Terrorists (9/11, 25 Years Later, Two.)

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

...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Bush, we can't hear you!

BUSH: I can hear you!

(APPLAUSE)

I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. And the people...

(APPLAUSE)

And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

BUSH: The nation -- the nation sends its love and compassion. And everybody that is here, thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud, and may God bless America!

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP) ~Via CNN Transcripts.

It's 9/11.

I remember, oh yes, I do.

I remember everything about that day, especially that morning.

Some images are seared into the mind over time whether you want them to be or not.

I remember, as a United States Air Force security forces veteran, the cold grim certainty that someone was going to pay for this, the feeling that once we knew who, it was on like Donkey Kong.

Classes were canceled, I went about my day as best I could, went to work, came home, chatted with the girlfriend. I remember the spicy pics she sent me because I somehow managed to make her feel better.

Oh yes, I remember and I've written perhaps too much about over the years.

I remember the feeling, so brief it turned out, of common purpose, of national unity, of people going about their days and refusing to be terrorized, the certain refusal on the part of even many conservatives, Republicans, to blame all of Islam for the actions of at most a few dozen men in total.

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms, and dads, and they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect. ~George W. Bush, remarks at the Islamic Center of Washington DC, September 2001.

Oh yes, I remember.

And, If you would have told me a generation ago that in the year 2026, that Republicans would angrily be trying to finish the work Osama Bin Laden started, and doing in the name of Donald Trump...and his angry, declining personality cult...I'd probably have punched you right in the mouth.

I'm tired.

Fuck this stupid bullshit.

But I can't give up.

Fuck that even harder.

I have a partner and a kid to think about and if you don't think that crosses my mind every minute of every damn day with all this crazy shit going on, you're wrong.

Everybody that I know is struggling, everybody that I know is tired.

But we can't quit.

Because they won't.

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.

Yeah, that's right, there's a small minority of activist fascistic Republicans who seem energized by all this constant crazy shit, who did about everything but engage in ecstatic, orgiastic worship of Trump these last few days, in a "Convention" the vast majority of people looked at and saw nothing but a massive soup sandwich, the kind of shit that would make Ronald Reagan rise from the grave and go change his party registration back to Democratic.

I Have Spoken.

No arguing.

No debate.

Enough is enough with this ridiculous horseshit.

Republicans don't give a good goddamn about America, they don't give a good goddamn about conservatism, Christianity, any of the things they've claimed as excuses and rationalizations and anybody who actually believed in any of that stuff is being given the old heave-ho right out the door as quickly as they can be discovered, and it doesn't even matter how hard-right you were before. I mean for fuck's sake I used to be a Republican!

These motherfuckers just wanna shoot people.

Like they're fuckin' Russians or something.

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

You want to stop this mess? Eventually, it's going to come down to a fight.

And I'm here to tell you, had These Fucking People been These Fucking Peopled this bad in 2001, the motherfuckers would have all gone and signed up with Radical Islam back then, too. They just didn't have the guts, or Trump enabling them to be the worst version of their worst possible selves at the time.

Trump gives them that, and while many have gotten tired, found the whole mess unsustainable, or just plain couldn't afford it...there are still those, maybe up to 20% of this whole damn country, that are addicted to that shit.

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, A Tumbleweed rolls by, a Coyote howls mournfully in the distance.]
"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

And as other people have tapped out, "Establishment" Republicans and all those tight-ass conservative types have gone more whole-hog on this shit than the most Reddest of Red-Hat-wearing MAGA's did in 2017.

Now, we're going to have to stop this fucking bullshit.

Republicans spent the decade after 9/11 being so afraid of the Terrorists that they went out and became the fucking terrorists, just because a man uses political power instead of AK-47's and improvised explosives does not make the effect any fucking different.

And time and time again since then, they have been offered the chance to go back to making the world better, by Democrats, by other Republicans, by Barack Obama, by their own fuckin' presidential candidate...and they have refused it.

Because a Black man said "Yes We Can" the only thing Republicans wanna say is "No We Can't."

And it doesn't even matter what it's about.

They don't want freedom, light, peace, any of that. They'd rather walk in the darkness like it's some kind of awesome flex. Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor" I guess.

Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. ~John 8:12

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

I can't put it any more simply than that.

I have spoken.

Слава Україна!

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

One

[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

Jihad And The Last Day (9/11, 25 Years Later, One.)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...

When ye therefore shall see the Abomination of Desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (who so reads, let him understand)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behold, I have told you before.

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

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shines even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:15-27

...

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, A Tumbleweed rolls by, a Coyote howls mournfully in the distance.]
"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

I remember.

Oh yes, I do, and for that reason I always mark the 10th of September as pretty much the Last Day before things started to get crazy.

And that's what September 10th, 2001, was, a normal day. I don't even remember much about it...and why should I? Isn't that the point of a normal day??

The next morning like the rest of America, I woke up to an Apocalypse striking out of an infamously clear blue sky.

I was a conservative person, a theologically-conservative Christian, a Republican.

Me. Not much different from how I am today, either. I didn't change, they did.

But tomorrow morning I will wake up in a world where conservative Christian Republicans have become the Idiocracy Taliban, protesting the death of an Influencer in a city where he was NOT killed, who think evangelizing a person in a squirrel suit in the middle of a gas station is somehow What Jesus Would Do. People for whom the point of the Bible is ANYTHING but "Love Thy Neighbor." Their "god" is Hate.

And getting attention for themselves.

And stupidity, if we're being honest.

Willful stupidity, on purpose and with malice aforethought, because they think they're going to get something for it.

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.

These are people who, when offered the chance, did not want a better or more peaceful world, or actual observant Christians in government, even.

They'd rather try and say an adulterous corrupt lying scumbag like Ken Paxton is a "Christian."

That is literally not what I was taught.

And here's the thing; I'm not unfamiliar with some degree of "Christian Nationalism" either.

I just gradually became disgusted by it as I gradually realized what these fucking people were, a process that happened for me throughout the Aughts.

But, at that point, what these assholes believed could still be recognized as both American and as a form of Christianity.

That's not what this is anymore.

These Fucking People are no more "Christian" in any cultural, orthodox or theological sense than the boy-abusing, drug-using, terrorism-practicing Taliban are Muslim in any real way.

At best, their religion is about Christianity, not about following Christianity.

They're "Proud of" and want to claim the stern public religiosity of it.

And they want to impose that mentality on the world. The rest can go to Hell, all day and twice on Sundays.

These motherfuckers just wanna have a Jihad, they don't care what it's for.

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

They don't care if they run the country and the world into the ground in the process, so long as they or somebody they "claim" or "like" gets rich off the whole fucking mess or gets to pretend he's King for an hour.

They don't care if he, or they, has to sell their souls to the demons for it, either.

I couldn't do it.

And evidently, even a lot of These Fucking People can't keep up with the demands of this bullshit either because the whole mess is literally falling apart right in front of all of our faces.

And These Fucking People Don't Care.

In fact, the falling apart is the point.

They want to ride the bomb all the way down whooping and hollering like Major Kong in Doctor Strangelove because they think it proves some sort of a point, and they don't actually give a damn about the rest of us. Or even themselves, or their own kin in too many of these people's cases.

I have seen it.

These are people who, fundamentally, believe this world sucks, that it should suck, that they should make it as terrible as possible to punish...well, pretty much everybody...for existing and not being a shadow on the wall in the firelight in someone's cave on some other world that, in their imagination, is somehow holier than this one.

Oh, and don't forget, they believe that they should have the right to be comfortable and well-fed and have money because they have the "Right" beliefs.

Yeah, fuck all that, and I say that as a former conservative Republican.

I'm tired of this shit, too many people I know...like my Mom, or my partner and the kid...don't deserve any of this shit. People who've already busted their ass, or endured hardships, should not have to suffer more.

The thing is, a lot of the beliefs these people claim (but don't follow) are not wrong.

If they really do believe any of it (and I don't think they do) they seem to have missed the point that they'll be judged right along with everybody else.

Jesus Himself used the example of the Sheep and the Goats.

I just don't think the Judgment is going to work out for These Fucking People the way that they believe it will.

Fuck them, they can commiserate with Abdullah the Taliban in Hell for all I care.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

Last Post

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

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. 

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran  

Please Clap II (Oblivion, Four.)

Proctor: Sir, Mahoney says this restaurant has the best salad bar in town. [They're walking down an alley, still in their police uniforms.]

Harris: Well, it damn sure better have! 

[Inside, they walk through curtains of beads and past a Bud Light neon sign.]

Harris: Proctor, I don't see a salad bar. 

Proctor: [Noticing the sign "The Blue Oyster."] Look, sir, maybe they serve seafood. 

Harris: [Slowly realizing he's in a gay bar] That's not funny, you idiot! [To Leatherman] What are you looking at, you PECKERHEAD?! 

Leatherman: Nice uniform, makes me wish I'd worn my sailor outfit. 

Harris: I'm getting out of here! Move it! Move it! [Starts to push through the crowd of gay men.]
*El Bimbo begins to play*

Harris: [Being forced to dance with Leatherman] Proctor! 

Proctor: I don't think cutting in is allowed, Sir. 

Proctor: [Being noticed by second Leatherman] Nice collar!

~From Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol

...

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

So the Republican midterm convention in Texas can be summed up in pretty much 2 words:

"Please Clap."

Well, that and "Grindr."

Wait, is that a word??

Tim Scott evidently gave a pretty bizarre sermon/speech and what little I've seen of it is bad enough. I don't really want to see the whole thing.

I mean, Jesus, what the hell is wrong with these fucking people??

Except that, of course, it's the fact that a (The? Sorry, painfully straight guy here and I don't know shit about this stuff) Gay hookup app is literally *Checks Notes* OFF THE HOOK where there's a Republican convention.

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 think that tells as big of a story as how much of a goddamn mess the whole thing is. Like, maybe these idiots might find time to be competent if they weren't always trying to cover up the giant pile of pelvic bones spilling out from their closets??

Like what's even the damn point, nobody cares if anybody's gay anymore, except for a certain kind of Evangelical Republican.

You know, the kind that habitually gets the definition of "Sodomite" completely wrong.

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)

And of course Trump is trying to literally buy people's votes...as if anyone but dumbass cultists trusts him anymore??

He said $5,000.

There's 245 MILLION adult citizens in this country so that works out to about $1.3 TRILLION dollars.

That we don't have.

That no one will loan us.

That Trump's biggest allies in particular simply do not have to give.

The trouble with deficit spending is you have to maintain good relations with creditors and potential creditors to keep the credit (AKA deficit spending) flowing.

And if America is done with Trump, well, I think it's safe to say most of the rest of the world is at least as sick of this bumptious wannabe-Antichrist as we are.

Not to mention it's a pretty damn safe bet he's stolen all of the Republican campaign money.

Yeah, have fun with that in a couple months here, guys.

Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house comes, at evening, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning, ~Mark 13:35

The rest of us are, and I cannot stress this enough, God-damned tired of this mess. I'm overextended, my partner is over-stressed, my Mom *Checks Notes* the retired person, is overtired...and these motherfucking Jabronis have time for an off-season political convention and Rent-boy-palooza?? Instead of fixing the country and dealing with our actual problems???

Fuck These Motherfuckers.

Either get a grip, Republicans, or get the fuck out of the way.

As for the rest of you? You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You get what you tolerate, America.

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Three

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, Grass Grows, Paint Dries, The Earth Spins.]
"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

Please Clap I (Oblivion, Three.)

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ~John 8:44

...

Proctor: Sir, Mahoney says this restaurant has the best salad bar in town. [They're walking down an alley, still in their police uniforms.]
Harris: Well, it damn sure better have! 

[Inside, they walk through curtains of beads and past a Bud Light neon sign.]

Harris: Proctor, I don't see a salad bar. 

Proctor: [Noticing the sign "The Blue Oyster."] Look, sir, maybe they serve seafood. 

Harris: [Slowly realizing he's in a gay bar] That's not funny, you idiot! [To Leatherman] What are you looking at, you PECKERHEAD?! 

Leatherman: Nice uniform, makes me wish I'd worn my sailor outfit. 

Harris: I'm getting out of here! Move it! Move it! [Starts to push through the crowd of gay men.]
*El Bimbo begins to play*

Harris: [Being forced to dance with Leatherman] Proctor! 

Proctor: I don't think cutting in is allowed, Sir. 

Proctor: [Being noticed by second Leatherman] Nice collar!

~From Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol

...

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, Cricket, Cricket, Chirp Chirp]
"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

...

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

So the other day Trump tried to say he was pulled from the rubble by firefighters on 9/11,

Bullshit.

I was glued to various TV's that day, and for several days after, as I went about my daily routines.

He wasn't. I know he wasn't there.

At around 9 A.M. on September 11th, I was sitting at my desk, looking out at that infamously clear blue sky, arguing with my ex-wife on Yahoo messenger. There was a knock on my door, my neighbor...a Saudi international student...stopping by to bum a cigarette. I got back to my desk and my ex was freaking out about something, demanding I turn on the TV news. I picked up my pack of Camel Blues and the remote for my TV, thumbed on the remote (my TV was set on CNN) and pulled out two cigarettes for my neighbor. I was handing them to him just as we both watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. My neighbor said something in Arabic that I didn't catch.
My ex started freaking out again. Classes were almost immediately canceled, I went to work in the cafeteria though, because faculty and students and maintenance staff still had to eat. It made for a slow day, and we had the TV's on in the cafeteria. 

I've said before that afternoon my boss and I stood outside after we'd taken out the cardboard and the trash, smoking and watching a solitary contrail in that clear blue sky, just a gray-green point on a long silver-white spear...I knew it was a military aircraft (We'd already seen, on CNN, FOX and local news, videos of scores of commercial jets landed at every available airport in the country including disused Air Force Bases like KI Sawyer AFB-where I'd been stationed for most of my time-near Marquette, MI and Wurtsmith AFB, near Oscoda, MI) and, to confirm it I went and got my binoculars out of my car, (A Teal 1994 Ford Tempo) parked on the grass a few feet away...and showed him that it in point of fact was a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker. That evening my Mom stopped by to check on me...her own classes having been canceled for the day as well. I'd been rolling out pizza dough when she showed up, and just walked back into the kitchen like she was supposed to be there. 

After work I spent most of the evening consoling my then-girlfriend who was also extremely upset, a conversation that also happened on Yahoo Messenger.

Never heard a damn thing about *Checks Note* Donald Trump in that whole time.

Republicans are losing their ass in Texas, and apparently losing their souls everywhere else. For all of their big talk, I've heard from people like Rick Wilson that the White House is lawyering up. They know what's about to happen. They're going to lose.

Enough so that they're floating literally the most Communist of Communist ideas in the National Review like it's a strategy.

And what do they bring in as a last ditch effort?? 

A bunch of guys that basically look like the clientele of the gay bar from the Police Academy movies. (And one of these guys is rather infamously, like one of the few openly gay Republicans left.)

To rally Republicans??

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.

Bill Buckley (who called Gore Vidal a queer on live TV and they almost got into a fight) Fucking Wept.

Honestly, that's not the actions of people who care if they win or they lose.

This isn't the actions of a political party that's fighting for its life.

This is bored nihilists who want to cash out and either get away before Fuck Around turns into Find Out or they simply want to move on to something else.

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)

And don't you forget it.

What's worse is These Fucking People have basically destroyed their own business model.

And...note I've had this conversation with my British friend...they did it because Capitalism simply wasn't racist enough and needs a continuous influx of new bodies, women, Black people, Latinos, LGBT folk, Muslims, Immigrants in general, even the Undocumented...simply to maintain itself and keep the system and its various pay-as-you-go supports like Social Security and fucking taxes going.

Republicans craved a closed economic  and political system, like the Jim Crow South, perhaps, only worse. (Actually what these assholes want is feudalism.) The problem is, you cannot get that without everyone losing a fuck-ton of money and most of their standard of living.

Nobody wants that, at least not nobody whose brain hasn't been completely fried by Twitter or maybe drunk-ass hyper-Calvinist horseshit.

They couldn't get that in four years. Hell, in today's world you couldn't do it in any amount of time because modern Capitalism only cares about one color; Green.

And Republicans are shocked, forsooth, shocked I tell you! That Black Folks didn't just drop everything including successful careers and show up to pick vegetables for less money than it takes to live on because Donald Trump implied (wink wink nudge nudge) that they should.

Nobody was going to do that, either, people already got jobs and they got bills to pay that (effectively) $4K for $5K (more realistically if paid proper wages $10K) worth of work ain't going to cover. 

If you don't like it, too damned bad. 

Pick your own fucking Peas.

It's all visibly falling apart in real time and that is not a joke.

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

Everybody that I know or know of except for rich Republicans is overextended, overstimulated, over-stressed and overworked. Every. Body.

And then these motherfuckers have the balls to wonder why most people don't wanna vote for them, and why, with Trump governing basically in the name of a late-aughts Yahoo News comments section full of idiotic racist comments that have nothing to do with the topic...they're losing a lot of their own fucking voters.

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

(Full disclosure; My partner, like me, used to be a Republican.)

Republicans wanted to break the system so bad that pretty much everybody would accept whatever shit-off-the-bottom-of-their-shoe deal Republicans saw fit to give us. Fuck no.

I help support my Partner (and often, my Mom) whenever I can.

People are doing what they can and protecting themselves, just like they did during COVID-19, when Republicans tried to weaponize that against everybody else.

Like, what the fuck did they think we were gonna do??

I'm so tired of this shit.

And there's two things in play now, which we're going to have to be aware of.

#1 The only thing they have to make themselves feel better is to lie about it. Which they are doing with wild abandon. This is not the actions of people who want to save themselves.

#2 (And also see #1, the two things feed off each other) If they cannot get the totalitarian control that they think they want (which they cannot do) and break everything so everybody else in the world (and yes, take that literally) has to lick their boots, These Fucking People crave the Oblivion.

#3 But also, they don't wanna actually die.

I mean that's how it usually ends up when people are allowed to buy into completely bullshit tautologies for decades. 

But what the fuck do I know??

Worse, at the end of the day, this is pretty much the best they can actually get to protect them when everybody else isn't buying into their bullshit.

Bunch of far-right marchers from over in England wearing Black Pajamas and ski masks and since half of these guys are about the size of House from Police Academy (no offense to Tab Thacker's excellent character intended) the effect is that I had to do a double take 'cause I thought the shit looked like a seal colony if you just added water and some rocks or something.

The Hork Hork kind of seals, not Special Operations.

Republican Babylon is going to fall. There's a non-zero chance that it takes America...which has also become Babylon because of these shitheads...down with it and we have to start over with something new.

This is a case where the Word gets it wrong though, no one will mourn her, not even a little.

And it will fall, soon.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Truth is the only floor we have to stand on to punch back and keep our freedom.

Remember That.

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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

Two

Maximus: You sent for me, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?

Maximus: For the glory of the empire, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Ah, yes. Ah, yes, I remember. Do you see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar, I have known four years without war, four years of peace in twenty. And for what? I brought the sword. Nothing more.

Maximus: Caesar, your life...

Marcus Aurelius: Please. Please, don't call me that. Please, come sit. Let us talk together now, very simply, as men. Maximus, talk.

Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?

Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.

Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?

Maximus: I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Maximus, let us whisper now, together, you and I. You have a son. Tell me about your home.

Maximus: My house is in the hills above Trujillo. A very simple place. Pink-stones that warm in the sun. A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus- black. Black like my wife's hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north. Wild ponies play near my house. They tease my son. He wants to be one of them.

Marcus Aurelius: Remember the last time you were home?

Maximus: Two years, 264 days, and this morning.

Marcus Aurelius: I envy you, Maximus. It's a good home. Worth fighting for. There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.

Maximus: What would you have me do, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: I want you to become the protector of Rome after I die. I will empower you to one end alone: To give power back to the people of Rome, and end the corruption that has crippled it. Will you accept this great honor I have offered you?

Maximus: With all my heart, no.

Marcus Aurelius: Maximus, that is why it must be you.

Maximus: But surely a prefect, a senator, somebody who knows the city, who understands her politics?

Marcus Aurelius: But you have not been corrupted by her politics.

Maximus: And Commodus?

Marcus Aurelius: Commodus is not a moral man. You have known that since you were young. Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule. You are the son that I should have had. Commodus will accept my decision. He knows that you command the loyalty of the army.

Maximus: I need some time, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Yes. By sunset, I hope you will have agreed. Now embrace me as my son, and bring an old man another blanket.

~From the film Gladiator.