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

 

Four Questions Plus One...

 

Hundreds of UT Austin students and faculty gather on campus for pro-Palestine protest, Ren Leija, Senior News Reporter, The Daily Texan, April 24, 2024

© April 25, 2024, the Griot Poet 

 

Opinion: A new set of ‘Four Questions’ for anti-Israel protesters

by Congressman Steve Israel as reported by The Hill: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4619331-a-new-set-of-four-questions-for-anti-israel-protestors/

(Summarized for brevity)

“Question 1: On Oct. 7, the terrorist group Hamas slaughtered young Israelis at a music festival as well as other civilians in surrounding communities. They murdered, stabbed, shot, raped, beheaded, burned. They forced children to watch the butchering of parents. They cut off women’s breasts, killed the defenseless elderly, abducted, and continued to hold innocent civilians hostage. Did you protest that massacre in the days, weeks, months after Oct. 7. At least once? Did you fly flags, wave banners, and demand justice?

 

“Question 2: In the ongoing civil war in Sudan, at least 13,000 to 15,000 people have been killed and 33,000 others injured. Over 6.5 million are internally displaced and more than 2 million others have fled the country as refugees. Here too, innocents have been beaten, burned, raped, tortured, murdered. Meanwhile, according to the human rights group Oxfam, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has killed more than 10,500 civilians, including 587 children, “as constant bombardments, mines, and drone attacks have left a generation traumatized, displaced, and fearful for their lives.” Have you protested the grotesque and persistent war crimes in Sudan or Ukraine? If not, why not? Why do civilians in Sudan or Sevastopol seem less important to you than in Gaza?

 

“Question 3: In Gaza, Hamas violated international law with a heinous military doctrine that forced its own innocent civilians to become Israeli military targets. It embedded weapons systems in hospitals, schools, and residential apartments. (Many foretold the strategy on day one: Hamas massacres Israelis, Israel responds by targeting Hamas weapons in civilian infrastructure, casualties skyrocket, the world turns on Israel, and the university protests ignite). Have you protested Hamas’s illegal tactics of deliberately putting innocents in harm’s way? Have you demanded boycotts, divestment, and sanctions for nations that fund, enable, and empower Hamas’s crimes against humanity?

 

“Question 4: You chant: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” In fact, the Hamas charter continues to insist that the geographic borders of Palestine extend “from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and the north to the south,” i.e., the entirety of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. And while I’m asking — why is it that while I support a two-state solution in which Jews and Palestinians live with full rights, your chant seems to support the purging of one?

If not, why not? Why do you protest only Israel?

“Two-state solution is the only resolution.” Chant THAT!

 

My plus one:

Have you read “Perceptions of Palestine” by Kathleen Christison?

Who asked this insightful question: “If a broader frame of reference on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been employed, allowing a less warped public discourse, might not years of warfare have been avoided and steps toward peace achieved much earlier?”

Or did you read a post on the Internet and join a “flash mob” in response?

Or anything else other than your own curated news feeds?

 

This piece is not for getting me snaps.

It’s about encapsulating for you digestible facts.

 

Anger is a powerful emotion.

The adrenaline rush can be overwhelming.

Some researchers have suggested that it may [even] be an addiction.

Source: https://psychcentral.com/lib/is-anger-an-addiction

 

News outlets no longer have the independence of getting all the advertising dollars.

Investigative journalists are rare and have given way to valuing access.

Probing the powerful too much will get them dismissed.

Thus, the genesis of “softball” questioning.

The daily newspapers have been reduced to magazines.

The Yellow Pages can be ripped apart by prepubescent teens.

So, the only card the “fourth estate” must play is from the prescient movie “Network”:

“I’m mad as HELL, and I won’t take it anymore!”

 

They do it on your news feeds and your favorite network news channels,

Bonus Read:

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” by Dr. Neil Postman.

Your anger is managed and part of the programming.

Thus, we have the “warring factions” George Washington warned us about in his farewell address.

 

Nuance (noun): a slight difference in sound, feeling, meaning, or appearance. It's often used to describe the more delicate aspects of something, especially in language, writing, or interpretation.

 

I understand your passion.

You’re the generation that has had to endure the sadistic spectacle of endless school shootings.

You’ve had to endure endless RUN-HIDE-FIGHT drills and ZERO gun control legislation.

You had to endure “Zoom fatigue,” which wasn’t a THING before the pandemic.

By design, you’re strapped with debt before you graduate college, and people wonder why you’re not starting families or buying houses.

You’re watching a warning Earth, and it’s a coin flip between political parties on whether we’ll survive it.

 

But, as someone old enough to remember Kent State and A&T,

Seeing what is happening from Columbia, Emory, and UT,

Like many college campuses in the 1960s,

Protesting the Vietnam War vigorously,

The Civil Rights Movement, Star Trek, a Man on the Moon, and the “Dawn of the Age of Aquarius” were pregnant with possibilities.

 

Unfortunately,

It led to the election of Richard Milhous Nixon on a “law and order” ticket.

He did some GOOD things:

The EPA,

Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws against the father and son New York real estate developers refusing to rent to black residents (the son, astonishingly obtuse, would become president),

And he appointed one of the seven republican justices who voted FOR Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

 

Then:

He proceeded to break almost every law that then existed.

It led to the deaths of over 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese citizens.

It led to the prolonged injuries and deaths of troops exposed to “Agent Orange.”

It led to the Watergate scandal and our current mistrust of government institutions.

It led to mostly black, white, Jewish, and Hispanic GIs coming home to be spat upon and called “baby killers.”

 

Because it’s easy to get behind any Pied Piper with a bullhorn or a podcast.

“TikTok” was never a part of the First Amendment,

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act needs to be amended.

So that Mark Zuckerberg and other tech moguls can stop wasting our time, “apologizing” and doing nothing.

Flash mobs don’t require much attention,

Or thinking about the consequences,

Adrenaline, like any drug, is a hell of a fix.

 

It’s not easy, I realize, to consider the nuances of a situation.

Your satisfaction with pimp slapping “the system” might lead you to the election of a narcissistic psychopath bent on “retribution” who will have the nuclear codes.

He tried to nuke a hurricane, oblivious to the consequences.

His solution to fires due to climate change was to “rake the forests.”

He told us to inject bleach,

Shine lights up our rectums,

And ingest the horse dewormers Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.

He killed over a million citizens during a pandemic.

He’s bent on retribution and imprisoning anyone who goes against him.

 

“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

Hell yeah, pilgrim!

 

“Two-state solution is the only resolution.”

Or the sixth mass extinction WILL be the “final solution!”

 

This election isn’t about Democrats vs Republicans.

This election is about whether we’ll ever have another one.

This election is about whether women are citizens or state-owned broodmare cattle.

This election is about if the government goes “1984” and invades our bedrooms.

This election is about Democracy vs Fascism.

This election is about empathy vs cruelty.

This election is about survival vs extinction.

 

There is “world peace” on Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (maybe a planet) because there are no HUMANS on them!

As Earth once was, “peaceful” without us.

And,

After Armageddon, any argument you tried to make about the “lesser of two evils” will be [horribly] irrelevant.

There will be no Palestinians, Israelis, or humans left to lament.

Two James'...

Bond: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34540639/sean-connery-eulogy-james-bond-action-hero/

Kirk: https://treknews.net/2017/05/06/star-trek-tng-type-i-phaser/captain-kirk-star-trek-phaser/

© June 26, 2023, the Griot Poet

 

James Bond,

And James T. Kirk:

 

The name James is the English translation of the Latin name Iacomus, derived from the New Testament Greek form of the Hebrew name Ya’aqov (Jacob), which means supplanter, substitute, or trickster.

 

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/james-the-meaning-origin-and-other-facts-about-the-name_n_7329710.html

 

Two creatures of Cold War literary fiction,

The 1960s were poised between utopian hope and mutually assured destruction.

 

“Bond, James Bond,”

Was the literary child of Ian Fleming,

A writer for Reuters,

A correspondent assigned to Moscow,

He was a promiscuous Naval officer,

Working with MI6 during the “Great War,”

Later, finding itself WWII’s prequel,

He went on dangerous missions for the Queen and country,

He was helped with gadgets by his creative inventor friend, Quincy (“Q” in literature).

 

We can assume that James Bond replaced the previous 007, as the number is not special, just an assigned placeholder in Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

 

James T. Kirk,

The “T” was for Tiberius.

Tiberius was the name of the second Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus,

Gene Roddenberry pitched a “wagon train to the stars,”

To Lucille Ball and Desilu Productions,

Captain Pike was fine,

So was Science Officer Spock,

But his “Number One,” Umma, a woman,

As the second-in-command of a starship, a naval vessel, had to be reworked,

It was the “age of Aquarius” sixties, and sexism still existed.

 

Pike was out,

Spock stayed.

Majel Barrett was demoted to Nurse Chapel,

To be second in a starship sickbay to the curmudgeon, Bones McCoy,

And the big chair on the bridge inhabited by Captain James T. Kirk.

This James supplanted Christopher.

They added Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Swahili: “Freedom Star”) without stating the Communications Officer was third in command.

 

Both James had swashbuckling swagger:

One had machine guns, the other had phasers,

Both were promiscuous with the ladies,

One had lovers on every continent, the other expanded to parsecs,

Both were dedicated to the ideals of their respective governments,

The British Empire was still a thing, and a United Earth workshopped “Federation” to mask their ambitions and expansion in space.

 

In their fictional universes,

SPECTRE: Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion,

 

It was a metaphor for the KGB: Committee for State Security, the foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union,

 

It was a sleight-of-hand by screenwriters,

Commenting on the Cold War while not making it nuclear hot!

 

The Klingons were [clearly] the Russians,

Gruff, warlike, and unreasonable,

Twenty-four houses that were warring factions,

A metaphor for eleven time zones and Soviet satellites.

They would start a brawl over their equivalent of selecting the wrong station with a television remote,

They found it better to drop their rocks and form a government,

Colonizing and conquering other planets at sub-light,

Until they stole warp technology from the Romulans,

Upgrading from sleeper ships to birds of prey,

 

The Federation was us,

After WWIII, preambled by The Eugenics Wars in the 1990s by Khan Noonian Singh,

And his mother’s augmented race of supermen,

Translated from the German Übermensch,

The illusion of perfection that the Nazis preferred.

Spock said, “Superior ability breeds superior ambition,”

Probably recalling the neutron bomb devastation on Vulcan.

The “supermen” devastated our planet.

They toppled our respective governments,

After creating a collective, radiated mess,

They fled on the Sleeper Ship, The SS Botany Bay,

Escaping summary judgment for their crimes against humanity.

 

After the Phoenix flight of Zephram Cochran,

After the Deus ex Machina discovery by the Vulcans,

The remainder of humanity discovered,

Boarders were bullshit,

So were the hierarchies and gaslighting that formed them.

Now, scientifically advanced and logical,

Only a unified humanity could survive, reverse climate change, and build starships.

 

And we lived in these live-action, cartoon universes,

Poised between yet unimagined utopia and the real politick of mutually assured destruction.

Cheering the swashbuckling supplanters:

Bond. James Bond.

And James T. Kirk.

 

And for our species’ continuance,

I am hoping that someone like them exists.

Nihilistic Moron...

 

The conservative attorney slammed the former president as a “nihilistic moron" whose undoing could come "for something so stupid and pointless and silly." HuffPost Twitter

© June 9, 2023, the Griot Poet

The first turn of phrase I heard about Donald in front of Trump Tower was, “Oh! Do you mean ‘Dumbo Gambino?’”

 

He’s how poor men think the rich are,

And he thinks he’s a “Teflon Don” mobster.

Trump LLC was so broke,

The Apprentice show runners rented furniture,

Because his office looked like a rat-infested joke.

The Apprentice was a carefully crafted fiction,

For a failed real estate mogul trying to live up to his father’s expectations,

But that was the operative metaphor,

“Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

Professor William T. Kelley, at Penn State’s Wharton School of Business.

“He came in with an incredible amount of arrogance like he knew everything but didn’t.”

So, a malignant narcissist,

Rejected by his family and professor,

Crafts a world away from the hurt of his bruised ego,

Where he is the hero, and he ALWAYS wins!

Even if he must lie, cheat, and steal to make it happen!

 

“Now people will say, you know, he really, in a just world, [he] would go to jail for what he did on Jan. 6, the weeks approaching Jan. 6,” [George] Conway added. “And I kind of agree with that, but for this man who is [basically] a **nihilistic moron,** for him to go to jail potentially for a long time, these Espionage Act charges bring very heavy sentences to potentially go to jail for something so pointless and silly and useless as keeping these documents is actually kind of fitting.”

 

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-indictment-2660998395/

 

George Conway with the mic drop.

All you had to do, Sparky, was return the library books!

 

My fifth-grade librarian, Mr. Halsey, rest in peace and would have charged him eighty-five cents for each day past the return date (a bit of a grip for a 10-year-old back then).

 

“Retention of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving the White House,

“The charges include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willfully retaining documents violating the Espionage Act.”

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/trump-says-hes-been-indicted-summoned-to-federal-court-in-miami-next-week.html

 

The Presidential Records Act of 1978, amended in 2014:

 

“Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.

 

“Establishes a process by which the President may restrict, and the public may obtain access to these records after the President leaves office; specifically, the PRA allows for public access to Presidential records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years.”

 

https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/laws/1978-act.html 

 

Nowhere in the act or the statute is a clause for telepathic declassification!

 

Because telepathy is right up there with mermaids and Bigfoot: neither exists!

 

After his indictment in West Palm Beach, Florida,

He flew back to Bedminster, New Jersey,

And did what many of his previous lawyers quit him for: He opened his fat mouth and started lying and grifting from his gullible followers.

 

His malignant narcissism doesn’t seem to realize,

Everything he says is admissible!

Jack Smith has an office clerk,

Jotting down every insane utterance,

Every “Truth Storm,” especially when he’s nervous!

 

Eighty percent of Americans think he deserves conviction for stealing classified documents,

 

Except, of course, his moronic cult members,

Who, in the height of heresy and hypocrisy,

Published “Son of Man” on Amazon, alluding that HE is the second coming!

 

News flash: He’s not!

 

He will be indicted again in Washington, DC, for inciting January 6.

He will be indicted again in Fulton County, Atlanta, Georgia, for trying to steal 11,780 votes!

 

He is a criminal and a con man.

His only skill is at picking and exploiting his marks.

He’s torn between going back to his old life as a two-bit criminal that other billionaires chuckled about,

 

In Winston-Salem, North Carolina,

My hometown,

Former New York Mayor, and presidential candidate, Mike Bloomberg was asked how he felt about two billionaires running for President in 2016,

Mike replied without skipping a beat:

“Who’s the other one?”

 

MAGA has a lot of meanings:

“Make America great again,”

First said by the Ku Klux Klan, then Ronald Reagan.

 

It also means:

Morons are governing America,

During our shared four years in hell.

Where he tax cut us into a trillion-dollar deficit and killed one million Americans during the pandemic through stupidity and incompetence,

 

It also means:

Make attorneys get attorneys,

As many are jumping off the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane Express,

Pretty soon, all he’ll have left are public defenders, and they may not want him!

 

He’s, in southern parlance, “a HOT mess!”

A political party without a platform since 2016,

Reflexively defends him like a chorus jazz riff,

 

As a “nihilistic moron,” he takes his party of lemmings over a cliff!

And I am SO here for it!

American Exceptionalism II...

Image Source: New York Post, Jesse O'Neill

© September 8, 2022 (Star Trek Day), the Griot Poet

American exceptionalism “is the idea that the United States and its people hold a special place in the world by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals focused on personal and economic freedom.”

Boil water orders in Jackson, Mississippi,

The seat of their state government and conservative policy,

84% of the city consists of African Americans,

Coach Deion Sanders putting his players in hotels to access showers,

Take showers at home, but keep your mouths closed,

Especially when approaching the state house to discuss it,

Not exercising your First Amendment rights addressing grievances to your government,

 

Mississippi has the highest death rates

From:

Covid,

Gun deaths,

Opioid crisis,

Infant mortality,

Lowest life expectancy at 71.9 years in the nation,

Brett Farve stole 1.1 million dollars meant for the needy,

What other "millionaires" had their hands in the welfare kitty?

Colin Kaepernick's career was tanked for kneeling,

You’d think Brett could rip off a check from all those Copper Tone gigs he’s been getting,

 

You can’t drink water in Flint, Michigan,

Water sources diverted by a political decision,

My favorite president, Barack Obama, pretended to drink it,

FEMA was not called in to resolve it,

Michael Moore said this might have had more effect in 2016 than Russian interference,

Lead in pipes and water ignited by matches,

It makes for viral YouTube dispatches,

 

ERCOT took itself off the national power grid,

Climate change and a snap freeze froze to death citizens,

Cancun Cruz left his poodle, Snowflake, to freeze to death in Houston,

Then cowardly blamed his daughters for the decision,

A metaphor for the contempt he feels for his actual constituents,

Mind you; this sociopath still wants to be president,

Twenty-three members of the ERCOT board of directors, after the big freeze, quit,

Too bad none of them lived in Texas,

Concern about the isolated grid and Texas droughts arose in the summer heat,

Before they started finding dinosaur riverbed footprints,

 

What’s the Venn diagram blueprint?

Mississippi, Michigan, and Texas suffer “Republican governance,”

Reagan’s inaugural throwaway line: “government isn’t the solution: government is the problem,”

Became the framework for forty years of this grift,

It’s why Ronald Reagan, Pappy Bush, Dubya, and Orange Satan,

Come into government and took a sledgehammer to it,

It’s why the country, after each of their administrations, is in smoldering ruin,

And Clinton, Obama, and Biden have to ride herd in to FIX it!

 

Nunes the Cow, Hannity the Chin, McCarthy the Squid,

Crooked lawyers and hangers-on after seized phones and 40 subpoenas,

Meeting with the “Slob Father” on his golf course, no one is golfing!

Or not talking on electronics, since many of their phones are with the Department of Justice!

 

Moscow Mitch:

It would help if you had let Merrick Garland ascend,

  

[This] is not a typo: “Slavery abolition will be on the ballot in five states in the midterm elections: Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont.”

 

No one is free in Jackson, Mississippi.

No one is free on First Nation reservations.

No one is free in Flint, Michigan.

No one is free in Texas when an 18-year-old sociopath can purchase an AR15-style weapon easier than a beer, rum, and Coke,

And gun down babies before summer break,

 

For women, the Republic of Texas is the Republic of Gilead,

 

The evisceration of Roe vs. Wade was supposed to put the decision back to the states,

As soon as they get back the House and the Senate, Republicans plan on writing a federal mandate,

The childless Ms. Lindsey Graham wants this,

Who’s never been in a woman’s bedroom in his closeted life,

 

Ms. Graham might as well recite this derivative from Guy Fawkes:

 

“Remember, remember the eighth of ROE-VEMBER,”

Voter registrations are exponentially higher for women,

Democrats, Republicans, and Independents,

The anticipated “red wave” looks like a trickle,

Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker dream in a pickle,

 

Red states pay no state taxes,

Putting the burden of supporting the federal government on blue states,

Causing an exodus from states like California bearing the national burden of the actual slackers, Cancun Cruz,

Ironically winding up in one of the states that caused their distress,

 

Both Nixon and Reagan governed California,

Reagan and the NRA restricted the Black Panthers’ right to bear arms,

Just like the right gets excited about Black Lives Matter,

Not realizing that if you have to chant the obvious, it doesn’t,

We’re not “offering opportunities to a part of humanity,”

Whose ancestors have been here since 1619,

 

In the 80s, no one measured the life expectancy effects of the crack cocaine epidemic,

Incarnations made them irrelevant,

In 2011, average life expectancy dipped due to the opioid epidemic,

Not a single person went to a for-profit prison,

In 2019, the average national life expectancy was 79 years,

In 2022, that dropped off a cliff to 76,

Due to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic,

It’s not the flu:

The flu is responsible for at most 20,000 deaths per year,

Coronavirus slaughtered one million Americans,

Zoom zipped math and reading test scores,

Causing them to recede 20 years backward,

No other comparable developed nation saw this,

Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune between the 1950s to the go-go 80s,

They had to join fellow vets in a lawsuit over burn pits for due compensation,

Vietnam soldiers affected by Agent Orange joined them,

The republicans didn’t want to pay for the lung effects of 9/11,

 

So, tell me a fairytale story,

Tell me about Winthrop’s “city on a hill,”

Tell me how it’s differentiated from a golden sprayed dung heap,

Tell me about “American exceptionalism.”

 

I channel James Baldwin as I end this piece:

 

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

 

ROE-VEMBER 8, 2022: women, save America: VOTE!