Empire? (Pride Month, Eleven.)

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

I saw this bullshit just before I started writing my last post.

Michael Knowles, who literally wants a genocide of Transgender people, calling the Pride flag the "Imperial Flag."

Go ahead, for real, look at the behavior of "Conservatives" vs. almost anybody else at this point.

Who really wants an "Empire?"

Be specific, show your work.

It's not Black people, LGBT people, Latinos, or liberals flying the flag of a dead empire and trying (and failing) to conquer their neighbors, is it?

Hell, who was it that tried to raise up a Caesar on January 6th, 2021? 

You do the math.

In point of fact long before they tried to influence our own politics via Trump and buying the Republican Party, Putin and the Russian government have spent much of the last two decades cosplaying as "Conservatives" and actively partnering with particularly homophobic US Evangelical groups like the "Family Research Council" and the "World Congress of Families" and shit. 

Rates of Christian religious observance in Russia remain...unspectacular.

Because that's not what these people's fuck fuck games with each other were about.

Because that was never the goddamn point.

In fact, Putin has been known for persecuting Evangelical Christians and under the guise of "Anti-Terrorism" laws and prohibiting "Extremism" bans proselytizing and missionary activities.

Because Putin's idea of Empire doesn't include any Christian denomination that he doesn't control.

Because that's what empire is, basically.

And Russians know it...because despite Putin's efforts to project an aura of Christian Power, only about 47% of Russians are actually Christians...and a majority of them are still Russian Orthodox. Actual rates of attendance and such remain lower than rates of professed belief.

Yet the American far-right pretends otherwise because Putin persecutes feminists and LGBT people and 

Not that any of these "Conservatives" or "Republicans" really believe in Christianity either, it's just that a certain kind of Evangelical Christianity basically functions as Conservative America's "Imperial Cult" which you had to at least pretend to observe, for decades, if you wanted to be anybody.

Likewise, even Democrats, pretty much right up until Obama's second term in 2012, tended to have to pretend to be a bit conservative just to get by.

Meanwhile it's only been in the last 20 years that Bisexual and Gay people have ceased to be an out-group and Transgender people still are...and "Conservatives" are fighting hella hard to keep them that way because, well, somebody has to get left behind or Republican Jesus gets soggy and hard to light.

I mean, really, that's these fucking people's entire religion.

And I don't see anybody having to pretend to be LGBT to get ahead.

I mean this seriously, if there ever were gay empires, they are long gone, because they were ancient Greece and Rome.

And "Conservatives" claim to revere both, even though their whole thing is basically drawing dicks on the walls of Plato's Cave.

But if the actual conduct of a lot of these people is any indication, they know Plato's ghost would probably be there critiquing the dicks.

And I maintain that these people know all this...they just hope that you don't, or they think you're stupid. And they sure know a lot of their base is.

Which is exactly why some idiot like Michael Knowles can say shit like this and try to make "Conservatives" seem like some kind of persecuted minority and "Other" people, established ways of doing things, reality, science, etc. etc. is some kind of "Evil Empire."

Same people were just fine with all that when they tried to raise up Trump to be their Caesar.

But yeah, it's you and me and the gay dude down the hall that are the "Empire."

America demands Citizenship as a part of liberal democracy, Empires demand Subjection to an Emperor and some Imperial Cult and "Ruling Class."

Based on their observable conduct in the here and now, who wants what?

You tell me.

One of these things is not like the other one, remember that.

It's a cornerstone of America's Enlightenment roots that there's such a thing as observable, testable truths in this world.

Conservatives love to try and falsely equivocate on all this shit because they want to believe everyone is "Bad" because they think that justifies them doing what they already wanted to do anyway.

They try and equate Hunter Biden with the Trump kids, in order to try and say Biden and Trump are the same, and so on. Like, why vote for these fucking losers??

And they try and call LGBT people an Empire because...well, they want to have an Empire themselves, so they think everyone must be the same, right?

It's a failure of imagination on a colossal scale.

You don't have to be like these fucking people, remember that. Without our distinctiveness, our diversity, our pluralism, without people that dare to dream of something different, of the possible rather than the simply easy...without people and things that make life interesting, what are we but a bunch of miserable fucking people?

That's what things like Pride Month...or Black History month, and so on...are even for.

To show us what was, so we can change what is, so we can dare to dream of what we might become, in a positive way rather than something harmful or zero-sum. We are what we dream about.

If we are an empire, let us be one based on that.

Maybe that would be something we could all be proud of?

Peace.

Ten

Слава Україна!

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X. 

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