Unga Bunga (Babylon Or Sodom? Three.)

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.)

...

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

...

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."

I saw this a couple days ago.

These Epstein Cabal motherfuckers wanted to reduce the world to Tribalism so that they could buy up everything cheap.

So, pretty much the absolute worst of everything I thought these fucking people were, proven, all in one go.

These assholes literally come right out and say, among themselves, that they want to crash civilization and reduce Humanity to dancing around a fire and shouting "Unga Bunga" while they wait for the local Witch Doctor to come out of his cave. And yet...and yet...These Fucking People are so goddamned soft that seeing people exercise their Constitutional Rights and protest in a church breaks their fucking brains.

I'm confused, because it sure as hell seems like the *Checks Notes* End of the World is probably gonna pop whatever bubble you think your ass lives in, not least because Billionaires and modern so-called "Conservatives" can't even survive without having the rest of us to bitch about and parasitize.

In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a fever-land. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all. ~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

I'm sorry, but I used to be a conservative Christian Republican and this ain't what I was taught.

But of course, why would we dare assume these idiots know that?? They sure don't seem to want to know it, or anything else.

I have repeatedly, for years now, said "You either believe in freedom or you don't."

To believe in things, you have to know a thing or two. Faith, in a certain sense, requires at least some degree of knowledge or at least that's what I was taught separates (for example) a human being reading or being taught the Word of God from a dog listening to the commands of its master.

As Ronald Reagan (of all people) said "We are Spirits, not Animals." 

I don't know if modern Republicans have forgotten that or if, like everything else, they just didn't want to know it in the first place.  My actual lived experience with these fucking people is that their actual "beliefs" seem to hinge on the idea that if they don't know anything, they can "Believe" in whatever they want.

But that's not what Belief actually is.

What they have is Delusion.

Truth is the only floor most people will ever have to stand on to push back against Power, let alone Tyranny.

By then all stores of food had given out and murder was everywhere upon the land. The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell. The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sister-world in the ancient dark beyond. ~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

So of course those who think they want a Tyrant are going to willfully ignore the Truth.

Granted, even (or perhaps especially) in the most Christianized terms, it's safe to say that ignorance of the Law, ignorance of the Truth, etc. etc. Is NOT A Defense!

These motherfuckers treat all this shit like some kind of set of legal contracts with which they're trying to cheat the Universe. Like they think there's no God that'll judge them, no sense of Reality outside of whatever Solipsistic nonsense is popular in a given moment.

Sorry, but (again, just for example) you don't have to "Believe" in Gravity, or Diseases, or Science. If you try to do certain things, or not do other necessary things, well, all that stuff believes in YOU just fine, and Nature has its own credo of "Fuck Around and Find Out."

And all these fucking people who think the Universe begins and ends with them, because their Self is on the Throne and not God (and this is a line of theological reasoning a supposed Calvinist like Dale Partridge should damn well know) are going to be hella surprised when they find themselves in Hell.

Man cannot Save Man, and Man does not get to Judge himself.

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. ~Matthew 22:36-40

Being rich or being White or believing in the right theological tautology is not Salvation.

Belief in, accountability to, and when necessary obedience of and participation in the Divine Conversation with the Creator is how you get that...if you choose to see it that way.

And "Love Thy Neighbor" itself presupposes a certain level of belief in Civilization, I guess?

Like I said in a conversation with the Threads poster in the snipped post immediately above, it shocks me that these days half of America is basically damned illiterate.

Not least because as I was taught things, the Written Word is basically the foundation of pretty much everything.

Again, even in the Bible it says thusly:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shined in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. ~John 1:1-5

If you can't fuckin' read how are you even supposed to know that??

Just accepting what people tell you is not faith.

Naturally, the people whose biggest question is do they want to live in Babylon or Sodom aren't going to want people to know that.

There's a reason that the longer this shit goes on, the more Demonic it seems to get.

People who want you to be ignorant and live like a savage so they can steal Civilization right out from under your ass ain't your friends.

Even when the political aspects of this shit are supposedly over, we're going to have a long way to go before we fix it, and it's probably going to be a fight to get there.

Remember that, because it's going to be on the test.

Слава Україна!

Loretta Smith: I'm Loretta Smith. You killed my son. You're a handsome fellow.

Donald Groves: Thanks.

Loretta Smith: You broke God's law: Love thy neighbor. I wanna hate you but I can't. I feel pity, tears, but no hate. I didn't realize that until this moment. You are my neighbor and I love you. And I forgive you with all my heart. That's all.

~From the HBO series "Oz" Season 1, Episode 7 "Plan B."

Two

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

Canceling Elijah (Babylon or Sodom? Two.)

So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. 

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. 

Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. 

Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. 

Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”

So all the people answered and said, “It is well spoken.”

Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.”

So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us!” But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made.

And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord; and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two cords of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four water-pots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.

And it came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”

And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there. 

~2 Kings 18:20-40

...

[Jyn proposes to the Alliance Council a raid on Scarif to get the Death Star plans, but runs into objections]

Tynnra Pamlo: If the Empire has this kind of power, what chance do we have?

Jyn Erso: What chance do we have? The question is what choice? Run? Hide? Plead for mercy? Scatter your forces? You give way to an enemy this evil with this much power and you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission. [Rebel personnel grumble in agreement] The time to fight is now! Every moment you waste is another step closer to the ashes of Jedha. ~From the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I saw this over the weekend, in the Epstein Files drop.

Somebody wired thousands of dollars to an account with the name "Baal" on it.

Now for those of you playing the home game, who might have a church background or a decent knowledge of the Old Testament, Ba'al is one of the primary Canaanite gods, typically identified as a Demon in Christian and Jewish tradition.

Tagging something with that name, in this country anyway, feels like a deliberate act. Whether there was some arcane point to it in whatever mythology these freaks have constructed around themselves to justify their atrocities or if somebody was just trying to be edgy and heretical, I don't know.

But I can tell you from experience, Christian Fundamentalists love the stories of the Prophet Elijah, and the violent, bloody imagery thereof.

Somebody knew what they were doing.

And a lot of the shit I've seen about all the evil perverted shit these fucking people were doing feels pretty ritualistic, like the kind of stuff whack-a-nut Christian Fundamentalists caught up in all the "Satanic Panic" bullshit back in the 1980's liked to accuse other people of. 

Now that it's Republicans doing it?? 

Crickets.

Chirp Chirp.

Not a sound from so many of those assholes that are still around.

In fact, if the alternative is to Cancel Trump?? I'm quite sure These Fucking People are Canceling Elijah.

But I'm sure seeing a lot fewer of them with MAGA hats on or Trump signs in their yards lately.

Not because they're sorry, but because they wanna hide that shit now.

They still want to do it though.

I have been saying for awhile now that these motherfuckers would likely end up worshiping Demons.

I didn't think they already were, but the date on that file is 2009.

And if you look at the Google-generated summary up above, suddenly a lot of things from the last decade or so make more sense if looked at through the lens of "These Fucking People are worshiping some ancient Old Testament Bad Guy" don't they??

And again, speaking as somebody with unfortunate experience of the crazy parts of Fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity, the odd feeling that the only difference between "god" or "the devil" in these fucking people's minds was what side they were on also makes more sense when viewed that way.

Some people are so Lost they don't know the damn difference.

Or want to.

Hence the need for an American Reformation, as I've said in my other ongoing series.

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 don't make the rules, I'm not the one who set up this paradigm, it was like that by the time I was old enough to understand this stuff even a little for myself.

Now it seems like we've got whole countries in this world that don't know the difference between God and The Devil or his Demons, because all they see is Power one way or the other and they want it as quick and dirty as they can get it, without much care for what results.

Yoda: "A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger. Fear. Aggression. The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow. Quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."

Luke: "Vader… Is the dark side stronger?"

Yoda: "No! No…no. Quicker. Easier. More seductive."

Luke: "But how am I to know the good side from the bad?"

Yoda: "You will know, when you are calm. At peace. Passive." ~From Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Think about that, for a second.

Complete amorality is making a moral choice.

There is no neutrality, no saying "I'm just here for the war, man!" or "I was just following orders" when it comes to this kind of crap.

When it comes to the Judgment Day, the Lord isn't going to care about that.

And again, the Nazis fucked around with the Occult a lot, too.

These guys know that, and they know exactly what they are doing. They just thought nobody was gonna find out, or that they would get away with it.

The only thing we don't know is how far down the rot goes and how widespread it is, but my guess is pretty damn far on both counts.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

It's time to ask yourself that question.

Do we tolerate America trying to be Babylon or Sodom, or do we burn that shit up and build something different?

This is America, we get the choice.

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.)

One

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

Also, seriously?? I can't believe people are still trying to blame somebody else when they just picked this team after all the Epstein drops.

Bonus Content

Shitting On America (Babylon Or Sodom? One)

 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;

And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.

And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:

And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them carnally.

And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.

And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place:

For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.

And Lot went out, and spoke unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.

And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord:

Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:

Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.

And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken.

Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.

Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord:

And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.

~Genesis 19:1-29

...

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

I saw this yesterday.

Trump, literally starting to shit himself on camera, and his media wranglers struggling to get the room cleared before it became obvious.

Then I went to bed, woke up to an argument with my partner, and got treated to Epstein Files drop shit all night while I was at work.

I said a long time ago that what's in there would likely spark a revolution and I still don't think I'm wrong. I think I need to invest in a company that makes Brain Bleach. More to the fucking point, as I've also said repeatedly, I wonder just how fucking far down the rot goes.

The question needs to be asked, why??

Well, I think you can start with the fact that some fool is literally trying to sell an AI Jesus. If the Image Of The Beast is in the fuckin' App Store I don't think that leaves a lot of debate where we stand on pretty much anything.

Trump is only part of the problem, there's a shit-ton of Billionaires, Republicans, rich people in general, and various celebrities and enablers all wrapped up in this crazy shit and they're all gonna need to be dealt with.

America right now is basically trying to decide if it wants to be Babylon or Sodom, without ever considering that both come to a bad end.

Hell, I'm starting to wonder if These Fucking People have literally worshiped Demons at this point, because among other things a lot of this crap seems weirdly ritualistic.

And yeah, I'm seeing fewer and fewer people trying to defend any of this or any of the people now known to be caught up in it. But the point is there shouldn't be any at all, and in a sane world we'd be having international mass-trials of these monsters like the Italian government does with the Mafia, then lock them up and melt down the keys.

Makes me wonder "Damn, What's Next??"

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.)

If we don't do something about this shit, it's only going to get worse.

At the rate this crap is going, who needs Babylon or Sodom when you've got Washington D.C??

When is Enough going to be Enough, people??

I ain't asking ya, I'm tellin' ya, this isn't sustainable. Something is going to break, Soon.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And you're either willing to fight for that freedom or you're not.

The alternative is an eternity of depravity and submission.

I've got a partner and kid to think about, the hell with that.

And I'm tired of these fucking people shitting on America.

Слава Україна!

[Jyn proposes to the Alliance Council a raid on Scarif to get the Death Star plans, but runs into objections]

Tynnra Pamlo: If the Empire has this kind of power, what chance do we have?

Jyn Erso: What chance do we have? The question is what choice? Run? Hide? Plead for mercy? Scatter your forces? You give way to an enemy this evil with this much power and you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission. [Rebel personnel grumble in agreement] The time to fight is now! Every moment you waste is another step closer to the ashes of Jedha. ~From the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Last Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading Amos In Satan's House (95 Theses For America, Two.)

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing.

And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 

Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves. ~Amos 5:7-26

...

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 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, letter written following the Hajj.

I saw this the other day.

Some idiot came at Ilhan Omar at a town meeting and tried to throw some liquid on her. She stepped up and was about ready to beat the guy's ass when security tackled him.

The day before that, I saw this bit here, which takes my belief that these nuts will worship demons and says "Fuck that, they already are!"

What's wrong with These Fucking People at this point??

I mean, aside from the fact that the root cause of this is a literally Biblical-level plague of Narcissism on America???

These Fucking People are trying to turn the United States into Satan's House.

And there's people out there who would let them.

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.

Why?? Because they think somehow doing so will cause God's judgment to fall on the rest of us, and not them, who are the ones that are actually doing it.

They somehow think they are protected and special. But, the truth is, they're just narcissists.

And they want to burn everything down because *Country that historically trips over itself to fuel their Narcissism, always to its own detriment* isn't blowing their damn narcissism hard enough anymore.

And if they can't do that, then they want to have a Civil War and kill a bunch of people...but they're also terrified that somebody might fight back.

One of these things is not like the other one, yo. Wars always have another side that will fight back, it's the nature of the beast. 

That's what war even is. 

And God is not stupid, and if God can be manipulated by Man then He is not God and we're all worm-food anyway so what's the point??

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

I mean, really it's a safe bet that These Fucking People never believed in anything but themselves anyway.

In effect, these fucking people are so damned Atheistic that they'll reject basic observable science (and I say this as somebody who is extremely vaccinated cause I was in the military) in favor of some bullshit narrative every fucking time.

Although they seem to have unlimited faith in that narrative. The truth is, they don't. 

They're actively trying to WILL it into being so they can keep cheating the Universe and killing people, they know it's all bullshit.

But Man cannot create such a thing, we cannot really make Gods unto ourselves.

Not according to the Abrahamic traditions, anyway.

You can make Idols all day, but they have no power.

These Fucking People are all basically Atheists Minus One, in that they'll reject any belief, even things that shouldn't be considered "beliefs" worse, the "One" being whatever belief they think they can weaponize against Other People.

I'm a veteran of Bosnia, I know exactly what that type of bullshit thinking leads to.

These Fucking People think the Bosnian Serbs were the good guys.

Like I keep saying, I can't even talk the way these people talk anymore. Their goals are alien and repulsive to me and I say that as a former Republican.

And any given belief system is actually expendable to that end. Like, in real terms These Fucking People's Christianity stopped having any meaning somewhere around 20 years ago.

Think Q-Anon and how quickly that disappeared once it became obvious who was in the Epstein files.

I don't know if I believe in Egregores as the dictionary or Wikipedia definition goes, I mean, honestly in the kind of terminology my brain has as a default setting (Church background) if it acts like a Demon, Looks like a Demon, Manipulates people like a Demon and Gets Worshiped by deranged cultists like a Demon, it's a fucking Demon.

But we can all see exactly what form these deranged assholes would want such a thing to take if it did exist:

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.)

And if you can't imagine these idiots setting great fires and chanting deranged homilies to Trump while they eat their neighbors or even their relatives, you ain't been paying attention.

Worse, he would let them, so long as it let him feel like a god for five seconds or hoard more money.

There ain't no bottom, and don't you forget it.

Yes, like I've been saying for a week, I've now encountered people who actually scan exactly like that.

And if there's a "Worse" out there? These fucking people will find it.

Anything to cheat the Universe, even if the result is that they themselves become monstrous undead horrors.

Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living, and so we cannot die. But neither are we dead! For too long, I've been parched of a thirst with nothin' to quench it. Too long I've been starvin' to death and haven't died. I feel nothin'. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. [steps out into the moonlight, revealing his skeletal form] You best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!

~Hector Barbossa, Pirates Of The Caribbean; Curse Of The Black Pearl.

There are people out there who, if they'd heard my kid's rant about "Trump Dick Riders" last week, would take it as a compliment.

It's going to come down to a fight.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

People like me shouldn't have to be the ones nailing the 95 Theses of this American Reformation to the door of the American church, but I don't see anybody else doing it.

And while the Islamic faith of people like Ilhan Omar or the humanity of the secular Left is all well and good and part of the American way in its own way, those beliefs are neither a default cultural setting nor the problem.

The problem is rot in the American church.

You cannot fix this shit from the outside unless the solution is to destroy it completely.

It may come to that, but it'll be less bloody if it doesn't. 

These Fucking People would love to have themselves a couple hundred years of Wars Of Religion, even if they lose.

At least some people can be made to see before they find themselves on the altar being sacrificed to some bullshit right-wing theological concept. We're going to need those people either way.

And it's better to step up and try than to live in Satan's House, even for a little while.

Слава Україна!

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.

6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God’s remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.

7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.

9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory.

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.

12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them.

14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love.

19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it.

~Martin Luther, The 95 Theses 1-19.

One

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."