State Of Confusion (Exorcism-SOTU Edition.)

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenberg's, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it. 

~Billy Joel, We Didn't Start The Fire.

...

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

...

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

So, in last night's State Of The Union, Trump finally went full Fidel Castro.

"History Will Absolve Me." ~Fidel Castro.

Note: You Never go the full Fidel Castro.

And then the motherfucker had the nerve to call Zohran Mamdani a Communist.

First off, Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

I know, I was there. I watched the Berlin Wall fall live on CNN.

Second, I didn't watch the whole speech, hell I didn't even watch clips of it I just watched Rick Wilson's Lincoln Project analysis this morning and the whole fucking mess would be better titled "State Of Confusion."

Republicans forgot what the fuck they were supposed to be doing a long time ago.

Basically, they got addicted to blowing the narcissist. Now, having been married to a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder, I sort of get it. Crazy can be fun...for awhile.

But Republicans are officially at the "Already Left Once, then Went Back For More" stage and it's working out exactly like that shit does every time. 

The Republican Party is eventually gonna wake up flat-ass broke, with a sore ass, groggy in a dirty gas-station restroom with its wallet missing and a $256 overdraft on their checking accounts while Trump hits the bar with Kim Long Dong, Vladimir Putin and whatever ancient ass Soviet Politburo members he can dig up.

Although really, to look at the average Russian official or, in fact, about any Russian over 40...what's the damn difference? Every older Russian dude has a face like the mutant love-child of a Basset Hound and an old-ass leather shoe anyway and most older Russian women look like my ex-wife if she would've drunk a fifth of the cheapest available Vodka straight out of the bottle every day for the last 20 years with a side order of Kratom and too much fast food.

Slap a bad suit on a couple random Russians and Lord Dampnut wouldn't know the fucking difference as long as they pretend to kiss his ass.

(And these are literally the people who think if you aren't a Russian you should be their bitch...and they frame this in explicit racist terms even against other "White" people...Republicans who 20 or even 10 years ago *Checks Notes* called Ronald Reagan [Who famously referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire] their Patron Saint if not God Himself--my late uncle, as I've said before was explicitly one of those guys, and he hated Trump-now can't wait to drop their pants and bend over for this goddamned bullshit.)

Now I realize that this whole mess is basically the product of bigotry and a sort of puerile Anti-Liberal perpetual "Opposite Day" line of bullshit like how my ex played on End Times Christianity.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Technically, my ex actually did believe in that shit too, though. She just believed in scamming guys out of money in general and manipulating me in particular a lot more.

These Fucking People are lining themselves up to get destroyed about like I was when I let my ex move back in because she was having trouble keeping a job and couldn't make her rent. Do I even need to tell you how much of a fiasco that was??

Oh, and it was this time of year in 2001, also.

And just like I did, America, you're going to have to quit this bullshit and spend the next few years fighting to get your life back, rebuild something at least and if we're being honest, probably let these assholes who keep believing in this shit take some small part of the country for themselves as if Florida ain't already a goddamned Banana Republic under our own damn flag. And we're gonna have to let these idiots wander off and basically destroy themselves.

And learn to fucking say "No."

And mean it.

And potentially back up that word with literal force.

Because it will come to that.

All that comes before the fact that we basically need an Elijah to confront the Epstein mess and our modern day Prophets of Baal.

That's going to have to be dealt with too.

Again, and I've been saying this since my partner and I got back together in June and since I've been forcibly reintroduced to the concept of fatherhood and of constantly trying to be a decent, protective guy because I actually do like the women in my life, these fucking people's treatment of women absolutely repulses me and fills me with white-hot rage.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

I love my partner. I loved her when she was just a 20-year-old college dropout who'd become the loud brassy bitch in our work clique and gaming group and when she was my late best friend's ex-girlfriend who needed a place to stay. I loved her when we were long-distancing it when she lived in Tennessee and God Willing I'll still love her in another 20 years.

When my surviving now-former best friend turned all creepy sexual harasser almost the second he found out I was talking to her, I got a very bad vibe and to be honest it almost seems Demonic now. This dude wasn't like this 20 years ago.

And I know where he got this bullshit, listening to Manosphere chuds all day while he drives for work, pretty much. Yeah I was caught up in the same bro-culture bullshit he was but the difference is I grew up. Fuck him.

I said what I said in response and I still stand by that.

Guys, ya'll need Jesus, this Ain't the Way.

But, in the wake of all the Epstein revelations there's something Biblical-level evil about all this anti-woman bullshit.

Biblical-grade Evil demands Biblical-grade Justice. 

I don't make the rules.

I say we need a national exorcism for a goddamned reason.

The trouble is so many of these idiots are so fucked up on their own narcissism that they don't want to be human anymore.

They think they're entitled to be gods.

Against that??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And this? This ain't it, yo.

You're not gonna defeat this shit with a vote or a strongly-worded memorandum.

You want this to stop?? You're going to have to fight for it.

Слава Україна!

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex.
JFK – blown away, what else do I have to say?

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it. ~Billy Joel, We Didn't Start The Fire.

Four

"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! ~Brother Cavil, "No Exit," Battlestar Galactica (Reboot) Season 4.5

Bonus Content 1

Bonus Content 2

Bonus Content 3

Heaven...Until The Power Goes Out (Exorcism, Four.)

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he strikes a man.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. ~Revelation 9, King James Version.

I saw this last night.

Apparently at the World Economic Forum, they're promising rich people some kind of AI Afterlife now.

I mean maybe it's just me and most of the rich people I know are cheap as fuck, but wouldn't belief in some religion and its afterlife just be *Checks Notes* Cheaper??

Of course, I suppose then they couldn't fully subscribe to Ayn Rand's belief in a godless, man-centered world where a rich man's self-satisfaction becomes the moral purpose of the Universe, now, could they?

Just sayin' people, don't do this to yourselves.

You can have an AI made and this, that and the other fuckin' thing, upload it into the Cloud, blah blah blah.

That still ain't you.

That still ain't your Soul.

You're still gonna face the judgment.

To me this reads like some fool trying to get out of breathing air, out of sheer misplaced self-importance.

Actually, from my rough-around-the-edges Christian context, well I'd say that Jesus is probably just gonna laugh at you.

Like, you made an AI Avatar of yourself like the Universe is a fucking Facebook page, out of sheer pants-shitting fear of the Void (even as, if you're rich enough to be in the Epstein files apparently, you worshiped the Demons that dwell within it.)

And then He'll go judge your Video Game self, too.

ALL things die, it's just how God, the gods, the Universe, whatever put all this together, made shit to work. It simply is what it is.

No amount of technology is gonna change that. No amount of fear will overcome it, only love can do that. What happens to your AI Data Center "Self" when the power goes out??

AI Heaven ain't gonna provide Eternal Life any more than AI Chatbot Jesus is gonna grant you Salvation.

It's at best a cardboard-cutout Jesus, and therefore completely meaningless.

(And for the record I don't see Buddhists or Jews or Muslims doing all this, it's mostly secular White Guys who come from cultures steeped in Christianity, so I feel alright using that specific context here.)

Like, come on, people. Is having Faith just that damn hard??

Because at worst, this kind of garbage is exactly the type of Deception that people go to Hell both for believing and propagating.

And again, I'm an agnostic Christian. I don't know how all this stuff works at least not with any degree of certainty anymore.

But that's just What. I. Read.

And either you're willing to believe in the written Word or you're not.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shined in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. ~John 1:1-5

The day is going to come when your choices will be only to embrace all this crap and take that computer chip in your hand and the best you can hope for is that Cloud Afterlife, or to fight against it and get to find out whether the Holy Books were right or not and whether there's a Heaven and a Hell.

I'd prefer my concept of Eternity to last past the next time the power goes out.

Seriously, in a country and a world as marinated in Christianity as the one I supposedly live in, I don't even know why I have to say this shit. This is why I think we need a national, if not global, exorcism.

Either you Believe or you don't.

Make up your minds.

Слава Україна!

The dark is generous and it is patient, and it always wins.

But at the heart of its strength lies weakness.

One lone candle is enough to hold it back.

Love is more than a candle; Love can ignite the stars.

~Matthew Stover, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith novelization.

Three

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! ~Brother Cavil, "No Exit," Battlestar Galactica (Reboot) Season 4.5

Sword of the (Bad) Spirits (Exorcism, Three.)

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 

~Matthew 25:31-45

...

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

I saw this yesterday.

James Fishback, who is, by the way, a scammy finance bro and not some kind of preacher or something (and who, despite the name, is a Spanish-speaking son of immigrants) wants to change divorce laws.

Uh, has this motherfucker met old Republicans??

I'm old enough to remember when Newt Gingrich effectively got shit-canned out of the Party for adultery at the same time as he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton, but what the fuck do I know??

Of course I get it. These motherfuckers think their bullshit will mostly affect women, or they wouldn't be trying to do this shit.

Like all these idiotic attempts to pass the Death Penalty for having an Abortion.

I'm so tired of this crap. It has no purpose. All too many of These Fucking People do not make the slightest effort to live up to the shit that comes out of their mouths.

It's not right, and all this bullshit posturing ends up hurting actual people.

And let me tell you why;

Okay, yeah, I admit that I've been pretty hard on conservative Evangelicals and shit down through the years, it's kind of what I do. But then for most of my life, I was conservative and pretty Evangelical-adjacent. I know more than most people do about this stuff, and I think I have a right to say something.

But here's the thing;

A lot of people don't stay with this crap. They get hurt and leave, they grow out of it, or they simply grow up. It's usually only the people with bad intentions who end up staying in it and maintain lockstep with people like Donald Trump, Doug Wilson and people like Pete Keg-Breath.

While there's always going to be people like Lauren Blowbert, for every one like her I know ten people like my partner or the vast majority of my House Church friends from my old job.

Or people like James Talarico, for that matter.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Let me give you an example (and I had to ask permission to share this story, mind you) 20 years ago when my partner and I were both working Third Shift at my old job, it's lunch break and me and a couple of the Gaming Group bros are sitting there in the smoking side of the breakroom eating and hashing out how we're going to adapt a few then-popular Christianity-related conspiracy-tinged things (One of them was the Da Vinci Code IIRC) into the long-running Vampire The Masquerade/White Wolf-overall game I ran. 

My partner, then younger and more combative (and also part of the gaming group, and that night we'd been working together) comes in, sits down, sees that the subject of the moment is politics-and-religion-tinged and a light goes on, like "Ooh, Ooh can we have an argument? Can we?? Can we??" She was very much a conservative Evangelical at the time.

(The kid thought me telling this story last month was quite hilarious while her mother glared razor-sharp daggers at me from across the table at the pizza place the whole time.)

She was mildly crestfallen to find out we were just talking Gaming but her input almost certainly closely followed the argument she thought she was gonna have.

Anyway, after break guess what? We had the argument, on the way back over to the hotel, the whole second half of the night, on the way home, into the living room and through the first smoke break of the day.

We ended up (for neither the first nor the last time) making out and dry-humping on the couch.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

At that time even the fact that we loved each other often manifested itself in arguments and fell (despite my no longer being in it) within the 'norms' of conservative Christian church culture.

Here's the thing; She grew out of being the right-wing debate girl, even if she still loves a good argument.

And if we want to defeat this crap, that kind of fierce, passionate energy is at least some of what we need.

A lot of that comes from women, in my experience.

Which is exactly why these weird creepers want to strip away women's rights and their right to participate in the goddamned argument.

Four Words, Beard-O.

"Over My Dead Body."

Not least because even 20 years ago when I was like, totally secular and not the least bit interested in this stuff and didn't want to even be bothered with it, when I occasionally attended a house-church mainly because there was Weed, I found it within myself to care about people who did believe in it and those people eventually showed me that it wasn't all the same rotten crap preached by False Prophets like Doug Wilson or Lauren Blowbert.

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

Hell, the second time we dated, when she was down in Tennessee, my partner even got me to go to church with her a few times.

I can't really say I was very impressed at the time, mostly, I did it for her.

But the truth is all those little efforts by people worked up to that when I heard the Epstein motherfuckers were into worshiping Baal and eating babies, I remembered all that I'd been taught.

And whether one wants to hear that or not, I really don't think secular liberalism is gonna be able to deal with this shit by itself, at least not without cold steel and hot, righteous rage to go with it.

Like I said I think there's a case to be made that we need a national exorcism at this point.

It's funny, so far, who I've seen feel threatened by that idea and who doesn't.

Like, there's a reason These Fucking People don't feel threatened by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, but that they do feel threatened by James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett.

And if it's people rooted in the Black church or who have theological educations vs. scummy finance bros who are trying too hard turned amateur Bible-thumpers, I think I like our odds.

But it's absolutely going to come down to a fight.

Don't be surprised if one of the later moves of the Goddamn Monsters is to go public with their demon-worshiping horseshit because, as the whole Trump thing has shown us...there are, 100% and then some, people in this just to be bad goddamn people.

And there's a reason these fucking people keep doubling down on performative acts and religiosity.

The letter of the law rather than the spirit of it, lends itself well to being used as a weapon.

They only ever adapted or co-opted everything else they ever did because they thought it might be a useful weapon to hurt somebody else.

Ultimate Evil will, as it turns out, be the same way.

They sure do want to take up the Sword of the Spirit...but only that of the Bad Spirits.

It should surprise nobody that it'll be the backsliders and the castoffs, the educated theologians and the LGBT folks, all of us "Sinners" who actually Believed and it's the wealthy white privileged church-as-social-club Republican assholes who turned out to be depraved monsters who will, in the end, worship demons if it helps them hang on to "Power" for a few minutes longer.

To shorten that time, it will come down to a fight.

And you either believe in freedom or you don't.

Including, by the way, freedom of conscience, religion, or thought.

There's a reason these people trying to make an AI Jesus to cover up real sins.

The only "Freedom" Republicans want is the "Freedom" to be bad people.

Слава Україна!

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

Two

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out!

[repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

The Unseeing (Exorcism, Two.)

 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

...

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

...

Cassian Andor: What? To steal from the Empire, what do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands, and an Imperial toolkit. They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied, they can’t imagine it…

Luthen Rael: Can’t imagine what?

Andor: That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E2 "That Would Be Me."

...

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this last night. 

Florida Republicans are naming the Palm Beach airport after Trump.

And, perversely enough, this shit reminded me of the day I met my ex-wife.

(Actually, Florida-related stuff does that more than I'd like. The over-the-top Banana Republic Conservatism and religiosity combined with the sexual morals of a goat that defines that place now was her vibe.)

It was towards the end of May, 2000. I'd somehow managed a Friday off from both of my jobs, had Saturday morning off because I was working an evening shift at the clubhouse, and I had money. Basically, the stars had to align correctly for all this to happen at once. I was thrilled.

So I'd decided to go over to Traverse City and go to Borders bookstore and a few other places, and because there was this girl I'd been talking to from over there I'd fired off a message on MSN Messenger and also called and left a message on her voicemail, with my then-new-and-exciting Nokia Track-Phone.

(LOL)

So I drove over there, did most of my running, went to PetSmart and got dog food, etc. Then I went to the book store basically with full intent to just hang out for the afternoon regardless of anything else. I ended up reading a good chunk of The Indwelling, the new Left Behind Series novel at the time...and thinking it was absolute crap. 

Note I was only just coming down off of being all about End Times Prophecy stuff.

As it turned out, I was a good couple hours into it and my girl called me, I told her where I was and asked if she wanted to meet and it turned out she was up for it. Hour or so later she showed up more in a T-shirt and fuzzy pink pajama bottoms but she was cute and chubby, flirty and, fun to hang out with and physical in a way my last girl definitely hadn't been so I didn't care. We ended up getting a coffee, sitting together and reading, I bought us both some books (although definitely not the one I'd been looking at) then we went to lunch at Chili's and ultimately we decided to go back to her place and hooked up and the rest is some seriously unfortunate history.

But at the time it seemed like a good day. 

Considering I was coming off a breakup it was the very best of days in the heat of the moment. I remember every damn thing about that day, unfortunately including every fucking line that I read in that book. Including the fact that the "Global Community" bad guys started renaming everything that wasn't nailed down after the Antichrist, from the highway system to the money.

Honestly I thought that was so ridiculous at the time that I still remember it all these years later. Actually, come to think of it the whole day ended up like that. I just didn't see the rest of it that way at the time.

And that entire day, including the sexual looseness of the moment (and keep in mind me and her were both different levels of Conservative Christian at the time) to a bunch of buried secrets I'd only discover later is a little too much like what all this shit has turned into now in real life.

Yeah, we were a bit of "Convenience Christians" ourselves but we were two consenting adults doing nothing much compared to what's being excused by These Fucking People nowadays!

We were also, still could be and if I can even now I'd assume she can be as well...observant Believers to the best of our ability.

Other people, apparently not so much.

Trump is the natural end result of the Prosperity Gospel and of empty spiritually vapid Pentecostalism more broadly.

More to the point this absurd desire to remake the world in Trump's bloated, doddering image is all too indicative of the mentality of what I call the "Atheism Minus One" people, the people who don't wanna believe in anything but some variant of Right-wing Christianity and Republican politics. 

Including rejecting not only every other religion (even Christian denominations) but rejecting the validity of reality and science themselves in favor of whatever conspiracy theories make their chosen (false) god look good.

Also typically such people see no difference between Christianity and being a Republican, the two things are fused together like they got melted by a dragon's fire-breath.

And as consequences and scrutiny intensify, yeah sure...some of these people will get disgusted and leave. Some will bow out and revert to sports-fandom or some other addiction to fill the Void. But, some will get weird and double- and triple-down infinitely on this fucking garbage.

Even now, and I say that because that type of shit has already been happening for years and by now most of the MAGA's that are still left have already done that kind of thing at least once.

Now I don't know if Trump is The Antichrist but MAGA and Trump and a lot of the other people associated with all this shit definitely are Antichrists and I find it interesting that even my ex-wife is apparently against this shit.

So is my partner, so is my conservative religious old-lady neighbor that I ran into when I went and checked the mail. I mean at this point being against Trump and this Ideology of Power and Wealth that now seems to be fine with cannibalism, murder and pedophilia is pretty much just a baseline for keeping one's Humanity somewhat intact.

But to me and given my own experience, the headline is more that the End Times conservative and Evangelical Christians have basically become the villains in their own goddamned fanfiction.

Complete with a bumptious Antichrist surrounded by ass-kissing yammering fools and literal False Prophets.

It's not just that they don't even care...honestly, I think they don't even notice.

Call it The Great Unseeing.

If you don't see why that's a problem I can't help you, and I'm not sure I want to try.

I'm not even sure a National Exorcism would fix this, because to get rid of the bad spirits, first you have to be willing to see that they're even there.

Слава Україна!

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

One

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 

~Matthew 25:31-45