What Shall It Profit A Man? (Opioids Of The Masses II, Three.)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

...

Follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.

~Scorpions, Winds Of Change

I just saw this.

Apparently, a lot of these "Christian Nationalists" don't much like the exposure of their ridiculous bullshit lately from the media...among others. Well, guess what? Too damn bad.

I'm here to tell you that whatever's been exposed in the media, it doesn't even begin to lightly scratch the surface of these fucking people's assorted bullshit and insanity. Mike Johnson likening himself to Moses at some nutty conference?? LOL, I've seen worse and far more glaring narcissism, and I've seen it in far, far humbler circumstances.

My ex-wife thought we were going to have two kids, twins who would be the Two Witnesses of Revelation because something something Gazpacho. Yeah, it was likely some kind of passing 'thing' the product of Pentecostalism and rabid untreated mental illness. She got real mad that I insisted on using condoms after that bit entered the chat. Too bad, even if I would have been crazy enough to get her pregnant there was no way I'd...and I was a Christian myself at the time...have allowed that kind of religious mania to be forced on a goddamned kid. It's just not right.

And these fucking people simply refuse to see stuff like that.

And I'm here to tell you there's a dark underbelly of American Christianity that was full of this kind of garbage 20-25 years ago and I'd imagine it's only gotten worse since. But, now, I'm primarily observing this shit from the outside so I don't imagine I'm getting the full picture. But I can also tell you almost nobody that I knew who was a Christian ten years ago [who isn't also a flaming right-wing political zealot or suffering from raging untreated mental illness, occasionally both] still is one.

Even the assorted nuts that I still have some degree of contact with tend to be more secular and less explicitly "Christian" than they once were...because many have moved on from Christianity to conspiracy theories. Not that that's much of an improvement. It's simply had the effect of kicking Jesus out of His own End Times narrative.

I was surprised, at first, that the war in Israel hasn't sparked a wave of End Times bullshit from these fucking people, but then I realized that there was no way to work in Antivaxxer bullshit, conspiracy theories about the Deep State, or anything to do with Trump...and worse, that a lot of MAGA's actually agreed with the "Far-Left" protesters who were basically demanding Israel's destruction...and that they, Hamas and the Tankies all were in thrall to the same Russian masters anyway.

So yeah, the response I'd expect ain't gonna happen. Not this time.

I'm not going to make any effort to warn Ivan just what he may have gotten himself into by getting into bed with these fucking people. Yeah, I get that the average Russian these days cynically doesn't believe in much at all. But here's the thing...the kind of Evangelical Christians who'd label themselves as a modern day Moses don't cynically believe in nothing. The problem is that they enthusiastically embrace goddamned near everything, so long as it tickles their ears, confirms their confirmation biases and feels agreeable to their social memes. If they can get money, pleasure or recognition from it, so much the better...and they don't really care if the end result even looks much like actual Christianity. In fact, the more cockamamie bullshit they have to spew to make it sound like it is, the better.

(Because cockamamie bullshit and self-glorification and -gratification is their real religion.)

And I'm here to tell you, when these fucking Christian Nationalists and Trumpers and shit break off a piece of America for themselves and it's less an orgy of blood and fire than every liberal and sane conservative in America saying "Bye, whore" (with military operations primarily concerned with getting anybody who wants out, out of their territory, and securing certain bases, cities and resources that cannot be abandoned...not to mention the Inner-American border) and it becomes a Russian satellite state...there's going to be a hell of a lot of young Russian soldiers sent to protect it, to back up the ill-constructed walls and raggedy-assed militias...who find themselves spending the next 20 years or so dealing with ravening insane white girl Pentecostal baby mamas.

Whatever role, if any, that Donald Trump or somebody like him might play in such a situation...I don't think people like Vladimir Putin or most of his oligarchs are going to want to sit through the tedious Evangelical sermonizing from motherfuckers like Mike Johnson.

You know, the shit that they love to enthusiastically claim when among their own, but then deny whenever they face any kind of mixed audience?

I don't think the fucking people on all sides of this damn equation, who want America to burn, have thought ahead far enough to realize sooner or later they're the ones who are going to be stuck with the maniacs they want to use to light all the fires.

You can't reason with this shit, you can only fight it, and attempts to use it tend to eventually blow up in your face. You, me, somebody like Adam Kinzinger, David French or Joe Biden...we might ask "Where does it stop?"

The thing is, with these fucking people...it doesn't. They're like Heroin addicts, but instead of Heroin, what they're fiending for is a particular kind of dopamine hit. And sooner or later...they need a stronger hit to have the same effect.

I mean, if the American neo-feudalists, Catholic "Traditionalists" and Fundamentalist wannabe Pol Pots get their way in some part of this country...they're not going to have anywhere here to invest their ill-gotten gains, and markets in what remains of the US, its allies and most major US trading partners (including China and smaller places like Nigeria and Zambia that are part of China's emerging network) will be closed to them...which means investing the shit in places like Moscow.

Which might well bring in enough money to shore up the Russian economy somewhat, but I'm not sure Uncle Vlad's neo-Soviet system is going to like all the Evangelical Christian fuckery that comes with it.

And it will come, simply because deep down, the crazies childishly cannot wait to tell everybody else how crazy they are...it's just that they're afraid somebody's going to laugh at them or tell them "No" if they can't accrue all the political power and get all the guns first.

And when that shit hits the fan, the Evangelicals are gonna be mad about it, too.

What shall it profit a man? Isn't it funny how these Evangelicals never ask themselves that about their own conduct??

Be careful what you wish for, Comrades, for you may get it.

Two

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

...

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.