Othering...

 

Image Source: "How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice," Kendra Cherry, MS Ed. Very Well Mind Dot Com

© September 14, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

King Leopold,

Othered the Indigenous people of [the] Congo,

For the harvest of sugar cane, ivory, rubber, and minerals,

He commissioned the chopping of hands and limbs when they fell behind in production,

Making him insanely rich because of his callous disregard for them.

His monstrous behavior resulted in his murdering 10 million people.

 

Blood libel,

Was the false accusation that Jewish people used the blood of Christians in religious rituals.

Particularly, the blood of children.

Using it with Passover bread,

This lie was perpetrated throughout the Middle Ages until the early 20th Century.

When the othering by the Nazis resulted in 6 million deaths.

 

Labeling abortion healthcare as murder, “other’s” women who were the victims of incest, rape by biological or stepfathers, brothers, uncles and cousins.

It others the OB/GYN who went to college to provide it.

Self-righteous extremists screaming at women getting healthcare at abortion clinics.

Leading Scott Roeder to slaughter Dr. George Tiller in his church, on a Sunday, serving as an Usher.

Because Bill O’Reilly nightly referenced him as “Tiller, the Baby Killer” on Fox (not) News.

Like Sarah Palin’s “don’t retreat, reload” and gunsights on her website over Democratic headquarters causing Jared Lee Loughner to fulfill her twisted mantra,

Causing the permanent injury to Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Senator Mark Kelly’s wife, and the death of a nine-year-old girl on her ninth, and last birthday.

 

“Furries” was an Internet rumor.

It’s the crazy, insane notion that some children want to only defecate in litter boxes.

I didn’t believe someone could believe it until I heard this at a dinner party.

Most of us have photographic instruments in our pockets.

Where’s the evidence of this unique phenomenon?

It’s a tactic to other the trans community, especially children who we now know have Gender Dysphoria.

 

It sounds insane for a presidential candidate to accuse Haitian immigrants of eating dogs, cats, and recently added, geese.

Another Internet rumor that was fed to him by a 9/11 “truther.”

That he had with him at the New York memorial.

Question for evangelicals: Where was his wife?

9/11 “truthers” are as insane and othering as Obama “birthers.”

It sounds like the insane ranting of a madman.

Fun fact: “MAGA” means sorcerer in Latin.

His dark incantations have a desired outcome.

Haitian immigrants are being forced to pull their kids out of school,

In Springfield, Ohio, due to bomb threats.

Ohio is an open carry state, with self-appointed vigilantes anxious to “be a hero” and exercise the Second Amendment.

Haitian immigrants are legally in the United States for employment.

Fleeing the hell hole left behind by Europeans.

 

Othering (verb): view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.

 

Oneself is a member of the dominant culture.

 

Leopold was a proto-capitalist cum fascist.

Blood libel endangered the Jews.

Abortion as a monstrosity fostered bomb threats and murder of providers in churches.

“Furries,” that don’t exist.

Now, a new blood libel on Haitian immigrants, whose only sin is being descendants of the only successful rebellion against French colonizers.

Haiti is poor because of having to pay Paris “reparations” for lost property - ironic.

 

This is stochastic terrorism.

This is a mob boss “speaking in code,” as pointed out by Michael Cohen.

 

You can’t directly blame him for the heinous actions of his cult followers.

He’s several degrees of separation from the mayhem his dictation causes.

He’s going to exercise the emotionally disturbed, who have the same Second Amendment rights as normal citizens.

The same access to bomb-making materials.

Leaving him technically innocent.

Because his tiny hands are bloodless,

You legally can’t blame him.

 

“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.” John 8:44

 

Jesus was bearing witness to the active plot to assassinate him.

After pointing out that his accusers were sinful when they wanted to stone a woman,

A woman caught in “the very act of adultery” they all had participated.

Before a kangaroo court of his Jewish peers in front of the Sanhedrin bruised him beyond recognition.

Before handing him over to the Roman state, which was occupying Jerusalem.

Before the Roman state hung him on a tree in an act of terrorism.

As lynchings for any man of color, betrayed by his own, has always been.

Southern, and Near Eastern trees have always borne “strange fruit.”

“Blood on the leaves, blood on the root.”

And no amount of pious handwashing by Pontius Pilatus, or feverous gaslighting by Combover Caligula absolves either of them of guilt!

 

Making your enemies monsters is the first step towards killing them.

Sometimes you must bear witness to the callous and evil act of othering.

Vote. Let’s end this.

Sane Washing...

 © September 10, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Matthew 23:27

 

That statement resulted in a man of color, the world’s first documented Civil Rights worker, executed by the Roman state.

 

Words like these are powerful and threatening to hierarchies and corrupt societies.

 

Mansplaining (noun): the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.

 

Because what he fears is comparison to a more qualified woman,

Finding him wanting in preparation and experience.

It’s a tool used by abusers, gas lighters, and colonizers,

Because to enforce a brutal psychological hierarchy,

You must constantly convince the designated pariahs to “stay in their places.”

The proper place is beneath their boots and contempt.

They must define themselves as being closer to godhood,

And the common folk can never be like them.

That’s why they isolate themselves in Ivy League colleges,

And Levitt Towns with restrictive covenants,

De facto by exorbitant housing prices,

When all they see are their Stepford selves,

It’s easy to get full of your self-importance.

Any threat to that contrived existence will be dealt with by social and actual violence.

 

He talks about “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

As if Thomas Harris’s cannibal psychopath was a real person.

He opines about whether he wants to die by electrocution on an electric boat or being eaten by a shark!

He tried to redirect [a] hurricane with a Sharpie!

He tried to blow up one with a nuke.

He told Californians suffering climate change forest fires to “rake them.”

At a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina he said: “Yesterday, we heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia…a Rhee, be, do, gah!”

He said illegal aliens were eating dogs and cats like he was quoting an episode from the TV sitcom Alf!

By the way: “Abortion after birth” is called a school shooting!

“Thoughts and prayers” haven’t solved that.

 

At the Economic Club of New York:

“Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because look, childcare is childcare is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you must have it – in this country, you [have to] have it.”

Excuse me: What the hell was that?

 

Dr. William T. Kelly from Penn State’s Wharton School of Business said that he was “the dumbest goddamn student [he] ever had!”

This is why “stable genius” had his [then] fixer, Michael Cohen, threaten all his schools to “not release his grades or transcripts.”

He said he graduated at the “top of his class,”

But he’s not listed Summa Cum Laude in his commencement address.

I would say he graduated “Thank you, Laude,” but he’s stuck at Two Corinthians.

Are “concepts of a plan” the new “binders full of women?”

 

But let’s push out his opponent, three years older who happens to stutter.

 

And, like Hillary Clinton, analyze his Vice President’s laugh, when her weird opponent never seems to.

 

Sane-washing (noun): The superfluous act of taking nonsensical word salad and blanching it like kale until it’s discernible as human speech.

 

Face it:

The Fourth Estate was on life support during the Vietnam conflict.

The Fourth Estate died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The corporate media was more interested in making money and pumping the profits of the military-industrial complex.

Bloggers were more accurate than the Washington Post and the New York Times.

So are their natural descendants, podcasts.

Poets have always put the truth on full blast.

 

Eric Blair, pen name George Orwell said it best:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

 

Why not “deconstruct the administrative state?”

Why not promote “alternative facts?”

Why not promote a bloody conflict if he lost?

Why not a personality cult zombie apocalypse?

 

He is a tool of the 1%.

Actual billionaires laugh at him.

The 400 million Daddy gave him would be 150 billion if he had sat on his ass and done nothing!

His “wheeling and dealing” has always been Ritchie Rich cosplay,

He never fully knew what the hell he was doing.

His father bought 3.5 million in poker chips at one of his three failed casinos (out of six bankruptcies), and never placed bets on them!

Some would call that money laundering.

 

He’s at the tail end of wealth distribution on a bell curve.

The only reason he’s rich is because he refuses to pay his creditors or do a profit and loss statement.

 

Every characteristic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder,

Particularly the malignant kind,

He checks off the DSM-5 list effortlessly.

Corporate media ignores his failings because they are acquiescing to fascism,

Before, the line gets too long to include them!

Before they wind up in the gulags with the rest of us.

 

Anyone worse than him is going to be our mass extinction!

Sane-washing is the last stage of patriarchy before Entropy collapses it.

 

Every movement that brought us forward has always been met with backlash.

Check your voter registration and vote early.

Volunteer and work through November 5^th.

Lower your shoulders and push back.

But as we embrace and shape the future:

“We’re not going back!”

Fact of Life...

 

Colt Gray, Colin Gray's Mug Shots Released After Georgia School Shooting, Newsweek

© September 8, 2024, the Griot Poet

“Tyrants overthrown: 0

“Co-workers, students, spouses, store clerks * et al: near ∞

“And we cower

“Kowtowed by lobbyists’ power

“NRA clout and dollars

“Make our representatives “want to holler”

Scoreboard, July 23, 2012

 

“Death is a sure thing, but life is just as certain. The problem is you can’t know in advance.

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Toni Morrison, February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019

Fuck your “thoughts and prayers!”

“I... can’t... breathe!”

“Between mass shootings

“Not 24 hours after twenty souls were

“Dearly Departed

“By another white domestic terrorist

“In El Paso, Texas”

Carnage, August 19, 2019

“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.”

Killing Fields, February 15, 2023

 

Governor Bill Lee tweeted:

“I am closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant, & the Tennessee Department of Safety & Tennessee Highway Patrol are assisting local law enforcement & first responders at the scene.

“As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.”

“After three students and three adults,

A teacher, a substitute, and a custodian,

All in their sixties died in a Christian school,

“Thoughts and prayers” are oxymoronic,

“But so is signing legislation against drag shows, which to date:

“Drag shows are voluntary activities.

“No one’s died, ever.”

Thoughts and Prayers, March 29, 2023

 

I am tired of writing about mass shootings.

On the 58th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek.

A fantasy of society evolving to a “more perfect union.”

They’re becoming more frequent than Braxton-Hick’s contractions.

 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told grandparents to “take one for the team” during COVID-19 to open the economy as our corpses froze in eighteen-wheelers.

The libertarian fascist set wants to raise the retirement age to 72, to get us closer to death.

The answer to rising childcare costs is for the aforementioned “take one for the team” and work until you drop grandparents are supposed to “take up the slack” by being what: zombie corpses skilled at diaper changing?

The fact of my life is my granddaughter just started kindergarten.

 

Every piece I’ve written was to avoid the eventual day she started learning how to escape and evade,

Play the quiet game,

Text her parents to tell them that she’s okay until the PTSD nightmares begin.

 

A gun enthusiast [obviously] named Colt Gray.

Let me give some perspective:

At fourteen, I was in Army JROTC and joined the Rifle/Pistol Team.

To get on the rifle range, we all had to join the NRA,

Before Wayne LaPierre got his grubby hands into it, they took care of the gun range safety training, and that was it.

“Point the barrel of your weapon down range.”

“Always wear your eye and ear protection.”

“Practice BRASS: breath, relax, aim, slack (the trigger finger), squeeze (the trigger finger): repeat.”

And,

“Never point your weapon at anyone at any time.”

Most importantly:

“Put your weapon in the gun safe on exiting the range.”

We trained with 38-caliber pistols,

World War 1 M1A1 bolt action rifles,

And the Mike-One-Six long rifle.

Which has a muzzle velocity of 3,100 feet per second,

5.56mm NATO (.223) caliber cartridge

And has a maximum effective range of 600 yards. It has a rate of fire of approximately 800 rounds per minute.

This class scared the living shit out of fourteen-year-old me,

But I’m betting Colt Gray never heard it.

 

The precursor of this personal weapon of mass destruction was the Armalite 15 Assault Rifle.

The AR and the Mike-One-Six can punch a hole the size of a fist in front of a human body and rip the back out on its exit.

Which is why we had deep respect for the power that we wielded,

This is why we haven’t seen any aftermath photos of gun massacres from Columbine to Sandy Hook.

A Mike-One-Six in Vietnam could tear down concrete walls if you let it.

 

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.”

AP News: https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-georgia-shooting-7d7727a1aff8491f66914a4d8a14cd8c

 

Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde: all had “bolstered security” with resource officers.

 

Mr. Vance,

I must [respectfully] disagree,

Our society for letting this carnage go on and on is psychotic.

The fact of my life is my grandbaby who just started kindergarten.

Profaning the Mothership...

 

Image sources: Pinterest, Mothership Connection Back Cover – Vinyl Distractions, Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura of Star Trek, Dies at 89 – New York Times

© August 28, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

“Conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

A literal quote from the previous, and now fifth indictment,

Focused on his role as a “candidate,”

Jack Smith cleverly bypassed the constitutional mulligan given by the Supreme Court,

I used to equate them with religious mullahs.

They’re more like fascist hacks in robes, spitballing.

 

For the first time, an election had been thwarted by a candidate for president,

Staging a coup and insurrection to resist what up to that day had been a “peaceful transition of power.”

The high mark of our democracy was that, unlike Europe, it did not involve wars or bloodshed.

 

January 6, 2021: like 9/11, and Pearl Harbor, never forget!

They’re trying hard to gaslight us into believing it was a tourist visit.

They’re distancing themselves from Project 2025, when they wrote it!

Trying to remove reality and replace it with “alternative facts.”

They’re trying to gaslight us into WHATABOUTISM.

Ask ex-Russian citizens who escaped the gulag how that works!

 

“The Mothership Connection” is one of my favorite songs from Parliament Funkadelic.

 

The fact that it’s in two related indictments,

Profanes the memory suggested by the lyrics:

 

“Well, all right!

“Starchild, Citizens of the Universe, Recording Angels

“We have returned to claim the Pyramids

“Partying on the Mothership

“I am the Mothership Connection

“Getting down in 3-D

“Light year grooving

“Well, all right, if you hear any noise, it ain't nobody but me and the boys

“Getting down, hit it, fellas!”

 

My childhood memories of jamming at house parties have been obliterated.

 

The first influence was surprisingly, Dr. Martin Luther King,

Who talked Nichelle Nichols out of leaving Star Trek after the first season,

His reason was that we needed to see ourselves as surviving into the 23rd Century,

Which means that we made it through the three preceding it.

 

Herman Poole Blount,

Jazz musician, poet, and composer, AKA “Sun Ra”

Inspired Parliament Funkadelic, and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

He taught a course at UC Berkeley called “The Black Man in the Cosmos.”

His college course was the basis for the film “Space is the Place.”

His philosophy would eventually be called “Afro-Futurism,”

Seeing the diaspora survive in the future,

Decolonizing science fiction that was initially influenced by the pseudoscience of eugenics.

The future both H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft envisioned was utopian and whitewashed.

 

Dr. King saw what Star Trek was trying to tell us: we could have a better future, not just with warp drive, but with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We missed the point that Nyota Uhura, whose name means “Freedom Star” in Swahili, like the North Star followed by Harriet Tubman, and the enslaved escaping to Canada,

Was herself the third-highest officer on a Naval Space Vessel,

If Kirk, Spock, or Scottie weren’t around, Uhura would have the Conn.

After the misogyny that dismissed Majel Barrett as Number One in the series pilot.

The Next Generation suggested women were Admirals,

Which meant they were first Captains,

Admiral Nechayev was Captain Jean Luc Picard and Benjamin Sisko’s boss!

Which means, she wrote their Performance Reviews.

I’ll let the Incels chew on that a bit.

All of this was made possible because,

Lucille Ball saw the future,

And Nichelle Nichols listened to a Civil Rights preacher.

 

“We have returned to claim the Pyramids.”

Cesare Borgia, son of a Pope, inspired Niccolò Machiavelli's political treatise, The Prince.

He was also the image Leonardo DaVinci painted to represent Jesus,

Because previous images looked “too Egyptian.”

They didn’t like his brown visage, so they changed it.

It also helps when you’re starting global trade predicated on human enslavement.

 

Pythagoras studied in Alexandria, Egypt.

“Alexa” AI is named after it.

The center of learning was on the African continent,

Recognized by scholars,

Until the British Empire in the 19th Century created the non-direction, “Middle East,”

Cleverly not associating the nation with the continent.

I, as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson,

Chaff at the notion that ancient civilizations populated by Melanated humans couldn’t build pyramids in Egypt, or Mexico without aliens.

Or build sailing ships to cross the ocean and cross-pollinate knowledge.

Not that there aren’t any,

But why would an advanced civilization travel parsecs to construct a building they could never live in?

 

“Lightyear grooving'”

That doesn’t preclude it,

But blaming it on aliens takes away from Melanated human agency and intelligence.

 

“Conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

Suggests a spectrum of mental disorders that has yet to be documented.

 

The two related indictments,

Profane [a] pleasant childhood memory that I would like to reclaim.

And like Dr. King, Star Trek, Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Afro-futurism,

I’m working on all of us moving positively forward:

 

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat on her Lucid Substack,

Wrote “Why Joy Is an Effective Anti-Authoritarian Strategy.”

I agree with her,

And not New York Times opinion writer, Paul Healy who said, “Joy is not a strategy.”

Neither was “hope and change.”

 

The strategy I chant to pimp slap the killjoys:

“If you hear any noise, it ain't nobody but the girls and the boys

“Getting down, with the band!”

“When we fight, we win.”

And “we’re not going back!”