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!”