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.

Revival (Don't Tread On Me, Four.)

And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso reads, let him understand:)

Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:

For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Behold, I have told you before.

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:1-27

I was at work last night.

And I saw this.

Empty tent-revival tent, complete with a Baptismal Pool, supposed to be part of Trump's "Great American State Fair" which looks like pretty much a Fyre Festival-grade, Woodstock 99-level  flop. 

Yeah, you heard me.

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

I pretty much had one question bubbling up in my brain all night after I saw this mess;

Note: I ask this as a white former Conservative Baptist with a full-on Church background who's been to more than my share of Tent Meetings and Revivals and even a few Promise Keepers events back in the day.

What in the Christian middle-school graduate, Diet Coke drinking, Dry Humping, Fox News is liberal media, Gol Darn It, Gun rack in the truck cab, hated spicy food as a kid, John Birch Society-adjacent, Knowing who Psalty the Songbook is, Left Behind Series reading, margin notes in a Scofield reference Bible, Nat-Geo is too racy, once each at least has been to Branson, Eureka Springs, Gatlinburg and Knott's Berry Farm, Rapture-anxiety, seen a girl cousin naked, shotgun wedding, thought a barn dance was edgy, vaguely suspicious of Catholics, Veggie Tales-watching, went into the Air Force on a half cocked idea that it was the most "Christian" and Republican of the armed services, country fried Snickers FUCK is THIS. FUCKING. BULLSHIT.??

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

Because Imma gonna be honest here; I don't expect much from These Fucking People anymore.

But I hadn't expected to see, functionally, a Tent Revival apparently dedicated to *Checks Notes* Donald Trump.

Although, again, if we're being honest, it fully tracks with *Everything* that nobody showed up.

Some "Revival" huh?

Bet, these CHUDs will try to make a conspiracy theory out of that, too.

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

Because these idiots have to try to turn everything into mythology on the theory that while one can argue facts, reality, science, theology etc. there's nothing logically or empirically provable about Athena springing forth fully armed and armored from the cleaved-open head of Zeus.

And these assholes figure if they can destroy Truth and turn everything into legends and myths they can manipulate their way into staying in power forever...as if Death itself is somehow not a thing.

But people are tired of this bullshit.

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

Even Trump's "Great American State Fair" was apparently a grift that nobody bought into. $23 for a Turkey leg being the only food item I heard about? Come on.

And apparently the guy running the shit is a sexual predator.

At least, since Democratic leadership doesn't want to do much more about this garbage than sit there with their collective thumb up their collective ass, there seems to be a Democratic or Leftist equivalent to the Tea Party rising up.

Don't Tread On Me, motherfuckers.

Meanwhile Republicans be like, yeah, walk all over me with them clown shoes, Daddy, while sporting more wood than Redwood National Park.

Think about that for a second, will ya??

If Republicans would've pulled this kind of shit 40 years ago their own voters would have rioted in the streets, much less everybody else! Now? The average MAGA CHUD can't get enough of licking the dogshit off Trump's shoe.

When is enough, going to be enough with this garbage??

I'm tired of this bullshit, the next question is, why aren't you??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

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

Three

“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

Better Dead Than Red (Don't Tread On Me, Three.)

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

...

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

...

Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

~Isaiah 1:13-17 (KJV)

I saw this last night.

Trump, ranting about Communism like it's 1986.

Except it's 2026 and Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

More to the point, in what nominally Communist countries remain, there's lots of churches, mosques, temples, etc. The government might not trust religion, but they tolerate it because, among other things, that is the price of participation in our modern world...and it's funny how there's plenty of people in the governments of places like China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam who could well be described as Commies on the streets and Capitalist in the sheets. I mean, if you want to be serious about it, there's Evangelicals in the People's Republic of China who are just as much of fanatics about supporting the Communist Party as Evangelicals in the USA are about supporting Republicans (And for the same reasons.) 

No, that doesn't make much sense, but that's the state of the world these days.

Then you throw in that half the (American) Republican Party is on the payroll of KGB Agent Vladimir Putin, yet slouching rapidly towards something far more like Radical Islam than Soviet Communism.

Think about that one for a second.

It quite makes one want to start rooting for the Chinese at this point. And if we got our ass handed to us by the Iranians, yes, the Chinese would certainly fuck us over in a conventional war. 

Sorry, but maybe we need to lose a few, at this point, so we can figure out where we fucked up and get our priorities straight. Take the "Nationalists" and religious nuts down a peg or six while we're at it. Maybe idiots like Pete Keg-Breath would get a little smarter if some Chinese Evangelical wearing a T-shirt with the five-star flag on it.

Yeah, that's what Republicans, of all people, have come to.

They're basically the bad guys in a Tom Clancy novel at this point.

“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

(What the fuck is the difference between Soviet Communism and Christian Nationalism except their choice of excuse for oppression? I'll wait.)

Reagan Wept.

Let's get real, the only country on this Earth that is still Communist in the classic 1950's sense that Trump is trying to evoke here is North Korea and Trump literally said he was in love with Kim Jong Un. 

How the same people who keep pushing Trump to do antigay shit didn't notice that one, I have no idea.

Which is really weird because normally these assholes think about gay stuff more than actual gay people do!

I saw this last night too.

Jesse Watters ranting about distrusting bisexual women, and bringing up the recent Supergirl move for some reason.

I don't know if Supergirl is bisexual, I don't particularly care, I lost interest in that franchise years ago and I'm fine with it if she is.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

Bisexuality isn't an issue for me. I support LGBT people and their rights.

And I learned that as a conservative kid in the 1980's too.

Like why the fuck wouldn't I??

Jesus ain't an excuse. Love Thy Neighbor. America ain't an excuse "We The People" means ALL of us!

I've served with and worked with and hell, worked for gay people and that was even in my earliest working days.

I've written about that in particular.

As I did about the gay troops that I served with, who were a damn sight better than some of the straight ones, better than me, for sure.

 My partner is bisexual and we manage just fine. Honestly, we joke on occasion that she needs to find herself a wife. Or that she needs a staff, like a cat. My partner isn't great with a lot of "feminine" things, like cleaning, and she works a lot, and that's perfectly fine. I write about our stuff, on occasion.

A hell of a lot of people these days don't fit These Fucking People's claimed patriarchal ideal, or want to, or even have the capability to do so, or to try in a convincing manner.

As if these Gatekeeping ass-clowns would let them?

Not that they themselves really believe even 10% of it, half the MAGA dudes I know don't even work or have any serious interest in supporting a family (or in paying child support if they previously had one) or, indeed, in doing anything other than sitting on the couch smoking weed all day while everyone in the house lives off Mama's SSI check. Or, as my partner has put it concerning a certain member of her family, Make Asshole Get A job.

These guys want all the Power of the Patriarchy but none of the responsibility, none of the work that earns them that right.

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 then they'll try to blame women for that, too.

These fucking people aren't conservative and they don't wanna be.

They want political power, and the "right" to hector others and be mean to them and feel righteous for doing it. That's all any of this crap is. I can't even talk the way that these people talk.

And if I could, I wouldn't want to. Come on.

These fucking people want to bother other people with their allegedly "Conservative" and so-called "Religious" bullshit...but they're all perfectly fine with Trump's granddaughter turning the White House into a goddamned Thirst Trap.

These idiots are no damned different than the Soviet Proles who tolerated the excesses of the sons and daughters of Communist Party elites in Moscow in the 1980's...except perhaps in that they want to do so rather than they have to.

Yes, you heard that right.

And let me tell you why, or at least what the excuse they tell themselves is:

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

A Black Man said "Yes We Can" so the whole goddamn Republican thing just had to become "No We Can't."

And that shit has eaten these fucking people's brains.

It was a small meal. Snack Size.

Republicans think all the rest of us should have to live like Soviet peasants but under an allegedly "Christian" and "Right-Wing" regime, because they got their feelings hurt. No. No is a complete sentence. Fuck all that!

And take it from this former Republican, there's always been some Republicans that were like that. Just, well, before about 2008 everybody else told these fucking people to sit down and shut the fuck up, except for (well, just like now) there was always some class of grifters and televangelists and performative "Anti-Communists" that appealed specifically to those idiots. Why? Because if you told them what they wanted to hear they'd throw money at you.

Didn't matter if what you said had one damn thing to do with reality or not.

These fucking people taking over Conservatism and the Republican Party was a pretty long process that, in reality, started with Newt Gingrich in the 1980's and 1990's. But even Newt doesn't really fit in anymore, naturally.

Here's the thing, when the Wall came down, I was just a conservative kid in Northern Michigan. I've written about this before. In early November of 1989 I was just a 15 year old kid who was a couple weeks from getting his driver's license. On that particular day, November 10th, I'd had a counseling appointment in Alpena that I'd gotten out of school a little bit early to go to, we had gone to the grocery store and the mall, and my Mom let me drive home. It was pretty well past dark by the time we'd gotten home.

We'd just got Cable, thus catching us up culturally to things like CNN, MTV, rap music videos, sports channels and the very beginnings of the 24-hour cycle we all take for granted today. After unloading the groceries and warming up the Pizza my Mom had got us from Dominos, we sat down in the living room and turned on the TV, which happened to be set to CNN. We watched, transfixed, as people partied it up and streamed through checkpoints while armed guards stared blankly, slack-jawed, with their AK-47's slung over their shoulders, and the common people, everyday Germans from either side, took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.

The common person was right there live on international news, doing what all the bombers and jet fighters and guns and tanks in the whole Western world up to that point had not been able to accomplish.

Take that "Great Man" theory and jam it up your ass. 

Hans the Baker and Ingrid the Delivery Girl and millions of other people just like them took down Communism, Ronald Reagan just helped a little.

The world was changing, had changed, nothing would ever be the same again. Whole worlds of possibility had opened up within the span of hours, a whole separate world of evil and repression, gone in less than one day.

Think about that. Think about the fact that people like Donald Trump would rather that had not happened, they still want people worried about Communists under the bed...only now they want to target our fellow Americans, up to and including other Republicans.

I liked it better the other way, when there were whole new worlds of possibility springing into existence in the time it took to go to town or do your homework.

By the time I served, if there were air raid sirens going off it meant there was an Operational Readiness Inspection, and that was really a thing to fear.

And the worst part of these assholes kicking over the table on all that, really, was that it was all over *Checks Notes* screwing for political advantage. 

What's even the damn point of that when half the fucking people allegedly on the other team really aren't on the other team. But there's a bunch of nuts out there who think everybody who isn't a fire-breathing Republican Partisan is some kind of Communist.

But those idiots show up to vote, every goddamn time, and they throw endless money at MAGA grifters and Republican candidates and drive way too much of the attention/outrage economy...and honestly that shit has eaten the brains of a lot of what's left of the Republicans, and driven all too many of the rest into cowering compliance.

Republican Capitalism is basically doing all the shit they said the Communists would do when I was a kid, and nobody turned themselves into wannabe Stalinist proles (with a side of Idiocracy) faster than hardcore Republican voters.

Meanwhile a dozen or so Democrats want to declare "war" on the people that We The People are nominating to stop this bullshit. I'm not a primary voter, I'll vote for the Democrats no matter who they put up because Fuck Republicans, never again.

This cannot last, leadership requires courage. America is already falling apart like the Fyre Festival or Woodstock 99 at the end, like a goddamn high school beer party when the host kid finds out the parents are gonna be back from vacation a couple days early or some shit. Like my friend the Media Warrior says, though, Trump makes a lot of idiots that peaked in High School feel like jocks and prom queens again or some such bullshit.

Except these people are supposed to be adults, citizens, and use their heads for more than a hat rack.

Again, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

To be a free person requires a measure of intelligence and belief in Truth.

Truth is the only thing that gives most people a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

And the Truth is that Communism fell in 1989 and I watched it fall live on CNN.

And before anybody starts screaming "Better Dead Than Red" you better consider which color they've been using for which party on the maps since the 2000 election.

Yeah, that said, it actually fits. Better Dead Than Red. Fuck Trump.

We'll take that back right along with "Don't Tread On Me."

Слава Україна!

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

Two

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press.