Tag Archives: FOX news

MY FELLOW AMERICANS

MY FELLOW AMERICANS

I hold my tongue.

It takes strength I do not have.

Whimpers escape

On shattered breaths,

In silent screams.

The fight worries my soul,

Battle weary and choking,

On words held tight inside.

Once the scream begins

I doubt I could stop.

I wait for your speech.

I yearn for your promise

To stop the authoritarian

Who has taken over our house,

Emptied its vaults,

Stolen its wealth,

Sold its power

To the highest bidders.

So, I write. That I can do

While I wait for you.

To me, this nothing new.

Do you believe me now?

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STROBOSCOPIC POLITICAL STRATEGY

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Imagine if you will, 

everything you see in the MAGA

movement is really still.

Moments framed in space and time

and speeded up at will.

Whose will matters; yours or mine?

Wagons moving forward

we are told but their wheels appear 

to travel in reverse.

This wagon wheel illusion

is not just made for movies.

It is made to sow confusion.

The brain’s refresh rate is slower

than the information it is seeing.

It believes it is seeing motion

when the still image is moving more rapidly 

than the brain can refresh.

Unmerged refresh rates upend believability.

Under certain lighting conditions

and with other distractions

this effect is more striking

and not to the brain’s liking.

The distracting stroboscopic effect

is not truly an illusion, but a warning.

Our brains try to make sense of the lie

right before our eyes.

Sampling any phenomenon

with the wrong frequency

leads to misinterpretation.

The frame moves faster and faster

and slower brain rates sense a disaster.

Film. Repeat. Film in bright light

to move people to the Right.

Offer more distraction

and the lies seem so real

that we put them on media’s reels

so we think were are moving 

forward; but, our country 

is moving backward.

We must understand projection

for our own and our country’s protection.

We are seeing under the illusion of confusion.

A political strategy for those untrained

to give this phenomena a name.

Now you know it.

Now you own it.

Now do something about it.

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DADDY DEAR

ANGELO ANNARINO,SR. WITH DAUGHTER LOUISE

Sitting at my young Dad’s knee

with thoughts swirling all about me

I had to know what the larger world

was trying to tell me, and help me see.

Daddy, daddy, daddy dear,

lend this little daughter your ear.

Why do they call Japanese people Japs?

Why do they call German people Krauts?

Why do they call Italian people Dagos?

Why do they call Arab people Towel Heads?

Why do they call women Cunts?

Why do they call Viet-Names people Gooks?

Why do they call African-American people “N”?

Why do they call Jewish people Kikes?

I do not understand, but it feels bad.

Sweet girl, my Daddy replied 

with a glance and shrug quite mortified.

In the military I learned the reason why.

It is enough to make a grown man cry.

But, I shall tell you the reason why.

It is hard to kill a fellow human being.

It is easier to kill someone you do not see

is as human and wonderful as you and me.

It makes it easier to harm, and wound, and kill.

It is easier to demean, and hate, and impose our will.

Undocumented refugees become “Illegals.”

Asylum seekers become “gang member criminals.”

Confucius said presciently, “The ordering of society

begins with the rightness of words.”

Republicans 2025 say, “The destruction of society

begins with the wrongness of words.”

FOX “news” is not news at all; 

yet, keeps too many in its thrall.

Karoline Leavitt tries to make us believe

good questions allow her answers to deceive.

Pam Bondi investigates her own untruths,

accusing her accusers of being uncouth.

Kristi Noem prances and dances before the gates

of concentration camps, seeking a date?

Such liars are pretty, dainty and sweet.

Americans, especially young men, fall at their feet.

How do truth tellers compete?

The jousters of old travelled from court to court,

making jokes of despots’ overreach without harm.

No dungeons for jousters in the good ole’ days.

Now, the jesters are banished from dinners to honor

newspersons dedicated to uncovering liars and lies;

and Amber Ruffin’s scheduled comedic performance

is suddenly, fearfully, cowardly cancelled.

Truth now lives in the dungeons, walking there

willingly, and blind. Such willfulness rankles.

When the words are removed and truth set aside,

it is easier to harm, wound and kill 

without losing one’s pride.

How proud will we be when we realize 

we killed our country to save our pride?

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NOT QUITE SILENT

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I listened for the voice today.

This is all it had to say. 

My teacup is filled only 1/3 of the way.

Too little water to boil in the pot.

I shall brew my tea and keep it very hot. 

Then add cooler water to the cup.

No harbor will see tea fill it up.

Not exactly as I had willed.

Seeing my beloved democracy killed.

But who am I your will to sway.

My cup does not “filleth over” this cold day.

The half-empty cup seems a blatant warning.

I refuse to name and bring to life

fearfully expected wounds and strife.

The sun blares and cuts the cold air,

melting frost gathered everywhere.

It lies on every surface it seems.

In schoolrooms, libraries, museums,

in corporation and university board rooms. Next,

on airwaves  and in chat rooms and texts. 

In law firms hallowed conference rooms,

and in SCOTUS decisions which seal our doom.

Hard to find a place where the cruelty of iced hearts 

has not settled in, stopping hopefulness at its start.

Hard to know how this day should begin.

Hard to see how we might win.

No birds gather in the yard to eat, drink and sing.

Worms like words stretch frozen on cement pathways.

Hard to stand and walk boldly, or to see our way.

May will bring flowers in graceful bouquets.

But, June, I think, will have the final say.

May summer be full of grace, I pray.

I listened longingly for the hopeful voice today.

But, this…this is all it had to say,

as I watch sunshine melt the frost away.

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UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATERS

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Ugly Christmas sweater season has begun.

Americans seem to think it is fun

to dress themselves not in the season’s finest,

but in the ugliest sweater they can find

to celebrate together a sacred date

forgetting the solemnity of Advent’s long wait

to share with us a love divine.

Trees go up lit by flames to give us warning

that climate change may soon end

the faithful earth upon which life depends.

A cabinet full of ugly sweaters fills,

worn by those who think they are better

than faithful civil servants whose only goal

is to keep America safe and whole.

Executives dodging background checks

don the ugliest sweaters they can find

hoping to make a buck or two

off the game pitting us against each other,

me and you,

against all hope that we can survive

a very dangerous political ride.

The party which once celebrated 

freedom and patriots’ pride

donned ugly sweaters when it realized

white control was on a slip and slide

with the rising hopes of women

and people of color’s growing pride.

The uglier the better the saying goes,

for Christmas sweaters worn by those

who forget the reason for a season,

forget the principles of a constitution,

forget the laws and regulations

which hold together a flawed nation

and allow democracy to thrive.

The time of ugly sweaters has arrived.

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HIDDEN TRUTHS

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On the lintel stone

of my grade school

above the entrance

children passed through

every day,

after we left church

where we gathered to pray,

were the words to guide us through

childhood to adulthood as the

the good sisters would say:

“Ye shall know the truth

and the truth shall set you free.”

Those words I reviewed

each night before I slept,

an examination of conscience

of my personal truth;

what I had done that day,

who I had shown myself to be,

to myself and others

I had met along the way.

Uneasy truths rose in my mind

of tasks left undone

so I could play;

unmet needs of others

who got in my way;

truths I wished would go away

so I could pretend to be

someone so much better

than you, and better than me.

It is not others we fear.

We only fear who we are,

deep inside 

where our truth resides.

So, we hide away from ourselves

and fear discovery

that we are truly

not enough:

not good enough,

not strong enough,

not smart enough,

not wise enough,

not wealthy enough,

not educated enough,

not employed enough,

not courageous enough

to examine our conscience;

to own our thoughts and deeds,

to own our responsibility,

to own our need for love,

for passion,

for resilience,

for endurance,

for persistence.

Better to take time

to watch the game,

to drink at the bar,

to take the drug,

to avoid all blame

for what we refuse

to give away.

And the only way 

this fraud can continue

is to become a con

like so many others.

Great con men become

our saving heroes

and allow us to blame

all The Others

in their name.

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FANTASY NEWS

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No more storytelling to avoid dwelling

on facts that call to action.

No more storytelling distraction.

When life seems more fantasy

storytelling undermines responsibility.

Only the facts, only the facts, please.

Give us only the facts and we will build

our own story, reach for our own glory.

No matter the difficulty or doubtful success

at least our lives would belong to us.

Manipulating the life of the tale leaves us

unsure, disconnected, and breathless.

We can take no pride nor have any remorse

for a story so overblown it is not our own.

Fragmented like all fairy dreams, we lose our course

in the heightened senses you endorse.

We simply want to live our lives,

and show our children they can survive.

Stop the fantasies. Stop the lies.

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TESTIMONY OF HEROES?

Nice of you to stop by for a chat.

Heroes? I think not; although,

you would like us to believe it so.

Your ambition still rules my derision

for the complicit decisions

you made to keep in place

a criminal of such disgrace

he had to be impeached twice.

He is more than simply “not nice.”

And you stayed silent for more than four

years of actions deplored

by anyone with a care for humanity.

Sheer insanity was not his alone.

This is something you, too, own.

What if you had gone to the news

with all the facts you  knew ?

Would there have even been a coup?

The blame is not his alone.

It also falls on non-heroic you.

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VOTING FOR THE CHILDREN

“Stop, dear. You are frightening the children.”

is a line written into the family script

of every sit-com ever writ.

Bullies have been ever near creating fear

over those who power they sense may be

greater than their single autocracy;

built into the democracy of the family.

Fear does not subside once children leave the nest.

It persists and blankets adult nakedness.

The brain is an amazing protector

storing fear in a separate chamber outside reason’s own.

Reaching the age of reason is not enough alone

to overcome the constancy of threats that cut to bone.

in family sit-coms Dad was chided, even derided

when his supremacy and autocracy was on display.

Mother and children were filled with dismay

which they treated with complacency

and placated with plots created in funny ways.

Mother tried to soothe the savage beast who though it great fun

to keep his wife and children under the gun.

Week after week, the same battle waged

to bring family under his  control.

Week after week, mother and children placated the fool

who tried to instill autocratic rule against the family

whose adhesion to democratic rule, guided by equity,

acknowledged “one for all and all for one” the glue

that held family together against mob rule.

The Republican Party learned a different lesson than I

sitting wide-eyed as a child watching sit-coms.

The Republican Party delights in bullies’ power 

to create fear hour-after-hour in the political sit-com

“now daily at a”  FOX  “news station near you.”

They found it great fun to run games on the wife,

the children, neighbors they despised;

even, neighborhoods and entire nations;

making citizens cry as they watch democracy die.

The vote is going by the way unless we stay the hand

threatening us with Republican absolute rule

Life is not a sit-com. The vote is our greatest tool

to fight the autocratic fool whose fear weighs so heavily

upon those watching freedom-lovers placate the man

who would deny the vote in any way he can.

Even when reason returns, the fear remains locked in place

in a brain which keeps it safe for future use.

The only safe response can be 

to stop those frightening the children.

Fear only ends when we stand and fight,

defeat it and subdue it; and thus, destroy what causes fright 

so it cannot linger in a safe place.

We must lock away the fear-mongerers instead.

We are losing our children; and, too many can find no safe space.

“Dear Republicans, you are frightening the children.”

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