Blaze Of Glory (American Revelation IX, Five.)

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred. 

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabering the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

"Democrats are trying to take everything from us, but they can never take our FAITH!"

Bitch, do you know what, and who it was that made me lose my belief in organized religion?

Want to take a guess?

It was right-wing political religion and people like yourself. Democrats didn't have one damned thing to do with it.

But of course, this guy knows that. He just doesn't care. 

His faith is in right-wing politics, which is fast being boiled down to nothing but White Supremacy...they are leaving themselves nothing else, this isn't something I said but it's demonstrable by their actions...and he calls this "Faith?" They are taking something else and calling it faith and religion. I'll admit I don't study the Word much these days but I seem to recall that it has a thing or two to say about that kind of stuff.

I used to be part of a big clique of people at my old job, the religious crew, basically. Christians of various sorts, Native American traditional practitioners, others came and went through the years. 

You know what? Almost none of the Christians in that group are still identifying as Christians these days. Broadly speaking, it was the hate, the hypocrisy, and the politics that wrecked it for every last one of them. 

It was the constant, ginned-up feeling of being under attack by basically everything, when in reality nothing and no one was coming at almost all of them.

For most people, at least those of us who aren't conflict-driven assholes, drama-mama psycho-bitches and foaming-at-the-mouth religious fanatics, the constant culture war drama is simply not sustainable. We burn out, we get tired, we shut off the goddamn TV and go the fuck outside.

We can see with our own eyes that we're not under attack, and sooner or later it sets in that nothing of the sort is happening. Sooner or later, we all have to interact with Other People.

But the Admiral here? He knows that too.

Motherfucker just hopes that you don't.

He hasn't been recalled to duty to patch up wounded grunts in some existential fight to the death. Hell, his ass got elected to Congress! He's more of a goddamned fat cat living large than most of us will ever be, and he knows it!

Again, he just hopes you, don't. 

No one has more contempt for the Republican base than Republicans do, and that is not a joke.

And the world is changing, sorry, not sorry.

I saw this in the paper last weekend. Front page of the Detroit Free Press, article about some New Age woo woo 'Academy' in Detroit.

OK, whatever. I could care less if somebody wants to eat psychedelic mushrooms, lick poisonous toads or smoke weed in search of enlightenment...and I could've cared less 20 years ago when I was a conservative Christian with a pocket-size Bible in my back pocket. I've done my share of that stuff since. Hell, I had then.

Sometimes those people actually have a point, and as a younger man I worked with enough Rastafari to know...if you're going to talk Bible with them and debate theology, you better bring your A-game, facts, and snacks. They know their stuff, and so do the Toad Poison people, more often than not, simply because such people are by nature seekers and they've likely been through some sort of a Bible-thumper phase already. 

Hell a lot of Voudoun and other afro-Caribbean faiths already incorporate heavy elements of Christianity because they were syncretic faiths created by enslaved Africans so those people could preserve some elements of their culture and traditional faiths.

Fuck, while I'm at it, good old-fashioned American Pentecostalism is a syncretic faith incorporating many elements of such traditional religions...particularly African and Afro-Caribbean ones, albeit with the serial numbers filed off...and nobody has more rock-star passion for Jesus than some dude in Zambia who might well have an appointment with the local medicine man after church.

I'm serious.

But you can't explain that to these fucking people.

Well, not the American ones, anyway.

They simply won't hear you.

I'm sure some asshole somewhere is freaking out about Witchcraft being on the front page of the Detroit Free Press. You know, that supposed icon of liberalism that spent much of the mid-1990's breaking a strike by its unionized workers.

The simple fact is, these fucking people simply see difference as an attack. The existence of the Other and the fact that even a relatively (small-c) conservative newspaper sees a need to acknowledge such is exactly what Ronny Jackson is saying he "Will never surrender" to.

Winston Churchill, he fuckin' ain't.

These fucking people long to be embattled, persecuted, stuck in a fight to the death against all type of crazy shit that exists only in their own whacked-out imaginations.

More to the point, they long to claim for themselves the historical mantle of righteousness they think goes with all that.

And they want to inflict real pain and trauma on real people, on the scale of generations, because of it. 

Never mind who, historically, just who it is that's often the one doing the persecuting of the Other...

And these same fucking people, who are terrified of interracial couples or LGBT people...are perfectly fine with children having children. I'm sorry, I can't make that shit make any sense. 

But then if you'd have told me 20 years ago that Republicans would run a vapid Instagram star named "Tudor" for governor of my state, I'd have laughed at you, because that shit doesn't make any sense either, and I'd have told you so when I was a Republican, too.

But the internal logic of American conservatism has fallen apart, and they kept going anyway.

Other people's aspirations, dreams, futures, and lives simply don't matter to them. Contempt not only for the Other, but even for those like themselves is a driving force for these fucking people. 

What? You don't think Trump having 300+ classified documents in his possession without authorization, with no chain of custody, and likely selling secrets to foreign powers puts White Conservatives in danger, too? 

We're all Americans, ain't we? The blast effects of a Russian nuclear weapon don't stop to ask one's political affiliation before they burn one to ash, you know.

These motherfuckers will keep this up until images of Black medics patching up White grunts, Soldiers of different Colors dying in each others arms while trying to shield each other from concussion and shrapnel, and the image of a violently severed arm and the remains of a Corps tattoo, with a strangely undamaged Pride bracelet on the wrist are seared into all of our minds. It's hard to keep being angry, hateful or racist towards the people who might've saved your life or the lives of people you love.

It's hard to keep hating people, when they're the rough men (and women) standing ready so that you can sleep safe at night. Sooner or later, somebody's going to pin the Congressional Medal of Honor on a transgender person.

That's not "Wokeness" it's simple statistical probability.

Whether they realize it or not, that's the direction "Conservatives" are pushing things in. We're all going to have to stand up against this shit sooner or later.

And if these assholes keep this shit up, they may well get their wish of being embattled and persecuted, except it's more properly labeled "Consequences" and nobody but 'Conservatives' ever felt sympathy for the fucking Nazis.

I'm going to be honest, that's a thing that's starting to worry me. I think the Republican Party is going to violently self-destruct, if not during this election cycle, certainly after it. But I think it's looking to go out in a blaze of glory like some radical Islamic suicide bomber and take other people with it rather than overdose like some coked out rich kid.

And considering just how many Republicans I've seen complaining about aid to Ukraine lately, I'm starting to wonder if they're being paid to destroy themselves...and if something infinitely worse will rise from the wreckage.

As it is these fuckers can't make a dig against Dr. Fauci without also working in classist and racist comments, apparently. (Never mind that there's plenty of advanced countries that don't extradite people to the US.)

These are people who love the idea of fighting some kind of war like the French Revolution...or the October Revolution...against liberalism, science and, well, basically reality at this point.

But here's the thing, who wins the war is to a great extent determined by...science. Sure, it's not as hard as it used to be where some Centurion had to eyeball the terrain and do the math in his head real quick about where to site the catapults...but how bullets, explosives, missiles and all that kind of stuff works is still something that comes down to math and science, and that was as true in our Civil War as it would be in the right-wing insurgency these fucking people think they want to fight. Nowadays somebody just punches a few commands into a computer, the solution downloads to the warfighters, whose fingers pull the triggers, and there you have it. 

The people who see the existence of Black people as an attack? They're not going to have all that.

And for months now, we've had the ongoing example of the Ukrainian Army...which fights according to reality...kicking the shit out of the Russian Army, which is all hopped up on ideology.

It's not going well for the people who thought they were fighting some glorious war against reality's apparent liberal bias, now is it?

But you can't tell these fucking people any of that.

They simply won't hear you. 

They think the bad shit will only happen to other people. They get that people die in war, they just don't imagine it could ever be them. And they won't like how any of this is going to turn out. But when it doesn't they'll double down and keep fighting anyway, because the cruelty is the point.

When the murder of a Black man by a police officer seared the conscience of our nation a couple years ago, they got mad that other people had consciences.

Actions have consequences, and we're in such a time again. We need to do something about this shit before these fucking people and their privileged stupidity kill us all.

They only want to go out in a blaze of glory because they think it'll somehow hurt other people more.

And there's plenty of more-rational bad actors looking to take advantage of it.

Four

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

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Crazy Eyes (American Revelation IX, Four.)

At length did cross an Albatross,
And through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through!
A good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollow!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whilst all the night, through fog-smoke-white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'
God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?'—With my crossbow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
~From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Tuesday night in Wyoming, Liz Cheney lost her primary.

Liz's sole sin, of course, was being on the 1/6 Committee and thus, against these fucking people's Mad Orange Wannabe King.

She lost it to a relative unknown named Harriet Hageman, a crazy-eyed loon whose sole qualification insofar as I can tell (even in the eyes of her voters) is that she's a crazy-eyed loon who doesn't know anything and will simply do whatever Trump says.

I'm going to warn you now, any of you Republicans that aren't MAGA Cult members...between these people's fanaticism and their paranoia, no one is safe. Somebody is trying to primary Matt Gaetz, apparently for not being MAGA enough. But, if he isn't, who the fuck is? He's never been anything but a pro-Trump fanatic and some nut is accusing him of being a traitor? Republicans have been eating their own in the service of their Golden Idol for a long time now, and it's going to get a lot worse.

The thing I'll never understand is...why are Republicans doing this shit to themselves in the service of a total fucking loser like Donald Trump?

Oh, That's Why.

Apparently, there's some Rapture stupidity going around again. I wonder how they'll try and move the goalposts when it doesn't happen?

And it doesn't happen...every single time. You can run this experiment as often as you like and nothing will be any damn different.

How many of these sons of bitches bought heavily into the End Times Prophecy movement in the 1990's (and didn't leave when it turned out to be all bullshit?) The post-9/11 religious mania, Harold Camping in 2011, the 2012 Mayan Calendar bullshit? I'm still at a loss as to how the hell Christians thought the calendar of an indigenous people, which had nothing to do with Christianity or Christ and simply had an arbitrary end-date had anything to do with...well, anything?

When you believe in one impossible thing, and elevate belief above rationality, and do so simply for its own sake...anything becomes possible. When the sole criteria for "Salvation" becomes believing in something hard enough...without any care for what that thing is...well, how many people sold everything they owned, gave the money to Harold Camping, and then felt really stupid afterwards?

Do this enough times, I guess, and you end up with eyes like that.

And I will die on the hill that yes, a lot of these people know what the actual Truth is, they simply do not want to follow it because it won't get them enough money or something.

A lifetime of cognitive dissonance like that is how you end up with crazy eyes like Harriet Hageman.

How many of these fucking people will follow Donald Trump straight to hell, despite the Bible's many and rather explicit prohibitions against the worship of golden idols?

And the worst part of it is, these people will do it, fanatically believing that they're going to end up with something special that nobody else has.

As if a cooler spot in hell is something to aspire to?

I think in the end, we're all going to end up feeling Cheney's loss...but none more so than Republicans. Someday they're going to realize what all they traded in for...Trump...and then they're going to beg to get their shit back.

Just like all the willing marks that followed Harold Camping and every other fucking scammer who set a date for the Rapture.

In the end, this Trump thing won't be any different.

And I'm here to tell you, the next round of defections, heretic hunting and insanity will be even worse. Apparently, Trump has lost Alex Jones. 

For whatever that's worth, I guess.

And "Nuclear MAGA" was trending tonight.

The fanaticism is getting worse, and will get worse still. There's people who've based their whole damn lives on Alex Jones...but they'll drop him in a heartbeat for endorsing somebody other than Trump. Same will happen to FOX News, and so on and so forth.

Until these fucking idiots essentially demand that all things be given to their fake Orange god.

Shit, if I was still up in this mess I'd probably have crazy eyes too, just from trying to keep up.

Seriously, don't be these fucking people.

Three

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

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Dicks (American Revelation IX, Three.)

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: ~Amos 5:7-8

I saw this earlier, a friend of mine sent it my way.

Some idiot trying to sell their own semen *Cough* I mean "Unvaxxed Sperm" for $3500 per, uh, "Load." 

Good work if you can find it, I guess, $3500 for, what? A minute's work? 

But I shouldn't laugh too much. My own life experience tells me that if you can put it out there, some idiot somewhere will buy it. Doesn't actually matter what "It" even is.

And that seems to go double for conspiracy theorist types, ad infinitum.

I mean, this is functionally the entire basis of Donald Trump's brand, extending back to well before his political life as we now know it, correct?

But, I don't know. I'm seeing way too much...and increasingly stupid amounts of...stuff like this these days.

These fucking people, in fact, seem like they're increasingly obsessed with dicks.

Whether it's their own or other people's doesn't seem to matter.

Dude, don't ask me. I only work here.

For example, Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake claimed that Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have "BDE." Big Dick Energy, whatever the fuck that means. 

Maybe it's just me. Note I say this as an Air Force veteran, and as the grandson of a Naval officer; If you don't even have the guts to swear, I'm not going to respect you. In fact, I'm going to have a hard time even taking you seriously. More to the point, I doubt you're even going to fight a civil war, much less win such a thing against the rest of us.

And perhaps more to the point, both as an Airman and in the civilian world...in my church background and in secular everyday life, also...I've had to deal with plenty of leaders in one capacity or another. Some of them, that's exactly what they were. Others just took up space, and left it to people like me to fill in the gap.

I never once cared about their "Dick energy" or even if they had such a thing. Indeed, many of such leaders (or non-leaders) were women. So yeah, "Dick Energy?" It's not only not even in my top 100, but I'm a basic straight white man. The absolute last thing I want to think about in the course of my day is some other dude's dick.

Nothing in particular against it, I just don't care. Among other things I'm not some sex-obsessed freak. Right or wrong, I'm getting too old for that kind of shit.

And that's just basic conservative worldview 101 right there.

Which is, of course, not what these fucking people are.

Like, seriously? These people seem obsessed with dicks lately, in fact, with all things sexual and the more creepy and weird the better...but they don't have the guts to say "Dick" in public?

How do you have a fertility cult...especially a Roman-style fertility cult (given that the Romans could be a fairly earthy and profane people, and that Latin has a hell of a lot of words concerning sexual acts) considering that Latin words and Roman practices are essentially the root of the very concept of 'Fascism' (literally named for a Roman means of execution, a bundle of sticks and an axe) when you're afraid to say "Fuck" in the company of your own people??

And of course, their idea of "Mr. Big Dick" not only lost the election, but...thanks to Stormy Daniels and presumably others, we know that regarding the whole "big dick" thing, there's simply no there, there. A few years ago we all spent months hearing jokes about Trump's "Toad stool dick."

I mean, I get it. These fucking idiots are trying to sexualize fascism (This has been going on for a long time, actually) in the same way that Ayn Rand tried like hell to make unregulated Capitalism and plutocracy look sexy, and for the same reason...and of course it's pretty much the same people buying into it, too. Funny thing is, Ayn Rand herself wasn't the least bit of a prude.

A lot of these people are just plain lost, and absolutely in the very sense of that word that Christians themselves use.

It's been my experience that, at the end of the day, dudes that are in cults a lot of the time basically end up literally or metaphorically worshiping their own dicks.

And more to the point, a lot of these same sex-averse yet sex-obsessed people used to moral-panic about that shit, too, on a regular basis.

Seriously, don't be these fucking people.

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Two

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Rubicon (American Revelation IX, Two.)

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they've always done before
Look at the hate we're breeding
Look at the fear we're feeding
Look at the lives we're leading
The way we've always done before
My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

~Guns & Roses, Civil War

So, I woke up last night to get ready for work and found out that, among the various things retrieved from Mar-A-Lago by the FBI were Top Secret nuclear documents.

And all night at work I was just, like, are you fucking kidding me?

I'm not kidding when I say that I'm so angry that I'm having trouble finding the words to express it.

The general consensus among people is that the only reason Trump had those documents was that he was selling the secrets therein. I hope not, but I'm afraid something like that was indeed what was going on here. Seriously...just the fact that he had this stuff, unauthorized, is a major crime. That he refused to give it back when asked or even subpoenaed makes it even worse. They had to come get the shit.

And other people presumably on both sides of the political divide allowed this situation to exist, for months, knowingly.

And it's very likely that one of the countries Trump sold information to was Saudi Arabia. You know, the home of Osama Bin Laden, among other things. Think about the potential risks there, for a second, will you? A country De Jure dominated by a fundamentalist strain of Islam. A country where a member of the military becoming a radical Islamist is about as unremarkable as Senior Airman Mattson in Security Forces or Technical Sergeant White in Munitions getting the Jesus, and for the same damn reasons...as long as he doesn't try to overthrow the government, that is. 

If this shit leads to Saudi Arabia becoming a nuclear power, I'm honestly going to be worried, because the chances that some Takfiri nuts could end up with weapons of mass destruction becomes a real possibility.

And we may well have Donald Trump to thank for this.

When I was a young Security Policeman in the field with a rifle...well, let's just say if I'd done 1/10th of the shit that Trump may well have done here, I'd still be in prison and I'd deserve it.

But here's the fucking thing that bothers the shit out of me. FBI agents, Federal Judges and members of Congress have been subjected to death threats and verbal abuse because Trump got raided....again, apparently for stealing nuclear secrets.

These Fucking People...the ones making the threats...they hate America, they hate the very concept of freedom. They want to burn down America because they can't stand the idea of living in a country where everybody's free.

Just to throw out a completely made-up scenario, say some Islamists were to seize a launch control center or two at a Royal Saudi Air Force missile base in the middle of the Rub-Al-Khali sometime in 2034 and launch some Badr-5 Ballistic Missiles, causing hundreds of thousands to millions of casualties in Baghdad and Tehran...or New York City and Washington D.C. Sure, RSAF Security Forces recaptures the base and kills the terrorists, but hundreds of thousands of people somewhere still end up dead with countless more people wounded. And people blame the radical Islamists, not the society and system that created them and allowed for their radicalization and that was all too happy to point them in a safe direction...for themselves.

For other people, not so much.

And there's people who will cheer about that shit, I'm 100% not joking.

All the more so if it's their neighbors, their fellow Americans, the people here that they don't like.

Republicans like Donald Trump can pal around with Saudi Royals...in the same way that Republicans of a generation ago did...and get away with it precisely because a hell of a lot of their voter base here is so backward and parochial that a place like Saudi Arabia doesn't really exist to them.

And the right-wingers are threatening Civil War because it very much looks like Donald Trump finally did something that he absolutely has to be held accountable for.

But everybody else is the bad guys for holding him to account?

Fuck that.

Donald Trump will likely end up making Julius and Ethel Rosenberg look like pikers.

These motherfuckers are just fine with Trump betraying America, his oath and the Constitution, though. And they don't give a shit how many people die because of it. Because none of that stuff really matters to them. In fact, they hate America. Or at least, these fucking people hate any idea of America where they aren't the only ones who get to have anything.

Aren't they Americans too? That's the part that gets me. But that's just it. They don't want to be Americans too. They want to be the only ones and if they can't be that, then they would rather burn down civilization, destroy America and end the civilization that sustains us all. These assholes would rather see America destroyed and form some white supremacist neo-Confederate theocracy, or be conquered by Putinist neo-Communism or hell, radical Takfiri Islam, than live in a country where Black people, LGBT people and women get to be free.

Again, fuck these motherfuckers.

And that really is all that I have to say.

Lock him the fuck up. Lock up Trump and anybody who says they'd go to war for his fucking ass, they're all traitors, every goddamned one of them.

The oath I swore almost 30 years ago says that the Constitution and thus America are to be defended from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

We are a nation of citizens, citizen-legislators, citizen-soldiers, not serfs to a nobility, not subjects to a king. If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. We, the People have to hold these motherfuckers to account...and hold to account any who will not do what needs to be done.

You're either an American or you're not. Either you believe in freedom or you don't. You cannot have both the Cross of Christ and the Hammer and Sickle....or the Swastika. 

Fascism and freedom simply cannot coexist, one must win out over the other. It's that simple. 

One of these things is not like the other one. And for anybody who believes in freedom...losing is not an option here.

If you would fight a war against your fellow Americans to save a traitor who betrayed all of us, that makes you an enemy of America by definition. And it makes you a fucking idiot.

Speaking as a United States Air Force veteran here, personally, I'd recommend getting your affairs in order first.

It's time to pick a side.

Choose. Choose wisely, because once you've chosen there's no going back.

I feel like a line has been crossed here. This mess has crossed the Rubicon and we as a people have no choice but to deal with it and put a stop to this bullshit.

Now.

One

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

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Hellfire (American Revelation IX, One.)

Through me is the way to the suffering city;
Through me is the everlasting pain;
Through me is the way that runs among the Lost. Justice urged on my exalted Creator: Divine Power made me,
The Supreme Wisdom and Primal Love.
Nothing was made before me but eternal things
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope - Ye Who Enter Here.'

~Sign above the gates of hell, Dante's Inferno.

...

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ~John 11:25

So, evidently yesterday Trump got raided at Mar-A-Lago by the FBI. Apparently, it's related to his theft of classified documents. That was yesterday, I found out about it when I got up...because I had to work Sunday night and slept most of the day.

LO...and I cannot fucking stress this enough...L.

Meanwhile, Republicans in general be like "You can't do that to him!" and Trump Supporters are basically threatening civil war all over social media.

I have a little experience in these matters myself and suffice it to say, as an Airman it was made clear to me exactly what would happen if I stole classified documents or any such thing, and it would absolutely not have taken the FBI 20 months to get around to raiding my shit if I'd done so.

I also...having been a conservative and lived in Northern Michigan for much of my life...have more than my share of experience with these fucking people.

With people who make up a bunch of stupid false prophecies about cities and nations being destroyed by the Wrath of their small, vengeful God and their children being the "Two Witnesses" of Revelation?

*Marks that down on Right-Wing Idiot Bingo Card helpfully provided by that English bloke.*

You know, the loudly, obnoxiously jingoistic "Patriots" who hate America, who hate everything about America, who'd cheerfully kill everyone else in America, shoot down its government, its military, trash civilization and society, strip this country all the way down to the bedrock and give it all to somebody like...Donald Trump?

*Marks that down too.*

Donald Trump, who until about ten years ago literally, in the most obnoxious way possible, represented everything these fucking people loudly said they hated about America.

America and its bustling cities, it's decadence and irreligion, its sexual immorality. I used to own (On VHS, because that's how far back I go) at least one Playboy videotape in which Donald Trump made an appearance as the ostensible host of whatever was going on. It was on the discount rack somewhere when I bought it, and I must've both had money and been bored, because I didn't (still don't) bother to buy that kind of shit otherwise.

Somehow I missed that Trump was in it, and I was like...eww. Two hot Latinas, Okay. That guy, not OK. Like...Eww.

At that time, back in the early-to-mid-1990's I associated Donald Trump with bankruptcy, divorce, occasional racism, stupid shit and casinos where everything was dirty or sticky, the food was garbage and the slot machines were tighter than an Evangelical virgin church girl.

Yes, I've been to Atlantic City, alright?

Donald Trump, that guy, who so many of the "Christians" these days try and claim is some kind of paragon of Bible-thumping moral rectitude. Donald Trump, sometime WWE wrestler.

Some of those WWE guys, I'll take it seriously when they say they're Believers, because of how they conduct themselves.

But Trump? Son of a bitch couldn't name two books of the Bible and claimed he didn't need God's forgiveness. 

Excuse me? None of this shit computes and I used to be a conservative Christian.

But I'm a tell you what does compute.

"We Are All Domestic Terrorists."

Yep, that fucking computes.

Let me tell you why.

About this time of year in 1994, I was an Air Force Security Policeman stationed at KI Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A good four hour drive from my Mom's house, and I'd come home for a couple days on a weekend leave. Sunday evening, I'm getting gas at the local Shell Station and I was in my BDU's because the plan was to go home, rack out for a few hours, then get up and go to work and I wouldn't have to take as much time to get ready. My duty day started early the next morning, as I recall.

I'm in uniform. Camo, combat boots, American flag on my shoulder, brand new Sergeant's strips, too. In the front license-plate holder on the dark blue 1980's Chevy Caprice that I was driving at the time there was a white plate that said "Someplace Special." It was a cultural thing for the 410th Bomb Wing. Anybody from the Upper Peninsula and a lot of Cold War or early 90's USAF bomb wing veterans will likely know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure I'd expect anybody else to, and that's OK. 

And I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit cocky about it all, too. 

Old Ford truck pulls up on the other side of the pump I'm using. Fat local loser (who'd been a friend of mine in high school) and his buddy (who I didn't know) get out of it. Other guy goes in the store. My old high school bro comes over and starts talking to me. This dude...who had all though the time I'd known him in the before times literally laughed about my going to church and used to call me "Sir Mix-A-Lot" because my girlfriend all through high school was a chubby nerd girl (who was way smaller than he'd gotten since) starts talking about how he's Found Jesus. (!!!!) [Note: This dude was previously known for two things, listening to rap music and smoking cigarettes and weed. I'd known from hunting with him and his cousin that neither one of them could hit shit with a rifle.] Since I'd last seen him he'd gone from wannabe Rap Guy and plus-size 90's hip-hop fashion back to the scummy side of typical dirty rural redneck, reeking of chain-smoking and motor oil...and he'd apparently quit shaving.

He tells me he's joined some militia group up by Cheboygan (the closest big town) because "The Lord wanted him to." And then he told me that I should look into doing the same because of the "New World Order" or some such bullshit, and by his, er, "reasoning" we were supposedly "on the same side."

Again, Me = In Uniform, no cover but hair military high-and-tight, shaved up, everything including the inside of my car military-grade clean and reeking of Lysol. I was trying to quit smoking (again) and trying to get the smell out of my car. Respect is earned, by every action, every day. Excellence in all that we do, yo.

And I got this fat fuck with apparently the I.Q. of pocket lint a pack each of Basics and King Edwards in the front pockets of his dirty shirt up in my face?? Oh, HELL NO!

And I'm like "Motherfucker, look at yourself. By definition we're not on the same side of anything. Look at me, dude. Look at this flag, these stripes! I just got back from Saudi Arabia. You? You look like you fell out of a Skoal can! Who the fuck you think you're talking to?" He tried to make some bullshit excuses but I kept right on him and finally just told him to get the fuck out of my face before I fucked him up. He went and put whatever amount of gas his buddy had paid for in the truck. I went in and paid for my gas and by the time I was done and getting on the road they were gone.

Never saw him again, except in the local paper. He got busted for selling weed and did some time. Through mutual friends, I heard both sides of the story. As it turns out, these kind of fucking people always think consequences for their actions is some kind of vast conspiracy.

I don't know if this dude's parents (or him, for that matter) are still alive or if any of them live in the same place, but I'll tell you what. Where they lived 30 years ago there's Trump 2020 signs still all over the damn place.

And I'd run into the same kind shit seven years later from my ex-wife, except instead of the government being out to get her it was demons and witches out to stop the Chosen Ones from being born. The fact that she'd ran our finances into the ground and tried to wreck every other relationship in my life...and then gone psycho religious nut when I'd (predictably) left could not be reached for comment. 

About the only difference is I know my ex isn't a Q-nut or a Trump Supporter. She buys into all the rest of the conspiracy theories and then some, by the way.

I'm warning you now. Expect that if Trump is indicted, let alone arrested or locked up, that he will absolutely Find The Lord(TM) and appoint himself These Fucking People's Preacher-In-Chief.

And this, too, is a thing you need to know.

You think the conspiracy theories and the Q-Anon shit is/was bad? There is absolutely no more "Morally Flexible" do-whatever-you-want-and-feel-justified-about-it belief system in the world than this New Apostolic Reformation Prosperity Gospel crap that's resurfaced as a thing lately and apparently even overran CPAC.

These are the people who live lives that'd make a troop of horny Bonobos feel ashamed. And they don't care if you know, just don't point it out or they'll get mad. But Jesus loves and forgives them (and not you) and that makes everything they do Okay.

This is absolutely two streams of things I was hoping like hell wouldn't come together, but here we are.

You think Republican rationalizing is bad, immature and puerile now, on a normal day? Or that Republicans normally are piece of shit criminals and grifters? Wait until these motherfuckers get them some Holy Ghost, and you ain't seen nothing yet. Remember "I know the way to Jesus, now send me $20" is these people's starting point.

They'll do a bunch of nasty shit, claim God is going to supernaturally destroy this, that and the other thing when it doesn't go their way...and when that doesn't happen they'll get muscles the size of Samson moving them goalposts, and when nothing happens after the third or fourth...or thirty-fourth...time they've tried to call down Revelation on your ass or the world in general for not doing what they want...and nothing happens...they'll start trying to bullshit the Universe into giving it to them.

And what they want is hellfire. They don't care if it consumes them, too. They just don't. Every last person I've ever seen get into this shit turns self-destructive sooner or later. As long as the Blood God eats you first, that's all that matters.

And that was before far-right politics entered the equation. Their religion was all about them and their selfish desires even before that. They follow Trump because they think he IS them, or at least, their wildest imaginings about themselves, personified.

Or they will until he goes down. When he does, they'll hope he brings about the End Times somehow.

And when that doesn't work, they'll start trying to bring it all about their own damn selves. Their goal is that they get to go to heaven and watch you get eaten by the Things From Beyond. Heaven isn't Heaven if other people get to go. America isn't America if somebody says "Mubarak Ramadan!" to them in Walmart.

And when push comes to shove, no, they don't give a damn about Jesus...because in the end they will convince themselves that they are Heavenly Beings.

Oh, you thought it was a Cult before? 

The Cthulhu cultists Lovecraft came up with have nothing on these idiots. I'm not joking.

This is Christianity, as redesigned by the people who brought you the Aliens franchise and Warhammer 40K, with some real bad drugs thrown in. But unlike gaming or science fiction writers, these people really believe in their own stuff. 

Or at least, in the dopamine rush that it gives them, and Trump Jr. says that makes it all real, right?

And they will try to weaponize ALL this crap to make sure that the Rich Old White Man doesn't face consequences. When he does anyway, they'll say Trump didn't Believe In It Hard Enough and go get themselves another one.

And then they'll try and repeat this cycle of crazy contradictory bullshit again and again, because they think each time they pull the lever, they'll get a different result.

If that's the definition of insanity, well, I really don't know how else to describe this shit.

If you want a better country, you're going to have to be a better citizen, and we're likely going to have to fight for it, too.

Слава Україна!

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Bleeding Kansas, Again. (Also, WTF, Republicans?)

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.

I saw this the other night. And it pissed me off. Michigan GOP governor candidate Tudor Dixon saying she'll "Keep Drag Queens out of schools." Bitch, what?

Ain't no Drag Queens in no schools. This is not a thing that's happening. Drag Queens are grown-ass, usually straight men who dress up like women. That'd be against the dress code in most schools.

Of course, this dumb bitch is using "Drag Queens" as shorthand for Gender-nonconforming and LGBT people in general, and transgender kids in particular, because she's nothing but another two-bit bigot. 

As if somebody who's known mostly for posting dumb shit on Instagram, softcore Vampire Porn or Zombie Apocalypse videos can just drink some Potion Of Conservative Assholery and instantly turn into Rush Limbaugh. (No, I'm not even going to give Trump's own simpering grade-school antics consideration here.)

Why? Because I guess even if she sucks at it, she has to at least try. Without bigotry, without discrimination, the entire modern Republican "Thing" falls apart into a maelstrom of competing factions and everybody sees manipulating the bigoted MAGA yokels as the tiger they can ride in their victory parade.

Besides, if you really want to Conservative Asshole the right way and "Own The Libs" you want to be on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, not some stupid Playboy video shit. Rush might've sucked gigantic festering necrotic donkey balls, but at least he still did shit in an identifiably conservative way even when it didn't necessarily benefit him. And yes, it cost him when he tried to be a TV sportscaster.

I frankly detest people who want to talk like they're some kind of bigoted 1960's Union dock workers or something, but then claim all the modern shit, too...especially when they get into politics, or if things stop going their way. Tudor wants to talk about "Drag Queens" but if people who talked like the old Republicans I knew did about somebody like her, to her face...she'd be demanding all the "Woke" shit for her own defense, trust me.

And I thought the same thing about seeing a picture of Caitlyn Jenner at Trump's Radical Islamic golf tournament. You do not want to know what my people would have said about her back in the day. My dudes might've been willing to mind their own business or keep their piece about certain things. But there were, shall we say, limits.

And they'd say what they said whether it necessarily was to their advantage or not. Yes, a lot of these people were bigoted assholes, but they were neither two-faced, nor nanny-state eliminationist about dealing with that which was different.

As long as "different" didn't make a point of bothering them, they didn't bother it. The jokes told around beer, cigars, and whiskey might be the kind you can't really tell anymore, but we didn't try and rub people's noses in it or try to make a scene.

And a lot of us eventually rolled with things and evolved, because life.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's how it was.

But, see, I was taught "Live and let live" even if I didn't like somebody.

Maybe it's just me, and I know I'm a lot more old-school than most of these people, whose beliefs move with the latest fanaticism, or the wind on a clear day and then they want to evangelize the world into their (newfound) point of view...but I think people have a right to do what they need to do without any of these fucking people bothering them about it.

And yes, that absolutely includes LGBT kids, or parents for that matter.

And again, yes, I say that as somebody who told plenty of jokes about gay stuff back in the day.

But there was limits, and they was enforced.

These motherfuckers in the modern Republican Party don't have the sense to blow off steam out of sight or keep their bigotry behind closed doors. Hell, they act like they should be able to act out in public and get a prize for it. 

They likewise don't really seem to give a shit that all the bigotry and craziness and outrage-addiction will eventually eat them like it's a hungry tiger and they're the sheep that couldn't get away fast enough, because eventually everybody does something to offend the mob. 

Why? Mostly because the mob nowadays doesn't wait for something to annoy them, it is actively out there 24/7 looking for something to be offended by, and an excuse to be mad about it in the most performative way possible. And who needs the back deck or the smoking room when you have the internet?

And yes, that's exactly what these fucking people are, nothing but a goddamned mob. 

More to the point, like I said they want to act out publicly, rather than privately, and think they should get some kind of medal for it.

Cracker Barrell evidently joined, ya know, every other major restaurant chain out there in offering "Impossible" brand plant-based sausages and shit. 

Hey, I don't much care for the stuff (I think a lot of this plant based stuff tastes like eating a paper bag) but if somebody else likes it...or has to or wants to eat it, it doesn't matter to me. I might laugh about it later, but I'm not going to mock some Vegan person to their face about their life choices or get mad that my favorite source of grease and cholesterol is providing a service to somebody else.

Ya know, Capitalism? Freedom?

The company sees the chance to make a few extra bucks by expanding their customer base by offering different stuff. What's wrong with that?

Evidently a bunch of rednecks and shit got all mad about it, because mob behavior and they have to have something to be mad about. And they can't enjoy a good (??????) meal [Fuck, it hurt to even think that] if the place doesn't serve only food that nobody but them likes. Cracker Barrell isn't Cracker Barrell if some tofu-eating Vegan might eat there someday, or some shit. Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go. Bigotry and excluding others are, quite honestly, the only thing most of these idiots seem to actually like doing.

Seriously, y'all, fuck this silly bullshit. I've never eaten at a Cracker Barrell in my life and I'm not about to start.

And it gets worse, because of course it does. After last week's debacle over the PACT Act and the resulting public backlash to Republicans blocking it and then celebrating on the Senate floor, the Senate voted on it again and it passed this time.

Except some of these fucking people, like Rand Paul, voted against it again, claiming the PACT Act in particular and government spending in general will "wreck the economy." 

Seriously, I'm not going to, but I'll bet you money that if I look through Rand Paul's social media feeds there's a post somewhere touting the economic benefits of producing a whole bunch more F-35 Lighting II jets that only work maybe half the time.

But ya know, if the pilots, ground crew, maintainers and assorted support personnel were exposed to carcinogens via burn pits or some other shit while deployed? 

Republicans be like "fuck them. The economy damn it" blah blah blah. I've got news for you, Rand. Your war machine ain't going to work without the people that run it. Republicans hate the military. They love the defense contractors who give them money. It's really that damned simple.

And I have to say that I find it interesting that when all these international alliances and weapons are used for their intended purpose...that is, defending the global order and protecting the less-powerful from the ruthless...I find it interesting that that's the cutoff point where a lot of these Republicans say they don't want to play anymore. 

Sweet Jesus, can you imagine Reagan or George H.W. Bush if, say, things would have been less peaceful at the time, and Ukraine had ripped down the Hammer And Sickle and told the Russians to go fuck themselves while either of them was in office? 

Especially Bush after the fall of the Berlin Wall when...yes...we were looking for something to use all that big green and haze-gray firepower on while we still had it at the ready, simply to prove that there'd been a need for it all this time? The response would've been right out of all those Cold War novels and it would've been on like Donkey Kong...because Freedom, and at the time that was more than just an empty slogan to these people.

True enough, I think both parts of that are a big part of why Desert Storm happened, but it amply proved the damned point. Sweet Jesus, if the Ukrainians are fucking the Russians up this bad with a few HIMARS systems and flood of more basic weapons we've given them...any conflict where it's us against the Russians would make Desert Storm look like slow motion, leave a big smoking crater where the Red Army used to be, and leave the Russians wondering what the fuck even happened. 

The difference between the citizen-soldiers of a free nation and their courage and values, and the subservient conscripts of Putinist Neo-Communist totalitarianism in their obedience to Power could not be any more plain than the battlefields of Ukraine have made it.

And back in the day Uncle Sam would've kicked their ass, used the Red Banner for toilet paper and put Lenin's taxidermed ass in the wax museum at Knott's Berry Farm (Look that place up, its history and who started it, I fuckin' dare you.) and triple-dog-dared anybody to do anything about it...judging from the performance of Putin's New Soviet Men, anyway, we'd have probably gotten away with it.

Bomb 'em until they glow and use they asses for runway lights, as some of the older ex-SAC guys used to say.

That's the conservative attitude as I remember it. What the fuck happened? Now, Republicans pick the losing side, the side that lost the Cold War, with malice aforethought, and ally with them gleefully simply because they hate the rest of us?

Fuck That.

'Cause right now there's entire previous generations of Republicans (and not a few older-school Democrats) looking down at Josh Hawley from Capitalist Valhalla like "What's wrong with you, you interior-decorator-looking motherfucker??" 

Although I could see people like LBJ, Nixon, or for that matter Reagan using less...politically correct...euphemisms. I'm sorry, but these guys...particularly Reagan...cultivated a certain image that stuck in the minds of people like me. And it was Ayn Rand's attempt at Capitalist Chic, or the whole Marlboro Man cowboy thing, it sure as all fuck wasn't Josh Hawley's pathetic run away from his own goddamned mob. 

Fist in the air my fucking ass. Yeah, pencil-neck power. Fuck you, man.

Thing I don't get about Hawley...other than the fact that he has Putin's dick up his ass...in this matter is that neither Finland nor Sweden joining NATO is going to cost us much of anything, and both bring advanced, robust military forces with their own...damned near everything they need already, and already networked with NATO to cover what they don't have...to the table, straight up. 

In point of fact the Finns are set to buy a shitload of F-35's (Even though, since they already use the earlier version of the Hornet, Super Hornets would probably serve them better and the force would be on line a whole hell of a lot faster. But, whatever) and were actively planning to expand their Navy before this whole thing with Ukraine even started.

But of course, it's not really about any of that, is it??

You'd think, whether on issues of bodily sovereignty, family planning, sexuality, what people eat, or even the things they've said for so long are so fundamental like one's right to defend themselves or their own country or to make alliances in the world and have a stronger defense or foreign policy, that Republicans would mind their own damned business on the former...or as they so often did in the past, simply leave such things up to the individual (Which was exactly the point of Roe Vs. Wade.) 

We used to be all about supporting the latter. People have to have the right to make their own choices, even if you don't like those choices. That's what freedom even is.

And yesterday, Kansas voters broke their foot off in the GOP's ass, and this is the first time We The People have really had much of a chance to weigh in on the whole abortion rights issue.

Kansas, of all places, Wow. I'm a lifelong student of history. Shit starts in Bleeding Kansas, yo. Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory...

I guess not all Republicans have forgotten what freedom means, or that words have meaning.

Or that somebody's biology or gender or sex shouldn't put them in chains.

But current Republicans don't give a shit about any of that. 

They're more interested in a collective right to boss other people around and bully them, or to discriminate, or simply to hurt or kill people. And all the evidence suggests they wouldn't even be very good at it, certainly not against anybody who's going to fight back.

Modern Republicans are used to conducting themselves like strutting, jackbooted goons while the media and much of the political class equivocates on their behalf, as if they have some kind of valid societal role to be assholes. Like, it's the old stupid "just ignore the bullies and they'll go away" shit.

No, the way you make that shit stop is punch somebody right in the mouth. Repeat this until you understand it.

Well, come November, We The People have another chance to remind these sons of bitches what usually happens to people like that. Democrats had best get used to the idea of using the big stick, because ain't nothing else going to make this shit go away. 

Let's get after it. The Republican Party seems to be trying to commit mass political suicide, but we ain't got time to wait around for them to succeed. What replaces them might be worse.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this bullshit, and I don't want it to get worse.

And yes, I say that as a former Republican myself.

We were what we were...but given what they've become, goddamn, I miss those assholes. Modern Republicans combine the worst traits of far-left and totalitarian Right in the service of one thing only; Cruelty. 

It was so much better when cruelty wasn't the point. You want to make these people find something else to do with themselves, you have to step up, whup they ass, and make them think it might be in their best interest to find a new hobby.

But you have to do it. You want a better world, you have to be a better citizen.

You have to be the citizen-legislator or the citizen-soldier or simply the dedicated citizen and tell Power and Authority what they can go do with themselves.

You.

Get after it.

Слава Україна!

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27