America, WTF?? (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Four.)

The drafters of the Constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They'd assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they'd been. One could almost hear the "Oops!" emanating from all those old graves. The people who'd drafted the Constitution had sat in a room dominated by George Washington himself, and whatever honor they'd lacked he'd probably provided from his own abundant supply, just by sitting there and looking at them. The current Congress had no such mentor/living god to take George's place, and more was the pity, Ryan thought. ~Tom Clancy, from the novel The Bear And The Dragon.

...

Hilary Faye: In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you, leave the body of this servant of God ...

Mary: You're performing an exorcism on me?!?!? Get off me! [she shoves Veronica aside and gets out of the van]

Tia: Where are you going? Get back here!

Hilary Faye: Mary, we've gotta get rid of the evil in you.

Tia: [holding up a picture of Jesus] It's God's will!

Mary: God's will?

Tia: Christ died for your sins!

Hilary Faye: OK, wait a second. [pushes Tia aside] So are you not gonna accept our intervention here?

Mary: You mean kidnapping? No!

Hilary Faye: You are backsliding into the flames of hell.

Veronica: You've become a magnet for sin! We've all witnessed it.

Mary: Sure, Veronica acting all pure--what about last spring break at the Promise Makers' rally, huh?

Hilary Faye: Oh my God ... you are making accusations as we're trying to save your soul? Mary, turn away from Satan. Jesus, he loves you.

Mary: You don't know the first thing about love.

Hilary Faye: I am filled with Christ's love! [throws her Bible at Mary] You are just jealous of my success in the Lord.

Mary: [Mary hands Bible back to Hilary Faye] This is not a weapon, you idiot.

~From the film Saved!

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I saw this shit last night and this morning.

FOX News, naturally, going full high-school CHUD against James Talarico, because apparently they have to do about anything to get their Pedophile-excusing corrupt freak-show of a Texas AG into the US Senate, apparently well aware that even that might not work, so there literally is no bottom.

I said what I said, if anybody's got Soy Milk coming out of their veins it's Jesse Watters and Stephen Miller, at least James Talarico looks and talks like a real damn person, although he's probably too much of a Minister for my tastes.

These guys don't need an apologetic as a response, or a stern pastoral talking-to, they need an offering plate broke on they ass like shitty little kids who got caught being shitty little kids in church.

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.

Don't worry, Susan Collins will stand there glaring Bumboclaatically in the opposite direction, ignoring this shit like she's ignored every second of her Party's descent into Barbarism, outright Baal-worshiping perversion and Trump-cultism...but god forbid some random Democrat "Use Profanity."

Let alone call out some freak like Stephen Miller with a well-placed "Shut up, you ugly fuck!"

No matter how much his ass deserves exactly that and more.

Yes, the next "Moral Panic" these idiots try and push will be about the fact that Democrats are talking like normal goddamn people.

Bitch, in this equation we are the normal goddamned people! The excessively-HR-speak types and the Consultant Class have either been sidelined...or right along with Chuck and Hakeem they're hanging out with Republicans and not listening to the rest of us anyway!

Like what the fuck causes this shit? Drugs??

Are the cocaine parties just that damn good??

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 then when these fucking people have to face the consequences of their own actions the whole rest of the world has to hear about it for 100 years until their goddamned narrative wins out just because everybody else either gave up out of exhaustion or simply had, ya know, a life to live.

If Republicans didn't have politics, they wouldn't have anything at all. Or want to.

I'm sorry but that is a sad goddamn existence, to make politics (let alone Trump) your freaking god? Especially since in most of these cases "Politics" is just an increasingly ill-fitting cover for Racism.

Like, these goddamn people's whole thing is they're basically fine with either living in bunkers eating survival taco meat while clutching their Bibles and guns and peering suspiciously at the world through the firing ports and a rifle sight...

Or with being the goddamned slaves their own selves.

Just so they can keep anybody else from getting any light.

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)

Just so they can preserve the "ideal" of Slavery. And then, These Fucking People will plot for generations against anybody they think betrayed or questioned it...let alone the people who actually took it away.

Like, what the fuck is wrong with you??

Fuck these people.

When the hell is enough of this shit, in fact, going to be enough??

I'm tired of this garbage, and I say that as a former Republican. My red line was the conspiracy theories and racism against Obama.

Now consider that plenty of Bush 43 Republicans, Tea Party people and even Trump first-term folks are Democrats now, or basically might as well be, without ever having changed much.

Makes one wonder what the next "thing" is and where the line is, doesn't it??

Well, my guess is that considering their half-ass pogroms against Black folks and Latinos haven't done very much (and aren't really intended to do anything besides create fear, which they think will lead to favor for White men) their next target is Women.

To do that, they have to go after us guys who give a shit about the ladies in our lives first. Stuff like that is what all these weird comments against James Talarico are really about, and trust me, they cannot stand any ideal of Christianity that doesn't treat women (especially non-Right-Wing women) like pieces of meat.

And oh yes, Republicans, up to and including people like Susan Collins, will employ all their fake moralism to try to make that seem OK too.

And yeah, that'll go about the same way, badly. It already is. The whole anti-Transgender thing was seeing if they could get their foot in the door to go after women in general and their rights full-bore and if people would just shrug and yawn and ignore that shit. A lot of people did, but mostly just the same people who always do that.

Like, it's a good thing I have a partner because a hell of a lot of women in general just aren't interested anymore (and she wouldn't be either except it's me and we have a history in which I'm historically a safe space.)

Women are increasingly opting out and just doing their own thing. Good.

And that is a direct result not only of bad behavior, creepy bullshit, patriarchy and politics...it's simple survival instinct and desire for basic human freedom.

Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator had come to replace water, virtually everywhere. Water, the basic component of all life, had been deemed a threat to Brawndo's profit margin. The solution came during the budget crisis of 2330, when the Brawndo Corporation simply bought the F.D.A. and the F.C.C., enabling them to say, do, and sell, anything they wanted. ~Narrator, Idiocracy

A lot of this bullshit from "Men" a lot of the whole Trump thing, and a hell of a lot of These Fucking People's belief in slavery basically boils down to they want to have somebody to have sex with and to do their work, who can't say "No."

The only "Power" these idiots really want is the endless power to enjoy themselves.

What do you think the AI and Robots are really for?? Why do you think these idiots are all but demanding the Mark Of The Beast?? 

Worse, They don't care how fake their Patriarchy is. Actually, most of these guys don't want to run anything either, let alone their family or household. They just want everybody to think they do.

And when that doesn't work out the way they think, they'll do it to each other.

This is less "It'll get worse" than "I've already seen it getting worse."

The thing is, "Republicanism Is A Hell Of A Drug" is working on fewer and fewer people by the day (especially because of Trump and the fact that Everything Trump Touches Dies) but of those who are still Republicans...the level of addiction basically is approaching dystopian Science Fiction drugs levels.

These idiots would rather get high, especially off an endless narcissistic hummer, than do the work of life.

And they're basically making it so the Crash-Out and the Detox end up killing America and probably taking down much of Christianity with it, too. It's less "Left Behind was a Lie" than "The Truth is even dumber and more perverse than you could possibly imagine."

Because these same fucking people have effectively spent 60 years making themselves politically indispensable, mostly as some bizarre kind of fetish.

They thought the Whore Of Babylon was somebody they were gonna get to sleep with.

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

Reagan Wept.

Actually, that doesn't even begin to cover it. Pretty much anybody who actually did believe in anything during this time Wept. 

Techno-"Idiocracy" doesn't even begin to cover it.

America, WTF??

Like I said, fuck these people.

And if you have a problem with me saying that, fuck you too.

Enough is Enough.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

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

Слава Україна!

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.

And he exercise all the power of the first beast before him, and cause the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

And deceives them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13:11-18

Three

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

Light And Darkness (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Three.)

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! ~Matthew 3:2

...

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

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

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

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.

...

The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high ... [after looking at crowd] but sometimes it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done. Like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore. ~William Adama, from the Battlestar Galactica (2003) Miniseries, Part One.

I saw this the other day.

Pope Leo wrote an Encyclical, apologizing for the Church's role in legitimizing the Slave Trade, but also connecting that with AI and other modern drives to create slaves or slavery-like conditions (What, after all, is AI but an attempt to create Techno-Slaves that billionaires don't have to pay to do work?) and saying that AI should be used for the good of ALL of Humanity not just for the profits of the Few.

Makes sense.

And Imma say it again, MAGA and what "Republicans" are now is not what I was taught.

Way the fuck too many Republicans have become the bad guys in their own damn stories and I say that as the guy who just started listening to the Audible version of The Hunt For Red October this morning.

But I mean, technically, screw that; These motherfuckers been working on being the bad guys in the Left Behind books for a while now.

Which is pretty blatantly the point of all the AI crap and Data Centers and you bet their next move is gonna be to dig up some hyper-Calvinist chuckle-fuck who'll write some bullshit counter-argument to the Pope basically saying "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when we do it!"

Yes, yes it is.

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.

Joe: Yes.

Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?

Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.

Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.

Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.

Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?

Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?

Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.

Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?

Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.

~From the film Idiocracy.

They know, they just hope that you don't.

And they think because they and their voters are sickeningly *Willfully Ignorant* that everyone else must be, too.

Worse, they think they can find some kind of Magic Words And Phrases that'll get everybody on their side, because they think everybody else is really amoral, bigoted, cynical douchebags just like them and that nobody really believes anything, because they don't. These Ass-Clowns honestly think things like that "Racist" is just other people's slur against them.

That's why whenever they get ahold of something like Twitter, or the US Government in Trump's second term, they immediately start ripping all the copper wire and shit out of the walls cuz they trying to find the switch that makes all those other people "Liberal." Never mind that anymore you can be pretty much Hard Right but NOT Fascist and these jackoffs will still think that's "Liberal."

These Fucking People hate America and its diversity of culture and people and thought.

They hate Christianity and Christ and "Love Thy Neighbor" and any other belief or religion that doesn't thrive on Hatred of some Other, real or imagined.

They want slaves. They don't care if it's AI and robots or every other human being on the planet.

They don't care that this ends badly no matter how you run the experiment and it always has.

These Fucking People see Law and Religion and every other damn thing as little more than cudgels to use to beat other people into acting Like Them.

And they hate and resent that Law, and Religion, and all type of other shit doesn't do that, and certainly doesn't do it automatically and break their way every time.

Fuck is a four letter word. Rape is a four letter word. Wife is a four letter word. So is love. Fuck is a curse. So is love. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and Otherwise."

Worse, These Fucking People, who tend to not even like each other, don't understand why other people don't "like" them or think they're cool.

I mean, when your whole bit is constantly, obsessively trying to establish a complex hierarchy of who can do what to whom like all the overlap between slavery and homosexual culture in the Roman Empire...purely as a diversion from being a Miserable Bastard (TM) all the time?? 

Yeah, that kind of tends to suck the joy out of everything and make everybody from conservatives who aren't that way, to liberals, to regular gay people, to women and just plain people that don't see "Who you can have sex with" as a mark of Power or political status (and don't want to see it like that) not want to participate in your bullshit.

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

Ken Paxton gave some fuckin' bullshit-ass Lawyer in Waco a one-day jail sentence for sexually abusing a boy for years. The local judge found that so egregious that he imposed a 60-day sentence instead (Still nowhere near enough) and the dude ended up serving half of that for "Good Behavior."

I'm old enough to remember when this by itself would have been a national political scandal that went on for years, that prompted imposition of all type of new Federal laws to prevent that shit from ever happening again, and which would have meant that anybody involved couldn't find a job as a public toilet attendant in Liberia if they wanted to, not without waiting 30 years like Jim Bakker had to before he even started to make a comeback.

Stop and think about that for a second.

I'm old enough to remember when anything that even implied homosexual behavior or orientation (especially if the person was a Republican) or tolerance for it was a scandal all by itself.

Fuck, I can remember when even the absolute worst of the Bad Guys on shows like Oz were portrayed as being violently against pedophilia...and honestly that was generally American culture at the time.

And it pretty much was that way until Trump ran for President.

I have a partner and a kid to think about, the hell with this bullshit!

The difference now is that what modern "Conservatives" have come around to having a problem with is Consent. They no longer care about child abuse or rape. In fact, They think you can do whatever you want, pretty much, as long as the other person doesn't want you to do it!

And these fucking people are mad that they can't make Americans start hating Muslims but stop hating Pedophiles.

Again, think about this shit!

Like, I literally grew up in church, in the 1980's, when all the Don't Talk To Strangers, Satanic Panic stuff was on pretty much every bulletin board and newspaper and TV screen in the whole damn country.

And now these same motherfuckers are giving child molesters one-day jail terms?? 

The hell with that. If that's what "Christian Nationalism" is?? 

Fuck That. You know what happens to dudes that do that type of shit in Muslim countries??

They cut that shit off, if they don't just kill 'em.

And yes, especially a lot of the more gender-segregated Fundamentalist Islamic countries have a hell of a lot of situational bisexuality going on. 

It's not generally officially tolerated, though.

But the Truth is that's what stuff like Patriarchy and religiously-dominated cultures end up being.

Because people are people and most other people don't share American Republican beliefs about the alleged supremacy of ideas over living beings, not that Republicans really believe in this.

It should be said that Islamic preservation of Greek Classics is pretty much 90% of how most of us know who Plato even is much less the story of Plato's Cave. Not that "Conservatives" really believe in that shit anymore either. They only believe in taking advantage.

Republicans are already (and fairly openly) working their way around to a degree of Man Love Thursdays that makes the Ottoman Empire at the height of its debasement, power and sloth (where if you had "Sir" in front of your name you didn't wanna get captured by them) look like Thomas Road Baptist Church by comparison. 

This keeps up, you won't wanna be a Republican intern by, say, 2028.

There needs to go back to being zero tolerance for fuckery or stupidity again, sexual or otherwise.

Before this gets worse.

If that means not as much sympathy when shit happens? Too Bad. That's Unfortunate. Shit Happens.

You're still out of luck.

Sorry, I think we erred TOO much on the side of "empathy" and got taken advantage of.

By Republicans not immigrants. 

It's not LGBT folk or POC or the Undocumented immigrants screwing this shit up, it's Republicans.

And most of their prejudices simply project their Sin onto other people who don't deserve that. But the only way to stop this shit at this point is going to be to SLAM the door in their face, without understanding, without explanation, Fuck You. Go Away.

Way the fuck too many of these people are abusers. You don't play with that.

There's some things modern liberalism isn't much good for, and dealing with evil shameless people who will not respect anything short of a violently-drawn hard line and a "No" backed up by a credible threat of force is one of those.

I'm divorced, I've learned this the hard way.

But, in our defense, at least on the liberal/mid-conservative/pretty much anything but MAGA side of the fence, the well is running dry.

People are sick of this fucking garbage.

Taking the high road all the time does not work.

Meanwhile, Republicans are either all-in on it, infinitely forgiving to a degree that makes Obama-era Democrats look like the people who ran Dan Quayle out of politics for misspelling "Potato" or desperately trying to ignore it, not least because doing anything about it increasingly means voting for the Other Team.

Sooner or later it comes down to either you're sitting at the Nazi table or you refuse to sit at the Nazi table.

Sooner or later it comes down to "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" or "Don't." But you have to pick one, because all that Left Behind shit was a lie you don't get to go to Heaven without dying, you don't get transcendence without the fire. The Universe does not exist for your convenience.

Sooner or later, you either believe in freedom or you don't, and you're willing to fight for it or you're not.

Make up yo damn mind.

Light has no fellowship with Darkness.

Слава Україна!

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

Two

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."

Six Hundred Threescore And Six (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Two.)

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

If any man have an ear, let him hear.

He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity: he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he speaks as a dragon.

And he exercises all the power of the first beast before him, and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

And deceive them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13, King James Bible.

...

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

So I saw this early this morning.

Apparently there's going to be some mandated app that worships Trump on government-issue Smartphones now?

Like seriously what the hell kind of fragile-ass narcissistic man-baby needs that type of shit? Oh, right, Trump.

Meanwhile Republicans keep crapping all over the country and goddamn but I can't help noticing that the "Golden Dome" version of Israel's Iron Dome system has magically shrunk down from protecting the entire country to only protecting about a third of the original White House? 

My guess is it'll shrink down to just protecting Trump before it ever actually hits the design stage??

Like, I'm being kinda-serious here, Late Stage Trumpism is starting to make the various excesses of Saddam Hussein seem...tame...by comparison. And it's not just him, a lot of these idiot CHUDs think they're gonna get to be Saddam, too!

And elected Republicans plus about half their voters (and certainly anybody voting in a Republican primary) are fine with this??

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

I'm not a huge fan of just mindlessly repeating other people's talking points but yes, "It's A Cult."

More than that, this is a cult of miserable people who basically worship their own self-inflicted misery in the hope that it'll make somebody else's life worse.

They don't seem to care that they're still miserable.

Or maybe they just like it that way?

Like I don't know who the fuck got the idea that Trump was "Fixated On Heaven?" 

You mean when he decided he probably wasn't gonna go there awhile back??

Or have we just forgotten about that, now??

Like, I'm sorry, I don't even understand what these fucking people are trying to accomplish at this point?? Do they think Trump will give them a cookie? Re-Tweet (or whatever) their bullshit enough that they can monetize it?? 

I don't even see the damn point.

Hell, maybe I just don't want to.

Clemency. That's a fancy word for mercy. You see, the governor can commute a death sentence. He has the power to just pick up the phone and say no. But to me, the only time the governor shows clemency, is when he don't make that call. Because life in prison without parole is a shitload worse than death. Death is parole. Death is the real mercy. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz S1.E4 "Capital P."

The whole damn point of all this MAGA shit seems to be they think they'll get to have their boot on somebody else's throat before they, too, die a horrible death. Seems like a hell of an ideal to live with, if you ask me.

Death with a higher relative status, or under some gold Techno-dome of alleged protection, or with a quadrillion fake AI's singing your praises every second of every day is still DEATH.

I have a church background, I've read the Lord's Word, most of my remaining friends and my partner etc. are all the same way. GOD is not going to care about all that crap! God is not going to be impressed by all the same shit that fools American redneck idiots into worshiping this walking garbage bag full of rotten flabby assholes!

And Trump is not a god, he's just a man, and not even a very good one. He's an Antichrist, but apparently not very good at that either.

Remember that, and remember too that attempting to outsource your Sin to this creep is still, in fact, Sin. 

You are not going to fool the Almighty.

You know how I know Left Behind Is A Lie?? 

Trump is literally acting like the dumbest possible version of every Antichrist or Beast of Revelation in every dumbass Christian novel or low-budget movie I ever heard of much less partook of my damn self...and a majority of "Evangelicals" still support that bullshit!

In fact, dude has hit October of 2008 Bush 43-level polling nadirs on way more issues than he hasn't, overall approval rating is to the tune of around 30% (This is, in real terms, a political death spiral, it's just I think it's gotten so big that it's gonna take the Republican Party and half of America down with it!) and I live in Northern Michigan and pretty much have to go through the backwaters of the backwaters of the poorest area around here to see an actual Trump flag in the wild now and there's still a large slice of the White Evangelical population that literally thinks Trump can do no wrong.

And he can't get people to worship him so now he's having AI or apps or some bullshit installed that'll do it??

Yeah, there's something vaguely Biblical-sounding about that, alright.

But not in any sort of way that tells me anybody involved is going to Heaven, or even planning to or wants to.

More like they know they're going to Hell, and they wanna see who they can take with them when they go.

You wanna make this shit stop, it's going to come down to a fight.

Soon.

Because if it doesn't?

Well, I've read enough of the Bible to be able to tell you exactly how these fucking people think this is gonna end.

Слава Україна!

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

One

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around
The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around

… Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 

~Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around.

Bonus Content

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."