welcome to the spirit of january

---

The Matinecoc people (my people) are relatives of the Shinnecock people as are the other indigenous groups such as the Montauk people of what we now know as Long Island.  You might have heard about our indigenous land lately by way of the US Open tennis competition at Flushing Meadows.  Flushing is part of Matinecoc - the hilly land. However, in spite of our closeness in kin and culture, our situation is a another ball of wax.  More about us another time.

In the meantime, there is a specific ongoing issue regarding the Shinnecock people that in some ways follows the typical American pattern of invasion. In this instance, what I am presenting here speaks to my focus on systemic oppression. I claim no expertise nor hold any authority regarding the issues of the Shinnecock people or the specifics of how they choose to act. The following is all my opinion.

This past spring a fierce Shinnecock woman, Becky Genia was parked on the edge of the Shinnecock Reservation displaying signs with a reminder.  Some others were with her in solidarity. No celebrities.  No television cameras from major media outlets. No amplified speeches.  Just her presence to uphold a truth that prevails.  That’s where me and my opinion come in.  

Lines of cars drove passed her.  The backed up traffic was headed out to various Southampton venues not the least of which was the 126th US Open Golf Tournament that day. That is why she was there to remind passers by that “you are playing golf on the desecrated graves of our ancestors and the stolen land from the Shinnecock people.”

While I realize that the US Open Golf Tournament is in America’s rear view mirror at this point, this is to shine a light on what results from stolen land repackaged by the falsehood of entitlement.  Thousands of island hoppers, day trippers, vacationers, the rich and the famous assume the Hamptons are for their privileged and assumed use free and clear.

But see, America got away with nothing free, clear or otherwise. A crime that is renamed as something else does not erase the criminal perversion.  Ongoing crime requires a certain kind of control if the profit and power are to continue.  Obviously, America has continued since the first grain of land was stolen all those years ago. So has the rationale of invasion (renamed discovery) that drives the thought process holding it all together. 

This is about that thought process more than the criminal events. It is the thought process that triggers the events.  America is trapped by the rationale of entitled criminality that codes its identity of racialized supremacy. Unless America confronts and ends its invented identity and the truth behind its beginnings, that process is binding.  Being bound to that process is America’s life sentence without the possibility of parole.  Truth has no expiration date. Truth has no statute of limitations. Neither do the consequences of covering it up. 

Holding down falsehoods blocks the ability to think, see, judge, or act.  Developing or expressing independent thought is forbidden. It is a threat. Only ideas and behaviors that protect the falsehood of repackaged crime are allowed. As a result, the rationale of invasion makes for a populace that is psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually disabled, disconnected, and disempowered from realties that provide self preservation and sanity.

Consequently, historic falsehoods complicate into present-day perversions. More murder, more theft, more savagery, more deceit, more cowardice, more perversions all repackaged as something else.  The alleged “rule of law” depends on whose breaking it. The fallout - and there is fallout - is left to trigger more toxic choices rooted in hard-wired contempt. You know, like enraged mobs that lynched human beings, burned people alive, butchered children, from its very beginning right up to the mob that stormed the Capitol to block the duties of Congress to certify an election. 

There comes a point in a bad situation where one must ask themselves how and why is this going on.  Isn’t this a democracy governed by rule of law? Why can’t it be stopped? 

I am reminded of those of us who contemptuously judge others experiencing or have experienced abuse, assault and emotional trauma:

Why didn’t you just leave? 

Why didn’t you just say, “no simple ass crazy bitch, you gotta go”? 

Why couldn’t you see the warning signs? 

There are supposed to be three executive branches of power with constitutional authorities to maintain checks and balances.  Why haven’t those other executive branches checked and balanced a fool who wantonly jerks from one ‘overreach’ to another? 

What has evolved out of that process is the acceptance of an individual who has dangerously put this country in jeopardy and potentially at the mercy of some of the most lethal entities, oligarchs and dictators who know how pathetic and easy America is to manipulate.

How is it that America maintains that a felon is not permitted to own a gun yet a felon of 34 counts is allowed access to not just one gun, but an entire military that can be (and has been) ordered at will to bomb and invade countries for what can’t even be called reasons or under an officially declared war but rather random words at any given moment? Here’s a thought: it’s because America is bat-shit crazy from having ingested it’s own poison. It is programmed and conditioned to comply with the cover up of its beginnings.  It is made made up of a populace that is codependent on an identity of false entitlement by false supremacy that brings false realities. Poor judgment.  Self destruction.

A group of psychiatrists and mental health clinicians collectively offered a professional practice known as ‘a duty to warn’, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.  This book has been expanded and updated with 10 additional participants.  In addition to this book, there were the continued admonitions from one particular psychologist with first hand personal experience, Dr. Mary Trump. I heard her say more than once to interviewers who asked her about her uncle’s behavior, America’s President to stop addressing his behavior as if he was normal.

Why couldn’t America listen to those who presented a professional duty to warn? 

Couldn’t America see the red flags?

Why did America choose to blindly go over a cliff in compliance with an unhinged derelict?

How was America lead to a slaughter of it’s own making?

As far as I’m concerned, there is a layer of the American populace white people duped into thinking it was being was manipulated by one abhorrent individual who was successfully able to manipulate the rage that was finessed into a weapon of  true agenda that is in step with the basis of its authority.  Invasion, conquer, mass murder that grew into license to destroy permitted by contempt. 

So what does the message on the sign about the US Open have to do with any of this? I’ll start by saying while Becky’s sign is a reminder of the desecration of burials, it is a lesson about truth and its consequences when being denied and hidden.  Nobody gets away with anything.  

Truth, knowledge and free-thinking human beings are a formidable foe of those whose existence co-dependently rely on an identity of entitled criminality all dressed up as something else.   

We are as collectively oppressed as we allow.  If we want to score touchdowns instead of home runs, a decision has to be made about the game being played, the rules, the identities, the roles, the environment, the language, the instruments used to participate.  A baseball can’t be kicked.  A football can’t be hit with a bat. Those who choose to survive oppression must step out of its framework and start anew.

So now what?  Surprise! I have some thoughts.

Here we all are.  Nobody brought any land with them.  No matter how romanticized their label as immigrants, pilgrims, pioneers, colonizers, settlers, plantation owners, explorers, traders, or what the hell else, America exists on stolen land of continuously murdered, displaced, and erased indigenous nations.

A common attitude is that it is too late for native people to assert any rights to repatriation, reparations, restitution - or be alive for that matter. It is not fair to present-day home owners. There just isn’t any solution so just shut up about it. Nobody’s giving up their mansions, bungalows with picket fences or paying anything for what was done hundreds of years ago.  The presence, personality and ego of America is too important. The only solution is to repress the ugly and look at the back-lit paper moon. It will be fine if the truth is silenced. There’s nothing anybody can do.

I beg to differ.  I am inspired by words of visionaries, here are a few:

From, “Sound of da Police” (KRS One): 

“There can never really be justice on stolen land.”

The contradiction is so clear.  How can there be justice when truth is forbidden in order to protect a crime? Justice is a science not a legislative or abstract slogan. Justice is a mathematical interaction and can’t be contaminated otherwise it isn’t justice.  

There are also the words of ancestor Neely Fuller, Jr. from his book, The United Independent Compensatory Code System Concept a textbook/workbook for Thought, Speech and/or Action for Victims of Racism

“If you don’t understand white supremacy (Racism) what it is and how it works everything else that you understand will only confuse you” 

In my exploration of systemic oppression (including the recovery from my own childhood trauma - not the least of which was the reprehensible lie that my people where extinct), the thought came to me that systemic oppression came in many forms. So if one does not understand a particular form of oppression, everything one thinks they understand within the walls of that oppression will be confusing. 

The parades, history months, plaques, tributes, honors and oaths used for relief are distracting and temporary. To those who ‘want their country back’ from the siege of what has taken hold must understand the origin of the condition wholly and completely. The comfort and privilege of some at the brutal suffering of others meant there was never any such thing as good old days in America.

Poet / messenger Gil Scott Heron wrote that “The revolution will not be televised. Revolution happens when you change your mind.” 

The one solid thing that an abuser, predator, trafficker, colonizer, gang leader, cult leader, religious leader, and social potentates thrive on is mind control of their followers.  Like vampires, they need the cooperation of those who trust them in order to exploit and violate them - such as children. They require the mental beat-down of those they control.  

Identities and personalities can be molded from tiers of oppression placement or ‘rank’. Sometimes safety and feelings of acceptance are woven into a protective cover to hide pain or enjoy privilege.  If the pain is to end, so must the cover.  Some comedians expressed fear of losing their comedic edge if they no longer had the pain to draw from. Not that it’s necessarily true but there must be a willingness to give up any notions of the conditioned self if there is to be a change of mind.  That is the true revolution. 

“Take this pink ribbon off my eyes” 

From “Just a Girl” by No Doubt - 

Imagine resolving the complications of invasion, land theft, mass murder, objectifying human beings for profit and power with a completely different mind coded by a rationale of oppression.  Imagine abolishing old institutional structures so that a true rule of law exists and is enforced consistently. Imagine creating authentic methods to uphold democracy.  One person, one vote.  Every citizen is responsible for their sovereign choices determined by a rather than controlled by other’s agenda. Dump political parties and the electoral college, redistricting and all the other tools of manipulation and control.  The role of elected leaders should be that of public servants.  Any overreach by a derelict of any kind should be slapped back abruptly, immediately and without hesitation.

The power is supposed to belong to the people. That is what a democracy looks like; a democracy of the people upheld by a rule of law that is logical, consistent and duly enforced. This means the change of mind is to change the rationale of criminal entitlement. 

Change is possible, yes it is.  It must happen or else all the atrocities, morbidities and perversions will repeat, complicate and rot to the point of destruction (or ‘hit rock bottom’ as they say?)  Until then, truth has no expiration date.  Truth is beholding to no trend, no calendar event, or special occasion.  Truth is a pure and gentle yet as persistent and strong as that blade of grass that pushes through hardened concrete.

Let’s do this.