No country for young men.

And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up next to you
And defend Her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt
I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.~Lee Greenwood

Over the weekend, and especially today, anything remotely to do with social media has been aflame with condemnation of the Trump administration's policy of separating undocumented immigrant kids from their parents, and rightly so. All 49 Senate Democrats have signed on to a bill aimed at prohibiting the practice, and as the snipped Tweet above shows, even many Republicans are...as they God-damned well should be...coming out against this practice.

Now, whether this is just plain racist bullshit, or some kind of bargaining chip in some bullshit political fight...it should not be tolerated. I think anybody who has anything to do with it should be fired and brought up on charges of child abuse, in addition to whatever else can be thrown at them, because this bullshit is not only immoral, it's illegal under international law. More to the point...if this IS some kind of "bargaining chip" that shit needs to be slapped down hard. Look, I'm of Scandinavian heritage. The Vikings are part of my genetics. I'm here to tell you, once one pays Danegeld, one *Never* gets rid of the Dane. If Congress caves to this hellish bullshit, you can bet that little InCel sadists like Stephen Miller and Meth-fueled masturbators like Steve Bannon and washed-up old men like John Kelly will be getting wood over what kind of petty cruelties they can inflict upon the undeserving to score political points and wring otherwise-undreamed-of political concessions out of Congress.

Also, speaking of Nazis, let's get one thing out of the way straight up. When people like Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon use words like "Culture" they're not trying to protect Apple Pie, Backyard Barbecues, Mom, or anything like that. Unless you look at it from the perspective of they're trying to get rid of Mom's new black boyfriend or the family members he has over for barbecues or the Mexican neighbor who brought over the apple pie or the Dominican and Mexican kids that are playing baseball in the vacant lot across the street. What These Fucking People are trying to protect is their racism and their right to be racist assholes and don't you forget it.

Meanwhile, these fucking people can't even take responsibility for their own shitty thought process. Here we have Roseanne ranting about "Leftist mind control." Bitch, if Democrats or Leftists could control your mind you might actually be a decent person and still have your stupid TV show and maybe your name might not be synonymous with "Making a fool of oneself on Social Media as performance art." Hell, maybe you wouldn't have changed all that much from back when YOU used to be a radical Leftist and ran for President on the Green Party ticket with Jill Stein as your running mate. Remember that one? I sure do, and I thought it was ridiculous. I'd personally suggest you try something other than woo woo bullshit for once. Don't you ever get tired of looking like an idiot?

I keep seeing these shirts at Wal-Mart (and I saw somebody wearing one today) that feature a Bald Eagle wearing sunglasses and they say "I can't hear you over the sound of my FREEDOM." (Freedom to do what, exactly?) And then in smaller letters further down "Make America Great Again" So, I'd have to assume the shirts either have something to do with Trump or at least somebody trying to make money off of him. I wonder if this is what they mean? Freedom to run over a peaceful protester in the street for no reason. These people don't give a shit about your freedom, or your rights. In fact in their zero-sum white trash minds, the fact that you have your freedom means that they don't have theirs, never mind that the actual laws of our actual country protect both you and them. Trickle-down economics has apparently been replaced by Trickle-down basic human rights, and these idiots think they're gonna be the next generation of Super-rich. They see other people having agency and human rights as an attack upon their own. Never mind that these people apparently don't believe in human rights.

As their Nationalist Anthem suggests, the only privilege or rights that they really care about are that they were born here. "Here" by the way somehow manages not to include big cities, liberal states, also Alaska, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. "People who were born here" doesn't include Christians who aren't Fundamentalist Nuts, LGBT people, liberals, Nancy Pelosi, People of Color, people who actually care about the Environment, Veterans who don't tow the right-wing political line or anything else that isn't fetishized by conservatives...or whatever passes for them today. It may however, include in an honorary capacity people like Kim Jong Un, Moammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin. North Korea is, in these fucking people's eyes, somehow more American than Chicago.

There's hope, though. A lot of people, both Democrats and Republicans, are openly speculating that Trump has finally gone too far, and polling seems to bear that out. As I've said many times at this point, the key here is that you have to show up and vote, and you have to vote for the party most likely to be able to stop whatever it is that you have a problem with. So, in this case, that would be the Democrats. It kind of IS a "Like it or lump it" sort of thing, and at this point, either you support basic human rights and human worth or you don't. It's really just that simple.

Why do I say that?

I love ya, Max, I really do. But the answer to your question is "No." There is nothing that the Dear Orange Leader does that the Trump Cult Of Personality Party will not support. That is exactly why in the next two election cycles, they have to be voted out of power, completely and at all levels. Please, keep in mind that this dude is a conservative, and not just a conservative but a pretty no-shit conservative academic. I actually own a couple of his books.

Of course, he lost them at "Academic" and it all went downhill from there. Conservatism is now defined as "Whatever Donald Trump says it is" and the precise reason for that is that Trump's followers and a large majority of conservative voters generally haven't had any serious grounding in academic disciplines or conservative philosophy in at least 24 years, quite possibly longer. I blame people like Newt Gingrich for that. When you can't even have a conversation with somebody on the other side, that's not actually a sign that you believe in the words that come out of your mouth when you're talking about political beliefs. What that means is, even you figure that your shit can't stand up to criticism and that's where these people have been at for nearly an entire generation. You can't argue with that, you can only vote that kind of shit out of power...and then never give it control again.

You cannot reason with willfully unreasonable people.

As a case in point, this dude here recently attended a conservative women's conference and while I intend to use the majority of his thread as the basis for a future essay, this part came to mind: The conservative obsession with people like David Hogg...as expressed by Tomi Lahren. If you think these people, with their bitching about dumb shits eating Tide Pods as if it were something done by more than a few Internet Idiots, will stop at imprisoning Latino immigrant kids for no reason...you have another thing coming. These Fucking People stopped understanding the world...or even trying to...at least a decade ago and now they're finding themselves surrounded by a changing world they no longer understand and have-endlessly egged on by Fox News-become desperately afraid of. The fact that a large number of young people...some of whom actually have been shot at...are refusing to take up their phallic worship of the Gun scares the shit out of them. Of course, the fact that large numbers of older people...people like me for instance...never signed onto such in the first place even though we have guns, well that scares the shit out of them too. In point of fact I think it's shorter to list the things that these people aren't afraid of than the things that they are afraid of.

I honestly don't know how people can live like that. But then, if the number of gun-related suicides and Opioid overdose deaths is taken into consideration...I think a lot of them can't. But they can't seem to accept or deal with change, either.

I started out as a conservative, but I guess I was just taught a different vision of the world.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~Emma Lazarus

I like that one better.

Let's vote these bastards out, shall we?  Let's do it while we still can.