For Want Of A Nail (American Reformation I, Six.)

 [Luthen receives Dedra at his antiquities store, where she presents him with something familiar - the N-S9 Starpath he was looking for in Ferrix]

Dedra Meero: A vintage Imperial Starpath unit. What do you think? A little damaged, perhaps... But I'd say it's held its value. [Luthen breathes deeply] I have dreamt of this. Too many versions to remember. And here you were... all that time, hiding in the shelter of Imperial peace and quiet.

Luthen Rael: And I've known you all along. Hardly seems fair.

Dedra: You disgust me. Do you want to know why?

Luthen: Everything you stand for. Freedom scares you.

Dedra: "Freedom"? You don't want freedom. You want chaos, chaos for everyone but you. Ruin the galaxy and then run back to your ridiculous wig and little workshop.

Luthen: How confident you are.

Dedra: We're done here.

Luthen: Confident and terrified.

Dedra: The building is surrounded. You're finished.

Luthen: And you're too late. The rebellion isn't here anymore. It's flown away. It's everywhere now. There's a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S2.E10 "Make It Stop."

...

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

I keep seeing this bullshit all the sudden.

ICE Agents acting like 'cause they shot one lesbian, everybody else should just bow down, or something.

None of this works like that, it's human nature to resist, among other things.

And somehow "Organized Gangs of Wine Moms" became some kind of a bullshit talking point?

I mean come on, what the fuck?? Read that again and think about how ridiculous it sounds, conservatives.

Not for the first time, it sounds like these fucking people are trying to use Magic Words And Phrases, spell components or some shit, trying to use magic to cheat the Universe while shouting "Unga Bunga!"

That's half the fucking problem, basically half the country is illiterate or nearly so, and doesn't want to think.

And they want you to be afraid of everything. I can't do that, yo. I was in the military, I've been taught better than this.

I've also been shot at, by people who as evil as they clearly were seemed at least marginally competent. ICE and MAGA, Putin and Trump don't scare me. In fact, I think America needs better enemies.

The truth is these idiots think any dissent or protesting is "Crime" or "Disorder" or "Insurrection" or "Violence" it doesn't matter what's actually happening. Movement "Conservatism" functionally thinks itself God no less than Soviet Communism did.

They don't see a difference of belief or opinion or even a lack of interest in their crap as what it is, they see it as heresy and think what they "Believe" is pretty much the One True Everything. Increasingly these CHUDS see the very existence of Other People or even of those who might be a little or even a lot like them but have some difference from the rest of the Hive as a Crime against themselves.

Everything is some kind of Khmer Rouge-style Year Zero bullshit.

These Fucking People's idea of the Future is the Killing Fields, but with a mall.

They have no idea how to get there, but they feel themselves entitled to it anyway.

This crap is basically Nazi shit, and it's actively trying to become something else even worse.

But, naturally, it's both entitled and squeamish in that uniquely American sort of way, like that "Enhanced Interrogation" bullshit from the Bush 43 years. They pretty much expect that just by saying this shit they should be able to get what they want, now.

Like, my dudes, the vast majority of your opposition out here in the World ain't gonna be Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

And it's not just that These Fucking People have no idea how anything works, it's that they don't care, either.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

When is enough, enough?

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.

American "Conservatism" and the Republican Party has basically come down to illiterate thuggery.

Reagan Wept.

Sorry, but I literally was raised, taught, trained to have actual opinions and thoughts on things that were something other than grunting and cultic devotion to somebody like Donald Trump. I mean for fuck's sake I was by inclination and philosophy a conservative, theologically educated as a Christian, and I've watched every step of the way that idiotic American "Pop Culture" and creepy-ass ungodly "Reality TV" bullshit dismantled all of that over the last 25 years and that's what got us here. Worse I saw too many "Christians" embrace every step down the ladder of this shit and I'm fucking sick of it!

Like I said yesterday these people have stripped themselves of any basis for being in any of the positions that they're in, and they wonder why the tide is turning against them and why people aren't content to wait for the next election anymore??

For Want Of A Nail the horse was lost, etc.

These fucking people wanted hate and raw Power to be their own (and only) justifications, like Russia.

It frankly disgusts me that the "Conservatives" were the ones who became so enamored of Russia and the memory of the Soviet Union anyway.

But America isn't Russia and doesn't work that way despite these fucking people having spent like six out of the last ten years trying to sell the American public on the idea of being Russian Peasants. I do think I know when I first saw something like this coming, though. It was just after the 2000 election when I saw that first blue and red map of which areas voted Democrat or Republican, I remember in fact being pissed off that Red was the color chosen for the Republican side because it literally made me think of the Soviet Union and shit. I was like "What the fuck??"

Most people quickly seem to have embraced that way of looking at the world, though

We've been gradually ground down by elite malfeasance and divisiveness and media manipulation  and the totalistic marketing of bullheaded religiosity and purposeless hate until we're not so much one nation anymore, but a collection of competing tribes and special interests.

Which is exactly why I see America collapsing like the Soviet Union did, likely within the next year or so if We The People can't get our shit together fast enough.

I do think the tide is turning against all this bullshit, whether it's doing so fast enough to save the whole unified country or simply enough to hem this bullshit down into a small-ass Banana Republic or two remains to be seen. Personally, I think it'll be the latter.

And I think that simply because there's a plurality of "Conservatives" who've simply decided that they don't want to live with anybody else, and I thought that before the Trump cultism and they were already starting to be that way before he showed up.

Even so, there's going to be a point in our near future where if you want to be free, you're going to have to fight for it.

Like I have said, we need an American Reformation because too much of American Christianity is simply a propaganda tool for the Republican Party and/or MAGA and seems to like it that way, never mind the Devils and the Idols of Gold.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Five

Whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. ~From the Allegory Of The Cave, Plato's Republic.