The Audacity of Whiteness...

 

Letters at 3 AM: O is for Oligarchy, Michael Ventura, Austin Chronicle

© September 29, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Langston Hughes,

Part of the Harlem Renaissance,

He played his part,

Commenting on the issues of the day,

Bringing the ire of the Unamerican Activities Committee,

Chaired by a demagogue,

Senator Joseph McCarthy,

Advised by Orange-Satan’s favorite hatchet lawyer,

The closeted, self-hating Roy Cohn,

 

However,

Don Lemon on CNN,

Interviewed Hillary Fordwich,

A British woman,

Her opinion:

That the ENTIRE continent of Africa,

Owes reparations to the British crown,

 

Madam:

Africans didn’t steal resources,

Africans didn’t colonize foreign lands and slaughter fellow humans,

Africans didn’t obliterate cultures through “reeducation camps” and gaslighting,

Africans didn’t have a Queen wearing the Order of Saint Michael jewelry,

The archangel is pictured as a white male,

With his boot on the neck of Satan, [pictured] as an African.

Africans didn’t invent a doomsday weapon, making J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita Vedic scriptures:

 

“If the radiance of a thousand suns,

“Were to burst forth at once into the sky,

“That would be like the splendor of the mighty one,

“Now, I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

 

Club Q in Colorado was Pulse 2.0 in Florida.

The most devastating thing the dominant culture can do is to “other” marginalized people.

When they do that, they make it possible to kill their members.

 

The mythology of the Nazis,

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,”

Led to Kristallnacht: night of broken glass,

Culminating in Dachau and Auschwitz,

It’s now reimagined as Democrats eating babies by QAnon BS,

 

Since Mother Immanuel, black worshippers are not comfortable in churches.

Christchurch, New Zealand, left Muslims uncomfortable in Mosques,

The Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting makes American Jews wary of worship,

The Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, was the site of a gun massacre.

Gay people have two reasons not to go out partying,

Drag queens reading nursery rhymes might be met with AR15s,

Hispanic citizens can get massacred in El Paso, Texas, at Walmart,

Now, so can Chesapeake, Virginia residents,

You can’t go for a pleasant walk on a nature trail in Raleigh, North Carolina, without the threat of being randomly assassinated,

Women haven’t been safe from men for centuries.

 

The Ku Klux Klan STILL isn’t designated a terrorist organization,

By the United States Department of Justice,

After cross burnings, castrations, hangings, burning of men and women (including some pregnant), feeding babies to crocodiles in Florida as BAIT!

 

These actions are terrorism,

By the Republican Party on US citizens,

After the 2004 expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban,

George W. Bush didn’t renew it,

Which made the gun industry fabulously wealthy,

Put bullseyes on all our backs,

As they and their Congress of sociopaths blissfully exist in gated Cul de Sacs,

This terrorism is taking our safe spaces from us,

All we get from republicans are their erectile dysfunctional “thoughts and prayers” shtick,

 

There is no conservative plan for:

Climate change,

Marijuana decriminalization,

Bodily autonomy for women,

Reducing gun massacres,

A conservative case for same-sex marriage,

 

1681,

The Bacon Rebellion,

When European indentured servants and African enslaved people rose against the oligarchs,

The oligarchs responded by

Defining for the first time,

The made-up category: white,

A “false teaming” of peasants, and lords,

They gave the new “white” people shiny badges,

And made them part of the slave patrols,

The progenitor of modern police forces,

 

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

 

The militia was understood to be minutemen,

Regulated by General George Washington,

Called to address British aggression,

And to quell African rebellions,

 

The one word missing,

If you want to argue “original intent,”

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms”

It is missing the word: purchase,

Also, corporations, the NRA, gun shows, lobbyists,

 

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best:

“Colored man, Gay man, Immigrant, Lesbian, Transgender, Woman,

“He won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

 

Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson with the reporter Bill Moyers (modified),

 

The actions you see are the last gasp of desperation

People who are not ready for a country,

That doesn’t look like them in a Norman Rockwell painting,

Or Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

With a real emphasis on a “white Christmas,”

Speaking of which: it’s time for Fox’s annual war on it.

 

The Reich Wing establishment,

All wanted Barack Obama to be a “one-term president,”

They’ve been losing what was left of their minds since 2008,

 

In 2012,

Listening to the Reich Wing echo chamber,

Confident HE would be the nation’s 45^th president,

Mitt launched his transition website!

He lost.

 

Mitt and Anne Romney had a FIT!

Disheveled, disoriented, and genuinely perplexed.

They thought he would win

After lying, tan suits, bared arms, faux controversies, and “terrorist fist bumps.”

 

When does it end?

When the current dominant culture realizes,

They are the victims of 400 years of gaslighting,

There was, and is, nothing special about them,

Other than their susceptibility to propaganda,

It was the “Lost Cause” before the “Big Lie,”

Now it’s “Critical Race Theory,”

The psychopath oligarchs will keep playing the same sheet music,

If they have an audience falling for it,

It ends,

When you join WITH the groups you’ve been trained to despise,

Nous sommes tous humains

We are ALL humans!

We are ALL the 99%.

And the 1% are forever terrified; you’ll realize that!

Stochastic Terrorism...

 

Image Source: Instagram

Also:

The stochastic terrorism against the Constitution and people by Donald Trump

Public Intellectuals

© November 1, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

John Wilkes Boothe

Read the pamphlets published by

Dixie oligarchs sent southern peasants,

Who fashioned themselves as southern gentlemen,

Like them, he believed that printed gaslighting,

The peasants took themselves

To the war front for the protection of the institution of African enslavement,

That made the plantation oligarchs wealthy in the first place,

They didn’t own the pavement they marched to war on,

All Confederate soldiers got for their troubles was: PTSD (shell shock),

And the ensign that was flown by North Virginia’s Robert E. Lee regiment,

Who told them after surrendering at Appomattox,

To “fold it up and put it away.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest pulled it out of the drawer,

He got some bed sheets,

Put some holes in them,

Set fire to crosses to terrorize freed black people,

Put together the first domestic terrorist organization,

That STILL isn’t designated as such by the United States Department of Justice!

His BUST was at the U.S. Capitol for over a century!

The oligarchs didn’t lift a finger,

Lived on to age in grace and dignity,

And still got reparations from the U.S. government for “loss of property.”

 

Like Pontius Pilate,

They could walk away from any responsibility,

Wash their hands of any guilt,

Influence violence by remote control,

As a fanatic, they launched screamed:

Sic Semper Tyranus,

Assassinating Abraham Lincoln, the 16th and first Republican President,

Now, his former party advocates it.

 

It is the formula for stochastic terrorism.

 

Stochastic terrorism (noun): the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted:

Example: The rhetoric of stochastic terrorism influenced the lone-wolf attack.

 

“Don’t retreat: RELOAD!” Sarah Palin, summoning the mentally disturbed [being] Jared Lee Loughner,

“Tiller, the Baby Killer,” Bill O’Reilly, sending Scott Roeder like a missile to his church while he served as Usher,

 

“In the old days, folks, they would take them out on a stretcher!”

“Do me a favor: [just] knock the crap out of them, will you? I promise you that I will pay your legal fees.”

“There were very fine people on BOTH sides! I know it, and YOU know it too.”

“Stand back and stand by!”

“Come to the Capitol on January 6th: it WILL be wild!”

 

They say what they WANT to happen,

 

And absolve themselves of any responsibility for the consequences.

 

In spy parlance, it’s called “plausible deniability.”

On the streets, it’s abject cowardice.

 

It is the proverbial “shouting fire in a crowded theater” where none exists,

Then, getting off sexually like a pyromaniac from the mayhem proceeding from it,

 

This poem is now my eighth piece mentioning it,

 

There’s blood on the streets, yet no laws against it,

 

227 million dollars spent over the last four years,

Denigrating Speaker Nancy Pelosi,

Engulfing her face in flames,

Calling for her execution (Marjorie Taylor, the ex-Mrs. Greene),

Shooting an AR15 in a gun range, tweeting it, with the caption: “FIRE PELOSI!”

When questioned, they’re evasive and dismissive:

“Can’t you liberals take a joke? Geez!”

 

Her possible, inarticulate successor, suggesting that he might hit her with the Speaker’s gavel,

Like John Boehner and Paul Ryan NEVER did!

Laughing it off

Deflecting the origins of the violence

To conspiracy theories about:

 

A spat between gay men (obviously, they haven’t met any: ask Lindsey Graham)

The attack was staged,

High crime in blue states (red states have the highest murder rates),

It’s “deep state,”

He overstayed his Visa (so, now we have to build a wall on the Canadian border?),

The Arizona fascist, Kari Lake, making a joke onstage,

Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, touted as the “normal republican,” doing the same,

And, the last gasp of desperate gaslighters: “he had it coming.”

 

This obfuscation is a multiverse of B.S. Mountains!

 

This madness is Karl Rove’s “created realities” on steroids!

 

The reality:

 

The 82-year-old husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi,

Grandfather and great-grandfather, “Pop” of their family,

Attacked in his household at 2:30 in the morning by David DePape,

A disturbed man, a conspiracy theorist, not a male prostitute,

The shortlist is as follows:

Breaking and entering,

Attempted murder,

Elder abuse,

And a laundry list of federal crimes to choose from,

Inspired by a Big Lie and other obfuscations,

David confessed: saying that it was a “suicide mission,”

But somehow, he was going to survive to wheel the Speaker into the Capitol,

As a warning to democrats and quite a few republicans,

And NOT get arrested,

Only if the “rule of law” is WHATABOUTISM and irrelevant.

 

These people are Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane incarnate!

It’s gone beyond the Big Lie Orange Satan sputters on podcasts,

Paul Ryan and John Boehner were driven insane and into early retirement,

By the TEA PARTY,

How do you think you’ll fair with MAGA, Kevin McCarthy?

You would be a SINO: Speaker In Name Only.

You’d be on the hook to Orange Satan and the MAGA Insanity Caucus,

You wouldn’t be able to make deals with Nancy Pelosi,

You wouldn’t pass any legislation beyond tax cuts for the wealthy,

Financial physics would send the economy crashing,

Within three months, we would be shut down because you absolutely wouldn’t know what you were doing,

Nor does your party have any cogent ideas for governing,

You would be in a state of sheer sweating, televised panic,

Nancy would have to save you from your [own] incompetence and plug the holes in the Titanic!

 

No one would watch any sporting events if they erupted in riots,

Political discourse would devolve into disgust and indifference,

 

We have two choices in this election:

 

Harmony, or dystopian fascism,

Autocracy, or federal republicanism,

Democracy, or the Wild West.

 

There’s no way back if we go over this cliff!

Ase'...

 

Image Source: Pinterest

© October 31, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Vote!

That’s the point of this piece and its last note.

If you’ve voted already, you’re an actual patriot.

If you haven’t, or won’t, you don’t have anything to complain about,

And, no social media “zinger” posted after our rights are gone will change it.

 

You either live in a municipality or Cul de Sac, so wealthy,

So de facto segregated, it doesn’t matter who’s running the republic,

Just as long as you get yours in tax cuts.

 

I grew up in a ghetto,

Not because my parents didn’t want more,

Segregation, when I was born, was de jure: legally mandated.

I got hand-me-down spelling books ten years out of date,

And light-skinned teachers who could “pass” on the west side of Winston-Salem, NC, to purchase the latest math and science books: we studied stencil graphed copies.

My big sister came home from the civil rights marches with black eyes and a bloodied forehead.

 

I’m trying to remember how that was so “great” that you’d want it back again!

That some fragile snowflakes want to replicate it,

The one thing that my past taught me,

Is this longing for a bygone era

That never existed is psychotic.

 

In 1898, a fusion government of 50/50 white and black republicans were elected to the Wilmington, NC legislature,

Dixiecrats and the KKK ransacked the state house,

Driving out the elected officers,

Burned down the black newspapers,

Staging a successful coup on U.S. soil without punishment,

One-hundred and twenty-three years before January 6, 2021.

 

In 2007, a gangly young Democratic Senator announced his candidacy for president,

He self-depreciatively made fun of his big ears, and funny name:

Barack Hussein Obama.

He ran on a platform of “hope and change.”

Simultaneously becoming the first to receive Secret Service protection while a candidate.

 

In 2018, Cesar Sayoc,

As democrats battled to take back the House,

He took it upon himself to mail bombs to:

Billionaire George Soros,

President Bill and Secretary Hillary Clinton,

President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama,

Vice President Joe and Second Lady Jill Biden,

Senator Kamala Harris and Douglas Emhoff,

Senator Cory Booker,

Actor Robert De Niro,

And Reporter Keith Olbermann,

Over a dozen bombs were sent,

 

Arguably during a time when republicans were in charge of the Presidency, the House, and the Senate,

 

Don’t tell me your pop philosophy about “both sides ism,” like political a la cart,

Don’t placate me that if you ignore them, they will “go away,” like an unpleasant fart,

Don’t tell me their party is “tough on crime” when they’re clearly not!

 

One side is violent; the other isn’t.

One side holds its members accountable; the other doesn’t.

 

John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, Al Frankin, and Andrew Cuomo,

 

Once rising stars in elected government,

They were held accountable for their actions by their party’s members.

 

Oliver North lied under oath, protecting Ronald Reagan from impeachment for Iran-Contra.

 

George W. Bush won re-election after allowing the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and attacked the wrong countries - Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of Saudi Arabia - for it.

 

You elected:

A man credibly accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll and twenty-six other women,

A philanderer with the sexual mores of a polar bear:

Cheated on Ivana with Marla Maples,

Cheated on Marla with Melania,

Cheated on a pregnant Melania with Playboy model Ronan McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels,

Ran a dubious business that was probably a front for Russian money laundering,

(Why he won’t say anything bad about Vladimir Putin)

He used Michael Cohen to pay off the aforementioned adult sex workers because someone told him that’s “probably not a good look.”

(Michael went to prison for him)

Bragged about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape,

He AIMED a mob at the U.S. Capitol,

Intent on murdering his Vice President, and the Speaker of the House,

STILL petitioning the NOT Supreme Court to block access to his taxes,

(Occam’s razor says he’s broke as a joke)

The only time he’s not committing crimes are the few hours he’s somnambulant.

 

He’s the embodiment of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho,” and Damien Thorn in “The Omen”:

 

Quote:

American Psycho ends with Patrick staring into the camera, with his voiceover confessing, “There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

 

And somehow,

The wires were crossed

Between Evilgelicals, Y’all Qaeda, and QAnon,

EIGHTY-ONE percent voted for him!

To use a European colloquialism:

Do you want this crazy bloke to have the nuclear codes again?

 

I’m not supposed to be a poet or a Ph.D. in Nanoengineering.

 

I grew up in a ghetto.

Where gas is STILL expensive, and food is cheap.

So we’ll be encouraged to stay on “our side of town,” self-segregating.

Life was exquisitely engineered for my defeat.

But I was supported by the spirits of my ancestors, who survived worse than this.

 

“Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes”

First recorded by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century,

Also attributed to Bernard of Chartres,

Also by the founder of Physics, Sir Isaac Newton:

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

 

Like my sister: Ase’ (Ah-Shay),

 

It has three meanings:

A word of affirmation, like “right on” or “amen.”

A word for life force, energy; Prana in Sanskrit, or Qi in Asia.

A word meaning having the power to create that which one speaks!

 

Every election is the election of our lifetimes.

Every election decides the impact of climate change.

Every election, we’re fighting against fascism,

Who don’t require goose steps or swastikas: just willing participants!

 

Every election either gives power to those who see problems and have plans to fix them,

Or, those who don’t and gain power by ignoring or exacerbating them,

 

Senator Raphael Warnock said that a vote is “like a prayer for the future” you envision,

 

Affirm your future and those of your children,

Affirm the future for the children you may never have or live with,

Be the Prana, Qi: life force for Gaia,

Save the world beneath you that’s dying,

Create a world that you want at the ballot box,

Armed men with small penises aren’t a threat,

Those idiots are terrified of the power YOU possess!

 

Take a deep breath and know you stand solidly on the shoulders of giants.

 

Ase’ (Ah-Shay)!

VOTE!

So What?...

 

© October 29, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Trevor Noah,

The host of Comedy Central,

Who helmed the show after Jon Stewart’s brilliance,

He has sadly also announced his retirement,

And desire for life, love, and other projects,

 

In his freestyle framework, “Between the Scenes,”

He opined about the angst of the human species,

On sharing power and resources equitably:

 

“Watching this story of Rishi Sunak,

“The first prime minister of color, of Indian descent,

“And then, seeing the backlash,

“Is one of the more telling things about how people view their role in history,

“And what I mean by that is this:

“You hear a lot of people saying,

“‘Oh! They’re taking over!

“Indians are going to take over Great Britain,

“And, what’s next?

“And, I find myself asking the question: so what?”

 

So what?

What are you afraid of?

 

There are a lot of things to criticize Rishi Sunak about,

The richest member of Parliament,

A net worth of 800 million pounds,

A former trader with Goldman Sacks,

Wealth made by dwindling the United Kingdom’s middle class with austerity measures,

That will likely gut the National Health System,

Into nonexistence,

Exacerbating inequality, poverty, climate change, and human continuance,

There’s a lot to criticize Rishi Sunak about,

However,

Any concerns or contemplations about his complexion are irrelevant.

 

“The Hindu belief says that the people are classified into four castes,

“And these castes define what jobs they can do, duties and privileges they have.

“These four castes are:

“The Brahmins (priests, teachers),

“Kshatriyas [shuh tree uhz] (rulers, warriors),

“Vaishyas [vase yas] (landowners, merchants)

“And Sudras (servants),

“And the 5th group is the group of the untouchables, called Dalits.”

 

“Dalits-Caste communities that were forced by Caste apartheid into slave and bonded agricultural labor, and undignified sanitation work like manual scavenging.

“Branded untouchable for jobs considered spiritually polluting, they struggle against extreme violence and discrimination.”

 

https://phirenamenca.eu/cast-system-in-india-today/

 

Great Britain, and the United States of America,

Set up a caste system of white supremacy,

Similar to fascist Germany and Italy

The Ziggurat base is populated by Dalits, Gypsies, Hispanics, Jews, Immigrants, Indigenous People, LGBT, and African Diaspora,

A pseudoscience based on taxonomy,

Placing themselves at the social construct’s apogee,

Then tortured the people put under their thumbs and boots for centuries.

 

From Benito Mussolini, Bull Conner, Bill Wallace, Adolph Hitler, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, David Duke, Tucker Carlson, Richard Spencer, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin,

 

The refrain is the same:

“We can’t let THOSE people get political power!”

 

So what?

What are you afraid of?

 

You repeat the same refrain,

 

“We can’t let THOSE others lead!”

 

So what?

 

No wonder you’re heavily invested in book banning,

Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” consistently rewrites history and facts,

What before and now is embarrassing,

To you and your fragility,

Because it doesn’t fit the self-delusional narrative,

The first Platonic Noble Lie is American exceptionalism,

The Big Dumb Lie is someone suffering from Anosognosia [a nos sog nos sia] who can’t admit that he lost an election,

A word of Greek origin roughly translates to “without knowledge of the disease.” You may also hear it called “lack of insight.” What it boils down to is that the person is unaware of their condition and unable to accept it.

 

https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/what-is-anosognosia

 

Using the same illogic barring enslaved people from reading,

 

“Slaves, be obedient to your masters,”

 

The only thing you bothered teaching my ancestors,

But not

That persnickety vignette

From a brown-skinned Palestinian prophet about “setting the captives free,”

That one

You conveniently omitted it.

 

So what?

Are you afraid that if given power,

The formerly oppressed groups will be as sick as their sadistic former masters?

 

Your example is former Apartheid South Africa,

Where the formerly oppressed people pursued:

A truth and reconciliation commission,

So that they could function as ONE country in the spirit of forgiveness,

It sounds like it was [really] dark and threatening!

 

For eight years, the NRA claimed,

President Obama was confiscating everyone’s firearms,

Simultaneously,

They made more profits than with their Manchurian Candidate, Orange Satan!

They lost money while he was supposed to be “making America great again!”

We lost a million citizens during the pandemic!

How is that anything BUT a con and sadistic?

 

Look:

It’s not in our nature to be sadistic or vindictive.

All we, women, Hispanics, the LGBT, immigrants, and Indigenous people, want to do is live as full citizens in peace.

That’s what you want in multicultural, multiethnic democracies,

We’ve heard Paul Pelosi was attacked by Antifa, that Pelosi’s staged it, or he “had it coming.”

This illogic isn’t cogent, coherent, or realistic,

This crap is the gaslighting of fascism!

 

As Trevor observed,

You’re [kind of] giving away the game

By saying the “quiet part out loud,”

 

Maybe instead of vindictiveness,

You’re afraid that the people you’ve tormented,

Will show more empathy, Christian charity, and “family values,”

Than you’ve ever exhibited,

 

So what?

 

As Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky observed of the real politick of nation-states,

 

Do you fear that indigenous peoples are better equipped to manage the environment?

 

Do you fear that gay or lesbian parents might be better than our cisgender archetypes?

 

Do you fear that blacks or Hispanics aren’t all drug traffickers or rapists?

 

Do you fear the witness of reality and facts will defeat your stereotypes?

 

Do you fear “the threat of a good example” that makes your claims of righteousness and innate superiority impotent?

 

So, what other than facts are you [actually] afraid of?