Cultural "Revolution" (Parable Of The Ten Virgins, Ten.)

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

...

It was right here, in the waters around us, where the American experiment began. As the earliest settlers arrived on the shores of Boston and Salem and Plymouth, they dreamed of building a City upon a Hill. And the world watched, waiting to see if this improbable idea called America would succeed. More than half of you represent the very first member of your family to ever attend college. In the most diverse university in all of New England, I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like those first settlers that they too could find a home in this City on a Hill—that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places. ~Barack Obama

...

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13

I saw this yesterday morning when I got up.

Bret Stephens (whoever that is) basically saying "You have to be a straight White Conservative Man in order to have 'Excellence' in intellectual matters."

Bitch, I AM a straight white man, and both a former Christian and a former conservative with a classical and religious education from Christian schools on both the Catholic and Protestant sides of that fence and I probably know more about that shit than you do. I'm sorry, but I'd hardly equate modern "Conservatism" with discovery, knowledge, or the "Free and Vigorous Contest of Ideas."

Which, by the way, all that sounds like a pretty WASP-ified way of saying "Let 100 Flowers bloom, let 100 schools of thought contend" right down to the implied "And if it doesn't come out the way we want, violent 'Cultural Revolution' and mass murder is the next step." And then they'll say "Look what you made us do." Because abusers love to make everything the victim's fault.

Except you fuckers forgot that America ain't China. A whole hell of a lot of us don't want to go back to the way things were in 1952, 1963, or even 1977, and we have guns and shit, too.

They can call it the 100 Raisins In The Potato Salad Campaign. 

Or perhaps more accurately; 100 Impotent Dicks.

Seriously, fuck these white-bread motherfuckers and I say that as a white man.

Because it has not one fucking thing to do with education, intellect, or the mind.

It has everything to do with the dick, the ego, and these fuckers being mad about these fuckers losing much of their ability to legislate and legalize their various and assorted bigotries against basically everything outside of themselves.

I was never that kind of "Conservative" hell, I was never that kind of White Man. When I was coming up, I simply had the wrong ethnic background to be let in the door by the Elks Club motherfuckers for most of their history.

But then, to be rather more than technical about it, so did Chris Rufo, which is the funny part. 

The people he's trying to be would have called him a "Wop" and thrown his ass right back out into the street in the times he wants to go back to! Same with Ron DeSantis and a bunch of these other dopes. The old WASP-y shits would have thought them fit only for crime, factory work, menial jobs, or maybe military service or the ownership of certain types of small businesses if they were good little bitches.

(You do not want to have to parse or learn to comprehend the complex networks of privilege and all the other stupid bullshit that these fucking people half-remember and idealize, and somehow invariably think they'd be at the top of.)

And I used to know a bunch of old White-Flight Republicans, and drink and golf with them. You think all that's bad?? Don't even get me started on their views about women.

The Russians are apparently the same way, in fact they're worse.

Trust me, the 1950's sucked, most especially the earlier parts, and some people really do want to go back to exactly that including the Stalinism.

And in our modern world it would almost be comical, except for the knife these sons of bitches have held to the throat of civilization as they ramble all about their racist manifesto. 

And they are mad as hell that if they ever get their "ideal" solution of a civil war...that the person flying the jet they're trying to shoot down and frantically hitting the pickle-switch to drop the bombs on their position might in fact be Black (or female, or LGBT, or some other POC or what have you.)

They really do, axiomatically, think only White Men...preferably just the "Right" kind of "Conservative" White Man (or those other White guys who are willing to do the work they don't want to do, but only to a point) should be allowed to do much of anything other than manual labor, and they think women...including/especially their own...are fit only for child-bearing or domestic/sexual servitude.

And every time they get beaten, proven wrong, shown that their "beliefs" are just so much horseshit, it just makes them angrier. Hell, as it is I have no doubt that there's some old rich White Guy just seething that they have to give money to a dude with Italian heritage to propagate their anti-everything far-right agenda these days.

Please, think about that, and give it some thought that just mocking this shit and thinking the masses will see how ridiculous it all is won't do. Sooner or later you're going to have to actually do something.

Because if you don't, for the love of God, Fascism isn't even these fucking people's end goal. 

What they really want is Feudalism, Putin or Trump or someone like that as their king, a political and religious monoculture (where there essentially is no line between politics and religion) and a small intellectual elite to justify it, with the rest of us locked into various forms of serfdom or slavery, they only want Capitalism or Freedom for...I'm serious...not even themselves but for those like them of high social standing that they can attach to like lampreys on a shark, and never have to face or think about anything ever again. The modern "Conservative" ideal is basically being a better class of slave than all the other slaves. And they're willing to die to get there.

This dark world is what these assholes want. Conservatives, as they are now, believe in slavery so much that they don't care if they have to "take one for the team" and be a goddamned slave...just like they so believed in using COVID-19 as a biological weapon against the rest of us to "Own The Libs" that they didn't care if they caught it and died.

And the people who set all this bullshit up, who want the world to "Work" this way?? When some priest says "The Lord Thy God" they'll think the creepy old virgin in a robe is talking about them.

Civil War, Cultural Revolution, Fascism and Killing Fields is just how they think they're going to speed-run getting there. 

The unity of these United States is probably on borrowed time...but each of us can (and should) still fight for a Better Nation and the world we want to live in...because somebody is going to have to deny as much of This Land That's Our Land as possible to the bad guys, pick up the pieces and make something work out of what's left...and in a big damn hurry if you don't want Putin styling himself as Vladimir The World-Conqueror in any way that it'll stick. because what he's counting on is that 75% America is 25% less able to stop him. 

(And it really pisses me off that Republicans have signed onto this.)

Reagan Wept.

You are not "Lessened" by having to fight for your own freedom, just ask a Ukrainian.

Vote...and fight...like your life depends on it, because it does.

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

Nine

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