Atlas Jerked (American Revelation XIV, Two.)

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. 

~Hunter S. Thompson.

...

Daniel Plainview: I did what your brother couldn't. I broke you and I beat you. It was Paul who told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one. He knew what was there. He found me to take it out of the ground. You know what the funny thing is? Listen, listen, listen! I paid him $10,000 cash in hand, just like that. He has his own company now — prosperous little business — three wells producing $5000 a week. Stop crying, you sniveling ass! Stop your nonsense! You're just the afterbirth, Eli —

Eli Sunday: No...

Daniel Plainview: — that slithered out in your mother's filth. They should have put you in a glass jar on a mantelpiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at his mother's teat, eh? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli? One of Bandy's sows? That land has been had. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s gone, had.

Eli Sunday: If you would just —

Daniel Plainview: You lose.

Eli Sunday: — take this lease, Daniel!

Daniel Plainview: [yelling] Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy! Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw — There it is. That's a straw, see? Watch it. Now my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! [slurping noise] I drink it up!

Eli Sunday: Don't bully me, Daniel!

Daniel Plainview: [throws Eli to the floor] Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation. I am whom the Lord has chosen. [throws bowling balls at Eli]

Eli Sunday: [dodging the bowling balls] Daniel!

Daniel Plainview: Because I'm smarter than you! I'm older!

Eli Sunday: I'm your old friend, Daniel! Help me! Help me, please!

Daniel Plainview: I'm not a false prophet, you sniveling boy! I am the Third Revelation! I am the Third Revelation! I told you I would eat you!

Eli Sunday: We're family!

Daniel Plainview: I told you I would eat you up!

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

So, apparently the whole Lauren Boebert Boob-Gate scandal is still making waves.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't care enough about this kind of stupid shit to write about this kind of standard-issue base Republican hypocrisy twice, except for the sheer volume of it.

But something occurred to me as I was leaving for work last night.

I've been seeing this kind of shit for over 20 years now, not ordinarily from political figures like Blowbert (and more on that in a second) but from the Republican base; Do something indefensibly crass or stupid, lie about it, get caught lying. Deny. Waffle. Half-Ass Apologize. 

Lather-rinse-repeat for as long as it takes...then wait for the Tribal Christians or the Tribal Republicans or whatever the fuck to show up.

Knowing that the tribal nuts will, in complete bad faith, defend your ass and fill the inboxes of your critics be they Left, Right, Center or none of the above with sizzling green acidic drool (or assault, kill, threaten or stalk them) and they will do it until your critics (assuming they are alive and mobile to do so) either get up and leave out of frustration or simply quit for their own safety or sanity.

And then ultimately sacralize your bullshit because Something Something Gazpacho or "Own The Libs/Moderate Republicans/RINO's/Whatever."

I.e. Boebert's "Infinite sexual liberation for me, but not for thee" bullshit.

Used to be, [Capital-R] Republicans weren't like this...they simply took ruthless advantage of stupid fucks like that...and did their level best to maintain complete deniability (and make sure law enforcement cracked down and their asses were covered) when bad shit happened. Gin the mob up...then throw the mob to the wolves when the mob did what mobs do, because this shit has absolutely been entirely in bad faith at least since the 1994 election season. 

Intermittently it was that way before, too, but Republican brass would usually try and reign that shit in when it was inconvenient or at least keep the mob from trying to go full Turner Diaries on everybody else (if nothing else out of self-preservation.) Of course, that lasted entirely until Republican brass figured it could get a cut of the tribal warfare. Thank you Newton Leroy-Jenkins fucking Gingrich. 

Goddamn, I hated that motherfucking scumbag when I was a Republican.

But here's the thing...far more so even than Trump...Hoebert was a street level Republican voter. Hell, she was White Trash before she was anything else. Trump cosplays base, but IF he had a brain in his head, the remaining mental acuity God gave a dried mushroom or the sum total decency of a rutting hamster, he would be more on the manipulator/CYA side of this. Lauren Boebert absolutely does come from the Republican base.

Let me explain the difference.

Trump's been surrounded by political fuck-fuck games, wealth and yes-men his whole fucking life. His contempt for his cultists voters is endless and obvious and any alleged "beliefs" he professes at any time are insincere, obvious, and obviously insincere. Trump cares about three things, Trump, Money, and whatever gives Trump...whatever passes for an erection at his age. Theoretically, given that I'm using There Will Be Blood in my pull-quotes here, Trump should be Daniel Plainview. He isn't.

His mental flatulence and narcissism are plain to fucking see. He doesn't want to be President, he wants to be Jesus to Morons...but the only way he can protect that infinite honeypot of narcissistic fuel is to keep running for President ad infinitum and keep the mob ginned up. Whether he wins or not.

I'm not sure he remembers what he's running for President of at this point.

Here's the thing, though.

Defense of Trump is tapering off. A lot of the actual Republican voters have realized Trump the Man and Trump the Meme are two different things. His grifting has functionally crippled Republican fundraising and he's not sharing with the other Republicans. Yeah, I get he could win (and large sections of the media would love it if he did because easy money, until the hammer comes down.) 

But defense of Boebert popped right up in the moment with all the regularity of the daily Trump scandals in 2017 the second that shit became known to have been indefensible. (And I wonder who might be responsible for that?) Here's the fucking thing, Lauren Boebert has been a white trash trailer park ho her whole life. If I had to guess, she's been blithely ignoring or simply rolling disapproving adults and various authority figures since she got old enough to figure out she had something the boys wanted and she's obviously gotten away with it. She obviously believes in something, even if it's only...that. 

You could argue that her Christianity is fake as fuck, you'd likely even be right. But I have experience with these people and believe it or not I've seen the disconnect between actual behavior and religiosity be worse...it just didn't make the national news. All those Christians getting busted these days for raping children...don't doubt they were "Believers" too, at least at some point.

Down here at the street level here, nobody but Tribal Republicans believes the polls. Nobody's following the horserace the media is trying to create. It's not even an election year, for fuck's sake! It looks like Republicans, barring some major mishap where they somehow manage to pull it together and handle things better than Democrats do...are probably going to get shit-canned next year, and they know it. They're just hoping they can lie their way out of losing too bad. Republicans are, in effect, the Eli Sunday of this bad remake.

They are very likely to get rolled and/or killed by somebody far worse than their most inflated imaginations of their own toughness...and far more ruthless than they are...somebody like Vladimir Putin.

Here's the thing, and I've said this before.

Trump is a trial run.

You don't think all this Antichrist Superstar crap is an accident, do you? Nor that they've gotten the alleged Christians in on it?

Or the Republican base wants somebody worse, take your pick.

(It sort of works out the same way, really.)

And there are, per the 2020 Popular Vote totals *Checks Notes* (and to paraphrase something Michael Steele said on Roland Martin's show in 2015) 74,223,975 fucking people out there who all think they're going to be Donald Trump someday.

And then Trump convinced his mob that if they could just [Something Something Gazpacho blank slate empty suit crap here] they could all be rich too!

(Trouble is, a lot of these morons are too stupid to see the obvious scam.)

But we also need to be aware that some percentage of that 74 MILLION+ motherfuckers thinks they're on some kind of Mission From God to get their rocks off at the expense of the rest of us because they think it's funny.

And they want to have all the debaucheries and wealth of the Roman Patrician class, and all the power of the Pater Familias for themselves...and then spend eternity fucking each other and fucking each other over for fun and profit. All that Christian Morality stuff is just for us Plebes. They figure they're special and they can do what they want.

Think about that for a second. Think about that level of soulless hypocrisy. Imagine the darkness of that kind of worldview.

It's not so much Atlas Shrugged as Atlas Got Caught Jerking Off.

Or perhaps he was getting a hand-job from the Whore Of Babylon...except somebody got the address wrong and sent him the whore of Baghdad (Florida.)

And now he wants to drop the Earth and break it so nobody laughs at the size of his dick.

(Also, add stark raving mental illness and season to taste.)

But seriously...

If you don't think it's going to come down to a fight to get it to where these fucking people don't have any power in our government, you have another thing coming.

Like I said, there's a reason America was based on citizenship, not a particular kind of politics or religion.

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

One

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press
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And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.

And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. ~Revelation 17:1-10