Two Wolves.

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. ~Susan B. Anthony

...

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

...

You see the face on the TV screen
Comin' at you every Sunday?
See the face on the billboard?
Well, that man is me
On the cover of the magazine
There's no question why I'm smilin'
You buy a piece of paradise
You buy a piece of me
I'll get you everything you wanted
I'll get you everything you need
You don't need to believe in hereafter
Just believe in me
'Cause Jesus, He knows me and He knows I'm right
I've been talkin' to Jesus all my life
Oh, yes He knows me and He knows I'm right
And He's been tellin' me everything is alright
I believe in family
With my ever lovin' wife beside me
But she don't know about my girlfriend
Or the man I met last night
Do you believe in God?
'Cause that's what I'm selling
And if you wanna go to heaven
Well, I'll see you right. ~Genesis, Jesus He Knows Me.

**Note: On The Title.

Fucking "Christian" Nationalists like Dale Partridge are still on this thing of trying to take the vote away from women.

A few things there: 

First, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed over 100 years ago. Our ancestors decided this and his side lost. These people are not conservatives. Conservatism is based on revealed Truth and the wisdom of the ancestors, things people like Dale despise.

Arrogant religious fanatic narcissists like this dude always think they know better than everybody else.

Second, in any case the vast majority of people did not ask him. No one gives a rat's ass what he thinks.

Third, these motherfuckers can have my Mom's rights or my Partner's rights, our daughter's rights or any other woman's rights over my dead body.

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."

Fuck these people, or better yet don't, ever.

I'm a veteran, I swore an oath to the US Constitution and that says women can vote. When I did this, I was a conservative Christian Republican, but that was back when those things meant you could be something other than a bigot.

I did not swear an oath to White Christian Nationalist Neo-Calvinism and I would not have, even then.

Remember, Dale Partridge started out as a scammy investment bro, not a preacher.

And honestly the thing I think I find most offensive about these assholes is they can't imagine anybody feeling any differently than they do...because they're stupid selfish narcissists.

These men, and any that follow them, ain't lonely enough.

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

These guys and in particular the overwhelming majority of their followers don't want any kind of Biblical familial headship, or to be responsible or to raise families. They want the Power of the Patriarchy without responsibility. They want to sit on their ass and dick around online all day while their wife does everything. It's not an accident these idiots think Cryptocurrency or whatever scam is the latest thing is their big money-making opportunity; Most of these CHUDs want Wealth Without Work.

A lot of these idiots can't be bothered to have jobs, much less to pay child support if any hypothetical relationship to a woman doesn't work out!

More to the damned point their whole fucking idea of "Christianity" is little more than a macho-bullshit Baal-worshiping Penis Cult that (just for example) measures one's "Masculinity" in how many kids one has, not if they even take care of them or not.

I knew dudes like this before it was cool, the vast majority of them are divorced multiple times over and either can't do anything because they're paying out most of their check in child support every week or they get arrested and go to jail at least once a year for nonpayment. Actually, in a substantial number of such cases, it's both.

And that was before all this hyper-religious Incel crap came along.

Guess what, guys? If you get the world you want it'll be mobs of jilted ex-harem girls and housewives coming to collect personally with baseball bats and guns, legally or otherwise...because kids and women gotta eat, too.

Women by nature tend to figure shit like that out so they can make it in the world while supporting kids. Even my ex-wife eventually figured it out and that's saying something.

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.

If you don't teach a dude right, for some strange reason they tend to think they can make their way in life sitting on their ass, playing video games and smoking weed all day.

And increasingly, then they have the balls to wonder why they end up alone.

If you don't smoke Tarrlytons...Fuck you! ~Advertisement, Idiocracy.

These dopes don't want a Christian nation in any sense of what that word means. They neither have nor want any real faith in Jesus Christ.

They want a bullshit Cryptocurrency Influencer shock-jock nation where everybody is required to blow their narcissism on a regular basis with some kind of Fallout-style 1950's affect scribbled on with a sharpie or taped on to try to make it look good.

And they want to either molest kids, be situationally bisexual on the down-low or both, don't forget that part.

Somehow, increasingly, it's working out that way every fucking time you run the experiment. It seems like it's slouching towards "Both, with a side of goats." 

They want, as my British friend says, Nicotine in the fucking Gatorade.

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

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

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

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

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

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

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

Or maybe, just maybe, it's that these fucking people faced no consequences and got too comfortable while also having too many material things and they became debased because they had nothing else to fucking do with their time or worry about?

Like, Stephen Miller wouldn't be Stephen Miller if somebody would have whupped his ass and made him pick up after himself and took him aside and cussed him out about why you don't act like that before he was allowed to grow up to think the shit he does is Okay.

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.

It's specifically stuff like that, that's why I say secular liberalism and tolerance are no good for certain things and, as practiced in America, they just end up enabling bad behavior.

Too much of my partner's family is basically welfare people, and that's why she's militantly against a lot of Welfare and understandably so, believing that it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis with giving people a job and the support to keep it as the primary option...and the State having the option to say "No." I've come around to agreeing with this.

I used to think there needed to be a State option to say "Here's $50 now get the fuck out of my face." She says no to that, and she's right.

The same needs to be applied to These Fucking People and political power.

We basically need to put our foot down and say if you believe certain things you don't get to decide what's for lunch.

Throw in remedial education as a requirement for political participation, at the rate things are going.

Hell, maybe just start throwing in a social requirement that people give enough of a shit to learn something?

Democracy without conscience or intelligence increasingly just ends up being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

Actually, the funny part is all this used to be the conservative argument.

Now it's one wolf trying to cut the other one out altogether while molesting the sheep instead of eating it, and some people think this shit is funny.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

But you have to be smart enough to know what freedom is, too.

These fucking people?

They don't want that...either for you or themselves.

Because freedom makes them feel less important.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran.

Last Post

[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. ~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ~Matthew 7:15

Jesus, He Knows Me.

You see the face on the TV screen
Comin' at you every Sunday?
See the face on the billboard?
Well, that man is me
On the cover of the magazine
There's no question why I'm smilin'
You buy a piece of paradise
You buy a piece of me
I'll get you everything you wanted
I'll get you everything you need
You don't need to believe in hereafter
Just believe in me
'Cause Jesus, He knows me and He knows I'm right
I've been talkin' to Jesus all my life
Oh, yes He knows me and He knows I'm right
And He's been tellin' me everything is alright
I believe in family
With my ever lovin' wife beside me
But she don't know about my girlfriend
Or the man I met last night
Do you believe in God?
'Cause that's what I'm selling
And if you wanna go to heaven
Well, I'll see you right. ~Genesis, Jesus He Knows Me.

...

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

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

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

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

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

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

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

I saw this while I was out with my Mom today.

Donald Trump, literally saying "Jesus, He knows me." (*Cough* Bullshit *Cough*)

All while Republicans are literally, at this point, balls deep in their involvement with various pedophiles (including Joseph Duggar, recently arrested for molesting a 9-year-old girl) and they can't even bother to, ya know, make it illegal for first cousins to get married in Florida.

(For the record, it literally says in Leviticus not to have sex with relatives, fucking ancient people knew this, what the hell is Florida Republicans goddamn excuse?? Go ahead, I'll wait.)

Yeah, Jesus, he knows them...just like that old Phil Collins song. They're all about the perversions and protecting the perverts.

Well, that and attempting to control the lives of women and starting wars no one needed, prepared for or wanted.

Again, there's nothing specifically "Christian" about any of this. If Baal or Dis Pater handed them Power and a justification for what they already wanted to do anyway they'd follow that.

These fucking people believe in nothing in the sense that "Regular People" like you or I do.

Except, apparently, their perversions. Those, they'll defend with all the fanaticism of a couple thousand Christian knights defending Malta from the Turks. But then, it's not like they even want to enjoy that shit after. 

Baal is the true "god" of Christian Nationalism, as revealed by the Epstein files. In truth, he too is just another monster they hope to use as a stick to beat regular people with, an unholy smite for the people they don't like. Any monster will do, after awhile.

If you think there's any morality to be had here, well, these fucking monsters think it's Okay to literally bet on the war and bet against American troops.

I can remember when even considering something like that would get people beat up, by conservatives, and the cops wouldn't have done shit.

I'm tired of these fucking savages, and I don't mean the Iranians, I mean these fucking bro-chuds and MAGA assholes and Antichrist Trump ball-fondlers who think all this shit is Okay as well as the dipshit hickerbillies who voted for this garbage and all these priggish "Leftists" who stood by in November of 2024 and let this shit happen. Fuck these motherfuckers and the horse they rode in on.

Safe bet that if we cannot defeat the Iranians, our NATO allies would hand us our ass on a plate, and how are we even going to do something like go after Greenland when we, as the supposed biggest dog on the block, are choking on Iran like a dog with a chicken bone??

And as it is, idiots like Keg-breath and Trump can't even keep their story straight vs. Iran, so it's probably a safe bet we're losing the fucking war.

Worse, Republicans want us to consign slightly more than half our population to domestic slavery and no freedom, so that America literally has to fight and work with one hand tied behind its back. Wait, how does this work, exactly??

Especially considering that most jobs don't pay enough for one person to support a family anymore and women are a massive part of the existing economy?

Yeah, I get it, it's all about male power and chud-bro wish-fulfillment but sooner or later most of us grow out of that bullshit, because we fucking have to just to make it in the world.

A world that our ancestors and these motherfuckers with their rampant Capitalism fucking made.

And now they want to unmake it because too many people are getting a slice, and wreck everything for everybody else on their way out.

They know they're going down, at this point. 

They don't care.

The trick is they want what replaces them to be worse, so maybe they can make it to their bunkers ahead of the mobs and the posses of enraged citizens and troops, They seem to hope the mobs of heathen cannibals will protect them?

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.)

I don't know what the fuck they think they're gonna do in those bunkers while the world burns, except cook more slowly.

I don't think they care.

I doubt any of these fucking people, especially Trump, know Jesus.

If they did, they wouldn't be conducting themselves this way.

You either believe in freedom...and in your own right to have your own life...or you don't.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran.

Last Post

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley.

The Case For Baal (Bropocalypse Now, Ten.)

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."

...

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.

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~2 Kings 18:20-40

I saw this earlier.

This lady claims you can fight "Leftist Extremism" by going to church, getting married, having babies, home schooling and reading the Bible.

Shit literally sounds like "The Case For Christ" by Lee Stroebel and I read that book when it came out. I owned it, until I gave my copy to a casino coworker who actually wanted that shit. It was vapid theological nonsense that only fit together in the context of Evangelical church culture: This was NOT designed to reach an outside audience and I thought so at the time.

Nor is Tania Shaw's idea of "How To Fight The Left."

Uh, none of that stuff is specifically "Conservative." I know plenty of Independents, liberals, middle of the road people, moderate conservatives and completely unaffiliated folks who do some or all of that. Most people do some of this to some degree. These are basic human things.

I mean, I get it.

These current Republican Nazis and Heritage Foundation Nazis pretty much think anybody who is to the Left of the Third Reich, who doesn't share their cultic devotion to Donald Trump and who isn't White was either grown in a lab or spawned directly by the Devil as part of some vast "Leftist" plot against "Conservatism." Like they literally don't understand the rest of the world was here first.

Funny enough, their ideas for how to fight this "Vast Leftist Plot" have basically nothing to do with conservative-anything and are exactly what you'd expect from simple-assed weird far-right morons.

They apparently think liberals, mid-conservatives (who are basically Leftist but somehow worse in their minds) and the politically unaffiliated grow their kids in labs and sit around reading from the Communist manifesto or some such bullshit. Needless to say the fact that me, my partner and the kiddo exist sort of fucks up their narrative.

Among other things, the absolute last thing These Fucking People want is relationships based on love, mutual feelings, or people treating each other like people...no matter how Christianized or uptight.

Well, that and how These Fucking People actually act in real life isn't very convenient either. 

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.)

Like, I'm a say it again, the weird MAGA relatives told my kid she couldn't go to church and made her chop wood for daring to ask. Like I said at the time, having basic slave labor was more important to these fucking CHUDS. That word is too kind.

And these weird freaks are apparently weirdly obsessed with breeding, even when the people involved (Cousins, for example) literally shouldn't breed. (Wait. How else do you get Florida Man?)

I don't know if my partner's relatives are the same way. But from what the Kiddo said when I was last down there, my partner's cousin that owned that firetrap rat's nest hoarder-house let his teenage daughter get away with shit that would've got me horsewhipped at that age, so long as she pretended to not talk to boys (they were all under girl names on her phone) and she acted all churchy at school. Yes, what was really going on was an entirely open secret that the little shit would brag about to my kid who wasn't allowed to do anything fun if they had a say in it (unless it was participate in the shenanigans which she didn't want to) let alone say anything about all that.

The first and second rules of fight club are Don't Talk About Fight Club!

Let me translate:

In other words, "Conservative" double-standards and hypocrisy ARE being Taught. It's being taught in that house, actively, with intention and malice aforethought.

And both my partner and the kid have been bullied because they got the fuck out. It's not their fault that my partner finding a good job in her field meant moving three hours away...and of course the kid wanted to go with her Mom. Well, some people thought they were gonna get cult-inductees and slave labor out of that, I guess?

This is how MAGA and so much of this "Country" bullshit (which has always been bullshit, take it from an actual country person here, one who despises rednecks and was taught thusly) grows and attempts to maintain itself.

There has been some foul language and harsh words exchanged about that recently and These Fucking People have been informed that some of us don't give a damn. Or as another mutual friend from back in our casino days who's in on this put it "I can afford to get us all hella good lawyers."

But here's the thing, behind closed doors and what we don't know is apparently way worse than all that.

Like I've said and I'mma KEEP saying I think the rot from the Epstein shit goes way, way further down than a lot of people are prepared to deal with.

And the corrupted Evangelical church is balls deep in this garbage. Like, the churches will try to protect the abuser and silence the victims first.

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

Because what we're really dealing with here is the Cult of Baal.

Why are these people so obsessed with Breeding? Well, among other things Baal started out as the Canaanite fertility god.

This is literal Old Testament-grade Evil.

Sorry, but Law and secular liberalism ain't gonna be able to deal with this shit on their own.

If we wanna burn it out, America needs an Elijah, probably more than one.

Thankfully these idiots are making the Case For Baal about the same way as they made their case for Christ.

And no, it's not designed to reach Outsiders in this version, either.

For what it's worth, with this kind of crap and the spiritual forces behind it, ancient Israel and Ancient Rome had the same battle plan; Wipe out everything from the ground up and salt the Earth after.

And they both did that shit multiple times and we're still dealing with this fucking bullshit. Hell, they're basically treating their depravity the same way their grandparents treated being Calvinist tight-asses and their parents treated being Pentecostal narcissists, as an utterly joyless religious duty.

This is the inevitable result of "Anything but Love Thy Neighbor."

Where they want Christianity at all, they want it neutered like a feral tomcat in a TNR program. They want it empty and incapable of preaching or even reaching outside of itself, shorn of faith, meaning or transcendence and useful only for political power.

They're going to make the Case For Baal, because right now there's some demon-worshiping narcissist somewhere who can't wait to tell on himself, who can't wait for the world to know what he did.

And when they do it you can say "No."

You can fight back.

You can tell these people to go fuck themselves.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Nine

Valin Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them? 

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

An Infinity Of Crab Buckets (Bropocalypse Now, Nine.)

When vice is extolled by the name of virtue, so that a man is induced to sin not only without regret but with joy and triumph, and is hardened beyond the modesty of a blush for his enormities, this sort of flattery, I say, has been fatal even to whole kingdoms.

- Plutarch, The Flatterer

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~2 Kings 18:20-40

...

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."

I'm tired of These Fucking People.

But you know what? I'm ESPECIALLY tired of their petty hatred of women.

I'm tired of their shitty obsessions with Force and political power and I'm tired of the fact that they think their bullshit ideas are so "Superior" and think they shouldn't have to ask anybody else what they can do while thinking everybody else should have to ask them for the right to walk down the street in their own neighborhood.

This isn't politics, it's the authoritarian narcissism of an abuser.

And America has tolerated this bullshit for way too long.

Very little of this shit is inherently "Christian" or has anything to do with the Bible or even a lot of the beliefs and systems that a lot of people claim it does.

I was raised a certain way, I went to Christian schools until my Mom and I moved somewhere where there weren't any, I served in the military. I was a politically active Republican until September of 2008.

In no way was I ever taught that the kind of welfare people like my partner's idiot MAGA relatives who gave her such a hard time (and are still trying to) should be treated like valid Conservatives or have any claims of Christian (or in fact any other) religious belief taken seriously.

Among people that I've known throughout my life (including a fair number of Democrats) stuff like "If you don't work, you don't eat" gets thrown around a lot...right or wrong.

But of course, Republicans don't give a good goddamn if welfare people (be they Michigan rednecks on welfare or Israeli settlers living off government stipends) are welfare people so long as they vote Republican or otherwise serve various Evangelical or Right-Wing causes and give the "wrong" people (even within their own groups) a hard time.

It's like I've been saying since Trump declared in 2015, Republicans are basically Communists now.

And when the state of Ohio wants people to "register" pregnancies like it's the People's Republic of Ohio China??"

Well, what happens when the State decides to deny a "Certificate Of Life" to certain people, or a certain kind of people...based on criteria set by a small group of random fanatics??

In his novel The Bear And The Dragon, Tom Clancy did a pretty good job of writing about what happens when the State tries to do shit like this, because a fairly major plot point is that a Chinese Christian couple was told by the government to abort a pregnancy and refused to, and a Baptist pastor and Vatican diplomat were killed protecting mother and child...which eventually led to China facing major loss of trade and to a war between China and Russia.

I get that Republicans are supposedly anti-Abortion, but what they really are is anti-Choice and their absolute mania for Control will eventually lead to telling people who can have kids or not, and to shit like the Mark Of The Beast if that shit isn't stopped. If the State can make you have a kid it can make you not have a kid. If it can control your body about that, then the State can control your body when it comes time to put computer chips and such into people's foreheads or right hands.

It's not about Life, it's about Power.

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.

And the thing is the absolute hubris that a conservative author like Tom Clancy ascribed to the Chinese Communist Politburo back in 2000 has nothing on the behavior of current American billionaires and MAGA politicians.

The thing is These Fucking People don't give a shit if they're "ruling" a nation of morons trapped in Infinite Crab Buckets that's effectively destroying itself on a daily basis so long as their political narcissism and alleged goals are publicly blown on a regular basis.

Current Republicans don't give a shit if they blow up the world or even if they personally lose money so long as their "Authority" is "Obeyed" and enough people appear to hate who they hate.

Like I said, it's not politics, it's narcissism. Rich white male narcissism is destroying America. This should be perfectly obvious.

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

Like, the overwhelming need of a certain kind of white male idiot to tell everybody else what to do while never being told what to do their own damn selves is a thing that used to get dealt with by a punch in the face from another kid on the playground fairly early in life or by parents at home.

But the whole issue with MAGA is it's all the people who weren't taught much of anything or who didn't want to learn.

This kind of attitude killed a million Americans during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We need to stop tolerating this horseshit.

Or it will get worse the next time there's a crisis.

A crisis or crises that these idiots are constantly trying to bring about, because they think that shit will be the End Times.

At the end of the day, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

And maintaining freedom requires three things: #1 Intelligence and #2 That everybody gets to have it, also #3 that a certain amount of virtue or at least survival instinct can be assumed on the part of the public.

Christian Nationalism includes none of these. 

These Fucking People don't care if their people are murdering each other in the streets and half the population openly worships Demons as long as they can fundraise off the fighting, pass repressive laws and preach smug moralism. They'll just go about with bigger motorcades than the Pope has and a bunch of armed guards and shit.

Christian Nationalism isn't about Jesus. 

Like most cults (which I'm including Evangelicalism as one lately) it's basically Self-worship (and in particular, a sexualized form of it, which is what a lot of the "Pro-Life" Purity Culture crap really is) and there's a reason I say these motherfuckers will ultimately worship Baal just like the Epstein Class does.

The propagation of heretical lies like the Prosperity Gospel ultimately guarantees that. The coupling of the Prosperity Gospel to feelgood narcissistic horseshit like Pentecostal spiritualism makes this shit worse.

Tack on a Bro-culture Manosphere that essentially tells "Men" to follow nothing more than their own erections, and when the shit hits the fan it'll be like Cormac McCarthy's The Road out there if people with brains in their heads don't get this shit under control.

Trump isn't the cause, he's a symptom.

The problem is that the culture and the systems themselves are rotten.

And we have to face that shit and fix it.

Bropocalypse Now.

These motherfuckers gonna be real surprised when God ain't a dude-bro like them.

Let the day of His Wrath be at hand.

Слава Україна!

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

Eight

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

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

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

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

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

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

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

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

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