Uncommitted (Satan's Sermons, Five.)

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

...

We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Savior, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics. ~Hunter S. Thompson

So, my state's Primary was Tuesday.

Naturally, there were no surprises, Joe Biden cleaned house on the Democratic side, this despite a far-left effort to get people to vote "Uncommitted."

And while Donald Trump won on the Republican side, a large plurality of Republicans still voted for Haley.

Think about that for a second.

I get it, Americans, both Left and Right have been conditioned by political media and their own biases (because that's what an algorithm is, functionally) since 2008 to want a President that inspires an absolute WANK-fest on one side or the other, and scathing hatred on the opposing side, because strong emotions generate Clicks and Likes and overall Internet Engagement and thus an ass-load of money for a lot of fuckin' people.

Not that there's any real comparison between Obama going on Jimmy Kimmel and all the shit Trump did, but the media would like you to think so. Why? Because at least the media got itself conditioned into liking the easy money from certain people (mostly but not exclusively White Republicans) reacting strongly on some kind of emotional level to everything Obama did, just because he was President-ing While Black.

Then they got all type of money and props for being seen as a center of resistance to Trump. Democracy Dies In Darkness, now give us $5.00 (Funny how no one cared about or even mentioned the people who didn't have five bucks.)

Well, guess what??

That's not helping.

None of those fucking people, thus, have anything at all (least of all in an atomized society like our own where far too few of us either "Conservative" or theoretically "Liberal" give a shit about other people) vested in making anything better because that doesn't *Checks Notes* get a bunch of gullible people on the internet hopping mad and thus directly or indirectly giving somebody money.

And Biden is, obviously, not that guy. Joe doesn't want to play these games or be a superstar like Obama and he doesn't consistently do terrible things and say dumb shit in public like Trump either, thus generating a buzz, and the media hates him for it.

And the far-left hates Joe for not being "Perfect" enough or not doing enough for the Palestinians. Never mind that Hamas got themselves and their own people into this mess, or that letting the stated reasons Hamas is even doing this for let alone their vicious methods set a precedent would be terrible for all nations. Palestine has been a Cause Celebre for the Left forever, or something something Gazpacho.

But it's more and less than that, too. It's not just a generational social meme. They never got over the fact that Bernie Sanders wasn't The Dude in 2020. 

Never mind that Republicans spent months winding up to Red-Bait the shit out of Bernie (And I like Bernie but he had a history of not helping when it came to that crap) and when Joe got the nomination instead the "Anti-Communists" just kind of wandered off and went back to doing whatever they've been up to since 1989. 

Never mind that dueling political cults of personality tend to end badly.

But somehow all that effort didn't generalize past The Bern. 

And somehow Uncle Joe being right up there with Che and Karl and Fidel and Uncle Ho as far as the Right is concerned just never took off as any kind of an idea except in the fever swamps where any Democrat or liberal is basically a "Commie."

Nor did this particular meme expand beyond said fever swamps. In fact, the idea didn't even catch on with most Republicans.

(Also, said fever swamps are not exactly expanding.)

And more to the point, despite the existence of a small number of American Tankies (and nobody is less impressed with Joe than the Tankies right now, trust me on this one) over 90% of the straight-up adoration and worship of the Hammer And Sickle these days is coming from MAGA and Republicans from Donald Trump on down.

Again, stop right there and think about that for a second.

So yes, even if all that were true, Republicans...one of these things is not like the other one...and there's no Leftist policy these days that's as categorically calculated to aid Russia and Vladimir Putin on the battlefield as Republican dysfunction in the US House of Representatives is despite the fact that Putin's armies are literally flying the Hammer And Sickle.

And it's not just that Republicans don't care. It's that they cannot wait to taste Russian boot-leather.

Sorry, but I grew up in the 1980's. I don't get this shit and I never will.

Fuck, Anti-Communism was still very much a literal thing when I was growing up. Red-baiting had mostly died off, but that was because domestically at least the conservatives had either figured out you could comfortably fit the number of actual Communist Party USA members in a phone booth or remembered that they themselves had been the ones marching with North Vietnamese flags and photos of Che Guevara in 1968 before they Got The Jesus and switched sides. Indeed, it was "Fashionable" on the Right, to say that one had once been a Leftist (also it was usually BS.)

I don't give a damn how allegedly "Christian" or homophobic the Russians are...their beliefs and culture (and their paranoia) are not yours, they don't give a shit about your and you will not like their beliefs and social memes nor the fact that their paranoia lands you in a Gulag, either, conservatives. That's where they want to go.

And in the face of that, anybody who's "Uncommitted" to voting for and supporting the candidates and the system we have is apparently also uncommitted to Democracy.

I'm not saying current Democrats are the greatest, but if you think the fucking Fascists will give you an equitable policy on Israel vs. Palestine or Universal Health Care or anything else you say you want, you have another thing coming, and that is not a joke.

And accelerationism will not go the way you think it will.

Playing fuck-fuck games with that type of shit is basically letting the Devil write your sermon.

Hell, these fucking people are already winding up for the next big bullshit moral panic which will apparently be primarily weaponized against their own people...or the ones who are insufficiently Fascist anyway. Also, I'd guess we won't hear much about "Mom's For Liberty" once that starts, will we??

What's it going to take to get it through your head that Republicans literally want to enslave your daughters, your wife or yourself if you're a (White) woman or a poor White man, and kill you and your gay friends too (if you're anybody else at all.) 

If we don't stop this shit now, it'll never stop.

Democracy, for most of us, is self-preservation.

Commit to understanding that, at least.

Слава Україна!

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

Four

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

...

Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin