Charlie Crow (Spiritual Warfare, Two.)

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.

Maya Angelou said "When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time."

Charlie Kirk said, this morning, that Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown-Jackson and Michelle Obama only ever got anywhere because of "Affirmative Action." No, motherfucker. No.

You can't get into a position like that, without showing that you have something going for you. 

All of those women were smart and talented and driven enough to get somewhere before they got famous. They had to be, just to get in the damn door. Hell, every job I've ever had I either got on my own talents or...simply because I was either crazy or dumb enough to volunteer.

Theoretically, that's how America is supposed to work, across the board. Isn't it??

Well, unless you're White and talk the right "Conservative" talk, that is. Then all you have to do is claim to have the proper in-vogue "Conservative" beliefs, then kiss enough asses and say the "right" things to the right people and simpering choads like Mitch McConnell will get you the rest of the way.

Some idiotic goddamned Republican actually used the words "Colored People" in the House yesterday and I'm like "What?"

I haven't heard anybody use those kinds of words since I was a kid, like we're talking 1980's here. At least where I was at, say some shit like that 40 years ago and most people was gonna look at you like you had three heads or some shit.

Now I realize certain people have always talked that way (or worse) in private, but I used to be a Republican. There were limits, some things just weren't done, period. 

Shit like that used to be career-ending...and in most places outside of the Republican Party it still is. If I said something like that at my job...for fuck's sake at any job I ever had, including the military...I would certainly be disciplined, possibly even fired the first time and absolutely would be if there were any repeat incidents. 

If *I* can't say shit like that...and I have no desire to, because trust me, saying that shit would fuck over my entire life and I'd deserve it....how can some old idiot Republican say that shit in Congress??

Isn't the House of Representatives the "People's House" and aren't those elected to it charged with representing all of us??

I know, I know, Republicans don't see it that way. They represent certain interests, and that's it, and they think everybody else does the same. They think everybody else is conniving shit-birds just like they are, and you can't tell these people anything else. 

It's a failure of imagination. As much as so many of these fuckers claim to hate Neocons, they never learned a damn thing from Newt Gingrich or the Bush 43 administration.

But, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say even in that context, all is not well in MAGA-land.

It's the same old Republican Modus Operandi.

If they can't do what they want...even if such is not legally or physically or otherwise possible, they'll just shit all over everything they can and ruin things for everybody else.

They believe in nothing, so how would they understand other people who believe in something even if that something is just their own right to exist?

Of course Republicans value their bad-faith garbage and shitty political and social views so much they they're (mostly) willing to destroy themselves for that shit. Mike Pence, of course, being the archetypal example. Trump tried to have him hanged...and he still refuses to even bring it up, condemn J6 or Trump or anything.

But the rest of us are not like that.

And I've been hearing at least some of these fucking people bitch that X or Y didn't work out how they thought it was going to when they voted for Z my whole damn life. It always ends up the same way. They're never happy.

It always ends badly. Think whole years like 2008 or 2020. If you aren't, well I am tired of this bullshit!

Maybe try voting based on something other than cultic sycophancy, personal grievance and petty hatred? 

I don't hate anybody enough to want to make my own life worse because I think it'll spite them in some 85-dimensional way.

More to the point this is America in the 21st goddamn century in an ever-changing modern world. 

You literally don't have a right to be mad about "Other People Exist." The world is what it is. It's not going to change just because you don't like it. It's that simple, and I don't think you have a "right" to be bigoted towards those other people, either.

And I'm clearly not the only one, else people would not be leaving Florida, Mike Lindell would not be going broke, and various State Republican parties (including my own here in Michigan) would not be out of money and stuck in some kind of internecine civil war, either.

(And then they wanna turn the whole damn country into this kind of shit??)

I saw a bit in the Detroit Free Press last week, some local Republican official trying to say their ticket back to being something was "God, and local control."

Motherfucker, No.

I've seen these fucking people's idea of "God." I want no goddamn part of it.

I've watched people like Mike Lindell destroy themselves and go broke for Trump knowing he'd never appreciate it.

I've seen these fucking people try like hell to deify Donald Trump (and more lately, Ron DeSantis) simply because he stroked their lizard-brain frills just so and because they can't resist feeding a goddamned narcissist or jacking off to the idea of being a concentration camp guard. 

And they can't even get that shit right.

But they'll frenetically whack themselves off 'til they go blind over even the remotest hope that they might get to be openly racist again?

Didn't we fight a war over this? One here and a couple abroad? 

Didn't our ancestors build a liberal-democratic world order to try and prevent threats like fascism from arising again? Didn't our ancestors decide on Civil Rights instead of Segregation? 

Hasn't American Capitalism spent the last six decades finding ways to include new people, simply because it can't survive...much less compete in the world...as a closed "Rich Whites Only" system??

How the fuck is there anything "Conservative" about this bullshit?

You tell me.

This is America, and it seems like there's about a third of us who want damned near anything besides "Love Thy Neighbor" let alone "We The People..."

And I'm goddamned tired of Americans, who of all people should know better, selling themselves out to small, greedy men because they think it'll hurt somebody else.

You want to fuck up your own shit because of fear, hate and resentment? 

Fine, we can't stop you from doing that. What we can do is stop you from trying to take the rest of us down with you.

Worse, they can't wait to equate this mess with Christianity, and the Christians fall all over themselves trying to get associated with it, too? Everybody from Baptists to Sedevacantists wants that (R) next to their name.

This, despite the fact that the places where Christianity has the greatest numbers of Believers are mostly full of Black and Brown people? (And the paradigm has flipped enough, now they want to Evangelize US.)

How the fuck does that even add up, how is shit like racism so central to these people's Christianity, how is undermining everything we spent 250 years building "Conservative?" Unless it was all crap to start with?

I'm tired of this bullshit.

You want to do anything constructive, you have to believe in something other than how great You the Self is.

You want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen and this ain't it, yo.

Слава Україна!

You men gather round. I've been talking with, Pvt. Bucklin, he's told me about your problem. There's nothing I can do today. We'll be moving out in a few minutes, we'll be moving all day. I've been ordered to take you men with me. I'm told that, uh, that if you don't come, I can shoot you. Well, you know I won't do that. Maybe somebody else will, but I won't, so, that's that. Uh here's the, uh, situation. The whole Reb army is up that road a ways, waiting for us, so this is no time for an argument like this, I tell ya. We could surely use you fellas, we're now well below half strength. Whether you fight, or not, that's...that's up to you. Whether you come along is, is...well, you're comin'.

You know who we are and what we're doing here, but if you want to fight along side us, there's some things I want you to know. This regiment was formed last summer in Maine. There were a thousand of us then. There are less than three hundred of us now. All of us volunteered to fight for the Union, just as you did. Some came mainly because we were bored at home, thought this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or, or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free.

America should be free ground - all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free, all the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value - you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, we're fighting for each other. Sorry, I, uh, didn't mean to preach. You, uh, you go ahead. You talk for awhile. Uh, if you, uh, if you choose to join us, you want your muskets back, you can have 'em. Nothing more will be said by anybody anywhere. If you, uh, choose not to join us, well you can come along under guard, and when this is all over I will do what I can to see you get a fair treatment. But for now, we're moving out. Gentlemen, I think if we lose this fight, we lose the war. So if you choose to join us, I'll be personally very grateful. 

~Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, from the film Gettysburg.

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