Notes in the wake of the Asian Spa Shootings

We broke intellectuals have dangerous habits. In this regard we like to take assumptions, traditional ways of thinking and logic and flip them on their heads….to as it were, see if they can stand on their heads as good as they can stand on their feet. The best philosophies, religions and practices nearly always do so, (that is, are able to stand on their heads just as good as their feet)or not. It was at this point in my intellectual life that I reflected on the White boy that shot up the Asian massage parlors because they had taken advantaged of him and corrupted him and thus he felt himself to be sexually addicted. I suppose he wanted to ‘be like Tiger Woods’ (that is, sexually addicted). I wonder how much money a teenage boy can spend in massage parlor or anywhere else? I wonder did his mother or father notice the charges at the Asian massage parlors? Did anyone think to speak to him about it. It’s not so much that one would be against Asian or any other massage parlors as a parent, it’s that if the li’l White boy is going 3 times a week for months in a row it might make you wonder what is going on at the massage parlor! Still no one is asking these questions because of the trauma of the trend of people targeting Asians. But this White boy doing this shit raises some very interesting questions of American psychology that don’t deserve to be swept under the rug of generalized Asian trauma, as painful as that is. Let us begin.

I don’t need to guess how many lives, families and careers have been ruined by alcohol and/or drugs (prescription or not). I can contribute personal experiences to that huge anecdotal reality. But I never got the idea to shoot up the liquor store or my weed man. As a matter of fact unlike workers at massage parlors, both the liquor stores I frequent and my dope boys are ‘strapped’ (armed) and ‘buck back’! If this little white fellow would have been addicted to drinking liquor and smoking dope and decided because of his addiction he should shoot the dealers and the liquor stores he frequents up he wouldn’t have gotten the chance to surrender to the police. These muthafuckas woulda lit his ass up in the parking lot on the way out!

But even the logic is ridiculous. He blames Asian massage shops (that is, broke Asian women) for his lusts and inadequacies with his peer group White girls. Thus it is these broke Asian women’s fault for his failures in life….the Asian masseuse who could happily think of things they’d rather spend an hour on than some horny White kids inner thighs as ‘his cock swells like a purple mushroom ready to explode’!

No doubt drugs and alcohol and their purveyors kill more people and break up more homes, but this White kid blames Asian chicks in America working in a massage parlor. Ladies and gentlemen legal or not, that ain’t many steps above being a sex worker and/or sex trafficker and working in the sex industry. Clearly this incident shows and years of anecdotal evidence shows that massage parlors have a long history of crossing the lines between physical therapy and sexual pleasure. I’m not lying when I tell you that when I was in high school here in APS in the 1980s on some weekends and after 3 muthafuckas finishing off a 6 pack of 16 ounce Olde English 800, (quite precisely and only because it was what NWA drank), we’d drive down and around the Cheshire Bridge area amidst the slew of Lingerie shops (advertised with models), massage parlors, et al. Unlike the White boy, we could not afford anything either place had advertised (we put all of our money together to get the Olde English 16 oz cans) but I’ll never forget going in a lingerie shop to see some models only to realize that there were no free peeps; you want the peep you have to pay for the peep show.

Dammit little White boy, the Asian chick you’re getting your rocks off on is 46 with four kids and two baby daddies, one back in Laos and one over here that magically works for the company that paid for her ‘Visa’ and ‘Green Card’ applications. White boy if you had simply told her to stay away from your inner thigh, scrotum and rectum and still paid her the same amount I don’t think she would have denied you. Thus you might have avoided the feels of certain sexual gratifications and perhaps may have been able to avoid your feelings being addicted, being manipulated and being abused. Perhaps your self knowledge of your sexual predilections could have prevented these women getting you excited and the apparently evil outcomes of you getting to sexually excited and stimulated. Thus we might argue it’s your fault you got addicted. Lots of people go to massage parlors and don’t get addicted. Not you li’l White boy. This is the type of li’l dude (Black, white or whatever) that ends up being 30 and while he may have had some sexual experiences or even gotten some pussy before, he never got any from a chick that either loved him or wanted to be there. And now the li’l White boy comes back to the massage parlor armed and shoots the place up. It is as though they (cue British alt-rock singer Morrissey’s “Oh, Asian Girls”) took his manhood, used him, took advantage of him and in his mental gymnastics they had to be punished; 46 year old Asian women with 4 kids (two of them by the man that ‘imported’ her from Thailand) with no greater job prospects in America than playing with li’l White boy’s balls for 2 hours.

But pay attention my fellow Americans. You find this narrative on the White traditional right and the alt-right and these are not coincidences. There is a popular narrative that White America is not what it is supposed to be, not what it can be because something has ‘robbed’ them of their ‘rightful’ place. Whether it is paying taxes to support minorities and Latino immigrants, or Black kids that don’t score as high on the tests getting in top schools over hardworking White kids with better test scores or Trump’s narrative that the Chinese have been not just engaging in skillful trade practices but literally ‘robbing’ America, like taking things from a baby. The end result is the narrative that if White people don’t fight back, a la January 6th, a la militia groups, they may find their country taken over and overrun by corrupt and ignorant Black people, Latinos storming the borders and being in no otherwise good Catholics, being good Catholics by refusing birth control and having lots of children (unlike White people’s birthrate). Oh, the narrative also includes having the country overrun by wild eyed liberals who use the politics of race and sexuality when it is convenient for them, meaning the type of White liberal that will pay lip service to ‘Critical Race Theory’ and all sorts of affirmative actions even to the point of reparations but they’d never live in a Black neighborhood or suffer their children to go to ANY majority Black school.

White conservatives and libertarians see this as hypocritical on the part of White liberals and it very well is. Furthermore, for White liberals to have constructed an ideological world where one’s sexuality cannot be assumed by what one looks like and is dressed like is hardly utopia to White conservatives, Christians (whether broadly Evangelical or not) and traditionalists. All of these prerogatives assumed by White liberal and minority interests are presumed to have been stolen from the White man in the America and the Trump narrative of having the election stolen by just such a liberal hegemonic blitzkrieg fits right in with that. And do not get it twisted; Trump and the movement he has generated aren’t going anywhere.

Part II

Let us continue this little exercise in Neitzschean ‘Transvaluating Values’. In the United Methodist Church there is a movement afoot to as it were, decriminalize and normalize homosexuality and transgenderism. This essay is not about whether the behavior is right or wrong or whether or not it is right or wrong policy for the United Methodists, Anglicans and a few other mainline denominations to decriminalize and normalize homosexuality. I’m simply ‘transvaluating values’ to their logical ends for purposes of intellectual reflection and amusement.

We were told as United Methodists by Bishops, Judicial councils of Bishops, seminary presidents and lawyers that the statistical existence of homosexuality, the historic existence of homosexuality, the idea that homosexuality and transgenderism are a civil right that traditional societies have historically denied this community to the point of persecution; and the transcendent idea that God is love (all love) should guide our hearts, minds and fingers to vote in favor of the church marrying homosexual and transgender persons and ordaining them in ministry. I repeat, this essay is not about the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of this phenomena. I’m ‘transvaluating valuations’ in a Nietzschean sense purely for the sake of amusing the reader and myself. Shall we begin.

Let’s look back at biblical prohibitions against alcoholism and by inference psychoactive drug addiction. Far more people drink alcohol and do some form of drug whether it is psychoactive prescription drugs or street drugs but there is no movement afoot to ordain willing drug addicts and alcoholics. Granted the result in the pulpits on Sunday morning would be far more interesting but there is not grassroots wellspring of alcoholics and drug addicts trying to convince the church to ordain willing alcoholics and drug addicts to the ministry. This is precisely because the alcoholic and the drug addict views the church as an inhibitive force. It may not stop the behavior and if you’ve never heard of one or two examples of a Deacon or two you think you can tell had a drink or two hitherto I’d be surprised. Even though statistically the church must have many more alcoholics and drug dabblers, the restrictive nature of church tradition and practice regarding drugs and alcohol is not seen as a negative or hindrance but a positive; adding balance to the individuals life.

Thus, it doesn’t matter what I do as an individual, that is my business with the Lord, but if the church has not historically been about that the church has a right to be what it’s about, if I’m going to choose to participate. I can let it be what it is about and in my private time imma be what i’m about. There is a terrible danger in making the church be about whatever ‘post-modernity’ is about whether it’s sexuality, alcohol and drugs, ‘new age’ philosophies, ‘self-help’ or get rich quick ministries. Public drunkenness’ and carousing is a way to get kicked off the Deacon Board. Private drunkeness and selective and restrictive drunkeness; well privacy should be a human right! Anonymity should be a human right but alas in this world no one wants to hide anything anymore anyway.

We have no shame. We want the world to accept us and change for us. This has poisoned race relations too. Ladies and gentlemen in all your reading, read history and biography. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Black people in America are playing out (for historical purposes only) some kind of Greek tragedy. The damned thing is wrong and ill-fated from the start; stars aligned for a dramatic conclusion and denouement of anguish and torture to the point of the ridiculous intensity.

It was wrong to be enslaved; wrong to be held in such a state until it was literally no longer socio-economically necessary or possible (if not morally impossible). It was wrong to be held a second class citizen legally and in terms of social norms and for America to cede the legal right not being 2nd class citizens begrudgingly and after much handwringing during the Civil Rights movement. And it was wrong, nay even tragic to even after the Civil Rights movement be denied socio-economic norms and equalities other races expect by default but whereby we are still 2nd class in interactions with the police, the bank, Silicon Valley and other valleys where the white mainstream makes a lot of money and controls a lot of power.

And now in the midst of all that ‘wrongness’ and in the midst of those tragedies White folk think we niggers are supposed to just wake up in 2021 completely free of anger and resentment because this is the best country in the world. Nigga please. Well, let me say that differently. That is indeed what we should do but not for the reason that White folk’s said that is what we should do. By God we should have our own reasons for thinking this is the best country in the world. Fuck, anywhere I am or my people are is the best country in the world; but that is due to our testimony and what God has done for us not White folk. God ordained our slavery and provided for our freedoms and the opportunities those freedoms provide us in post-modern America and we need to use them for God’s upliftment in a materialistic, irreligious and atheistic world. God bore us and bred us for just such an occasion as this in the state of humanity. The world is out of balance because Africa and descendants of Africa are weak, spiritually and materially.

All of that is to say that African America must let go of this politics based on anger and resentment. It is hard enough to be competitive and win; you only add to your difficulties when you’re trying to do this angry, resentful and with feelings of chips on your shoulders and scores to settle; people to get back at. Ladies and gentlemen in Christ and/or whatever religion we of Negritude are professing these days, it is not about anger and resentment; it is about being the best we can be from this day forward and expecting the best that they can be out of others; not setting up for some kind ideological war. I am free in Jesus. I can’t love God and my faith and be living with anger and resentments. I feel sorry for sinners and the misguided I do not hate them. And if someone thinks I’m misguided, hey that’s alright too. It is good that a man is contradicted sometimes no matter how powerful he is or pretends to be. God is real to me and not a thing happens without his knowledge. Not only doe she know the numbers of the hairs on your head and mine, he knows the numbers of the feathers on the birds of the air individually as well. My job is to be the best person I can be, quite precisely the best artist I can be and I can’t do that obsessed with trying to prove something to other human beings in a negative way; trying to get them back; trying to put them in their place; etc. If that’s necessary God will do it, it is not my responsibility. I just want to be the best artist I can be full of peace, love and good fruit; fruit meet for repentance.

Watch this reverse psychology and how it actually reinforces White supremacy in Black people and culture. Logically speaking, in order for White folks to treat us ‘perfectly’ they would have to be ‘perfect’. We niggers keep hammering away about how we expect white folks to treat us and that they ought to treat us ‘perfectly’ because subconsciously 450 years of Mental colonization has taught us to expect that White folk are perfect and thus can be perfect. The devil is a lie. White folk ain’t perfect amongst their own, how the fuck they gonna be ‘perfect’ with you! They are lawyering up and suing the brakes off each other and selling each other out and we niggers are running around acting like our very lives are dependent on white folks giving us justice.

The devil is a lie. God gives us justice. Justice is not the White man’s to possess or give and it’s not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris’s to acknowledge and bestow on behalf of white folk as a whole. This is the same White folk that damn near 50% of which still believe the election was stolen from Trump and and another 15% to 20% may believe something different but so cowardly they are willing to go an a wild ride driven by a Donald Trump so completely intoxicated off his own power and what he experienced as the so-called leader of the free world that he and his followers are willing to subvert and suborn 250 years of democratic practice. Does he lead a free world that admires Putin and the subversion of Democracy by any means necessary? Does he admire a Putin who as I write is backing Belorussia in a Diplomatic version of highway robbery inconceivable in modern (let alone Post-Modern) Europe since World War II.

Yeah, Ninja, you trust these people to do you right. or you trust your God. Whom do you have more faith; changing White folks minds and making them quit micro-aggressing you and making you feel bad about yourself? Nigga please, what has Black politics and intellectualism degenerated into? We worried about what’s wrong with White people and ‘the system’ meanwhile our kids are playing li’l African soldier and exhibiting similar psycho-trauma as kids from war torn countries that have been inter-generationally destabilized!

But in our case, it’s like we live in a Third World County. Yes I said it but before you accuse me of being melodramatic; when the AIDS rate is as high as in Sub-Saharan Africa; when you pull up at intersections and you mobbed by water boys; when you circle around Interstate 20 & the 75/85 connectors and you see tent cities under the overpasses and woods; when you see dope boys selling drugs in front of Asian owned “convenience” stores; when you see proper mental health patients at corners and in front of businesses; when crime is relatively high; when private economic development is low and lots of people are dependent on checks it is like you live in a 2nd or 3rd World Country.

And ladies and gentlemen of Negritude that is not good enough. That is not good enough in the home of Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights Movement. That is not good enough in a city where Black elected officialdom has thrived for 50 years in Black Mayors, City Councils, School Boards and superintendents. And basically now we’ve run it into the ground and turned it into a Third World Country with all the socio-economic dysfunction of a Third World Country, the very same damn thing White folk told us would happen if ‘you give the niggers too much responsibility and freedom to fast’. We went right out and proved it and now White folk bout to gentrify what they want out of the city and leave the rest of it to us. How the fuck you gonna blame the police for systemic racism and the police have had Black officers for 50 years and Black police chiefs just as long. The question is not whether they got anything right or not just that they had the opportunity and fucked it up leading up to the explosive situation within the Black community today vis a vis the police.

Ladies and gentlemen of Negritude I promise you that Robert E Lee and Thomas J ‘Stonewall’ Jackson statutes are not coming to life at midnight when there is a full moon floating in the ether only the illuminati know about and telling our kids not to value academic performance. That is a cultural choice we are making and to take the easy way out and say you make poor choices because of 450 years of racism is ridiculous. The next nigga basketball or football prospect is a ‘beast’; when was the last time you heard of the Black student in APS with the highest PSAT or SAT score. When was the last signing event you went to at a high school for a kid who was going on fellowship to Columbia in a dual degree program with Oxford….but it happens. Who the fuck heard of Naomi Osaka or Simone Biles or that ninja that plays hockey until they actually excelled in white hands. We need to be much more in control of our talent and the only way to do that is to be knowledgeable enough to produce competitive people in competitive fields with intention.

We Black men were worried about making Atlanta the strip club capital of the south and all kinds of idiotic notions about the responsibilities of being a post-96 Olympics world class city instead of trying to capitalize. Everywhere around the perimeter is highly developed but the parts on nigga sides of town 50 years after we first integrated many of these areas isn’t. But we worried about taking down statues and changing the names of public institutions named after white men we don’t like (and how hard is it to go through the past 450 years of American history finding White men you don’t like)! Pick higher hanging fruit! This is how absurd ‘the Black struggle’ has become in the Post-Civil Rights and BLM era and is symbolic of the depths Black public intellectualism has sunken to in 2021.

Black people are living out some kind of psycho-trauma Greek drama destined to end horribly….unless we give God the glory and keep it moving, not expect perfection and perfect treatment from anybody but ourselves. At its most basic level, if you aren’t dependent on somebody, you really have no need to really care what they think about you. If I hear Brian Kemp says one more time he has to help the niggers in Atlanta with their crime problem; their Black on Black problem, I’m going to throw up. I notice Stacy Abrams, Raphael Warnock, Al Sharpton and John Ossoff haven’t said shit original about what to do on crime.