Pride.

Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before a fall.
~Proverbs 16:18

"Make America Great Again" the Trump Supporters say.

What does this mean, exactly?

Well, I guess a while back somebody finally got a straight answer!

Yep, somebody (Specifically, an African American person) asked Roy Moore when America was great. Roy then proceeded to tell him that America was last "great" back when we still had slavery because "Families were united."

The obvious add-on here is "...Unless you were Black" because families got split up as their members were sold to new owners all the time. Not to mention "...Unless you were Chinese" and working in America in the hope of being able to send money back home to your family. Unless you were Irish, or Italian, and therefore considered expendable by other white people. Not to mention "...Unless you were poor" and working far away from your family members on some dangerous job...or after the end of the Fabled Antebellum Era of Greatness, Drafted into the Union Army and sent out into the field with a .57 Caliber Enfield rifled musket to help tear that corrupt, evil system down.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord...Oh, sorry, I digress.

This child-molesting, fake-Christian son of a bitch actually said what he said to a Black dude. I'm just sayin' in another context it's not hard to imagine these remarks resulting in an ass whuppin.' If you ask me, that would be a perfectly valid outcome here.

Now, let's look at this a little further: Supposedly, America was "Great" when rich people could buy and sell other human beings in order to profit from their free labor.

Certainly, this is of a piece with sentiments expressed by others. The kind of bald-faced, soul-sucking contempt expressed by Senator Grassley for example. Rich people are rich because they're righteous. Poor people are poor because they're immoral. That's basically Calvinism (or the Prosperity Gospel) in a nutshell. I've got mine, fuck you, because Jesus. No, Calvinism is not Biblical, it's a false doctrine, and it's wrong. This is something debased rich people came up with so they could fool the masses into thinking they were Christians and yet, still go on being debased, debauched rich people.

Listen here, Trump Supporters. If you think the Republicans give a wet, limp-dicked crushed-Viagra snorting FUCK about you, you have another thing coming. In terms of government policy and legislation, Congressional Republicans are the ones setting the "Populist" agenda while Trump golfs and Tweets and screws up the Middle East peace process. (This will get both Israeli soldiers and various Palestinians killed needlessly, by the way.) They don't care about your guns, but they're sure as hell coming for your health insurance, you Medicare, your Social Security, your Veteran's Benefits, your younger son's Pell Grant, your older son's benefits, pay, LGBT Battle Buddy and working equipment in the Army, and your older, more liberal daughter's post-graduate degree. Not to mention a free Press (This will negatively effect much more than what you think it will) immigration both legal and otherwise (So there likely goes both your Doctor, at least one of the Republican pundits you like, two troops from your son's squad and the guy who mows your lawn) National Parks and other Federal lands (This will greatly limit options for affordable family vacations) and basically anything else that benefits you and doesn't dump money directly into rich people's pockets. They're also coming for Climate Change research (Sixty degrees the other night, and it's December in Michigan, just sayin') NASA (So, there goes a lot of technological advancement right there) and science in general. None of this is going to do you one damned bit of good.

What are they offering you in return? Rabid Creationism, Racism and shitty pipe dreams, most of which have no basis in reality and almost all of which they have NO intentions of even trying to deliver on. Let me give you an example: There's Coal Miners who are turning down free retraining in literally almost any field that they want. Guess what? The Republican tax plan effectively would put the coal companies out of business, according to the CEO of Murray Energy. Why? Because it (accidentally) kills all Corporate tax deductions including the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is designed to help companies that run on thin margins...like coal companies and gas stations...stay solvent. Let me put it another way: Grown-ass men who are supposedly conservatives are sitting around waiting for the government Trump to "save" them. Sorry, but that's not what I was taught. If the market killed coal, it's dead. If something like that happens and you're given the opportunity to retrain, you take it. You have agency over yourself and responsibility for yourself and those people who depend on you, You're supposed to practice it. It's not the government's or the President's responsibility to give you a job nor to prop up a dying industry for the benefit of its core supporters. That's been done before, it's called Communism.

Then of course, there's the Child Labor caucus. AKA Orrin Hatch. FUCK that guy. He basically said "Why should we spend money on health insurance for kids if they're not working?" Um, Dumb ass, BECAUSE THEY'RE KIDS?!?! Imagine how much less a lot of parents...most especially poor white folks...would have to worry about if they had educational support, food and half-decent health care because they were kids? My (poor white) ex-wife had Borderline Personality Disorder mostly due to a chaotic and miserable childhood thanks to her family's relative poverty at the time. Call me a bleeding heart whatever if you want, but I think people growing up to not have personality disorders is a pretty decently valid societal aim. People with personality disorders let a lot of bills go unpaid, I'm just sayin.' A healthy and well-educated populace also generates more money for everybody, including higher profits for corporations and stuff.

But that's not what these people want, is it?

If everybody's working to make things better...it gets better for them too, right?

Here's the thing. These people...from Republican Congresspersons on down to Wingnut voters, view life as a zero-sum game. Equality makes them miserable, they resent any advances that anybody else makes because these idiots think that anybody else's gains are somehow at the expense of white men. This is why conservatives, Evangelicals, etc. have such a persecution complex. They interpret equality and social change as somehow being an attack against them. This is also why so many of these people have such an obsession with guns. They're trying to protect themselves from cultural and social change.

Of course, none of that is even remotely accurate. That doesn't stop them from wanting somebody, somewhere, to be miserable. In fact...the more visible the miserable people are, the better. When shitty people base their entire existence on spite...that's what we get.

Here's the thing; More freedom and more opportunity creates more of the same. More people having more money makes the economy better for everyone. Social change is usually a good thing in and of itself, provided there's some degree of direction and leadership from intelligent people. Uncontrolled social change...which is what we have now, created by too many right-wing attempts to "Stand athwart the flow of history shouting 'Stop"' isn't always such a good idea.

But that's what we have, and enough people are acting intelligently and so far enough of the safeguards are holding that the damage, while serious, can probably be repaired.

In other words, typical Republican M.O. of "Crap all over everything and leave the mess for the next black guy to clean up."

Then there was this bit, Roy Moore said that "Maybe Putin is right and America is the hub of modern evil in the world."

As far as I'm concerned, if that's how Roy feels, then he should move to Russia. Steven Seagal can help him fill out his citizenship application. If you think your own country is "Evil" because of increasing LGBT rights, racial equality and social change...then as far as I'm concerned, if you think those things are "evil" then you have a very deviant definition of evil. The American tradition is one of increasing liberty. If you don't like it you can leave. A majority of people decided this was the way we as Americans wanted to be, and we decided it a long time ago. I'll say it again: Americans do not have a shared culture or religion or a thousand years of history. All we have, is what we want to be.

We as a nation and as a people can be great without abusing our own citizens or other peoples. We can be great and still be good people...and I mean goodness in terms of conduct. We can be good without following some fanatic's idea of culture or religion, A Hijabi Muslimah or a bearded and turbaned Sikh or an irreligious Transwoman can be...and is...as much an American as a cowboy-hat wearing, gun-toting conservative Fundamentalist Christian. There will come a day, and I am certain of it, when conservatives will want to get African people from places like Nigeria to come here in order to boost their numbers...and I for one will welcome that day. Those people work HARD, and would be a powerful addition to the strength of this nation. We are ALL better off as a part of diversity, instead of trying to exalt ourselves at the expense of others.

We are stronger together.

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