With your eyes...

Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!
~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

I was going to write something a week ago. Instead, I had a PTSD issue last Monday, which is something I haven't had in over a decade. For me, it all stems from my marriage, my divorce, and all the crazy religious crap around that. As I've mentioned before, my ex-wife had Borderline Personality Disorder. Given that our political situation since 2015 daily reminds me of my ex-wife, it's a wonder that it's taken me this long to snap on somebody...and naturally it was the wrong person. 

It happened in the comments on a post about the Santa Fe, Texas school shootings. Some gun nut showed up and made some inappropriate comments, and the post had already profoundly bothered me. So yeah, it all went downhill from there.

As a result, I was angry and depressed all last week and well into this one.

On Sunday I got the ferrets out early in the morning to avoid the heat, and then after they were put up for the day I spent most of Memorial Day sitting outside. I was mostly messing around online on my Tablet and drinking (which I also do not do regularly, and have not in a long time, but I'd bought the cheap stuff and it was a holiday) and the fog sort of lifted. Late in the afternoon the sky clouded over and thunder rumbled, and long story short, my Schnauzer is terrified of thunder. I didn't want to get wet. He froze, and between me and the dog suddenly being terrified of stairs, we just made it in the door as the sky opened up. It rained for an hour or so, and then cleared up like nothing had happened, thankfully lowering the temperature by a good ten degrees for the rest of the day.

Funny thing, but right up until the sky turned gray the weather channel app on my phone and tablet said it was supposed to be hot and sunny all day. 

It's funny how Man, for all his hubris, for all of our vast technology, still cannot reliably do something as simple as determine what the weather is supposed to be in the afternoon.

But you know, we really don't need all that technology, if you think about it.

Do you realize that when we look out over a vast landscape from a higher elevation, or when we look up into the sky at night...we, with just our own eyes...can see literally forever? Technically, at sea level, the human visual range...also limited by the curvature of the Earth itself...is around ten miles. But the more unimpeded that vision is by things getting in the way, the further we can see.

Granted, technically when we look up at the night sky, we're looking out over such a vast distance that what we're seeing is actually in the past due to the sheer vastness of the distances involved and the limitations of the speed of light, but I digress.

Think about that, in the context of America, of our politics, school shootings and of course, Trump.

Why are we, the nation that sent men to the Moon, so prone to listening to leaders of such small vision? For example, one who would take Memorial Day as yet another opportunity to honor himself, instead of honoring fallen airmen, marines, sailors and soldiers.

Very early on Sunday morning, I learned that American Astronaut (and US Navy officer) Alan Bean had died. I first saw this on Rick Wilson's Twitter feed. Wilson, of course, is a Republican strategist. Most of the other people who mentioned anything about Bean or his death were Democrats, scientists, or science fiction fans or writers.

Decency and vision know no Partisan divide, but then neither do shortsightedness and stupidity, unfortunately.

For much of last week on Jim Wright's Twitter feed I watched a number of threads where various "Bernie Bros" and other far-left white people basically debated the merits of voting, of all fucking things. The Trump Presidency has turned into an endless, ridiculous self-congratulatory clown-show of governmental incompetence, malicious stupidity and scandal after scandal after scandal. For example, the Department of Homeland Security apparently lost track of 1,500 or so migrant children entrusted to its care last year. Think about that for a second...and then think about what the hell kind of privileged asshole you'd have to be to care more about some Progressive policy idea than the lives of 1,500 children or 30,000 elderly people in Louisiana.

This right here is another thing I saw last week, a survey taken that says only 25% of Evangelicals think that the United States of America has a responsibility to take in refugees. Sorry, ya'll, but that's not the Christianity that I was taught.

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34, New International Version.

 But then, the same people basically have the attitude that the only things Leviticus is really good for in abusing children, LGBT people and women,

Let's not forget the three commandments of Evangelicalism.

#1: Thou Shalt Not, under any circumstances be LGBT, marginalized or poor. Remember that Thy Church is a popular social club and conduct yourself accordingly. 

#2: Thou Shalt Not under any circumstances have an Abortion, unless it be to hide thy affair with some powerful Man, in which case, It Is Thy Fault, O Harlot!

#3: Thou Shalt Always Vote Republican, that thy true deity, Angry 100-metric-ton Assault BattleMech Jesus, Ayn Rand, Mammon, Velociraptor-riding Creationist Jesus Donald Trump!  shall be appeased.

#3a: Jesus who?

That last add-on there was actually not a joke. I think Evangelicalism has officially reached the point of being a Christless Christianity, and in fact is rapidly approaching Trump Cult status.

As of last night, I learned that the First Lady hadn't been seen in public in 18 days, but several people had gotten it confirmed via the Secret Service that she's moved back to New York. There are rumors of abuse. Also, it's entirely possible that Trump and Rudy Giuliani could go full Brokeback #MAGA if both of their wives take the opportunity to split. Hey, it wouldn't make any less sense than anything else that's happened in the last three years.

Speaking of incidents that'll make you question hard-right conservative sexuality, then there's this guy, Canadian (?!) Alt-Right Nazi Gavin McInnes, who apparently stuck a microphone up his own ass because something something gazpacho Hillary Clinton blargh blargh grunt grunt *Thumps chest in simian-like rage* I mean, come on dude, if you want to get long hard things stuck up your ass, there's plenty of decent conservative gay men out there. Go find yourself one and deal with your issues. This bullshit is disgusting. I pity the sound crew on your show. 

Apparently this idiot was pretty clear about his intentions toward the microphone and/or Hillary Clinton when speaking with somebody or other. Maybe it's just me, but I think these motherfuckers and their obsession with Hillary Clinton is more than just a little creepy.

But then, I felt the same way about their obsession with Barack Obama, too. These people's obsessions say far more about them than they say about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. A lot of it seems to come down to the usual mediocre white male worries about penis inadequacy...although I'd dare say calling these fools mediocre is probably an upgrade.

If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and vote against this garbage in the most effective possible way, (i.e. voting for the major party that isn't acting like this) because the Democrats don't inspire you or aren't fighting for whatever your pet policy issue is, don't call yourself a liberal. Hell, don't call yourself a decent human being.

It's the people who need to be "Inspired" that are why when it comes to getting out of this mess, we're just going to squeak by because pissed off conservatives who got cheated will vote against it and this country will survive by a percentage point or two, only to see the fight have to be renewed in two or four years when the Republicans find a way to wash this orange mess off of themselves. If the non-voters who bitch about this crap and the white uber-liberals/Bernie Bros would just get off their butts and vote with the rest of us, we could exile these Republican motherfuckers to the wilderness for decades, where they could either rethink their lives or stick microphones up their butts to their heart's content and we wouldn't have to see it on social media.

We. The. People. have the power to end this crap in the next couple of election cycles, Period. There are a lot more of the rest of us than there are of Republicans, let aloneTrump Supporters.

Will we? That's on us...all of us.

Look around you, and make the call.

Choose wisely.

...And Shineth even unto the West (Republican Judgment Day, Part 2)

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

I wrote the first part of this essay the other day, and then not long after that I went to bed. I woke up around nine on Monday night needing to use the bathroom, to find a huge and especially flashy and loud thunderstorm in progress. As the lightning flashed through my bathroom window, this verse came to mind again. That extra sense for vibes that I sometimes have was firing on all cylinders.

I feel a sense of foreboding. Something is coming...and it's not going to be what Evangelicals want it to be, either. We're due for a kick in the ass. We, as a people, have officially fucked up in allowing this situation-both Trump and more specifically the bloodshed in Gaza-to come to pass.

Reports indicate up to 61 dead and as many as 2700 injured in the brutal repression of Monday's protests, with no Israeli casualties or even known injuries. American Evangelicals are thrilled, and consider both the Embassy move and the resulting conflict signs of Biblical prophecy.

My Facebook and Twitter feeds on the other hand, bipartisan and global in nature as they tend to be, are still, after several days now, aflame with the condemnation of the world. That includes the condemnation even of many, if not most Americans and more than a few Jews...both Democrats and even some Republicans. It's important to remember, that on a global scale, White Evangelical Christians who ascribe to the hard-right politically-motivated End Times Theology that American Evangelicals do are an extreme minority. Even my Ugandan Facebook friend...who in many respects would be considered an extreme Fundamentalist here in America...holds a very socialistic view of politics and many aspects of life. Ugandans don't often have the money to be assholes for no reson. Given the vicious feedback loop between our current government, Israel's current government and the Evangelicals...many of whom, by the way, only support Israel because of its imagined role in the End Times. So, to be quite honest, most of the rest of the world just plain thinks we've lost our damned minds.

I've had to un-follow exactly one person on Twitter...and I think that speaks well of the people-both conservative and liberal-that I follow. I will say, though, that I've blocked and reported numerous bots and even a few actual, live trolls. Though regarding that last...I have to say, it's getting hard to tell the damned difference. I've also noticed one other troubling point. The Right seems to be getting its various claims about the casualties...specifically that all or almost all of those killed on Monday were members of Hamas...from Hamas itself. Now, I'll remind you that whenever a claim made by an organization like Hamas isn't convenient to whatever they're trying to claim, conservatives are the people who will question it if it's Midnight and somebody from Hamas tells them that it's dark outside.

Could it possibly be that Republicans don't really care about any of this shit and will just go with whatever sounds good (regardless of where it came from) then lie their asses off and make the rest up as they go along?

Sure looks like it to me. Hey John, do you hear a bus coming?

...No...

*Shove*

If these people will throw John McCain of all the people under the damn bus, where do you think that leaves you or me? I'll tell you one thing, I don't ever want to hear that Republicans support Veterans ever again. Hell, they can't even be bothered to support Republicans when one of their own is in need. Do you really think they're going to give a damn about some poor schmuck who spent four years as a Rifleman in the Marine Corps 50 years ago before spending 30 years working at His Way Lawn Care and another 10 working at Wal-Mart, who's old and in need of health care now? They cannot now be bothered to support the very man that they anointed (damned near literally, or maybe that was just his Vice-Presidential pick) as fit for the very highest Office in the country! What makes anybody think they're going to give a shit about you?

Then this happened. Trump called immigrants "Animals." Note that this was...as such things often are these days...a completely unqualified statement. That, of course suggests that there are dog-whistles that the base was meant to hear. If that's the case it's par for the course with this son of a bitch. The comment seems to be aimed at Latinos, which seems stupid to me for quite a few reasons...not least that if they were being treated decently by Republicans, Latino people (who are usually religious and often conservative in some ways) would be a natural demographic for Republicans. But of course they're not, because the Republicans at this point really seem to only want white people in their party.

There's just two problems here, #1 America as a nation is dependent on immigrants for everything from picking vegetables to serving as our doctors and #2 Demographics are already changing. If Republicans don't want to become a permanent minority themselves, it might be a damned good idea to ditch the hard-Right crap and be a little more inclusive.

Standing in the way of the tides of history and demographic & social change seems stupid to me. It's a bad strategy, especially when rolling with it and adapting to the changes in question would honestly not take very much...Americans have notoriously low standards.

...And that needs to change. If you want to have a better country you have to be better citizens. This country was founded on the ideal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and we need to start living up to that or the Republicans and their Opioid-addled rage-monkey base will succeed at burning this country down around their ears. These people hate government, science and even diplomacy and they have no business being allowed anywhere near any of the above.

This damn "Sanctuary city" conference? Getting the US out of the Iran Deal? The Jerusalem Embassy thing?

This isn't governance, this is a bunch of idiots playing with matches in a lake of gasoline because they think their God will like the pretty fire and come check it out.

We as a people really need to stop tolerating this bullshit.

Part One

Animals

A thousand did not fall at their side
Nor ten thousand by their right hand
It was not they who tore down Rome
Nor sent the last of the Caesars into exile.

It was not they who slew a hundred thousand
In the Holy City, Christians, Jews, Muslims
Three faiths, one God, all their blood the same color
As it stained the boots of the Crusader knights to their ankles.

It was not they, who with alcohol, gold, and muskets
Would purchase generations, even centuries of Black lives
Nor carried them in chains and squalor across bright oceans
Who said at Ouidah and Ferguson that their lives did not matter.

It was not they whose eyes saw the glory, and made of us, two great tribes
Blue and gray, bayoneted, burned, shot and memorialized into our nation
A war won, yet still fought, bloody wounds held open by greedy hands
Who sell hate like drugs to the huddled masses of our own teeming shores.

They did not kill six million, nor send new suns on Silverplate wings to stop it
Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen, Go For Broke and fight to build a new world
From Sea to Shining Sea, from Tranquility Base to the depths, for all mankind
Let freedom ring as we live each day twenty-six minutes from the Apocalypse.

They did not do these things, We did. It was Us, They're not tearing down the world
The world our grandparents, red, brown, yellow black and white all bled for,
We are, we who walketh about like roaring lions, seeking whom we may devour.
They are not the Animals, Mr. President, we, White Men are...and we made you.

Deal with it.

For as the lightning cometh out of the East (Republican Judgement Day, Part 1)

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.~Matthew 24:27

So, there it is. The American embassy in Jerusalem opened today, and massive Palestinian protests were met with excessive force by the Israelis. Thus far, all reports from Gaza (and presumably other Palestinian territories as well) suggest battlefield-scale casualty reports, with at last count, 51 killed and 1700+ injured.

Naturally, the Palestinians don't appear to be backing down...and well they should not.

Now, don't get me wrong, I support Israel, but I also support the Palestinians. Both of these countries/ethnic groups have full right to determine their own destiny and, I think, at this point they need to be forcibly held at arms-length from each other by the world community like somebody stepping between two fighting kids on a playground and pushing them apart until they calm the fuck down, and then they should be forced to resolve their disputes rationally. I take no side in this and I've been saying for two decades that it's the oldest ongoing ethno-religious conflict in the world...stretching back to Biblical times...and we'd do right by ourselves and all parties if we'd just stay out of it. Especially, I think, since the Israelis are handling their side of the conflict with all the grace of a playground bully...and bullying is something I have no tolerance for.

What I have even less tolerance for is the Evangelical nuts who keep trying to manipulate this situation because they think it will somehow, something something gazpacho, magically bring about the End Times and cause Angry White Turbo-Jesus to appear and zap all the people they don't like into charcoal briquettes and then whisk them away to heaven so they can gloat about it for all of eternity.

I don't think God has any more desire to put up with these people for that long than I do, but hey, that's just me.

Granted, if God can be manipulated in such a way He is not God, and we need not worry.

If such is the case, we'd all best accept that all this stuff about the Afterlife was just made up by people who were afraid of death. Of course, you know I don't believe that. I don't believe the Evangelical End Times horse shit either and I say that as somebody who knows this stuff better than some of those who actually believe in it do.

But even if it was true...

What these people would even do with themselves without Democrats, Gay people, non-believers, People of Color and for that matter other white Christians to bitch about, I've literally no idea. Hell, most of these people can't even stand each other if the infighting, leaking chaos of the Trump administration (or your typical white-conservative Evangelical church) is any indication. About the only thing that surprises me is that there haven't been several illicit and very-not-gay relationships where there was a lot of anal sex involved in order to preserve the female partner's technical virginity.

I also rather suspect that if even one Catholic, Jew, Mainstream Christian, Muslim, Person of Color or various LGBT-person were present, these people would immediately head for the gilded exits. You have to understand, just like America isn't America to These Fucking People if anybody else gets any, Heaven isn't Heaven if anybody else gets to go...and I rather suspect all of the above are already present in great numbers, but hey, what do I know? I only got thrown under the bus by these same people seventeen years ago myself.

That really is about the only difference between every Evangelical, Fundamentalist or Pentecostal church I've ever set foot in, Evangelical heaven, and the Trump administration...well, that and the fact that I think my ferrets probably read the Bible more than Trump does, and ferrets can't read.

Listen, I'm just sayin' if Man got to determine this stuff, everybody would've been out of the pool a long damn time ago, there have been such fanatics throughout all of history, and they usually end up coming to a bad end. It's not just that these fuckers are well on their way to that...it's that they're mostly thus far doing it to themselves.

As a case in point, despite their certainly being at their peak of glories and Hallelujahs from the Evangelical community (a situation likely to end soon, if my own read on the situation is correct) A friend of mine just posted an article to my Facebook timeline stating that no one wants to work for these idiots.

Wow, what a surprise, given that Trumpublicans and Trumpvangelicals have been busy throwing none other than John S. McCain III, Vietnam War hero, longtime Republican member of Congress, former Presidential candidate who never met a Republican policy he couldn't sell out his principles for while being very concerned about it, and perhaps most importantly He Who Made This Crap Possible by bringing Sarah Fucking Palin aboard as his Vice-Presidential nominee and firing up the Evangelical and especially Pentecostal nuts in ways that even Reagan's politically-convenient (and relatively quickly discarded) alliance with the Moral Majority never did.

I was a moderator on a message board for ex-Pentecostals at the time...so I got far more of an earful about Sarah Palin than most. Not to mention, my ex-wife, who'd never had the least bit of interest in politics before in her life, was suddenly trying to get everybody she knew to vote Republican (my ex-wife can't vote due to a felony conviction.) Of course, McCain went down in flames, and given that he spent most of the campaign looking like he was going to die, and most of the next several years seeming increasingly senile, I'm glad he lost...and I used to have a lot of respect for the guy not least because one of my Grandfathers was also in Naval Aviation.

McCain shouldn't be a guy whose death (due to cancer, of all the hellish ways to go) gets joked about by White House aides. He shouldn't be getting told by Republicans who he can or cannot have at his funeral and he damn sure shouldn't be being maligned on social media by many of the very people who voted for him in 2008.

To make matters worse, the reasoning for such maligning seems to fall into two categories: #1 Insufficient racism and #2 Insufficient Trump ass-kissing. That seems pretty fucked up to me. Given McCain's record, seniority, and theoretical status within the Republican Party, logic dictates that he should be able to say and get to do what he damn well pleases, and a majority of Republicans should be responding "Three bags full, sir."

Of course, at this point, as 30,000 nursing-home-bound Louisiana Senior Citizens can tell you, Republicans have a demonstrated capability to throw anyone, or any ally or any group, under the bus for any or no reason whatever.

Just sayin' if I was the Israelis, with their justifiable reasons for heavily armed paranoia, I wouldn't trust Republicans to tell me what time it was.

In point of fact, the Israelis might want to ask this guy...Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei...just how reliable Trump's word or that of his Evangelical supporters is. In point of fact I rather suspect that the Iranians have more respect for and understanding of American values and Constitutional Law than Republicans do. Their leadership at least seems smart enough to be able to read an actual book to keep up on current events, at least, so there is that.

If I had to guess I'd say the Iranians probably have more actual respect for Israeli Jews...if only the respect an intelligent person gives a formidable and seasoned enemy...than the Trump crime-syndicate or their Nazi-wannabe really do.

I think the Israelis are going to find themselves in big trouble for having aligned themselves with Trump. For fuck's sake, this guy thinks more than half of America is The Enemy and would rather suck up to Kim Jong Un and the North Koreans than deal fairly with their own people, so hey, what could possibly go wrong? They'd rather threaten our allies than hang with them on numerous things we all agreed on two years ago. There are actual Trump Supporters who rant about killing all the Jews, there are actual Nazis running openly as Republicans at this point. If I were the Israelis, I'd quite frankly be looking for a new international benefactor at least until this Trump bullshit gets dealt with, but hey, that's just me.

I used to be a Christian, a Conservative and a Republican, and I've spent the last three years watching these people gleefully set everything they've ever claimed to believe on fire for Donald Trump.

I'm an Agnostic Theist, but I have a church background and even *I* have more respect for the values I was taught than this. I was taught that God is all-knowing, all-present, all-seeing and we all should probably assume He's smarter than us and probably not having it when it comes to our crap, so at least try to do better. But then, I'm not evil and stupid.

Seriously.

It's like they don't even need Angry White Turbo-Jesus anymore, they've found a new one. As I've often said lately, I seriously expect these people are going to start bowing down and worshiping Trump before this is over.

It's funny, though, what the Bible says about both the conduct and the coming of the real Jesus...and neither seem to match up well with what the Evangelicals fantasize about.

I think, deep down, that they know it too. Hence the Trump-worship.

But Trump is just a man.

You don't have to have been a member of the End Times Prophecy movement to know what the Bible says that God thinks of things like Man worshiping Man, especially over cruelty and mean, petty political agendas.

Were I an Evangelical or a still a Republican...I would fear the lightning.

Part Two

Twofold more the child of hell...

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. ~John 18-20

In case you're wondering, dear reader, I'm only kind-of being ironic with the pull-quote above. You know, that snippet of cherry-picked Bible verses that's basically been used to justify all manner of asshole behavior pretty much since somebody wrote it down...though I'm rather certain that Jesus, assuming He actually said it, probably didn't intend for it to be used that way.

The reason I bring this up, of course, is that Marco Rubio, for whatever reason, Tweeted that verse a few days ago. Given that this was a day or so after Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News and effectively ratted Trump out for pretty much everything he's been accused of regarding the Stormy Daniels case, further tying that whole mess to the campaign and likely igniting a fresh legal firestorm right after two of Trump's main attorneys had just quit.

If I was Ty Cobb right now, I'd be kicking back in my recliner drinking a '40' of Colt 45 Malt Liquor and thinking "Damn, I dodged that bullet."

I've been hearing a lot recently about how farmers in California, and also Sorghum and Soybean farmers in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas are worried about their livelihoods and worried about losing their farms because of Trump's trade protectionism and the entirely-predictable fact that the Chinese are fighting back in large part by simply buying what they need someplace else. Ya know, like one would expect people with a Capitalist mentality to do?

If the service sucks or they're charging too much for whatever you need, you simply go somewhere else. It's not rocket science, it's capitalism and customer service. Anybody who's ever worked at Wal-Mart should be able to tell you that.

That's what these people don't get. Nobody has to do business with us. Nobody has to put up with these fucking people's bullshit. When people don't like you, they're not "Persecuting" you it's just that you're being an asshole and they're not having it.

I swear, if these people ever faced persecution the way that Christians in so many other parts of the world have...every last one of them would renounce Jesus Christ faster than you can say "Make America Great Again."

Sorry, Jesus, the Evangelicals don't need you anymore. They've found a new one.

Here's the thing that gets me; How little of self-respect do you have to have to literally idolize somebody like Donald Trump? Trump being a man who, as I have said before, said live on CNN that he didn't need God's forgiveness.

I watched him say that on CNN, my [African-American Baptist] roommate and I were both extremely offended by the statement...and I'm the former Christian.

Yet Evangelicals voted for this motherfucker in droves, and they thought they were going to get some kind of glory for doing it, too.

I blocked one lady from the Facebook ferret group when she said she was going to vote for Trump and then gave all type of passive-aggressive excuses, lashing out at a number of other people who'd been drawn into the conversation-including a number of ferret people, some of whom were LGBT or non-Christian or both-and then when I unfriended her she adamantly (and increasingly creepily) continued to try to message me. So, I informed her that I was blocking her and that if any other communication was attempted I was going to call the police. Then I blocked her. Then she basically nuked more than half of her own online presence (including leaving all the ferret groups) and according to several other people, she whined on Facebook for three days because I called her a shitty person.

Who the hell even does stuff like that?

But then, who wears a stained tank-top with "Trump grab my pussy" on it, except they don't actually have the guts to write "pussy" on this homemade abomination of a T-shirt, so instead they just put an arrow pointing down.

What really cracks me up is when it's men who clearly want to, but they don't have the guts to actually swear. So they end up sounding like the Mall manager in Bad Santa, and wonder why people treat them like idiots.

Look, I'm gonna level with ya'll here. I'm sick to death of these fake-religious, racist strutting reactionary turd burglars and their collective man-crush on Donald Trump. These are clearly the kind of people who, many years ago, were the inspiration for why there was always some dumb-ass (Most often Captain Harris and Officer Proctor) who the cadets conned into going in the Blue Oyster gay bar in the Police Academy movies.

As I said earlier today, if Trump started picking random Evangelical men out for the purpose of butt-raping them they would think he was doing it to reinforce their masculinity or test them in some way, and hell they'd probably be lining up for a chance at being picked out in the first place.

Who the hell torches every single thing they believe and falls into this kind of cult-like bullshit?

People with no self-respect, that's who.

The funny part is that it was conservatives, or at least what passed for that 40 years ago, that taught me to have self-respect in the first place, and they ingrained it well enough that I was (rightfully, or so it seems) distrustful of the whole "Self-Esteem" thing in the 1990's. Current Republicans have no concept of self-respect, but a lot of them sure seem to have bought into the "Self-Esteem" craze back in the day.

Except the problem is, that theory immediately trips over this guy, disgraced West Virginia coal baron (and convicted felon) Don Blankenship, who seems to be exactly the kind of racist, slow-talking, slack-jawed yokel that is why all the horrible stereotypes about Kentucky and West Virginia exist. I'm serious, this guy is launching racist attacks against Mitch McConnell, calling him "Cocaine Mitch" and attacking his "China Family" and "China people." This guy has no self-respect, probably can't even spell "Self-esteem" and so far as I can tell, seems to be running in the first place based on some kind of bizarre vendetta against Joe Manchin (and apparently, Mitch McConnell) and out of some even more bizarre desire to one-up Trump in some way. He's also favored to win the West Virginia Republican primary tomorrow, though not expected to do so well in the general election if he does. Trump himself has Tweeted support for the two Republicans (including the state's current House Rep.) that are running against Blankenship.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you I cannot fucking stand Mitch McConnell, but the dude does not deserve racist attacks against his wife and family...and it's not Democrats doing this, it's a Republican.

I followed the Roy Moore scandal closely, and I have a feeling that the same kind of rabid droolers who put Roy Moore over the top in Alabama will prevail again. It's not so much that the Republican Party has turned into the Trump Cult, it's that there's a small but dedicated faction of Republicans who are determined to out-Trump the Trump.

I'll be quite surprised if this doesn't end with banjos and some dude...probably one of the other Republicans...getting sodomized and forced to squeal like a pig right before some cracker gets shot in the face with an arrow from a compound bow at damned near point-blank range, but whatever.

Things have been so nuts just today that I'm not sure it'd even make the news if exactly that happened.

That, quite frankly, scares me. While Trump has no idea what he's doing, these crazy people seem to on a certain level. I have a feeling they're exactly the ones who would be Okay with Nazis, and who if it doesn't come to that, will be the ones supporting armed right-wing anti-government insurgents, especially if Trump goes down, or simply keeps finding his presidency paralyzed by scandal. Some people just can't understand that Trump and current Republicans are incompetent and basically their own worst enemies...but some people, even if they can't articulate it...can imagine that and are angry and stupid enough to try to do something about it. These are the people ranting about "We have to destroy liberalism" who are also busy redefining "Liberal" as "Anybody with basic human decency" or "Person who criticized Donald Trump even one time" or "Anyone who does not have Vladimir Putin's dick either literally or figuratively in their mouths" and, increasingly, "Any person who is not a White conservative Evangelical or willing to explicitly bow down to those who are."

Like I said, fake religious, racist, strutting reactionary turd burglars, that's what we're dealing with here. Fox News fucking televised Vladimir Putin's fourth inauguration. If somebody would've tried that when the Soviets swore in Gorbachev, that person would've probably literally got their ass handed to them...especially by Republicans.

Which brings me to the NRA, the people most prone to unhinged ranting about the subject of armed revolution in America, who love them some Russian money and who have chosen convicted felon, disgrace to the uniform and supplier of weapons to Iran, Oliver Fucking North to be their leader. I'd say "Are ya'll fuckin' serious?" but my sense of irony collapsed from exhaustion three hours ago. Birds of a feather commit treason together, as the saying goes. I'm seriously about ready to start screaming "FUCK THESE FUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS!" at my laptop screen, but I digress.

Why? Because among other things, I've argued with, blocked and reported on Twitter a number of apparently rabidly anti-John McCain people, a combination of Trump Supporters and (of course) Russian bots. Now, I don't like John McCain all that much these days, but I have enough respect for him not to talk shit about a dying man on social media. Nobody deserves this. That is all.

Ya'll got a problem, Republicans, and if you don't start trying to fix it, the rest of us are going to fix you in November, although I suspect these drooling morons are going to end up being a problem for everybody no matter what anyone does.

...And that's your fault, Republicans.

If there's any consolation it's that these zombies you've created and foisted upon the world look like they're going to be busy enough eating you first, that the rest of us might have time to do something about this mess.

I'm just really starting to wonder how right-wing is right-wing enough for these assholes. If John McCain and Mitch McConnell...let alone somebody like Robert Mueller...people who should be defining examples of what a Republican is, if not what they're supposed to be, have targets on their backs? ...And all this for Donald Fucking Trump?!?! (And apparently even HE doesn't go far enough for these people?)

Well then, as far as I'm concerned, every last person on the planet who isn't a member of this cult or somebody that they fetishize needs to be worried.

I'm not quite sure that Republicans are necessarily all monsters...but they've damned sure created monsters.

Be Best, huh? You know what this is? This is what happens when Republicans can't spell "Just say no" anymore. This is what happens when the party of "Mr. Gorbachev, OPEN THIS GATE, Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" gives in to fear and destroys itself.

We can't hope these people destroy themselves before they do something horrible. What we can do is vote the bastards out.

Remember that.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. ~Matthew 23:15