Pale Horse (American Revelation XV, Three.)

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

~Revelation 9, King James Version

...

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

I saw this the other day; Trump, carrying a stack of pizza boxes, with open sores on his hands.

In all honesty, that's probably multiple food-safety violations, right there, if we're being honest.

Likewise, last night I saw that former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's COVID-19 vaccination records are false.

Seriously, who do these fucking people think they're fooling with this shit?? The virus doesn't care about your alleged vaccination card. It cares about whether or not you've been vaccinated, because then it can infect you.

Similarly, whatever Trump has, HIV or Syphilis or even something as simple as bad health and whatever's festering in his fetid bloodstream could get in the goddamned food he's carrying. I mean for fuck's sake I'm a Serve-Safe qualified food service professional, you just don't do shit like that! Carrying food around with open sores on your hands, not even a pair of gloves, what's wrong with you??

Ya know, I get that these people are dirty politicians, shitty fascists, and all that. Oh yes, I do. They seem to be intent, from Trump's stinky ass on down, on literally being dirty and diseased and goddamn but I can't even imagine why. Simply because I started watching my health a couple years ago after having not really paid much attention to it since I was in the military and I had to, and I feel a lot better.

And then I thought about it and I realized how much these fucking people venerate the Dark Ages and the Medieval period, simply because those are times when there were little or no constraints placed upon the powerful and the wealthy.

Of course a bunch of fucking perverts are going to look back with depraved wistfulness on a time when it was common for nobles and royals and the wealthy to marry their own family members, so as to keep power and wealth in the family. It didn't seem to matter to them if eventually their medical histories were going to read like a catalogue of really fucked up medical problems...I suppose it doesn't matter so much when you have the temporal, worldly power to simply declare yourself to be Superman.

But here's the thing, reality and science don't care about all that. It doesn't matter! Eventually what is, is simply going to overrule what you wish to be. We literally, provably, know this now.

And the thing is, even Ancient people knew that shit was wrong, not from scientific knowledge so much as observable experience but the truth is, the ancients did eventually figure it out. So what the hell is wrong with 21st century state Representatives from Kentucky??

I mean, it happened a fair amount, but incest was actually illegal under Roman law and such things also tended to generate the kind of scandals that got somebody executed by the State or simply murdered by a bunch of conspirators if it was discovered.

Of course Romans also knew enough to have proper, if very basic, public baths and toilets and stuff like running water and sewers. Even the Legions, when they made camp, had it as standard procedure to pipe their wastewater downstream from their position and to get their water for drinking and other uses well upstream...and their regulations were assiduously followed, such that one could be executed for breaking them. 

It's hard to fight or work if you're shitting your guts out.

Hell, it's hard to do much of anything if you have COVID-19.

If your parents were related before they were married it might be really difficult to do anything at all or live much of a life at all without serious (and expensive) medical intervention and support.

And there's other people in the world besides you, too. 

All that same stuff also applies to all those other people! More to the point, if they're sick...especially in terms of stuff like COVID-19, foodborne illness or other basic communicable diseases that are perfectly well preventable simply by giving a damn...you have a real good chance of getting sick too!

I'm tired of these people and their base contempt for best practices, for constraints on themselves and for regulation of any kind...simply because I've spent my life working in environments where a lot of the lessons that fed into all that stuff were written in blood the first few hundred times around.

But the truth is, as with everything else, a lot of the actual problem here is that these jack-offs think that cruelty and not giving a shit is funny, or rebellious, or some very arch joke against the status quo of a modernity that they hate...and that, again, mostly is composed of a bunch of stuff people learned the hard way and eventually got tired of dying from.

And ya know, that includes social ills like racism, and for that matter, vices like smoking cigarettes, too.

Funny how, at the end of the day, all that kind of shit is stuff that "Conservatives" have kept finding ways to profit from, isn't it??

So I suppose it's no wonder that these fucking people want that much more bad shit out in the world, eh?

(And they believe in this crap so much that functionally, they don't care if it eats them, too. Not so long as they get to be mean to somebody else first. Hey, Republicans, this is not sustainable.)

All this stuff is, functionally, all the same shit. Do you think if Black people or Indian people are hurt by something, that you will remain unaffected forever??

Sooner or later, these shitty little monsters are going to get bored and are going to start finding ways to push their bullshit on their fellow white people for no better reason than they think it's funny. 

When I worked at the casino, for a (very) short time as a custodian I worked with a (White, of course, also butt-ugly basic butter-faced redneck) maintenance guy who had at some point worked in a Federal prison and thought it was the height of hilarity to tell people about getting inmates sick by various means like not putting warning signage up after having used cleaning chemicals in the ice machine. He turned whiter than a ghost and about shit himself when I immediately pointed out that food code is Federal and if enough people found out about that kind of stuff, it could result in a lawsuit in which he could be put under oath and deposed, and that what he said under color of law and penalty of perjury could very well be public information. And it's kind of hard to get a job when you've bragged about shit like that. Unsurprisingly, he didn't last too long. We all called him Notorious W.O.S. (Waste Of Space) anyway.

It's funny how all these shitty little motherfuckers want to do their bullshit, and treat cruelty and hurting people and sick perverted bullshit as a joke...until it happens to them or they get threatened with being held accountable for it. 

I'm here to tell you that's true whether it's some redneck idiot from Indiana or somebody like Donald Trump or Elon Musk themselves. Note when and where Trump acts out, these days, and how he gets Alina Habba to do that shit for him when he's actually in court and how that's going for her...while he does it outside on the sidewalk where it's less likely he'll be held to account for what he says.

And the problems are going to continue until civilization, you know...the rest of us...stop putting up with this horseshit. 

It's not "Freedom" to reject civilization and society, nor to make life worse for other people. You're not some kind of heroic crusader if you're taking food away from poor kids.

Same shit is why they're going after history as a concept, it might be easier to get away with fucked up bullshit if nobody remembers or was taught what things were like when fucked up bullshit was normal. These people are not your friends. I don't give a damn who you think you are. And I find it very interesting that they keep getting Nikki Haley of all people to say this shit, and she'll get nothing in return, except maybe a mean Babylon Bee meme, if she merits that much notice.

And yes, that's exactly what current Republicans think. For fuck's sake even Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush or hell, Mitt Romney could be capable of basic humanity! But then, these fucking people called Paul Ryan a Communist a few months back, so you do the math if the Anthropomorphized Apotheosis of Randian Libertarianism isn't enough for these goddamned assholes.

Perverted concepts of individual freedom are being used to beat the actual freedoms and rights of the majority of people to death, and we as a people tolerate this bullshit at our peril. 

For the record, I said the same thing when I was still a conservative and a Republican all the way back in 2006.

And everything else along the way, "fiscal" conservatism, religion, their skewed concepts of "individual liberty" and all that was just nothing but excuses.

Hell, now that it's down to the wire and all they have is Donald Trump (and this is by choice, mind you) they're basically going to come right out and say fuck the Divine Right Of Kings, they want the Divine Right of "Conservatives."

And if given such, anywhere in the world, at any point, they'll use it to do shit that would make Caligula or Charlemagne puke and make people like Pol Pot or Slobodan Milosevic look like amateurs.

I know I keep saying this, but you either believe in civilization and freedom or you don't. It's really that simple.

And these ignorant, nasty Typhoid Mary sons of bitches are going to find a way to make it even more plainly obvious by next week, much less November.

I get it, a lot of people think Joe Biden is boring, for whatever stupid reason. Functional government isn't supposed to be entertaining. I mean, I've been there, at its most functional in terms of how it relates to us it's primarily expressed in terms of procedure in places like a military duty day or one's workplace, or in one's grandmother getting her Social Security deposited into her account or your health insurance working smoothly. You don't even have to notice that it works!

But I'm here to tell you, you'll know very quickly when you don't have it. 

On one level, having a foodborne illness like Norovirus...much less a serious respiratory illness like COVID-19...is not something one soon forgets. And on another level, shit like that and worse is the future "Conservatives" want for the rest of us.

They want to inflict the Pale Horse of Revelation on the rest of us, and they believe in that shit so much that they'll sacrifice themselves to get it, if that's what it takes.

Remember, you can say "No" and protect yourselves like so many of us were starting to do around this time four years ago.

You don't have to die for their "Freedom."

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And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. ~Revelation 6:8

Two

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.