American Asshole (Damn, What's Next?? 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.

...

Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America
Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
In television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue
Well, maybe I'm the f****t, America
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody, do the propaganda
And sing along to the age of paranoia

~Green Day, American Idiot.

I saw this last night at work. 

Evidently, at a rally in Iowa, Trump said that he thought the Civil War could have been avoided and the issue of Slavery negotiated, or some such bullshit. 

I'm going to have to stop asking questions like "Damn, what's next??"

Excuse me, but I've spent my life studying this stuff, the Slavers negotiated in bad faith, there's no possible negotiated solution that could have ended slavery. In fact, even as the rest of the world was rejecting the concept of slavery, these fucking people believed they were on a literal Mission From God to spread it...and it was amazing just how "Biblical" they could get about the subject. 

You cannot compromise with people whose primary belief is in your subjugation...and if you think these assholes only wanted to dominate Black people, you have another thing coming. That was the real cause of the Civil War. Even White People in the rest of America got sick of Southerners trying to boss them around. Slavery just happened to be the thing they were doing it about.

As with so many other things, Jesus Christ could have come along and told those motherfuckers to cut that shit out and they would not have listened...and then they would have attempted to crucify Him again.

It was always going to come down to a fight, and the Confederates (as well as their ideological ass-kissers elsewhere) are still mad that they lost. Not that they ever made any real effort to get the things (proper logistics, sufficient rail networks, wide scale industrialization) that actually made it possible for the Union to win. These fucking people always think some combination of evil acts, macho bullshit and vicious assholery will get it for 'em. 

Mostly because all that shit is easier (and more fun for bigots) than doing the actual work of getting the people and things needed into the battlespace on time and under budget and where they can be properly employed. 

"Purity" and the veneration of pointless asshole-ism loses wars. It's going to be the same way the next time around, too.

Not much individual glory in driving a truck, flying a C-130 Hercules, or running a train, but reality doesn't care. If the Russians get their wish and end up in a war with NATO, it's gonna be the US Navy (and other) convoy escorts and the container-ship crews they protect that are the determining factor. Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising is one of the few Cold War novels about the subject to give it sufficient attention. And the side that says only so-and-so can be at the sharp end of the stick using the stuff they deliver because Something Something Gazpacho is going to lose, because again reality could give a fuck what you look like.

So, seriously, Republicans, what the fuck is the point of following after a 77 year old man who has the mentality of a seventh-grade boy, at best?

I'm sick and tired of this pointless asshole.

I'm sick and tired of grown-ass adult Americans who refuse to grow the fuck up. Like, nobody that isn't already the "right" kind of Republican gives a shit. Your numbers ain't growing. 

I don't give a damn about the pronouns or the skin color of the person making me my coffee, I want my damn coffee...on the rare occasions that I want that kind of shit (Seriously, I have to be pretty damn tired to have a craving for it, the Air Force pretty much ruined coffee for me.) 

Like, who the hell as time for this kind of bullshit??

More to the point, in a world where increasingly few damn people meet the Fascist ideal of physical perfection (and were even fewer of the people who do are Fascists themselves) why does something like Trump mocking Biden's stutter even get anything more than an eye-roll and a "What the fuck is wrong with you??"

I mean, fuckin' seriously have you SEEN the average MAGA, lately??

What of 'em ain't old white-haired motherfuckers with all the physical infirmities that age brings are fat, smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, spend their money on several giant cans of beer every day or they use drugs...if not all of the above! About the only MAGA's I see on a daily basis under 65 who don't fit that description are a couple of the local cops who come into my work, and they have professional requirements to maintain. Hardly the numbers ya'll need, people.

Modern Republicans seem locked in a competition with the Russians, not over Cold War global dominance...but over who can be the worst people in the whole fucking world. (This particular snip, BTW, came from a discussion about COVID-19.)

And the thing that really disturbs me, and what I suspect is going to be our real problem going forward, is just how many Americans insist on living down to Republicans' shitty expectations of them.

If you want a better world, sooner or later you're going to have to be a better person, and this ain't it.

Слава Україна!

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

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