Finnegus Boggs is a Marid Djinn (genie) who grants 2 Oakland punks a chance to rewrite their destiny. This short read has a “Great Message!” that’ll stick for life:
https://amazon.com/Fractured-Fairy-Tales-T…
Tag: black lives matter
Is WOKE Brain-Dead
Got feedback for my novella, A Marriage Fable, from a reader.
Thanks Jeri! I actually read it and enjoyed it. I just hesitate to review because the husband calls the therapist a muslim I think it was, in a nonflattering way, and never takes it back later in the book. It just didn’t sit right with me.
A Marriage Fable is a fantasy romance of a typical husband nearing his 20th anniversary, and the powerful genie that inspires him to be a better man. The “muslim” Pam is referring to is the genie. The husband is a sexist, narcissistic asshole in the beginning of this fable, and does indeed refer to the genie, who he thinks is a therapist, as a Muslim because he’s mad with his wife for asking him to participate in her session with Dr. Boggs.
This fable is a modern twist on the classic Dicken’s novella, A Christmas Carol. I used Arabic words for the opening of each stave, and honored the legends of Marid Djinns throughout the writing. I, Jeri Cafesin, did not slam Muslims. Andrew Wyman did, the MC in A Marriage Fable. To show, (not tell in exposition) that Andrew was a self-absorbed dick, he indeed used ugly language, as he, like most men these days, was not violent. Words were his weapon, and his complete lack of interest in anything but his career.
Pam deciding not to leave my novella a review is beyond WOKE, it’s brain-dead. She’s so into being politically correct, following the masses, a ‘believer’ she’s being ‘good, respectful, polite,’ she’s stopped actually thinking for herself. She enjoyed my novella, but can’t leave a review because the Woke community, to which she is a card-carrying member, says using the word Muslim derogatorily in all cases is wrong. And she’s bought that crap. She’s so unsure of her own mind, so afraid of her own racism that she has to call out a fable showing an arc of a character to protect her self-image. She must follow the crowd she’s picked — falling off the boat left-wing. Her behavior is equal only to the far right of the Trump coalition, which she likely despises.
I used to be a Democrat. I am not anymore because of people like Pam who can’t think beyond their rabbis, priests, and the will of the crowd they’ve picked so they can look in the mirror and feel good about themselves. Fuck that. TRUTH changes things, not all this PC bullshit.
So, let’s get down to some TRUTH, and face some facts about humanity. WE ARE ALL RACISTS. We are all BORN RACISTS! And until we all wrap our heads around that FACT, we are doomed to stay racists!
At my writing group the other night a guy read 1500 words out of his historical novel about WW2. In his book, he quoted Hitler, and other Nazis using racial slurs. Several group members had “a problem” with this. They found the language offensive and suggested he take out the terms. Instead, he was advised to use the PC version of describing the terms without using the actual slurs. Again, brain dead! Are these people so scared of the TRUTH that they cannot face the FACTS of what the Nazis did/do. Wokes must sugar-coat it to swallow it down? There is nothing sweet about Nazism! It was/is ugly in the extreme, and this writer in my group was showing this. It wasn’t his job to be politically correct as to offend NO ONE EVER. It was meant to offend! Ignoring history, we are doomed to repeat it, and we ARE with Trump and the current Republican party, and the other side, the Woke party.
Fiction writing is a fine art. Should someone have told Edvard Munch he shouldn’t paint The SCREAM because it may give some kids nightmares? It did me! Should books like Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple not have been written because they may offend? Of course not. Art is supposed to be controversial, get people feeling first, then thinking about what they feel and why.
My father used to call me Marco after the MC in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street because I’ve been a storyteller since I was a little kid. I’ve read it to my kids to spark their imagination because that is what the story is about, not a ‘Chinaman (original wording) who walks with sticks’ (and by the way, the TRUTH is, Chinese in China still use chopsticks), or a ‘Rajah with Rubies.’ The Woke community has robbed children forward of a method to reach and spark their own imaginations.
New York Times had an article about transgender conversion a couple weeks ago. For once, the left-wing rag, wasn’t. They actually had the balls, in our politically correct version of the world now, to call out therapists who are pushing children, as young as 10 years old, to change their sex. In their extensive research, the article points out that the Woke community is selling kids on medically ‘reconfiguring’ (the PC term) their bodies, a decision that will affect the rest of their lives, and in many cases negatively. Personally, I don’t care if an adult decides to become the opposite sex. It is an adult decision. Blind support of a child wanting to change their sex after seeing some YouTuber trans who is saying how great their life is now, is ugly in the extreme. It doesn’t make you a good therapist to always be ‘supportive.’ It makes you a bad one.
Oddly, well, maybe not, the same Woke crowd is calling out Trader Joe’s for using Trader José on their Mexican label beer as racial appropriation. I don’t understand why changing sex later in life isn’t sexual appropriation. A man changed to a woman at 18 or later didn’t have to grow up with the slings and arrows I faced as a girl or a woman in the workforce. They have no idea what it means to be constantly hit on from the moment you get tits, groped, assaulted, get pregnant, paid less, and a girl better be pretty, and thin, or she’s lonely. And I was. The damage sexism did to me will be with me for the rest of my life, regardless of the sex I later become.
And THEY is more than ONE. Unless a human is two people in one, like Siamese twins, what does someone calling themselves THEY even mean? Using ‘THEY’ as your ‘personal pronoun’ WON’T STOP SEXISM! This will — the TRUTH is a good place to start.
Politically correct doesn’t help humanity become kinder or more equitable. Activist groups like LGBTQ have powerful lobbyists who help change discriminatory laws. The Gay Liberation Movement (GLM) in the 1980s got Congress to invest in AIDS research. Black Lives Matter (BLM) forces us to investigate systemic racism in our police forces across the US. These organized groups send representatives to DC who actually fight for legal change. If you really want to be politically correct, actually do something to help make us a more just society, join one of these organizations, and help end discrimination.
It’s hip, slick, and trending Woke these days to say “I’m Pro-Palestine.” In fact, my own daughter said this to me the other day.
Hmm, I thought I taught you better than jumping on the Woke train, I told her. Do you even know what it means to be pro-Palestine? All her friends are. All her friends are Chinese and Indian students at UCSD. Literally. She is White and has no White friends. Many of these friends are on visas and have no voting rights in this country. And they too have no clue what they are talking about when they claim to be pro-Palestine. My daughter’s friends are feeling disenfranchised. They’ve been the target of racism here and are justifiably angry. But instead of dealing with that TRUTH, they’ve lobbed onto a crowd — the PC community — that lets them express their internalized anger by getting behind causes they have no clue about.
Do you know that Hamas, the government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked attack on Israel from Gaza, killed over 1,200 people, and kidnapped 253 in October of last year?
And did you know Hamas was raping 12–48 yr old girls and women they kidnapped, then posting it online to terrorize victim’s loved ones?
I haven’t heard that. All I heard was Israel was bombing civilians in Palestine and killing mostly women and children.
Do you know that the government the Palestinians voted in are using their women and children as cover for their terrorist shit, and that is why they were getting killed in Israeli bombings?
No. But it doesn’t make it right that Israel is killing kids.
No. It doesn’t. I didn’t say Israel is right. There is no right here, baby. Both sides are wrong. I’m not pro-Israel. They know that Hamas is sacrificing their own children, yet instead of targeted strikes against Hamas, they are wielding an iron fist. Badly. Ugly. For sure. 100%. My beautiful daughter, I told her, siding with one side or the other is divisive in the extreme. It perpetuates the problems there, and creates more here, between us. Call out bad behavior, like Israel knowingly killing civilians regardless of their reasons. Or Palestine voting in a fanatical religious government with an agenda to kill all Israelis. Neither is right. Call out bad behavior. Do not get on the PC train because your friends are and you wanta fit in. Do the research before taking a stand. Blind faith means turning off your brain. And that is never OK.
I get writing this essay is going to piss off a lot of people. While I understand and support the underlying tenor of being PC is to stop discrimination in all forms, the Woke community has no clue how divisive and ugly they are when they call out everyone who isn’t on their train. They perpetuate racism, sexism, and flat-out stupidity so they can look in the mirror and lie to themselves they are righteous people.
Let’s all get off the PC train and focus on how to tackle our differences by getting honest with our own feelings — our fears of THE OTHER, of looking stupid, of not fitting in, of being alone and lonely. Let’s start sharing how often we fail, in our careers and our relationships, instead of perpetuating the happy-ending lie. I’m so sick of almost every businessperson I talk to saying they’re doing “just great!” and then their biz failing the next year.
Want to end discrimination? Then let’s start sharing how it feels to BE HUMAN since we all FEEL THE SAME THINGS.
We Are Born Racists
We are ALL racists. Every human being on the planet is BORN a racist.
NO! you’re screaming at me. BULLSHIT, you whacked-out bitch. I am not a racist!
Racism is taught, not inherent to our nature is the common wisdom. And while it’s true racism, hate, fear can be taught by parents, community, schools, religious leaders, and conservative media, we are all born, to varying degrees, racists.
Mammals, the genome to which Humans belong, are born with an innate FEAR of THE OTHER — anything outside what is familiar to us. And this fear manifests as RACISM, and SEXISM, and NATIONALISM.
“FEAR of THE OTHER” should be the universal definition of racism. And humans manifest our fear in a variety of ways. Some, their fear is so overwhelming, their ignorance so great, it aligns with HATE, and they are violent against THE OTHER.
But sometimes, when our fear is acknowledged, and then examined, it motivates us to learn about THE OTHER. Only then, do we discover that regardless of color, or even gender, we are not so different. We all FEEL the same feelings.
BULLSHIT, you calling me out again. You don’t know how it FEELS to be Black.
You’re right. I’m White. But I know what it FEELS like to be dissed. I grew up overweight in chic L.A. I was the butt of fat jokes through elementary and middle school. I never got asked out on a date until I dropped the weight in my senior year of high school. And while I am now in “good shape,” I will go to my grave feeling fat. I will never fit in to the world where thin is the only way to be “in.” And I know what it FEELS like living forever on the outside wishing to be in.
So what if you were fat, you say. You lost the weight. Skinny or fat, I can’t stop being Asian, or gay.
And I am a woman. I know what it FEELS like being judged as lesser than because I am not a man. I know how it FEELS to be making two-thirds the salary of the guy next to me doing the exact same job. My first job out of college as an art director for a major jewelry manufacturer, the CEO of the company came into my first big meeting and grabbed my breast instead of my outstretched hand. He squeezed my tit like it was an orange and said, “Nice!” I know how it FEELS to be objectified for my body alone.
Being disrespected makes me FEEL valueless, ashamed, awkward, angry, mystified, enraged, scared, small, sad. And all these negative feelings manifest inside each of us when we are dissed. The fact is, Black, White, Fat or not, we’ve all experienced each of these feelings independently, or simultaneously, regardless if we are consciously aware of them. Each of us may react to our feelings differently, but most all of us are intimate with feeling dissed.
Most of us are also intimate with feeling happy, engaged [in a pleasing activity], safe, content in moments. Our reasons for feeling these things may vary, though not as much as you think. The love of a parent, guardian or friend, the comfort of a home, full bellies from tasty food makes most of us FEEL good. The intensity of our feelings varies wildly from person to person. Some enjoy positive feelings far more often than others born with internal angst, or into external misfortune. But the feelings of HAPPY and SAD, GOOD and BAD, PROUD and ASHAMED, EMPOWERED and DISSED are common to all of us.
Being alive means FEELING. The enormous, complex range of feelings we get to experience, both body and mind, is exclusively Human. The capacity of our brain power is what separates us from every other living creature on this planet. And while we all have different experiences, feeling the same things provides a natural bridge to unite us, a window for empathy, even camaraderie through our shared feelings.
We are all born racists. You, me, all humans are born with an innate fear of THE OTHER. Once again, we are standing on the precipice of change, Racism and Sexism the topics de jour. Perhaps this time, we will get off the politically correct train, admit we are all racists and choose to fight our innate fear of THE OTHER. We’ll acknowledge the benefits of integration and globalization as an opportunity to learn from the best of each other. We’ll not only believe in, but practice equal rights.
Stand up, or take a knee, but SPEAK OUT against hate, and educate the ignorant that there really are no substantive differences between us — not color, not culture, not gender, not religious or sexual preference, because most all humans being FEEL the same things.
STOP Believing. START THINKING
My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. I once saw him put his fist through the maple cabinet an inch from my mother’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, even at me, when he encountered resistance (reason) when espousing his conservative views.
My father doesn’t believe Global Warming is real or caused by us in any way (absolving himself of conserving resources).
My father believes all non-believers — atheists and agnostics — are dangerous fools to be converted.
My dad believes in trickle-down economics, though it’s been proven again and again it makes the rich richer while wiping out the middle class.
My father doesn’t believe in gun control. “If they come for me, I’ll stop them at the door.” He quotes the NRA with fervor! “Take away what kind of guns we get to own, and you chip away at the foundation of the 2nd Amendment,” he preaches.
I remind him he can’t stop a tank with an AK-47. I implore him to examine history, and context, that the right to bear arms our forefathers were talking about were pistols and shotguns that took three minutes to load and didn’t fire straight or would blow up in your face. Automatic assault weapons were neither considered, nor anticipated when the 2nd Amendment was written.
He scoffs. As his daughter, and a woman, I am clueless.
As a mother of two amazing, spectacular children, I am horrified, not only by mass shootings on school campuses, but everywhere else, every time an assault weapon is used against our own because the NRA wants to stay rich. And our government officials, Republican senators in particular, ostensibly “by the people, for the people,” are paid off by gun lobbyists to let them.
I grew up in L.A., on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills. I went to school with writers, producers, directors’ kids, all fairly to extremely liberal. My father was the outlier in our neighborhood and among my parents’ colleagues and friends. The Great Divide between the Republicans and Democrats, fueled by Reagan pushing religion, conservatism, then ignited by Bush Jr’s Christian administration, and then concretized in lies, ignorance, and hate by Trump, didn’t exist yet. My parents lived together in relative peace, except around election times.
We have become a polarized nation and this serves no one here. On the personal level, it has divided me from my family. My siblings, like my father, are fervent Republicans. My sister, disgusted we’re raising our kids without religion, decided she’d had enough of my liberal leanings and checked out of our lives entirely, leaving our kids deeply hurt their aunt had abandoned them. My brother used to forward me emails from his Born-Again community that Obama was a Jew-hating Muslim who believed it’s okay to kill babies. Trump Made America Great — empowering men to be men again by stripping women our rights. My brother’s ignorance is only eclipsed by his blind faith in his Christian leaders’ conservative rhetoric.
The chasm in our morality and our philosophies is so diametrically opposed at this point that the rare times I talk with my father our dialog quickly sours, then invariably turns contentious. I’ve told him time and again I won’t discuss politics with him, but he insists on little digs, like, “Do you care about your kids?” He has not spoken with our children, his grandkids, in 7 years, or acknowledged them in any way, not birthdays, no calls, ever, and virtually never inquirers about them when I call him, which I always do because he doesn’t call me.
Truth is, it’s getting harder and harder to call him. Almost two decades after my mom’s death, my father is undaunted by age or illness in his quest to spread conservative lies. He’s a true believer (as are most hard-core Republicans) because believing is easier than thinking. Being told what is right and wrong, good or bad, is simpler than considering the complexities of our behavior, and our obligations to each other and the world we inhabit.
My remaining family believes women should not have the right of choice with our own bodies.
My father and siblings believe gays should not have the legal, nor moral right to marry. They believe homosexuality is a mental illness.
My family espouses they believe in “less government,” preaching the Republican’s canonical tagline but want to govern (restrict) women’s choice and limit our birth control resources; govern who is allowed to marry; limit healthcare to those who can afford it; allow corporations to buy politicians for corporate profit. They’d prefer to believe the GOP rhetoric that Global Warming isn’t happening and support the ‘rights’ of Big Oil to drill and frack our planet to death, instead of investing in renewable energy for our kids, and the welfare of Earth forward.
I’ve been wondering when it’s time to say goodbye to family, even before they die. I’ve been grieving my sister’s departure from our lives since her exit 15 yrs ago. The little connection I retain with my brother and father seems… over. My kids have no relationship with either. We have virtually no common ground and share little time that doesn’t quickly turn combative. So really, what’s the point of trying to stay in touch? Harsh? You bet. Ugly? Yeah. I’m profoundly saddened that we’ve come to this impasse. Hurts. A lot, knowing almost half our nation feels as my family does. And I am mystified, disgusted, and shamed by their gullibility in choosing blind faith over science, thought, and reason.
We are again on the precipice of our survival as one nation, but this time the war isn’t with rifles that blow up in our faces. Now we must recognize the enemy is ourselves — choosing ignorance over reason because it’s easier to binge-watch Netflix, peruse Instagram, or stream gameplay on Twitch than it is to think.
My daughter, a recent college grad, told me most of her friends — this new round of young voters — didn’t vote in this last election. They were ‘taking a stand,’ showing how they feel about our government, they claimed, neglecting to understand without voting they essentially voted in Trump. They were told not to vote by Republican ads targeted at them through social media, and blindly believe their feeds, not knowing, or even caring that what they are scrolling through is personally targeted at them, and designed to manipulate them to buy, try, subscribe, and believe in snake oil.
The chasm between us will continue to grow with more believers buying into the derisive rhetoric of their online feeds, their religious leaders, politicians, Google’s search results, and ‘personalized’ targeted marketing on social media platforms and apps. More families are finding themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide that will likely tear them apart, like mine, unless we STOP believing and start thinking what is right, not only for ourselves and our family, but broader, more complex considerations that include finding and creating ways to help our neighbors, community, this country, and our planet thrive.
VOTE your conscience.
jcafesin.com 