Recording
________________________________________________
I'm no quack, I'm a crackerjack, better in the sack than Khalil Mack, I pack a knack for snapping back when I attack the track, I rack up accolades cuz I a-m change call me a quarterback, I'll hack a Mac with a fax machine and ask, how you like them Apples, Wozniak? I don't lack for tact, I manufacture truth like alternative facts, then cackle and watch em squirm, call me a pachyderm cuz I got thick skin, smooth operator like Hamiltonians, 3-star rating from Michelin, dirty flow like Flint Michigan, rally so fast call me Wimbledon, trophy case full cuz I only win, evangelize like I was born-again, first birth in the city of Bethlehem.
Got all the tricks, I’m unfair at bridge
More fans than David Miscavige
Greatness is in my heritage
I’m so cool you’ll need to spare a fridge
Ang-kor a ship like the Khmer exist
Even my superiors address me as mis-ter,
Transport you to Oz like a twis-ter,
Dorothy fell in love when I kissed her
I rap so fast I got blis-ters,
Controlled flow like transis-tors
Call it Kurds and Wei cuz I gassed Saddam Hussein’s Haram insane ass to a backwards age when a fascist reigned over the USA, a pander-in’ thief made commander-in-chief of a racist fief, a rancid nation, emancipation from this disenchanted Reich begins when I chant into the mic, I’ll take flight like a feisty shrike, ignite the minds of every tyke ‘till I’m two-tired like a bike. Psyche! I go all night, fight from dusk to light cuz I got no bounds like a bottle of Klein but still churn out jewels like a diamond mine.
So much green I’m like a patch of cabbage
Losin’ me more tragic than a miscarriage
Got so many rings I’m like a failed marriage
Just bein’ real, not tryna disparage
I’m a Flash Player, got a million versions
Nicknamed immortal, an army of Persians
Wrap your head 'round me like your brain’s a turban
Cuz I’m nothin’ to fuck with like a horde of virgins
I got more brands than laundry detergents
Enemies endangered like a school of sturgeons
Treat ‘em how my country treats enemy insurgents
Like the legacy of Japanese internments
I’m so bomb caused nuclear deterrence
Climate change is due to my emergence
My raps save lives like a team of surgeons
The Second Coming’s what they call my resurgence
It all points to me like a negative divergence
And I’m independent from my exes, like uniform convergence
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
On Justice
One of the most toxic ideas in American culture is the tacit association of justice with punishment. Of all the morally backwards, medieval institutions in our society, our continued physical, mental, and sexual torture of prisoners is one of the most heinous. Prisoners are some of the most marginalized, disenfranchised people in the US. According to a 2016 study, "research has consistently shown that prisoners have high rates of psychiatric disorders". To me, this statistic already suggests punishment is not the right course of action. People with poor mental health should not be subject to harm; they are the ones who need the most help.
Let's say we start giving criminals with mental health problems psychiatric help instead of incarcerating them. What about everyone else? Other good predictors of crime are maternal smoking during pregnancy/other prenatal traumas, childhood abuse, social isolation, and low socioeconomic status. None of these things are in a person's control, so they are also bad reasons for punishment. But they are all good reasons to rehabilitate and support people who commit crimes.
Let's say we stop punishing everyone who commits crimes due to the above factors, so all we have left are mentally healthy people who are criminals for bad reasons, like maybe they're really greedy or narcissistic or whatever. Even then, punishment would have little place in our justice system. Punishment is not good at deterring crime. Prisoners have over a 75% recidivism rate over a 5-year period. When you consider the incentive structures involved, it's really not hard to see why: The for-profit prison industrial complex has every motivation to keep growing its incarcerated populations, and no incentive to rehabilitate them. Yet it would be far better for society if all those greedy, narcissistic people were rehabilitated rather than incarcerated -- and if that's not possible, they should at least have to repair the harms they've caused.
Punishment as justice is philosophically broken. It's really weird that our typical punishment for a serious crime, a prison sentence, is not at all related to the crime itself, and totally strips the victim of all agency. Imagine if criminals saw the suffering they inflicted on their victims and had to actually address those harms instead of sitting in a room for some arbitrary timespan. Imagine if victims saw the reasons why criminals did what they did, rather than not being able to interact with them at all. How much more human potential could we tap? How much more compassionate and kind could we become? How much more togetherness and understanding could we foster?
Let's say someone harms you in some way. In one scenario, they go through a court process you have no control over and waste a few years of their life in prison. Let's say this experience teaches them a lesson and they never commit a crime again (even though this rarely happens). In the other scenario, they are forced to honestly confront the consequences of their actions. You show them how their behavior has impacted you, they take responsibility for it, and then they take meaningful steps to repair those harms. Not only is the second scenario better for the person who harmed you, it's better for you, because you actually had a voice in the process and the person responsible tried to make amends. This is restorative justice. It's far more fulfilling to see someone grow than to see them punished. It reminds me of a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." How sweet that is.
Of course, saying all this is easy, but I'm not sure if I could do it in practice. I see an inspirational story of a woman who took the restorative justice route with her husband's murderer and wonder if I could be that strong. It's normal to wonder. After someone hurts you, it's natural to want them to suffer, to seek retribution, to take pleasure in their sorrow -- but this is not true strength. True strength is wanting the best for them. True enlightenment is wanting the person who hurt you to thrive, because people who are thriving are far less likely to commit crimes. There is a grain of truth in the idea of karma, because people who suffer are more likely to inflict suffering on others, while people who are happy are more likely to bring happiness to others. To paraphrase MLK, suffering anywhere is a threat to happiness everywhere.
Buddhism/Hinduism is just one example of our understanding of this truth. Christianity is another. I was talking with some Christian friends about the notion of justice in their religion. One of the great paradoxes in Christian doctrine is the simultaneity of God being perfectly merciful and perfectly just. I thought this was a major flaw in Christianity for a long time, but upon greater reflection, this is no paradox at all; in fact, there is great wisdom in this teaching. The true nature of justice is mercy, not revenge, or punishment, or deterrence. My best crime-prevention strategies are to improve education, social mobility, and sense of community. My ideal notion of justice is restorative, healing, concerned with the victim and the perpetrator in equal measure. This is the world I want to live in.
Let's say we start giving criminals with mental health problems psychiatric help instead of incarcerating them. What about everyone else? Other good predictors of crime are maternal smoking during pregnancy/other prenatal traumas, childhood abuse, social isolation, and low socioeconomic status. None of these things are in a person's control, so they are also bad reasons for punishment. But they are all good reasons to rehabilitate and support people who commit crimes.
Let's say we stop punishing everyone who commits crimes due to the above factors, so all we have left are mentally healthy people who are criminals for bad reasons, like maybe they're really greedy or narcissistic or whatever. Even then, punishment would have little place in our justice system. Punishment is not good at deterring crime. Prisoners have over a 75% recidivism rate over a 5-year period. When you consider the incentive structures involved, it's really not hard to see why: The for-profit prison industrial complex has every motivation to keep growing its incarcerated populations, and no incentive to rehabilitate them. Yet it would be far better for society if all those greedy, narcissistic people were rehabilitated rather than incarcerated -- and if that's not possible, they should at least have to repair the harms they've caused.
Punishment as justice is philosophically broken. It's really weird that our typical punishment for a serious crime, a prison sentence, is not at all related to the crime itself, and totally strips the victim of all agency. Imagine if criminals saw the suffering they inflicted on their victims and had to actually address those harms instead of sitting in a room for some arbitrary timespan. Imagine if victims saw the reasons why criminals did what they did, rather than not being able to interact with them at all. How much more human potential could we tap? How much more compassionate and kind could we become? How much more togetherness and understanding could we foster?
Let's say someone harms you in some way. In one scenario, they go through a court process you have no control over and waste a few years of their life in prison. Let's say this experience teaches them a lesson and they never commit a crime again (even though this rarely happens). In the other scenario, they are forced to honestly confront the consequences of their actions. You show them how their behavior has impacted you, they take responsibility for it, and then they take meaningful steps to repair those harms. Not only is the second scenario better for the person who harmed you, it's better for you, because you actually had a voice in the process and the person responsible tried to make amends. This is restorative justice. It's far more fulfilling to see someone grow than to see them punished. It reminds me of a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." How sweet that is.
Of course, saying all this is easy, but I'm not sure if I could do it in practice. I see an inspirational story of a woman who took the restorative justice route with her husband's murderer and wonder if I could be that strong. It's normal to wonder. After someone hurts you, it's natural to want them to suffer, to seek retribution, to take pleasure in their sorrow -- but this is not true strength. True strength is wanting the best for them. True enlightenment is wanting the person who hurt you to thrive, because people who are thriving are far less likely to commit crimes. There is a grain of truth in the idea of karma, because people who suffer are more likely to inflict suffering on others, while people who are happy are more likely to bring happiness to others. To paraphrase MLK, suffering anywhere is a threat to happiness everywhere.
Buddhism/Hinduism is just one example of our understanding of this truth. Christianity is another. I was talking with some Christian friends about the notion of justice in their religion. One of the great paradoxes in Christian doctrine is the simultaneity of God being perfectly merciful and perfectly just. I thought this was a major flaw in Christianity for a long time, but upon greater reflection, this is no paradox at all; in fact, there is great wisdom in this teaching. The true nature of justice is mercy, not revenge, or punishment, or deterrence. My best crime-prevention strategies are to improve education, social mobility, and sense of community. My ideal notion of justice is restorative, healing, concerned with the victim and the perpetrator in equal measure. This is the world I want to live in.
Monday, February 11, 2019
Blue Sky, Part Two
A long time ago, I wrote about the blueness of the sky. It was about the tragedy of moments where wonder goes unnoticed, and the importance of treasuring those moments. It was also about how blue the sky is. (It was actually mostly about that. It was a sweet post.) But adulthood is a series of bittersweetnesses, and time has come for bitterness.
The sky in Shanghai is always gray. In the absence of government regulation, big industry's unbounded growth has enshrouded the city under a permanent blanket of pollution. As I sat under that smog-choked canopy, thinking about how I missed the blueness of the sky, another, more grievous tragedy hit me: There might be people who are born in Shanghai and spend their whole lives there, and never even know the sky is blue. It hit me pretty hard.
In my previous post, I bemoaned how sad it was that there were people in this world with full access to the blueness of the sky who never appreciated it. I said it seemed "like a big deal to me, for some reason," that there would be people who never got to love something the same way I love it. In a sense, this was an arrogant, shallow indictment of something irrelevant to begin with. Who cares if someone doesn't enjoy something as I do? Who am I to complain about that? There are countless things people enjoy I don't fully appreciate, like horticulture, or sewing, or NASCAR, or marine biology. But the hypothetical Shanghai-dweller is different, because they never even got a chance to love this thing I love. Unbeknownst to them, they were denied the opportunity.
The horror of that epiphany hung with me until it was overshadowed by an even harsher, more painful one. It came from the testimony of a thirteen year old Pakistani boy who said before Congress, "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray." To my ears, his words rang with the bitter jadedness of children who are forced to grow up too quickly. This is a person -- a child, no less -- who once loved something beautiful, but whose love was taken away from them by something ugly. I've written before about how the transcendent power of love can subsume strong hatreds. But this can also happen in the opposite direction. The reverse side also has a reverse side.
I'm not sure why I wrote this. It definitely wasn't to tell you to not take things for granted and treasure what you have -- that message is so cliche I nearly fell asleep typing it. It wasn't intended to be a thinly-veiled political message about environmentalism and anti-war sentiment either, because I don't like writing political opinions. So maybe I wrote it because I secretly crave that melancholy feeling that comes after expressing something sad. Maybe I wrote it because I wanted to show myself how adult I am, and I equate adulthood with cynicism and bitterness. Maybe I wrote it because I actually have become more cynical and bitter over time, and this is just who I am now. Whatever the reason is, it doesn't matter. The sky is still as blue as it ever was, and I still love it. But some people never will.
The sky in Shanghai is always gray. In the absence of government regulation, big industry's unbounded growth has enshrouded the city under a permanent blanket of pollution. As I sat under that smog-choked canopy, thinking about how I missed the blueness of the sky, another, more grievous tragedy hit me: There might be people who are born in Shanghai and spend their whole lives there, and never even know the sky is blue. It hit me pretty hard.
In my previous post, I bemoaned how sad it was that there were people in this world with full access to the blueness of the sky who never appreciated it. I said it seemed "like a big deal to me, for some reason," that there would be people who never got to love something the same way I love it. In a sense, this was an arrogant, shallow indictment of something irrelevant to begin with. Who cares if someone doesn't enjoy something as I do? Who am I to complain about that? There are countless things people enjoy I don't fully appreciate, like horticulture, or sewing, or NASCAR, or marine biology. But the hypothetical Shanghai-dweller is different, because they never even got a chance to love this thing I love. Unbeknownst to them, they were denied the opportunity.
The horror of that epiphany hung with me until it was overshadowed by an even harsher, more painful one. It came from the testimony of a thirteen year old Pakistani boy who said before Congress, "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray." To my ears, his words rang with the bitter jadedness of children who are forced to grow up too quickly. This is a person -- a child, no less -- who once loved something beautiful, but whose love was taken away from them by something ugly. I've written before about how the transcendent power of love can subsume strong hatreds. But this can also happen in the opposite direction. The reverse side also has a reverse side.
I'm not sure why I wrote this. It definitely wasn't to tell you to not take things for granted and treasure what you have -- that message is so cliche I nearly fell asleep typing it. It wasn't intended to be a thinly-veiled political message about environmentalism and anti-war sentiment either, because I don't like writing political opinions. So maybe I wrote it because I secretly crave that melancholy feeling that comes after expressing something sad. Maybe I wrote it because I wanted to show myself how adult I am, and I equate adulthood with cynicism and bitterness. Maybe I wrote it because I actually have become more cynical and bitter over time, and this is just who I am now. Whatever the reason is, it doesn't matter. The sky is still as blue as it ever was, and I still love it. But some people never will.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Lyrics: Questionable Comparisons
Recording
I’m rococo and so swole
Caught a whale in a chokehold
From his tail to his blowhole
Gave him some ox-ycodone
Cuz I'm the merciful Wei,
From Taipei to Marseille
I'm parfait, el padre,
So obey my dictates
Or doomsday may soon stay
Bid your Mum-bai like Bombay
This entree like Swan Lake
A ballet, my work'll take flight
Like blue jays
Who says I'm cliche?
Check the replay, I'm gourmet
A bouquet, a mainstay
A buffet, so feast your eyes
As I commit vehicular ho-
micide with a Chevrolet on my birthday
And watch God stay
On my side cuz his name's Yah-Wei
For you life is a series of tradeoffs
I sat back, relaxed, and still got paid off
I made off with the cash like I was Madoff
While everyone was busy getting laid off
No one could em-ulate my stash like I was Adolf
Thought the stars were pure? You’re way off
Call it the Milky Wei cuz I make it when I jerk off
I’m so clutch might as well be a manual
Critique pure reason like Immanuel
So instructive you could call me a manual
Or just call me a man you-will soon see
Success is what defines my philosophy
Dissing myself would be hypocrisy
So divine my existence is apostasy
Could only get on my- level through larceny
And I'm nothin’ but net, like Magic Johnson’s team
Fast with the ball like it’s Rocket League
My EP considered arson of the first degree
I jive the hive mind by drive-by call me a queen
Un-real standards like co-vers of magazines
So self-made got paid by- IKEA’s team
One level up so call me the mezzanine
So much money ‘slike I was embezzling
Flow so sick they call in a quarantine
But Still so smooth like two jars of Vaseline
Light up the stage like it was doused in some kerosine
I got energy, like I'm triphosphate adenosine
Plenty to spare cuz I’m made outta creatine
Re-make a state like Pan-cho Villa’s been
Chop off heads like I was a guillotine
Time to wrap this rap up like a stupid pharaoh
Verses pierce your heart like Cupid’s arrow
I'm fierce but I play the part, I’m on the straight and narrow
But I slay the art, break the bones and suck the marrow
Sharp dressed man describes my apparel,
Jabberwock the talk like I was Lewis Carroll
Challenging me’s an act o’ mortal peril
I’m rococo and so swole
Caught a whale in a chokehold
From his tail to his blowhole
Gave him some ox-ycodone
Cuz I'm the merciful Wei,
From Taipei to Marseille
I'm parfait, el padre,
So obey my dictates
Or doomsday may soon stay
Bid your Mum-bai like Bombay
This entree like Swan Lake
A ballet, my work'll take flight
Like blue jays
Who says I'm cliche?
Check the replay, I'm gourmet
A bouquet, a mainstay
A buffet, so feast your eyes
As I commit vehicular ho-
micide with a Chevrolet on my birthday
And watch God stay
On my side cuz his name's Yah-Wei
For you life is a series of tradeoffs
I sat back, relaxed, and still got paid off
I made off with the cash like I was Madoff
While everyone was busy getting laid off
No one could em-ulate my stash like I was Adolf
Thought the stars were pure? You’re way off
Call it the Milky Wei cuz I make it when I jerk off
I’m so clutch might as well be a manual
Critique pure reason like Immanuel
So instructive you could call me a manual
Or just call me a man you-will soon see
Success is what defines my philosophy
Dissing myself would be hypocrisy
So divine my existence is apostasy
Could only get on my- level through larceny
And I'm nothin’ but net, like Magic Johnson’s team
Fast with the ball like it’s Rocket League
My EP considered arson of the first degree
I jive the hive mind by drive-by call me a queen
Un-real standards like co-vers of magazines
So self-made got paid by- IKEA’s team
One level up so call me the mezzanine
So much money ‘slike I was embezzling
Flow so sick they call in a quarantine
But Still so smooth like two jars of Vaseline
Light up the stage like it was doused in some kerosine
I got energy, like I'm triphosphate adenosine
Plenty to spare cuz I’m made outta creatine
Re-make a state like Pan-cho Villa’s been
Chop off heads like I was a guillotine
Time to wrap this rap up like a stupid pharaoh
Verses pierce your heart like Cupid’s arrow
I'm fierce but I play the part, I’m on the straight and narrow
But I slay the art, break the bones and suck the marrow
Sharp dressed man describes my apparel,
Jabberwock the talk like I was Lewis Carroll
Challenging me’s an act o’ mortal peril
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