[Don't] Send Me (Scenes From The Fall, Ten.)

[After beating a US Cavalryman nearly to death for hitting Newt, he climbs on his horse and looks at the horrified townspeople] I hate rude behavior in a man. I won't tolerate it. ~Woodrow Call, from the Lonesome Dove miniseries.

...

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:


“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

He said, “Go and tell His people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined
and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
and the fields ruined and ravaged, 

until the Lord has sent everyone far away
and the land is utterly forsaken.
And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”

~Isaiah chapter 6 (New International Version.)

I saw this yesterday.

Keg-Breath, giving a particularly weird speech at Quantico, talking about "The Faith of Jerusalem, the Philosophy of Athens and the Power of Rome" Fun fact; Not one of those places or times has one goddamn thing to do with the "Freedom of Philadelphia in 1776." Rome ceased to be a Republic. America created the modern concept.

This ideological clown has about as much understanding of history or philosophy as he does of Cowboys, which is to say not much at all. Like, didn't this dude ever see Deadwood or Lonesome Dove??

These idiots consistently have the understanding of everything that one might attribute to a snotty 13-year-old boy who thinks he knows All Truth cuz his balls dropped. Yeah, I remember being that age, part of that time we were staying with my grandparents and I got a lot of ass whuppins that year because my Grandma Thompson absolutely wasn't having it. 

Her favorite line was "I'm gonna beat you all the way to Escanaba."

Most people grow out of this crap. Most of us have to.

Al Swearengen: Let me say this once in your hearing. For outright stupidity, the whole fuckin' trial concept goes shoulder to shoulder with that cocksucker Custer's thinkin' when he headed for that ridge.

Cy Tolliver: It's got its disadvantages.

Al Swearengen: We’re illegal. Our whole goal is to get annexed to the United fuckin' States. We start holdin' trials, what's to keep the United States fuckin' Congress from sayin' "Oh, excuse us, we didn't realize you were a fuckin' sovereign community and nation out there. Where's your cocksucker's flag? Where's your fuckin’ navy or the like? Maybe when we make our treaty with the Sioux, we should treat you people like renegade fuckin' Indians. Deny your fuckin' gold and property claims. And hand everything over instead to our ne'er-do-well cousins and brothers-in-law."

Cy Tolliver: That we don't want.

~From Deadwood, S1.E5 "The Trial Of Jack McCall."

At least back in my day, you did. If you didn't, painful Darwinian processes tended to ensue until you did. I was raised with a very simple principle; Stupid should hurt. Now, by that age my Mom had given up on the ass whuppin.' My Grandma, not so much.

I'm tired of these fucking idiots, I'm tired of their fake religiosity, I'm tired of them trying to force their bullshit Christian Nationalism on the rest of us, I'm tired of the way they treat women, and I'm tired of them running this country into the fucking ground.

I'm tired of these idiot narcissists, period.

I have a church background, I used to be a conservative Republican. I'm a veteran, Hell I even considered ministry myself, and you know what?? I didn't go for it because I didn't want to be responsible for somebody else's soul. I sure as hell never thought I had some kind of a right to "Make the rules" for other people.

And I wouldn't want to if I did.

Among other things, you get Saved or not by what you believe or what you do, not what you make other people do or not.

Other people are *Checks Notes* Other people...what are you doing??

Everybody has charge over their own Souls. Literally the entire framework of American Christianity as I was taught that is dependent on Belief being a free choice; It's literally why Baptism as an adult is even a thing.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: ~Matthew 3:11

If you go to most of those countries like Denmark or the UK where everybody is or used to be a registered member of the national Church at Birth or Infant Baptism...hardly anybody goes to church and all of those countries are very secular. And even in America, there sure as hell ain't very many Calvinists in originally-Puritan Massachusetts.

Religious societies ain't all they're supposedly cracked up to be. Even Jesus knew that.

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)

Among other things, I was taught Christians should expect society to be against them, and eventual persecution; 

Which is true even here, IF you actually follow Jesus and not the worldly abomination of Christ-less American Evangelicalism.

Trump's America can't decide if it wants to be Babylon or Sodom, and it's sure as hell failing to be Rome. Among other things, the secret sauce to Rome's success was making people want to become Romanized. The only thing I'm really sure the Republican Closetocracy wants is to bring back the LGBT culture of ancient Rome. Mind you, even in Rome, consent was a thing (At least for free Men.) There were laws about this. The Romans just invented whole classes of people to which consent didn't apply and the Law fell back in the face of Roman custom.

[Referring to the Hat Creek Cattle Company sign]

Woodrow Call: And if that ain't bad enough you got all them Greek words on there, too.

Gus McCrae: I told you Woodrow, a long time ago it ain't Greek, it's Latin.

Woodrow Call: Well what does it say in Latin? [Gus blusters some gibberish] For all you know it invites people to rob us.

Gus McCrae: Well the first man comes along that can read Latin is welcome to rob us, far as I'm concerned. I'd like a chance to shoot at an educated man once in my life.

~From the Lonesome Dove miniseries.

And I'd argue These Fucking People's aspirations for how to treat women are as bad as that, or worse.

I have a partner and a kid to think about. I don't want the world we have to live in to be like that for their sake.

My partner is strong and tough and very independent, and she wouldn't do well in the kind of world these CHUDs think they want. 

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."

The Kid is the same way. She's had a rough life, but still manages to be a decent person. She sure as hell doesn't deserve any of this fucking crap.

And neither one of them would permit me to be a raging dickbrain like a whole bunch of these guys trying to defend the Cornell 7.

That's just life. I've always been held to standards; Why aren't these other guys??

Among other things, speaking as a veteran here if I'd have come into work talking like Keg-Breath does, my LT probably would have had me drug tested.

Son, I'm just gonna tell you this one time. You want to keep working here? Stay off the drugs.

~Mr. McDowell, Coming To America

And I'm old enough to remember when a sexual abuse scandal, or a consenting adult sex scandal could END a church, or a political career or even someone's employability in any kind of a real job and land motherfuckers in jail.

It's really that simple to me.

And the thing with guys like Keg-Breath is, if someone really did "Send Them" into the kind of religious war they yank their cranks to the idea of, it's very likely he'd forget what he was doing, drop his rifle and his pants, grab his junk and go charging at the enemy. Then he'd trip himself up, faceplant, get captured and wonder why nobody on his own "side" wanted him repatriated in the next POW swap. Don't send Pete.

The motherfucker jerks off to the idea of taking a modern military in a modern civilization and turning it into a mob of Christian Nationalist killers little different from the Taliban, and he does it for no better reason than constant overcompensation for his own failures, insecurities, lies and self-deceptions.

I mean for fuck's sake we're losing the war.

And These Fucking People don't care as long as they get to showboat with all their idiotic bigotry, bullshit and religiosity.

And as long as these monsters are in power we're gonna lose and we're gonna keep losing until we get rid of them.

Because among other things they started by missing the point of America, along with damn near everything else.

In life you have to do a lot of things you don't fucking want to do. Many times, that's what the fuck life is... one vile fucking task after another. But don't get aggravated... then the enemy has you by the short hairs. ~Al Swearingen, Deadwood.

The whole purpose of America is that you are not what you are born as, but what you have it in yourself to become. I learned this in Christian schools.

They're seeing that consent for their horseshit is being withdrawn in real time and they're deciding to half-ass try and push forward anyway. Back in the Wild West days, that was a good way to get shot.

It's going to come down to a fight.

It's going to end badly and they're gonna lose.

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[Jim West arrives at Loveless' party]

Dr. Arliss Loveless: Mr. West...how nice of you to join us tonight and add COLOR to these monochromatic proceedings.

Jim West: Well, when a fella comes back from the dead, I find that an occasion to STAND UP and be counted.

Loveless: Ms. East informs me that you expected to see Gen. McGrath here. Well, I knew him years ago, but I haven't seen him in a COON'S age.

West: Well, I can see where it would be difficult for a man of your stature to keep in touch with even HALF the people you know.

Loveless: Well, perhaps the lovely Ms. East will keep you from being a SLAVE to your disappointment.

West: Well, you know beautiful women; they encourage you one minute, then CUT THE LEGS out from under you the next.

Loveless: ...Quite.

~From the film Wild Wild West.

Nine

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.

Repent (Scenes From The Fall, Nine.)

I am not the god of war, Diana, I am the god of truth. Mankind stole this world from us. They ruined it, day by day. And I, the only one wise enough to see it, was left too weak to stop them. All these years, I have struggled alone, whispering into their ears. Ideas, inspiration for formulas, weapons... but I don't make them use them. They start these wars on their own. All I do is orchestrate an armistice I know they cannot keep, in the hope they will destroy themselves. But it has never been enough... until you. When you first arrived, I was going to crush you. But I knew that if only you could see what the other gods could not, then you would join me, and with our powers combined, we could finally end all the pain, all the suffering, the destruction they bring. And we could return this world to the paradise it was before them, forever. ~Ares, from the film Wonder Woman.

...

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

If any man have an ear, let him hear.

He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity: he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he speaks as a dragon.

And he exercises all the power of the first beast before him, and causes 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 deceive 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, King James Bible.

I saw this when I got home from the store. I walked, because the car is in the shop.

FOX News is talking about some hokey "Out of body experience" crap where some preachers supposedly "visited Hell."

They should've stayed there as far as I'm concerned. This stuff is complete bullshit, always has been.

Meanwhile judging from the look on Katie Britt's face the Jack Smith hearings did not go well. Throw in the fact that Eric Schmitt tried to make it sound like prosecuting the former President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, for war crimes was itself somehow Something Something Gazpacho "Illegal" rather than the proper function of international law. Well, FOX News can't talk about the Jack Smith hearing, now can they??

I mean, given their abandonment of all things actually Republican and apparent desire to be nothing more than ass-kissers for some absolute monarch, I suppose "Republicans" would bristle at the thought of any malevolent leader anywhere being held to account. Although considering that Hashim Thaci is Muslim I'm surprised they'd try and claim him for the club.

Justice anywhere is a threat to Injustice everywhere, I guess?? And bad leadership or injustice does not become good, or justice, just because you dress it up in a bunch of Bible-talk (while trying to say nobody else can do the same.) Fuck all that.

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

Reagan Wept.

Earlier today, I saw this, too.

Apparently Suella Braverman, who's joined Reform UK wants to force British kids to sing Christian songs in school?

This in one of the least-religiously-observant, most secular countries in the world where chances are real good if somebody is a regular participant in any religious activity they're not a Christian (most likely Muslim, in fact) or if they are Christian, bet they're a Black African or Afro-Caribbean type of Christian with decidedly Pentecostal leanings.

Braverman herself is supposedly Buddhist, and married to a Jewish guy, so I don't even know where she's coming up with this crap except that Reform and all these far-Right Brits seem to be taking money from American Christian Nationalists who see they're likely going to lose over here and picked a really stupid place to try to export their "Culture War" to. I don't even get how they thought this crap was going to work, like at all. And the British people ain't having it, so far.

I mean, I get it, these people are stupid. I hate to sound that way but most of the actual intelligent or principled conservatives have jumped ship for various reasons, and many more are still doing so.

Because this shit gets dumber every day.

Every day these fucking people get more obsessed with pushing Christianity on other people while blatantly not practicing it themselves.

Thatcher joined Reagan in his weeping, pretty much.

I'm TIRED of this bullshit.

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 that these fucking people talk, anymore.

And what does this shit come down to about every fucking time?? Some chud trying to justify the Cornell Seven. Patriarchy, Rape, various forms of bad behavior by "Men."

Ya know, back in the day Christian apologists and anti-Cult people liked to try to connect cults or any religion they judged as a cult with sexual perversity. It wasn't an entirely wrong idea...a lot of cults really are All About The Power Of The Penis, MAGA is no exception.

But those guys were doing it to rile up a specific type of Christian that it's apparently not cool to be, now. Can't have anybody in Trump's world believing that sexual perversity is wrong now can we.

But the issue is these motherfuckers wanna have their drugs and their orgiastic parties and all that and still be considered to be oh-so-righteous. No, fuck you, none of this works that way.

And even if you win, political Power does not change Right from Wrong.

There's still an Afterlife, you're still gonna be judged in it.

The fact that these fucking people ignore that or simply refuse to obey it tells me, at the end of the day, these assholes are probably one motherfucker of a lot more Atheistic than Richard Dawkins.

Or worse, whatever spiritual beliefs they do have are likely so alien from the Bible or Christianity or any of the other Abrahamic religions that God does not recognize these fucking idiots.

And Buddha sure as hell wouldn't, Susie.

No one gets "Saved" by what they make Other people do. You have to talk to God, the gods, the Universe, the Dharma or what the fuck ever your damn self and come clean about what you did.

You know, Repent.

These Fucking People? They don't want to repent. They don't think they did anything wrong in the first place!

And that's why they're all going to Hell.

They just want to see how many of the rest of us they can take with them.

At this point "Conservatives" are just trying to hypnotize people with their bullshit.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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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.

Eight

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

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

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

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

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

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

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

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ~John 11:25

The Believers (Scenes From The Fall, Eight.)

I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind; but then I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learnt that inside every one of them there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves – something no hero will ever defeat. And now I know that only Love can truly save the world. So now I stay, I fight, and I give – for the world I know can be. This is my mission now. Forever. ~Diana Prince, from the film Wonder Woman.

...

Maximus: You sent for me, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?

Maximus: For the glory of the empire, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Ah, yes. Ah, yes, I remember. Do you see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar, I have known four years without war, four years of peace in twenty. And for what? I brought the sword. Nothing more.

Maximus: Caesar, your life...

Marcus Aurelius: Please. Please, don't call me that. Please, come sit. Let us talk together now, very simply, as men. Maximus, talk.

Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?

Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.

Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?

Maximus: I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Maximus, let us whisper now, together, you and I. You have a son. Tell me about your home.

Maximus: My house is in the hills above Trujillo. A very simple place. Pink-stones that warm in the sun. A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus- black. Black like my wife's hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north. Wild ponies play near my house. They tease my son. He wants to be one of them.

Marcus Aurelius: Remember the last time you were home?

Maximus: Two years, 264 days, and this morning.

Marcus Aurelius: I envy you, Maximus. It's a good home. Worth fighting for. There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.

Maximus: What would you have me do, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: I want you to become the protector of Rome after I die. I will empower you to one end alone: To give power back to the people of Rome, and end the corruption that has crippled it. Will you accept this great honor I have offered you?

Maximus: With all my heart, no.

Marcus Aurelius: Maximus, that is why it must be you.

Maximus: But surely a prefect, a senator, somebody who knows the city, who understands her politics?

Marcus Aurelius: But you have not been corrupted by her politics.

Maximus: And Commodus?

Marcus Aurelius: Commodus is not a moral man. You have known that since you were young. Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule. You are the son that I should have had. Commodus will accept my decision. He knows that you command the loyalty of the army.

Maximus: I need some time, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Yes. By sunset, I hope you will have agreed. Now embrace me as my son, and bring an old man another blanket.

~From the film Gladiator.

I've been seeing a lot of shit like this in the last couple days.

Dudes coming out the woodwork trying to defend the Cornell 7, Frat-boy rapists who drugged a girl with Ketamine and then abused her for seven hours back in 2024.

Like, I don't give a damn what the girl did or didn't do, first off, somebody should be catching drug charges just for drugging her. Enough Ketamine to incapacitate her for that long?? It's probably a felony charge by itself. Second, Nobody deserves to be raped, and I don't give a damn what you think.

I'm tired of this attitude, mostly from White Republican men that basically everything exists for them to abuse or exploit, that they should exploit whatever they can and that self-satisfaction from doing so is the moral purpose of their lives and, on the other hand, that caring about other people is somehow "Satanic."

These Fucking People believe in Ayn Rand way more than they ever believed in Jesus Christ. 

Trump is little more than the current debased figurehead for that belief system, Atheistic Objectivism.

I've honestly hit the point where I believe America is a violently Atheistic and Materialistic nation, and there's nowhere that proves the point more than a lot of American "Churches."

Right-Wing America has built a "god" in its own image, a god of death and wealth. I use the name of the Roman god Dis Pater (later re-appropriated as a Demon in Christian cosmology) for a fucking reason.

And at the end of the day, one has to also remember that Rome was never Christianized, Christianity was Romanized. Like it or not, Empire sidelined Christ and replaced Him with Caesar. Constantine did this for a reason. Keep the Christians sozzled on the deliciousness of Empire and Imperial Power and after awhile they won't even bother to follow Jesus anymore. 

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)

Why should they?? If they can feel all Holy and be narcissists and shit, with the Self on the Throne, and not ever have to deal with the inconvenience (among other things) of actually following Christ, isn't that just, I don't know, easier?? (Well, until you get to the Afterlife, anyway, then it sucks.)

I mean, who needs Jesus when you can convince yourself that you're your own god??

(And yet somehow, historically, even the most Imperialized understandings of Christianity until the American kind have had the sense to be like "Hey wait a second, maybe we should stop here?)

I get it, trust me, I do.

I spent a few years wrapped up in all this bro-culture nonsense myself.

Yet somehow, I still understood that shit like Pedophilia and Rape was wrong. Way too many of these fucking people have lost that understanding if they ever had it in the first place.

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.

America is currently aggressively trying to make up its mind if it wants to be Babylon or Sodom.

It turns out Rome had social welfare of a sort, grain rations and shit, and that's too "Woke."

And as debased as it was, homosexuality in the Roman Empire had many rules. That's not the world These Motherfuckers want to live in.

This is the only reason Evangelicals would prefer an adulterous, criminal shit-bag like Ken Paxton over John Cornyn (Or James Talarico for that matter.)

And Republicans want to be both the ancient Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and the ultra-modern-high-tech massively technologically controlled Babylon that the End Times Prophecy Movement prophesied about 30 years ago. They have long since lost the understanding that those were the bad guys in the story, or maybe it's just that the Tech Bros kept giving them money.

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 13:14-18

But they're about half a step from trying to say "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when WE do it!"

Trust me, as long as they can make money and use drugs and stick their junk wherever they damn well please, most of these white Republican men won't care if that means they're going to Hell.

American Evangelicalism (which I steadily and increasingly refuse to call Christianity at this point) convinced itself that the Prosperity Gospel and stern religiosity were all that mattered, that the world God gave us to live in was somehow Sinful and fit only for destruction, that being a terrible person, living in a terrible world and acting like a miserable bastard because you think that's a flex was somehow "Holiness." Oh, and you have to keep spending money and working yourself to death to "Prove" that you are somehow worthy. Well unless you own a bunch of shit, good luck with that.

But if you just own a few things, at this point you have to fight not to get snapped up by people who already have way more than 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.

Unless you're somebody like Donald Trump or one of these elites that's somehow entitled to have Wealth Without Work and then you can do whatever the fuck you want.

This is unsustainable for most of us.

And it's not that These Fucking People don't care...

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.)

It's that they're actively trying to collapse the system so they can build their own flesh-pot paradise for themselves out of the wreckage, and their weird worship of politics and religiosity is just an excuse.

Like I don't give a shit what you think, religion isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when anybody mentions Mel Gibson. And that's the key here, isn't it?? Religion is just what these assholes use to try to get feeble-minded people to tolerate their shitty behavior. No, it's not even about the Empire anymore. Well, Okay, late-stage Western Roman Empire maybe, where those fucking people were so obsessed with politics and religion that they couldn't be bothered to fight for themselves and couldn't avoid pissing off the German mercenaries that had become the majority of the Roman armies, either.

But there are some things politics and religion are no good for unless they are tempered with humanity. Without some level of common sense, ideology just becomes another death trap.

We're trying to pick fights where there's no reason to pick fights and trying to manipulate allies where there's no damned reason to do that either, this for little more reason that people like Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are demented drama queens trying to settle old Republican grudges before they die. 

Never mind how many new ones they create...against them.

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

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

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

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

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

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

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

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You start mixing narcissism and religiosity with right-wing bullshit, sooner or later it ends up the same way every time, with people destroying themselves and then ranting about how the Commies are coming while they're hiding under the bed with a pistol in hand. I've seen people go down rabbit holes like that and it always ends badly.

Especially when people choose evil, exploitation and Sin. Especially when we, as a country, let them.

I have a family to think about, a partner and a kid, but I wasn't down with choosing this before.

Sooner or later everybody else gets tired of your bullshit.

The enemy, the Other, the People, always gets a vote sooner or later.

It's going to come down to a fight.

You say you're a "Believer?" Well what are you a Believer *In?*

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

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

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

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

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

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Seven

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