What communion hath light with darkness?

I've had the misfortune, in the last several days, of reading the comments attached to stuff on the Fox News Twitter feed several times, and (usually because I saw something so ridiculous that I had to speak up) also of posting there myself. Last night, in response to my response to a ridiculously racist comment, some jackass literally tried to tell me that ALL black people are either in gangs or on welfare. (I went to the guy's feed, to see if he was a bot or a troll and his entire feed was nonsensical far-right articles, including one that I Googled to find the same exact text and verbiage on dozens of far-right and racist websites across the world, I strongly suspect this was a bot, not a person) I blocked and reported him.  The problem, such as it is...is that whether he's a real person or an electronic creation of the Russian GRU, there is literally so much racist (and for that matter, anti-LGBT, sexist, etc. etc.) crap in the comments on the Fox News Twitter feed that it's hard to tell at this point.

The title of the article that caught my attention was literally a claim that teenagers in Sweden had taken to carrying rifles because of soaring crime rates, which the reader is supposed to believe are due to immigration. This is absolute horse shit, given that Sweden has (especially in comparison to the United States) a very low crime rate. Also, Sweden (like most European or other "First World" countries) has strict firearms laws which mandate licensing, including having to have a purpose for having a weapon (Self-defense not being a valid reason) safe storage and even prohibiting the carrying of firearms by civilians unless engaging in specific, legal acts such as attending a shooting range or hunting. Not only that, but police in Sweden are (by European standards, anyway) fairly heavily armed, they maintain good relations with their communities, and they'd be certain to both outgun and quickly arrest mobs of armed vigilante teenagers.

For extra points...the article itself was actually about someone supposedly throwing a petrol bomb at a police station in Malmo. There's nothing to indicate that actually happened, either. The closest thing I could find was an article about an alleged hand-grenade attack in the same city...but the people (not named in the article) who allegedly did it and were pictured being arrested looked pretty damn white to me.

Now, between this bullshit, the assorted right-wingers losing their shit over "Dreamers" and various other racist crap that I've seen in the past couple of weeks, combined with the fact that we're seeing large numbers of "Conservatives" and Republicans basically setting everything they've ever claimed to believe on fire in defense of Trump...I'm forced to make one simple conclusion:

For a majority of these people, all their "Conservatism" ever was, was cover for the racist bullshit.

Hell, given Trump's stated refusal to enforce and implement bipartisan Russia sanctions passed by Congress, the Nunes memo, and the fact that certain members of the far-right punditry are outright calling for a police state...I've become rather convinced that conservatism in the United States of America is basically dead. Certainly conservatism as I was taught it, and likely Christianity as well. have both been dead for awhile. I'm leaning toward placing the time of death somewhere between 2008 and 2012.

I'll go a bit further and say that I believe that racism ate both of them alive from the inside out. 50 years of the Southern Strategy probably didn't help...but the truth is, what it really took to create this situation was Donald Fucking Trump.

Yes, there are still some real, intelligent, relatively sane and obviously non-racist conservatives and Republicans (and for that matter, Christians) left...but none of them hold power right now and more than a few of those who I follow on social media (among them Bill Kristol and Max Boot) are noticing that they're now on the same side as the liberals and middle-of-the-road people and reevaluating their priorities accordingly.

That said, there's a substantial percentage of this country's population that seems perfectly willing to burn down this country and our civilization, to abandon every principle and teaching of Christianity, and to sell everything out to the Russians and even to give up their own rights, or the very concept of Truth itself, for the chance that they might get to call people of color racial slurs. I never realized that beliefs that I was taught were socially unacceptable and wrong (or words that I was never allowed to use) were just that damn important to people.

I have no tolerance for racism, but I like civilization, flush toilets, the internet and the ability to have pets that don't end up on the dinner table just fine, thank you.

These idiots don't seem to care that you can still get fired from your job for that shit. (Hell, one of my objections to not only "sexual potency and stamina" infomercials but Fox News on TV at work is that if I was on break and somebody saw something saying the same stuff on my Laptop, I could get fired.) They don't seem to care that acting or dressing like a Nazi in public can get you beat up, or at least might just stay with you forever and prevent you from getting a job anywhere that somebody has the sense to Google-search your name. Hell, they don't seem to care about anything but the cheap emotional thrill of being a racist asshole.

...And that, to a great extent, is the real problem. These people have spent all these years quietly pursuing the cheap, vacuous emotional thrill of racism and constant self-indulgent rage (for which they didn't have to do anything but be white) like that young dude who spends all his time looking at Anime porn and whacking off instead of going out and finding a job, finding a date, doing something constructive and otherwise contributing to and participating in society. These Fucking People assumed they would always be "on top" and so they did nothing. White conservatives did nothing to show their ways were better (or even any good at all) provided no leadership, expected to sit back and collect checks for nothing, and in general whenever anybody questioned them, they just got mad. In fact, starting around 20 years ago with ever-deepening hypocrisy, they started alienating any of their own who had a brain in their head and the will to think about what was going on.

Like me, a decade ago.

...And now that their parents are gone, or fading out, and generally passed from the scene as regards setting the tone, these idiots are wondering why the lights are going out and the world is moving on without them, and why instead of being "Great Again" under their so-called leadership, the United States of America has become the laughingstock of the world and the rest of the world is moving on without us.

In a lot of meaningful ways, especially as regards things like Climate Change policy and renewable energy, the rest of the world is simply ignoring us.

This virtually assures that we'll be back on-board as a junior partner in a few years when this crap is over. We will get told what to do by the British, and the Chinese, and the French...like some second-rate middle power...and we'll end up damned well liking it because we need to get back "in" to the international order of things and 25% of us traded away our position of international leadership for the chance to hate Brown people for a few more years...and half of our population just fucking let them by not voting.

You know, there's another way. There's been another way this whole damn time. All we need, is the will to face that truth. The choice is yours to choose between the light or the darkness with its fires. It is late, choose now.

• Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings--not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand--without rancor or hatred--how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it. ~Lyndon B. Johnson, prior to signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As for the sign? This is the future conservatives seem to want. Let's have the sense not to give it to them.

Cruel Truths.

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

I saw this on Twitter on Friday, some idiot on FOX News claiming that because a majority of kids in Arizona elementary schools are Latino, somehow the "Border had moved north." Funny thing, but the idiot who said that is Canadian, and last I checked Arizona was still part of the United States.

But there's two variables at work here. #1 According to FOX News, you have to be White to be an American, and #2 America isn't America if White Conservatives aren't a majority. Everything is a zero sum game, heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go...and of course, these motherfuckers think they should be the one who determines who gets to go.

Yo, there's a reason that according to the Bible, Man doesn't get a say in who attains Salvation or goes to Heaven or whatever. It's the same reason that previous generations spelled out this stuff on a Constitutional level...because if people like Tucker Carlson got to determine who went to heaven, or who became an American, well it's them and Donald Trump and whatever popular and rich people they agree with and everybody else...including most of those of us who meet the actual requirements and have lived here all our lives (whether we were born here or not) can go hang.

That's why, when they're operating functionally, both government and religion understand that there is a need to protect the average people from the ruthless people. If either government or religion won't protect the weak from the bastards...then why bother with them?

I went through the comments on this FOX News post, and I saw an awful lot of conspiracy theorizing and groundless fear...mostly of the kind that people gin up when they want to try to justify actions that they know are horrible or wrong.

There's an awful lot of talk here and there about this "Wall" that Trump thinks he wants. But let's get one thing straight right now. That wall isn't going to do one damned thing about changing demographics and all those millions of minority people and white liberals etc. etc. and other folks these people hate, who are already here, legally so, and who aren't going anywhere and who don't like them much. They see that the end is on the horizon, it's getting here much faster than anyone thought, and that scares the hell out of them...because they know they've been doing all type of sick and wrong shit for years and they're afraid the rest of us might start doing it to them. There isn't and never has been any thought in these people's heads of not being an asshole in the first place.

Let me tell you what's on these people's minds, really.

Collapsing the government, death camps, murder, segregation, and if they can't get any of that past the rest of us politically (and I have a sneaking suspicion that they know they can't) then there's always their go-to of civil war and they'll try to take it by force. Why the fuck do you really think these idiots so favor the defense contractors over the actual troops? Why do you think Mitch McConnell blocked the Democrats resolution to make sure that the troops got paid? As far as these assholes are concerned if the military (or any other of this country's institutions) isn't white conservative Republican by a comfortable enough margin...they can go hang along with everybody else as far as Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are concerned. If the number of white conservatives isn't high enough and they can't stack the deck hard enough (or they lose with a fully stacked deck like they did in Alabama) they'll just try to burn everything down and hope that by the time the rest of us have cleaned up whatever they've crapped all over, they can come up with some kind of new strategy.

Come on, why do you really think these assholes have switched from "Support the Troops" to "Support the Police." As soon as a majority of the troops voted Democrat in 2008, the troops, "support" for whom was always bullshit anyway...were no longer a political constituency. Now trust me, as soon as police officers start turning up with PTSD, too much bad press, an excessive number of unemployment claims, wanting to keep their Unions or otherwise needing anything...and gradually shift back to voting Democrat like a majority of them did years ago (I remember an awful lot of conservative anxiety about the Police way back in the early- to mid-1990's) then the Republicans will be on the hunt for somebody else to "Support" in order to buff up their agenda. Who that will be, anti-government insurgents or Nazis or whoever the fuck, I don't know, but I don't really want to speculate at this point.

What it comes down to, in the end, is that despite these people's protestations of religiosity and this and that...their true god is Discrimination, and their desire to abuse and hurt other people. They would rather kill and steal than live, and rather hate than eat. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that most of these cowardly shits are too afraid to do all that...so they want a government that'll do it for them. Never mind that our system doesn't really work that way, and mostly stopped enabling that kind of crap over 50 years ago...and as a year of Trump has shown it's damned hard, if not impossible, to reverse that kind of inertia on the scale they'd need. So what they're left with is Trump equivocating and half-ass enabling Russian active measures and American Nazi wannabes in the hope that somebody will come up with something before the clock runs out.

As usual, These Fucking People are trying to bullshit their way through...only this time they seem to be failing, miserably, publicly, and looking damned incompetent while they're at it.

...And there's some people who seem prepared to excuse or ignore it, oh sure, vote them out this time but let them have a crack at it again in 2024 when maybe they've learned to look more reasonable.

Hell, I said last week that if Jeff Flake switched parties, he'd probably gain more than he'd lose and have a reasonable shot at getting elected President as a Democrat, because some people just don't want to learn anything.

Conservatives (insofar as that term has any real meaning anymore) and Republicans have lost the culture, they've lost their treasured "Culture Wars" and they know it. They'll try and impose their bullshit in small ways, but that too will fail and ultimately be reversed by the next administration, and they know it. They've lost the demographics, and they can build all the fences and mine fields and guard towers and machine gun nests they want...but in large parts of the country the next generation (not to mention the current ones) is already more diverse, more black, more brown and those kids are already American citizens and they know it.

...And this fake-populist crap has Republicans looking a lot more like East German Communists than anything I was taught a Republican should be.

But the root of populism is that weak-willed people want a government that will fight their demons for them, no matter how illusory and unreal those demons are.

So there's people like this asshole, trying to claim that God will have former Presidents executed for criticizing Trump. This is the same kind of crap my ex-wife would pull...trying to weaponize God as her own personal enforcer...but I didn't believe that kind of crap then and I don't believe it now, either.

Let me tell you how this is going to end up. Before this is over, I think Trump's hard-core supporters are going to end up worshiping him as a god. Whether they or he declares him to be so, I'm not quite sure. I see an old, cognitively and mentally declining man who ended up in the most high-pressure job in the world and who is not handling it well, and I think he might snap. I see MAGA-hat types and religious nuts slowly realizing that this isn't going to work out, and I see both the Republican party and the Republican voter base slowly, inexorably shrinking.

But there's that small group that keeps doubling down...and doubling down again when called on it.

Those are the people I imagine forming an Imperial Cult around Trump.

There were hundreds of thousands of people (probably millions altogether) in the streets because of the Women's Marches over the weekend.

With the government shut down...people get hella mad at the slightest hint of the Democrats caving to unreasonable and/or racist Republican demands...and as well they should.

We, the People, are getting tired of this shit-show.

We need to dig in and start holding these assholes accountable and hold their feet to the fire and stop this ridiculous shit.

And when this is over we need to treat the MAGA hats and the Republicans the way that the Dutch and the French and all those other European countries that were conquered by the Nazis treated their collaborators. Humiliation, No forgiveness, no mercy, pain. Then expect, Euro-style, that the Far-right is still going to start trying to weasel its way back into government in a generation or three, and guard ourselves accordingly.

Expect a lot of weird, cult-like stuff from them along the way. I'm talking about like the French extremists who stole Marshal Petain's coffin in 1973 with intent of re-burying it at Verdun...level of cult-like weird shit.

As the saying goes, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. People are going to have to be angry, stay angry and stay engaged, and most of all, vote these sons of bitches out and be prepared to stay active and make sure they don't get back into power.

The cruel truth is, we might as well get used to the idea, because now that these assholes have had a taste of power, undiluted from the norms that were ironclad even as of the last Republican presidency (and remember, George W. Bush made me stop being a Republican) they will never stop trying to get it back.

We might as well settle in for the long haul and then hang on like an irate, jaw-locked weasel, because if we don't, they will. I'm going to be honest, with the rampant unhinged racism that I've seen over the weekend in some places, I wouldn't put it past right-wingers to start killing brown kids.

As a friend of mine put it the other day, what with all the broken promises, dashed expectations and let-downs of the Trump administration, racism is all they have left.

I was taught that racism is wrong.

But the cruel truth is that, fundamentally, racism is America's original sin. There's obviously some people don't want to let that shit go.

Well, fuck them. There's more of the rest of us.

It's time we started acting like it.

If we don't, we're dead.

City on a hill.

So, last night while I was on break at work, I saw this. It's funny, that the first thing that popped into my head was some Bible verses, being that I'm not exactly religious, but that's what happened. I can't say with any certainty what Tucker Carlson believes about anything except that he seems to think being smarmy and obnoxious is generally a good thing. But in any case, I (being a former Christian, former conservative and fairly well-versed in how Republicans being those things for a lot of years related to U.S. foreign policy...it's an understatement to say I was shocked.

This is what I was taught, this right here:

 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

~Matthew 5:43-48

You got that?

As a former conservative Christian, I'm beginning to wonder what happened to basic familiarity with the Word (not to mention a baseline sense of morality) that people would even say shit like "It's not our job to stand up for other people." Oh hell yes, it is.

My second response was to post "Tell that to all the American soldiers who died liberating Europe from the Nazis, or who died in the jungles of Vietnam standing up for those who could not or would not stand up for themselves, you son of a bitch" directly as a reply to the post on Tucker Carlson's Twitter feed.

I grew up hearing the stories of my grandfathers and other veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I grew up not only aware of and attentive to (because it was on the news every day) the reality of the Cold War and all the international engagements of the postwar liberal democratic order of things that we ourselves had set up...but I had come of age, was politically active and aware and paid attention (because I had to, as they directly affected my job and life at the time) and was there for all the bumps and bruises of the 1990's and particularly the Clinton years when all the dust settled from all the stuff I grew up watching on TV as a kid. 

In other words, you're damned right that America exists to protect the citizens of other nations. Why else did we found, lead, and in the long-term remain a member of NATO or the United Nations? No, we haven't always done a good job, but in general, we step up more often than we don't. We don't always do things the right way, and we are often too quick to use force...but you can't even do that effectively anymore without international engagement.

More to the point, international engagement generally depends on the principle that everybody at least thinks that that Man Behind the Curtain knows what in the hell he's doing.

Trump blows the cover off of that idea on a daily basis. Take for example his reference to countries populated primarily by Black and Brown people as "Shithole" countries. Now, that there's some level of racism at work here ought to be obvious, and the various Republican denials of this are ridiculous, and the fact that the Senate is apparently holding hearings about this (while necessary) is equally ridiculous because it never should have been said in the first place. Needless to say, this is not going over well in Africa, or in Haiti, or in Latin America...but it went over big with Trump's base of ignorant, racist imbeciles...which is presumably why he said it. 

Let us not forget that current Republican policies are absolutely aimed at turning the United States of America into a Third World shit hole, because theoretically that will reduce the tax burden on the rich...though I'd argue that it'd also greatly reduce their power, their personal safety, and very much also the amount of protection they have. It's hard for a third world nation to maintain even a tiny percentage of the advanced military capabilities that the United States Armed Forces has...let alone the education and social support needed to produce people who can become the soldiers that use those capabilities properly, much less effectively.

Leaving aside the fact that the President seems to be openly striving to only be popular with idiots and racists, where the rubber meets the road is that I've personally gotten an earful about this from people that I know who live in other countries.

Not exactly how I want to spend my day, but I'm not going to ignore people or their entirely legitimate feelings and opinions about an issue just because it's inconvenient. Reality by its very nature is inconvenient and if that wasn't the case, then alcohol and drugs wouldn't be so popular, would they?

We all live in a global society, whether we want to or not. The world does not ask if you like it before you are born into it and no amount of ignoring that, or pretending it doesn't exist or small-pondism will ever make that fact go away. You can resent the hell out of all the "Made in China" crap that Wal-Mart sells, but the reason they can sell it and you can afford it is because it's cheaper due to lower labor costs over there. 

The thing is, there will come a day when those Chinese workers stand up and demand better working conditions, higher wages, and that their government live up to the philosophy it claims to follow.

At that point, it'll be better for everybody if we've kept the ball rolling on progress and worked to remedy the inequality and other social problems that plague our own society...because the Chinese, or the Russians or any other actors on the international stage can point to our behavior either to condemn us or to justify their own actions, right or wrong. America electing a boorish, lying, tacky rich racist pig of a President probably is not going to help with that.

We don't stand up for others, or treat other nations or people with respect because it's convenient or popular or profitable at the time. We do it because it's the right thing to do and because (for most of my life anyway) we've followed a policy of enlightened self-interest.

The rest of the world is never going to let us live this crap down, and well they should not.

What happened to us, and to American conservatives in particular, that we have forgotten who we were, in favor of such insular and bitter visions? 

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

~Matthew 5:14-16

Do you know who else used Matthew chapter five and the vision of America as a "City on a hill" as a guiding light? Ronald Wilson Reagan, that's who.

Tucker Carlson ain't fit to hold Reagan's hat while he takes a leak.

The hell with these fucking people, and the hell with their small-minded selfishness.

The Bottomless Pit

Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. ~Revelation 9:1-2

It's Martin Luther King day, and this was the first thing I saw when I got up this morning and logged into my social media accounts. Before we go any further, I want anybody and everybody who reads this to let that sink in. Think about it long and hard. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Think about how fucked up that is, do it now, take as long as you need.

Here we have a productive member of society, a man with a family, a home and a job, who has probably paid his fair share in US taxes being deported for reasons that, fundamentally, are not his fault.

Then there's this fucking guy, right here. "LA Werewolf" who I guess is some kind of internet Nazi or Youtube something-or-other who has to quit the far-right internet sausage fest because his parents are forcing him to get a job. I think it's kind of hilarious that he refers to this as "resigning" to "civilian life." As if the closest this guy ever got to either the military or a professional job wasn't renting "American Sniper" from a shady video store late at night one time when he got bored with beating off while watching Anime and they were out of pornos.

I suspect working at the local Jack-In-The-Box is probably going to be an educational experience for this dude, especially when he realizes that both the staff and the customer bases of such places are largely people of color, and an awful lot of the asshole managers are the white ones.

I would, in fact, like to point out yet again that in my own life experience as a former conservative, having a job, paying your bills and being a productive member of society (regardless of color, creed or station in life) was fundamentally what the entire damned deal was based upon. Living in your parents basement, not paying your bills, and spending your time surfing the internet instead of being productive? That doesn't qualify, and if I'd have told any of the older people who educated me on this stuff that one could get paid for such a thing, the very least I could or would expect is to get laughed at.

I can imagine my Grandma pointing out "Well if he can get paid for it he can have his own place, can't he?" You know, logic.

But then, it occurs to me that the absolute last thing modern conservatism is about is being a productive citizen. The rich assholes at the top basically want to colonize the rest of us and sit back and collect the checks, and this has spread downward to the masses of idiots that follow the political party they control. There's another word for that: Parasite.

Then of course, there's this ridiculous shit. You remember what I wrote about Steve King last year, right? The notoriously racist Iowa Republican Tweeted this earlier today, and has put up several similar posts since: 

Don't ask what I think about that. You don't want to know and I'd rather that this essay didn't devolve into an unending stream of profanity. This son of a bitch, who has openly said that more Americans should read the racist French novel "Camp of the Saints" is posting MLK pictures and civil-rights quotes? What's next? Pol Pot and Josef Stalin take turns reading from the Bible? I mean, come on, fucking seriously? You know what? I'm actually not sure what this does more, generally offend me or simply insult my intelligence. I know these people like their whitewashed, inoffensive mythology about the Civil Rights movement, but damn. The simple fact is that 50 years ago, Steve King would have sided with the Southern racists and there's no doubt in my mind about that subject. Why? Because that's how the motherfucker acts today, in this day and age, publicly. After all, this is the guy who publicly said that Mexican immigrants had "Calves the size of Cantaloupes" from smuggling drugs across the deserts of the US Southwest.

Yeah, fuck that guy, I don't give a damn what he has to say about anything.

If I said something like that, I would expect nothing more and nothing less than an ass whuppin.' 

Go ahead and try to tell me that not only all this Trump bullshit, but most of the current Republican party and the far-right more generally isn't all about the damned racism. Go ahead, I'll wait.

There's only one way to fix this, and that is that white America needs to get its head out of its ass. This racist, path-of-least-resistance, no-one-takes-responsibility bullshit is going to do nothing more than enable the worst elements of our society...and yes I'm talking to you, Republicans who are choosing to retire rather than stand up. We have a real problem, and that is that a small, but still statistically significant portion of American idiots get their dicks hard at the thought of ranks of goose-stepping soldiers...and if you think those people won't eventually come for the other conservative white folks, you have another thing coming.

It's like, the only future some people can imagine is destruction.

Funny, but it's often people of color who are the first to articulate a different vision of the future that works better for everybody.

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the Book.

~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.

Witch Doctor.

I sometimes imagine, in the not-too-distant future, a landscape of bombed-out cities, flooded coasts where the tops of skyscrapers have been turned into vast bird-shit covered concrete island chains and logged as dangerous obstructions by whatever boat people, merchant traffic, maritime forces or pirate fleets as exist in this time. Further inland, vast stretches of abandoned rural farmhouses, gas stations, highways and strip malls, looted Wal-Marts and other crumbling detritus of a generation or two past. Oh, certainly, there's a pocket of civilization here or there...an educational institution (itself likely shrouded in some degree of mysticism) a military outpost, a religious community built around a Church, Mosque, Synagogue or some sort of temple, or a perhaps a small town, or any combination of the above...likely powered by solar panels and such, linked to the rest of the world by satellite communications, and certainly in any case protected by armed men and women, likely both educating and trading with some local farmers or nomads. Likewise, here and there, there are gangs of bandits and other malcontents, riding around on horseback or in swarms of Toyota "Technical" trucks (and in the latter case, constantly as hungry for ammunition and fuel as other material needs) armed with AK-47's or whatever that era's cheap, durable and widely available rifle is, as they attempt to pillage and plunder everybody else.

In that world, somewhere, probably more common than most...there would still be those who failed one way or another to make the leap from poverty to adequacy, or (maybe more appropriately for such a time) from depravity to civilization, who don't meet the Darwinian requirements of banditry. It is not hard for me to imagine in the deepening darkness and overwhelming silence that would likely characterize night in this world, under vast oceans of bright stars and the soft glow of the Milky Way, their cries might be heard for miles as ragged figures danced around a fire, waiting for the local holy man to come out of his cave.

I imagine such a figure as an old man, wearing a ragged, stained suit and a "Make America Great Again" hat, emerging from the shadows, to the sudden, awed silence of the tribes-people, raising a worn Bible that he cannot read, and speaking words that sound important...purely for no other reason than that they sound that way. I imagine this old fool going on and on, until some offering of a captive or scrounged supplies is brought forward...then mumbling some kind of half ass blessing before scooping up the "offering" and retreating back into his cave.

Why do I think this?

People like this guy, right here. James Dobson, who once preached about beating a stubborn wiener dog in order to prove his spiritual "Authority" (and who I'm honestly surprised is still alive, truth be told) are out there telling "Conservative Christians" to organize a "Day of Prayer and Fasting" in order to prevent Trump from being impeached.

As if God gives that much of a shit about American politics? We as a nation can't seem to go more than 24 hours without insulting the Almighty's intelligence. I can't imagine He has any more of an interest in putting up with these people's shit than the rest of us do.

Here's a pro tip from somebody who was taught this stuff a long time ago: When imagining God doing anything, or asking or begging or imploring any aid from Him, it's probably helpful to assume that the Almighty Creator of the Universe is smarter than you are.

Then of course there's Paula White, who bills herself as Trump's "Spiritual Advisor" as if somebody who publicly stated that he didn't need God's forgiveness could plausibly have a need for such a thing.

But of course, she wants you to send her money, up to a month's wages in fact. Or [she gravely intones] "There will be consequences."

Here's the kicker: She's trying to say you'll somehow get rich by giving her all your money.

...Or there will be "consequences?"

Are you fucking kidding me? Show up at somebody's house with a baseball bat and speak the same words...and depending on the homeowner's inclination you're either being shot in self-defense or you're going to jail for extortion.

So why is it Okay for some bleached-blonde dumb ass to wave a Bible at people and demand the same?

Listen here, the Bible speaks directly against this kind of crap and those who practice it.

John 2:13-16New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”

Got that?

Listen here, the Truth is free, it is fairly Bipartisan in political terms (if such terms can be said to apply at all) and it doesn't go around asking for money. The only nation it favors is Israel, and there's some debate as to whether that applies exclusively to the ancient nation or includes the modern one as well...and all the political leaders it endorses are either mythical or dead. We do not in any way, shape or form live in "Biblical" times nor are the End Times any closer to getting here than they were yesterday, a week ago, or a thousand years ago. The Bible also says that it is not Man's business to worry about that, either. God is a force of nature and He's not on any one "Side" nor beholden to anyone nor willing to be used as a stick by members of one party to beat those of the other.

It's just that damned simple.

It's also not hard for me to imagine that God is getting sick of our bullshit, and very likely to start punching back before long.

This politicized and Prosperity Gospel mumbo-jumbo is getting to be about as believable as that scene in Police Academy Four where Hightower scares the new recruits by dressing up as a Voodoo witch doctor and Tackleberry chainsaws his way out of a body bag.

Come on, people, this is the 21st century, If I...who was a kid attending Christian schools in the 1980's when that movie was new in theaters...can successfully be taught to have enough critical thinking not to believe in superstition and witch doctors, what the hell is your problem?

I believe in knowledge and science and theology, not witch doctors with gold-plated churches.

We can reach for the stars, or we as a nation can continue to hand real money to idiots in return for some imaginary pot of gold.

The very fact that I can type this post and you can read it is all the evidence we need about whether or not reaching for the stars produces results. Come on, people, it's time we start doing better than this.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” 
~Carl Sagan