We want it now! (Apocalypse Later, Part Three.

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! ~Brother Cavil, "No Exit," Battlestar Galactica (Reboot) Season 4.5

You want to know what the problem with "Conservatives" and "Republicans" is these days? It's this silly bullshit, this right here.

"When it gets straight up unbearable" she says God will "Take Us Out" and that this is "His Promise."

Sounds more like a threat.

So basically, depending on how you choose to interpret this, either God is going to destroy the world and thus put you out of your misery, or (and this is the "Rapture" bullshit) God is going to rip you away from everyone and everything you care about and the only ones you might possibly even see again are the people who end up on the right side of some arbitrarily-drawn theological line that no one can consistently tell you where it is.

And I've known a great many people who've emotionally and/or mentally destroyed themselves trying to believe in this shit...or who've been so destroyed by others who did believe it.

And more to the point, these fucking people's religion is increasingly dour, joyless and zero sum, day by day. If I had to guess I'd say it's not any wonder that even conservatives don't like to hang out with conservatives.

For the hell of it, I did a crawl through the timeline of the lady in the snipped post, and it's a toss up between literally preaching at other people in the sorts of ways calculated to least win friends and influence people, and standard issue #MAGA bullshit.

It's almost like, the second these people start weaving false doctrines, lies, politics and racism into whatever they believe...they end up believing more in the false doctrines, lies, politics and racism than they ever believed in Jesus Christ.

And if they are right, then they have an amazing level of choice between destruction and...destruction.

In other words, according to these fucking people, human beings can either do what they want in this life and then barbecue in hell for all of eternity before their soul is eventually destroyed at some unspecified point...or they can become little more than a lobotomized, endless choir of praise for some small egotistical god while surrounded by a masturbatory materialist fantasy that they don't even get to enjoy...and to never do anything else ever again. 

And this they call a blessed afterlife?

How is the latter any less of a destruction than the former?

And more to the point, why the fuck would anybody want to spend eternity surrounded by these assholes, lobotomized or not?

And lately, why does their "God" look less and less like Jesus Christ or even Donald Trump and more like a shouty old homeless man reeking of Bath Salts and cat piss, preaching on the street corner about an End Of Days that never comes and railing about the evils of women?

The longer this goes on, the more these so-called "Believers" look and sound like they'd rather be Murderers than believe in anything.

The more I see of this garbage, the less I want to have anything to do with it and the more angry I am that I ever did. I'm honestly starting to wonder, if Revelation is true, is the persecution of Christians therein not much more than the legal and social consequences of their own actions?

Seriously these fucking people's goal seems to be making the Earth unlivable, followed closely by the extinction of humanity, in some vague hope that if things get "bad" enough, their version of Jesus will appear and only save them.

From events they appear to be trying to engineer their own damned selves. The Bible does not specify when the Apocalypse will come, at worse it's Apocalypse, Later. But these fucking people? They want it now...and they desire that it kill their "enemies," most of whom are just people they don't like who never did anything to them.

This crap is not what I was taught, it's not even close, but it seems to be all that's left of Christianity in America.

And some people are just fine with that.

Seriously, I hope I'm not the only one who sees a problem with this.

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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

Chicago Boys (Apocalypse Later, Part Two.)

[A group of new prisoners is being processed into Shawshank State Prison.]

Norton: This is Mr. Hadley, he's captain of the guards. I'm Mr. Norton, the Warden. You are convicted felons. That's why they've sent you to me. Rule Number One: no blasphemy. I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules, you'll figure as you go along. Any questions?

Inmate: When do we eat? [Norton nods to Captain Hadley, who gets right in the new inmate's face]

Byron Hadley: You eat when we say you eat! You shit when we say you shit, and you piss when we say you piss! You got that, you maggot-dick motherfucker?! [slams his baton into the new inmate's stomach, causing the man to fall to his knees, gasping for breath] On your feet!

Norton: I believe in two things: Discipline and the Bible. Here, you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. [smiles] Welcome to Shawshank.

~From the film The Shawshank Redemption.

I've seen stuff like this, sporadically, since 2015. Right-wingers, glorifying the idea of extrajudicial killings, throwing people out of helicopters and shit like that. Fun fact; In Chile under Augusto Pinochet they not only didn't glorify that shit...they hid it...along with a bunch of the other ways that they "Disappeared" people, and targeted and assassinated Chilean exiles in other countries as well as citizens of other countries...often with the help of the CIA. Seriously, human rights workers and law enforcement in Chile are still investigating some of this stuff! In Chile, Pinochet and the people who are left that were in his government were loathed by the people. Pinochet was eventually arrested for crimes against humanity (and deservingly so) even though General Augusto Pinochet had been the commander of the Chilean Army, when he died the Army refused to allow him to be buried in a military cemetery or on its property.

But the American far-right and Libertarians love the man, as much for his brutality as for the libertarian economics of his regime and its subservience to American big business. And because they're fucking fascists, that's why.

Here's Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic strip, responding to the death of his stepson by drug overdose, by saying that the only valid options for dealing with "troubled" young men are #1 To murder them yourself, #2 To watch them destroy themselves and hope they don't kill anybody else. (Or, you know, you could try giving a shit, asshole.) And then he added point #3; That any effort at love and wisdom or use of government programs, medicine or therapy is a "Delusion." This is Eugenics and Fascism, right here.

You ain't safe, White people...especially conservative white people. You think these Eugenicists give a damn that you're conservative or white? First you gotta be the right kind and I can guarantee you most of us ain't. In fact, you're very likely to be the people killed in the greatest numbers by it...because you think you're safe, because others will fight back, will set up governments and take their own spaces, and network with allies to hold them.

Why kill people yourself and get blood on your suit, when, in true "Chicago Boys" style, you can outsource that shit, and they might even do the killing for free for some bullshit reasons, and somebody might still turn a profit?! And then you can get some radical whack-a-nut Catholic priest to declare this bullshit "Holy." 

If there's a hell, I hope it's filled with these sons of bitches and that hell is an eternal Soviet breadline, or something like that. Fuck these motherfuckers.

These fucking people would rather murder the whole damn world, or watch the rest of us kill each other in the streets than be bothered to have to give a shit. They're assholes who see government, law enforcement, the military and society itself as nothing more than tools to make sure We The People show a decorous face to Power between bouts of bloodletting, and of course, that we don't go after the wealthy.

That's why these assholes are still stuck on Communism, even though it hasn't been a thing since 1989. Communists killed rich people.

(Note: They seem to be fine with Communism being resurrected and Russia re-Sovietized under Putin so long as the Hammer And Sickle remains on their side of some apparently moveable ideological line...even though the Putinists are still killing rich people in the same exact ways that the Communists did...but I guess it's the "right" rich people this time?) Also note that the same neoliberal economics were heavily in play in Russia in the 1990's and the capitalists and economists...some of them the same people who'd influenced Chile and the Pinochet regime...were balls deep in ensuring the rise of Vladimir Putin, or someone like him.

And that's exactly why these fucking people want to destroy Ukraine, because by daring to fight for their own freedom, the Ukrainians, regardless of their own personal political beliefs...defied these motherfuckers and their fascism and "economic-only" Libertarianism.

The Ukrainians decided they wanted to live in a society, and that they were willing to fight for it. We're going to have to do the same.

It's not just your money these motherfuckers want, it's your soul. They want fascism to be people's religion. Trump Jr's bio says he's a "Meme War General."

Motherfucker couldn't be bothered to serve in the military, but he wants to claim this mighty title in directing how you live your life? If possible, without directly telling you how to live your life.

Gutless motherfuckers, they won't even own their own bullshit in public. 

Again, You think these fuckers won't "Disappear" people? (Not that I think they're smart enough to actually keep that shit quiet.) If they fail to gain control of the government, they'll just do the same via right-wing insurgency, and it'll be the FBI now rather than the FBI later and human rights advocates and international courts investigating the damage.

They want what they want either way, domination, war, or both. If they can't get the former politically they'll give us the later physically...they're telling us this right to our faces.

Fuck that shit. You're either an American (or otherwise person who believes in a liberal-democratic societal order) or you're not. You either believe in freedom, or you don't.

If you only believe in freedom for you, that's not freedom. But you can't tell these fucking people that.

The cruelty, as always, is the goddamned point. And that is the entire basis of all this, from the hate and the racism on down the list. They don't "Love their own race" they'd kill billions of White people too, give the chance.

And they'll do it for fascist politics with a profit motive in the name of libertarian economic interests, and dress it up in bullshit religion, just like the Chicago Boys and right-wing Catholics did for General Augusto Pinochet.

And when there's a war, they'll fight that with profits in mind, too. Trump is disposable, Ayn Rand is these people's True God...they're just hiding that shit for now.

The time will come when they won't be.

Remember that. There's going to be a test later. Soon, I think.

Part One

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Floyd: So they let you tote that record player down there, huh?

Andy: [points and taps his head.] It was in here. [gestures over his heart] And in here. That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you. Haven't you ever felt that way about music?

Red: Well, I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it, though. Didn't make too much sense in here.

Andy: Well, here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.

Red: Forget?

Andy: That there are places... in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's... there's somethin' inside that they can't get to; that they can't touch. It's yours.

Red: What are you talkin' about?

Andy: Hope.

Red: Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It's got no use on the inside. You'd better get used to that idea.

Andy: Like Brooks did?

~From the film The Shawshank Redemption.

 

Kamikaze (Apocalypse Later, Part One.)

 [Jenner tells the computer to do an Enhanced Internal View of TS-19's brain]

Shane Walsh;  [as the group sees the brain of TS-19] What are those lights?
Dr. Jenner: It's a person's life... Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you... The thing that makes you unique. And human.
Daryl Dixon: You don't make sense ever?
Dr. Jenner: Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death.
Rick Grimes: Death? That's what this is, a vigil?
Dr. Jenner: Yes. Or rather the playback of the vigil.
Andrea: This person died? Who?
Dr. Jenner: Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected... And volunteered to have us record the process. ~From The Walking Dead, Season One, Episode Six, TS-19

I saw this earlier. Arizona Republican Congresswoman Debbie Lesko said during debate on new gun laws that she would "Do anything for her grandchildren" including...as a "last resort"...shooting them.

The fuck?

What the fuck do these fucking people think this is, the Zombie Apocalypse and they're about to be overrun?

I'm a veteran, a former United States Air Force Security Policeman. That's basically light infantry with a side of law enforcement, or vice-versa depending on one's duty station and assignment within a given squadron. Like it or not, I was a trained soldier, a killer. Or, in our modern politically-correct-speak, a warfighter. 

I never saw combat, peacekeeping duty was bad enough, but as an Airman, Coast Guardsman, Marine, Sailor or Soldier you are, by definition, trained to kill people.

And I can't process this.

I just can't. I am not capable of contorting my brain to think something that fucked up.

And I'm a gamer who routinely thinks of fucked up scenarios for the fun of it.

This lady isn't in the military, in a combat zone. She's a member of Congress, privileged, safe, powerful and wealthy beyond what most people in this world can even imagine. There's no war here, no civil disorder, no drunken Russian soldiers raping people, no Zombie hordes overrunning the city...not even the riots these fools are so performatively afraid of. She's an American, not a Japanese person at the end of defeat in WWII wanting to Kamikaze herself. And yet she does, not just herself but others too.

I guess it's not "Better dead than Red" anymore. It seems to be "Better dead than free...or better dead than having to live in a society where gay people are free to be themselves or where immigrants can practice their own culture.

Remember, these fucking people's "End Times Narrative" is pretty much "The world ascribes to Liberal values, and then gets destroyed by our small, mean, selfish god."

And this isn't a remote, happened-upon thought, she brings this murderous plan up fairly early in the conversation, she's on about possibly shooting her grandchildren. Like, this is something she thinks about often enough to bring it up in a debate, a discussion, on the House Floor. 

Better to "Go to Heaven" now than to risk seeing "Critical Race Theory" on a list of elective courses when the grandkid is getting their Masters degree?

And she's a member of the political party that, given the chance, would happily stop all aid to Ukraine for no less of a reason than they'd just love to be in bed with Putin's New Soviet Union...you know, the literal enemies of America. Vladimir Putin, who has sworn an oath to destroy America like Hannibal Barca of ancient Carthage swearing a vow on the Altar of Moloch to destroy Rome.

And yet there's some of these fucking idiots that think social media is some big threat to kids, apparently.

And yet, if I had to guess, I'd say that both of these motherfucking weirdos are perfectly fine with the idea of an 11-year-old girl being both a mother and a rape victim, and given their choice, they'd make her work to support that...family. 

Or in their typical two-faced fashion, after making her have that kid and forcing her into being on welfare for the rest of her life, they'd use her as a political punching bag *Cough* I mean "example of moral degeneracy and to show why liberal democracy and the welfare system are broken." *Cough*

Maybe it's just me, but I think Republicans...and guns...are the threat to kids at this point and I say that as a gun owner and former Republican.

I don't know what any of this is, but it's sure as hell not conservatism as I was given to understand that belief system. 

And now, on top of all that, we're apparently having terrorist bombings of obscure monuments put up by even more obscure rich people (and left to sit in a cow pasture) because something something New World Order conspiracy theories.

I mean, come on, what the fuck??

I don't know what the fuck kind of fucked up world these fucking people think they fucking live in, but I want no part of it.

The thing is, these fucking people see any kind of cultural or social change, or equality at all...anything different from their narrow, whitewashed worldview...as Apocalypse, as death. I'm serious.

She's essentially saying, at this point, that she'd rather shoot one of her grandsons than have them grow up and marry a black girl...or a white boy...or decide after much introspection or just "knowing" (as some people do) that on the inside, they're a girl.

She'd rather they be dead than fall outside of her narrow worldview in some small way...let alone a big one. I've known plenty of conservative LGBT people. This isn't about that. It's about she'd rather kill them than risk them growing up to be a liberal.

It's a death cult.

But if some older white boy gets one of her granddaughters pregnant, that's OK? Or does she want to shoot said statutory rapist, too? Does she want to force the granddaughter to have that baby? What about the quality of life for that kid...or her kid?? Hopelessness and poverty are already things we have to deal with in our world. How much worse would it be, when someone ends up entirely dependent on the State their whole life, because they had to wait until their kid grew up to learn basic education, job and life skills?

And this is belief in "Life?" 

Sounds more like a living death, to me.

But that's the kicker, isn't it? At the end of the day these fucking people could give a shit about any person's life other than their own. It's not even about a certain political philosophy or worldview, it's about fear and hate and even the most mild discomfort being equated with literal death by cowardly, privileged people.

People who, at this point, would gleefully burn down the world because somebody is different from them, who'd give up their own life and freedom because other people exist, and dare to keep on living life in spite of their disapproval. As if these fucking people view themselves as some kind of arbiters of what everything else gets to be.

Fuck all that.

This isn't about some kind of political or social conservatism, not anymore.

It's literally a cult of death and privilege and wealth so driven by fear and hate as to be alien from modern understandings of civilization and society that it might as well be the Cult of Dis Pater, the Chthonic Roman god of death and wealth, of Ba'al or Moloch of ancient Canaan or Carthage. 

Some of these people seem to long to be the bandits or marauders of some post-apocalyptic future.

And it would no longer surprise me if they were bowing down to literal devils, at this point.

We, as a people, need to stop tolerating this horseshit before these fuckers burn down civilization, and do something about it before that happens, not after.

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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Bottomless Pit (Fuck Republicans, II.)

[The 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first Black regiment in the US Army, has just been attached to Col. Montgomery's brigade in the hope of seeing combat. The troops are marching through a regimental camp]

Cpl. Thomas Searles: Who are these ragamuffins?
Sgt. Major John Rawlins: Contraband, straight out of the field.
Short contraband:[to Thomas] Hey old man, where from?

Cpl. Thomas Searles: Massachusetts. You?

Short contraband: Round about here, we slaves in the field when the Yankee man come. Say we soldiers!

Tall contraband: You walk like the Bukra Soldier, even talk like the Bukra Soldier!

Cpl. Thomas Searles: [to Rawlins] What'd he say?

Sgt Major John Rawlins: He says we march like white soldiers. How you like the Army, contraband?

Tall contraband: Oh, we love it! We thank the Lord every day for de good vittles and de beautiful clothes! This year every day like Kismis!

Cpl. Thomas Searles: [to Rawlins] What?

Sgt. Major John Rawlins: Like Christmas.

Cpl. Thomas Searles: Oh.

~From the film Glory.

I have to say, this year the Fourth Of July didn't seem like much of a holiday.

Maybe part of why that is, is because over the weekend I saw that a ten-year-old girl in Ohio who got pregnant from being raped was denied an abortion and had to travel to Indiana for the procedure. The state supreme court apparently referred to her pregnancy as an "opportunity."

An opportunity for what? Assuming she survived, to be struggling just to be able to survive? To struggle to get an education, or even to work when she got old enough, because of the cost of childcare? To live on welfare her entire life? To never be able to have any kind of normal life because of somebody else's heinous act, that she had no capability to even stop? 

That's the kind of "opportunity" that created a national argument for a couple days. And believe it or not there were dudes coming out of the woodwork defending the state's actions, saying she had consensual sex. Dudes, a ten year old isn't capable of consenting. There was big "Keep your legs closed, whores" energy with a decided undertone of these guys not so subtly wanting a piece of that action.

Why else would they define an obvious case of child molestation as "consensual?" Think about that for a second.

I mean, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with people??

 I'm sorry, but according to how I was taught, if a girl that age is doing anything like that it better be with a kid in the same age category and there should still be hell to pay...but more of a "being told by their grandmothers to each go pick a switch" variety. (I mean, seriously, the first time I got caught rather more-innocently fooling around with a neighbor girl we were both older than that and the same age and there was still hell to pay.) 

If it's an older boy, let alone a grown ass man (And at that age it's always either an older teenage dude or a grown ass man) you call the fucking cops and do everything possible to make sure the abuser ends up under the prison. 

And, In the moral universe that I was given to understand, you hope the hell cops get there before irate parents do because if they don't, even more people are going to jail.

This was the conservative ("small-C") default setting before 2015 or so. Why is this difficult?

Now the motherfuckers seem to not think anything at all is abuse, no matter how depraved it is, as long as they're the ones doing it.

And the worst part is; I'll bet you these sons of bitches, if they had their way, would force that kid to go get a job to support that kid that they wanted to force her to bear, and then likely to keep. Unless of course said kid was perfectly healthy and white...which is the vibe I've been getting from all the "We will adopt your baby" idiots. 

There's a lot of people out there I wouldn't trust to watch my ferret, much less a kid.

But don't worry, left to their own devices the White Nationalists would happily make the situation even worse. I don't know how the fuck a guy named Fuentes who (apparently) likes to beat off to transgender pornography and has a sexual relationship with a (seriously) transgender Nazi Cat-girl fits in to "White Nationalism" but here the fuck we are. And he apparently thinks there should be "Catholic Taliban Rule." One of these things is not like the other one. 

Hell, the majority of the world's Catholics aren't white. But it's true that these assholes would force a dour, utterly aspiritual, zero-sum cultural religion of some sort on as much of the rest of the world as they could, given the chance. And a whole bunch of these Red Hats would be just fine with that being "Celebrity Worship" of Donald Trump...among others...and I'm looking at you, dumbass Q Nuts.

Although, I think they'd be surprised when this religion more closely resembled Putinist Russian Orthodoxy than anything else. They're also setting themselves up for the kind of bullshit medieval society where a new ruler means everybody has to convert to a new religion...and where there's no such thing as objective truth, spiritual or otherwise.

And where force is the only thing that gives people power, or the government any legitimacy.

As if growing up in or having to live in any society where the people in power think of the Handmaid's Tale or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a guideline and vow to do worse wouldn't be hell for anybody and everybody who had to live in it? And then be a constant tumult of revolts and wars because it's human nature to resist and people want to be free. How would anybody deal with or treat PTSD when everybody has it?

But that's where this "Own the Libs" garbage and this unchecked belief among "Conservative" white people in fanaticism for its own sake and fascism because other people exist will eventually lead if it's not checked, and soon.

And somehow, I have a feeling these fucking people's own debased sexual attitudes and behaviors and pure stupidity would make that shit infinitely worse.

And people will die, not on the scale of the Fourth of July parade that some MAGA-hat shot up this weekend, but in numbers so vast we cannot comprehend them. If we don't stop this bullshit, there's going to be a war and people will still be counting the bones three generations from now. These fucking people don't want to live in a society, they want the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia and/or the wreckage of Eastern Europe post-WWII, but with a mall. 

And apparently, with some sort of rape camp, like the Serbs did in Bosnia. I saw what those fucking murderous fascists did. Now add in modern weapons, up to and including nuclear arms, on both sides of a possibly global war between fascists and non-fascists....and the fascists are clearly working themselves up to discard any form of logic or morality whatever. See Also; New Soviet Russia.

Right now, the average Republican would fit in on Russian State TV.

Do you fucking understand me? 

I remember reading, years ago, what Fredrick Douglass wrote about how slaves in the Antebellum South were debased by their masters, forced to drink liquor and engage in debauchery when they weren't working, such that they would be glad to go back to the fields.

What does it say about Republicans that they have debased themselves, in the service of whatever dark powers give them attention and money or promise power?

These fucking people want to burn down the world, for no better reason than they think it's funny and something something mumble mumble Black people, LGBT people, five Moderate Republicans and Ukrainians as a people even exist.

A hell of a lot of people feel that the Supreme Court has cost our government its moral legitimacy. Who the hell knew that the threads that bind us together were so thin? Who the hell even knew that Roe Vs. Wade was, in fact, one of those threads? 

America has come to have too much tolerance, socially and otherwise, for basic stupidity, for extremism and political and religious kookery. American Christianity
and the Republican Party have been balls deep in making that happen simply by tolerating bad behavior and weird shit, in the name of trying to "energize" their base.

Well now all that energy is finding places to go. And honestly it seems like that energy is against Constitutionalism, Checks and Balances, Democracy, Republicans, The State Itself, and even speaking in coherent sentences or not using foul language. 

When Liz Cheney is the reasonable, smart one in the room, we have a problem.

This is what eliminating the idea of consent, of governance, of truth from people's minds in the pursuit of power gets you. People have nothing to believe in because having that would give them a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

But these idiots think this Christ-less Christianity and societal belief in nothing will give them a better relative status than, I don't know, somebody that they don't like, to be determined later.

And Republicans created this shit. Now it's eating them, too.

And it's not even that they don't care.

Sadly it seems like all but a few of them are gleefully jumping in the monster's mouth because they think there's some kind of special prize just for them in its stomach.

There isn't.

Dead is dead. Death is all the same whether you're a conservative or a liberal, whether you're Black or White or anything else, whether you're gay or straight, Death is just Death.

And no one can say with any certainty what comes after that.

More to the point, no one is acting more like talk of any potential Eternal Life or Truth in this one is nothing but bullshit and faith is a sucker's game than the Christians are. These people are moral bottomless pits.

You all might want to consider the implications of that, before we continue this.

But it is, as I recall, a belief in the Christian faith that as long as you are alive, redemption is possible.

Just as African Americans and so many other peoples overcame and persevered despite constant attempts at destruction by White Supremacy, you too can reject and resist this bullshit. 

It doesn't have to be this way.

My fellow white working people...the elites pushing all this division and hate do not give a fuck about you either. When the Black people, the liberals, the LGBT folk, Women and all the others fight back and refuse to go back to these fucking people's...these rich Republicans...idea of Medieval neo-feudalism as Serfs, who the fuck do you think these assholes are going to use?

You.

But you don't have to take it.

Every day is a choice, you can choose, and start again.

But you've got to want to be Saved. 

Is all the hate really worth it? Is it worth it to you, to burn America or the world down rather than see Black folks or LGBT people or Muslims or Women get a slice? 

This is your home, too.

Remember that.

Part One 

Sgt. Major John Rawlins: [Speaking to a group of Black children in front of a mansion as the 54th Regiment marches by] That's right, Honeys. Ain't no dream. We run away slaves but we come back fighting men. Run home, tell your folks how kingdom come in the year of jubilee!

~From the film Glory.

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Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book

~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.

Fuck Erick Erickson. (Fuck Republicans I.)

 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

I saw this earlier today. Evidently, at least for Erick Erickson, The Supreme Court and the "Conservative" movement in general going off the rails lately is all about revenge.

Revenge for what, Erick? Civil Rights? Women not being your personal property? The fact that your side lost the Civil War?

Fuck that motherfucker.

My personal theory is the Supreme Court went rogue to try and cause distraction and kick up a fuss to protect the Republican Party in general and Donald Trump in particular from accountability since there appear to be...maybe...a dozen Republicans nationwide who weren't balls-deep in the whole goddamned attempt to overthrow our government and replace it with Donald Trump. A man who, evidently, threw food at the wall, tried to choke out a Secret Service agent, and who damned well knew members of the mob he whipped up were armed.

And Trump wanted to lead them into battle, against his own country.

Think about that for a second.

That's the literal Constitutional definition of treason, right there.

But Erick here shows that Trump isn't really the problem, just a shitty opportunist.

And Erick, that Supreme Court you're bitching about? It's been dominated by Republicans for that same 50 years you're bitching about...but not your kind of Republicans, apparently.

And in that lies a warning for all you other Republicans. If SCOTUS keeps at this rogue bullshit it's going to break this country. At that point, normie Republicans, you will be at the mercy of the mob.

Which ostensibly-respectable, often anti-Trump Republicans like Erick Erickson will be only too happy to lead, since it never was really about Trump either. 

It was ever and always about racism.

And all this bullshit is about accountability, not just for 1/6 but going way back. For example a warrant was found this week in the basement of a Mississippi court house. A warrant for the arrest of the white woman whose lies led to the murder of Emmett Till. She's still alive. His family wants that woman arrested.

That's what these fucking people are afraid of. What you got to hide, Erick?

If you think these motherfuckers will stop with wrecking the Civil Rights of Black people, or of LGBT people, you're wrong. In fact, they'll probably be coming after you first...because as racist and terrible as you've been you weren't racist or terrible enough.

My Grandpa, a Naval Aviation retiree, had saved some newspapers for various reasons from when he was stationed in the South. As a kid...and later as an adult after he died...I looked through some of those. There's not much those Southern white people hated more than Northern white people, and it was mainly over the whole idea that people in general had rights, that workers could organize, and stuff like that. A lot of those Southern newspapers were the Newsmax and Fox News of their time.

But it's worse than that, even.

Apparently a lot of these Republicans want to fuck 12-year-old girls. They keep getting caught talking about that shit. The same people who call liberals "Groomers" and LGBT people "Sexual Deviants" are consistently getting caught talking about the idea of Tween girls having sex.

Doesn't that seem kind of fucked up to you?

But it's part and parcel of these sons of bitches' belief that other people's humanity and sovereignty over their own bodies is not a thing they need to respect.

And when the massive social disruption caused by these so-called "Conservatives" leads to a divided America and Neo-Confederate forces and the United States Armed Forces peering through their gunsights at each other, and a bloody tit-for-tat of airstrikes, missile attacks and naval battles, and hordes of refugees...many of whom will be non-Christians, non-fascist conservatives, People of Color and women...expect that among those refugees will be 13-year-old Moms...and those who (rightly) don't want to be Moms.

Expect that if we ever take back the parts of the country that these sons of bitches end up controlling, we're going to need things like the Special Court for Sierra Leone...but here in America and specifically for dealing with things like sexual assault.

Because that's the kind of world These Fucking People want to live in, apparently. 

A world where most people's lives are nasty, brutish and short...but where old wealthy white dudes get to live in fabulous wealth and practice perversions that would shame the Devil...while old simpering priests that dress like one-man Pride floats extol how "Righteous" they are before the captive masses.

I don't want to live in that kind of world, and you don't either.

Vote these fuckers out, demand that Trump be prosecuted, and remove the current corrupt Supreme Court members...and more to the point bring them up on charges of treason too, because when you're literally working on behalf of a foreign power to destroy America and replace the Constitution with radical Catholic doctrine...the Knights of Malta...that's what you call that shit.

Treason.

And people like Erick Erickson go along with it because Racism. Don't let them fool you, either.

This is America, assholes, we don't goddamned answer to your religion, the Federalist Society, or the Sovereign Military Order of Malta...or the 1920's Ku Klux Klan, neither.

And we all sure as hell ain't waiting for the Rapture...which isn't even a Biblical doctrine, but something a dude named John Nelson Darby made up whole-cloth in the 19th century.

The time for Knights ended 600 fucking years ago, the age of aristocrats over 100 years ago. We as a goddamned species had better wake up and deal with the 21st Century and stop tolerating those who won't, be they Communist-revanchist Russian dictators or American Catholic extremists.

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.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

"White Life?" (You Break It, You Buy It, One.)

I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. ~Malcolm X.
 

I saw this the other night, Representative Mary Miller called the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade a "Historic victory for White life." She tried to walk it back later, but she said it and the crowd roared, Trump was standing right next to her and made no move to challenge or correct her. 

What the fuck is "White Life?" Note I ask this as a white man and a former Republican. Has there been some kind of Jim Crow Memorial Society or Segregationist Underground all this time that I didn't know about? I grew up conservative and I was taught this shit was wrong.

And it's funny how, given that the whole Pro-Life movement was, in fact, a proxy for racist bullshit this whole time...just how stunningly fast they've discarded that whole "Pro-Life" thing, now that they don't need it anymore.

Telling, that is.

Shortly after I saw that quote, I saw this. As regards women's health issues, the Department of Defense and the military have basically told the Supreme Court to go fuck itself.

As a veteran who knows how important things like that are in terms of readiness and the health of female Airmen, Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, I have to support such a decision even though I well understand the negatives.

And what are those? Well, it further frays the apolitical nature of the United States Armed Forces and it further damages civil-military relations issues and undermines civilian control of the military, that is actually bad. But of course the military...and the wider Federal government on general principle...can't just take this crap laying down without adverse effects for itself and the country as a whole.

I rather suspect there's going to be a lot of Federal agencies telling this Court to go fuck itself or simply ignoring its dictates until this situation is rectified one way or another or until the Court stops handing treats out to the far-right, or both.

But like I've already said, I think the far-right knows what's up, knows their days are numbered and is trying to grab what they can, while they can, before the hammer falls. It's not just the 1/6 hearings, it's resistance to their crap across the board. It's that Democratic favorability for the midterms has swung ten points in favor of the Democratic Party in just the past few days.

And also, I think, because they know something's up, and because I think some Red States are going to try to secede, I think they're also trying to establish a basis for their own legal system. I think something like what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is going to end up happening here, and there's going to be a war...or at least a Right-wing insurgency...because that's what the Far-Right is saying it wants, openly, period. When somebody tells you who they are, believe them.

And here's the thing, here's why I think their scheme to break off a piece of America for themselves might actually work:

I see a hell of a lot of people disgusted, and taking down flags, and one hell of a lot of them are veterans.

The Supreme Court has caused a full-on legitimacy crisis and damaged the full faith and credit of our government. Not in some abstract way, not with some other country or other entity, but with Americans, with We The People, with those who traditionally should be at the vanguard of supporting our country and its government. 

This is on top of "Conservatives" spending basically the entire last generation trying to do exactly that in one way or another already, because Ayn Rand Libertarian Horseshit or whatever, or because Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay or Paul Ryan had some other moral low they needed to plumb...and that was before Trump.

I've been saying for a long time that "Conservatives" hate America. And now they've successfully dinged the whole damn country...not with our allies this time, not with shitty bad actors like Saudi Arabia who laugh at us Infidels while they conspire with even-more Atheistic bad actors in our own government...but with us.

With people like me who've served this country and put our asses on the goddamned line. And no, I absolutely cannot find fault with that when I find out that the entire political philosophy I was raised on and spent 17 years of my adult life actively supporting was nothing but a goddamned lie.

And that's what faithless fucks like "Conservatives" in general and these Supreme Court Justices in particular seem to have forgotten. When you lie to people, when your Word ain't worth SHIT, you ain't either.

Respect is earned, by every action, every day. You can't buy that shit. You can't force people to respect you. It's a thread that runs through our entire system that our government only operates with the consent of the governed. It says so right in our founding documents.

That consent, that moral right, is evaporating in real time and we can all see it.

And here's the thing, who's more likely to fix this situation or to start something new that's actually workable? People who, whatever their disagreements and faults, believe in compromise, cooperation and working together??

Or the people who'd happily shout "Unga Bunga" at golden idols while cannibalizing murdered neighbors, so long as their lust for more hate and rage is sated, and for whom no immorality is too much??

Again, respect is earned by every action, every day. All the time, no mistakes, and it takes but one violation of that trust to lose it forever.

Service Before Self

Integrity Above All.

Excellence In All That We Do.

You break that shit, you bought it, and you can own the fucking consequences.

Someday, conservatives, y'all going to need something from the rest of us or wish America as it was, was still a thing, and none of this...and none of us...will be there for you. 

You break America...and you can own the shitty little banana republic that you'll get out of whatever part of it you take...probably only after a whole bunch of fighting that wasn't worth it for nobody.

And the rest of the goddamn world will move on without your ass, and never take you seriously again.

And what I find endlessly incomprehensible is just how much These Fucking People hate their fellow Americans.

White American "Conservatives" would rather burn America to the ground, and hell, destroy our global civilization and our planet than see LGBT people, People of Color, or women or anybody else get their fair share of America. 

I don't know how the hell people can hate anybody that much...much less everybody.

Civilization keeps you alive, too. You might want to consider that before you keep trying to burn it down. Cultural and social change, and the future, is going to happen no matter what.

But they'd rather end the world in the name of their small, shitty, miserable god than accept that.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Слава Україна!

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

Mask Off (DixiePublicans, Yo.)

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

I wasn't going to write today.

But then, I saw this.

Lauren Hoebert literally calling Pro-choice protests an "Insurrection." Yes, this is exactly how much contempt Republicans have for you and your Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment.

Yet Republicans can try to literally overthrow our government and that's a "Protest?"

Seriously, fuck these bad-faith motherfuckers.

And then it got worse.

John Cornyn, literally trying to argue to Barack Obama that Brown Vs. Board of Education was a wrongly-decided case that somehow stripped rights from people. Mind you, that and the Civil Rights Act were what undid Southern Segregation.

What? The right of Black people to be treated badly by society and have to go to substandard schools, etc. etc. ???

That's not a right. That's not what rights are.

Cornyn just gave away the fucking game, he believes that he has, or should have, a right to discriminate against other people.

If you wonder why...why all this anti-abortion, libertarian, religious-right crap not to mention the constant glorification of the 1950's that's been going on my whole life...that's why. That right there. John Cornyn and most Republicans now living aren't in any mental or ideological space "Conservatives" else they'd have gone with the status quo which, at least for my whole life, has been civil rights.

Cornyn and a lot of those like him are Segregationists, and it's been very uncool to even think that, much less say it, for almost 60 years now.

 But literally everything that's driven Movement Conservatism for the last 60-70 years has been a reaction against not so much Roe Vs. Wade or Civil Rights or any of the stuff that's come up since...but a visceral, emotional reaction to the Brown Vs. Board of Education decision...and they have to go after all these other rights, first, because Brown is the plank they all stand on.

Oh, I get it, their excuse is they're just kicking these decisions back to the states.

States that, minus a few large or generally well-intentioned places like the West Coast states or the Northeast...either don't have the resources to do this, that and the other thing because they don't collect shit in taxes or they're actively trying to kill their constituents half the time with malice aforethought because Republicans.

Yeah, that's about how far I trust the chucklefucks in my state legislature and not just the Republicans, some of the Democrats aren't that great either. 

Also, and speaking as a former conservative here, I've never particularly trusted state legislatures with my rights specifically because states have a history of doing very fucked up shit. And not just in the South. Usually, it's the Feds who reign that in.

 This morning I went to the Farmer's Market with my Mom, basic uber-liberal retired social worker who was a Democrat (and specifically a Clintonista) for 15 years before I became one. She doesn't follow politics, she doesn't bring that shit up. She hates it when me and Pat (her partner, your basic conservative "Joe Manchin style" Democrat, an Army Aviation retiree and also a retired social worker) talk about this stuff.

And she brought up the Roe Vs. Wade thing, not me. She brought up that next Republicans will go after LGBT rights, People of Color, civil rights and things like Social Security. And she...knowing that I used to be a Republican...a source of cheerful disagreement in earlier times...said "Don't vote Republican."

And she sure as hell ain't wrong.

We went to the Farmer's Market...a space full of hippies and weird people selling baked goods, produce and various other stuff, and it was of course a happy, diverse space filled with all kinds of people, Capitalism, in its modern incarnation, yo.

But there was this one guy in a Trump shirt walking around with his dog and doing nothing but glaring at everybody...

Like how dare we even exist.

And that's the thing, as bad as the religious nuts or the segregationists are or would make things, you could go somewhere else and get out from under their power. That's what the Great Migration and all that stuff even was. That's why Chicago is so hated by These Fucking People, because it was a mecca for Blacks who left the South and a source of both information and resistance. The Black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, was the paper of record for Black people in a wide swath of Southern states.

And there's those who would happily do worse that people like Clarence Thomas, John Cornyn or Sam Alito, because they won't bother with legal process, they'll just murder people.

Stuff like this is precisely why the Founders enumerated all these rights for us in the first place and set up our government the way they did. You may not like the way things are going, or have been for awhile, but our Federalized system prevents one major problem, as the Trump years and bungled COVID-19 responses showed it dilutes authoritarian horseshit: Autocracies, dictatorships and monarchies are very, very efficient at getting things done, especially killing people.

There's fucking people out there who are literally itching for just any old excuse to kill people, who literally do see any opposition to their evil bullshit as some kind of "rebellion" and anybody who disagrees with their fanaticism of the moment and their murderous hatred as an enemy to be enslaved or murdered, and increasingly these fucking people are just going completely mask-off and not even bothering with their shitty selfish religion and other assorted justifications.

And anybody who falls outside of that is expected to just meekly shuffle off and die quietly in the Outer Darkness. Time will come, I'm warning you, when that includes most conservatives, too.

And when these fucking people meet too much resistance to own the whole country, and break off a piece of America for themselves, that's who's going to dominate that space, the fucking wannabe murderers.

Because once these fucking people get their own space, nobody's going to have the guts to stand up to those who want to be killers.

But remember, it was basic Republicans who gave these fucking people and their racist hate a goddamned national platform in the first place...because they thought they could control these people and they'd crawl back under their rocks after they were done voting Republican.

But as you can see, those people didn't do that, instead they became Senators. And now people who think the Senators don't go far enough are actively going after *Republicans.*

And it will get worse.

Vote these fucking people out, all of them. And then be prepared to defend yourself.

It will come to that.

Either we all have rights, or none of us do. That's the whole damned point.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

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.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran