Burning Times (End Times In The Idiocracy, Four.)

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 yesterday.

Ben Shapiro decided to burn some Barbie dolls because he doesn't like the new Barbie movie.

Bro, a quick Google search of box office numbers says Barbie has grossed $155 MILLION over its opening weekend. Perversely...IMO...a lot of matinees paired it with the new Oppenheimer movie and the two combined topped $302 *Million* this weekend.

It's a safe bet nobody gives a damn what you think.

But if history tells us anything, it's that those who would burn books and children's toys will eventually attempt to burn people. 

That's how it works every time anybody's allowed to run this experiment all the way through. We'd best not play on this shit. Keep slapping these fuckers down until they get the message.

Also, the Far-right lost badly in Spain's general election yesterday, badly enough that even with Spain's basic center-right party doing quite well, even were they to work together (though, I suspect, having looked at both parties' platforms, such a coalition would collapse rather quickly, forcing a snap election) conservatives and far-rightists would not have a majority in government. 

And of course, I found this out because the MAGA freakout ended up in my British friend's feed somehow.

I have a confession to make.

I'm tired of these people. 

I'm tired of their fascism, their misogyny, their racism, their transphobia, the list goes on.

But perhaps most of all I'm tired of their endless goddamned whining. Like my Grandma and my Mom both used to say, keep whining and I'll give you something to whine about.

I'm here to tell you, if I'd got it into my head as a kid to light a couple of Barbie dolls on fire and say that I was making some kind of political statement, the very next thing that would have got lit on fire was my own ass. Or at least that would have been what the resulting, and likely immediate, spanking would have felt like. 

I didn't manage to get my butt whupped all that often, but my Dad really didn't play. Neither did my Mom nor especially my Grandma. The words "Go pick a switch" still make me cringe a little.

I was never given the option to hate Black or Brown people...and in my neighborhood, well, there was a retired Black couple that lived two doors down from my parents. All us kids were terrified of them, not  because they were Black, but...I kid you not...being old and retired, they looked out their windows all the time and they saw everything. We were always told that Mr. and Mrs. Green were authority figures like any other adult besides a few outcast white trash we had around (Who everybody hated because they stole shit.) Mrs. Green would walk her Golden Retriever around every morning and talk to whoever was out and about and we were all, always, afraid she was gonna tell on us about whatever shit we'd been doing. And she pretty often did.

I've often heard that it takes a village to raise a child.

Now, I want you to consider something.

I'll be 50 this year, and Ben Shapiro is a bit over ten years younger than I am.

You want my honest opinion?

It takes the Internet to raise an Idiot.

I was an adult by the time the internet became a major thing. Hell, by the time Windows 95 came out and turned the Internet into something we'd seen a few bits about on TV to something that was comparatively easy for anybody with a current computer to access and use (and I knew it was coming and had a current PC ordered ahead of time, which I'd saved up for previously) I'd been serving in the United States Air Force for two and a half years already...and I was a Security Forces squad leader because somebody thought I'd demonstrated that kind of sustained, superior performance.

I'm here to tell you...28 years later...that thought, and the idea of being (and that I was) responsible for other people still terrifies me...and that's before the possibility of combat and shit.

But I learned a few things from that experience.

#1 Respect is earned, by every action, every day, all the time. You make a mistake, you have to own it and you have to fix it. If you want people to follow you...at all, much less when you're stormed at with shot and shell...Respect Is Earned. Whether you're at their head or (God forbid) just a voice on the radio, you have to be That Guy. 

#2 You have to be a leader. You have to be worthy of those men and women for whom you are responsible. None of this is negotiable.

#3 You get what you tolerate.

(On a side note, which I'll probably write more about later, it looks like some shit is about to go down in Israel. When the IDF and the Netanyahu administration are no longer talking to each other, plus protests, strikes etc. That seems bad.)

And "Conservatives" on a global scale are not That Guy. 

They've lost that understanding of life, and it seems like anybody who does know it either gets chewed up and spit back out or gets captured by the shitty political movement culture pretty quickly and forgets.

I'm sick of these fucking people, their bullshit "Nationalism" which somehow never gives a shit about the actual nation. I'm tired of their fucking petty hatreds and their vast, endless grievances...especially when you consider that their "grievance" basically always boils down to "Other people exist and are not forced by some Omnipotent State to be our slaves."

And when they don't get their way, they're going to start wars over it...and they'll lose. These fucking assholes seem completely impervious to paying attention to how badly that's worked out for Putin and his new Red Army in Ukraine. Or maybe they just don't care.

These motherfuckers don't want to live in civilization, they want the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall, regular internet access and some online platform that does everything for them. Yeah, in yet another move right out of Idiocracy, Muskrat-X wants to be your bank, too.

This all is going to end badly. They don't care. They seem to want it to.

If they can't handle a damn movie what makes these motherfuckers think they'll win wars?

They think if they fuck shit up bad enough, "God" or some Deus Ex Machina in the Universe will "Save" them...and not save the rest of us. End Times in the Idiocracy is exactly what they want.

And until we, as a people, stop tolerating this bullshit and step up and smack these fucking people right in the mouth until they stop doing it...the bullshit's gonna continue.

This global "Authoritarian" movement is about nothing more and nothing less than concentrating authority, power and wealth in the hands of a certain kind of "Man." Be it Netanyahu, Putin, Trump, Xi...it doesn't even matter who. It's not the individual, it's that certain people just get a hard-on from the idea of being ruled over by some dictatorial jackass, who they invariably think is gonna hurt their "Enemies."

And when they get hurt too, they never understand why.

Fuck that shit.

You get what you tolerate, America.

Remember that because there's going to be a test, soon.

Слава Україна!

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.