Blood Is All One Color, Again (American Revelation XV, Thirteen.)

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

...

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this over the weekend.

So there's another "Trucker Convoy." This time it's at the Mexican border, I think in Eagle Pass, TX.

And they're Baptizing people.

Wait, they're Baptizing people?? That seems kind of strange, considering that the vast majority of the migrants they're allegedly there to oppose are *Checks Notes* themselves Christians. In fact, given where they're coming from a solid plurality of those people are *Protestants* so these fucking people can't even really claim the "traditional" American bigot-exception of regarding Catholicism as something somehow alien and strange.

 Well...such would be the case if any of this crap was about any of the stuff these fucking people said it was about, anyway.

The truth?? These fucking people think (If you're White) you can somehow be Baptized into White Petit Bourgeoise Conservatism and/or Republican politics...or at least, they might as well think that...because they see no distinctions between all that and Christianity. In fact...they don't think anybody who isn't some kind of moderately-well-off Christian White Person with specific right-wing political beliefs and various racist inclinations is a Christian. 

There's no difference, or line, between their political, religious or social beliefs. 

It's all a crude mishmash that equals out to "Us First!" and that whatever "Other" there is should serve them.

And the Christian requirements to Love Thy Neighbor and think of others don't ever enter into it, nor does thinking, for that matter. 

None of this crap works that way.

And I'm here to tell you, most of these morons wouldn't think of this crap on their own, or even worry about it...or anything else that wasn't right in front of their faces...without FOX News and the Right-wing Rage Machine getting them amped up about it on a constant basis.

But ya know, Fox News Babes and sneering smarmy little shits like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson told them to be mad about it for years and years and that Brown People are a threat, so these idiots think there's HIMARS On The Border or some shit.

A whole hell of a lot of us White Folks never much evolved past the evolutionary stage of the Baboon hissing at it's own reflection in the mirror, because they didn't have to...being stupid is easy and fun or some bullshit...and in America today, that's one hell of a lot of MAGA.

Like, no, I bring up something that I think of as basic knowledge, especially if one is supposedly a conservative to one of these people...and half the time it goes right over their heads and doesn't even register. Christ, I was held to higher standards than this horseshit by the time I was like, five.

Yeah, sure, you can come up with all the sophisticated-sounding rationalizations you like, but it basically comes down to bigotry, fear, paranoia and stupidity. 

That, and a media ecosystem that's figured out it can make a lot more money by appealing to people's worst, basest instincts. Like these people didn't have anybody in their lives, growing up, who cared enough to tell them New Thing X or Y was simply a new thing and nothing to be afraid of.

And then these fucking people were allowed to build their entire identities around dumb shit 'cause it's easy and profitable for the Powerful to manipulate morons.

And you wouldn't want Republican shitheads like Chuck Grassley to have to do the work that's in their specific job descriptions...much less have to get real jobs or do work like us regular people, would you?? My God, would they even know how?? 

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers. If you don't want to have to work with other people regardless of who those people are you shouldn't be working with, let alone for, the public...much less be in government. I mean, for fuck's sake out here in real-people-land you couldn't make a profit with a goddamn hot dog cart having this kind of mentality...and people like this have enough power to punch above their weight here in America??

There's something extremely wrong with this picture.

And then these fools are mad because, fundamentally, other people besides them exist and are not required by the World to have to carry their fucking stuff around for them.

LGBT people, for instance.

Somehow "Conservatives" got it into their heads that the mere existence of LGBT folks challenges their mostly-imagined "Authority" or some shit. I guess a couple gay dudes got caught having sex in the empty Senate chamber recently and Charlie Kirk is mad that they're not being charged while (most) January 6th Insurrectionists caught relatively minor charges and sentences. And Chuck is mad about it. Some CHUD from Louisiana got four and a half years for making a jackass of himself, putting his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk and scratching his balls on camera.

Seriously try that crap in the office of Vyacheslav Volodin and you'll disappear, but you'll scream a lot before you die...and the FSB will make sure nobody ever finds you...or any of your friends...ever again.

Most J6 Insurrectionists didn't even get like a year in jail. But Charlie Kirk thinks, since they were punished at all, that somebody else ought to get put to the rack, burned at the stake, and beheaded.

Bro, in most countries...especially the kind of authoritarian nations you want to turn America into...the J6 motherfuckers would have been shot by the goddamn Army the second they breached a restricted area. In the kind of countries they fap to the idea of (or have turned the Republican Party into without a country) there'd have been mass arrests, public executions and repression of the political factions that were responsible, and their political leaders would be banished, dead or fled into exile.

And seriously, you give somebody like Trump a Golden Palace in Dubai (even if he had to be frog-marched to a plane and shipped there) and a large stipend from the Emir (because Allah forbid that rich people should have to not be rich people) or a Dacha in Sochi and the ability to suck Putin's dick on a regular basis, you really think the son of a bitch would ever come back??

LOL.

For fuck's sake do you think he'd ever shut up about having been detained by State Security for a couple hours, while the powers that were decided what to do with him?? Dude can already make it sound like justifiable consequences or a moderate inconvenience is some devilish plot, and motherfuckers believe that crap. It's all bad faith, but they don't know the difference anymore.

If we don't stop tolerating this horseshit...and start holding the people who spread all this garbage to account...then we don't get to complain when it's right-wing insurgents and they're causing even more chaos because they're completely fucking incompetent and literally trying to fight wars against things that only exist in their own heads.

But still, real people will die. 

Yeah, it might be the guy who negligently tasered himself during the Capitol riot, but still, he was a person, wasn't he??

If you want to be the one to have to explain that to somebody's grandma...please, by all means, keep putting up with this bullshit. 

Sure, The people that follow this crap believe they're in some kind of existential war with the Boogeyman...but they also, fundamentally, believe that the Boogeyman is being assisted by everybody from Black People to the Federal Government to Liberal suburban wine moms to poor Salvadoran migrants and Taylor Swift...and if you can't see how that kind of shit is going to hurt innocent people if these dumb shits are allowed to continue their Jihad of unreason...you're not even looking.

We need to stop this shit.

And we need to remember that blood is all one color.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran  

Twelve

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