...
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.
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The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high ... [after looking at crowd] but sometimes it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done. Like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore. ~William Adama, from the Battlestar Galactica (2003) Miniseries, Part One.
I saw this the other day.
Makes sense.
And Imma say it again, MAGA and what "Republicans" are now is not what I was taught.
Way the fuck too many Republicans have become the bad guys in their own damn stories and I say that as the guy who just started listening to the Audible version of The Hunt For Red October this morning.
But I mean, technically, screw that; These motherfuckers been working on being the bad guys in the Left Behind books for a while now.
Which is pretty blatantly the point of all the AI crap and Data Centers and you bet their next move is gonna be to dig up some hyper-Calvinist chuckle-fuck who'll write some bullshit counter-argument to the Pope basically saying "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when we do it!"
Yes, yes it is.
Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.
- Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
- Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.
- Joe: Yes.
- Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?
- Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.
- Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.
- Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.
- Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.
- Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.
- Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?
- Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?
- Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.
- Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.
- Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?
- Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.
- ~From the film Idiocracy.
And they think because they and their voters are sickeningly *Willfully Ignorant* that everyone else must be, too.
Worse, they think they can find some kind of Magic Words And Phrases that'll get everybody on their side, because they think everybody else is really amoral, bigoted, cynical douchebags just like them and that nobody really believes anything, because they don't. These Ass-Clowns honestly think things like that "Racist" is just other people's slur against them.
That's why whenever they get ahold of something like Twitter, or the US Government in Trump's second term, they immediately start ripping all the copper wire and shit out of the walls cuz they trying to find the switch that makes all those other people "Liberal." Never mind that anymore you can be pretty much Hard Right but NOT Fascist and these jackoffs will still think that's "Liberal."
These Fucking People hate America and its diversity of culture and people and thought.
They hate Christianity and Christ and "Love Thy Neighbor" and any other belief or religion that doesn't thrive on Hatred of some Other, real or imagined.
They want slaves. They don't care if it's AI and robots or every other human being on the planet.
They don't care that this ends badly no matter how you run the experiment and it always has.
These Fucking People see Law and Religion and every other damn thing as little more than cudgels to use to beat other people into acting Like Them.
And they hate and resent that Law, and Religion, and all type of other shit doesn't do that, and certainly doesn't do it automatically and break their way every time.
Worse, These Fucking People, who tend to not even like each other, don't understand why other people don't "like" them or think they're cool.
I mean, when your whole bit is constantly, obsessively trying to establish a complex hierarchy of who can do what to whom like all the overlap between slavery and homosexual culture in the Roman Empire...purely as a diversion from being a Miserable Bastard (TM) all the time??
Yeah, that kind of tends to suck the joy out of everything and make everybody from conservatives who aren't that way, to liberals, to regular gay people, to women and just plain people that don't see "Who you can have sex with" as a mark of Power or political status (and don't want to see it like that) not want to participate in your 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.
I'm old enough to remember when this by itself would have been a national political scandal that went on for years, that prompted imposition of all type of new Federal laws to prevent that shit from ever happening again, and which would have meant that anybody involved couldn't find a job as a public toilet attendant in Liberia if they wanted to, not without waiting 30 years like Jim Bakker had to before he even started to make a comeback.
Stop and think about that for a second.
I'm old enough to remember when anything that even implied homosexual behavior or orientation (especially if the person was a Republican) or tolerance for it was a scandal all by itself.
Fuck, I can remember when even the absolute worst of the Bad Guys on shows like Oz were portrayed as being violently against pedophilia...and honestly that was generally American culture at the time.
And it pretty much was that way until Trump ran for President.
I have a partner and a kid to think about, the hell with this bullshit!
The difference now is that what modern "Conservatives" have come around to having a problem with is Consent. They no longer care about child abuse or rape. In fact, They think you can do whatever you want, pretty much, as long as the other person doesn't want you to do it!
Again, think about this shit!
Like, I literally grew up in church, in the 1980's, when all the Don't Talk To Strangers, Satanic Panic stuff was on pretty much every bulletin board and newspaper and TV screen in the whole damn country.
And now these same motherfuckers are giving child molesters one-day jail terms??
The hell with that. If that's what "Christian Nationalism" is??
Fuck That. You know what happens to dudes that do that type of shit in Muslim countries??
They cut that shit off, if they don't just kill 'em.
And yes, especially a lot of the more gender-segregated Fundamentalist Islamic countries have a hell of a lot of situational bisexuality going on.
It's not generally officially tolerated, though.
But the Truth is that's what stuff like Patriarchy and religiously-dominated cultures end up being.
It should be said that Islamic preservation of Greek Classics is pretty much 90% of how most of us know who Plato even is much less the story of Plato's Cave. Not that "Conservatives" really believe in that shit anymore either. They only believe in taking advantage.
Republicans are already (and fairly openly) working their way around to a degree of Man Love Thursdays that makes the Ottoman Empire at the height of its debasement, power and sloth (where if you had "Sir" in front of your name you didn't wanna get captured by them) look like Thomas Road Baptist Church by comparison.
This keeps up, you won't wanna be a Republican intern by, say, 2028.
Before this gets worse.
If that means not as much sympathy when shit happens? Too Bad. That's Unfortunate. Shit Happens.
By Republicans not immigrants.
There's some things modern liberalism isn't much good for, and dealing with evil shameless people who will not respect anything short of a violently-drawn hard line and a "No" backed up by a credible threat of force is one of those.
If that means not as much sympathy when shit happens? Too Bad. That's Unfortunate. Shit Happens.
You're still out of luck.
Sorry, I think we erred TOO much on the side of "empathy" and got taken advantage of.
By Republicans not immigrants.
It's not LGBT folk or POC or the Undocumented immigrants screwing this shit up, it's Republicans.
And most of their prejudices simply project their Sin onto other people who don't deserve that. But the only way to stop this shit at this point is going to be to SLAM the door in their face, without understanding, without explanation, Fuck You. Go Away.
Way the fuck too many of these people are abusers. You don't play with that.
There's some things modern liberalism isn't much good for, and dealing with evil shameless people who will not respect anything short of a violently-drawn hard line and a "No" backed up by a credible threat of force is one of those.
I'm divorced, I've learned this the hard way.
But, in our defense, at least on the liberal/mid-conservative/pretty much anything but MAGA side of the fence, the well is running dry.
People are sick of this fucking garbage.
Taking the high road all the time does not work.
Meanwhile, Republicans are either all-in on it, infinitely forgiving to a degree that makes Obama-era Democrats look like the people who ran Dan Quayle out of politics for misspelling "Potato" or desperately trying to ignore it, not least because doing anything about it increasingly means voting for the Other Team.
Sooner or later it comes down to either you're sitting at the Nazi table or you refuse to sit at the Nazi table.
Sooner or later it comes down to "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" or "Don't." But you have to pick one, because all that Left Behind shit was a lie you don't get to go to Heaven without dying, you don't get transcendence without the fire. The Universe does not exist for your convenience.
Sooner or later, you either believe in freedom or you don't, and you're willing to fight for it or you're not.
Make up yo damn mind.
Light has no fellowship with Darkness.
- Слава Україна!
- I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.
- Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.
Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.
Andor: Is that the best you got?
Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out!
- [repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!
~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."
