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

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.

~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

...

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out!

[Repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, anyway;

"Marriage Is Between One Man And One Woman."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Nuclear IBCMs have been launched]

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

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

Sergeant: Where do you want to go?

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

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

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

Airman: He's right!

Airman Tommy: What about Starr and Boyle?

Sergeant: What about them?

Airman Tommy: What are they doing?

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

Airman Tommy: Well I'm going down there!

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

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

~From the TV miniseries, The Day After.

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

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

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

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

Or maybe they just don't care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll call it the Antimatter Family.

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

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

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

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

Melting pot? 

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

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

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

~From the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

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

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

That's just it, too. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Слава Україна!

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

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

 

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

Albert: No good?

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

~From The Birdcage

...

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

I saw this yesterday.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behold, I have told you before.

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

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

Five

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

Missing The Damn Point, Again (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Five.)

Brothers and sisters, please quiet down. Thank you.

We come here time after time and we talk about the same old same old.

Hey, quiet down.
- We talk about Jesus. - That's right.
Jesus said and Jesus wept.
Jesus heard and Jesus walked over.
I don't wanna talk about Jesus.
Cos as the big man teaches us, there's two sides to every story.
Not one but two. A story is not one-sided.
A story has duality. There's two sides to every story.
Which brings to mind the phrase "necessary evil".
I know many of you hear that phrase and say,
"That don't even make no sense to me.
"Can't be no such thing as necessary - how's evil necessary?
"That don't match. That's plaids and stripes, evil and necessary."
You see, because without bad, there is no good.
Without light, there is no dark, you need both these things.
You hear what I'm saying?
If every day is a sunny day, well, then, what's a sunny day?
Well, the bottom line, what I'm trying to tell you tonight,
is that evil...evil... is necessary.
Evil is necessary, thereby, if it's necessary, evil...
- Evil... -must be good.
Evil is good.
That's what I think. Evil must be good, must be good.
- Let me hear y'all say it... - Evil is good.

Evil is good. Take Brother Brown, one of our strongest deacons, pillar of stability.
Brother Brown was on Bushwick Avenue last night with a two-dollar ho.
When you tell your wife, "I'm going to see Mama," then you go get you a two-dollar ho, that's evil.
But Brother Brown had a good time with that two-dollar ho.
You can push a two-dollar ho and she don't have no limits!
Evil and good walk hand in hand. - Evil is as evil does. 

I know many of y'all may be saying, "How can he say ass is good?"
How y'all think y'all got here?
Ass is good! Evil's good and ass is good.
And if you get you a piece of evil ass...Woo!

~Maximilian The Vampire (As Preacher Paulie) from A Vampire In Brooklyn.

I saw this when I got home from work. James Talarico with his girlfriend.

LMAO.

Now compare those two, their apparent difference and diversity, their obvious happiness, and the smiles on their faces...with the fucking Republicans who are trying to talk shit about James, trying to say he's gay or trans or some bullshit. He's not, and it wouldn't matter to anybody but then if he was.

I mean, come the fuck on, people, when is enough, enough with this BS?

And when is enough going to be enough with the disingenuous fake moralism by the fucking Republicans who are all too happy to start these kind of fights but suddenly have glass jaws and the performative moralism of old uptight Western Michigan Dutch Reformed Calvinist church people when Democrats respond as Men...as people...should to this kind of garbage??

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X.

Some arguments should not be taken seriously and are best responded to with a punch in the face. That's why I say that Democratic Party secular Liberalism as currently constituted ain't gonna solve this damn problem on its own.

Emperor Palpatine: At last. Snoke trained you well.

Kylo Ren: I killed Snoke. I'll kill you.

Palpatine: My boy... I made Snoke. I have been every voice... [as Snoke] ...you have ever heard... [as Darth Vader] ...inside your head. [breathes] The First Order was just the beginning... I will give you so much more.

Ren: You'll die first.

Palpatine: I have died before. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... [lightning flashes, revealing Palpatine's decaying face] ...unnatural.

Ren: [raises his lightsaber at Palpatine] What could you give me?

Palpatine: Everything. A new Empire. [raises his decaying hands, with electricity surging between his fingers. Suddenly, multiple Xyston-class Star Destroyers rise from the ground] The might of the Final Order will soon be ready. It will be yours if you do as I ask: Kill the girl, end the Jedi, and become what your grandfather, Vader, could not. You will rule all the galaxy as the new Emperor. But beware: She is not who you think she is.

Ren: [turns his lightsaber off; a bit confused yet intrigued] Who is she? [Palpatine smiles sinisterly.] ~From Star Wars: Episode IX, The Rise Of Skywalker.

That said, if you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be emphatically agreeing with Hillary Clinton about much of anything, I'm not sure if I would have laughed at you or punched you in the face.

I couldn't help but notice that Trump's weird Death Star-looking UFC fighting ring is complemented by *Checks Notes* Legions of port-a-shitters, a rather different take on this mess than the legions of Imperial Stormtroopers that George Lucas and Disney conjured up, but Okay.

These motherfuckers have literally turned the grounds of the White House into a fucking toilet.

And this is supposed to be a symbol of Empire, of a thousand years of MAGA?

LOL, No.

For people that believe themselves to be so macho and manly and strong, they sure seem to have a weird obsession with making sure they can get to the bathroom on time. 

I'm just sayin.'

And, speaking as an old guy here, there's nothing especially manly about that. 

Start minding your health a little bit if you got a problem, start watching what you eat or otherwise put in your body! I had to, but when I did life got better. Y'all should've seen me when I started following my doctor's instructions and looking at the ingredients in things...

These corporations and shit do not put all these chemicals in food because they care about us, and if you live on fast food and other assorted garbage (let alone by choice?!?!) sooner or later you have nobody to blame but yourself for why you need a Port-O-John every ten feet!

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.

Same extremely "hyper-masculine" men have an equally weird obsession with the uh "aesthetics" and bodies of other men, just sayin.'

In fact, as several people have pointed out the restrictions on military personnel who might be theoretically attending this shit seem primarily geared towards preventing old Generals and women from attending...

And obviously Trump doesn't meet his own requirements. Have to wonder why this dude wants to be surrounded by young muscular men, don't you?? That doesn't seem very conservative, Christian or *Checks Notes Again* Straight.

And the obsession with toilets doesn't seem to be for actual Roman-style militaristic purposes like preventing disease outbreaks in camp, or they'd be doing this shit a lot differently.

(Yeah, I've actually studied this, the Romans put as much thought into waste disposal as they did into engineering and military tactics, which appears to be something that the US Navy for example has forgotten all about. The Romans, a couple thousand years ago, made their Legionaries carry pipes and tent stakes as much as armor and sword for a damn reason.)

But ya know it's not like 300 (a very Fash-coded movie, if you think about it) isn't also dripping gay subtexts throughout the whole damn film. That said...

Even people like Frank Miller still fucking get it more than Trump and his goons do. A lot more.

[Xerxes has advanced to meet Leonidas, seated on a solid gold throne carried on the backs of many slaves.]

Leonidas: Let me guess... you must be... Xerxes?

Xerxes: Come, Leonidas. Let us reason together. It would be a regrettable waste, it would be nothing short of madness, were you, brave King, and your valiant troops to perish... all because of a simple misunderstanding. There is much our cultures could share.

Leonidas: Oh, haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning.

Xerxes: Yours is a fascinating tribe. Even now, you are defiant, in the face of annihilation and the presence of a god. It isn't wise to stand against me, Leonidas. Imagine what horrible fate awaits my enemies when I would gladly kill any of my own men for victory.

Leonidas: And I would die for any one of mine.

Xerxes: You Greeks take pride in your logic. I suggest you employ it. Consider the beautiful land you so vigorously defend. Picture it reduced to ash at my whim! Consider the fate of your women!

Leonidas: Clearly you don't know our women. I might as well have marched them up here, judging by what I've seen. You have many slaves, Xerxes, but few warriors. It won't be long before they fear my spears more than your whips.

Xerxes: It is not the lash they fear, it is my divine power. But I am a generous god. I can make you rich beyond all measure. I will make you warlord of all Greece. You will carry my battle standard to the heart of Europa. Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet... if you will but kneel at mine.

Leonidas: You are generous as you are divine, O King of Kings. Such an offer only a madman would refuse. But the, uh, the idea of kneeling, it's... You see, slaughtering all those men of yours has, uh, well, it's left a nasty cramp in my leg, so kneeling will be hard for me.

Xerxes: [incensed at what Leonidas just said] There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned, and every Greek historian and every scribe shall have their eyes put out and their tongues cut from their mouths! Why, uttering the very name of Sparta or Leonidas will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!

Leonidas: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many and, before this battle is over, that even a god-king can bleed.

~From the film 300.

Stop and think about that for a second, too.

These Fucking People have either forgotten or just plain missed the point, even of the stories they tell themselves to justify themselves.

Like, fuck, I couldn't do it.

But then I have some level of intelligence and reading comprehension, or something.

And seriously, most of the musicians and shit that've been touted as being part of Trump's America 250 event have backed out (Some, apparently being dead such as Milli Vanilli's Rob Pilatus, were not consulted at all) with most claiming they were lied to about the nature of the event or even not told what it was.

A few right-leaning artists cited safety concerns in their declinations, but the truth is I imagine their real issues with the whole thing are the same as anybody else's, not wanted to attach Trump's name to their career for entirely obvious ETTD reasons. 

Everything Trump Touches Dies, Yo.

Well, she seemed all right by dawn's early light
Though she looked a little worried and weak
She tried to pretend he wasn't drinkin' again
But daddy left the proof on her cheek
And I was only eight years old that summer
And I always seemed to be in the way
So I took myself down to the fair in town
On Independence Day

Well, word gets around in a small, small town
They said he was a dangerous man
But mama was proud and she stood her ground
She knew she was on the losin' end
Some folks whispered, some folks talked
But everybody looked the other way
And when time ran out there was no one about
On Independence Day

Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today
Is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day

Well, she lit up the sky that fourth of July
By the time that the firemen come
They just put out the flames
And took down some names
And send me to the county home
Now I ain't sayin' it's right or it's wrong
But maybe it's the only way
Talk about your revolution
It's Independence Day ~Martina McBride, Independence Day.

Most of these the reaction was kind of "Meh" but there seems to have been a general freak-out that Martina McBride told Trump "No."

Thanks to the women in my life, funny enough both my ex-wife and my partner, I have probably a bit more familiarity with Martina and her lyrics and how she conducts herself as a person and I don't know why anybody's surprised that she wouldn't want anything to do with Trump.

But, again, missing the point is the whole damn point for these fucking people. They want to do what they want to do anyway and they don't think little things like good character, law, logic, reality or ya know, simply having to give a shit about other people should get in the way.

Well they're gonna have to. As much for these people's defense as anybody else's, because just like back during the COVID-19 pandemic there's no way these idiots following this shit down the rabbit hole to its logical conclusions only affects said idiots.

They want a future that's the Killing Fields with a mall and apparently a weird UFC fighting ring and a bunch of portable toilets, because they think that will continually stroke their Narcissism.

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

And that, at the end of the day, is what this whole thing is about, Narcissism and Selfishness.

Hell, even American Christianity has gotten jacked by this, all that Left Behind crap back in the 1990's was a thin cover for not much more than theologized sadism and the idea that Heaven simply isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go.

And then the same damn people today act like they know it's all a lie and there's no God that will judge them. It's easy to miss the point of everything when you can't see past the end of your own schwantz. It's easy to forget about Eternity when you're privileged and rich and focused on the here and now. The Bible itself spent a lot of ink warning about the perils of exactly that.

Decent government isn't a donkey show, freedom isn't relative status, and a worldview centered on the Self still doesn't make one a god. We're all still gonna have to answer to God as we understand it to be, or to the Universe or whatever someday.

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)

Remember that, because you either believe in Freedom or you don't.

And if these people are lying to you about the shit we know they've lied about? What else are they lying about?

A free people have a duty to the Truth, remember that, too.

Слава Україна!

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

Four

[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."

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.