Hologram (American Reformation II, Seven.)

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

~Barack Obama

...

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

...

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

I saw this yesterday.

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

Good. And I say that as a Christian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's basically their whole Belief.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well now I know, don't I??

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

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

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

Fucking Seriously??

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

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

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Six

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

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

 

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

Again, LOL.

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

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

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

Imma call it Obama Derangement Sydrome.

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

I mean, damn. 

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, come on, what the fuck??

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Allah Akbar!" God is great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not sorry. I have spoken.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

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

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Five

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

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

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

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.

Indulgences (American Reformation II, Five.)

 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. ~Matthew 25:31-45

...

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

...

[The Mandalorian brings together the entire Mandalorian covert after Carson Teva makes a surprise visit and asks him to help Greef Karga's situation on Nevarro when the New Republic won't lift a finger]

Mando: Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga. And those that do fought against him when you rescued me from his ambush many cycles ago on the streets of Nevarro. Since then, he's had a change of heart and has risked his life to save mine as well as the Foundling in my charge. [Grogu coos] I stand before you to petition an intervention. To help rescue Nevarro before it's too late. I am in no position to ask any more of you. However... However, the enemy that decimated this very covert were Imperials, not Greef Karga's bounty hunters. Greef Karga is now a High Magistrate and has offered me a tract of land on his independent world. Perhaps it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome. So our culture may flourish and our children can feel what it is to play in the sunlight.

Armorer: Does anyone else wish to speak?

Mando: It's up to them now.

Paz Vizsla: I do. I was there on Nevarro that night. I fought against Greef Karga and his hunters. I saw my brothers and sisters fall at the hands of the Imperial butchers that hunted us in the sewers. I saw many die to save the life of [gestures to Grogu] this one, tiny Foundling. And now we are asked to sacrifice yet again. The question we should be asking ourselves is, "Why? Why should we lay our lives down yet again?" Because we are Mandalorians! I have had my disagreements with this man, but he risked his life to save my son. And Bo-Katan Kryze did not give up on my child's life even when the rest of us did. These two are asking us to take up arms in the name of a brighter future, and I for one will take up arms to fight by their side. [Mandalorians agree] This is the Way!

Mandalorians: This is the Way.

Armorer: This is the Way.

~From The Mandalorian S3.E5 "The Pirate."

I saw this last night.

The Brazilian people reelected Lula and told Flavio Bolsonaro to go fuck himself yesterday.

Serbia voted out their autocratic leader.

And Republicans, starting with sneering NRA shill Dana Loesch, are panicking in Texas.

Good.

I have no intention of supporting These Fucking People ever again and neither should you, and I say that as a relatively conservative Democrat.

There's nothing conservative about people like Mike Rogers, he's a Simon LeGree-looking twerp who lives in Florida, he should go back there. And honestly he looks like he 100% should be "Ass-Clown Mike from janitorial." This dude ain't a Senator, he's a puppet. Also his wife looks like Medusa, but her gaze will turn you into potato salad (with raisins in it) instead of Stone. I'm gonna be uncharacteristically typical male here, but never trust a man whose wife looks like that and goes about her day with a scowl on her face. It ain't just he's doing something wrong, it's he been doing it wrong the whole time.

And, most likely, he's actively too stupid to care, if he's not just another Pink Mafia Republican with a taste for Cuban rent-boys or into some kind of Epstein class freaky wrong shit.

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 mean, at least in 2008 when it was Barack Obama vs. John McCain, both men looked competent and respectable. Mike looks too much like he's consciously trying to look like Donald Trump, including in copying Trump's facial expressions. Mike didn't look like that (or talk much like he does now) when he was in Congress. He also never impressed me as somebody who I thought should be there.

These assholes are losing, appear to know it, and are apparently in full panic-mode about it, trying to claim liberals are anti-White racists or some bullshit. No, Bitch, I'm a white guy (although I'm barely a liberal) most of the liberals I know are White. You guys alienated most of your actual voter base and thought it was hilarious while ya'll were doing it. You ran up the cost of everything so a lot of people can't even make it...and ya'll want them to vote for you without any actual relief being provided?? It is not everybody else's "patriotic duty" to just bend over and take it for your political and military adventurism.

Especially when Trump's stated attitude, out of his own mouth is "WE'RE making a bunch of money, HA HA! Fuck You!"

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

Fuck you, bro. That's not how that works. 

Also, Republican isn't a race and it looks like the guy pushing this crap is *Checks Notes* Not White.

I mean, fuck, I didn't even know Bobby Jindal was still around. I thought after the train-wreck he made of Louisiana, his ass wandered off to die in painful obscurity but now he's cranking out racist AI ads in *Checks Notes Again* Wisconsin?? 

Yeah, whatever bro. I'm sorry but this dude is a try-hard and he sucks and he should've never been allowed anywhere near elected office. I always thought his trying to use politics to claim he was "White" was kind of pathetic. Dude literally comes from a culture that was a thriving beast when Europe was all actual Barbarians. India has its own cool stuff. I'd lean into that. I don't even see the fucking point of pretending to be something you're not and I'm a former Republican.

But then I guess dude got his name from The Brady Bunch. Can't help bad taste I guess. Maybe it's just me but I think stuff like Curry and Diwali and laughing at a lot of White "Hippies" always copying Hindu/Indian things (usually badly) is a lot cooler. 

The People Of The Mayo are copying you, Piyush. And you'd rather be Bob from Dry Hump, Louisiana.

I can't make that make sense.

And then these same dipshits, apparently anticipating things will go sideways here in America, are trying to export their White Christian Nationalist bullshit to the UK?? 

Excuse me? 

Ya'll trying to export US-style Fundamentalism to *Checks Notes Yet Again* one of the most secular countries in the fucking world. A place where *Opens Book* Oh yeah, they've played this game before and apparently ain't having it now. A whole-ass country where making a public ass of yourself literally gets you your own category of memorable insults and the seething mockery of not one country, but like, four...plus the Commonwealth if you're really a jerk about it. 

I mean if we're being honest Trump's 2016 Scotland trip taught me a whole new category of insults and I've been to the United Kingdom twice. In my case, RAF Fairford and the environs around it plus a couple days off on one of those TDY's spent in London. 

I do not have a massive amount of experience with England and I know this isn't gonna go how they think it's gonna go.

I mean while were at it, I do know that the most religious Christians over there tend to be Black African immigrants or their descendants, although I know that from having worked with a fair number of such people who mainly came to America later. I wasn't all that religious when I was over there in the 1990s and I didn't seek out such information.

But let me tell you something I learned from such people; Way back in 2008 I had seen this story about a prison break in South Africa where a couple of guys basically lubed themselves up with Vaseline and slithered out between the bars on the windows. My African bro Henry heard me telling this story to Carl and Josh and he had some questions. So, I told him the next day I'd print out the article and bring it in. I did that. Sure enough he looks at it the next night and then points to a detail I'd missed, that the escapees were from Mozambique. His culture (The Shona, one of the traditional tribal groups of Zimbabwe) believes people from Mozambique practice Black Magic. Henry said in his heavy accent; "If you don't believe me think about this; It is impossible, but it still happened."

This guy and his wife lived in the UK for 15 years before they came here in 2006. One of their adult sons, who we called "G" worked with us while he was in college (2008-2012) and he spoke with a Black British accent. G's girlfriend (later wife) was Native American. They all went to the diverse Pentecostal church that was by my house. My partner is still friends with this family.

American Christian Nationalists are apparently giving the British far-right millions of dollars, and they didn't even bother to do the most basic of homework to find out who they were gonna need to actually speak to if they wanted to get anywhere. 5% of the UK goes to church, mostly not the White people.

All this shit is a scam.

It's no more "Of God" than some guy in a robe selling "Indulgences" on the Feast Of Saint Bartholomew. An Indulgence was a piece of paper you bought from the Church that claimed your sins were supposedly forgiven.

(And yes, that really is the kind of world these "Republicans" wanna live in.)

The Truth is that forgiveness and Salvation are free gifts of Jesus Christ.

(But that's not the world Republicans want to live in.)

And they expect the rest of us to keep indulging this scammy, racist crap because they can talk up a bunch of crazy shit that anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows is a bunch of bullshit.

American Reformation Now.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

The rest of the world is kicking these motherfuckers out.

So get after it.

Слава Україна

Follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.

~Scorpions, Winds Of Change

Four

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.

False Gods (American Reformation II, Four.)

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

...

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

...

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. ~Galatians 3:26-29

I saw this last night.

Some old-ass idiot MAGA Bitch at a Trump rally, when asked if slavery still affected Black people said that when they were slaves, they were "Given food, housing and medical care." Well, color me skeptical but I don't think any of that matters much if you can't leave.

Like, the fuck?? I knew "Slavery is bad" when I was like...five years old, maybe?

And, I'm sorry but with the Midterms and an extremely likely political ass-kicking looming, I'm starting to see a lot of shit even weirder than that. Like there's some kind of AI Terminator/Warhammer 40K slop video making the rounds on Twitter. Catholic Space Marines with laser rifles and swords vs. T2 Judgment Day grade Terminators, and I'm just like what the fuck??

Midterm Loss Psychosis seems to be a real thing, apparently?

[As the four newly-revealed Cylons aboard Galactica struggle to deal with the information, the call to action stations sounds]

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta: [over the loudspeaker] ...Inbound Cylon fleet! I repeat: action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. This is not a drill.

Tory Foster: Oh gods... what're we going to do?

Saul Tigh: The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!

Chief Galen Tyrol: Report to stations?

Saul Tigh: My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. ~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S3.E20 "Crossroads, Part 2."

Like, I don't give a fuck. 

I'm tired of these idiots telling me who to hate when I don't hate any of those people and I'm not going to. That's not who I am or who I want to be. I'm tired of everything being expensive and me and everyone I know being stressed because of it. That and I've been done with the Donkey Show Politics of the whole Trump thing since long before it was "Cool."

Apparently I'm not the only one, and there's worse people with way worse reasons for being done with it than me. A lot of these MAGA's and shit are about to find themselves under attack from their Right. Apparently, Joel Webbon decided to threaten Mike Huckabee and call for his execution and while I didn't see what it was over or what the threat was, it was apparently bad enough of a threat that there's calls for Joel to be arrested.

There's people out there that think Trump didn't or doesn't go far enough, because among other things Trump is (Yes, still) constrained by the Constitution and electoral process and America's democratic culture, not to mention his own low popularity and lazy shitty nature. Really, he can't.

Or, more particularly, he can't with 30% or less of the country supporting this bullshit.

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.

But people who think everything is ideally the domination of women, macho war shit and performative religiosity are quite likely going to be unimpressed by even Republicans quoting the Constitution or the Bill Of Rights to them...even if said Republicans are only doing it because they don't want to be slaves.

And another problem with this is that America's culture is violently atheistic and materialistic, the Church has historically been balls-deep in making it that way and keeping it that way, simply because people of a more spiritual inclination don't keep showing up, participating in all the horseshit and manipulation that infect churches in America or putting their money in the offering plate. 

Pretty often, doctrinally religious or genuinely spiritual people get bored, leave, and find their own ways to connect with the Divine Conversation because the sad truth of the American Evangelical religion is that most of those churches don't really do much in the community or have any real effect besides occasionally manipulating and parasitizing their members. Making the preachers the Zampolits of the Republican Party was actually a bad idea if you wanted to make people be more religious.

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

Like it or not, that's a pretty rotten, soggy grounding for a "Theocracy" of any sort. Best case for these CHUDs is that people mail it in and pretend for awhile, but honestly I don't see that lasting any longer than a couple of weeks. "Owning The Libs" or whatever they're calling it this week is only fun for most of these fucking people if it doesn't inconvenience them or require any real effort. Blame internet meme culture if you want.

Another issue is that the realities of American culture and diversity and of who is in the Body of Christ simply, I don't know, no longer work well with a lot of these fucking people's biases. Imma just put it like this. There's ads for a movie that keep crossing all of my feeds. It's called Drummer Boy and it basically looks like a less bloody, more musical updated version of The Patriot. But I noticed that #1 The main character's love interest in the previews is a black woman, and #2 the previews at least use the Christmas song Little Drummer Boy. #3 The film is produced by Angel studios, which is one of those knock off Christian movie outfits.

Trust me, I have a lot of familiarity with Those kind of studios and the movies they produce 'cause I have a conservative Christian Church background. 

It's like this: When the original left behind movies cast the principal pastor, Bruce Barnes, from the first four books as a black man (actor Clarence Gilyard) it was no big deal. Sure it was a long way down from Top Gun and Die Hard, but Clarence needed a job. Also, it's pretty obvious that's not the world we live in anymore, thanks to Trump.

But Trump isn't America and at the same time, now studios have to do stuff like have a diverse cast to reflect that a lot of their audience (Christian or otherwise) wants diversity. As much as some people don't want it to be, the American church, whether Christian or Evangelical, Catholic or Protestant, is a diverse Church, in a diverse country. 

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

It's stuff like this that's a problem for people like Joel Webbon, Dale Partridge etc. These people, these so-called "Conservatives" pretty much turn against anything that says black people, immigrants, poor people, etc. deserve any consideration at all...even the Bible, or even when it comes from modern Evangelical sources.

And that's why this whole mess is falling down. MAGA is not a growth industry or movement, the Republican Party isn't interested in making itself bigger or more diverse. Oh yeah, Trump still yells a good game now and again, or meanders through some kind of bizarre hate sermon at his rallies. 

But whatever Demonic aura of protection or magical attraction Trump had is gone; If they haven't already, these fucking people are going to start looking for a fresher or stronger drug again. I'm not sure Trump's Christ-less Prosperity Gospel Christianity is that. 

For all their constantly being in everyone's faces screaming their bullshit, Republicans actually want a lot fewer people to participate in the political process (But not in the same way that guys like Dale Partridge, Doug Wilson or Joel Webbon do) or for that matter, in religion past whatever it takes to get people to support Republicans. The unholy ghost of Richard Nixon forbid somebody get far enough into the Word to read "Love Thy Neighbor."

Christianity, as written, is inconvenient to the political Right. There's a reason the Nazis were big on Germanic neo-Pagan woo woo and practicing Black Magic.

It's gonna be the same way with these motherfuckers.

They're gonna find themselves Another God. In a pinch, Devils and Idols Of Gold will do. The "god" of Hate and Racism is a false god.

And then, they're going to come at the rest of us, MAGA and all included.

If there is to be an American Reformation, these fucking people will call Baal-worship their counter-revolution. I mean, just from what we know is in the Epstein files, that mess already infects a lot of America's "elites."

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

I've got a partner and a kid to think about. I can't be cool with that. Their freedom and safety and physical and spiritual well-being matter to me more than my own life does.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either give a shit about other people or you don't.

And either you're willing to fight for it, and for them, or you're not.

Слава Україна!

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

Three

"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."