The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed (Four.)

Ripley: Ash, can you hear me? Ash?!

Ash: Yes, I can hear you.

Ripley: What was your special order?

Ash: You read it. I thought it was clear.

Ripley: What was it?

Ash: Bring back lifeform. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded.

Parker: You and the damn company. What about our lives, you son of a bitch?!

Ash: I repeat: all other priorities are rescinded.

Ripley: How do we kill it, Ash? There's got to be a way of killing it. How – how do we do it?

Ash: You can't.

Parker: That's bullshit.

Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

Lambert: You admire it.

Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor...unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

Parker: Look, I don't... I've heard enough of this, and I'm asking you to pull the plug.

[Ripley moves to turn Ash off, but he interrupts]

Ash: Last word.

Ripley: What?

Ash: I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies. [smiles]

Ripley: [turns Ash off] We're gonna blow up the ship. We'll take our chances, and blow up the ship. ~From the film Alien.

I saw this when I got home this morning.

Somebody pointed out that the same fucking people who 20 or 30 years ago were ranting about the Antichrist publicly executing people are *Checks Notes* all excited about an upcoming public execution arranged by Keg-Breath and Trump.

And I'll note that last night I saw this, a dude claiming to be "married" to his AI-girlfriend that he created himself.

Like that's not about a million levels of creepy. Dude has an AI daughter-wife?

And how does that work when it's also the same people who've spent decades ranting about the Mark Of The Beast and the ungodliness of too much reliance on technology??

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

I mean, first off it's pretty much Babylon and the Mark Of The Beast all in one, isn't it??

Second, not to be crude or anything but I'm confused as to the, uh, physical and other mechanics of this. Generally speaking one gets a girlfriend and later on, wife in order to not end up polishing one's own little red rocket. Come on, dude.

Sorry but I know my partner is real, we provide each other companionship and support. Girlfriend.Exe isn't going to do that. And there's probably a subscription you have to pay! 

It's not just that I don't think I could do this shit...I can't imagine why anybody would want to.

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

Oh, right.

It's the same people who "Traditionally" think ideas are better than people anyway, who also historically crave The Oblivion out of a perverse philosophical desire for "Purity" and who can generally be trusted to find the least humane solution to about any problem.

And they'll usually provide Religion as an excuse.

No, fuck that. 

These motherfuckers just want to kill people, or try to intimidate the public. Whatever they think will work, if they can't hypnotize everybody into voting Republican.

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, the pendulum swings as Bush speaks in a curious monotone, Silence.]

"Please clap."

[The Crowd bursts into thunderous applause.]

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

Well, it's not working. 

Never mind the Ten Commandments or anything else, political power is more important, or some such bullshit. 

Fuck, is these people's idea of "Heaven" the Nine Hells of Baator with its endless hierarchies of Devils right out of Dungeons & Dragons?? I kind of feel like it's exactly that. That's what these assholes want.

And if they can't have it, they desire Oblivion...not only for themselves but for everybody else. It's a Death Cult.

Some of us don't wanna live in that kind of Multiverse. No, Too Bad, Fuck You.

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

Unless of course you're Benny Johnson, he doesn't get the Death Cult aesthetic, he gets Nero-as-theater-kid because "Fuck You, That's Why."

While wearing a "The Left Can't Meme" T-shirt??

Bitch, if we've learned anything from the war in Iran it's that the Right can't FIGHT.

Not without the deck completely pre-stacked in their favor. And ya know? I think that's a little more important.

And again, if they can't have that totalitarian control...and get everybody else to roll over for it...they don't want anybody to have anything at all, they'd rather blow up the Universe than not imagine themselves as gods.

It's not just that they aren't that, or can't be it...it's that These Fucking People don't deserve anything of the sort. They deserve the kind of Ass Whuppin that is literally the primordial example of what an Ass Whuppin is.

No small part of these fucking people's problem is that while they were hoarding Political Power like the little scratchy dude from Ice Age hoarding nuts, the world changed, and they didn't even notice.

And the way American culture and society are structured, they can't change it back. There's nothing to change it back to. The past is gone.

I'm tired of this bullshit. The question is, why aren't you??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

It's really that simple.

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed.

Слава Україна!

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

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

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

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

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Three

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed (Three.)

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back. ~Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll.

...

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

...

Hawkeye: My father's people say that at the birth of the sun and of his brother the moon, their mother died. So the sun gave to the earth her body, from which was to spring all life. And he drew forth from her breast the stars, and the stars he threw into the night sky to remind him of her soul. So there's the Cameron's monument. My folks' too, I guess.

Cora Munro: You are right, Mr. Poe. We do not understand what is happening here. And it's not as I imagined it would be, thinking of it in Boston and in London...

Hawkeye: Sorry to disappoint you.

Cora Munro: No, on the contrary. It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been. 

~From the film The Last Of The Mohicans.

I saw this shit yesterday.

A whole bunch of Trump supporters being interviewed, no fucking idea what's going on, not a goddamn clue what's happening in the world. But oh boy, you betcha, they're sure Trump's going to fix it! I'm sorry, but I've never been capable of fitting my head that far up my own ass.

There's nothing conservative about any of this bullshit.

I'm a conservative. These fucking people are just idiots.

Twenty years ago, when my partner and I were just a couple of third-shift food service workers, part of the same gaming group, and the sort of friends who were so close everybody else assumed we were a couple before we did...we had intense, passionate arguments about politics, and we were in fact mostly representing different parts of the same side. I was more old-school Reaganite, she was more Bush 43 Neoconservative. As the Republican Party lost me...a process well underway at that point, the arguments just got more interesting. But, we worked with opinionated, very smart people for the most part. You had to keep up or you didn't last very long. Lots of 'em didn't.

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, you can hear the braincells draining from the crowd, Silence.]

"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

By the time I left that place a bit over five years ago now...it wasn't that way anymore.

As a custodian, I worked with this guy, let's call him Jim.

Jim was a Trump Supporter, Capital T, Capital S, and by his own admission, no fucking idea why. I mean, not that I'm interested in being fair to this ass-clown but in fairness to him, he didn't seem to have any kind of idea about anything else either. No military service, no life experience or work-experience outside of jobs like the one he had, cleaning kitchen equipment and mopping floors. Never seemed to be or said anything religious either. He'd been a janitor at Dow Chemical in Midland or somewhere like that. 

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

You know, the kind of $20-an-hour-for-grunt-work jobs that pretty much died off in the 1990's...until they outsourced the job to Service Master and he'd mucked around with bullshit jobs ever since. The one thing he had that I ever saw was a nice 1995 Chevy Silverado extended-cab 4x4, just a slight update on the red truck I'd had. That shit was immaculate. That was about the only good point this fool had.

Dude had pretty much spent 40 years using his head for a hat-rack. In his defense he never appeared to be or said anything overtly racist. And unlike (for example) my partner as she was when we met, he was not obviously political except for a general dislike of liberals and his media choices. He didn't really argue. If you had knowledge about something, dude would stand there, let you talk and basically let that shit go in one ear and out the other. He was the last known addition to the crew on my custodial shift that would stare at the TV when FOX News was on it, zombie-eyed like ADHD kids binging cartoons.

It was one thing when it was my ex-wife's young son doing that. It's quite another when it's a 60-year-old man.

I found it massively creepy.

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

So one day, I straight up asked him WHY he supported Trump. He thought about it for a second, like visibly crunched...I don't know, chicken bones, numbers, old stale cornflakes, a tuna can, various janky porn films he bought on VHS when they were cheap...I don't know, whatever was in that empty-ass head...and came back up with "I like the shit he says. I don't know, I'm a dumbass or something."

Hey, at least he was honest. That was a statement I never saw anything to ever contradict it.

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.

By contrast, my partner...along with most of the conservatives I've ever known who ever gave their beliefs or anything else any thought at all...fucking hates Trump, if for slightly different reasons.

And it got worse after dealing with the leech MAGA relatives.

Deservedly so.

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)

The thing is, a lot of these fucking people were not like us. 

We were expected to know stuff, to learn things, to read books and stuff like that. It wasn't a choice. I had a teacher in Elementary school. Mrs. Nitz from rural Iowa, a gray-haired old lady who'd retired from teaching there, moved to Southern California and started teaching again. There was a whole massive shit-ton of books that later became films like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and Where the Wild Things Are that I knew as books first because we read them in her class, with her reading out loud and making sure we followed along. 

There were quizzes and shit with smart-ass trick-questions.

My partner? Different books, different location, similar scenarios. Same result, too. Her stuff, running a little later than mine, is a little heavier on 1990's Disney and janky aughts vampire fiction. But in both of our cases, imagination was encouraged, intelligence expected, you had to read and understand the material.

Hell, Trump doesn't do that.

We grew up with expectations of diversity and progress, with the idea that the world should get better, not worse.

I for one always expected to live in a country that wanted to make something more than money, internet content, political power or some bullshit like that.

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.

We, like our Founders and a lot of people down through this country's history, understood knowledge is also power and you have to be at least a little bit smart to remain free...and then you have to do something with it.

Today's Republican Party doesn't want to do anything but roll back the clock to something approaching the Dark Ages, immiserate everybody else and then act like misery is some kind of bullshit religious duty, and then sit on its ass collecting checks and letting *Checks Notes* Donald Trump do its thinking and work for it, and their voter base isn't much better. And Republicans somehow thought that everybody else would trade their life and standard of living for Republican BS, perversion and shareholder value they never get any of. I couldn't do it.

Now? Republicans are in panic-mode because for all their attempts at cheating and trying to put their whole ass on the scale, the numbers are still terrible and it looks like the midterms are going to be a Republican bloodbath.

Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."

Whatever, you asked for it, FAFO.

Trump is pulling crowds of a few hundred where he used to get thousands. He's campaigned everywhere from Bull Shit, Oklahoma to (Wait, what?) Syracuse, New York. Now, having been to Syracuse I'm not exactly sure what even Trump thought he was gonna accomplish by going there. Convenience, maybe? There's an Air National Guard base in that city which I suppose made security and transport easier. But it's a Blue freaking area in a Blue freaking state.

The crowds against are bigger than the crowds for him.

The thing Republicans forgot is it's not just American politics that's small-D democratic, it's American culture that'll try to put almost anything to a vote...almost to a ridiculous degree. Even when it's something like "Other people exist" or "Science is real" that shouldn't be up for debate. Republicans know this and have been happy to exploit it. Then they decided to overplay their hand and shit all over the American people and the world.

And they're panicking now that the voting public seems intent on saying "Fuck All That."

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 along the way they assumed everybody else as as cynical and murderous and selfish as they were. No, most of us have people and things we care about.

Then they trusted in Political Cultism and Trump to save them, "Praying" that the Atheism-minus-one mentality of the American Evangelical...a belief system so deeply cynical that anything you can't see or indeed anything outside of what the Preacher said last Sunday or what they saw on NEWSMAX last night can be argued as not real...and yet then they wanna turn around and tell you to have "faith" in "God?"

For people that are so religious, they sure don't seem to believe in any Higher Power than themselves. Maybe when your voters have unseasoned mashed potatoes for brains and will believe about anything, you can do that. But we ain't all that way.

It's nonsense.

And I'd argue that as a result of this bullshit...which starts in churches with preachers that are little more than Zampolits for the Republican Party...that America is an increasingly and violently Atheistic and Materialistic country. I'd argue as much or more so as the old Soviet Union ever was. In fact, it's rather evident that unfettered Capitalism has done everything to us that Republicans ever accused Communism of. I was wrong, even Trump couldn't overcome Ayn Rand at being Republican Jesus.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

This mess is completely spiritually empty, and it's gradually emptying our lives of material things, also. America is being Oligarch-raided just like the Soviet Union was in 1990. They're being too obvious about it.

They're being too obvious in hoping that most American people, like Russians, will just wallow in alcohol and miserable bastardy and accept this bullshit. It's not an accident a lot of the media elites are pretty much trying to talk to Americans like we're Russian peasants.

Fuck You, No. I've heard how things went over there, even got to see a little of it in the military. And in Bosnia I saw a lot more of the mess These Fucking People made of Eastern Europe. That's what Trump wants for America.

Like I said during COVID-19, the Republican ideal of the Future is the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a Mall.

That's Trump's idea of "Great Again."

The hell with that.

People are tired of it.

And we're going to vote the fuckers out. 

God forbid they try anything stupid. The country is going to explode if they do.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed.

Слава Україна!

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

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

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

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

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Two

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

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.

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed (Two.)

 Proctor: Sir, Mahoney says this restaurant has the best salad bar in town. [They're walking down an alley, still in their police uniforms.]

Harris: Well, it damn sure better have! 

[Inside, they walk through curtains of beads and past a Bud Light neon sign.]

Harris: Proctor, I don't see a salad bar. 

Proctor: [Noticing the sign "The Blue Oyster."] Look, sir, maybe they serve seafood. 

Harris: [Slowly realizing he's in a gay bar] That's not funny, you idiot! [To Leatherman] What are you looking at, you PECKERHEAD?! 

Leatherman: Nice uniform, makes me wish I'd worn my sailor outfit. 

Harris: I'm getting out of here! Move it! Move it! [Starts to push through the crowd of gay men.]

*El Bimbo begins to play*

Harris: [Being forced to dance with Leatherman] Proctor! 

Proctor: I don't think cutting in is allowed, Sir. 

Proctor: [Being noticed by second Leatherman] Nice collar!

~From Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol

...

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

Apparently, Republicans are getting desperate.

Weirdly so, and even in Texas. Like, apparently Trump thinks he's Davy Crockett now??

I'm old, I remember the old Disney Davy Crockett movie where the climactic scene was the fight at the Alamo. 

It wasn't some great victory, everybody died. I saw the movie and listened to the LP version enough times to still remember a fair bit of the lines all this time later.

It was the battle of Scarif from Rogue One, but for the Mexican War.

That's about the most sympathetic view I can manage. And it's really not deserved.

And if we're being honest, I'll take Disney now over Disney when the Alamo movie got made, or even in the late 1970's and early 1980's when I was watching that crap, all day and twice on Sundays.

Honestly, to me a Coonskin Cap was only ever the sort of weird of junk somebody might buy at a place like Knott's Berry Farm.

[Jyn proposes to the Alliance Council a raid on Scarif to get the Death Star plans, but runs into objections]

Tynnra Pamlo: If the Empire has this kind of power, what chance do we have?

Jyn Erso: What chance do we have? The question is what choice? Run? Hide? Plead for mercy? Scatter your forces? You give way to an enemy this evil with this much power and you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission. [Rebel personnel grumble in agreement] The time to fight is now! Every moment you waste is another step closer to the ashes of Jedha. ~From the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I hate to sound sympathetic to that garbage, but at least back in those days conservatism had something that looked like standards. But then I'm the kind of guy who inwardly shuddered in 2000 when people said they'd rather have a beer with George W. Bush. That was never the sort of trait I gave a damn about in a leader.

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence, sound of the headboard of a bed repeatedly hitting a wall somewhere. Sheepish shrug. Silence.]

"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

And again, I'd like to point out that, right or wrong...there's no way somebody like Scott Pressler (the openly gay MAGA activist) would ever have been allowed within 100 yards of a Republican Speaker Of The House at any point in the conservatism I was raised with. In fact he'd pretty much have been told to go be a liberal or something because Republicans in them days wouldn't have wanted him.

Of course, that was (so far as I know, anyway) before GOP conventions were hives of illicit gay sex. Of course now my only objection to that is, it's 2026, why not just be open about it and accept yourself?? 

I mean so far as I'm concerned that's about the only thing Scott Pressler gets right.

But I still find it more than a little weird that Mike Johnson, of all people, is trying to claim he's some sort of a "secret weapon."

Not least because more than one local GOP gathering wouldn't let Scott in the door.

We're eventually going to find out that all these freaks are in the Epstein files, aren't we?

And that the rot goes way further down than we expect.

It's a big enough problem that even with all their power they can't hide it.

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

And honestly, it's really starting to seem like they'd rather not since these assholes are trying to "Normalize" everything from the Cornell 7 to outright pedophilia, and they have the balls to be surprised that nobody's cool with this.

I have a partner and a kid, of course I'm gonna have a problem with that crap.

A lot of these freaks seem like they'd rather flaunt their perversions and Sin openly, because they think of that as some kind of sign of political power or some shit. 

Please, nobody tell them how that kind of thing historically works out...especially in societies where a lot of people are religious. I'd like it to be a surprise, if that's OK.

But then, a weirdly out-of-touch detachment from basic reality or conventional morality seems to be the price of admission to the GOP these days. 

It's bad enough that Karl Rove, you know...the guy who originally pitched exactly that like it was some sort of a flex...is voting for the Democrats now.

Welcome to the Revolution, Karl.

Way too many of these fucking people never actually gave a damn about any of the things they said they did.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed.

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

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