Mr. Rogers is On Neighborhood Patrol Watch

 

Mister, may I call you mister? 

‘Fellow I’m your neighbor Roger, what’s troubling your trembling? I won’t question. I’ll just listen to your troubles and the pulse of your vibrato.’

Roger they are killing the helpers

life here isn’t in disguise anymore

they murdered two angels 

a poet and a healer 

they are desperate to deflect they cry:

‘a state terrorist, harming our brave armed men!’ 

‘a state terrorist, who didn’t even salute those red and white and blue angry eyes!'

Roger I’ll be honest this seems familiar in my recent intake of life afar

the pattern of Gaza

sledgehammering and massacring the lives and loves of doctors, 

students, artists, bakers, tea makers, 

booksellers, EMTs, family archivists 

an International assembly (yes really) 

claimed no helpers or angels existed in the strip 

a land without people before the chosen they labeled

luckily because of the 21st century people saw right through their claims

who did they think they were fooling when they said  

that humanity is not among mothers, fathers, aunts and children 

grandparents, olives, texts, soap, makeshift kitchens, 

prayers, cats, hummus and Jesus draped in gauze

Roger these weren’t normal reactionaries spewing this

they despise the masked men as long as they are American 

they contradict love and borders and nationality and familiarity 

Roger I think as I speak this, they may come for me

they are patrolling speech because they want impunity to not grieve 

they’d rather steal and gather skin and organs like crops

then ask their own heart beat for empathy for Palestinians

and eventually here the pattern will be completed  

warehoused immigrants to harvest the hard harvests to come

and supply tissue and biologies 

erasing lineages is the conquerors lust fulfillment 

come first for the residents who do not claim occupied

the obsessed with possession of Palestine 

I cannot in my heart recognize

those slandered, their so called backward lives that they accuse: 

‘They are here to steal our standing, our souls, our patriotism, 

rewrite our borders, OURS’

Roger does this sound familiar? 

They’re claiming birthright and nationalist rallies? 

like the recent descents of the US democracy events 

fifty percent closed their eyes to 

and the other fifty spilt fighting themselves as rats in shoes on a sinking ship

Charlottesville, the capital on the 6th

they won Roger they did

why did no one halt these marches 

expose the architects of the coup 

that transformed in stardom and legislation

Mister among us are there collaborators? 

How else can a modern holocaust get funded?

artists and nurses of the highest spiritual order do not die 

for other writers and doctors to be exterminated 

borders mapped as weapons to be cut off and quartered 

the people who claim the holy land 

and the people who claim the greatest in terrain both as birthrights

wear and divide the same cloth

are the same tattered coin

the same tired mirror Roger 

how do I live without the camouflage holding on anymore?

‘Fellow friend, do not tremble or get stuck in frightened vibrato. 

You must love and bear witness and hold those exposed delicate and tearful. 

Whether passed, whether bleeding, whether alive. 

We mourn, we break, we love, we remember. We’re tender, we survive.’

 

 

Was a long day but not much occurred too much to speak of but we miss you more than words convey. I can't believe how young I was. I can't believe how much I didn't understand. How much I would lose and never know. I mean I did know and understand but I couldn't articulate that in the face of death at thirteen. Do you know how the years go on and people and time just go on and on? That's what I didn't really understand. Not that I was thinking of the future. It's sometimes difficult to remember the details and intricateness. I thought it would come back to me eventually but my mind was just finding ways to survive not be crashed onto the shore. Not be broken and washed up as a carcass of loss. Though it's difficult to not relate to that now. The world is filled to the brim of endless tragedy and loss. You have your personal and you must bear witness to all that exists outside your slice of the universe that you can't control. The unhoused being driven into the abyss. The Palestinians being annihilated while the world tepidly raises their shoulders and then claps for those who say they are in service of supremacy of a nation state. The most morally bankrupt to choose a conception of land, nation, country, a controlling governing body to surveillance/penalize/dictate over a person or people. Yet that is much of the world. You would get that. I think a lot of the conservations we never got to have. Those I can miss the most. I have been so stressed and lost in a sense of being stuck in an aquarium at night that never closes and I never find the exit out nor remember the entranceway. I am just in the stream of conscious and what I admire the most of life are the things I cannot touch.

Our children are buried under the rubble

Release the hostages!

You are bombing our hospitals

Release the hostages!

You are blowing up our schools

Release the hostages!

There is not enough water or food

or even fuel

Release the hostages!

There is no milk for the newborns

Release the hostages!

or sanitary napkins for women

Release the hostages!

You also have thousands of hostages

in your prisons for years.

Release the hostages!

You are killing us

Release the hostages!

You are killing your hostages

Release the hostages!

Can you hear us?

Release the hostages!

- Mosab Abu Toha

As AI haunts my mind and I struggle against the rage and frustration that stirs at not merely the new reality, not merely toward the ruling class tech vultures ready to destroy art at all costs, but my fellow photographers and the photo world people for embracing it. The only people who push back are the people in the comment sections. The art world in the larger scope I'm not surprised. Photographers you think would know better but no they actually seem to be less critically thinking on this issue because they're caught up in art theory approaches and philosophical magical fantasies. 

We don't get to do whatever we want because we are artists. We owe the world to be more than solely acting on our own desires to play around in the creative inspired bubbles we move about in. We don't get to make whatever we want at any cost. The world is more than the artist's playground. Some of us could be humbled more than clapping for the technical feats and dreaming about this tool/weapon. 

To the artists who love to act like they play and exist on the perimeters outside of society, we are all here and stuck together, sorry to break it to you. Maybe that's why some don't take us artists too seriously and some even think of us suspiciously.

Many artists like to think of themselves as especially in tune and sensitive people. Uniquely in touch with the world and can provide guidance into understanding it better. A kind of saviorism and martyrdom. Artists overall would be better to come down off the soapboxes we are enticed by. You don't have to give up shows, awards, or interviews, but the idea that it makes some superior in the intellectual and sensitive sense is demonstrably false. Inflated and fawned over egos are never helpful to artists and art as a whole.

To another point, these characteristics lead many of these artists and photographers to see current AI technologies as their god given right to use anyway they like. As well as keep their silence on Palestine lip locked as to not offend potential donors and collectors who believe in a superiority of certain people’s human rights over another group of people. It's amusing to act like this is not what this is about when it comes to Israel versus Palestine. The positioning of a colonial power formally claiming their people matter more.

People don't want to say out loud the obvious in their support of Israel over Palestinians. They believe Israeli and Jewish people who support Israel matter more than Palestinians. They don't see them on an equal footing, they don't see them as human. They see Palestinians as inconveniences. To some others Palestinians are completely invisible. It’s Gaza a strip of land to them not a people. Rubble not bodies. Infrastructure and buildings, not families and history vanquished.

This is what supremacy over others is, this is colonization and dehumanization. Is this so difficult to grasp? Well the above opinion may soon become illegal with overwhelming support of Democrats in congress. Though I heard Nadler pushed back but we’ll see.

Artists can't claim to speak to a universal human condition displayed in their work if they're silent on these issues. A technology that can upend society for most people for the worst including art, because even if you don't care about human society as a whole as an artist you should care about art. The first genocide of the 21st century paid and proudly supported by our government should also be on your radar and alarm if you spent years fearing and speaking up about the maniac who could very well slide back into office. 

The artists's silence as of late (across all mediums) scares me more than the cops beating up student protestors of what signs trying to read into. If artists are so disconnected in this moment they are not going to be some go to for survival and moral guidance in a fascist regime change coming to an election near you. 

Maybe as artist we shouldn't be bestowed as having special moral authority and wisdom to speak to the human condition, human rights and abuses. That we have the key to reach into the depths of the soul to shake its moral barometer. Speak the truth to power, show society the ugliness that underlies it all by holding up mirrors if so many in the art world and photo world can stay almost dead silent on the first genocide of the 21st century in high definition screened and screamed streaming on our phones 24/7.

The real test of an assimilation and falling in line with fascism is not Donald Trump it’s Israel’s genocide on Gaza. Trump is easy to resist, he’s child’s play. It’s frightening yes there are children who do want to play happily with him. 

Excusing almost all hospitals being bombed and destroyed with mass graves found among the ruins. The propaganda of ‘infants are only executed in people’s arms because Hamas is holding them as they point the gun at the brave IDF who do not want to kill anyone,' seriously this was a video. People eating grass, tens of thousands of people dead, organs stolen, people whose heads are found decapitated, surgical tools reused, no anesthesia, doctors murdered, the stop flow of humanitarian aid. The World Central Kitchen executions. Israeli politicians live on camera calling for the complete annihilation of Gaza, people saying they'd love living near the beach as theirs to claim in Gaza eventually. If you are on the side making excuses for all of this and/or support those people regardless because Israel has a right of self defense the right to live by any means and force necessary, you wouldn’t last a day resisting under a real fascist regime. You’d fall in line.

Abortion is *__________________* of our time and this man's horrible past record and current helpless incompetence and weakness on standing up for reproductive issues in the last almost 2 years along with his genocidal support for Israel could just take it all out. 

 Democratic primary voters made a horrible mistake in 2020 and everyone else who warned about Biden's early poor performance and ongoing vulnerabilities was shushed and dismissed. Now it's come back to haunt us all. How could this be worse than 2016? 

*1.17.2026*

Abortion is *the winning coalition issue* 

 yes I guess that would take a while if ever, meaning never, since it hasn't clicked for even some of you left wing women who don't get class first doesn't exist without this right. Anyway, at least the amendments being aisle crossed is nice. 

 Coming across the executions of the World Central Kitchen staff earlier and from having read accounts of whatever the fuck non logic looping in Biden's head about this issue of Israel's genocide on Gaza, I realized that Biden is just too committed to change course at this point. Which I feared when the massacre of Oct. 7 took place. I felt immediate dread of the retaliation many could foresee that would unfold. I imagined further into the future, knowing Biden's fanatical 50+ years support of Israel, decades long friendship with butcher Bibi, and how Biden's massive 'don't tell me what I'm doing I know what I'm doing' ego was going to be the greatest hurdle and possibly put the whole presidency in jeopardy so here we are today.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/03/world-central-kitchen-workers-killed-israel-gaza-jose-andres

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/03/1242489621/world-central-kitchen-aid-workers-killed-gaza

No state is more important than people and none ever will be. 

How can so many have lost their humanity in defense of the position that a nation state matters more than human lives?

Do I not just fit into the world? And what kind of world would I even want to fit into if that's the case. 

Watching genocide in high definition, done in the name of protecting people as if they are more sacred and deserving than the people originally ethnically cleansed off the land. Those who remained eventually existed in an open air prison, and now the people who are alive in the present are in a wasteland. But don’t worry if one is to question this logic attacks on their character will occur over and over.

Well fuck that noise. Free Palestine. 

The mainstream art world (and academia) has been particularly cowardly despite positioning themselves as speaking truth to power, free speech and expression. "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," yet all we hear from these institutions is crickets along with news of people's work taken down, shows canceled, and people kicked off panels. Pop celebrities have taken bigger risks ironically. 

There is worldwide courage from everyday people happening daily and complicity and spinelessness from those with power. Same as it ever was.

From the river to the sea. 🍉

In honor of the coward and warmonger once upon a time a progressive dream Fetterman also known as Israel's cheerleading ethnic cleansing ''if I'm the last man standing on this horrific stance so be it' bully

   A coward, a bully, a poseur in your empathy for the oppressed and forgotten. I think deep down you know you lack sensitivity that’s why you act to compensate whatever ego you have or your weakness and insecurity of one. You are aware there is a bully inside that you kept trying to hide and escape from. Yet now you have acquired power and treatment you feel ennobled you don’t owe anyone anything. You throw your wife under the bus even. You grin ghoulishly at the people pleading for you to understand the Palestinian’s horror and plight of the last 75 years. 

  You lie and say you have no idea what happened to progressives when you have been in these circles for years and exclaimed those were your people. You throw the term “pinko” as if you transformed into some Archie Bunker character. You positioned yourself for years on the political stage saying you stand up for the common man but those with clear eyed empathy can now see right through that. I’m ashamed to have supported and believed in you and waived away my first impressions of you. All those on the political right who attacked, belittled and demeaned not only you but your family now they sing your praises, and you do a photo shoot for one of the biggest media platforms for right wing propaganda. 

  

  One day this will all catch up in some form. I hope one day if you realize what you gave up it pains you a soul crushing ache that never abates. And as you try to sleep off these bouts of dread and sorrow you become consumed with the imagery and screams of the Palestinians. Especially the children who have been killed, maimed, and the ones who have to go on surviving after the genocide show.

Through your dismissal of the Palestinians you have given complicity to the media and political figures finding ways to distort the dead to not be seen as victims but as hollowed ghosts who had dreadful lives filled with backward violent people that didn’t matter. To you those people could never be real victims. Their truth and history is inconvenient for your narrative. But you are lucky you don’t even try to both sides this issue because they aren’t human to you.

  If I were religious I would pray that your fabricated bravery and astute acknowledgment that “war is hell” and full guttural maniacal support of Israel leaves an unmovable stain on your career. But you’re a politician in a country with short term memory of genocidal conflicts this country funds and perpetuates in lands many couldn’t point to on a map because it’s ‘over there.’ You will probably be off the hook by most sadly. I’m glad you blotted out your tattoo because you don’t believe in the core values of any of that. And even if you don’t come to any realizations as most cowards don’t, I hope the screams of the dead and dispossessed in Palestine and all in the diaspora haunt your dreams forever.

 I see people who it seems in any other context should know a thousand times better and those who try honestly to be good and compassionate people (that's what makes it even more tragic and angering) are being propagandized by a powerful state, to agree that in the state's national interest that this state can finally fully get backing to incinerate Gaza and assassinate as many Palestinians as possible. Because of the unconscionable acts of a terrorist organization the world is looking on to excuse a mass genocide and co-signing. I have such sickness in my heart that the people who knew after 9/11 what exactly was going to happen next can't see they are saying this is ok in THIS matter and some of them agreeing that if you don't agree you should be silenced. The spokesperson of IDF said civilians are collateral damage on live TV with no pushback or a "fuck you war monger." People who proudly espouse progressive ideas and even take actual action are complicit. Those also who were out in the streets during the Floyd protest as a lightbulb moment went off for them that the state happily co-signs the people abusing and killing others in the name of "protection" and "service" now have that lightbulb turned off willingly. Disappointing, depressing, saddening, grotesque...And when the deaths pile up to an amount that is even too unacceptable for the media's military industrial complex fever dream what will they say as an excuse? The car crash of human history wages on and it speaks up from it's ever growing open grave "just go beyond the doorway and lock it away to say "that was just human history."