...
And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A. we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama
It was a Pride rainbow flag blanket.
How the hell is your own life so empty, so small, that you have nothing better to do than sit there and judge whether or not you think your fellow citizens, your neighbors, have a right to exist...let alone have a decent life?
It wasn't quite 103 years ago that in most states, Lauren Boebert would not have been allowed to vote, much less hold public office. In point of fact, Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana) the first woman in the House, was elected 106 years ago and from one of the states where women could vote. The first woman in the Senate, segregationist and former slave owner Rebecca Felton...101 years ago...was an unabashed "Diversity" appointment on the part of Georgia's Southern Democrat segregationist governor. He'd opposed the 19th Amendment, but once it was passed, he desired that newly enfranchised women should vote for him.
Bitch, I'm a veteran, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
I have a friend currently serving in the Navy, who I've quoted in some previous posts, in fact, who is transgender.
I also knew students from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, nearly all of whom were religious as well, and none were Russian Orthodox, for a damned reason. I was friends with a bunch of Muslim international students at the time, also, people from places as diverse and different in interpretation and viewpoint as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and secular Turkey.
I get it, I really do. I just personally know people now, friends of mine, who maybe ain't got that much time.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I saw this last night.
Some "Conservative" idiot freaking out because he got an Amazon package with...Pride tape on it.
It's...Tape.
Who the fuck cares?
Back in 2019 I was in Walmart downstate and picked a blanket out of the $2 rollback bin in the main aisle at the local Walmart. I needed an extra one for my ferrets, mostly rescues that I had at that time.
It was the only pattern in the bin that I liked, and it was cheap. Current ferrets love the thing.
Not every single fucking thing has to be treated as an attack, bro.
Maybe they got a deal on a big box of that pattern?
There's a girl who parks next to me, usually, who has the symbols like that tape and the pride rainbows on stickers in her car. And I don't care. I mean, I literally don't give a fuck. Because it's none of my business what sexual orientation she is, if any. Because I'm not a fucking freak.
It's her business and her life and if she's LGBT or non-binary or whatever, I support her and that's likely as far as it needs to go for either of us. I've only seen her a few times in the course of life around my apartment building.
Why is this shit so hard for these fucking people?
How the hell is your own life so empty, so small, that you have nothing better to do than sit there and judge whether or not you think your fellow citizens, your neighbors, have a right to exist...let alone have a decent life?
How quickly so many of us forget what's gone before, eh? When I was a kid, well up into my own younger years I knew people who'd been alive when the 19th Amendment was ratified. Hoebert's rant, specifically, was about diversity, inclusiveness and EEOC regulations in the government and the military.
Lots of my friends in the Air Force...people who my life depended on, as theirs depended on me...were Black! Another was Italian and the son of immigrants who'd done well...but not well enough that he didn't need the G.I. Bill if he wanted to go to college. He sought to address that, so his own kids wouldn't have to. There were several women among the enlisted troops in my squadron. I had a female LT, for fuck's sake! (And she was a demanding boss, which is exactly how things should have been. You don't understand why shit like this is important unless you've been there.) Several people that I knew were immigrants and two that I know of and served with directly were both naturalized citizens and people of color.
I know at least one was gay, shit, I served during the implementation of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
So I don't wanna hear this stupid shit.
Narrow it down to just straight Christian white dudes, even in the world we lived in at the time, we would not have had enough people to get the job done. It takes a lot of people to make a B-52H Stratofortress into an effective weapon system, and those people have to be fed, kept healthy, protected, and supported and so do all the people in those support roles. Do the fucking math.
Shit, I got swarmed by Tankies the other night because I identified the military as anti-fascist. Fuck, don't you assholes ever consider that the reason you keep losing...whether it's to normie center-left people like Joe Biden or to the goddamn Fash...it's because you have no goddamn vision of anything other than to say "America is bad?"
And then these motherfuckers' talking points end up being used by Republicans to fuck the rest of us over.
As if "Conservative" talk about "Meritocracy" is ever anything but camouflage for white. male. power.
I see all type of idiocy every damn day which is exactly why we have to make laws about this stuff.
More to the point, how's Bobo's kind of exclusivist bullshit working out for the Russians? Seems like it's a big part of why they're losing the goddamned war. About halfway through the video snipped above that I watched the other night, one of these old Russian bags is bitching about how when she was in Ukraine in the 1990's all the Ukrainians were in "Sects" (meaning that they weren't Russian Orthodox.)
Of the few Ukrainians that I've personally met...mostly in college until recently...well, that describes pretty much all of them. They were all, in point of fact, Evangelical Christians just like Lauren Boebert, only without the Christian Nationalism, privileged attitude, and White Supremacy.
And ya know, it's funny how much of a difference it makes when a person doesn't have that. Good friends of mine downstate are from places like South Africa and Zimbabwe, because of one of my old roommates I know a lot of African-American Christians too. Most of them don't act like stank-ass Lauren Blowbert does.
Those people...all of them...made my world a bigger and brighter place and expanded on horizons already broadened by military service. It's offensive to me that somebody would consign them and their faiths to some lesser status for no better reason than being from a different culture or of a different religion than your self.
But just like the mean old Russian ladies, Lauren Boebert's attitude is "If you're not like me, you're not even human and you should just die."
Not that I think Blowbert gives a damn about people who are just like her, either.
But it ain't just her.
What about people like Hillary Clinton?
Don't get me wrong, I sense that what HRC actually means is that Democrats should prioritize, pick battles, etc. I get it.
And ya know, that just means that transgender people might have to endure four or five more years of right-wing persecution before HRC is observed laughing it up with some transgender employee of a San Francisco barbecue joint. Of course, all will then be forgiven and within a couple years a whole bunch of court decisions will pile up guaranteeing the most very basic of human rights for nonbinary and transgender folk.
And in case you're wondering, the original variable in this exact scenario was Barack Obama, who was less-than-enthusiastic about pushing for LGBT rights until it was politically "safe" to do so.
Never Again is right the fuck now!
What's important isn't what you do when it's easy, but what you do when it's hard.
You either believe in freedom and human rights or you don't. It's as simple as that.
"We The People" means all of us. Together we rise, or none of us do.
You cannot hand "We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident..." over to people who literally do not believe in Truth as a concept, whose "god" is basically the demon Dis Pater, and expect that anything but disaster will result from such an act.
You either believe in America, with all its faults, and it's promise of expanding liberty...or you want something else entirely.
Own the fuck up to it.
We can be what we're supposed to be, hell, what it says on the can...or we can be Trailer Park Rome for a few years and then collapse, which won't work out well for nobody.
You either believe in freedom...for all of us...or you don't, there can be no half measures.
In Clint Eastwood's film Invictus, about the 1995 Rugby World Cup where South Africa defeated New Zealand, Nelson Mandela (as played by Morgan Freeman) tells his bodyguard "The Rainbow Nation starts here, reconciliation starts here...and forgiveness starts here too."
We're going to have to remember that.
Слава Україна!
Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan
~United States Declaration Of Independence.
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