Dunning-Kruger Death Cult...

 

Training Peaks: Dunning-Kruger Effect

© September 16, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

In 1980,

Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),

Who gave us the infinitely useless “stand your ground” laws,

That empowered a psychopath named Zimmerman,

And murdered Trayvon Benjamin Martin,

Weyrich spoke to a group of conservative preachers in Dallas, Texas:

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.”

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

 

In 1999,

A prophecy of Nostradamus did not see its fulfillment

But a paper by Justin Kruger, a graduate student, and his advisor David Dunning, Cornell University

Caused a stir in academics before the end of the 20^th and start of the 21^st Century

Titled: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s [Own] Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,”

People who “hold overly favorable views of their abilities.”

They are not self-critical enough to know what they’re missing,

Like bulls in china shops, they’d rather “wing it,”

“Fake it until you make it,”

Causing ruination,

The circular logic is,

If you’re [totally] unaware of your limitations,

How can you tell if you’ve reached the summit of knowledge, recognize expertise, or your flaws in your process?

 

In 2020,

During the rising death toll of a global pandemic,

Our shared Nightmare on Elm Street

At the Resolute Desk said the quiet part out loud,

In a rare display of candor and honesty:

Dismissing the safety protocols during a pandemic: early voting, mail-in voting, and same-day registration: “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

 

The now-famous Dunning-Kruger effect

Seemed fulfillment of Bertrand Russell’s earlier assessment:

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

 

Karl Rove told reporter Ron Suskind: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ [...] ‘That’s not the way the world [really] works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our [own] reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to [just] study what we do.’”

Karl: that was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” insanity.

But it and Dunning-Kruger aptly explains our current calamity,

The modern “gang of Putin” is Paul Weyrich’s wet dream.

There is a through-line from Barry Goldwater to Weyrich, Weyrich to Nixon, Nixon to Reagan, Reagan to Orange Satan.

Goldwater got some disingenuous ads against him, painting him as crazy enough to start a thermonuclear war.

Lyndon Baines Johnson won 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52.

It was then Goldwater, years before Watergate, coined “you’ve got to hunt where the ducks are.”

The ducks were the disaffected southern Dixiecrats in deep depression because Civil Rights and Voting Rights from the US Constitution extended to African Americans.

When you have privilege, equal justice seems like persecution.

Privilege is a kind of willful blindness.

For white supremacist power, party insiders weren’t, and aren’t, willing to remove the scales or blinders.

 

Yesterday,

A diminutive number of domestic terrorists,

Marched for their seditionist brethren from January 6,

Pretending they are all political prisoners,

As if they’re behind the lines of the Iron Curtain,

No congressional cheerleader,

Even Marjorie Taylor-Green,

Bothered to show up in solidarity,

The California recall blowout was an indication,

Maybe they shouldn’t brace to their bosom the absolute crazy?

They’re all white grievance minstrels, performance artists, professional trolls, and nihilists. “Owning the libs” is all they do.

Name ONE piece of legislation they’ve proposed for the common good?

I hear the sound of chirping crickets.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t need another tax cut!

“Idiocracy” did not take 500 years of political Entropy: it just took the desperation of a party that sees its power waning, and is clinging to power at all cost, even if that wage paid is the republic.

Hypocrites...

 

© September 6, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“Pro-life,”

Would be 20 Sandy Hook teens starting high school this fall,

We didn’t forget.

A parent committed suicide because of “Sandy Hook truthers,”

Insisting the carnage by Adam Lanza wasn’t legitimate,

It was fake, you said, and staged by “crisis actors,”

Pumped by conniption fit king Alex Jones,

And other failed vitamin/survivalist hacks,

 

Other than stuntmen and stuntwomen,

No screen actors guild job posting as this exists,

 

Black Lives Matter,

Came into existence

With the killing of Michael Brown,

Eric Garner,

Sandra Bland,

And sadly, others,

 

“All Lives Matter,”

Sounds kind of cute,

On closer inspection, it’s obtuse,

If “all lives mattered,”

You had 1619 to the present to prove it,

You’d be wearing a mask during a pandemic,

Or, get a free vaccine versus bleach, flashlights, ivermectin,

You derisively call people who get it “sheep,”

Ivermectin is deworming medicine for horses, cattle, hogs, dogs, goats, AND sheep!

 

You’re Libertarian for your freedoms,

And totalitarian with everyone else’s,

You just reduced Texas women to second-class citizens,

The first act of authoritarians is reducing women to UN persons,

Only suitable for cisgender sexual gratification,

Or, quoting George Carlin, broodmares for the state,

Texas women have no options,

If raped by a brother, a father, an uncle, a cousin,

They must carry the fetus of their rapist even if unviable,

Or threatening the life of the mother,

A woman thrice assaulted by her ex-lover in Texas,

Has to share custody with him,

Praying her rapist won’t harm her son,

When did “personal freedom” include back-alley coat-hanger abortions?

 

It’s like George Carlin’s stand up,

Pegged you in perpetuity:

“If you’re pre-born, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re FUCKED!”

If they survive their Sandy Hooks,

After PTSD “active shooter drills,”

Stacking up chairs to barricade themselves,

From psychopaths

Whose Second Amendment rights

Overcomes theirs to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”

(Notice which is listed FIRST?)

Once they turn eighteen, they can’t drink legally,

But they can VOTE (the 1% don’t want them to do that),

Oligarchs would rather they go

To the contrived meat grinders,

Of endless wars to enrich their pockets,

Designed since WWI by the Creel Commission for defense contractors,

Marketing has been manipulating an entire population,

Noam Chomsky’s “manufactured consent” for generations,

Lining the pockets of robber barons,

Overlords would instead love to pick our leaders/puppets,

[Than] have a government responding to the public,

They didn’t fight the so-called “war of northern aggression,”

But they made sure they got paid reparations for losing "laborers,"

Instead of the actual slaves who bled and built this country,

It’s why they don’t want true history,

“Critical race theory” is just a slogan, the real reason:

Criminals don’t admit to crimes committed,

They’d have to return the lands stolen,

From its original citizens,

Reparations,

Would be the equivalent,

Of the gold and jewels,

Given to the Hebrews

Leaving old Egypt,

 

New Egypt,

Brought us here in ships,

Lying in bile and filth,

Never to see our motherland again,

Sold to our enemies,

Women and men,

Treated like cattle you had forced sex with (Deuteronomy 28:68)

 

The foundation of this psychopathic wet dream,

Is a steady stream of permanent pariahs,

It started with the British Empire,

Extended to the Dalits - the original pariahs in India,

Aborigines in Australia,

The Somali refugee in Europe,

The Uighur in China,

South Africans in their [own] nation,

Afghan refugees twenty years post “enduring freedom,”

It’s why Queen Elizabeth couldn’t fathom Diana, a commoner, or an independent black woman, Meghan Markle,

Every authoritarian needs necks for boots to rest on,

Scapegoats on which to lay blame,

Rather than solve problems that overwhelm them,

 

Because solving the problems they created,

Would be doing something to their great chagrin: 

 

It would entail sharing the wealth and resources around the WORLD that were stolen BY them!

Reality TV, Infotainment, and Apocalypse...

Infotainment Systems Can Turn Some Car Owners Off, Wards Auto

 © August 26, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

We are living in a “Twilight Zone” episode,

Rod Serling never wrote,

You went from hydroxychloroquine,

To drinking bleach,

Shining flashlights up your ass,

To “Billy Bob, Cooter, and Skeeter’s” medical advice,

In your “dimensions of sight, sound, and mind” Facebook groups,

On the horse dewormer, ivermectin,

Instead of wearing a mask or taking a FREE vaccine,

Are you all insane?

 

Facebook meme: “insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibility isn’t freedom; it’s adolescence.”

 

Laura Ingrate, Sean Insanity,

And The Three Stooges Curly Howard’s distant cousin, Tucker Carlson,

Have all been vaccinated,

As well as their oligarch boss, Rupert Murdoch,

Yet, they’re encouraging you not to.

 

That is the textbook definition,

Of sadism: “the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others,”

Laughing at you in the coffee room,

After passing company-mandated COVID protocols,

Fully-vaccinated,

On the Avenue of the Americas,

They are fascists,

Like Ingrate’s father, Nazi sympathizers,

Mike Lofgren and George Will were the first to leave this circus,

None of Fox Propaganda’s anchors are conservatives,

They aim to overthrow our democratic republic,

 

Penguin Random House book description lead:

“What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment?”

 

Neil Postman’s central research question in his polemic,

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,”

 

Ted Turner’s “great idea” of 24-hour “infotainment.”

Attractive, model-like female news anchors like Robin Meade,

Misogyny well before Roger Ailes,

Ted tried to get the same cinematic effects,

Like“HBO,” “Star Wars,” and the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,”

CNN’s “Crossfire,” the prototype of orchestrated conflict,

He largely succeeded,

The infotainment echo chambers followed as clones of him,

 

It’s easy to blame everything on social media,

It’s just a digitized version of Postman’s warning screed,

Richard Nixon,

Won re-election,

On his “law and order” mandate,

Instituted the racist “war on drugs,”

Sweeping 49 out of 50 states,

Watergate felled him,

Due to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s,

Investigative journalism,

With the help of

Three television stations,

Radio and print media,

The corporatists had to control the flow of information,

Were the same fascists who substituted,

Civics with what Frank Zappa pointed out as “social studies,”

Began a decades-long campaign,

To shape the opinions of citizens,

Consolidating ownership,

From 150 independent media outlets

 

To six, controlled by:

AT&T (who bought Time Warner), CBS (Big Bang, and Star Trek), Comcast (think MSNBC), Disney (owns ABC), News Corp (Fox Propaganda), and Viacom (BET, MTV, VH1, all of who no longer plays videos),

 

But cheered on our failed deployments,

In Iraq and Afghanistan,

As it lined war profiteers pockets,

 

Apocalypse: It’s a great title to a movie, story, supervillain, or blog post.

It means “to uncover” or “to reveal.”

 

Here’s your revelation:

This nation has profited from war and carnage since its inception.

Looking forward to a rapture,

Encourages laziness,

No need to solve climate change by applying science,

“Mutually Assured Destruction” in this warped Cartesian thinking isn’t madness,

 

All Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Women, immigrants

 

Are all being affected by the anti-democratic efforts of Republican legislatures to either pick the voters they want to be counted or if elections don’t quite go their way, THROW out the results!

 

Dr. King referred to that as “interposition, and nullification.”

 

The filibuster has been adjusted, carved out, flipped, manipulated for less than our ability to call ourselves a federal republic than for billionaire Oligarchs’ tax cuts.

 

Both parties are invested in the “status quo.” It is ghoulish.

 

Continuing it would be self-extinction and foolish,

 

The whole intent of Dr. Neil Postman’s warnings of simply 24-hour “infotainment” cable news;

Before social media proliferated;

Before phone apps were invented,

Before our news outlets consolidated,

And morphed into self-deluding echo chambers kowtowing to Nielsen ratings,

Before politicians became craven liars in stark evidence of insurrection,

And would instead rule over a smoldering ruin of feces than serve in an actual democracy.

 

Democracy (noun): a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives: rule BY the people,

 

Our nation and the world deserve better.

Our nation and the world get better when “we the people” demand better.

 

 

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, Margaret Atwood, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” translation: Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

 

Demonstrate,

Protest,

Do comedy,

Sing songs,

Write poetry,

Perform skits,

Speak the truth about reality, politics, and science,

Come to venues like “Spoken and Heard” to fight for democracy, and above all:

Vote!

Put the bastards to flight,

Representative government is fascism’s kryptonite.

Blowback Racket...

In Trump's Plot to Seize the White House, Who Will Be Our Smedley Butler? Jonathan M. Katz

© August 23, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Hillary Clinton,

In a moment of clarity with Greta Van Susteren

When Fox Propaganda was actually “news,”

A video that has recently gone viral,

She detailed how

 

Dr. Zbignew Brezinski,

With the peanut farmer,

President Jimmy Carter,

Gave the Soviet Union

Their [own] version of Vietnam,

 

The United States and Pakistani intelligence created,

The Mujahideen,

Especially,

Empowering,

A young Osama Bin Laden,

And my Aggie classmate, Khalid Sheik Mohammad,

Gave them training from the CIA,

Courtesy of the School of the Americas,

Enabling butchers like Pinochet, the Contras, and others,

Supplying stinger missiles in Pakistan,

As they, with Saudi Arabia,

[Bought] the free press,

News dumbed down to the common denominator: fomenting rage,

Radicalizing the local people and clerics,

In each instance, telling “good Muslims.”

 

To kill the atheist Soviets,

To kill the atheist serving the Iranian Shah,

In the 1960s, women wore miniskirts,

Not burkhas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran,

What happened?

 

Check out the formula:

Get control over the news outlets,

Radicalize some religious zealots,

Overthrow the democratic government,

Install a puppet dictator,

Empower

Defense contractors,

And weapons manufacturers,

To bribe corrupt politicians,

And cash in on this Golden Calf,

Drink Courvoisier Cognac,

Smoke stogies lit with "hundred dollar bills y'all" in their White Citizens Council Cul de Sacs,

It works well when you target some usually brown, un-godless “other,”

Rinse. Lather. Repeat!

 

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.… It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

 

Major General Smedley Butler penned this,

In 1935,

Earned two Congressional Medals of Honor,

Fighting wars for the racketeers,

Whistleblower for the corporate fascists,

Who tried to overthrow the US government,

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

And install Butler as a dictator,

 

Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes apply it,

Nightly as a rage manufacturing machine,

For the altar of Moloch Nielsen ratings,

It’s why we can’t reduce mass shootings,

After each massacre,

Check out the stock value of Smith and Wesson,

Gun manufacturers aren’t “free-market capitalism,”

Less than one percent of our population,

Owns enough firepower,

To outfit all the rest!

When are you going to accept that you’re being gaslighted?

 

News flash:

Franklin Roosevelt didn’t take your guns,

Harry Truman didn’t take your guns,

John F. Kennedy didn’t take your guns,

LBJ didn’t take your guns,

Bill Clinton didn’t take your guns,

Barack Obama didn’t take your guns,

 

For your manufactured fear, you have corporate robber barons to thank,

Weapons and gun manufacturers are “kissing cousins,”

Laughing all the way to the bank!

 

Rupert Murdoch will continue this game,

As long as your eyes stay glued to his and Roger Ailes’ refrain,

Of grievance minstrelsy as propagated,

By Sean Insanity, Laura Ingrate, Tucker "Three Stooges" Curly, and Steve Doocy,

With a name that already sounds like a pejorative,

Without adjustment or artistic commentary,

 

Fox Propaganda has a vaccine mandate,

For every employee at Avenue of the Americas,

Rupert Murdoch can self-isolate,

He and Orange Satan got the vaccine, for goodness sake!

What “Twilight Zone” episode are we in when you’re willing to take,

Hydroxychloroquine,

Shine a light up your ass, drink bleach,

De-worming medicine for cows and horses,

Rather than just getting vaccinated?

 

We could have let you eat Tide pods, but we didn’t!

 

Along with hydroxychloroquine and drinking bleach, we could have left you in the loving arms of Darwin and Karma, but we didn’t!

 

Because unlike you, we’re compassionate.

 

What are you proving with your sacrifice?

Death cults encourage such tripe,

 

You’re being radicalized for violence,

For overthrowing a democratic government,

Geoffrey Chaucer in “The Parson’s Tale,” and Malcolm X said:

“Chickens come HOME to roost,”

 

Now,

Religious zealots,

Here in America,

Want to kill atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Deists, liberal Christians, Muslims, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender,

And a multicultural democratic government,

They don’t want to participate,

Since they know, no one wants to vote for their hate,

Instead of wearing burkas,

These fascists fancy red coats and nun habits,

Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has tried to warn us,

 

Evil deeds, and curses,

Boomerang back,

And hurt the originators who launched them,

Celie told Mister this in “The Color Purple,”

Blood baths can enrich no one in their aftermath,

If your functional republic is a pile of crap,

Oligarchs raided in their cul de sacs,

The rebellion led by their well-paid security staff,

 

That is the recipe for dystopian nightmares,

Humanity’s progress wasted,

And has absolutely nothing to do with “greatness!”

Domestic Terrorists...

24: Kiefer Sutherland Hopes for Jack Bauer Closure Someday, TV Series Finale

© August 20, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“24,”

The heartbeat-themed opening a novelty,

Is where the Cheney/Bush administration,

Got its best ideas from,

From stress positions,

Sensory deprivation,

Electric shock non-therapy,

Waterboarding,

Off-books black sites,

To Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib,

 

Cheney swore,

On his superheterodyne pacemaker,

Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer,

It was [TOTALLY] based on him,

 

Because of W’s approval ratings,

Were below 50%,

The Taliban offered Osama Bin Laden,

Immediately after 9/11,

Would justice juice his numbers,

Or, a war of pure convenience?

 

We know the path they took,

“Sexed up” the intelligence,

Lied about weapons of mass destruction,

In Iraq,

That had nothing to do with 9/11,

2004, despite being selected in 2000 by [a] 5-4 Supreme Court vote,

A controversial election decided by his father’s sexual predator pick, Clarence Thomas,

Despite decisively losing all three presidential debates, he “WON” re-election.

 

Trillions of dollars and un-replaceable treasure spent,

Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters in body bags,

In Afghanistan, Iraq, and flag-draped coffins,

So ashamed, we brought them home under cover of darkness,

The only “winners” were weapons and defense contractors,

But as we’ve seen recently,

The facts don’t matter, really,

 

Before the election of 2008,

African American actor,

Dennis Haysbert prepped us,

Playing a US president in “24,”

Then, Barack Hussein Obama showed up,

 

Suddenly, the opening, heartbeat-themed novelty,

Became national,

Myocardial infarction,

Manifested in the flesh,

He was now beyond Nielsen ratings,

The embodiment of a changing electorate,

The crossover changing,

 

From 2050 to 2040,

The dominant population decreases for the first time since 1790,

With a purposely early-ended 2020 Census,

How much would it have been if we had fully counted?

Evangelicals became a numerical minority,

In 2017,

You can see why they’re in a wholesale panic!

 

I hate the phrase “majority-minority,”

Because it doesn’t make numerical sense,

How about “new majority,”

And respecting a new electorate?

 

Orly Taitz,

Herself an immigrant,

Proffered the conspiracy,

Without evidence,

That President Obama was born in Kenya,

 

Picked up by the right-wing echo chamber,

Magnified by a carnival barker,

And his Russian GRU masters,

Our nation’s sadism is easy,

For a Master KGB spy to manipulate,

 

Demand for his short-form birth certificate,

Followed by the long-form equivalent,

But this isn’t about facts or reason: it’s pure fear and emotion.

 

Amplified by,

A 30,000-plus count serial liar,

Twenty-seven women accused him of sexual assault and one of rape,

A six-time bankrupt and failed real estate magnate,

644,763 dead Americans,

Reality show court jester,

Up to his eyeballs in debt to Russian oligarchs,

The money he laundered in Florida for a lark,

 

Which is why he never said a single [crass] word,

About, or to Vladimir Putin,

 

The “Manchurian Candidate,”

Asked for help,

On-camera to source 30,000 emails,

Against his opponent,

His “crime-o-MATIC” technique:

Flood-the-zone with criminality,

Keep them dizzy,

Too busy to convict you of one crime

Before charging you for the next,

 

Sabotage Afghanistan,

Release 5,000 Taliban,

Use Mike Pompeo to

Free Mullah Baradar

Who will eventually rule the “graveyard of empires,”

Knowing that he would lose,

Months before the election,

Knowing that Kandahar,

Would fall utterly into chaos,

Purposely,

Keep the new administration TWO MONTHS

In the dark,

From classified briefings,

 

Occam’s razor:

Why wouldn’t such a man,

Orchestrate domestic violence,

Tweet from suspended account:

“Come to the Capitol. It will be WILD!”

To challenge a free and fair election that he LOST?

 

Floyd Ray Roseberry is a domestic terrorist,

From North Carolina,

In I’m afraid, a long list of lone wolves to come,

Just like the crowd, the Grand Pooh-Bah of bullshit,

Summoned on January Sixth,

Don’t sanitize this idiot,

With the “mental health” shtick,

The dude was on Facebook live for five hours,

Before Zuckerberg took the video down,

Dominating news coverage like his orange-god-emperor-narcissist,

While I get called out defending myself from a MAGA idiot for bullying!

He misspelled “dinosaur.”

(But I digress)

 

An unpunished insurrection,

Becomes practice for the next,

We’re either “a nation of laws, and not of men,”

Or, an anarchic cluster fuck,

Good luck with libertarian, free-market capitalism,

When we can’t maintain a republic!

Terrorism (noun): the unlawful use of violence and intimidation especially against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. Definition from Oxford Languages

 Floyd Ray Roseberry is a terrorist,

So was Ashley Babbit,

And everyone who tried to overthrow our democracy January Sixth,

The only solution:

Convict and sentence the insurrectionists and their treasonous president!