Bad Poetry: Otherwise Engaged

"I worry when I see no post!

Was damage done by storms that raged?"

Worrying's never worth its cost;

I have been otherwise engaged.

"This war that 'refugees' have waged

Upon the public exchequer"--

I have been otherwise engaged;

Cela ne fait rien d'en parler.

This web site's, I consider, paid

(Though I've been otherwise engaged);

Free Internet time's a fair trade,

While frantically the mouse pad's paged

Where I've been otherwise engaged

With other topics, other sites.

Dear readers, please don't be enraged

If posts are later than by rights

They should have been; the time I've gauged,

But I've been otherwise engaged.

This started out as an exercise in a classical French verse form, but it twisted in my typing fingers.

Cela ne fait rien (often pronounced fast enough to sound like "San-Ferry-Ann") = it's not doing anything, it's no use. D'en parler = to talk about it.

Now a short quick rant about what's been blowing up the Internet...I'll say this about the bogus day care scandal. I think that actually, if "day care providers" for young children go through the trouble of certification, then only care for one or two children of friends of the owners and close their doors once those children are in school, that is the ideal type of day care. The only problem is that some day care providers have continued pretending that they're minding dozens of children when in fact they're not even bothering to open the building. 

I'm not pleased by the stereotypes people are throwing around about Somali refugees, specifically, as if they were any worse than any other lot of people who would prefer to be earning a living as artisans but can't get work and are pushed into the position of full-time "needers"--social parasites. If the society around you forces you into the role of parasite, beggar, thief, prostitute, slave, etc., you constantly see that you are not getting as much respect as people who have more money are getting, and you will naturally feel that it's reasonable to take the social system that oppresses you for all you can take, with a goal of going somewhere else as a person who has a normal amount of money and gets a normal level of respect. I'm not saying that the "daycare" and "health care" grifters are justified in fraudulently reporting that they're "caring for" more and more people when in fact they're caring for none. I am saying that the behavior pattern is not specific to any ethnic group or age group or religious group or any other kind of demographic. 

Nor am I opposing our government's decisions...What the "conservatives" forget, when blaming Congressman Emmer for legalizing so many Somalis' coming here, is Congressman Emmer's reasoning at the time. He observed that people who had lost their homes and livelihoods in that country's civil war were vulnerable to a Muslim extremist group called Al-Shabaad, a separate group from Al-Qaeda or Boko Haram but similarly dangerous, and he thought bringing people to the US would give them the information they needed to judge Al-Shabaad's rhetoric. As a guess he expected that some of these refugees might be a burden on our budget but thought they'd be less of one than any more attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center or the London Tube. Is it terribly cynical to guess that Al-Shabaad has become less of a threat now? 

This whole "breaking news" story shows all the signs of something that's been brewing for a few years, probably planned by Al-Shabaad watchers. People knew that these businesses were not actually doing any business. Those whose job descriptions didn't require them to pay attention probably thought that was because of the COVID panic--which obviously did shut down legitimate day care facilities for children and disabled adults. Those who were paying attention knew that this business and that business had become shameless scams. Charlie Kirk was probably the rising star who would have been given the tips and leads to break the news story, if he'd been alive. He wasn't, so Nick Shirley was picked. One news reader's comment seemed particularly idiotic--one should never underestimate the intensity of adolescent energy--but, yes, not only did older people help Shirley plan and fund his fact-finding expeition, but one of them actually spoke on camera in his video report. The way the news broke does suggest to me that old, rich people were discussing and deciding: "Yes, we can send those Somalis back home now. Pick the young talent we're going to make famous. White men are feeling discriminated against--let's pick a White boy." 

So, should the Somali scammers be sent home now? I'm not really happy with the President of the United States having to step in when a large group of people are doing something wrong; I think local governments should be able to handle that sort of thing before the problem expands to include a large group. But yes, if they've been here for more than ten years, and despite all the radios blaring "You Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee" at them they're still living like refugees--I think that is an indication that they should be looking for another place to live. They can't go on scamming us for government grants and subsidies forever, and they're obviously not qualified for other jobs here, so if they don't want to go back to Somalia maybe they should be choosing other places to go now. 

And I am thoroughly bored with people who cling to that image of a man who shows one of those patterns of malnutrition producing an irregular kind of face (didn't everyone see the chart pinning different kinds of less-than-classic face shapes to different dietary deficiencies, in Adelle Davis's Let's Have Healthy Children, in the 1970s?) and say "Yes, that's what they're all like, and their IQ score is below 70." Those effects are found when people grow up in disasters, famines, and wars. Somali people who were born and grew up in normal circumstances are not stupid or ugly. Far from it. 

For years the model rated "the most beautiful woman on Earth" was Somali. You readers undoubtedly knew that. Please feel free to share this fact with all the igmos whose comments you have to wade through when doing online research.