The Hip Hop Anthropologist

   Dennis Shipman is currently Chief Ethnographer & Consulting Officer for Applied Anthropologics, Inc.. Dennis has an eclectic background punctuated by world travel that includes a brief stint with la Légion étrangère. He was born on New York’s Long Island. Dennis never graduated from high school. Westbury public school district issued him one of the state’s first “Letter of Completion.” Basically, it stated that he had completed 12 years of high school, but was deficient or, more accurately, short enough credit hours to be formally graduated. While living in Trenton, New Jersey, he was told by a Navy recruiter that his scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery [ASVTB] were so high he could easily pass his GED. One never to disappoint, he took the walk-in examination given at Mercer County Community College without any preparation and was granted a General Equivalency Diploma (GED) shortly thereafter by the New Jersey Department of Education. A true renaiss...

Donald John Trump has brutally ripped the façade of democracy off the body politic for the entire world to see. America has become a failed state; a banana republic, that no longer enjoys a moral imperative; one we once took for granted. It abandons its allies while embracing its enemies; imprisons minorities it wishes to control while discriminating against those it cannot. Elected officials buy their way into office while well-heeled criminals buy their way out of prison. And corporations are “similarly situated…” The final nail in the remains of our representative democracy was banged into the coffin by the total capitulation of the Senate. It cynically voted in unqualified judges to lifetime appointments on Article III courts; and, refused to vote bipartisan legislation by the lower house into law; or, hold 45 accountable for his treachery. We no longer live in a free, open, and fair society -- if ever we did. And we can thank 45 and his henchmen for savagely disabusing us of th...