Medusa

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). 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 intermittently 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.

...

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

I saw this yesterday.

And of course it escalated last night.

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned. ~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

But there's a particular point I'd like to address.

I'm a democratic voter.

Former Republican, but I've been out of that shit for 20 years. Voted D in 2006, re-registered as an Independent in 2008, switched to being a Democrat in 2016 because of Trump.

Let's look at this; Like somebody said, Abdul Sayed and his wife look like they actually like each other.

Mike Rogers and his wife do not.

These fucking people supposedly have all this money and political power, they've got every vapid boob-fluencer imaginable shilling for them spewing anti-Islamic crap. Supposedly, Republicans got the whole world by the balls. (LOL no, but that's what they're trying to convince their voters of.)

And they look like this.

Every damn day.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

People who are winning don't look this way.

People who are even happy don't look like this.

A Good man, a real man, don't have his wife sitting next to him looking angry like he came up short on her money. with a side of "Why the fuck did I marry this Wank-Muppet??

Bitch is glaring at the world like Medusa...except she gonna turn you into Potato Salad with raisins instead of Stone.

Pro tip: First, Clean the stank off your face first. If you gotta go to the bar and do a couple shots to crack a smile, fuckin' do 'em.

Second, don't go around looking like you got shit on your upper lip, just had to gargle razor blades and lemon juice and you don't wanna be there before you go on camera.

You're one... ugly motherfucker! ~Dutch, to the Predator, from the film Predator.

You don't ever wanna look like you don't wanna be there when addressing the public.

I get that Republicans are positively in love with the idea of miserable bastardy, but come on.

If my partner was looking like that sitting next to me, I wouldn't figure I was in big trouble, I'd know I was. 

And I'd probably deserve it.

I know what These Fucking People think would make them happy, oh yes I do. But if we've learned anything from the last couple of years it's that these CHUDs can't make the rest of us hate like they hate.

They wanna live in a world (again) where they think they can ban shows like Sesame Street and do so for 22 days before they have to cave to overwhelming public pressure...because they think it'll work out different this time.

What a fucking thing to aspire to, eh??

I hope these idiots think about that and see if they can still feel proud of themselves.

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.

These fucking people cannot even defeat the Iranians, anymore than Russia can defeat Ukraine, and they've fucked us over on everything from high altitude ballistic interceptors to precision-guided munitions to basic supplies and working toilets for the troops on the front lines and if you don't think that's a worse problem than it looks like, as a veteran I'm here to tell you, you're wrong. People can die from the unsanitary conditions created when the toilets on a ship all get backed up.

And if you think Republicans are bad now?? Wait until reality kicks them in the teeth a few more times. The angry sullen loser-culture with a serious AI addiction that they've created will only get worse as they continue to lose. And when Trump dies? You ain't seen nothing yet. Stop listening to these people or putting up with this shit...but first, deprive these motherfuckers of any power over your life. At this point, it's a goddamned safety issue. They probably wouldn't be able to pull off a full-on civil war at this point, not with pretty much 70% of the country against them...but they can still kill people.

It's probably still going to come down to a fight somewhere. You have to fight that fight.

The alternative, pretty much...is imagine Mike Rogers and his wife glaring at you like that...forever.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

Four

We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. ~George Orwell, 1984