“We are a symbol-using class of life, and those who rule the symbols rule us.” – Alfred Korzybski
Boobie Sub-Cognitive Symbolic Stimulus-Response
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America's post-literate retreat to Plato's Cave)
White Boobies knelt to signify
Their “solidarity”
With “blacks” who swore they’d had enough
Police Brutality.
Some shameless politicians saw,
And promptly “took a knee.”
But Boobie soldiers, cops, and guards
Saw “disobedience,”
Which they had sworn not to indulge
Or tolerate, so hence:
Their first instinct required that they
Respond with violence.
They suited up like Robocop,
Enforcement Droids berserk,
Intent on quelling protest that
Their inbred culture took
As disrespect of Power and
The Wealth for which they “work.”
To “dominate the battle space”
Some clueless Boobie said
Required that cops beat protesters
And club them in the head.
And “tough shit” if, because of that,
they wind up maimed or dead.
You see, the cops sense “danger” when
Confronted by a sign
Or chanted slogan (unapproved)
Which they take as malign;
Projecting their own fear and hate
On those they see as swine.
Two Boobie sub-cults have emerged
Each moved by different sights
One finds a symbol “racist” while
The other sees their “Rights”
To own a gun and slave because
Such things belong to “Whites.”
The centuries roll on but still
The Boobies stay the same.
They can’t abide that “others” might
Fight back and win the game
By using symbols to defeat
A lie worn-out and lame.
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2020