Who Run Bartertown? (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Three.)

Auntie Entity: And what did you do before all this?

Max: I was a cop, a driver.

Auntie Entity: Well, how the world turns. One day cock of the walk, next a feather-duster.

~From the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

...

As I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I take a look at my life,And realize there's nothing left,'Cause I've been blasting and laughing so longThat even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it.Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of,You better watch how you're talking, and where you're walking,Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk,I really hate to trip, but I gotta Loc,As they croak I see myself in the pistol smoke,Fool, I'm the kinda G the little homies wanna be like,On my knees in the night Saying prayers in the street light..

~Coolio, Gangsta's Paradise.

...

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

I saw this shit last night.

On the feed of the Black Rifle Coffee Company...a veteran-owned corporation...some idiot called Trump's Idiocracy-Palooza at the White House "The Most American Thing They've Ever Seen."

Way to miss the fucking point, and I say that as a veteran.

Sorry, but I didn't serve for this fucking garbage and I also say that as a former Republican. Put that in your Keurig and brew it, asshole.

You either have standards or you don't. 

Standards and Truth are the basic preventative maintenance of a Civilization.

As I learned when I became a Senior Airman in the Air Force, you get what you tolerate. That's quite clearly a lesson that went way the fuck over somebody's pointed head.

And ya know, I get it. I knew plenty of people that were dumbass rednecks, or dumbass-whatever when they enlisted, but 30 years ago most of them learned a thing or two and ended up resenting the shit out of parents that didn't teach them anything and school systems that failed them, and came out of Basic Military Training and/or at least by Tech School actually valuing education on some level.

But then, 33 years ago in the United States Of America, being stupid was considered a bad thing.

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

Fuck these motherfuckers. 

Sponsored by Monster energy drinks. Jesus Christ.

What the fuck is wrong with you??

But then, this is the same political party that brought a live Elephant into the convention hall of the GOP state convention in Texas and then was surprised when it pissed all over the place.

Of course, none of the idiots responsible were the ones who had to clean up that ungodly mess.

Also I can remember back in the 1980's when conservatives massively lost their shit over some idiot's art that included a crucifix in a jar of urine.

I never particularly liked the kind of people that got performatively mad about bullshit like that, especially since just cutting people off when they do that kind of tasteless shit is more effective. 

So what's the social penalty for letting an Elephant piss all over your convention, Republicans??

I'll wait.

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.

Maybe, just maybe, we should stop listening to These Fucking People, let alone electing them??

I get that racism, misogyny etc. rotted out people's fucking brains, but come on. When is enough gonna be enough with this shit??

I find the Elephant thing and appropriate example. America in general and American conservatives in particular have pretty much pissed away all their credibility with the rest of the world. 

The day will come when we wish we hadn't and it really is that simple.

And then these fucking people have the balls to be surprised when nobody wants to date them??

A year ago, when I wrote this post, I was all of five days away from reconnecting with my partner, and seeing as more than just an observer the casual evil that a hell of a lot of "Men" can just do, without even thinking about it.

I'll be the first one to tell you I've done some bad shit, I've made mistakes, but not on the on-purpose and clearly with malice-aforethought level of shit that my partner had to put up with from other guys. Christ, that she had to put up with from guys I thought I knew weren't capable of doing shit like that!

And yes, the two of us have been plenty mean to each other over the years, but the difference between me and my former best friend vs. her is, I never thought it'd be that way if I'd ever used the phrase "Keep my balls empty" because my ass would have been dead.

Some things, you just don't do.

Hospitaler: One may stare into the light, until one becomes the light. I've done it many times.

Balian of Ibelin: [throws a rock at a bush that catches fire by the spark] There's your religion. One spark, a creosote bush. There's your Moses. I did not hear it speak.

Hospitaler: That does not mean that there is no God. Do you love her?

Balian of Ibelin: Yes.

Hospitaler: The heart will mend. Your duty is to the people of the city. I go to pray.

Balian of Ibelin: For what?

Hospitaler: For the strength to endure what is to come.

Balian of Ibelin: And what is to come?

Hospitaler: The reckoning is to come for what was done one hundred years before. The Muslims will never forget. Nor should they.

[the Hospitaler slowly walks away as a second bush several yards from the burning one catches fire. The Hospitaler is nowhere to be seen in the clear and open desert]

~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

And I'd have deserved it.

That seems to be the part These Fucking People don't understand: Cause And Effect.

Well, that and they seem to celebrate being a miserable bastard. This pretty much is the whole Republican bit at this point.

Of course this whole thing at the White House is going to be a soup sandwich and it's going to further diminish America, the Republican Party and yes, ultimately Trump, because it's stupid.

And I'd put money on most of the people going to this bullshit event end up complaining how much it sucks by the time I get up tonight.

Meanwhile in New York City, I'm not sure what the hell is going on but it looked like a whole bunch of people were having a good time last night.

I'd rather have been in NYC last night than in DC today, just from what I saw in this short little TikTok video.

And that's the thing, in an Apocalyptic situation like that in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the safest person to be isn't Auntie who runs the place, or Dr. Dealgood, whose job it is to distract the masses, nor Master/Blaster who actually wielded the power (literally) until he was betrayed and Blaster got killed (and again, there's a message in the fact that it was the smart little guy who actually was in charge.)

No, you wanna be one of the working stiffs pushing the turbines to generate the electricity.

I've written about this before.

This morning, it's probably safer to be the guy who has to clean up the Elephant piss than it is to be the guy who ordered up the damn animal in the first place, because nobody's mad at the cleanup crew.

The thing about America is, really, it's we the Regular People that actually have the power, not all these rich fucks and temporarily politically powerful nincompoops.

Nobody's gonna give a shit about Trump in five years.

We were a serious country once.

Remember that.

Слава Україна!

 [Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

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

Two

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

Trillion (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Two.)

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

...

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.

...

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

So, apparently Elon is a Trillionaire as of yesterday

So, do you have to worship a Demon to get that rich, or is Elon just doing that part because he wants to? Or is that a prerequisite to try to turn this Neuralink bullshit into the Mark Of The Beast??

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

And while I'm at it, what's with these fucking people railing against women in every possible occupation or position, because I'm here to tell you most of the teachers I had in Christian schools were women, and that includes Catholic school and I have the scars on my knuckles to prove it. 

No, I don't give a shit what Joel Webbon thinks about that.

He obviously was never held to the same kinds of educational standards that I was in the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh grades nor subject to any kind of punishment for not meeting whatever standard he had, or he wouldn't be this goddamn stupid and he, along with all these other supposedly "Religious" Men (Keg-Breath, Wilson, etc.) wouldn't talk about women the way they do. Among other things I was raised conservative and religious myself and I was taught that was wrong.

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.

Not that any of these CHUDs seem to know right from wrong, or care in the least, which tells me they're Christian in about the same way that my Ferret is an Astrophysicist.

Which is to say he's not, and if given a book on the subject his main contribution to that field of study would be to try and drag the book under the couch, if for different reasons that Joel might.

This shit isn't Christianity, it's the skeevy borderline-homosexual (but not in a "gay" way, keep that rainbow shit and any potential happiness off me) looks-at-women-as-"dirty" end of "Bro" culture, sacralized. These fucking guys don't read the Bible except to find ways to weaponize it against the people they don't like which is basically everybody, but especially women. These are the guys that used to mock my partner, but then 20 years later one of them tried to take advantage of her for being in a bad situation.

I wrote about that here.

And I wrote about how they treated me for *Checks Notes* liking her once they found out.

I have to say, again, sorry guys. I just liked her better than I liked you. I like women, and I'm glad I'm drawn to strong women, not doormats or manipulative pretend-doormats. If you don't like it, fuck you.

Seems like pretty much everything is "dirty" to these guys except for each other, making money and **Most Importantly** Taking advantage of other people.

Like that's why they all hit that Crypto-Bro stage in about 2020 and don't tell me that's not why.

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."

These guys spent whatever time they spent in Sunday School not paying attention to the subject matter, and they were jerks so they couldn't get the cute little Latina girlfriend in high school so they're all trying to say that James Talarico is going to Hell for having one (and for actually practicing Christianity) as an adult.

Dan Patrick lost any credibility he had with me when he said old people should just die for the economy during COVID-19. You learn things from old people. So, Dan, like my Grandma used to say, be careful or your face might stick like that.

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

And they say all their crap is about Jesus and protecting kids and the unborn, but the truth is it's really just a cover for racism and they don't even seem to mind openly telling your ass exactly that right now.

You watch, after November if not before that (because this could very well blow up before then, and almost certainly will after) all these fucking people will be trying to deny that they said what they said if not also claiming that Charlie Kirk was killed because he wanted the Epstein files released (which I think is an actual possibility but it doesn't absolve these assholes of anything like they'll try and make it sound like.)

Unless they're more enthusiastically telling you it's about Homophobia and/or Transphobia each of which seems to have been sacralized all by itself on These Fucking People's side of the fence.

Like, bitch, nobody is giving up their right to vote, except you, voluntarily because you're a moron who thinks the mousy church-girl act is gonna fool anybody other than your husband, you think because you connive and manipulate, everybody should have to do that. 

No, my partner works for a living, she's an honest, strong woman and she has her own opinions...political and otherwise...and I love her for it. We don't have to agree, although in practice we tend to agree on end-goals but differ on how to get there more than anything.

Neither she, nor the kid, nor myself for that matter would be happy, successful or even survivable in the world these motherfuckers think they wanna create, which falls somewhere between The Handmaid's Tale and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

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.)

But emphasis much more on the cannibalistic psychopaths.

What people like Keg-Breath don't realize is, if you remove the guardrails from what we call "Civilization" that means people rise or fall according to their own ability or ruthlessness, and it'd be an error, generally speaking, to assume that you (rather than some random person you least expect) are That Guy. Or that you would even survive.

Daryl Dixon: Hey kid, what'd you do before all this?

Glenn Rhee: Deliver pizzas. 

Why?

Daryl Dixon: You got some balls for a China man.

Glenn Rhee: I'm Korean.

Daryl Dixon: Whatever.

~From The Walking Dead S1.E4 "Vatos."

Just sayin.'

These Fucking People...all of them...have no idea what the hell they're doing by fucking with things to the degree that they have. Unintended consequences are basically a scientific law of this equation at this point, the way things are going.

When the shit hits the fan (and it will) about half of them, mostly the Proles and shit, are gonna look at Trump as their Lord and Savior and hope they can all lie or shoot their way out of the problem.

How'd that work with COVID-19??

The "Upper" half? They're gonna look at Elon as their "god" and hope the fuck he can pull some kind of a giant Mars-bound spaceship out his ass that'll whisk them away from the consequences of their own actions. But like the people at the end of Don't Look Up, if he has one at all, most of them? 

They're gonna find out they don't have enough money to be on that ship.

And for most of the rest of us? The "Bread and Circuses" routine is wearing out if we ever were the least bit interested in the first place.

Note: I wasn't.

I don't want a government that "Entertains" me, I don't find any of this shit entertaining and I'd really like to get back to the business of living my life without having to worry about what the government is doing or what the President is gonna fuck up this week or the next or worrying if I'm gonna have to protect myself and my family from some deranged racist religious fanatics or crunchy fake-hippies turned MAHA wannabe-SS.

And that's not a hypothetical.

Last week, Elon Musk and the British far-right instigated riots and attacks against immigrants and people of color in Northern Ireland in response to a (non-fatal) stabbing attack involving a Sudanese immigrant, who was arrested and (rightly) charged and is awaiting trial.

Northern Ireland's population is almost 97% White and 80% Christian, so I don't wanna hear it.

Part of it is the usual Ulster Protestant "Loyalist" assholes find some bullshit to riot about every damn year. There's a reason the Police Service of Northern Ireland has armoured vehicles, issues firearms to all its officers and looks more like a typical American police force than a regular British one.

But ya know, since These Fucking People and the American religious right are up each other's asses (and that goes way back) and Christianity among various Northern Ireland Protestants far more often quotes Revelation and has a similar apocalyptic bent to the American kind than to what Christianity throughout most of Europe usually does.

And, frankly, despite the fact that Northern Ireland is overwhelmingly White, it's also ridiculously racist.

Because That is the Point of this stuff as far as people like Dan Patrick, Elon Musk, and the Ulster rioters are concerned. Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

Here's the thing they didn't tell you in the Left Behind books; If there's to be a False Religion of the Beast and a New World Order dedicated to the Antichrist and some Demons or some shit? It won't be "Left Wing." It'll be Far-Right, and it'll be all about protecting the Wealth of some unaccountable Trillionaire like Elon Musk if not Musk himself.

And that's why these fucking idiots want to mythologize everything else, because the pure banal-ass sad-sack Truth of this shit doesn't make for good stories at all...and probably makes for even worse reading than Atlas Shrugged.

Accumulation of Wealth to the point of Stupid, talking about taking away people's Constitutional (among other) rights and abusing one's neighbors aren't "Cool" or even things Decent people do and these motherfuckers actually know it.

That's why they try to create mythological conditions to justify their bullshit.

You can absolutely argue (for or against) "Love Thy Neighbor" because it's a fixed point on a known spectrum of observable behavior with tangible results. That doesn't fit today's "Right" and its clearly post-modern ethic. Besides, it's much It's harder to argue with Aphrodite being born from the sea-foam, or perhaps more likely, Baal riding on clouds

The thing is, Truth is the only floor most of us will ever have to stand on to push back against Power.

If Elon Musk decides he wants to buy himself a country, the main defense the people there will have is the Truth. Trump is just the Golden Idol to distract from that.

Those who claim to be "Conservative" but in reality seek only to profit from licking Power's boots know that.

That's why they wanna turn everything into Ghosts and Goblins and Myths and Legends, so they can lie to their heart's content and there is no Truth.

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

Слава Україна!

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

One

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."

Pronouns (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. One.)

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a Yacht

Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot

You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and...

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive
When you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave

But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and...

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

~Carly Simon, You're So Vain

I saw this last night, Nancy Mace (She/Her, Was/Were. Fuck/You) came in 5th place in the primary for South Carolina governor.

Get lost, bitch.

If I never have to see that stank ass bitch hamming it up in front of a camera again it'll be too soon.

Had this stuck in my head last night:

Hey, hey
Bye, bye, bye (bye, bye)
Bye, bye
(Oh, oh)
I, I'm doing this tonight
You're probably gonna start a fight
I know this can't be right
Hey, baby, come on
I loved you endlessly
When you weren't there for me
So now it's time to leave and make it alone
I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I want to see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye (bye, bye)
Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye (bye, bye)
Don't really want to make it tough
I just wanna tell you that I've had enough
It might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye
You just hit me with the truth
Now, girl, you're more than welcome to
So, give me one good reason
Baby, come on
I've lived for you and me
And now I really come to see
That life would be much better
Once you're gone
I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I want to see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye (bye, bye)
Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye (bye, bye)
Don't really want to make it tough
I just wanna tell you that I've had enough
It might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye. ~NSYNC, Bye Bye Bye.

I woke up early and something hit me while I was making something to eat this morning. You know what "Pronouns"(keeping in mind that the word is pretty much always said with a sneer by a certain kind of "Conservative" these days?

I/Me.

There's a reason everything else is a slur, or all but that, or said with a sneer out of sheer homophobia and transphobia.

Other people don't really exist to these motherfuckers, not even people they interact with and see every damn day. That's the only reason they can talk the kind of shit that they do about people like James Talarico. Sorry, but I've seen the guy and absolutely nothing about the dude says "Weird Shit" in any way at all. I saw the picture of him and his girlfriend, hell I used it as a header for a previous post. If a Golden Retriever could take a human form it'd be him.

But These Fucking People are Solipsistic Narcissists.

Insofar as they think about something like the Bible at all, they think it's about them or want to make it be so. Other people do not really exist, except (maybe) as their toys.

By definition, in terms of the conservative Christianity I was taught (not that they ever bother to follow even that) the Self is always going to be on the Throne with these fucking people.

And war broke out in heaven Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. ~Revelation 12:7-9

There is no God, unless its Them (Oops, I used a pronoun, my bad, but "Them" in this case being the singular use of the word, not "Them" as a group."

And they don't really care who else's dreams or lives they fuck with in the process of their seeking never-ending self-glorification and self-satisfaction, either...but they're terrified of being seen that way (really, of being seen in any way traditionally seen in a negative social light) so then they try to redefine every damn thing so it looks like them.

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

But we live in a world today defined not by legends or myths, but by facts.

You can only bend reality so far before it snaps back hard and smacks you in the nuts. These fucking people want to turn everything into mythology because deep down they know how they'd feel if some unaccountable person was fucking with their career or dreams.

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.)

But they can't face that, won't name it, and sure as fuck won't empathize when it happens to somebody else.

Especially if they're the unaccountable petty bureaucrat stamping the form. 

There was a time when most conservatives hated State Power for exactly those kinds of reasons.

And by the way, These Fucking People have spread the "Meme" of being a bad guy in politics as being beneficial  for one's goals such that Democrats have adopted the idea too. 

I knew Platner was gonna win the Democratic primary in Maine for exactly that reason.

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.

But then they convinced themselves that, somehow, they would be the only ones ever wielding the power, and too many Democrats, high off watching too many episodes of The West Wing and shit, let them get away with it for too long so it all went downhill from there. Taking the high road didn't work.

And now these fucking people are too high on the smell of their own shit to see it's already gone sideways. 

People didn't take the bait of ICE and all that. So, It's a lot less likely to end up with this bullshit flaming out in a violent civil war at this point, I think, than it is for it to end in a Fyre Festival or Woodstock 99 type of collapse or for that matter, a Berlin Wall 1989 type scenario where all the CHUDs end up standing around confused with rifles slung while regular people take down their walls with sledgehammers and shit just because everybody got sick of it all and they bungled the fuck out of the response. Not just that, but most narcissists aren't great with responsibility, especially when their name ending up attached to something that went badly might have real consequences for them personally.

And these idiots are mostly being undone by public mockery and their own incompetence.

But at the same time they're hoping they can collapse things enough that (for example) they can just break off somewhere like, say, Florida as their own most Bananas of Banana Republics and nobody will care. They might even be right about that.

Truth is, most of these fucking people simply don't care if not caring will get them a 30-year career at the public trough for doing nothing but faking concern, insider trading and spewing disingenuous horseshit. 

It doesn't matter where they're the politician or the religious bullshitter spewing whatever crap, only that they get to be that person and have whatever wealth without work such a position gets them.

That's why they want to make everything into mythology. You can argue reality, actual religion or theology to a great extent, science, what's actually happening...all of those things involve shared reference points. You can only really lie about XYZ until it punches somebody in the nose. I mean, sure, some people will always be some kind of committed ideologue, partisan fanatic or shitty little hater...but most of us can't do that forever, it gets old, it becomes "not fun" anymore, the spell breaks, it wears out.

You cannot argue Athena springing forth fully armed and grown from the cleaved head of Zeus.

It's not even that kind of a story.

And that's what they're trying to turn "Conservative" ideology into now. Yes, they'll dispense with Christianity entirely on the way out the door and most of the Evangelicals will absolutely follow them. It's not the Mark Of The Beast when WE do it.

(Yes, Yes, It Is.)

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

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

Last Post

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."