...
- [The Mandalorian, the Child, IG-11, Greef Karga, and Cara Dune enter the Mandalorian covert on Nevarro, but Mando stops at seeing a pile of Mandalorian armor pieces]
- Cara Dune: We should go.
- Mando: You go. Take the ship. I can't leave it this way. [to Greef] Did you know about this? Is this the work of your bounty hunters?
- Greef Karga: No. When you left the system and took the prize, the fighting ended and the hunters just melted away. You know how it is. They're mercenaries. They're not zealots.
- Mando: [confronts Greef] Did you do this? DID YOU?!
- Karga: No!
- Armorer: It was not his fault. We revealed ourselves. We knew what could happen if we left the covert. [puts a piece of armor from the pile onto a floating cart] The Imperials arrived shortly thereafter. This is what resulted.
- Mando: Did any survive?
- Armorer: I hope so. Some may have escaped off-world.
- Mando: Come with us.
- Armorer: No. I will not abandon this place until I have salvaged what remains [Goes to the forge, and the others see her melt down armor pieces] Show me the one whose safety deemed such destruction.
- Mando: [IG-11 reveals the Child] This is the one.
- Armorer: This is the one you hunted, then saved?
- Mando: Yes. The one that saved me as well.
- Armorer: From the Mud-horn?
- Mando: Yes.
- Armorer: It looks helpless.
- Mando: It's injured, but it is not helpless. Its species can move objects with its mind.
- Armorer: [keeps working] I know of such things. The songs of eons past tell of battles between Mandalore the Great and an order of sorcerers called "Jedi" that fought with such powers.
- Mando: It is an enemy?
- Armorer: No. It's kind were enemies, but this individual is not.
- Mando: What is it?
- Armorer: It is a foundling. By Creed, it is in your care.
- Mando: You wish me to train this thing?
- Armorer: It is too weak. It would die. You have no choice. You must reunite it with its own kind.
- Mando: Where?
- Armorer: This, you must determine.
- Mando: You expect me to search the galaxy for the home of this creature and deliver it to a race of enemy sorcerers?
- Armorer: This is the Way.
- ~From the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, S1.E8 "Redemption"
Andrew Tate, whining about being in prison, where he (Unlike almost everybody else in prison) is apparently still allowed unfettered access to social media, even if it's only for a few minutes a day. I mean, seriously, you can't Tweet from a random public-access computer without entering a code to authenticate on your phone, or at least you couldn't in 2023 when I left, so I know somebody somewhere is letting his ass have access to a Smartphone. Think about that, for a second.
Think about the shit These Fucking People are doing, out in the open.
I mean, I'm pretty sure if I posted on social media about abusing my romantic partner? Well, first off she'd hit me right back and then call the cops and still pull off her best "I'm just a girl" cry-cry energy when they got there, so there's that. I've seen her do this over much less. Hell, she's gotten me with it. My partner is a bitch and I love her for it.So yeah, It'd very quickly end up as evidence in a criminal case and I'd be rather less privileged than Andrew Tate is in jail.
But my partner is a rather different sort of "Bitch" than people like Andrew Tate, and not the kind of person to be or want to be anyone's bitch.
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.)
The life, hell, the world these fucking people want is best described as nasty, brutish and short.
I don't want people like my partner or the kiddo to have to live in that shit.
And then These Fucking People have the balls to be surprised that only White Evangelical Republicans continue to support this bullshit in significant numbers??
(And there's enough of them to pretty much assure that 30% of the country still supports Trump. I want you to stop and think about that for a second. And those that remain are getting worse.)
What's in it for anybody else, at this point??Fuck, what the fuck is in it for the White Evangelical Republicans??
Not only Trump but a boatload of his enablers pretty much (and pretty openly) want everybody else to have to be their bitches and even from that, they want to be able to discard you at will.
(As Andrew Tate is currently finding out.)
The thing that scares me is 34% of America seems to want this, yes, use and discard me, Daddy.
It's a vast, dangerous and scary world out there, and it's even more so if you're stupid, especially if you're stupid on purpose either out of desire to manipulate others, malice, or some kind of bullshit weaponized incompetence.
And the bubbles of protection that people like Andrew Tate, Donald Trump and all the hyper-Calvinist assholes that people like Tia Levings write about would not...could not...exist without the enabling, support and/or willful ignorance of others.
Even in prison. Hell, especially in those kind of environments.
And eventually, especially in any situation where the average person gets any kind of a say or there's any kind of collapse of social systems, that carefully-constructed bubble can pop.
These fucking people have pretty much set it up so it's either going to be one or the other.
[After Rick has beaten down Merle]
- Merle Dixon: Who the hell are you, man?!
- Rick Grimes: Officer Friendly. Look here, Merle. Things are different now. There are no n****rs anymore. No dumb-as-shit, inbred white-trash fools either. Only dark meat and white meat. There's us and the dead. We survive this by pulling together, not apart.
- Merle Dixon: Screw you, man.
- Rick Grimes: I can see you make a habit of missing the point.
- Merle Dixon: Yeah? Well, screw you twice.
- Rick Grimes: Ought to be more polite to a man with a gun. [cocks gun] Only common sense.
- Merle Dixon: You wouldn't. You're a cop.
- Rick Grimes: All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son. Anybody that gets in the way of that is gonna lose. I'll give you a moment to think about that.
- ~From The Walking Dead, S1.E2 "Guts."
Fuck up enough, and yes, eventually the whole Universe is out to get you.
Andrew Tate is in the Secure Housing Unit (SHU) because, since he's a famous person who's publicly known to have done some wrong shit, Corrections Officers know they couldn't protect him from the regular-people regular prison population and its regular-people morals (Such as they exist in prison.)It's a whole vast and complicated universe out there. Strip out the enablers of sexual assault and worse that currently populate our government, the real world comes surging in on these assholes.
And they know it.
And they know, trust me they KNOW that with only White Evangelical Republicans still supporting them (and I suppose you could throw in the Israeli government at this point but it has the same basic problem) they're going down, and probably sooner and not later.
Short of successfully breaking off a piece of America for themselves, and populating it exclusively with White Evangelicals, they're screwed (and that carries it's own Mega-Fuck-Ton of risk.)
China won't help. Hell, China is profiting from the fact that Republicans won't take the shovel away from Trump at this point, but Trump is too erratic and threatens the arrangements China has (in reality) spent about 25 years building, although he probably (previously, anyway) accelerated the process for them by about 50 years.
Russia can't help, they're not in a position to fuel their own civilian economy right now and supporting their army in the field is very, very shortly going to be downstream of that.
The Middle East? Trump lit that shit on fire. I doubt the Emirs and Sheiks and shit would give his ass the time of day if shit goes down.
"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press.
Hell, Tim Pool is claiming to have switched sides on the whole Ukraine thing.If Putin goes down, Trump goes down.
You watch and see if he doesn't.
(I rather suspect Putin has build this in to any scenario in which he falls, that there will be some kind of automatic and likely electronic release of data to betray all his enablers who were supposed to keep this from happening, and they all probably know this.)
Actually, I suspect Orban going down was the first domino in that chain to fall. And a lot of these enablers and internet CHUDs are just mercenary ghouls. As are a lot of the billionaires, a lot of whom claimed to be liberals 10-15 years ago.
Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)
If this goes how I think it's gonna go, the shoe is pretty soon gonna be on the other foot for these motherfuckers.It's like the Irish guy in Titanic said, go the same way as the rats are going.
Hell if this keeps up, Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries might have to actually do something.
People are tired of all the crap.
I went out to my Mom's house this week, and along the one stretch where all the Trump signs used to be there's only one left, and it's kind of hidden.
Stuff like that says more to me than any polling that anybody digs up. Around here even most of the MAGA's are trying to hide being or having been MAGA. I live in Northern Michigan.
The fact that these fuckers are trying to dig up using "Communism" as a slur/smear also tells me things must be pretty bad for them.
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan
Communism as a threat doesn't (and rightly shouldn't) have any meaning to anybody any younger than I am.
Judgment is coming, and they know it, or they wouldn't be acting like this.
Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
You either believe in freedom or you don't, and you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.
The sad part here is all anybody has to do is not give up and be somebody's bitch, and that's too much work for a third of America.
Think about that, too.
Слава Україна!
When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”
Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”
“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”
He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”
Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”
He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”
He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”
Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”
He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”
When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
~Genesis 18:16-33
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.
And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept...for there were no more worlds to conquer. Benefits of a classical education. ~Hans Gruber, from the film Die Hard.