American Babylon (Independence Day, One.)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

~Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.

...

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

...

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

So, Mercedes Schlapp is trying to say that Trump turned the reflecting pool into a green algae swamp to "Honor the heroes who made us free." 

Bitch, I'm a veteran.

#1 I don't WANT to be your hero. There's a very, very small number of people I care about trying to be heroic for, 'cause if there's anything I've learned in the last year it's that a hell of a lot of people (and certainly most "White" people of a certain imagined level of privilege) are just perverse ungrateful shitheads with no values, for absolutely no good reason. But there's still a decent number, at least a plurality, of good people out there and they're the ones I'm willing to fight and die for.

You ain't on that list.

I can't save the world. I figured that out.

But I've managed to help a few people, and got a girlfriend for better and worse.

And you'd have to want to be Saved.

#2 The reflecting pool and every other damn thing was fine before Trump broke it in some half-ass personal vanity project or Republican ideological/moneymaking scam. But I repeat myself. 

#3 The difference between me and you is, I'm brave enough to stand up and say this sucks and it is not right.

You know, it's worth noting that there were great swamps not far from Ancient Babylon, the modern marshes of southern Iraq are what is left of that. 

In Oz, the guards lock the cages and walk away, and the predators rise, take control and make the rules. But in Em City, the guards are with us 24 hours a day. There's no privacy. Everybody sees what everybody's doing. Eyes everywhere. McManus' eyes. See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta wanna be saved. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz, S1.E1 "The Routine."

But perhaps more to the point if there's anything we've learned in the last few days it's that there's a too-big percentage of Republicans that not only don't give a shit about anyone's freedom...they're opposed to the entire concept because of some kind of made-up self-important ideological, racial or religious horseshit.

And that's where all this mythologizing garbage comes in.

They have to do it to try and say that Trump is "god" because if they don't do that, they have to admit that he's simply a two-bit greedy thug who sees America and everything about it as his personal piggy-bank to loot or smash as he damn well sees fit in order to try and prove some bullshit idea of "Authority" that only exists in his own bloated, orange-painted head. But nobody, not even his own family loves or respects him. 

The American system constrains Law and use of Force, so all this dude has is an unnatural ability to inspire cultic devotion, thankfully only in a certain type of person.

The problem is, he has a cult, and when all this crap finally falls all the way down...that'll still be 20% of the country just like it was for Bush 43 at the end of October in 2008 when he crashed the US economy so bad it took the rest of the world's economics with it.

And the Truth is, out of the diminishing number of those Republicans that are left (and you have to be a 1000% Trump Ass-kisser at this point to remain in good standing) These Fucking People would all rather watch the world burn than admit they've tried like hell to trade America and the world we live in for a pat on the head from a useless narcissistic shit-bag bully like Trump and to be enablers for the Epstein class and literal worship of demons.

'Cause the real problem is most of them are vain little narcissists too.

I guess "Me, Me, Me" is even how they could square that. I couldn't do it, and the whole idea drove me into Old Testament-grade FURY.

And like my buddy says Trump makes these fucking people feel like high school football players and prom queens again. I don't know, I played football one fall semester and found it boring.

I can't even talk the way these people talk, as a result of all this shit.

And I've seen what the redneck CHUDs do, it disgusts me.

When you could live decent for a year off the sheer scrap-metal value of the 20 dead cars and one motor home in your yard, leeching off your cousin who needs a place to stay because your town is where she found a job...that's a deliberate choice and a special kind of laziness.

What disgusts me even more is the people who should know better that keep going along because they think they will profit from this mess.

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.

And that's exactly why as bad shit continues to come out and things keep going sideways (and they will) it will eventually come down to everyone at least says they were against all of this bullshit all along.

Don't tread on me with that bullshit.

They knew what they were doing.

These fucking people will eventually betray Trump and throw him overboard, if he doesn't do it to them first.

I can remember when most Republicans weren't this, or at least had to pretend to be something else.

31 years ago when I took this picture at the KI Sawyer AFB farewell airshow, having gotten lucky enough to have most of the daytime hours off that day, I don't know if the world was necessarily any better but it was at least less fucking stupid.

And yes, it's things like that, which remind me that people like Mercedes Schlapp or Troy Nehls don't give a shit about people like me or anything that our service accomplished.

Which, when I see some idiot Republican literally talking smack about the Statue of Liberty, I wonder just what the fuck I was even doing.

And as we run up to Independence Day and America's 250th anniversary, with an apparent Fyre-festival like collapse waiting in the wings just behind it, all I can do is fight to make sure that when that happens, decent people step up and build something that works instead of allowing the next generation of this garbage to perpetuate itself the second We The People go back to sleep.

America As Babylon is going to fall, soon.

What comes after that is on us.

Enough Is Enough.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Last Post

Charlie White-knife: Do you know what "fiduciary responsibility" means?

Cooper Howard: "Fiduciary responsibility?" No. I have no fucking idea. I play a cowboy for a living.

Charlie White-knife: Okay. So, the US Government has outsourced the survival of the human race to Vault-Tec. Vault-Tec is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors. And how does it make money? By selling Vaults.

Cooper Howard: That's called "capitalism," Charlie.

Charlie White-knife: But they can't sell Vaults if these peace negotiations go through. So, Vault-Tec has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that it don't work out.

Cooper Howard: [scoffs] Yeah? How are they gonna do that?

Charlie White-knife: I don't know. But...do you remember that movie we did with Johnny Morton? You were the Sheriff, and I was some generic Indian?

Cooper Howard: Hey come on, don't say that. Tall-hand Mudlake could talk to horses. You played him with grace and dignity. It was a great role for you!

Charlie White-knife: Morton played a rancher who owned half of Missouri. And what happens when the cattle ranchers have more power than the Sheriff?

Cooper Howard: The whole town burns down.

Charlie White-knife: The whole town burns down. Right. Vault-Tec is a trillion-dollar company that owns half of everything, and after ten years of war the US Government is broker than a joke. The cattle ranchers are in charge, Coop. Unless the People do something about it.

Cooper Howard: I guess everything's a conspiracy, right? Come on man, you sound like you're in a cult.

Charlie White-knife: And you're sitting here defending a system that's ready to set the world on fire, Cooper. Maybe you're the one in the cult. 

~Fallout (TV Series) Episode 1.06 "The Trap."

Blood Is All One Color (Don't Tread On Me, Six.)

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34, New International Version.

...

When I kill a man, it's because he's standing in the way of my constitutional rights, what God has given me. The Sicilians understand that. The rest of these fucks will cut a man for a fucking cigarette, for a pair of sneakers, they are animals. ~Vern Schillinger, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and Otherwise.

...

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

...

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Ā, upane! ka upane!
Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body)

(Translation)

'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.

~Ka Mate, from a previous post "War Dance."

Yesterday in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the 14th Amendment and Birthright Citizenship.

The decision should have been 9-0.

Instead, Clarence Thomas wrote a 91-page dissent effectively arguing that once Black people were made citizens somebody should have pulled the ladder up behind him.

Sam Alito wrote a 30 page dissent laced with racist conspiracy theories. Alito is Italian, his people weren't considered "White" until well within my own lifetime. Seriously, White-on-White racism used to be a thing. My grandma owned a book of Polish jokes until the fucking day she died.

In These Fucking People's world, the definition of "American" is so narrow as to exclude basically anybody but themselves or their homies. That's not how Rights even work.

Crude as it may be, the Oz quote makes the point, and I used that shit for a reason. Look up the character, I fucking dare you. I'm a conservative, Democrat, yes...but I was taught and will always believe Rights are given by God, not Man.

Because if it was up to Man...especially these "men?" A few short weeks from now we'd be down to the last American...and that would be Trump. That kind of shit is what cults fucking do. I cannot even tell you how many times in dealing with people that've gotten fucked over in church communities, or as an Admin on that ex-Pentecostal forum, that in their previous situation the only person in the church they were sure was going to Heaven was the Pastor.

So much for "Saved by Grace" eh?

I've been an American my whole life. I swore an oath on the Bible to the Constitution when I was 19 years old and served my country, alongside people of all races, and many cultures. I swore no oath to "Whiteness" or to anyone's racism, and I say that as somebody who was a Republican at the time and who has said many things about other people and groups that would be deemed slurs or wrong in this day and age, MAGA or no MAGA. Am I sorry for that? Maybe, depends on the context. Sometimes shit's gotta be said, and what follows is such:

These people don't want God's grace or a world of laws and rights and people having recourse against the State or their fellow man. They don't want to be citizens, they want to trade freedom for slavery and call that "ideology." They want a pat on the head and privileges, like they're goddamned children. and to be guilt-tripped and manipulated and told what to do. They want to conceptually eliminate freedom so they know who they can be mean to and who's ass they have to kiss or who they have to backstab to get ahead Fuck that.

The reaction of assorted right-wing "Influencers" and other weirdos to this decision was even worse.

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.

We need to take our country back from these motherfuckers.

I did not sweat through two deployments to Khobar and PSAB in Saudi Arabia to see a third of my country utterly prostrate itself before a more Orange, sans mustache version of Saddam Hussein. Fuck that shit!

Except it's actually worse.

I've seen people argue that nobody should be allowed to even visit America, least of all pregnant women. I've seen these freaks say that visitors (again, especially women) should be sterilized. There's a substantial part of "Republicans" out there that....well honestly, I don't even think North Korea is this fucking paranoid or xenophobic. Christ, the motherfucking Nazis didn't go that fucking far! This is the kind of shit that makes the whole rest of the world band together and put you down like a rabid dog, America.

I mean, this is where "Anything but Love Thy Neighbor" logically ends up.

And These Fucking People all say they believe in Jesus.

“The Good of the People was a laudable enough goal, but in denying a man’s soul, an enduring part of his being, Marxism stripped away the foundation of human dignity and individual value. It also cast aside the objective measure of justice and ethics which, he decided, was the principal legacy of religion to civilized life.”
― Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

Yeah, right.

These Ass-clown idiots think what color they were when they came out of their mama makes them gods.

Sorry, but I've been a Christian my whole life. Jesus wasn't White.

The Word says in Isaiah that He would not even be remarkable in appearance:

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. ~Isaiah 53:1-5

Jesus most likely basically looked like an Arab in today's terms, and Aramaic (the progenitor language to Arabic) was among those He would have spoken, along with Greek, Hebrew because of his vocation as a Rabbi and the education that came with it, and a little Latin. Both Greek and Latin being necessary for dealing with the Romans, the real rulers of ancient Israel in His time, and for the most part deployed Romans and transplanted Greeks were the only "White" people in that region.

And the locals, Egyptians, Israelites and Syrians, who had become Hellenized or Romanized were looked at by their neighbors about how like Black Republicans get looked at today, except things were a little more stabby.

As a carpenter, Jesus would have been a rough man, not unfamiliar with alcohol or physicality including physical violence as His driving the money-changers from the Temple suggests, both strong of arm and back, and very likely creative with His invective and prone to peppering his work with imprecations and spoken blessings and curses.

The faith of Jesus was not the faith in Empire or Hierarchy but promised liberation from it. 

How's them Imperial Ambitions working out for Vladimir Putin? And if Russia is so great why, 35 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, does Moscow still look like a typical dirty Soviet city like Tom Clancy described Moscow or Tallinn in the Cardinal Of The Kremlin and The Hunt For Red October?

I've met people from the former Soviet states, including Russia. They all basically at one time or another said the same thing: Authoritarianism does not encourage one to pick up the garbage.

And yet even the average person from Moscow thinks they're a Boyar when dealing with people from rural parts of Russia.

Empire hands you a place in the world and then makes you fight your own neighbors to keep that shit. Seems like a hell of a way to live, eh?

I was taught all are equal in His sight. It wasn't even a question.

Salvation is a free gift, not a reward for submission. I was taught this, too, by conservatives.

In the same way, if you are born in America, our Constitution and culture and traditions all say you're an American. You don't have to do anything, or believe a certain way.

But if you accept and believe that, these assholes don't get to control you, and that's their real problem.

And again Power and control always come down to flesh-pots and meat-markets and a complicated ranking system for no greater purpose than who can do what to whom, usually in the most base and lustful ways possible.

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

For as much as These Fucking People claim to hate Communism...they sure wanna live like low-grade apparatchiks in a walled-off Communist "Worker's Paradise" lording their little bit of petty power over the factory workers that live down the hall in their shabby apartment block.

Their real "god" is political power, "God" is little more than a golden idol they can fit in their pocket and play like a card to get their way or get out of having to argue.

Which is weird, given that so much of what we know of Jesus from the Word is Him, literally arguing with the religious leaders of His day...of which He was clearly not one, but he knew what they knew (and more, naturally) and had the same education and ascribed spiritual powers by society and thus a little political power, only lacking the same rank that they had achieved.

And naturally the Pharisees and Sadducees saw Jesus as a threat.

Because they didn't Believe, not in their hearts.

Because Power was their real "god."

It's the same way with These Fucking People.

That's why they worship Devils and Idols of Gold.

There's a reason these idiots hate Islam, or would try to arrest a Catholic nun for simply walking to Mass.

And it's not just the racism, they hate anybody whose belief in God extends much pass uttering "Goddamn" while getting stinking drunk...which is evidently a thing among even (perhaps especially) *Checks Notes* Hardcore Calvinists today.

I'm old enough to remember when even Anti-Communist Neo-Conservative War Hawks acted better than that. Hell, I started out as a conservative. I was a kid in the 1980's In the 1980's you couldn't go more than a day or two without hearing of the brave Mujhideen fighting the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan, facing down Soviet Mi-24 Hind Gunships and T-72 Tanks with nothing more than AK-47's, improvised explosives, our FIM-92 Stinger Missiles and their own guts, grit and determination:

“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.

As I wrote many years ago now; That war, or the nightly news reports of it anyway, right along with the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa this was something that marked and shaped my childhood and my view of the world, much as knowing Muslims as a young man shaped my views well into middle age. The Kuwaitis and the Saudis were our brothers in the Gulf War and in containing Saddam after this. Iraqis and Afghan Pashtuns alike have fought beside us in our own Global War on Terror...and American Muslims have shed blood in the service of this country, including friends of mine, guys who I served with who I sometimes had to live so close to we knew about everything there was to know about each other whether we wanted to or not.

In mine and my partner's own struggles, a year ago one of the people helping keep her going was the Arab guy who owned the bodega across the street from her apartment building. I still consider it that I owe that guy, and I'd like to pay back that debt someday. Any man who does not understand this or claims not to is not a man.

I'll note, Hell I've extensively written about, that it's the right-wing Evangelical Christians who have strived to make her life harder and treat her like dirt.

That Muslim immigrant store-owner? He called my girlfriend "Habibi" (which means "Baby") and paid for her groceries more than once, and would tell her to buy MORE stuff, when she had basically no money. Islam scripturally compels Charity (Zakat) and protecting the vulnerable. Muslims don't always do that the way we would, but they do it.

We are better than this, America, or some of us are anyway. We are better than this racism and willful ignorance and we have to fight to make others be better than it too. We're better than this, and we damned well know it...or we should. We are a nation of immigrants, for fuck's sake!

And as you see these monsters gleefully discussing the heavy loads, so great that no one can bear them, that they would put on people to come here?

Imagine what they'd put on people in order to define them as "Christian" or "Republican" or any other damn thing.

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

In the meantime, Don't tread on me with this bullshit.

Ronald Reagan said Blood is all one color.

Don't you dare forget that.

Because before this is over, we're going to find that out again.

Слава Україна!

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Five

 [Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

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

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

Meat Market (Don't Tread On Me, Five.)

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."
...

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

...

“The Good of the People was a laudable enough goal, but in denying a man’s soul, an enduring part of his being, Marxism stripped away the foundation of human dignity and individual value. It also cast aside the objective measure of justice and ethics which, he decided, was the principal legacy of religion to civilized life.”
― Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

I saw this last night.

Apparently, some freak got arrested at Trump's "Great American State Fair" for exposing himself to circus performers and beating his meat in public.

I wish I could say I was surprised.

The perversion from (mostly) white "Conservative" men that I hear about and have personally seen shocks me. I knew it was bad before, you can't be on social media and not see it. But, in the last year since I've been with my partner it seems like either I've become more aware or that shit has gotten a lot worse.

Possibly both.

But even in spite of that, I look at shit like some CHUD using AI to *Checks Notes* fantasize about his daughter and something in my brain just wants to reach for my shotgun. The kiddo is 14 and I'm a thousand times over incapable of ever thinking about her like that. She's a freaking kid AND she's GAY.

I cannot even imagine the thought process for that, and it's not even difficult not to be a fucking pervert.

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

When I met my partner she was 20 (young, yes, but still a consenting adult and I did not initially have intentions towards her. For one thing, when we met I had a girlfriend and she was dating my best friend.) and in spite of a ten year age difference we freaking liked each other, both "that way" and as people, we had a hell of a lot in common and we've struck sparks off each other ever since. We worked together and she pretty much was automatically in my circle, as I've said before.

We knew each other for a bit over a year before she became my roommate, because of issues with her family and shit, and since she'd been to my house (as part of the gaming group) many times, she straight up asked me if I wouldn't mind having a roommate and I was like sure, why not.

I'd just (amicably) broke up with the girlfriend because she was moving to Indiana and I didn't want to.

Anyway living with a 21-year-old young lady that I, neither unkindly nor without an actual basis joked about her being a Werewolf was...interesting. Not least 'cause she was at that "Going to the club" phase of life and I'd gotten that out of my system a decade before while still in the military.

Also, fun fact, like my ex-girlfriend, the roommate also had a conservative church background, the rule-follower type. Pay attention, that'll matter a bit later, LOL.

So, anyway, after she'd been staying at my place for a month or so, and I'd already told her if she ever needed a ride or a designated driver to call me at any time, one night she did. It was the weekend, we usually had one weekend night off in common. But, I remember very clearly we both had that particular weekend off. It was some time after midnight.

Note: The main club in Mount Pleasant is often referred to as the "Meat Market."

Anyway, I'm sleeping, my cell phone rings, waking me up, and it's her. Her voice sounded small and sheepish "Hey, I'm at the Meat Market and I'm too drunk to drive home, can you come get me?"

So anyway it's basically just off the next main street from the one our apartments were on. I get dressed, get in the truck, and go pick her up.

She'd clearly overdone it and was drunk to the point where she got sick...in my nice then new-to-me 2000 Chevy S-10 Extended Cab, which like several vehicles I'd had before it was kept fully G.I. Clean.

Fuuuck. 

But it was the middle of the night and I was really worried about her and I was like "Fuck it, we'll deal with it in the morning." To make matters worse she fell getting out of the truck and needed to be helped up. So anyway, I got her in our apartment and on the couch and then ended up sitting up with her most of the night. We fell asleep on opposite ends of my big poofy couch, possibly in mid-conversation.

Woke up, it was light, she was not only still sleeping but snoring. I was hungry, so I got up and made a shitload of bacon, eggs and toast. Drunk hangover food. I know this game.

Whether it was all the noise I was making or the smell of food, Princess wakes up about the time I'm finishing up, making myself a plate and throwing bits of bacon to my Schnauzer.

"Hungry?" She was like "Food!" And after going in the bathroom for a minute, she proceeded to come back to the kitchen/dining room and eat me out of house and home. I let her.

While gathering up the cleaning supplies. (I'm sure you see where this is going.)

As soon as she was done I was like "You're on, Sweetheart!" as I gestured to the pile of car and house cleaning stuff and handed her a rag and a roll of paper towel. She glared at me but was like "OK?"

I went outside and smoked a cigarette, then a few more, while watching her clean the truck. By about halfway through, the glare was constant, nuclear-powered and (I was reasonably sure) boring holes in the back of my skull from several megatons worth of sheer radioactivity.

I finish my third or fourth cigarette and go in the house, a few minutes later she comes stomping in, pretty much in full stompy-foot teenager mode, fuming and sulking.

"I cannot fucking believe you made me do that!"

"Action/Consequence."

"Fuck You!"

I swear between putting away the cleaning supplies and a general fit of pique she managed to slam every door in the house at least twice.

We ended up back on the couch, somehow arguing turned to wrestling which turned to dry-humping and falling asleep in a tangle on the couch.

Mind you, even with her inhibitions clearly reduced and both of our emotions amped up, we didn't quite hook up...because of that mutual Christian background. Found a loophole, bitch.

But there was still no way we were going to go from Zero to getting busy quite that fast.

Anyway, we woke up a few hours later...kind of belatedly realizing what had just happened...and she had to go back to the club and get her car. We did, but then she decided she wanted to go in since they were just opening. I said NO! Didn't we just...? And she pouted and whined and generally talked me into going in there with her.

We didn't leave until sometime after midnight, but decently before close, drove home, shared a fairly chaste kiss and then each went to bed...in our own beds.

As one does, when one is raised with a certain expectation of discretion and propriety concerning such matters, especially after some opportunistic illicit fooling around.

Other than this post about this and a thread of those kind of stories on Threads back in the spring (which I had to get permission to write) Neither of us told anybody about that until in January (The guys at work would have never let us live it down) when I had to go down there for that little rescue operation. We told the Kiddo because she's a perceptive little shit and caught our personal in-joke about that situation after my partner slipped on some ice getting out of the car...and kid went full landshark about getting an answer. The kiddo freaking laughed her ass off at us when we told her, never having imagined her mother being so...innocent.

It was quite a conversation to have over Pizza and grinders, LOL.

But we had it, because our history might be kind of screwed up, but the kid still wanted to know and we felt like she deserved an answer.

And a truthful one.

Because like I say about other things, you either believe in stuff or you don't, and if you do believe it your conduct should actually reflect that belief.

_________________________________

So if you wonder why I look at These Fucking People's claims of conservatism, patriotism, religiosity, etc. And think "Bullshit!" Things like this story are why. 

These fucking people are all about the flesh-pots and the meat markets and don't even want to pretend to bother with the protective and provisional aspects of Patriarchy let alone the proprietary or the social aspects of actual conservatism...which they seem to care about only if such things can be weaponized against somebody else. They don't believe in let alone follow the conduct or social memes of conservatism, be it religious, social, or whatever.

But here's the thing, you don't get Saved by making other people have to "act Christian." You have to have a relationship with God and follow His ways your own self.

Also, Because even after I'd been out of that stuff for several years, it was only *Natural* to conduct myself along those lines with someone of a similar bent. That's the part that these people who go around screaming "No! It HAS to be THIS WAY!" never fail to miss. If a belief is taught, if one is persuaded to follow it, it might persist. If something is imposed? As soon as you're gone, the other person will revert to acting however they did before.

The only time these assholes want to do anything of the sort is when they can use it to harm others or do wrongs.

And that doesn't work.

Because you either believe in things, or you don't.

Yes, it really is that simple.

And that's why I can say Don't Tread On Me with this bullshit.

Or on those that I care about.

Слава Україна!

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

~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

Four

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.