Showing posts with label #Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Colorado. Show all posts

Saturday, September 13, 2025

The Sword...

 

Image Source: Threads

“I think that it’s worth the cost, unfortunately, of some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” Charlie Kirk, April 5, 2023.

 

Charlie Kirk is dead.

He was a husband, a father, and a human being.

We mourn his loss,

As we did with Minnesota Representative Melissa Horman, her husband, their Golden Retriever, and the attempted murder of two other Democratic state lawmakers.

Malcolm and Canterbury said, “The chickens have come home to roost.”

This violence is no different.

Unlike the right, which made jokes about the assault on the husband of Speaker Emeritus Pelosi.

Before Charlie achieved full rigor mortis,

His death had been weaponized to guarantee more violence.

I never agreed with his Neo-Fascist movement,

Turning Point, USA,

He famously said that

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson was a “DEI hire,”

Code for she’s unqualified,

Justice Jackson is a Harvard Law graduate,

A former public defender and appellate judge,

He doubted the competency of black commercial pilots,

When 90-95% of them are white,

Which means that if accidents happen,

Black pilots are less likely to be the cause of them.

He’s also inscribed criminality on black bodies and lied about statistics.

 

Charlie dropped out of community college,

As did Rush Limbaugh,

As did Alex Jones,

As did Sean Hannity,

As did Glenn Beck,

 

I see a pattern of “WEI”: white, entitled, incompetent,

Mediocre white men who couldn’t face their own shortcomings,

Hat tip to Lurie Daniel Favors,

And subsequently found a profitable shtick to cope with it.

But it’s destroying our body politic.

At the writing of this piece,

A “person of interest” was questioned, then released.

 

My pure speculation before Tyler Robinson’s capture:

The shooter had a powered, or other type of long rifle, with a decent amount of rifle training to spot his target from 520 feet away during the day.

He was reportedly dressed in all-black, head-to-toe, American flag on his chest.

It won't be the last.

The one thing that would have surprised me:

If the shooter wasn’t white.

Utah is “white Wakanda.”

 

I still, to this day, post-PhD, and substantial life experience,

Cause Caucasian women to shift their purses on an elevator by entering it.

It doesn’t matter if I’m wearing a suit, jeans, or Dockers.

It is a melancholy I’ve learned to live with,

 

Despite the following statistics:

“Between 1982 and August 2025, 84 out of the 155 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters.

“By comparison, the perpetrator was Black in 26 mass shootings and Latino in 12.

“This is 54 percent white, 17 percent black, and 8 percent Latino, respectively.”[1]

 

Yet, I am the enemy, and not Tyler Robinson or Dylann Roof.

I notice that ICE is not profiling or rounding up stray, suspicious-looking Caucasians.

 

“Do me a favor. Knock the crap out of them, won’t you?”

“In the good old days, people like that would be taken out on a stretcher, folks!”

 

We’re more than seven degrees of separation from that sick joke.

 

Our iconography and ideology try to cosplay the Roman Empire,

Colonizers and sadistic occupiers of Judea,

 

Where a brown-skinned Aramaic prophet assailed a brutal fascist dictatorship by turning conquest and brutality into compassion and empathy.

Where a brown-skinned Aramaic prophet healed the evidence,

His disciple, who would go on to deny he knew him three times,

That ear slicing would have led to the disciple’s Capital Punishment: Death by public hanging.

 

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Matthew 26:52

 

Lao Tzu,

Thousands of miles, and six centuries earlier,

Penned Chapter 42

Of the Tao Te Ching:

 

“The Tao begot one.

“One begot two.

“Two begot three.

“And three begot the ten thousand things.

 

“The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.

“They achieve harmony by combining these forces.

 

“What others teach, I also teach; that is:

“A violent man will die a violent death!”

This will be the essence of my teaching.”

 

“Hunter Brown, a 24-year-old junior at Utah Valley University in Orem, was about 10 feet from the stage where Kirk was speaking before an audience at the campus. He said Kirk was talking about shootings by transgender people in response to an audience member’s question when a single gunshot rang out.”[2]

 

The last word reported on Charlie’s lips,

Before he succumbed to the assassin’s bullet,

Was the word “violence”

 

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Proverbs 18:21

“All who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

“A violent man will die a violent death!”

A violent nation will die a violent death!

 

Solution:

“Blow bubbles, not bombs!” Thom Woodruff, the World Poet.

Sunday, September 08, 2024

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.

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.

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Cult of Ignorance...

 

Asimov’s original essay, Cult of Ignorance (PDF)

© September 9, 2023, the Griot Poet

 

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding [its way] through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

 

Isaac Asimov, 1980

 

I often hesitate to answer questions,

In casual conversations or on the Internet,

Posed by those who at first seem to be seeking knowledge,

Only to be barraged with epithets:

 

Grammar Nazi,

Smart ass,

“Uppity,

“Woke.

 

Because they weren’t seeking knowledge, but they were seeking an audience,

They weren’t looking for peer review but seeking validation.

They didn’t want information; they wanted confirmation bias!

When I would give my advice from experience,

That deflated what was already the fragile ego of a narcissist.

 

An analog from personal experience:

Major “Tommy” Tompkins and I were both stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas,

There wasn’t a day that went by that he would ask me:

 

“Well, Lieutenant Goodwin, what’s going on in Physics?”

I had a subscription to Physics Today magazine back then (I access it now on the Internet).

As he knew my background and major, Engineering Physics, I would gladly tell him,

Having conversations over coffee in a SCIF - a Special Compartmentalized Information Facility,

I was recently granted my Top-Secret clearance,

Entrusted with the nation’s secrets,

Attached to the 12th Tactical Intelligence Squadron as their Communications-Computer Systems Officer,

At Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas.

I saw the Internet in its infancy,

DARPA-NET sent the equivalent of text messages over Zenith computers with mainframes as big as small garages,

The IMP - interphase messaging processor - that we lugged around - 500 pounds, and as big as a gym locker: was the precursor to your 10-inch tall home router.

I made it my business to study all aspects of transmission: radio, microwave, and line of sight. troposphere scatter, and satellite,

I wrote communication plans for exercises and contingencies,

I took coursework on cryptography,

 

So, when I saw that Major Tompkins was about to call for frequencies outside our equipment’s bandwidth, I advised him against it.

 

“I don’t give a good goddamn about your ‘expertise’ lieutenant! I’m the major, and YOU’RE the ‘butter bar’: got it?”

 

Shocked at his Jekyll and Hyde personality switch, I said, “Yes, sir!”

 

Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”:

The exercise was a flop!

 

Neither our pilots nor Bergstrom flight control tower could talk to each other.

It’s a miracle that they didn’t crash into each other or commercial flights from Mueller!

 

Colonel Eugene Habba,

In charge of Command, Control, Communications, and Countermeasures,

 

Stormed into our tactical headquarters, bellowing:

 

“Who is responsible for this clusterfuck?”

 

To which, after saluting, I said:

“Colonel Habba, Major Tompkins!”

I got my hat and left!

 

I caught up with some pilot friends at the O Club,

They said, “Good, ‘WTFO,’” Air Force call sign for “what the fuck, over?”

I spilled the tea; their eyes rolled.

Major “Tommy” Tompkins was a boot licker, a ladder climber,

He was trying to take all the credit for the exercise,

Well, he got it!

Tommy, despite his narcissism, looked like a pear, especially from the snickering rear view of his butt,

They explained that their nickname for Tompkins because of his protruding stomach was “Jabba the Gut!”

For all of you “Star Wars” aficionados!

 

I laughed out loud - literally!

I needed that levity.

After Habba chewed what was left of his ass,

Major "Jabba" Tompkins put in for his retirement!

 

*****

 

It is a cult of ignorance when expertise is assailed as bullying.

 

It is a cult of ignorance when your side can’t admit to losing the Civil War or a presidential election.

 

It is a cult of ignorance when Dr. Fauci, Senator Romney, the FBI, the CDC Director, elected officials, and VOLUNTEER election workers must shell out dollars to protect their families from raving lunatics who believe every conspiracy theory Orwellian “truth-ed” at them!

 

It is a cult of ignorance when you print t-shirts that say, “fuck your feelings,” when put under the stress of information, YOU’RE the biggest snowflakes!

 

It is a cult of ignorance when climate scientists sounding the alarm to protect their families and the planet are supposedly lying to you, but fossil fuel companies are the “arbiters of truth.”

 

It is a cult of ignorance when everything about modernity you don’t like is “woke,” and you refuse to crack a book open out of sheer arrogance.

 

Banning books is a cult of ignorance. Yet, the number one way for the early deaths of children 0 - 17 is semiautomatic weapons - NOT libraries or drag queen shows - yet you refuse to do anything beyond vapid “thoughts and prayers” that you neither think nor utter.

 

Like Major Tompkins,

Your “Colonel Habba” moment is coming,

When the facts gob-smack you and bite you in the ass,

Ecclesiastes said, “There is no new thing under the sun,”

The Bard said, “What’s past is prologue.”

I await your retirement from public life,

As your stubborn stances have caused much strife,

Eventually, the true “children of light” will triumph,

As you fade away from existence,

And your destructive career in the cult of ignorance.

Monday, September 11, 2023

Cloth Diapers...

 


© September 11, 2023, the Griot Poet

Twin Towers image source: ABC Australia

Twenty-two years ago today,
The world was propelled unwillingly into the arms of blowback:
A Saudi Sheik, Osama Bin Laden,
Trained by the CIA in the Mujahadeen,
Convinced 19 men, 15 from his nation,
To willingly plunge top-fueled planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon,
Some "let's roll" Flight 93 passengers thwarted a fourth meant for the US Capitol.

Sixty years ago this week,
I was one year, one month and one day old,
On my mother's thirty-eighth birthday,
I was potty trained.
I was reminded of this,
Not that I would remember it after
I bragged to my big sister that my granddaughter was two and potty trained.

"We had cloth diapers back then. No one was playing with you, Reggie,"
Meaning: Changing cloth diapers, flushing the load, and WASHING them probably wasn't pleasant!
And the observation that disposable diapers might have delayed development.

On our mother's birthday,

I was one year, one month and one day old.
On that day,
Four girls were killed by white supremacists in the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, sixty years ago.

Growing old in my community is a privilege not afforded to many.
To this day, in 2023,
We rightly describe Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization,
Yet, the Department of Justice has no such designation for Nathan Bedford Forest's KKK,
Whose whole existence centered on terrorizing the newly freed and formerly enslaved into not voting in the best interests of their communities.

Two medical professionals,
Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider,
Shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Dr. Jack W. Szostak in 2009 "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

Let me translate:

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed.

Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/

The National Institute of Health found telomeres profoundly shortened in African Americans, corresponding to shorter lifespans of existence.

September 11, 2001, was on a Tuesday.
September 15, 1963, my mother's birthday, was on a Sunday.
Four little girls, who should be grandmothers, were practicing for a performance that day when domestic terrorists bombed their church.

Their reaction to the March on Washington on the anniversary of Emmitt Till's lynching.

And my mother and father, the day after, had to go to work on Monday.
(For them, "Father Knows Best," "Ozzie and Harriet," and Ward and June Cleaver in "Leave It to Beaver" did not exist as an option.)
After the news, they had to drop me off at the sitter and hope that they would see me again.
Attending church services (I was told) was understandably limited.
Living in fear of being killed for being black shortens your telomeres.
There is cause and effect, not "Curses of Ham" or divined magic.

Growing old in my community is a privilege.
We are 400 years tired of this terrorism.
For the "sin" of being brought here in chains for forced servitude.

It isn't "woke": It's history.
It isn't "book banning": It's psychopathy.

You CANNOT ban the book that is seared in my soul.

What's insanity is that the Department of Justice still refuses to designate Christian nationalists, the KKK, white nationalists, and white supremacist groups as domestic terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda.

As Americans finally experienced,
On September 11, 2001,
The psychological effects of the horrific fear of not knowing what calamity would end your existence.

Living in fear of being killed for the "sin" of being alive shortens your telomeres.

As my big sister observed:
This country needs more cloth diapers for our development.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Collective Psychosis...

 


© August 20, 2023, the Griot Poet


Inmate number: P01135809, Fulton County, Atlanta, Georgia, or,

If “fucked around and found out” got a mugshot!

 

“4 indictments, 91 felony charges, 2 impeachments, 1 act of sedition, and threatening civil war, 26 women alleging sexual assault. 1.13 million Americans dead from COVID. And he IS the frontrunner of the Republican Party. This is why I call it a collective psychosis.”

 

Quoting Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee,

Formerly of Yale University, warned us.

She gave her expertise in what used to be a tweet,

She, and 26 other psychological professionals broke the “Goldwater Rule” and published “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”

 

The cost was her tenured position, that’s supposed to be beyond reproach.

 

Collective, or shared psychosis “can also happen in groups of people who are closely involved with a person who has a psychotic disorder (called folie à plusiers, or "the madness of many"). For instance, this could happen in a cult if the leader is psychotic and their followers take on their delusions.”

 

Source: https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/shared-psychotic-disorder

 

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shared-psychosis-of-donald-trump-and-his-loyalists/

 

What does tenure mean?

It used to mean that academics were free to speak “truth to power” without fear of retribution.

I guess in Dr. Lee’s case, being Asian and female, there was an exception made, but not for her 26 other coauthors and colleagues.

 

What is the “rule of law,” if a scion who lucked out in the “Sperm Lotto” can wriggle out of felony charges that would put any ONE of us under [the] jail?

 

Justice HAS to prevail!

 

“But: He didn’t participate in the insurrection,” you say?

Well, Bin Laden didn’t fly any planes!

Charles Manson didn’t murder anyone!

Your point?

 

Stochastic terrorists don’t “do the deed.”

They just plant the seeds so that some numbskulls carry out their bidding.

 

For Osama, it was 19 hijackers, 15 from Saudi Arabia.

Charles Manson had his twisted “family” do it.

“Hold my beer” said he “loves the poorly educated.”

(Because they can be easily manipulated.)

 

This is not a cartoon on Saturday mornings,

Where the tension is scripted,

Where Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff with an anvil from Acme, Inc. into a ditch,

Crumbled in the denouement of the scene,

And reconstituted without a scratch in the next.

 

Real life has consequences!

Real life has monumental decisions that will result in whether our planet is hospitable to human existence,

Or having thousand-year mega-storms every week.

Try maintaining a high Dow Jones Industrial Average on THAT recipe!

 

By the way:

The Dow isn’t a measure of the economy.

It’s an indicator of stock trades on Wall Street,

89% of which is owned by the 1%.

So, the Dow is more accurately, a mood ring for rich people, or an oligarch Rorschach test!

 

They’re not banning books to spare white kids’ feelings:

They’re banning books so they won’t learn empathy!

Because “walking in someone else’s shoes” means learning what you didn’t know about them.

Knowledge breeds empathy; ignorance breeds violence.

 

George Santayana said that “those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

The book banners want us to be ignorant so they can easily repeat it!

 

71% believe that what “Big Lier” says is true.

63% believes their family and friends.

56% believe conservative media.

42% believe religious leaders.

 

Source: https://www.axios.com/2023/08/21/trump-republican-2024-voters-poll

 

Now, out of 46 presidents, he’s the ONLY one who has a mugshot!

 

It’s. A. Cult!

Conservative Judge J. Michael Luddig said “there IS no Republican Party” as he previously understood it.

He, and liberal Harvard emeritus professor, Lawrence Tribe, Grok to it.

This is what a constitutional crisis looks like!

When one major party is marginally democratic,

And the other major political party exists in Zones beyond Twilight.

Both are shouting as loud as they can:

This “man of sin,” this “son of perdition” is a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”

 

A cult leader has risen to godlike status.

A warning:

All cults, from,

Jim Jones in Guyana, South America,

David Koresh Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas,

Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate Cult in San Diego, California,

 

All dead.

Poisoned Flavor-Aid. Fire and shootouts. Cyanide to “beam up to the mothership.”

All because they gave godlike status to a FLAWED human.

 

And eventually, it all comes to an end.

The survivors will comprise three camps:

The sane among us, like Dr. Lee, who tried to warn us,

The same people who will be responsible for repairing what’s left,

The embarrassed, waking up that they were duped by a conman,

Pretending that they were never on “team crazy,”

And the “true believers” who will deify his remains on Mount Olympus.

(They’ve already constructed a graven image in Florida, not a desert)

 

Hopefully, they will be in small enough numbers, and self-identify so that we can ignore them!

 

My hope is this: history illustrates that after every dark age, there is a renaissance.

 

Let’s vote for our future and get to it!