Power Hungry Maniacs Maintaining Their Empires By Feeding Us Peanut Butter and Lies
I am writing as a non-indigenous person born in the USA, of mostly European ancestry. I now live primarily outside of the USA, living mostly in Mongolia and Sápmi (Norway side), and occasionally staying in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) as well. I don’t write this to center my story. I write into the universe so I do not stay silent. If only the stars read my little poem then this is enough.
I would like to share how I feel about being a war criminal,
And how I plan to use this position of power
Today I bought bananas and peanut butter here in the USA at the grocery store
Food prices are rising
Yet bananas remain cheap, excluding the price of orchestrating armed violent overthrows of a couple countries kinda recently1
I pay peanuts for peanut butter, excluding the legacy of the immeasurable costs of enslaving countless people for generations2
But that was long ago, I am told
Today I supported war crimes
Taxes I paid to the USA government for my food is used to fund a strategy of a rain of missiles on civilians, shown repeatedly to me on TV
Not to worry, we are assured
Some terrorists were met with fierce justice in our missile attacks!
Along with the murder of families, and women loving women, and pickpockets careless enough to be alive in the crossfire
My pesticide laced bananas continue the legacy of terror and war crimes
A thousand eyes for an eye, for a thousand eyes, for an eye
Today I remember I don’t truly understand the methods used by global empires
Nor do I know the full complicated history of lands far away from where I write these words
But I do notice the power elite who control global empires seem to terrorize civilians an awful lot
I consider, just what is the reasoned response to such a long chain of horrors?
If someone killed the person I was with, right in front of my eyes
I think the terror would likely lodge in my soul
Perhaps then spread through my tissues
Eventually my muscles acting upon what they had absorbed
Like a reflex newly learned
Fear and terror may be more contagious than pathogens
Now social media amplifies and disseminates this fear into all our bones
Terror, it seems, spreads more easily than compassion
And now it is the day I have to pick my team
Symbolic identity politics is a must!
Especially for those of us who are the so super woke
Who am I if I don’t know my side?
Which flag, which anthem to post?
Social media must be told what I am thinking
No.
I will not select from these phantom offerings of teams
This isn’t a world championship
Fuck you, shadowy war mongers, your obsession with profits over the continuation of humanity
Fuck you, politicians gleefully watching missiles launch as your poll numbers rise
I won’t fall for this illusion of choosing a flag, luring me into amplifying your manipulative narratives of borders and bad guys
I won’t swallow the lie that two groups of people are of unequal worth
I see only taxi drivers, and worshippers, and awkward teenagers, and future drag queens trying to live their lives
In the midst of all these unimaginable horrors shown on all my screens my mind wanders and wonders
How do people care for their menstrual blood in their time of the month?
What about the toddlers who are picky eaters?
All the moms singing their babies to sleep, who will sing to them?
Why does my mind wonder about what seems so small
In what is so terrifyingly big?
In such small questions I see my own heart
Refusing to numb and turn a blind eye
In the media campaign to shut me down
I won’t fall for the story told to me from a contested line drawn across real lives
This isn’t an issue of teams but I do see a divide
I see a line that separates the global elite from the rest of us
I see power hungry maniacs maintaining their empires by feeding us peanut butter and lies
Here is what I will do instead of pick a side
I will stuff myself full of these nasty flavourless bananas
I will wash them down with huge gulps of this hydrogenated oil filled peanut butter
I will use these sacred calories to fuel the energy rising up through my spine
This is the energy I need to fuel a heart strong enough to bear the unbearable3
This is the energy I use to peer right into your soul with my sacred eyes
This energy fuels the new dreams that we will create together
With this energy I am the pied piper playing my magic pipe
That sings out of tune
I sing:
“Today we exist in the dream from the past
Open your sacred eyes!
Don’t give your power to that heartless, dried up dream
By repeating those old lies
That old dream can, with some perseverance,
Finally shrivel away and die
For this to happen, a new dream must be sown
Into the soil of our souls
Harness your sacred rage, and love, and fear
Use this power within you to dream our next dream
Now. Not tomorrow.
Today. What does your heart tell you to create starting today?
A community library of banned books, a refugee arrival center,
a sit in, a community garden4, a one person performance art piece
of you covered head to toes in peanut butter and honey and raisins
then going down to the Washington DC National Mall where you let
the last wild squirrels lick you all over
until you giggle from the feeling of their tongues between your toes
as the DC police try to figure out how to put handcuffs on your
naked delicious sticky body
We are the ancestors the future has been waiting for”
I’m still working on my lyrics, but I think you get my vibe
I sing this unfinished song because otherwise I will burst
Because I am not neutral
With my body fueled by these criminal calories
This is how I overthrow empires
~Frances Ulman
Podcast: Not All Spirits Are Jerks
Patreon: Dropout Psychologist
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2) https://www.harvard.com/book/slaves_for_peanuts/
3) Buddha taught his followers that the ability to be able to bear the unbearable reality of suffering that exists in this realm is completely possible, and necessary to be able to help relieve suffering. Without clear seeing, we are in delusion and therefore unable to understand how to truly help. Probably a lot of other people said this as well because wise people across all cultures seem to be reading off the same sacred notes that are being passed down.
4)