The Cheesecake Wars (American Reformation II, Eight.)

Tiberias: Guy de Lusignan and Reynauld de Chatillon, with the Templars... have attacked a Saracen caravan.

Crusaders: Liar!

Tiberias: Silence!

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: It was no caravan. It was an army headed for Bethlehem to desecrate the birthplace of our Lord!

Tiberias: Reynauld, with the Templars, have broken the king's pledge of peace. Saladin will come into this kingdom...

Guy de Lusignan: Tiberias knows more than a Christian should about Saladin's intentions.

Tiberias: [Walks up to him] That I would rather live among men than kill them, is certainly why YOU are still alive.

Guy de Lusignan: [Chuckles] That sort of Christianity has its uses, I suppose...

Tiberias: We must not go to war with Saladin! We do not want it, and we may not win it.

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Blasphemy! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison] An army of Jesus Christ, which bears his holy cross, cannot be beaten!

Hospitaller: Does the count of Tiberias suggest that it could be?

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: There must be war. God wills it! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison and King Baldwin IV raises a hand for silence]

Tiberias: Silence!

King Baldwin IV: Saladin has crossed the Jordan with 200,000 men.

Tiberias: He will make first for Kerak and Reynald de Chatillon. [Walks up to King Baldwin IV] My lord...

King Baldwin IV: We must meet him before he reaches Kerak. I will lead the army.

Tiberias: My lord, if you travel, you'll die.

King Baldwin IV: Send word to Balian to protect the villagers. Assemble the army! [Crusaders excitedly roar]

~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

...

[After the Saracen army withdraws from its attack on Kerak]

Imam: Why did you retire? Why? God did not favor it. God alone determines the results of battles.

Saladin: The results of battles are determined by God...but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came? That is, before God determined I should come.

Imam: Few enough. That's because we were sinful

Saladin: [Scoffs] It is because you were unprepared.

Imam: If you think that way, you shall not be king for long.

Saladin: When I am not king, I quake for Islam.

~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

...

And let’s be honest, does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. … So, he’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you. ~Barack Obama

...

Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)

It's still going; The Cheesecake War, I mean.

In a twist that should surprise absolutely no one, Trump has invested in Cheesecake Factory.

Oops. ETTD. (Everything Trump Touches Dies) Have Fun With That.

Needless to say that's not the only pointless culture war crap These Fucking People are throwing at the wall and hoping it sticks.

You have to understand where I live though. I'm in northeast Michigan 2 hours from the nearest freeway in either direction and there's still more Abdul signs than Mike Rogers signs.

(Note: There's 2 or 3 Muslim people in this town that I know of who aren't just passing through-a lot of transients, though-and the ones who live here all work at the hospital. There is a bigger Baha'i community than that here, for what it's worth.)

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

Nobody who wasn't already going to vote Republican cares about all this Ooga Booga Booga crazy shit Republicans keep saying about Abdul. Hell, the one person this whole season who's said anything to me along the lines of this kind of shit specifically said they liked Haley Stevens and that was who they were voting for in the primary. Saw the same guy the other day (He quit where I work, but still shops there) and he was wearing a "Fuck Trump" T-shirt. No, bigotry is not strictly a Republican thing...but I don't see it getting any Democrats to cross over because of it.

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

Yes, I think Trump and Republicans have fucked up on affordability and economic issues that damn bad. Sorry, but bigotry is a luxury good for most people. It doesn't matter worth a damn if they're struggling to put food on the table.

And that's before you get to shit like *Checks Notes* The Epstein Files.

I'm not the only one who doesn't even recognize the Republican Party anymore, either.

I'm not the only one who is massively tired of this crap.

And I'm far from the only one who's losing my ass financially, or going to, if this shit persists too much longer.

And I think Republicans overestimated the number of people who were willing to lose their ass supporting rich Demon-worshipers and pedophiles or the number of "Christians" willing to submit themselves to the prophets of Baal, so long as Black People suffered more. I mean, at the end of the day for a lot of folks voting against this garbage is coming down to basic self-defense. 

I mean, I figured out going on 20 years ago that Republicans were like this but even I didn't think it was anywhere near this damn bad. (And I thought it was pretty damn bad.)

Republicans started relying on Political Cultism to get them over the line.

(Without making any serious attempt to get anybody else to join the Political Cult.)

And then they made the ability to be able to afford to be a Political Cultist itself into a luxury good. The only Trump flag I still see around here is on a million dollar lake house over on US 23 along the lake, and it's furled so you have to look to see it's there.

So that's who's still MAGA.

Meanwhile I'm broke, my partner is broke, everybody that I know is broke. We can't afford that shit.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

Did they think the rest of us were just gonna die off, or something??

I mean, yeah, pretty much.

Netanyahu came right out and said he only thought extreme Zionists who agreed with him should have been treated as citizens.

I'm tired of these people and their mentality that they should only have to serve those they want to serve.

If you don't want to be a leader of all of your people or serve all of the public in your country, don't become a national leader. Just get in office in some other capacity and stay there. 

I mean, fuck, if Trump had just run for the House or Senate in 2016 he'd certainly have won his race. We'd probably have had 8 successful years of a Hillary Clinton presidency and be 2 years into President Tim Kaine...and Rep. or Senator Trump would probably still have himself a political empire and neither term limits nor much in the way of constraints and he could monetize being a "Lifestyle Brand For Assholes" basically indefinitely without much in the way of a political backlash. 

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

Dude could be Speaker of the House right now, still making trouble for everybody else, and be Newt Gingrich (or Mike Johnson) on fucking steroids and not be looking at a very likely either Impeachment, Revolution or vastly more insidiously slow Political Destruction as Democrats dismantle his political apparatus from the bottom up or the middle out.

Again I'll note for example; Rush Limbaugh never ran for office. So far Tucker Carlson hasn't either.

But that's apparently not good enough for most of these idiots. 

At that level, exercising Power requires a little bit of intelligence.

And it's not the world these motherfuckers want to live in.

Newt Gingrich, for all of his faults, could (at that point at least) still talk to people and make a persuasive case for whatever.

That's too much work for Republicans now.

It didn't exactly hurt Newt that Bill Clinton's whole bit and most of his coalition were limousine liberals who were enthusiastically in bed with the "Tech Bros" of the day and even though pretty much everybody was still making money (Adjusted for things, my best year was basically 1997-1998.) But just like now most people could see that it was a big club and they wasn't in it, and there was a lot of resentment for that.

These conditions have existed for a long time.

Trump has, in fact, been the Moral Relativism and Situational Ethics of the "Liberal" Clinton years on fucking steroids.

Brothers and sisters, please quiet down. Thank you.

We come here time after time and we talk about the same old same old.

Hey, quiet down.
- We talk about Jesus. - That's right.
Jesus said and Jesus wept.
Jesus heard and Jesus walked over.
I don't wanna talk about Jesus.
Cos as the big man teaches us, there's two sides to every story.
Not one but two. A story is not one-sided.
A story has duality. There's two sides to every story.
Which brings to mind the phrase "necessary evil".
I know many of you hear that phrase and say,
"That don't even make no sense to me.
"Can't be no such thing as necessary - how's evil necessary?
"That don't match. That's plaids and stripes, evil and necessary."
You see, because without bad, there is no good.
Without light, there is no dark, you need both these things.
You hear what I'm saying?
If every day is a sunny day, well, then, what's a sunny day?
Well, the bottom line, what I'm trying to tell you tonight,
is that evil...evil... is necessary.
Evil is necessary, thereby, if it's necessary, evil...
- Evil... -must be good.
Evil is good.
That's what I think. Evil must be good, must be good.
- Let me hear y'all say it... - Evil is good.

Evil is good. Take Brother Brown, one of our strongest deacons, pillar of stability.
Brother Brown was on Bushwick Avenue last night with a two-dollar ho.
When you tell your wife, "I'm going to see Mama," then you go get you a two-dollar ho, that's evil.
But Brother Brown had a good time with that two-dollar ho.
You can push a two-dollar ho and she don't have no limits!
Evil and good walk hand in hand. - Evil is as evil does. 

I know many of y'all may be saying, "How can he say ass is good?"
How y'all think y'all got here?
Ass is good! Evil's good and ass is good.
And if you get you a piece of evil ass...Woo!

~Maximilian The Vampire (As Preacher Paulie) from A Vampire In Brooklyn.

And it's good that the Brazilians saw this coming with Bolsonaro Junior, that he'd probably be a total repeat of his dad being in office, and told him to go fuck himself.

Unfortunately, now we're stuck with that asshole.

I mean, it's a pretty safe bet that Republican are gonna destroy themselves before Flava Flav Bolsonaro can be of much use to them, unless they really do intend to try to break off Florida or part of it to be "their" country (and thus they can set their own terms RE: "Citizenship") but here we are.

It's the Cheesecake Wars and that shit is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

It's a good thing Republicans are losing, but we shouldn't have gotten here in the first place.

Republicans have come a long way. A long way DOWN.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Seven

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

Hologram (American Reformation II, Seven.)

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can. 

~Barack Obama

...

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

...

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

I saw this yesterday.

Franklin Graham, among others, trying to say if the Democrats win the midterms it's the "End of Christianity in the US."

Good. And I say that as a Christian.

I have a church background, I've been at this in one form or another longer than most people. Whatever religion these idiots follow, it ain't Christianity.

If God needs these motherfuckers He is NOT God. I Have Spoken.

When is enough going to be ENOUGH with this constant horseshit??

There appears to be no Repugnant Thing these motherfuckers will not try to justify if they think there's some kind of political advantage? Polygamy? I remember when talking that type of shit used to get you beat up outside of (maybe) Utah, if not arrested for something, just so Republicans didn't have to put up with you.

They call this the Penal system. But really it's the Penis system. It's about how big, it's about how long, it's about how hard. Life in Oz is all about the size of your dick and anybody who tells you different ain't got one. 

~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz S1.E1 "The Routine."

I'm tired of this shit. According to these assholes, Christianity is the Republican Party, the Republican Party IS Christianity, all their bullshit social beliefs and hypocrisy aren't just Gospel, they're above The Gospel, and if they don't get everything they want, the [Insert Random Political Enemy Of The Week] are gonna come and take your Whiteness away and make you get gay-married or some shit. 

The world is terrible and it is meant to be terrible and you should just take whatever you can get and hope you get to have your boot on somebody else's throat before you die. After which you're either Worm Food or stuck praising Narcissist Republican Jesus for all of Eternity, depending on who's speaking, and these idiots have no problem contradicting each other or themselves. Everything is what it is, until the next billing cycle or political need comes up. Fuck You. Pay Me.

That's basically their whole Belief.

First off, I used to be a Republican and I never bought into this fucking bullshit.

Second, it's hard for me to imagine a worldview more antithetical to Christianity than that one.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. ~2 Timothy 4:3

Third, how is it that every last one of these fucking people is being exposed as some kind of raging pervert?? I used to be shocked at my ex-wife's massively sexualized Pentecostal beliefs but in her defense, she does have a Personality Disorder. I don't see how the average dude with "Christian" in their bio has that defense, the sheer mechanics of these things dictate they can't all actually be massively mentally ill. A fair number of them are just bad people with a large side order of entitled bigotry and stupidity. Not that it ends up easy to actually distinguish this crap from ravening mental illness.

But as far as I'm concerned at this point, these people are Without Excuse.

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

I grew up reading the Lord's Word, and I've still never claimed to be an angel or a Saint. For fuck's sake I was in the military, I'm divorced, and I've been pretty open about how those two things led me to make a lot of bad choices one way or the other. But I cannot imagine the logic of coming at some lady you don't even know with very specific sexual talk on the one hand while claiming to be a "Christian" on the other hand.

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

Especially since it's the 21st Century and if you want to be an irreligious sex pest, well, the ladies might object on totally non-religious grounds but certainly not enough other dudes are going to care. Why do they have to drag God into this kind of bullshit??

And I'm even more tired of just basic willful ignorance at this point, the utter dismissal, born of the same smug Republican fake-"Certainty" that they're "Right" of any beliefs, facts, or even very obviously provable world events that are contradictory to what they already WANT to believe or do anyway.

I mean, I guess I was taught you have to believe in something, that there has to be a baseline to reality.

I would have never believed, back when I was one of these people, that some of them would look at the options and select "Donald Trump" as theirs, and then gone on and believed every dumbass conspiracy theory that showed up while trying to argue with you if you showed them actual truth with obviously provable evidence.

Inappropriate religiosity and political convenience are more important, I guess?

Like I can't even imagine these idiots that try to deny obvious world-events that have affected my life and people that I know like COVID-19 or the War in Ukraine, but there's people that do it.

This is the fruit of what I call "Atheism Minus One" Christianity. These people are so Unbelieving in the Biblical sense of that word, except for in that one little thing, that twisted interpretation of mashed-up Republican/Christianity that worships Power and the State in spite of about every word I ever heard about how you shouldn't do that, from *Checks Notes* Republicans, when I was growing up. And, they will try to deny or rationalize away anything that contradicts this massively contradictory ethical construct or that simply "Feels" bad.

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

I used to look at the Book of Revelation or things like the Left Behind series books and wonder how, with literal fire falling out the sky and the Wrath Of God basically announcing itself as such, people could deny shit like that?? 

Well now I know, don't I??

He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. ~Barack Obama, RE: Donald Trump.

And the worst part of a lot of this bullshit is it literally comes down to racism and reactionary politics and shit like that.

Like, Obama made a crack about Cheesecake Factory and all the sudden some stupid gaudy restaurant chain is like, sacred to Republicans now??

Fucking Seriously??

Sorry but, like, I bowed out of the constant angry emotionally-driven politics-of-bigotry crap something like 30 years ago, at the least. I couldn't keep up with just the little bit of personality-cultism around Bill Clinton on the part of Democrats (including some of the Democratic voters that I knew) or the Right's countervailing assertion that Slick Willie therefore Must Be The Antichrist, simply for President-ing while Not Being Republican.

My partner used to be like this, too, somewhere along the way it got to be too much even for her. And she used to like to argue about this shit. She wouldn't have been MAGA anyway but I think it's really sad that life has worn her down, too.

There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser. ~Han Solo, from The Empire Strikes Back.

This is why I say that Trumpism is a Hologram, most of this bullshit started with people like Newt Gingrich and I wouldn't be surprised if when Trump kicks the bucket they cut him open so Newton Leroy Gingrich can crawl inside him like Han and Luke did with a Tauntaun so they could survive the night snowstorm in Empire Strikes Back. This shit has just gotten even more dishonest and stupid over time.

Like I would have never thought that Republicans would declare Vladimir Putin the "good guy" at all, or especially would do it just because of Trump's servile desire to be Putin's bitch. Nor for that matter do I understand These Fucking People's servile devotion to Trump.

Unless it really is because he's racist, and that is actually their Supreme Value.

Then I understand it just fine, but the person I used to be especially when I was a Republican would be utterly disgusted by such a cynical, evil view of the world.

At the end of the day, you either believe in Freedom or you don't.

You either believe in God, or you don't. No one cares if you don't anymore...but if you don't, just don't pretend that you do, especially if the only reason for that is to manipulate people or to justify being manipulated.

This is why we need an American Reformation, because following the American religious system is gonna send you straight to Hell if we don't start doing something different.

We have a chance in five days to stop this shit. We'd best take it.

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. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Six

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

And let’s be honest, does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. … So, he’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you. ~Barack Obama

 

The Tan Suit Diaries (American Reformation II, Six.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

...

He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. ~Barack Obama, RE: Donald Trump.

(Full disclosure this made me laugh my ass off.)

...

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

So the other day Barack Obama made a joke about Trump having the White House looking like a Cheesecake Factory restaurant opened by Saddam Hussein.

Again, LOL.

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Barack Obama, Remarks Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October, 2002.)

And the Wall Street Journal is covering that shit in about the same breathless disingenuous-panicky way some John Birch Society local rag of a paper in the Idaho panhandle must've covered it when Nikita Krushchev banged his shoe on the podium at the UN.

Imma call it Obama Derangement Sydrome.

I mean, sure as fuck they need something to distract from how this week has been going.

I mean, damn. 

It's a good thing he didn't wear a tan suit.

Here in America the numbers continually look grim as fuck for Republicans, and rightly so.

Flava Flav Bolsonaro, facing charges for corruption (what else?) fled to the US following his election loss the other day.

Netanyahu lost in Israel. I have to wonder how long before he turns up in Florida?

And when the hell did Florida become some kind of Sanctuary State for political criminals, anyway??

I mean, come on, what the fuck??

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation—not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That is the true genius of America—a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles. ~Barack Obama, DNC Speech, 2004.

I mean, hell, I thought America had better standards than this shit.

Apparently not, as the Bobby Jindal/Newt Gingrich "Racism Against White People" ad sort of proves. Sorry, but it's kind of hard to be racist against the people who are the ones that basically get to be why racism exists. Bobby Jindal didn't name himself "Fred" after Fred Sanford or "George" after George Jefferson. Motherfucker didn't even name himself "Bill" after Bill Cosby (which would be the more 'conservative' option) or any of the many able, famous and storied Black actors of the 1970's or the characters they played.

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

Christ, he could have named his ass "Archie" after Archie Bunker and been scoring (misguided, yes, but still) points with Those Fucking People even now and for all of Eternity for it as opposed to being a nobody making racist AI ads. I cannot stress enough, that was THE pop culture reference for my Grandpa's generation, and not a small percentage of my Mom's generation, too. My Grandpa used lines from All In The Family on the day he fucking died. But of course Archie Bunker usually came around to doing the right thing, whether he necessarily wanted to or not. So, that's out. 

No, Piyush named himself after Bobby from The Brady Bunch.

Whatever. Normally I wouldn't make an issue of someone's chosen name but that one makes no sense to me, and when people do shit like make lying ads claiming there's discrimination against White People, I don't feel obliged to respect them that way, and I am a White People.

The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man's eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel's heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan's first shot missed. His did not.

The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn't he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.

"Allah Akbar!" God is great.

Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.

"Are you there?" the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian. "It is all finished here,"

~Closing moments of the battle at the Soviet laser installation, from The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, by Tom Clancy.

And when that don't work, These Fucking People are gonna start lying about some nonexistent threat to Christianity, as if half the freaking people the Democrats are running against them aren't very loudly and outspokenly Christian.

Yes, yes, I get it, they're not Evangelicals. Well, I don't think Evangelicals are Christians anymore. You don't get to kick Jesus out, replace Him with Trump, and then get to still keep the title and the respect.

Maybe with different Christians in politics we'll get the American Reformation we need, and follow the Word of Jesus, not the hankerings of Empire.

I have people that I love that keep getting targeted by this shit. My Mom, my Partner, my Kid. Why the fuck would I vote Republican at this point??

And I'm not gonna Hate just cuz you tell me to Hate.

Not sorry. I have spoken.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Five

Elisabet Sobeck: I remember yelling that I didn’t care. And that’s when my mother took my face in her hands and…spoke.

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

Elisabet Sobeck: She said I had to care. She said, “Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.