I Voted (American Revelation XVIII, Seven.)

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. ~Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

...

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

...

Wlliam Adama: I've been going through Cain's log and from a tactical perspective it's hard to find fault in anything she did. Or that Kendra Shaw did.

Lee Adama: They butchered innocent civilians, Dad. Come on. How can you ignore that?

William Adama: I know that I didn't have to face any of the situations that she did. I had the President in my face, arguing for the survival of the civilian fleet. I had Colonel Tigh keeping me honest, balancing my morality and my tactics. And I had you. Now...you don't have any children, so you might not understand this, but you see yourself reflected in their eyes. And there are some things that I've thought of doing with this fleet, but I've stopped myself, because I knew I'd have to face you the following day. 

~From Battlestar Galactica: Razor

It's election day. 

I voted this morning.

For civilization, for freedom, for LGBT equality and Women's rights.

I voted for Kamala Harris.

Oh yes, I did.

Let me tell you something, though.

I'm a former Republican.

I've written extensively about this.

My first serious introduction to politics in an adult fashion was following and reporting on the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for my high school government class, it was an extra credit project.

Fuck, I volunteered for Bush 43 going door to door in Cheboygan County, MI in 2000.

(Yes I was that tired of the Bill And Hillary show.)

I'm a rural white guy.

I wrote about where I live, last night.

I'm a disabled United States Air Force veteran.

I'm a gun owner.

For fuck's sake I'm a former conservative Christian and was extensively active in several Baptist and nondenominational churches over the years. 

I was explicitly a member of the End Times Prophecy movement throughout the latter half of the 1990's, coincidentally, that's a trait I picked up in the military.

And I believe Donald Trump meets far more of the qualifications for "Antichrist" than any Democrat or liberal (or, for that matter, the vast majority of normal conservatives and Republicans) that has ever lived. He's basically got Elon Musk...who is actively working on a Mark Of The Beast type thing...in his corner.

Trump has loudly and repeatedly promised to go full Nazi, shred the Constitution, turn America against its own people and worse, rewire this whole damn country into an unending gold-plated narcissistic blowjob for himself.

That disgusts me.

But then I always hated Trump.

Even, perhaps especially, when I was a Republican and he was a Democrat.

And let me tell you something else.

I'm most definitely not alone.

There's a lot of this going around.

Republicans voting for Kamala, that is.

Good.

There appears to be record voter turnout all across the country.

Hell, I ran into several people I know when I went and voted, customers and people I used to work with, people I didn't know gave a shit one way or the other about politics.

A couple of them said they took the day off to make sure they could go and vote.

That's it, that's how you do this.

There was a line when I got there, there wasn't (and things were moving along briskly) when I left. I only saw one vehicle with a Trump sticker on it in the parking lot when I was leaving.

I've heard and seen on social media that Republicans are panicking and the mood around the Trump campaign is in the shitter.

And there's already been shenanigans.

The US Capitol Police arrested a guy for what looks like an attempted terror attack early this afternoon.

But ya know, I really get the vibe that if these fools try something, they're gonna lose in more ways than just one.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Go and be a better citizen.

Your vote is your voice.

And we're being asked to choose, again. The light, or the darkness with its fires.

The choice is between love and hate.

The future, or lies and a pile of magic beans. 

Democracy and freedom, or Donald Trump.

I'm more tired of Trump and all the weird creepers around him than I ever was of Bill or Hillary Clinton, by far.

The hour is late.

Go and choose now, for the future.

Because this is America and that's your Right.

Because the people who started this whole mess expected us to be Citizens, not peasants or serfs.

We are a body politic, not a mob.

As Ronald Reagan said, we are spirits, not animals.

Our founders, all them years ago?

They thought to ask you.

And you have to know a little of history, to understand for the time just how fucking Revolutionary that literally was.

Elon and Trump and them? They wanna take all that away and offer you nothing but gold-plated empty promises and hate in return.

So you better show up, Citizen.

Because they will.

Слава Україна!

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

Six

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

Not Going Back (American Revelation XVIII, Six.)

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton, but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
They ought to get a rich man to vote like that
Sing it

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

Well, somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all

Well, Mama got sick and Daddy got down

The county got the farm and we moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washin' machine and then a Chevrolet

Sing it
Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

~Alabama, Song Of The South.

...

 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

I had to work last night.

It was Truck Night, and by around 11PM me and my co-worker didn't have much more to do than wait for the truck to show up. I had YouTube music on, with the quoted song playing.

I hadn't especially intended it as a statement of anything, let alone politics, it was just where the playlist (one of those the app generates as what music you listen to accrues over time) was at.

Kid in an IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) hoodie comes in, likely an employee of any one of several local union factories. I'd guess mid-20's Nothing out of the ordinary; Soda and snacks, asks for a pack of Marlboros.

While my compatriot is getting his smokes he pipes up "Pretty good music y'all got playing. I ain't heard this one in a minute."

(This song is way older than him, if he knows it, I'm kind of impressed.)

"Well, kid, believe it or not there was a time Country music was actually about something and stood for some things. I grew up on this stuff, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and all them."

(Co-worker puts his smokes on the counter, I finish ringing the kid up, he pays for his shit with a USAA debit card. I bag up his stuff.)

Kid comes back with "Well, ya can't go wrong with Willie. Me? I'm a Union guy, just got my card, in fact. That means something to me. (Where I work is a union shop, if the kid didn't know that before this conversation, it says so right on our work badges) I know you guys know what I'm talkin' about, but like that song you just had on says, ain't no going back."

My co-worker (A gay dude from Oklahoma who pretty much only cares about or talks about politics in the context of LGBT issues and rarely enough comments on that or anything else to people he don't know) comes back with "I understand the assignment."

Kid nods and smiles slightly, I hand him his bag and his cigarettes, and he leaves.

...

You have to understand something about where I live; It's a small city two hours from the freeway in either direction where there is one, with Lake Huron in the other directions either way. 30-40 years ago this area was the epitome of Whitebreadistan and I'm not joking. 

In the 1980's and early 1990's if you saw a Person of Color in my town, the odds were extremely strong that they were either an Airman stationed at the nearby Wurtsmith Air Force Base or married to somebody who was. Or there was a smaller chance that they was a National Guard troop deployed to the (also nearby) Air National Guard station for training. In 1993, Wurtsmith AFB closed and the level of local diversity was affected accordingly, although with the increasing importance of the reserves and "Joint" nature of everything from the mid-1990's on, the number and eventual diversity of Guardsmen (and eventually, troops on active duty doing training) became larger and more relevant over time until now there's way more of them (and they themselves are a much wider slice of humanity) than there ever was of SAC troops from the 379th Bomb Wing.

Fuck, in 1994, finding an openly gay person in this area was like finding a Unicorn in the wild. Again, I'm being completely serious.

And it's worth noting that from 1993 to 2011 this town was in a Blue district, and while the level of Obvious Liberalism in this area, writ large, was never particularly overwhelming, back when I was a Republican (although I usually voted for our conservative Democratic House Rep when I lived here and he was in office) it was still enough to often make me feel like an outsider.

But then, as a thinking Republican, I was an outsider, just not in the way I thought.

Our local House Reps since 2011 (via the Tea Party BS) have since been a couple of Republicans, and since 2008 I've been a Democrat, and although Michigan has transitioned to being a Blue State this area is overall more pink than purple and the personal dynamic for me has kind of flipped since the 1990's and the Aughts. In town here, there's a slight majority of Harris/Walz signage. You go out of town, it flips to being a slight majority of Trump/Vance signs. 

Go to my Mom's house? You go through two or three areas where it's nothing but Trump signs, and a raging fuck-ton of them. Perversely, it's the low-income remote-as-fuck areas you know somebody like Donald Trump would never go where it's the worst. And it's people he would never so much as speak to directly putting them up.

Shit, my Mom's neighbor has two Trump/Vance signs in his yard (And those are two of the four Trump signs-plus one flag-within a mile or so.)

It's worth noting that in 37 years (including in high-emotional-tempo elections like 2000, 2008, 2016 and 2020) I've never seen a political sign on our little side-road beyond the level of hyper-local HOA stuff until this year (and those only because over the years one HOA board member and a friend of another have lived on that street.) My grandpa's generation (which dominated the block for most of my life) didn't really do that kind of thing, for one.

(And I'm not a fan of the change, neither is my Mom. For one thing, if you don't want to deal with that crap you should be free not to. Nobody should have to blow the damn narcissist or be required to watch somebody slobber all over Trump's jackboots.)

The guy who lived in the house that currently has the Trump signs before the guy who put them up? Whose name is still on the sign that the tree out front is now gradually growing around? Never said a word about politics (or much else) in the 50 years that I, my Mom or my grandparents knew him and from when I came up here as a kid until he died a few years ago. Like the only thing to give any indication of what that guy cared about was the fact that we knew he had a National Geographic subscription...and that just from seeing him take the mail in the house.

But around the corner, another neighbor has a VoteVets "I'm a veteran, not a sucker or a loser" sign to go with his Vietnam veteran flag and license plate. Note: First time I've ever seen a political sign on that street, too, and the guy who put it up is also pretty old, probably just a bit older than my Mom.

I have a sticker that says that, but it's in my laptop bag, still not applied to anything, I got it last week. It's only the third time in my entire damn life I've either bought anything like that or made a political donation of any kind. The other two being my Lincoln Project shot glass that I got last year and a $5 donation to Bush/Cheney in 2000...but I was a volunteer and it was kind of expected. I also have American and Ukrainian flags, but they're in my house.

(The only time I ever had a sign or any other outward political statement, I lived in a Red area and because me and my ex had a Bush/Cheney campaign sign-still the only time I've ever had a political sign-it seemed like half the neighborhood still had their dogs crap in my yard. The Schnauzer I had at the time loved it. Me? Not so much. Again, I only had the sign because I was a volunteer. Plus, my Grandpa's generation pretty much taught me not to make a lot of such statements.)

So yeah.

My Mom voted by mail, early, for Harris.

I'll be voting for Kamala Harris tomorrow morning.

I don't usually say so, but increasingly, it feels important to.

I'd like to go back to simply being able to say "I voted" without for who being so damned deadly-serious important that I feel the need to say so.

It's not just that the vibe is different now, it's that Republicans are themselves acting extremely defensive. Shit, Trump himself keeps acting and saying shit like he knows he's gonna lose. He's already setting the stage for an insanity defense, an insurrection in his name, or possibly both (and he ain't even lost yet.)

The stakes feel higher than in 2020, but so does the "People are sick of this bullshit" variable.

Maybe it's just me, but I think we've got this and we're gonna be Okay.

See you tomorrow.

If you want a Better Nation, go and be a Better Citizen.

Yes We Can.

Слава Україна!

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

Five

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

Four Years Ago

The dark is generous and it is patient, and it always wins.

But at the heart of its strength lies weakness.

One lone candle is enough to hold it back.

Love is more than a candle; Love can ignite the stars.

~Matthew Stover, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith novelization.

Missing The Point (American Revelation XVIII, Five.)

 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

...

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

...

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

I saw this last night.

Not going to lie, I didn't have "Elon trying to start crap with Cardi B" on my right-wing-dumb-shit bingo card.

I'm sick of this crap.

I'm sick of all these mediocre and spectacularly unintelligent white dudes who think being basically anything other than *Them* and being anything but a narcissistic selfish Bastard-flavored Racist Bastard Who Doesn't Care About Anything But Money is "Stupid" and that anybody else who believes anything else must be being paid off or told to say that stuff by some amorphous unknown parties or some such other Magic Words And Phrases so these motherfuckers can, ya know, not have to think about reality.

Reality in this case being that Cardi B is a black woman, what in the hell would she even get out of agreeing with Elon Musk??

More to the point, there's the whole issue that Muskrat can't seem to understand what words like "Authenticity" or "Empathy" even mean, let alone that somebody could rise from poverty to wealth on the basis of pure talent.

Of course, to these motherfuckers, being "Authentic" means reflecting their bigotries and little else.

This Billionaire shit is basically like the incestuous nobilities and royal families of old, at this point. I guess I don't get why, though. I mean, if you've lived your entire life in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially if you've lived all of it in the midst of the titanic changes since 1973 (the year I was born) or even more so, 1950 (the year my Mom was born) why wouldn't you understand how somebody could rise from nothing to being a famous rapper??

For fuck's sake we all lived through the fall of Communism and seeing whole nations freed from enforced poverty and totalitarianism going to capitalism, freedom, and some degree of wealth. Hell, we've seen some of 'em fight (Politically and in the case of Ukraine literally) to stay that way. We've also seen Russia fall back down that rabbit hole again. Is it so hard to comprehend that one person might rise up?

In America you are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.

I've never thought it was an accident or a coincidence that the rise of stuff like Rap music to being a big thing coincided with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall (not to mention the end of the Cold War more generally) and the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, and the increased freedom of expression that those events brought worldwide. I mean, fuck, the guy who did the main vocals on the SNAP! song "I Got The Power" was a US Army soldier stationed in Germany not long before he got that gig! 

I liked it a lot better when even Republicans could appreciate a world alive with endless possibilities, just sayin.'

Some of those acts were in fact pushed a little more toward worldwide fame by recently opened former East Bloc markets, just for example.

I mean, maybe it's just me but I paid attention in the late 1980's and early-to-mid-1990's when all that literally was the name of that entire game. I mean, one way or another most of those people learned how to sing in church, some like MC Hammer were even Christian artists or preachers and shit. A fair number of the early guys (like Ice T) served in the military. Some were actual criminals and drug dealers (Death Row records as an entire group, anyone?) and started rapping to get OUT of that life. Pretty much all these people had some kind of real job at some point.

I mean, I guess it's self-explanatory why somebody like Elon Musk wouldn't have the slightest idea what's going on with any of that. When Daddy owns an Apartheid emerald mine, about the only thing you can't afford to actually buy is A Clue.

Naturally, Trump's electoral ground-game that he pretty much outsourced to Elon is a Soup Sandwich.

Also, Elon has mostly used openly going full MAGA as an excuse to act out, though if you believe what his Transgender kid has been saying (and I do) Elon was really always this way behind closed doors, all the other shit was just an act.

It's about what I'd expect from somebody who, despite having spent most of his life here, managed to totally miss the damn point of America.

Being an occasionally-maniacal micromanaging asshole doesn't help if you never understood the actual assignment in the first place.

Anybody who knows anything has been saying the horse-race and the polls were all bullshit for awhile, and went from cautious hope a few months ago to pointing out and that under the radar it wasn't looking that close a few weeks ago to saying that all we gotta do is show up starting a few days ago, to now pointing out that if the numbers hold, we're doing exactly that and Trump is cooked.

Honestly, if Trump's own behavior in the field is any indicator, he seems to know it, too.

It's like I said back in July when this whole thing started. For every minute the whole Kamala Harris thing goes forward, Trump's eventual shitty little right-wing banana republic gets a little smaller.

Keep it going long and hard enough, maybe he won't have one at all.

Maybe we won't have to have an American version of "Tear Down This Wall" 'cause the shit will never get built anywhere in this country.

Maybe all you have to do is Be A Better Citizen and show the fuck up on Tuesday.

Think on that.

Maybe Republicans (of all people!) shouldn't have forgotten what the damn point of all this stuff was?

Reagan Wept.

 Слава Україна!

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

Four

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

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride (American Revelation XVIII, Four.)

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: ~Revelation 3:15-17

...

Simon Adebisi: See, we are all of us bad men, even you. I know you have come to destroy me.

Kareem Said: Simon, I don't want to destroy you. I want to help you change.

Simon Adebisi: That is what would destroy me.  

~From the HBO Series "Oz" S4, E8 "You Bet Your Life."

...

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well... maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

I saw this shit last night on break at work.

Richard Spencer, the fucking face-punched Nazi who pretty much defined all the Alt-Right Nazi and MAGA shit for its first year or so, says he's voting for Kamala Harris.

And the Lord Said Unto Richard "LOL, fuck you, man."

I wrote about This Fucking Guy and his lukewarm "Cultural Christianity" and his bullshit-ass fake White Jesus. Hell, it was my first blog post that actually hit it big.

So yeah, L-Oh-Fucking-L. Kiss my ass, Dick.

Buy the ticket, take the ride, yo.

Have fun in hell, you idiot.

As I've said before, the day eventually comes when this shit turns on pretty much everybody...and now it's Richard Spencer's turn, I guess? Since all this bullshit abandoned this loser a long time ago (or at least made him feel like it did, so now he's switching sides) I feel pretty comfortable in reiterating that Trump's day will probably come, too. The day will come when MAGA passes even him by, when no one cares anymore, when they find somebody they like better.

And oh yes, they will. That's the trouble with mobs, they're fickle.

Of course, one could also make the case that people like Richard Spencer and The Proud Boys and all that crap became irrelevant far more because their bullshit is just...standard Republican Party doctrine now. Who the fuck needs this dude when Donald Trump and JD Vance are being far more blatant and going further in what they say they'd do than Spencer even so much as proposed to be or do in 2016-2017 and they've got the Project 2025 crowd, Stephen Miller, etc. The list goes on.

Of course, it was all a game to Dick, just like it's all a game to JD so he can see how far ahead he'll get. But for different reasons, Trump and a lot of the 1990's type religious-Right schmucks backing him are deadly serious. For Trump, it's basically he wants to stay out of jail, and maybe stop the narcissistic decomposition he's been undergoing lately. 

And, for the Project 2025 crowd, this is all they've ever wanted to do for 30 years since Newt Gingrich first opened his yap about his Contract On America, hypocritical Catholic horseshit and scorched-earth Partisan warfare. (And all that while cheating on his wife, no less! I mean, that deserved some sort of a medal for Stupid Republican Tricks in terms of today's Republican Party. In 1998 it just got him kicked out, and deservedly so. Things have changed, and not for the better.) 

This guy didn't change, he just fell down and got trampled in the Lockstep March Ever Rightward, and now he's mad about it. Richard Spencer didn't even get shunted aside and violently kicked out like Dick and Liz Cheney did. He didn't leave in disgust or for his own safety like David French, [Tea Party] Joe Walsh, Olivia Troye, Rick Wilson and so many others.

The fascists just...forgot him, I guess.

But then, why wouldn't they??

It's not just that he's...forgettable. It's that his boring-ass White-bread fascism couldn't compete with the endless variety of Shiny Things dangled in front of the mob by the current crowd. 

Meanwhile, Trump is daily spewing even more nonsensical racist bullshit.

I mean, for one thing, Trump ain't "White."

Dude, the motherfucker's Orange.

And things ain't been jacked enough yet that Orange Is The New White, I think.

And sooner or later...probably sooner, in fact...the mob will demand something of which Trump is incapable. Whether he can't mentally or physically do it or simply won't do whatever it is, I cannot say. Whether his legions of Turd-polishers turn on him or simply fail to prevent the mob from doing so, I don't know. But the day's gonna come when they find somebody worse.

They already want that.

These fucking people are measurably more nuts than they were in 2016.

There's a bit of crap going around that some of the hard-core MAGA Nazis think a Harris presidency will bring them closer to a genuine Fascist getting elected sooner. I don't know if Spencer is one of those, or if he's simply given up.

But the day will come when Trump gets traded in for a cooler wannabe-dictator.

The day may well come when a much older, more addled and physically worse-off Trump (if he gets his voting rights back at some point) gets wheeled onto a FOX News set and is asked about some successive Republican candidate and looks at the camera and says "Fuck that guy, I'm voting for Walz" or "Yeah, I said vote for the [Insert slur of choice here] 'cause that'd still be better than [Insert Random Legacy Republican or MAGA-successor] that guy was always a loser." Although if we're being honest it'd probably be because they stole the spotlight he thinks should be on him.

Yes, even (perhaps especially) if we stop this current shit on Tuesday...these fucking people can and will get worse.

We'd best plan for that shit now.

For one thing, start punching more Nazis, it evidently worked on at least a couple of them.

Freedom isn't free, sometimes you have to fight for it.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You want to stop this shit??

That means one motherfucker of a lot of us better show up on Tuesday.

And even then, these fucking assholes will probably still try something stupid.

Be prepared.

No Going Back.

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

Three

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

Bonus Content

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

Garbage (American Revelation XVIII, Three.)

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

...

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

...

Simon Adebisi: See, we are all of us bad men, even you. I know you have come to destroy me.

Kareem Said: Simon, I don't want to destroy you. I want to help you change.

Simon Adebisi: That is what would destroy me.  

~From the HBO Series "Oz" S4, E8 "You Bet Your Life."

I saw this crap yesterday.

Trump getting in a garbage truck painted up with his name and slogan, while looking and walking like me in my early 20's after my accident when I'd drunk 4 or five tallboys of Steel Reserve and chased that with a blunt...then riding around on an airport tarmac looking like an idiot, and then giving a damn speech dressed like a fool in an orange safety vest like his ass was cosplaying as a garbage man.

I'm sick of this bullshit.

If we don't take out the trash next Tuesday and get rid of this son of a bitch in an overwhelming Reagan-in-1984-level blowout, we're fucked, America.

Because MAGA's goal is a civil war and destruction for its own sake if they cannot enslave the rest of us outright and force us to like it. These fucking people don't want a nation, they want an unending narcissistic blowjob for themselves.

If it's anything less than a goddamned electoral curb-stomping on Tuesday, even if this clown loses by enough of a margin that he and Republicans can't fuck with it, he's gonna try and break some small banana republic off of America and declare himself President-For-Life of it. 

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

Remember, Downsizing and "Peace With Honor" and taking their ball and going home, withdrawing but then blaming the Democrats for their own failures is what Republicans do. Sooner or later, they're gonna try that shit here.

It'll likely be (or start) in South Florida, because that's where Trump lives, and backed by Russian arms and Russian money and a haven for Russian oligarchs who (of course) don't want to live in Russia. And no, it doesn't matter how much of a shithole it is past the glittering spires of a Miami turned into a Western equivalent of Dubai (which, if you ask me, is probably where Trump would actually spend most of his time with JD or Ron running shit as a goddamn regent) MAGA's and other far-rightists will worship the goddamned place. Fuck, it'll replace Israel and the Middle East as the locus of various End Times horseshit, you watch. 

The economic numbers, blah blah blah, will be pure hokum. The military of this shithole will be the Wagner group with the serial numbers filed off, Hulk Hogan and RFK Jr. and any dumbass Florida Man who can talk real loud will be their fucking government. This shit will basically be the kind of political donkey-show bullshit Trump thought he was gonna pull the first time, forever.

And no, nobody really wants to see the political, religious and ultimately literal fight between Russian Orthodox, Sedevacantist Catholics and Woo Woo Pentecostals for who controls the religious life of their shitty little MAGA-Land. This is going to end badly on its own account simply because the Orthodox will turn out to be the most ruthless of the three and they have KGB backing.

It'll be the Central African Republic, but for White people. And no, I don't think a majority of MAGA's who can get in will care as long as we're outside the fence.

But trust me, when it takes about five seconds for the Medieval Catholics (You know, people like Newt Gingrich, who cheat on their wives and then go to Confession) to politically buttfuck the Evangelicals and and all the little "Conservative" kids...or the ones whose parents are rich enough to send them to school, anyway, will (because Putin will demand it) be learning Russian and the place will likely have itself an actual functioning Communist Party (for the simple reason that without political opposition to fight with, most of the people who live there or join this thing or don't get away will end up bored and wander off) but one that's taking orders from its equivalent in Moscow, same as the old days...it'll be completely lost on these fucking idiots that they managed to create the mutant love child of "Chuck Norris in Invasion USA" and The Handmaid's Tale with a side piece of Idiocracy.

And they'll have international recognition because Russia (at minimum) will back them and because probably at least a third of the United Nations is outright Hamas and Putin simps, don't think they won't get that shit. for the simple reason that even an America still at 95% and on the rebound with a bunch of its chaos agents removed will be 5% less able to help somebody else (like Ukraine) and if we defend the EU or Ukraine or South Korea we're always in danger of a two-front war or of an insurgency started by the White-Bread Liberation Front in Idaho or some shit.

I mean, if you think about it we parked a sizeable percentage of the United States Air Force in Saudi Arabia, a country that's pretty much the sand chafing at the asshole of the Earth, to deter Saddam Hussein when we had to know Saddam really couldn't do all that much. I know, I was literally there.

But we took the threat seriously enough. We had to.

And the longer this crap goes on and the more these MAGA's and Republicans belabor the point and drag this shit out, the more convinced I become that most of the rest of America, from the staunchest most dedicated Evangelical Republican For Harris to the most fanatical Antifa hard-leftist bare-knuckled street brawler in Portland is gonna shrug and be like "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" no matter how bad it gets for anybody who's not-rich that lives there and can't or won't leave.

Yes, I think 30 years of Republican unreasonableness in general and 10 years of MAGA in particular has done that much damage to American unity. And the only way to stop that, or worse, is for all of us to stand up and say "No."

In point of fact, the way it's looking so far, America's women seem to be on track to do most of the work on that themselves and Republicans are already mad as hell about it, and they ain't even lost yet.

Just in case you were wondering what these motherfuckers are gonna wanna fight about next.

Think about that, for a second.

Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you're just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state. ~George Carlin

Consider these fucking people's creepy-ass obsession with [White women's] fertility and childbearing, and that their ideal of a "Nation" is basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall.

People like JD Vance and the rest of these medieval Catholic ninnies are obsessed with that shit (now closely followed by the Russian Orthodox over there) because they want two things; Cannon Fodder and Slave Labor but this time they want it to be White, in part, I'm sure, because they think White idiots will be easier to control than other people who got sick of that shit, and who (truth be told) always resisted to some degree and wanted to be citizens, where "White Conservative" people will (they think) be fine with being slaves as long as they're a better class of slaves than some of the other slaves.

This has always been true of the "Pro-Life" movement, it's just that now they're being explicit about it.

It's not so much that Fascism or Nazi shit or Stalinist Totalitarianism is what they want...it's that they're actively looking to found an even worse ideology that will require new words to be made to describe how evil it is.

You either believe in freedom or you don't. You're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

Time's coming where, one way or another we're all gonna have to stand up and be better citizens.

Tuesday.

We can take out this Garbage Man and drive these wannabe demons and inquisitors alike from our public life, or we can spend the next 100 years refighting all the same shit from the last 100 years while all the other advanced nations leave us in the dust and America becomes a failed state like Russia did.

Your call, America.

As for me, I'm sick of this shit.

No Going Back.

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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.

Two

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well... maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Hate Thy Neighbor (American Revelation XVIII, Two.)

Master, what is the greatest commandment of the law?

Jesus said to him: Love the Lord your God with all your heart,  all your soul and all your mind. 

This is the first and greatest commandment

And the second is like unto it. Love your neighbor as yourself.

From these two hang all the laws of the prophets.

- Matthew 22: 36-40

...

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they believe in nothing; they believe in everything. - Umberto Eco

So Trump had his big asshole rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

As far as I'm concerned if you need to be told this is wrong,  there's something wrong with you. 

If you are anything other than a MAGA bootlicker and not reacting to literally threats against your life, what the fuck??

The opening act was some asshole racist comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, who I've never heard of before Sunday night,  that called Puerto Rico a "garbage island" and apparently pissed off most of the Puerto Rican population in the process. 

Fuck him in particular.

I hope it was worth lightning your useless career on fire.

This whole thing then progressed to racist jokes about Black people, outright Trump worship,  and some other asshole I've never heard of but immediately nicknamed Howard Lick Nuts trying to turn the US government into a Doge meme joke. 

But  there was something else; One of these fucking people spent way too much time talking about how Latinos "Love to make babies."

Hold on here; Isn't that what you "Pro-Life" motherfuckers wanted??

Or is it just the white women you freaks want to turn into brood mares??

It was all a lie. 

Now it's anything but Love Thy Neighbor.

It's anything but America

Look, I used to be a republican.

There's always been a dark underworld of fascist creepy bullshit and religious fanatics, albeit one seeking a Christ-less Christianity,to this crap.

And they've always been thick as thieves with the cocaine addled frat-boy money bros.

There were always a few people like this.

But here's the thing: Out here in the world among us normal people, talking shit like that could get you beat up.

For the most part 30 years ago, freaks like this were preaching on street corners, reeking of cat piss and Wild Irish Rose.

There were a few "respectable" ones...the Ron Paul types...with closely circulated newsletters full of this crap.

There was a moderate size tranche of totally amoral scammers, but you mostly only heard about them when they got busted and went to jail.

And there were a few militia types that pretty much everybody else feared and hated. 

Back in them days, the Commie sympathizers and the Russia Stans were all the farthest of far-left and after twelve years of Reagan and Bush, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism as a global political force, not to mention two years of Bill Clinton and "Greed is good" having become bipartisan...nobody cared.

Guess what?

After a decade of Trump, these fucking people are the Republican party now.

They chased everybody else out and took over.

Now they're trying to turn America into another Trump meme stock.

And it's less Showing Their Ass than the equivalent of mooning the whole Catholic pilgrimage to Rome and the entire Hajj all at once, with a side of preaching hellfire at Pride and showing up at a  Juneteenth event in Klan robes and turning the Cross of Christ into nothing more than a flaming lawn ornament.

And if they can't have totalitarian political power, they desire a civil war.

When is enough,  enough?

They're losing and they know it.

That's what this rally,  clearly meant to echo the 1939 MSG Nazi rally, was really about.

They're priming the edge cases and the militia nuts and the Trump moonbat motherfuckers to fight a right-wing insurgency for them when they lose.

Republicans already rejected Democracy because it wasn't self-serving enough for them.

Now they're going to reject America for not being racist enough.

We cannot continue to tolerate this bullshit.

You either believe in civilization and freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight or you're not.

Now is the time to be a better citizen.

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Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. - Matthew 23:24

One

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

Spirit Of Fear (American Revelation XVIII, One.)

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~2nd Timothy 1:7

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If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ~Patrick Henry

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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 last night.

Trump went on Joe Rogan the other day (before being three hours late to a rally in Traverse City, MI) and his side of the interview was total gibberish. Joe Rogan couldn't save Trump, by the end, he looked like he didn't want to.

Trump's not just losing it, he's done lost it already.

And I think the voters know it, too.

More to the point, I think a lot of people are just done with this fucking bullshit.

That's the vibe I've been getting for awhile.

I'm going to be honest, I'm just tired of hearing Trump's stupid Chloroform voice and seeing his stupid face all over the goddamned place. Honestly it'd be nice to be able to write about something else.

I think they're done with the crazy shit, and with the cult. I mean, it's not just that Republicans For Harris is a thing...it's that every time he has a freaking rally, there's people leaving well before it's even over.

It's that the most fanatically pro-Trump motherfuckers out there aren't even Americans, but South African-born billionaires who never even got what the whole damn point of America was to start with.

(And when Trump is over, those guys will move on to blowing Vladimir Putin, you watch.)

It's that in my town, which was basically Whitey-ville for most of my life, a slight majority of the political signs are for Harris/Walz and I'm serious, you don't see people with near the Trump swag that you did even a year ago.

So what's next for MAGA when Trump loses??

I mean, certainly, a lot of these fucking people will just crawl back under their rocks, or get bored and wander off. I see that starting to happen already.

Certainly, some of them will get worse...most likely the Medieval Catholics and the Project 2025 CHUD's will be the main driver of that category...especially if Harris even comes close to starting to clean out the Judiciary or expand the Supreme Court, or if anybody leans on Clarence and Sam to get them to retire. JD Vance is the future of this bullshit, not Donald Trump, but he has all the charisma of a cardboard cutout. These fucking people aren't going to try to persuade anybody, eventually, they're just going to make a move, seize whatever they can, and then try to start a conflict of some sort with the rest of Christianity in general and the majority of global Catholicism in particular.

Throw in a side of legacy Far-rightists, John Birch Society types, weird Incels, a few whack-a-nut Pentecostals and the odd Russian agent here and there...but most of those people won't do much of anything, unless goaded into it.

And speaking of, I'll bet you money if Trump goes to prison, he converts to this radical Catholic shit (or at least pretends to) cuz they all find the Lord in jail...and this would be (at least in terms of the cult) politically advantageous for him in the terms of keeping someone's interest.

That's Category A.

Next up is the opportunistic shit-bag Republicans, you know, the people just getting around to calling Trump a fascist now.

Most of those people, the John Kelly and Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney types (for example) aren't going to do anything to actively help Trump, same with Jeff Bezos, they're just going about covering their bases

We'll call them Category B, they're not going to help Trump, but unless it's self-defense for themselves (and it'll likely come to that) they won't be much help to the rest of us either.

I don't see the basic Republicans or the loud giant Styrofoam-Middle-Finger MAGA types being willing to blow themselves up for Trump no matter how much shit they talk. Most of those idiots just do this shit for attention, or for kicks, or out of pure misanthropic stupidity. As soon as this bullshit stops being fun, or funny, or whatever they think they're getting out of it...they're gone.

The only ones of those who are a threat are the gun nuts and the idiots who can be gulled into acting out by the first group...although I'd suspect there's a lot of overlap between those two subgroups involved, that's category C.

But there's a fourth group, MAGA's Fourth Estate of weird agitators and grifters that seem driven in equal parts by fear and greed. They might fall into any of the other categories also...and they might do something stupid, or they might not. 

The thing about MAGA is a lot of these motherfuckers are just there because they're trying to scam all the others. My feeling is a lot of these guys will find a new scam and move on to whatever that is, although some will definitely be recruited into the first group (A few, like Candace Owens, already have been.)

And the thing is, some of the third category of losers might move into the first group also, because their fear, desire for hierarchy and willingness to tolerate pretty much anything will push them in that kind of direction.

That's the fruit of a Spirit Of Fear, to use Biblical terminology.

You know, there's a reason the Bible harps on uncontrolled fear, or fear of anything other than God being a bad thing as much as it does, just sayin.'

But it's that Spirit Of Fear...with a side order of Prosperity Gospel horseshit...that's the main driver of MAGA and all this other crap.

Until we break that, until we find a way to get these fucking people to stop being afraid of every new or different thing, these kind of problems are going to continue.

(And trust me, it'll get even worse as they start being targeted by the other fanatics for insufficient loyalty.)

Also, any of the other groups will also be targets for the first group of fanatics. Like I said yesterday, the Republican Party is and will remain an autocracy in and of itself no matter what. If Trump dies of bad health and dementia or gets locked up, they'll just anoint JD Vance or whoever is loudest about promising to pardon Trump.

In the short term, this crap might well get worse, with the caveat that this time Trump doesn't have any control over the government this time. 

But, if trends continue as they are, I'm more worried about a particularly dumb right-wing insurgency than I am about an actual Civil War that they won't get enough people for. It's not a huge improvement but it's something. Among other things, fighting a civil war requires courage, vs. the fact that anybody can be a cowardly terrorist.

And whatever sad-sack, tiny-ass Banana Republic these fucking people can break off for themselves just gets smaller the longer the whole Kamala Harris era goes on, until it dwindles to nothing and an Army National Guard patrol or a bunch of dudes from (just to steal from actual recent history here in looking for a name) the Alabama Awakening find a hut full of garbage and sheep shit with "Trump-Land military headquarters" spray-painted on one of the walls.

Like I said when Harris took over, the vibe has changed.

And now it's changing again, for the better.

Act like it.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Vote Republicans out, drive Trump into obscurity and hopefully jail. Yeah, we'll probably have to fight some of these motherfuckers off, but the thing is as hard as these Republicans have made themselves in their lockstep March Ever Rightward to try and immanentize some kind of right-wing Eschaton, they've also made themselves very brittle.

They're the ones who are afraid.

You don't have to be.

Remember that.

Yes We Can.

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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

Last Post

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comes into thy kingdom.
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. ~Luke 23:39-43