We Dare To Defend Our Rights (Arsonists V.)

[n response to a soldier saying death is honorable] Kashiwara died of honorable dysentery. ~Saigo, from Letters From Iwo Jima.

I just saw this.

What the fuck is it with these people, really?

They would rather fight to the death against conspiracies that exist only in their own heads...but do so by lashing out at very real governments and people, which will certainly result in very real death and pain...than get a simple shot and spend 15 minutes or so waiting to make sure there's no adverse reaction?

Of course, these fucking people believe [Checks Notes] That COVID-19 is basically some grand super-secret plot against conservatives or some shit, and that getting vaccinated will, I don't know, something something Gazpacho Argle Bargle Deep State COMMUNISM! Fuck, I don't know, it's impossible for me to understand these fucking people's thought process. Actually, it really isn't that hard anymore because there doesn't seem to be one and this entire mess is pretty much like some kid shouting at a random adult "You can't tell me what to do!"

A friend of mine has long said that this virus is a lot of these fucking people's first crisis. Throw in the actual incompetence of Trump and others and I suppose to those inclined to be conspiratorial about all type of shit, who also happen to be dumber than fuck, it's got to look like some kind of conspiracy. 

It must be, because in these people's heads the Gospel Truth that is "Conservatism" can do no wrong. If I had to guess I'd say that when the dust settles from all this bullshit, their line is going to be that "True conservatism has never been tried" or that "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed."

Actually, I've heard that shit before, too.

Anything to protect the selfish, shitty philosophy by which these fucking people define their lives, I guess.

I suppose the truth that there really is a damn virus and Republicans have handled the matter with utter incompetence...on purpose and with malice aforethought, with intent to profit politically and otherwise from large numbers of people dying...is probably too much for these damn fools.

I used to be a Republican, and the longer this goes on the less I understand it.

Or maybe I do.

You just have to check your brain at the door, put on the jackboots, and stomp on that shit hard 'til it doesn't work anymore.

When these people say "rights" they're not talking about their Constitutional or legal rights, you know, the kind you have to be alive to actually possess. No. That's not really it. When they say "rights" they're talking about everything from [their interpretation of] Constitutional and legal and social rights to hierarchy and their mostly-imagined place in it. To these people being "Conservative" is little more than being "Not liberal" (and there's a whole bunch of bullshit they append to that word as well) just like being "White" is basically defined as being "Not Black." 

On a certain level, too, they think they should have the right to own other people. What right do you really think the motto of the state of Alabama "Audemus jura nostra defendere" (We dare to defend our rights) was/is actually referring to?

And people on that side of our political fence are fine with this horse shit.

These people see the Democrats and increasingly most not-explicitly-MAGA Republicans (or those who have their own priorities other than serving Trump) as having "sold out" to other people in general and to Black people in particular...simply by merely believing in white superiority rather than outright White Supremacy...and they hate other Republicans, even those who vote with them most of the time...for being merely conservative rather than some sort of Football Hooligan-like fascist Ultra or sweaty overweight internet troll.

What they're saying is, functionally, they want...need, in their minds...the right to be RIGHT. It's the ultimate divorce between ideas and people. They think, even if they're dead, somehow their spiritual rightness will go on, or something. The Hive is all. What they want, basically, is to have what they think be seen as Correct, and for any other belief to be seen as secondary. To dictate terms to demographics or reality or the rest of the world...or be allowed to imagine they are doing so. This was the Republican modus operandi for a long time. To let the rubes think they had the power, and to offer them nothing but racism and rob them blind instead of anything that might help. And they want the right to kill if they see people as rejecting this imagined power and their very real shitty worldview. 

They want governments to tiptoe around them to avoid their anger as if they're radical tribal Islamists in Pakistan and the only way the government can control them is to send the Army into the northern tribal areas again...and of course nobody wants to do that because then people die, and the nuts invariably care less if it's them. 

They hope the rest of the world will eventually just settle for the sort of shitty tedious equilibrium of the Pakistani army troops in the big gray castle, letting the drug smugglers and Taliban alone so long as they don't operate in the town or any important parts of their AO that somehow doesn't include certain villages or the route over the mountains to Kandahar.

And essentially, most of these people are more angry tribal radical than actual doctrinaire fascist. 

Except that the people who are manipulating them, the Tucker Carlson types...are actual fascists who hope at once to both use these people to fulfill their goals and to get them to die of disease by not getting vaccinated, but not to die until after they've served their purpose. Normally, it seems like these two ideas would contradict each other.

And of course in normal times, in normal terms, Fascism is one of the far ends of the paradigm of Statism...on the rightward end of the spectrum there's also nationalism. On the leftward end of the spectrum there's socialism and further along, Communism. But these aren't normal times and normal terminology is less accurate in describing these people. Yes, they absolutely do believe in there being some kind of transcendent state...defined by things like marching soldiers, torchlit rallies and persecution of enemies rather than transcendence through meditation or prayer.

Or to put it another way, these people want to be the Pakistani Taliban gangs who go around trying to stop aid workers from vaccinating children for Polio. They want to be the people who shot that girl in the face for daring to get an education, and to shoot people for daring to do things like have sex or live their lives or walk down the street with a grocery bag. 

And if they can't do all that, they want to go down fighting, to try and immanentize their shitty eschaton by force.

They're fascist, alright, time was I'd have said religious fanatics also, but their religion is basically also fascism at this point. They just utterly reject the idea of government or politics or the people to actually deliver on this. Thus their fascination with Donald Trump, with guns, and with magical conspiracy worldviews. Effectively, they want somebody to bullshit the Universe into giving them what they want. 

Hence my use of the phrase "Atavistic non-state fascism." Basically, it boils down to they want to kill anything that's outside of whatever narrow spectrum they define as "Normal." Increasingly, that is expanding to include most of modern American government and society as we know it. All they know is they're angry and dumb and they want to tear everything down.

Basically, both the fascists and the tribal nuts share the goal of burying civilization and society under a really big pile of dead bodies. They just have different ideas about whose bodies it will be, and the tribal base is too dumb to realize that the rich fascists want them to die, too. 

I'm serious, nobody has more contempt for Republican voters than Republicans do. And people will die, unless we as a people step up and stop this bullshit.

The virus doesn't care about their politics. It will absolutely take that challenge...and win.

And no matter what the state of politics is, people are never going to stop being gay, having sex, doing what they want even if conservatives dislike it, etc. That's just life. Other people have a right not to give a shit what you think.

These people don't understand that part, either. In fact, given that Republicanism has basically rolled over faster to Nazi motherfuckers like this guy than the Weimar Republic did for the actual historical Nazis...I find his reference to "Weimar America" hilarious.

He only wishes it was that way, trust me.

And what these people don't understand is that once they start shooting at people, other people will shoot back and probably they'll end up killing a lot of their own, too. And the other side won't. They'll bank on things like short, sharp campaigns of insurgency and terrorism that will fail, but will hurt or kill lots of people anyway.

They don't care if they win. They just want to make sure that if they lose, so does everybody else. To them, anger is life, compromise and intelligence are equated with death. Death is easier than citizenship if citizenship means everybody gets a piece of the pie or can fuck who they want, how they want. Rage and revenge for imagined wrongs is easier than freedom and rights. 

Control of the narrative, of profits, and of sexuality are things these morons think they have some kind of "right" to have.

It doesn't really work that way. Your politics don't give you some kind of Right To Rule. This is America, not the Galactic Empire or the Imperium Of Man.

On an individual basis, these fucking people don't care if they get anything, they just want you to not have anything either. 

They don't care if they end up with some dirty, fascist banana republic that used to be Alabama where they live on four thousand dollars a year, as long as they get to be prejudiced, dictate the private lives and sexuality of other people, and generally act like braying jackasses in public while loudly proclaiming themselves "Orthodox Christians" while pushing beliefs and politics that are anything and everything but actually Christian. All the better if, by doing so, they can reduce America in some way, make it smaller, weaker, more divided. They long for their culture wars to be real wars.

Theirs is a world ruled by paranoia about somebody else having an unauthorized orgasm in an unapproved fashion in the privacy of their own space where you can't even see them, and willingness to impose nothing less than totalitarianism to control that. It's no wonder they go bananas about things like public health whether it's sex education, vaccinations or wearing masks.

The truth is they view those things as things that should only be for themselves. For the rest of us, they want nothing but religion, work, and submission to their totalitarian control. 

And that's what they think it is when anybody else tries to tell them what to do. It's all projection. Rod Dreher and those like him are less Christians than they are arsonists of the soul who want you to burn in hell, one way or another. They just want to also be the ones who determine who goes there.

And no human being can (or should) have that right, theologically or otherwise.

We really need to stop this.

I demand the right to not have to put up with this stupid bullshit.

And if you don't...what the fuck is wrong with you?

Post IV.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan