Not Legends, Facts II (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Nine.)

Red Army General : I carried out my orders. I sent in all of my boys. But the Germans engulfed us. They have artillery, aircraft, tanks. And me, what did I have?!

Khrushchev: A sacred duty to resist! I have to report to the Boss. [puts a pistol on the table] Perhaps you'd prefer to avoid the red tape.

[Khrushchev walks out of the room to address political officers. There is a gunshot, then he begins.]

Krushchev: My name... is Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. I've come to takes things in hand here. This city... is not Kursk, nor is it Kiev, nor Minsk. This city... is Stalingrad. Stalin-grad! The city bears the name of the Boss. It's more than a city, it's a symbol. If the Germans capture this city, the entire country will collapse. Now, I want our boys to raise their heads. I want them to act like they have BALLS! I want them to stop SHITTING THEIR PANTS! [briefly pauses] That's your job. As political officers, I'm counting on you. [stops at one] You, what's your suggestion?

Officer #1: Shoot all the other generals who have retreated. And their chiefs of staff, too.

[Khruschev looks at another.]

Officer #2: [terrified, stuttering] M-make s-some examples. D-d-d-d-d-de-port the families of the d-d-deserters...

Khrushchev: [bored] Yes, yes, that's all been done.

Danilov: Give them hope!

[Kruschev walks over and looks at the officer standing in the front, who motions with his eyes toward Danilov.]

Danilov: Here the men's only choice is between German bullets and ours. But there's another way, the way of courage, the way of love of the Motherland. We must publish the army newspaper again. We must tell magnificent stories, stories that extol sacrifice, bravery. We must give them hope, pride, a desire to fight. We must make them believe in the victory. Yes, we need to make examples; but examples to follow. What we need... are heroes.

Khrushchev: [looks around, wryly] Do you know any heroes around here?

Danilov: Yes, Comrade. I know one.

~From the film Enemy At The Gates.

Last month I wrote a post entitled "Not Legends, Facts." There was a reason for that.

Last night I saw some idiot at some bullshit event trying to blame Satan for Feminism and saying the Salem Witch Trials happened because of abortion. I studied the colonial history largely in Christian schools, I've been to Salem, albeit as a bored, disinterested teenager at that time. None of this works like that.

And These Fucking People know it.

They're just trying to mythologize our history and turn it into fables and legend because they think that'll make it harder for people to argue with them.

You can argue and to a certain extent prove your point via careful study of the Bible, Christian doctrine, history and tradition, the same goes for secular politics.

You can go to a place like Salem, walk around, visit museums and shit, or if you'd rather just sit at home and read all type of history about it. The Devil didn't do it, there was all type of conflicts with Native Americans, political upheaval at the time, poverty, a whole litany of Puritan bullshit that was then ongoing both over here and in England...these are known, historically proven facts.

You cannot actually prove Athena emerging fully armed and armored from the split head of Zeus after somebody cleaved his head because he had a headache. It's not even that kind of story.

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

And that's the point. That's what These Fucking People want. It's not "What does the Bible say" it's "What did the Pastor say?" They want to make everything subjective because then the loudest or most vehement voice is more likely to win the argument.

These fucking idiots want everything, up to and including religion...to be subject to political power.

Because they think they will have it.

The Mormons got a big surprise last week when they found out that hyper-Calvinists and Evangelicals don't actually consider them Christians and the Department Of Defense changed the designation of their religion on the new list accordingly.

Oops.

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.

Now These Fucking People want Trump to personally fix it...when the literal point of the Constitution is he shouldn't have to!

This is exactly the kind of problem for why the Founders put the First Amendment in the Constitution and indeed put Freedom of Religion first on the list.

When religion is subject to political power, nobody's really free to believe anything at all. In the world our Founding Fathers grew up in, it was nothing for people to have to change their religion every time there was a new king, or a new foreign army conquered the region in which they lived, Europe's wars of religion, the Puritan wars in England, etc. were still in living memory.

The moral and religious framework I was taught cannot exist in such a world as that. The entire concept of Christian Salvation as most Protestant American Christian churches believe it (or at least say they do) does not function in a world where the State in any capacity can say that one religion is valid and another is not, for any purpose.

By definition, if worldly Power can determine Spiritual Truth we're all damned anyway, and nothing matters. Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world for a damn reason.

And what happens, Evangelicals, when everything goes to shit and civilization falls and all the sudden armed men show up and tell you, at gunpoint, that you have to worship Baal or some other such Demon now??

If religion is subject to Political Power and political power grows only from Force, what grounds have you to say "NO?"

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.)

Truth is the only floor most of us will ever have to stand on to push back against power.

Faith requires belief in certain things and actions based on those beliefs to be more than just a bullshit word.

You can do legends and myths and all that in a positive fashion, to expand the mind, to make a point, to teach, that's literally what mythology is for. Jesus used Parables.

Revelation is a larger example of the same thing, an Apocalypse isn't just destruction, if there is to be destruction it's for a purpose...an Apocalypse is actually supposed to be a great revealing.

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."

"Conservatives" such as they are at this point want to make up myths and legends to get people to stop thinking, to obfuscate the Truth, to let them just reorder the country, the world, hell, the Universe according to whatever crap they like...but what they want is largely based on partisanship, personal preferences and politics, it's all subjective and it literally cannot and does not work for everybody...or even most people...and it's not even meant to!

If you're not one of these people, or if your beliefs or preferences were set (For example) a generation or two ago...Fuck You!

And I am one of those people, as is my partner, much less my Mom. Our beliefs predate all this current bullshit and we like it that way. None of us are gonna change at the drop of a hat because some dipshit Influencer on a stage thinks we should.

I've got people to think about, I can't sign on to this garbage even if I wanted to.

And it's getting worse.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either believe our rights are God-given, or you don't.

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

Eight

[Mon Mothma addresses the Senate chambers again]

Mon Mothma: Fellow Senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries, I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I've spent my life in this chamber. I came here as a child, and as I look around me now, I realize I have almost no memories that predate my arrival, and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honorably and upheld our code of conduct. This chamber is a cauldron of opinions, and we've certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might, I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come.

I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil! When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber's hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza! What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman, was unprovoked genocide! Yes, genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine!

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S2.E9 "Welcome To The Rebellion."

Aliens (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Eight.)

 [Han arrives at Docking Bay 94 and sees a familiar face, and his ship surrounded.]

Jabba the Hutt: [in Huttese] Solo! Come out of there, Solo! Solo!

Han Solo: Right here, Jabba. [Jabba and his henchmen turn around to see Han and Chewbacca] I've been waiting for you.

Jabba: Have you now.

Han: You didn't think I was gonna run, did you?

Jabba: Han, my boy, you disappoint me. Why haven't you paid me? And why did you fry poor Greedo?

Han: Look, Jabba, next time you wanna talk to me, come see me yourself. Don't send one of these twerps.

Jabba: Han, I can't make exceptions. What if everyone who smuggled for me dropped their cargo at the first sign of an Imperial starship? It's not good for business.

Han: Look, Jabba, even I get boarded sometimes. [accidentally steps on Jabba's tail, causing Jabba to yelp in pain] Did you think I had a choice? But I got a nice easy charter now; I'll pay you back, plus a little extra. I just need a little more time.

Jabba: Han, my boy, you're the best smuggler I ever hired. So, for an extra 20%...

Han: Fifteen, Jabba, and don't push it.

Jabba: Okay, 15%. But if you fail me again, I'll put a price on your head so big, you won't be able to go near a civilized system.

Han: Jabba, you're a wonderful human being.

Jabba: [orders his minions] Come on! [Jabba's gang leaves with bounty hunter Boba Fett following behind.]

~From Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope

...

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

I saw this last night, in a tranche of Threads posts about the fact that Republican LA-mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is not only losing to Karen Bass, but he's very likely going to be overtaken by a third candidate and thus not make it into the general election at all.

I'm gonna be honest though, what I noticed, what stuck with me, etc. was his partner's Jabba's Palace space-alien lips. Like, come on, who wore it better? This bitch, or Sy Snootles??

Also I threw in the Bioshock reference for a damn reason. There's no corner of the Star Wars universe thus far that reflects the sheer incompetent malevolence of this shit.

I mean, I get it, American political-class and/or rich people are profoundly out-of-touch, weird, and hate the rest of us, because most of us refuse to be their toys or feed their narcissism (or we simply can't afford to or don't have the time.) And a lot of Americans, understandably, hate them right back.

The Andor series sort of hit this with characters like Cyril Karn and his mom, but even science fiction has to have limits to be believable, reality doesn't have that. Trouble is, there's about 20% of us that are fighting over which one of them gets to be the Imperial Stormtrooper that's holding the shock wand.

But at the same time, the reason I know all that "Left Behind" crap is a lie is that the Evangelical churches that preached it the most are busy as fuck trying to cover for all this bullshit!

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 that's before the Epstein files and lurid talk about Baal-worship, cannibalism, sex crimes and gods know what else at this point...

But ya know, I used to know some old-school Republicans, the kind of guys who had bumper stickers like "Charlton Heston is my President" on the back of their pickup trucks (and it was a regular pickup truck not some ridiculously jacked-up monster, because these guys didn't need to overcompensate. I'm just gonna say that the extrapolating the comments those guys would make about any woman they saw whose lips looked like that (or even repeating comments I actually heard about things far less egregious in nature) would probably get me kicked off this platform. Yes, these guys said shit like that complete with slurs and other type of language people get canceled for today...right to people's faces.

It's the dark underbelly of Societal Standards, I guess. It's worth noting that all of these guys that I knew hated Trump. And they were not the kind of conservatives who'd just follow along either. Just sayin' I don't have to wonder what them guys would say or think about somebody like Gwneth Paltrow because when it came to the kind of movies she was in, just like my Grandpa their attitude was "I'm not even gonna watch that crap, what's wrong with you?!"

She says she's "Not a Republican" but she doesn't "Feel Anything" right now.

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

I'm here to tell you she didn't feel anything before, either. She's not a complete dumpster-fire, she was a big Obama booster back in them days, and did the same for Mayor Pete, she urged proper precautions during COVID-19, also. But the truth is Gwen is the kind of "Liberal" that, for all the noises she's made about feminine empowerment and shit over the years, could give a rat's ass about any woman who can't afford to steam-clean their lady-parts with her "Goop" crap...or who lacks the inclination to.

Let alone anybody like my partner who wants to work for a living and doesn't care about all that crap except to point out the health risks of weird shit (which she'll do) and/or anybody whose feminism is more than a brand or situational.

In other words the only differences between her and Republicans at this point are less bad intentions and less active bigotry.

At worst, Gwen's the type that's like "Ew, Ew, poor people." And don't tell me she isn't, bitch is cousins to a bunch of people in Hollywood and politics. This ain't somebody that's ever had to work a real job. Hence the shitty social views despite the at least socially-liberal ideas.

Look, I don't know how her partner does it, but *I* couldn't be with somebody like that, and I say that as somebody in a politically-mixed relationship. Not because I'm so righteous, but because for better and worse I have a fucking soul. I can't imagine having anything in common with someone so vapid. Among other things both me and my partner have hit rock bottom and been poor people. We both got out of that pit by the help of others and varying degrees of government assistance. We agree on most things, end-results-wise, but have (and will fight about) some different ideas on how to get to that end result.

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."

The difference between Gwen and us is we both actually give a shit, we have to. We have to look at what's going on and feel something, we live here. We have to work for a living.

And, like it or not, right or wrong, we actually believe that there's a higher power we're gonna have to answer to when we die, and that each person is a wondrous creation of God, and that to alter or degrade that creation excessively for any reason...let alone just to show something like Conspicuous Consumption"...is wrong.

And that is, basically, the bright side of having standards. Me and most of the people I care about who were taught similarly were never gonna fall for this crap!

Unfortunately, too many people can't say that or weren't taught like we were.

Yeah, okay, if you don't know anything you can believe whatever you want, in theory.

But at the end of the day you as a person living on this Earth in a Universe that, one way or another is not about you, it was not made for us, and we are responsible for getting certain things right or not.

That's our rent for being here.

Cassian Andor: What? To steal from the Empire, what do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands, and an Imperial toolkit. They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied, they can’t imagine it…

Luthen Rael: Can’t imagine what?

Andor: That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E2 "That Would Be Me."

And I was taught there are consequences for getting it wrong. We have free will, but that also means we have to accept the consequences of our own actions. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Yeah, that includes having lips that make you look like a Star Wars alien.

This moral framework that I was taught can't really exist outside of a free society, it cannot be imposed on somebody else, not if you believe we each have a soul and that is in our keeping alone. Such things must be Taught. You cannot make a person Believe or want to be Saved.

And whatever choice one makes must be made freely.

Yeah, some people get it wrong and that's the nature of the world. Okay, everybody fucks up, but you can't make a Civilization out of fucking up, especially if you're doing it on purpose. There have to be limits.

There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft....When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. ~Baba, from The Kite Runner.

I'll note that the "Freedoms" current "Conservatives" promote are mainly the kind of "Individual Liberties" that only really can be used to beat on the collective rights of the majority. There's a reason for that. These people ain't your friends. The only "Right" these idiots care about is an alleged right to steal and waste everybody's time. I'm an old-school conservative...nominally a liberal not by choice but because my standards didn't move. I'm a capitalist, but there have to be limits. "Don't make your face look like that" would at least be a start.

It'd almost make more sense if These Fucking People were Aliens.

Man is not the center of the Universe.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Seven

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

~Matthew 25:31-45

Antimatter Family (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Seven.)

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.)

...

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

I saw this bullshit on like Monday. "Nuclear Family Month" WTF??

But I didn't get to write on Tuesday because I had to come home, take a nap and then drive downstate to take my partner her art, art supplies, and whatever else I could fit in the car. Her mom decided at the last minute to come up for the kiddo's Middle School graduation, which is today. Momma Werewolf wants to hang the paintings, fix some cracks in the sculptures and in general decorate the place. 

My partner also still had to work yesterday (so it was a quick trip) though she's off today. For my part I'd already debated going but I asked kiddo if she wanted me to be there or if she'd rather have money...and naturally she wanted the money.

It's not yet comfortable or especially practical for me to stay down there for 3 days especially not with other people also showing up (Plus her mom and I didn't get along all that great 20 years ago) and I have ferrets and stuff to do at home so it was just easier to unpack the car, hang out for a little bit, then come home.

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."

And then I slept most of yesterday, anyway, apparently being more tired than I thought I was.

So, anyway;

"Marriage Is Between One Man And One Woman."

I've been hearing this shit for like *30 years.*

Pretty much since people ever considered the idea in this country that *Anybody Else* should be able to get married, it rapidly morphed into this:

"God Made Adam And Eve, Not Adam And Steve."

You know, the good old-fashioned Nuclear Family, which I was raised to think of as some kind of an ideal. 

How I was taught it, that's considered husband, wife, two kids, generally presumed to be Patriarchal, White, and immediate family only. Dad works in a factory or some physical job and served in the Army at some point (The Navy and Marines were vaguely considered gay, none of this foofy Air Force shit and nobody even noticed the Coast Guard or the reserves unless there was a disaster.) Mom is a Housewife. The son plays (American, duh) Football, the daughter might be a cheerleader or some shit if she does Athletics at all. Church on Sunday very much implied. What they do the rest of the week doesn't really matter much.

Sounds like something out of a 1950's Cold War Anti-Communism brochure...and not by accident either because that's exactly the kind of political and social environment where the bullshit fucking term even originated. Anybody else including aged relatives, blended family (be it through adoption or step-siblings or whatever) elders and extended family, was only adopted in grudgingly and under pressure, a process only being completed culturally when I was a kid in the 1980's.

If this kind of imagery invokes thoughts of air raid sirens, cold bright flashes from over the horizon as the power goes out, and the distant rumble of jet engines as bombers sortie to hit back and fighters launch on air defense missions to protect whatever's left, well...that's kind of what the whole idea was behind it in the first place.

[Nuclear IBCMs have been launched]

Airman: You know what that means, don't you? Either we fired first and they're going to try to hit what's left, or they fired first and we just got our missiles out of the ground in time. Either way, we're going to get hit.

Airman Billy McCoy: So what are we still standing around here for?

Sergeant: Where do you want to go?

Airman Billy McCoy: Well, how about out of here for starters? I've got to get my wife and my kid!

Sergeant: We're still on alert, Billy! No one leaves this facility. Not until the choppers get here to take us back to Whiteman and to the shelters...

Airman Billy McCoy: [cutting him off] Are you kidding me, man? The bombs will be here before the choppers will! Listen to me. Listen to me, man. The war is over! It's over. We've done our job. So what are you still guarding? Huh? Some cotton-pickin' hole in the ground all dressed up and nowhere to go?

Airman: He's right!

Airman Tommy: What about Starr and Boyle?

Sergeant: What about them?

Airman Tommy: What are they doing?

Airman Billy McCoy: Yeah, they're 60 feet down, sipping on some cold beer and whistling "Misty"!

Airman Tommy: Well I'm going down there!

Sergeant: You can't go down there! That elevator is secure!

Airman Billy McCoy: Do you hear yourself talking, bozo? 'Cause I hear you saying that we've got direct orders to be sitting ducks!

~From the TV miniseries, The Day After.

Throw in some good old fashioned American hypocrisy and Keeping Up With The Joneses for good measure. My partner's family was like this (I know the town she's originally from well since it's the next one over from where I lived until we moved to California) and it's taken her (and them, for that matter, or at least the ones that want to) 40 years to start untangling the damage. And that kind of environment...you know, the one that's left millions of us Gen-Xer's and Elder Millennials stuck with addictions or needing therapy or both, isn't good enough for some of these fucking people?? Oh, fuck off, what's wrong with you?!?!

Nowadays the Right would be crying about a Black actor playing Airman McCoy, a doctor being one of the other main characters, and the several strong female characters in the series.

The actual message, including the deaths of several characters from causes due to social breakdown, and the "Is there anyone there?" at the end of the film, answered only by a Morse-code message during the credits, would be too subtle for These Fucking People.

There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft....When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. ~Baba, from The Kite Runner.

Or maybe they just don't care.

Because the whole damn thing is simply a Death Cult...social and otherwise.

The Nuclear Family simply wasn't Nuclear enough. Or, as people like me, my partner and the kiddo demonstrate...that shit all too often doesn't survive the pressures of the modern world much less the Male Narcissism Epidemic that's an ongoing problem and (as far as I can figure) has been getting worse for 20 years. Yet at the same time the people who sort this shit out have managed to survive, to grow or even to thrive in spite of all this shit!

And maybe that's the fucking problem, from a "Conservative" perspective anyway.

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

That anybody else has the capability to get away from their bullshit, much less the freedom to thrive or the will to survive in spite of adversity sticks in these fucking people's collective craw every damn day.

More to the point, the fact that the same people who came up with the often problematic systems that me and my partner grew up under also recognized the dangers and limitations of the world they'd created and came up with or allowed to be released various art, such as movies like The Day After that reflected such would have the New York Post comment section calling people like Ronald Reagan "Woke."

Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war? ~Ronald Reagan.

SO, Woke person that I (being a former Reagan Republican) am, and having been a Republican back when words meant something and this shit wasn't a Death Cult; I'd like to propose a change in terminology to include such people.

Because the America I was taught about is all about inclusion and being a melting pot, or something. Chalk it up to basic politeness or a desire for exactitude in terminology (Oh, those "Liberals" that obsess about what words ya'll using oughta love this one.)

We'll call it the Antimatter Family.

(Antimatter, of course, being more destructive than mere Nuclear fission or fusion.)

"Marriage Is Between One Man, One Woman and/or his Sex Robot, his Side Piece(s) plus all his Bros whose 'approval' he must maintain, and the Republican Party."

If that sounds more creepy, restrictive and Totalitarian than anything George Orwell ever came up with?? Well, good, it kind of is.

And far worse, the destructiveness is (And the male narcissism) in fact, the point.

Melting pot? 

Yeah, melt this crap down; Like the Terminator at the end of T2: Judgment Day.

John Connor: We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

Terminator: It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.

~From the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

And of course, now even a lot of the people who helped create this mess realize how fucked it is; But that means one gets voted off the island, as Candace, Marge, Meg, Tom and Tucker have already found out, or worse, right, Chuck??

And the funny part here is, lots of the soft-handed bitches who keep driving this bullshit off a cliff can't even own their own bullshit if it doesn't get them resounding applause on social media.

That's just it, too. 

The far-right's "Second American Revolution" appears to be dying off mainly cuz it didn't get these chuckle-fucks as many Heart emojis and Like reacts on Facebook as they thought it was going to. They're finding out the hard way they can't simply make the rest of us Hate like they do.

And without that, there's no glue to hold the rest of the project together.

In general people are tired of this bullshit, and none of these idiots bothered to even think through what they were going to do in such a case, except to try to each protect their individual political power. The modern Right is less a movement, directed towards a goal in the traditional sense, than a horde of Zombies all trying to at the same fleeing survivor, but as soon as a rat scurries by, or whatever, they get distracted and go after that instead.

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 can't even talk the way these people talk, anymore. There is no higher thought process.

I'd argue there is no thought or process at all, simply a desire to reactively destroy anything this shit touches, like Antimatter.

The whole idea of this "Nuclear Family Month" shit is some kind of bullshit reactionary opposition to Pride Month, but they made it sound about as celebratory as a 1950's psychology seminar put on by a bunch of Republican doctors, you know, the kind that used to consider "Smoke filtered cigarettes" to be solid medical advice.

And some people look at this horseshit and call it "Greatness."

Yet they can't even handle it if somebody tells them "No."

All that "Left Behind" crap was a lie, These Fucking People would have to believe in God or something other than themselves first.

I know I say this a lot, but either you believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Слава Україна!

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18
Six

I don't usually deal with those big words because I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to lose, and they've got every thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a minute: "It takes two to tango; when I go, you go." ~Malcolm X.

 

The Golden Image (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Six.)

Albert: No good?

Armand: Actually, it's perfect. I just never realized John Wayne walked like that.

~From The Birdcage

...

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

I saw this yesterday.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Now, I'll be the first to admit I can't even imagine the thought process of the people who make all these Beefcake pictures of Trump...much less make him look like that surrounded by beefy *Checks Notes* Male cheerleaders or, to paraphrase Red's narration from the Shawshank Redemption, maybe I just don't want to.

But somehow that shit always ends up looking like about the gayest shit imaginable, and if that's how they want to mark the start of Pride Month, Okay, whatever, weird but whatever. For all his faults real and imagined, I'm pretty sure Trump isn't going to be attracted to *Checks Notes Again* guys like Gary Peterson. 

I don't know if I'd necessarily have any faith that Trump, who's famously ruined The Village People for damn near everybody *Clears Throat* Has better taste than that...but I don't necessarily see Trump going all Schillinger from Oz on the average balding porcine middle-aged Republican dude, let alone Lindsey Graham...unless such is purely an expression of Power.

Then, yeah, he'd probably do it, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment etc. are about Power specifically in most cases.

That said it weirdly seems pretty clear that most of the Republicans fitting the prior description much less a lot of the bearded, paunchy redneck-garden-gnome-looking motherfuckers I see buying cigarettes on a daily basis would cheerfully bottom for Trump for not the least bit obvious-to-me of reasons.

If rape is about power...and most people will generally agree that such is abhorrent...why do so many of These Fucking People literally seem to want to be Trump's bitch??

But then I'm just a basic old straight white guy who actually, ya know, believes in some things. None of those things are the things Trump or current Republicans stand for.

And I've rather notoriously ended up entangled with at least a couple of narcissists in this life. Trust me, if you want that to end as anything other than a disaster you do not keep trying to blow their narcissism, you do not continue to play with let alone indulge such people once you know what they are.

To their not-very-much credit, even most Republicans seem to be done with Trump at this point, but like me in February of 2001 there's not a whole hell of a lot left to do but start picking up the pieces. All their political power will end up coming to nothing and America is turning against them.

Why? Mostly, because These Fucking People thought they could get what they wanted by continually and obsessively squirreling away political power without trying to convince anybody of anything. No, none of this works like that. 

And I say that as somebody who was a convinced conservative Republican 20 years ago.

Honestly, it was the religious nuts that ruined it for me, had been ruining it for me for about five years even at that time but I thought decent people should hang in there and fight and not let these assholes have everything.

Trump is ruining it for a lot more people, because he took all the bad shit that Evangelicalism and Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism were doing that wrecked it for people like me and completely secularized the whole mess.

They didn't need religion anymore, they had him.

Trump showed up and said "Worship Me!" And a lot of these faithless motherfuckers were so desperate for a "god" they could see that they simply said "Yes Sir!"

And honestly by 2021 that was literally happening, the gold Trump statue at CPAC, for example.

In Oz, the guards lock the cages and walk away, and the predators rise, take control and make the rules. But in Em City, the guards are with us 24 hours a day. There's no privacy. Everybody sees what everybody's doing. Eyes everywhere. McManus' eyes. See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta wanna be saved. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz, S1.E1 "The Routine."

See, the mistake that I think a lot of people made all this time was the same one I was making from roughly 1998 to about 2008...I generally figured enough people had good intentions or at least wanted to be saved but the truth is they had ideas (at a minimum) of what they wanted to be saved from that were, in the grand scheme of things, deviant enough that I think a substantial part of the structure of American-style Christianity was (assuming These Fucking People have been this way the whole time) built more with its foundation in Racism than its foundation on Jesus Christ.

Left Behind isn't just a Lie, it's a lie founded in Sadism and the idea that Heaven somehow isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go.

Which made the whole thing basically a convenient cover for Devils and Idols of Gold, and for narcissistic, Sinful Man. And now out of *Checks Notes Yet Again* Devotion to or literal lust for (Ew) Donald Trump...these fucking people are going to pretty much become everything they've spent most of my life saying they hated?? When is enough...enough??

And the actual freaking Truth is that if Hell is Hierarchical and Heaven isn't...these CHUDs would rather go to Hell.

They've just decided they want to take more people down with them.

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

They cannot even imagine that some people really believe in anything else, or that God doesn't work like that.

Like what's even the damn point?? These idiots would rather be somebody's bitch than see a couple of normal LGBT people go on about their lives unbothered by this bullshit! Regardless of what's happening over there, in such a case you're still doing things nobody should have to do. Like, seriously I'm a former Republican myself and I wonder "Who the fuck does this shit?!?!"

But then I'm also on record specifically saying that I don't care for or understand these fucking people's valorization of misery.

I wouldn't still be here if I went though life thinking like that. Tying yourself up in trying to make other people miserable just makes you miserable too, in my experience. Heaven and Hell are both infinite and eternal, and having a greater status in Hell...means you're still in Hell.

And if you get there by worshiping Trump's Golden Image, you're just plain stupid.

This bullshit is Antichrist, and about 30% of America has chosen it.

How the fuck does choosing to live like that make any sense??

"Christian Nation" or even "Christian Nationalism" my ass.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Слава Україна!

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

Five

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