Screaming (Reason For The Season, Eleven.)

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

Apparently, there was a bit of a situation in San Antonio. Right-wing idiots showed up with guns to "protest" a drag show...and then LGBT rights protesters showed up with more people and more guns.

Good.

But, and I'm being serious here, somebody needs to get a lid on this and put a stop to this idiocy before there's a firefight and the situation gets out of control and people get killed.

Seriously if you think this shit will stop with the Right's current manias about sexuality, you have another thing coming. They get what they want that way, they'll just move on to something else until we're all living in some kind of a Star Wars prison.

Earlier today, Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station made the point that Twitter under Elon Musk has effectively become a simulation of the Dystopian America that modern "Conservatives" want, in which even information that is by Federal Law public and freely available is subject to the capricious whims of Power.

And he also said, quite accurately, that this was the kind of shit that the Constitution was designed to protect us from.

Thing that boggles my mind is how many of these Bible- and Constitution-humping "Conservatives" can't wait to live in a world where they are utterly subject to the whims of a very small number of small, mean, powerful men. Constitution, checks and balances, freedom and rights etc. be damned, apparently.

Hell, they don't even give a shit if the Power they subject themselves to is even American...in the case of people like Elon Musk or Vladimir Putin. Or if it's subject to god-only-knows-what foreign money and powers like Donald Trump is.

The Right is making no secret of wanting civil war and to turn America into some kind of nuclear-tipped Bosnia 2.0 complete with ethnic and political cleansing of whatever areas they can capture. If they can't realistically help Putin conquer Ukraine, I'd imagine they figure to at least get the US government, NATO and supporters of liberal democracy in general to have to fight a two-front war. 

It won't turn out how they think it will.

And in the meantime, we've got Muskrat trying to make the world...or at least Twitter...safe for Oligarchs. 

Even as he's actively trying to stir up trouble for the rest of us, if only to get "Likes" from his fanboys.

I just...don't even see the point.

Dude could have literally done anything with all that money, and at one point had a stated ambition to run for President...of Mars.

Why in the fuck is he doing shit like buying Twitter, firing all the workers, not paying the company's rent, and suspending flight trackers (which use literally Federally-mandated public information, that's what a flight plan is) and trying to suppress Ukrainian accounts while throwing in with the absolute slime of humanity in America and abroad.

We see you bro. We see what you're doing. It's pathetic, and you suck at it.

Like, what's even the damn point? Do you fuckers think Vladimir Putin is going to give you a cookie if he wins? 

No, the rich and famous who threw in with him might be welcomed for the cameras with a handshake before they're led away and murdered, but the average person will just get enslaved or shot without the pretense.

I can't imagine the people freaking out about Critical Race Theory, LGBT stuff and Pronouns...which chip away at their understanding of the world in small ways...will really be all that excited about Russification and forced conversion either to Russian Orthodoxy or just straight up Atheistic Neo-Communism...depending on how well Re-Sovietization is going by then.

And make no mistake about it, if Putin's version of neo-Communism offered these fucking people Power and Patriarchy, they'd fucking take it.

The thing I don't get is, for all intents and purposes whether it's constant confrontations in the streets, Musk-Twitter, subjugation to foreign powers or the very real threat of an armed right-wing insurgency at this point, this is the world something like a third of us want to live in. I don't know why anybody wants to live like that, from Elon all the way down to dudes I know what can barely keep a roof over their head and it's December...in Michigan.

But that desire for debasement, dystopia and subjection...it's there. I'll never understand it, but it is.

Because America is too hard, or something, especially if it tries to actually live up to the things it already promised all of its people.

And there's a certain kind of white person wants to burn it all down, so they can keep feeling special instead of being one of many.

There's some of us, mostly a certain kind of white dude, that are just goat-eager to kill somebody. I'll admit to being a sadistic bastard at times. I hope some of you fuckers get your wish...and wake up screaming in the middle of the night from the PTSD, throw in living from bottle to bottle for extra points.

And that's not even considering all the people left dead, maimed, incarcerated or facing execution for war crimes, etc.

Does that kind of shit really sound good to you?? Because you're mad?

I'm a veteran. I saw the aftermath of that kind of shit in Bosnia. I saw shit over there I still can't unsee. You want to inflict that kind of shit on Gen Z just because they didn't vote Republican?? Back in the day when I served, I had this strange idea that maybe if I did, my kids or somebody else's kids wouldn't have to.

But no, we got people want to speed-run all the bad shit from the last 120 years because they're mad at the world, or something.

Or worse, because they think some angry, dumb, unemployed beard-o who shitposts on 4-Chan all day will like them if they set it up that way?

It's Christmas, and we've got people who'd rather fight in the streets over dumb shit (that hardly mattered to anybody last year) than love their neighbor as Christ commanded.

If that's the world you want, fuck you. 

I'll be one of the people fighting to maintain the civilization and nation we already have.

I can't...and I won't...put it any other way.

Ten

Слава Україна!

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