Dow Jones crossed 40,000 for the first time in history.

Unemployment has been at an all-time low since 1979.

The CHIPS Act is bringing back manufacturing jobs shipped out long before the pandemic,

To an oligarchy, all of this is horrible.

Why do you ask?

Because shorting is how they steal money and resources.

“Short selling is the practice of selling a stock (usually a borrowed stock) before you’ve bought it and hoping the share price will drop so [that] you can replace the borrowed shares with shares that cost less than the ones you sold.” Source: “Investing 101,” Michele Cagan, CPA, page 170.


Naomi Klein wrote “The Shock Doctrine.”

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana,

Evidence of climate change disaster,

Dr. Klein is a Canadian professor of journalism,

She coined the phrase “disaster capitalism.”

Companies swooped into New Orleans,

Not to help the poor, homeless, and destitute,

But to profit from the deaths, suffering, and destruction.

It explains why they don’t want to do ANYTHING about climate change!

Instead of humanity, oligarchs see Cha-Ching!

Shorting the planet is disaster capitalism!

 

“Poverty exists not because we can’t feed the poor, but because we can’t satisfy the rich.”

The United Auto Workers, Screen Actors, and Writers Guilds: Three unions had successful strikes and won concessions from their employers.

When unemployment is at record lows,

Oligarchs have no leverage for terrorizing workers.

Mr. Dithers on “The Simpsons” would probably say, “In the good old days, we would have sent the Mafia to shoot them all!”

There are no strikes when workers are frightened about what they could possibly lose.

If you SAID the word “union” at Motorola, where I worked, that was an automatic firing offense, with NO severance!


Think like an oligarch:

If small “d” Democratic elite donors had succeeded in pushing Biden and Harris off the ticket after the people voted in primaries and before the nominating convention,

Won’t heiresses like Abigail Disney, after the country falls into fascism, STILL get a tax cut from the convicted felon?

We’re stressing about Project 2025 but should have been in the streets for “Citizens United.”


Elon Musk moved from California to Austin, Texas, so he could exploit his workers without consequences.

He also had an issue with black employees calling out on-the-job racist treatment.

Tesla stock devalued at 50%?

Layoffs will happen in Central Texas.

What do you expect from a trust fund baby inheriting stolen emeralds and raised during South African Apartheid?

(Notice Elmo refused a DOJ request for X files when he was found on Jeffrey Epstein’s phone list?)

 

Think like an oligarch:

War is a Racket. I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period, I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” Major General Smedley Butler 2 time recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The oligarchs then wanted what they saw in Italy and Germany.

They wanted to overthrow FDR because, as one of their kind, he betrayed them.

With the “New Deal” and to install General Butler as a dictator.

Sound familiar?

Smedley was a soldier.

He took an oath to The Constitution,

He narc [ed] on the oligarchs and gangsters,

Because his loyalty was to his nation.

Oligarchs think [in terms of] magical physics.

The “common good” doesn’t exist.

The only thing that matters is bottom-line incentives.

Affirmative Action is gone because theyre not interested in sharing resources.

They grew up in an insular world where only their kind existed.

 

Also, in 2010,

The Oscar-winning documentary, “Inside Job,” stayed on screens in Austin for only two weeks.

An instructive scene:

A hedge fund manager from his limo got out in his private garage,

Leading to a private hallway,

Leading to a private elevator,

Leading to the top floor where his penthouse office was,

So, he never had to meet those who worked for him.

In the event of shorting the economy, layoffs are just numbers,

Not people who have homes and families,

They’re just entries on a spreadsheet to be deleted.

Oligarchy is corruption, and a failure of a democracy at self-determination.

 

To recap:

They don’t feel like they should pay their “fair share” in taxes.

They want permanent tax cuts from here to infinity.

“War is a Racket” and a good investment.

Project 2025 conditions government funding for all public schools taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB),

There is one exemption: private schools.

Because the oligarchs never send their kids into battles theyve started.


Their vision isn’t just to make you enslaved:

They want to actualize “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

They want to set up the last version of the American caste system:

They as “Lords” and us as “Serfs.”

Where you are in this dystopian nightmare depends on your net worth.

And if you don’t want this nightmare, VOTE!

To understand this dark arc,

You need to think like an oligarch.

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Recollection...



© July 15, 2024, the Griot Poet

I credit the podcast “Politics by Tabitha” for the tagline for this piece.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

The genesis of violent rhetoric.

“Do me a favor: knock the crap out of them! I promise you that I will pay your legal bills.”

Hinting that his followers would use “second amendment remedies” if he lost the 2016 election.

“I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, and I wouldn’t lose any voters!”

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Birtherism by the immigrant Orly Taitz,

During the campaign of the first credible black candidate running for president.

Soon to be taken over by a failed businessman and reality show host.

You can see the thread from questioning President Barack Obama’s legitimacy to Vice President Kamala Harris being a “DEI hire.”

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

“Terrorist fist bumps,” racist rhetoric, Facebook memes with watermelons,

The right was appalled by sleeveless dresses and tan suits, causing existential crises!

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Moscow Mitch and “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann vowed to make Obama a “one-term president,”

And secret meetings where an ENTIRE party vowed not to work with him, even on policies that they previously supported,


“I’m old enough to remember”:

Obama burned in effigy,

The right joined the dark chorus, demanding that he “show his birth certificate.”

Then he did. The short form wasn’t good enough. Then he published the long form.

People who couldn’t spell “forensics” if their lives depended on it knew that both were forgeries!

Glenn Beck said he thought Barack Obama was prejudiced against white people.”

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

The right screaming at migrants at the Texas-Mexico border,

And “little Marco Rubio” on the “Gang of Eight,”

Trying to tackle comprehensive immigration reform,

They had a solution ready to forward to the full Senate,

Until he abandoned it to run for president.

For a son of Cuban immigrants, that was quite a trick!

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Lindsey Graham called him a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot.”

I remember Ted Cruz standing up to him for insulting his wife and accusing his father of murdering President Kennedy.

Marco Rubio called him a conman.

Rand Paul couldn’t stand him.

One by one, they all folded,

Right after the Russian GRU hacked the DNC and the RNC servers.

We found out that Hillary Clinton liked yoga and was excited to be planning Chelsea’s wedding,

And that John Podesta liked cheese pizza from a certain DC restaurant,

Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists made that “child pornography” and “Pizza Gate.”

A man from Salisbury, NC, shot at the roof looking for children in a nonexistent basement.

Intel released about the RNC: nada, zero, zip!

But Paul Manafort, the unpaid campaign manager and Russian oligarch consultant, was smiling.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Government shutdowns cost taxpayers millions of dollars the 60 times they tried to repeal Obamacare, with no replacement offered or mentioned.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Moscow’s refusal of his Constitutional duty to “advise and consent” on Merrick Garland’s elevation to the Supreme Court,

That would have made it lean liberal 5 to 4.

Roe vs. Wade would still be protected.

Moscow pulled rules out of his rear in what amounted to a bloodless coup to reshape the third branch of government,

Shoving in Handmaiden, Amy Coney Barrett, before RBG’s corpse was cold.

Now, its 6 to 3 “conservatives,”

All Heritage Foundation picks,

Moscow is a member of it,

Project 2025” was enacted before they publicly announced it.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Who repealed the Obama legislation in the first year of his administration,

Blocking mentally impaired people from the purchase of firearms.

Particularly AR15s, as used by the shooter.

Karma has never had a more cogent example.

Mr. Crooks was a supporter of the felon with signs festooned in his front yard.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

The attack on Paul Pelosi,

Speaker Emerita Nancy’s husband,

By a psychopath who was chanting, “Where’s Nancy?”

Like those insurrectionists at the Capitol,

The same who injured and killed Capitol Police officers.

That the convicted felon calls “hostages.”

The same he has vowed to pardon.

The same who intended to kill Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence,

I remember CF leading the jeering against Paul Pelosi before he became a shooting victim.

And how they made a joke of an 81-year-old grandfather getting his skull smashed by a hammer.

“It must have been a gay sex act,” they said.

They put up Paul Pelosi manakins to punch and kick at their conventions.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

An Army friend called me on November 5, 2008, and asked:

“Reg, did you ever think that we would live to see this?”

My friend and I are both veterans of the Army and Air Force,

Even though we swore an oath to “protect and defend The Constitution,”

We could not see anyone like us as the Chief Executive.

We’d seen 43 previous examples of the preferred model.

 

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro:

“When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.”

 

November 5, 2024, is sixteen years since this faithful call between friends,

Our ancestors fought for freedom since the Revolution, since Crispus Attucks,

Only for the “blessings of liberty” to repeatedly not be extended.

For,

A nation founded on the land theft from Native Americans and the genocide of tribes from the Taino to the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Wounded Knee.

The kidnapping of Africans for uncompensated labor for centuries.

Before July 13,

Four presidents were assassinated,

Three were shot but survived.

Three attempts with bystanders killed or injured.

Four attempts where no one was killed except the culprits.

 

“I’m old enough to remember”:

Before we can state that “we’re better than this,”

We should really be honest about how violent our country’s history is.

Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Broken Glass...

 

Source: Getty Images

© July 6, 2024, the Griot Poet

 

He said he knew nothing about his father being arrested at a 1927 KKK rally.

He said he knew nothing about David Duke or the KKK and their endorsement.

He said he knew nothing about the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and told them to “stand back and stand by.”

He said “very fine people” were on both sides in Charlottesville.

He said he doesnt know anything about Project 2025.

He said he never knew Stormy Daniels but paid her $130,000 for sex that he says didn’t happen.

See a pattern?

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”[1]


Even though the Pennsylvania shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican, the convicted felon and his party are going to blame the Democrats and the current president.

See a pattern?


Steve Bannon, who’s lounging in Danbury, Connecticut,

Kept hinting at something that sounded like the rants of a madman:

“Deconstruction of the Administrative State.”

He was foreshadowing Project 2025.

You don’t write a 920-page document haphazardly.

27 out of 39 signatories worked in his administration.

Project 2025 has been the plan for decades.

 

The first stage was awarding corporations freedom of speech via “Citizens United.”

The Austin Chronicle wrote, “O is for Oligarchy” in 2010,”

 

The second step was giving the president the same powers we went to war with King George for!

He can “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and get away with it by calling it an “official act!”

The last step will be to install a dictator and eliminate The Constitution.


Because in 2017, white evangelicals became a minority,

White Americans will follow this demographic trend by 2050.

They’re consolidating power before this eventuality.

 

Both men are old, but one is kind, and the other is a psychopath.

If 81 is old, the 78-year-old lunatic will be that in three years!

 

The twice-impeached instigator of the January 6 insurrection, 34-count convicted (sentencing September 18th), adjudicated fraudster and rapist has not been asked by the mainstream media to leave the ticket in all seriousness.

 

They want to eliminate:

Civil Rights,

The DOJ,

OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration),

The EPA,

The FDA,

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency,

We’ll get,

Fascism, high crime, no accidental injury compensation, climate catastrophe, everything mystery meat and salmonella poisoning, and we won’t be able to track hurricanes!

 

I continue:

LGBTQIA Rights eliminated,

The Response Task Force for Pandemics eviscerated,

Property Rights taken back to pre-1968,[2]

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ disability benefits,

Women’s Rights,

All to fund forever tax cuts for oligarchs!

They want to eliminate the Department of Education.

After attacking Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility,

They want to close HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions.

“Knowledge is power,” and they don’t want you to have any!

They want to use the Comstock Act to prevent abortive healthcare under any circumstances.

And that’s all in the 17-page preamble!

The six liars who perjured themselves in their Supreme Court confirmations,

Are the “judicial activists” they accused and projected on others.

Forget about the 1950s and “Happy Days.”

These monsters are trying to drag us all back to the Stone Age!

 

Believe Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, on July 2 when he said:

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

 

It’s time to take the gloves off.

Books and words are stronger than bullets!

I want you to phone bank,

Door knock,

Hang signs and flyers,

Send out brochures,

Post blogs and write poetry,

Comedians write satirical jokes,

Musicians compose tunes that can be chanted and sung,

March and disrupt.

Above all, VOTE!

“This is what democracy looks like!”

Democrats,

Stop trying to convince “moderate conservatives” to flip sides,

Get people who haven’t voted in their LIVES to vote this time.

Dr. William Barber says,

The poor are the key to success in every election,

That’s why they’re criminalizing homelessness!

 

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, [that] the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: [it is] dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then there is not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for [so] unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, read Christmas Eve, 1776, before the Battle of Trenton.

 

This is the break-glass moment.

This election isn’t about Democrats or Republicans.

This election isn’t about Liberals or Conservatives.

This election is about good versus evil.

Margaret Atwood tried to warn us.

This election may be the last time we can hope to repel fascism!

Fight for your democracy before oligarchs like Harlan Crowe steal it.

Fight for your democracy because we haven’t yet achieved it!

England and France voted out their fascists.

We. Will. WIN!


[1] John 8:44

[2] U.S. DOJ: “Fair Housing Act of 1968,” https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-1