The Dark And Rolling Sea

We will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, yes we can. ~Barack Obama

Yesterday, A couple hours before I started writing this, I watched Joe Biden give the Eulogy for the Arizona memorial service for John McCain at the North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

We know now that on Saturday, both Barack Obama and George W. Bush will speak at the National Cathedral in the D.C. memorial service.

Over the course of this week I've seen extensive tributes to John McCain from Democrats and some Republicans, from Americans and Vietnamese alike, from the Vietnamese Army jailer who was party to McCain's torture and from the Presidential candidate who defeated him.

That's pretty damned amazing. I've seen people come together to speak of duty, honor and sacrifice in the course of honoring the late Senator from people who never agree on much of anything.

I've thus far seen a pretty politically, racially and even yes, sexually diverse group of people speak up or be tapped to speak up in memory of McCain. There's black Arizona Cardinals football players, gay Republicans, a registered Democrat Latino businessman and non-profit supporter. Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, Joe Biden, NATO officials, Vietnamese prison officers, There's class, decency and respect all around.

I often feel like conservatism is a series of missed opportunities, an obsession with the next fiscal quarter or polling cycle instead of thinking five or 20 or 30 years ahead. I feel like had this McCain program been followed (sometimes, even by McCain himself when he was alive) then McCain would've been President and Donald Trump would still be just Donald Trump, Private Asshole instead of threatening to take half of our entire political system down with him when he goes down...if such could even be said to be a singular event in a Presidency that's seemed to be in a perpetual state of collapse almost since its beginning.

Oh you set your course for the furthest shores
And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and the rolling sea

You know what I haven't seen? Basic respect toward Senator McCain from the President of the United States, nor from many Republicans. In point of fact this small, mean, petty man and his small, mean, petty followers and the Republicans who've gone along with them for the racism and tax cuts seem offended by talk of duty, honor and service before self.

It seems as if because a Black Democrat said the words hope and change then hope and change became Bad Things, to be avoided at best, and hoarded only for the select few at worst. Of course, by that logic is it any wonder that since the same guy said "Yes, We Can" the entire mantra of the Republican Party for the last decade has been "No We Can't" unless it involves racism, tax cuts for the rich or a war that they specifically want.

Then there's this. I've noticed an odd trend developing in the last couple weeks. The Republicans have a new strategy. "Everybody is out to get you and everything is terrible, so vote for us because it's Tuesday, or something, oh and Hail Dear Leader Trump." Seems like a really weird strategy to me. It seems like an even stranger hill for the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and The Bushes to die on, but I guess that's just me and I'm really not inspired or even really emotionally moved at all by this mess. 

"We're not as bad as THEY are" is pretty much normally the strategy Democrats have run on in every midterm election since forever, and it doesn't normally work unless the Republicans have really fucked up. Whether the Republicans are trying to use it against the Alt-Right Nazis or Democratic Socialists, it seems like all they should have to do is look across the aisle and ask Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi "Hey, how has this strategy worked for ya'll?"

For fuck's sake, at this point Republicans have fucked shit up so badly that the Democrats are starting to see socialism as a valid option, and young angry white dudes (and Trump personally) are experimenting with Fascism (and in some cases open Nazi shit) while Republicans have basically burned every bridge to the mainland, set all their own values on fire and left them to burn and Republicans now live in fear of getting voted off Trump Island with no recourse by the very guy they decided should be the only vote that matters.

Does any of this seem dysfunctional to you? Hello? Hello? Is this thing even on?

When somebody like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sounds like the sensible one in the room and a freaking Texas politician like Beto O'Rourke can pick up some of her talking points and be ahead of Ted Cruz in the polls last I checked...

Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and the rolling sea

If the Republicans had held to the values they had 31 years ago when Reagan stood there in Berlin at the Bradenburg Gate and spoke these words, this wouldn't even be possible, much less happening: (And of course, Texas would probably still be a Purple state that bounced back and forth between (D) and (R) every four years or so, but I digress)

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Yes, there was a time when being a Republican meant you were something other than an asshole, or a bigot.

But those days are long past. To be a Republican today is, quite honestly, to have no moral center or values at all other than what feels good right now, what might buy us a few more clicks, or cheers, or minutes in power or squeeze a few more pennies out of the army of dipshits these fucking people have bamboozled into following them. 

A note on terminology: If the use of the word "Dipshit" in this context offends you, too fucking bad and you're probably part of the problem.

Anyway, per Fox Fucking News, we're now down to trying to force non-compliant (Read: non-Trump Supporting) rich people to have to submit to socialism while invoking Bernie Sanders. I guess Trump and his goons...I don't know, sneak out the back door and board a flight to Moscow with the rest of the money?

I'm legit not sure if Tucker (Or Trump) understands how Capitalism actually works and how it functions RE: The Constitution and how our financial and legal systems work, but there's literally no way to put the screws to Amazon without also screwing over Wal-Mart...and you bet that'll make those checks from the Walton family stop coming. You can't have capitalism for only some of us, while making others live under a socialistic system, and Amazon and social media alike SHOULD be (or have been, I guess) considered the Republican wet-dream of a business model.

But no, I guess it all comes down to the fact that at the end of the day, Conservatism in America has been reduced to five words: "What Trump Says It Is."

I'm not sure about you, but that literally doesn't square up with anything that I was taught.

It may not have to, though:

No, seriously, check this out.

I think the snipped Tweets here could safely be referred to as a Demographic Conservapocalypse.

It should be noted that it didn't have to come to this. It never had to come to this. This is what happens when you give your country, or your party, over to insecure, small, mean men whose idea of success is "We're making money."

This is what happens when you trade the quiet leadership of a Dwight Eisenhower or Gerald Ford or even a George H.W. Bush for the bombastic stupidity of a Newt Gingrich. 

This is what happens when you trade the big dreams, leadership qualities, sunny optimism and even woo woo economics of a Ronald Reagan for the small dreams, lack of leadership, fear of damned-well everything and woo woo economics of a Donald Trump.

This is, at the end of the day, where even the hard-nosed shitty Neoconservative pragmatism of a George W. Bush or Richard M. Nixon goes to die. I'm willing to make the argument at this point that the situation is even starting to get away from Trump. We might as well have Fox News for President.

At the end of the day, Republicans are probably going to wish that wasn't the case.

Now the thunder rails in the great mainsails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and the rolling sea. 
~Al Stewart,
On the dark and rolling sea.

But to effect that, you have to show up and you have to vote.

So do it.

Yes, We Can.

Part Four.

Wut R U Wearing, Senator?

Respect for the God-given dignity of every human being, no matter their race, ethnicity or other circumstances of their birth, is the essence of American patriotism. To believe otherwise is to oppose the very idea of America.~John McCain

So, apparently Republicans have decided to blame a dead man for why there was an issue over the White House flag earlier this week.

According to Senator James "Snowball" Inhofe (R-Dumbfuckistan) McCain should have been more "Courteous" to Trump.

Yeah, and I suppose the Senator from Oklahoma also thinks that if women would just dress more modestly they wouldn't get raped, and maybe if those students had guns instead of school books they wouldn't have got shot, or any number of other dumb-shit blame-the-victim conservative excuses for "logic."

I'm sorry, but I've had it with These Fucking People.

John McCain has been in Congress since 1983, a member of the Senate since 1987. He served in the Navy for 20 years before that, and came from a family where all the guys did the same before he did it. Now, I've spent most of the last decade disagreeing with this dude about a variety of topics, but as regards service to his country in general and to the Republican Party in particular, there literally should be no doubt that John McCain was That Guy.

He'd been there and done that in all respects, from the depths of the Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam to the heights of running for the U.S. Presidency, that guy was there.

How do they treat him? Well, as I've said so many times if you're a Republican you're apparently Persona Non Grata once you're dead.

Presumably out of fear of Trump and Trump's base, Republicans have basically abandoned a plan to rename the Russell Senate Office Building (named for a racist Georgia Democrat) for John McCain.

Apparently, dude is now the subject of thinly repurposed rape rationalizations as regards why Trump is treating him like garbage.

And Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's best friends, goes on Hannity and expresses fangirlish levels of support for Trump, after all this crap?

No, seriously, fuck these fucking people. Not to sound that way but I quite think that Captain Queeg picked about the right time to check out.

I just can't help but feel that the Republican Party...or any sliver of it that I or most of the people I know could recognize...died with him.

And then there's this fucking shit, about which I'll say very little, simply because I think the Twitter blurb says more than I'm willing to without excessive profanity and certainly taking the risk of saying something that's just wrong. But, as I told my younger friend C.J. who I specifically asked about this to the tune of "I'm not that fluent in 'Internet Nerd' despite being one. So, could you translate this shit for me?"

Look, I'm sorry, I came up in a different era and being a conservative at one point did mean that you were (or certainly, could be) more than just a bigot or some freakish internet troll. But starting about a decade ago, it certainly seemed like if you were anything else they didn't want you.

I'm fucking serious. Somewhere inside, 1990's Republican me is looking at this conservative Transgender Internet Fan-fiction Porn shit like "Oh my God, what the hell is that, please make it stop." I'm not sure how much more I can say here without recording myself actually shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN" but I was taught there were certain things that went with conservatism. This isn't it.

Then there's this ridiculous bullshit. Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, running for the Florida governorship, said of his Black Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum "We shouldn't 'monkey this up' by electing Democrats." I'm fucking sorry, but there's a million and one goddamned words he could've used to say the same thing besides one with all the racist connotations of calling a Black person a "Monkey." He knows it, he said it anyway. Fuck that guy and I'd say that to his face. I'm sorry but this is America in 2018, not 1958. Americans in general and Republicans in particular need to stop tolerating this garbage.

The demographics of the country are changing, the electorate is changing, I fully understand that Trumpism sees itself as a last-ditch effort to prevent change, but short of "Massacre everybody besides conservative white people" which is an idea that'd probably not end well for conservative white people...there's  just no way that's going to happen. The changes they fear are already ongoing, have been for some time, and the fact that they're just now seeing it and overreacting should tell you the same thing it told me.

These people are fucking stupid.

There's no two ways about it.

Look, you know what this is? Keep in mind that I was 21 years old before the Internet as we know it was even a thing, and that I lived through all those messy formative stages.

As an old psychology professor of mine once put it "In 1995 the general sentiment regarding the Internet was 'Oh hey, this is cool, I can talk to somebody in Bangladesh and it's not going to cost me anything. Now today, in 1998, one American gets online and starts talking to another one of the opposite sex and the second or third thing they'll ask is 'Wut R U Wearing' misspelling and all."

Then of course there was the early 2000's and the "Kill Everybody Who Doesn't Understand L33tspeak" phase, which was the birth of the Internet Nihilism that led directly to 4Chan and conservative transgender fan-fiction porn.

After that, came the era that I missed, in which it became cool for stupid white kids to say racist shit, stupid shit, and racist stupid shit online, which led thence to the Alt-Right Nazis, Charlottesville, Idiots with Tiki Torches and the fucking Dilbert Guy being a Fox News contributor.

Look, I wish I could say I had a cure for this shit, but I don't. The best I can offer is that maybe we should start making kids, teenagers and assorted younger internet nerds leave the house every once in awhile or as my Mom put it when I was a kid and she thought I was playing too much Nintendo "Turn that shit off and go outside or something."

There seems to be something about relating to other human beings exclusively through a computer screen that leads a lot of people to become sociopaths, and historically, humanity generates enough of those without electronic assistance...and don't even get me started on the Jacksonville shooting over the weekend.

If you're that into a damn video game that you're willing to kill somebody over it, I can't really help you, but the last thing I think you should have is access to a gun. It takes work and a degree of skill to actually stab somebody to death, even if they're sitting down playing a video game.

I can get pretty into a game, to the point of screaming profanity at it when something goes wrong, but murder has never been on my mind because of it.

I somehow learned not to abandon my friends, even if they died, just because it's politically convenient or some big orange galoot didn't like my friend.

I've never Photoshopped anybody, despite owning an actual copy of the program. I sure as hell have never written politically themed transgender erotica about some dude.

I was taught that racism was wrong, I was taught this by conservatives. Yes, conservatives were a little different back then, but not so much, really. I dare you, go ahead and research Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or the John Birch Society or Barry Goldwater's 1964 Presidential run...In your guts you know he's nuts!...and you'll see what I mean.

Listen up, America, we need to start doing better. Maybe we can at least manage speaking in complete sentences again?

We have to do something, before this silly bullshit kills us all.

Part Three.

Under the wide and starry sky...

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
    - Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson

John McCain died last night.

I can't help but feel like the last shreds of the Republican Party as I knew it died with him.

Fair winds and following seas, Captain. What we do in life echoes in eternity.

Fuck you, Senator. Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?

Full disclosure: John McCain was the last Republican presidential candidate I seriously considered voting for. In the end, I couldn't stomach the rise of conspiracy theories, racism, religious extremism (Thanks, Sarah) and various nutty anti-Obama conspiracy theories nor the unwillingness on the part of Republicans to crack down on that crap.

In the end I voted for Obama and I'm glad I did. Why? After having spent the last decade watching the shit-show that is the modern Republican Party unfold I want nothing more to do with that crap.

I spent a couple hours this morning slogging through the feeds of various Fox News personalities to see what the Comment Section was saying. I find it ironic and sad that the people showing John McCain respect are the Democrats, Liberals, #NeverTrump Republicans and not a few Vietnamese people. It's ironic that the people whose ancestors tortured John McCain at the Hoa Lo Prison (The "Hanoi Hilton") for five years after he was shot down and captured are showing McCain more respect than one HELL of a lot of the people who wanted him Sarah Palin to be President of the United States in 2008. I think that's pretty fuckin' sad.

Instead of McCain's old-school Republicanism, this is what we get, Republican candidate Kelli Ward (AKA Chemtrail Kelli) who is running to replace Jeff Flake, accused McCain and family of announcing that he was forgoing further medical care...basically dying...just to derail her senate campaign.

As Rick said: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Kelli. It bears mentioning, again, that Rick Wilson is a Republican.

This is what the Republican Party has come to, performative evil and stupid shit. Republicanism is now Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort being declared guilty at the same time, one by plea bargain and the other after trial by jury. Republicanism is Duncan Hunter and his wife committing $250,000 dollars worth of campaign fraud and racking up nearly $40,000 in overdraft fees from their bank, being indicted for it, and then blaming the "Deep State" for their own stupidity. Fun fact: Hunter is also trying to throw his wife under the bus now.

I wanted...tried...to post about that this week but I couldn't put anything to a keyboard I felt like publishing. Yes, sometimes the stupid can be that overwhelming.

Republicanism is Donald Trump. That Guy, who responds to someone's death by posting a picture of himself and a creepy greeting-card like statement on Instagram and Twitter. It's also worth noting that while the 43rd President, George W. Bush, and the 44th President, Barack Obama, were specifically asked to deliver eulogies and speak at John McCain's funeral...the 45th, said embodiment of modern Republicanism, was not invited. According to at least one Twitter post by a #QAnon nut that I saw, that means John McCain is a "Hateful Person."

I wouldn't want these motherfuckers represented at my funeral either, nor their leader present. Hell, I've had to correct more than one person's posts about the fire on USS Forrestal, that's how fucked we are. Hint: The person posting the idiotic meme was a Trump Supporter, who from their pic looked old enough to have heard about the fire on the evening news.

If that makes me a "Hateful person" in the eyes of the Q-nuts then so be it. I've never particularly wanted to be liked by stupid people.

Rest in peace, John Sidney McCain III.

The Old Men Shouting At Clouds, Saul Tigh demographic will be poorer for no longer having you in it.

Not that a lot of your fellow Republicans will notice, right now half the Republican Base is on Twitter maligning you as some kind of agent of the "Deep State" or something something gazpacho.

Fuck them.

Part Two.

Fuck you, Tomi Lahren.

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

So I haven't written much in awhile, mostly because my disgust-meter has lately been overwhelmed by conservatives in general and Fox News and Trump in particular, but I saw this damned near first thing this morning and I've been stewing about it all day. I used to be a conservative, and I've been scratching my head wondering just what the fuck happened? What the fuck is going on with this shit?

Listen here, Tomi. I was taught way back before you were even thought of that if people cared about you they told you the fucking truth. Reality is what it is, truth is what it is and just because something tickles your ears or makes you feel good about yourself that does not make it the truth.

Also, evidently over the weekend Rudy Giuliani said "Truth isn't truth" during a TV interview.

I'm serious as a heart attack when I say this, the road to hell is literally paved with that kind of bullshit.

So, what IS Truth anyway? To use some random examples from my younger years, what is to prevent somebody from claiming that the Bible has no more spiritual relevance than an auto parts manual? What is to prevent people from changing the wording of the Bible to support current "Political Correctness" fads? (No, seriously, this was a big worry for about five people back in the 1990's, although apparently it was perfectly Okay to do just that in the 1600's, just sayin.') What, to use current conservative logic...and no, you don't get to claim that these people are not conservatives. They are what has become of the movement and if you don't like me pointing that out, too bad. This crap could have and should have been stopped years ago if you had acted like you have a spine and stopped just following the fucking crowd and stood up for something more than what was convenient at the time.

Me? I basically got hounded out of conservative Christianity for insisting that gay people and Muslims ought to be treated like human beings, and for resisting the rabid homophobia that characterized conservative Christianity in the first decade of the 21st century. No, seriously, my Mom is bisexual and I have a number of LGBT friends and relatives. I'm not going to throw all those people under the bus for religion.

Also, in the end I got run out of Christianity for standing up against the steady creep of Pentecostalism and the Prosperity Gospel into formerly distinct aspects of Evangelical and Fundamentalist thought. The sad part is, I'm not sure an awful lot of the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists even noticed. In the end, I think a lot of it came down to capitalism, simply because there wasn't much money in not buying into that crap. At this point I think white American Protestantism has been so jacked by money and politics and false doctrines that it probably can't be saved. When it's the Black church, (Occasionally) the Catholics, the mainstream denominations and only the occasional diverse, sane Evangelical or Pentecostal church that I can even recognize as preaching (let alone doing) anything close to what I was taught? And don't get me started on the Fundamentalists...when it took the Southern Baptist Convention a couple days to figure out that it needed to condemn alt-right Nazis I basically gave up any hope there.

Yeah, it's pretty much fucked.

I got run out of conservatism itself because I thought (and had the guts to say) conspiracy theories weren't the hill we should die on, and because I was taught and ultimately still believe racism was wrong and I refused to tolerate that crap. Over the course of 2008 my Republicanism basically died. Sarah Palin being nominated as McCain's vice-Presidential pick was only the last straw. After that I was grudgingly at first, but then more increasingly determined that I was going to hold my nose and vote for Barack Obama.

Best choice I ever made, and I'll cite the Tweet at the top of the page as to why. Fuck you, Tomi Lahren.

Conservatism as I was taught it, is based on the idea that a sound view of life rests on revealed Truth and the wisdom of our ancestors. That's basically the same thing Chuck Colson said in a 2011 critique of Ayn Rand. You know, Chuck Colson, none other than Richard Fucking Nixon's personal hatchet-man. Conservatism as I was taught it was based on the idea of "Things as they are." That's not "Things as they were 70 years ago" or "Things if they were the way we wish they would be." It's definitely...most definitely...not based on "What Donald Trump said."

As I put it when I saw this particular Twitter post, which I snipped before I reported and blocked the idiot, "Setting fire to everything conservatives have ever claimed to believe to "Own the libs."

Just what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway? These people aren't "Owning" anybody, and I'm not sure where they got the idea that pissing people off was a good thing or would have any other results besides inspiring them to retaliate if it went on long enough, but whatever. Apparently these idiots are hell-bent on looking like fools and absolutely nothing anybody is going to say will change their minds. It seems like a really stupid hill to die on if you ask me. Granted, I'd hardly identify as a "liberal" although I look like a damn socialist compared to these jack offs and I'm damn proud of that. If this is what has become of Conservatism I want no part of it. Punishment? No, seriously? Bitch I'm more annoyed by these motherfuckers than anything else.

Basically, since 2015 when Donald Trump decided to run for President as a Republican, every single fucking performative second-rate loser and his Waifu pillow has signed on to conservatism and Republicanism and apparently, anything I could ever recognize as conservative values got lost in the wash. These people have set every value that I ever associated with conservatism on fire and left it to burn, while grabbing onto every bullshit mistake and every shitty thing that fringe whack-a-nuts and the Hard Right ever tried to push. According to something my friend Aaron sent me awhile back:

SA Forum User Skex: "Republicans desperately want to catch the Democrats in a scandal in revenge for running Nixon out of office. I'm not sure if it's just that Democrats are in general not sociopaths the way that Republicans are or they are just smart enough to not leave gaping paper trails and recordings of their crimes laying around everywhere. But the Republicans because their projection is pathological are convinced that the Democrats are just as crooked as they are and are determined to catch them at something and the fact that they can't they have convinced themselves is because the Democrats have the system in their pockets protecting them because they just can't conceive of the idea that the Democrats might actually have ethics and believe in things like honesty and integrity they just can't wrap their minds around it. The funny (in a very dark sense) part of it all is that they really suck at crime."

Yeah, apparently some people are so determined to "avenge" Nixon that they basically forgot that hey, Richard Nixon may have been an asshole, a crook and a raging paranoid, but he actually did stand for a few things, among other things he's the guy who founded the Environmental Protection Agency and started the process of detente with China and the Soviet Union...as an equal, not as the Russian president's bitch. Honestly, I think these shits are so bad, and Trump is so shitty at being the President, that these motherfuckers may just accidentally rehabilitate Richard Milhouse Fucking Nixon.

At this point, I think it's safe to say that American conservatism is dead. It wasn't the "Left" that killed it either, it was the conservatives themselves. Their murder weapons were convenience and entitlement, petty ethnic hatred and not a small amount of religious woo woo bullshit, either.

But there's one more thing that remains, one more thing that all the rest of us have to do to end this silly bullshit before it ends us, and that is, we have to show up and vote these motherfuckers out.

Show up and vote, before there's giant murals of Trump on the sides of buildings, a government health program that consists of signs that say "Do not poop here," long lines for bread, clean water and toilet paper and mercenary soldiers checking to make sure everyone's Party cards are in order before you can go to the polls like we're in some shitty third world Soviet-allied dictatorship complete with AK-47's and technical trucks in 1986. FUCK THAT.

Show up and fucking vote. If you want a better country, be better citizens, do the work of life, ain't nobody gonna do it for you and anyone (like Trump) who says they will is a fool, a liar, or both.

Republicans literally have become the postmodern fabulists that they spent the 1990's accusing liberals of being.

As an old man who spent the 1990's being a young man who was a Republican at the time...that alone has me starting to hate these motherfuckers and has me damned well planning to head straight to vote right after I get out of work on election day morning.

If you're not planning on some variation of the same, get your priorities straight.

When it really comes down to it, people who say that truth is hate, are people who hate the truth. If you think those people have anything even remotely close to your best interests in mind, you have another thing coming.

Vote these motherfuckers out in November.

I don't know about you but I sure don't want to put up with this horse shit for the rest of my life.

#WhatTheFuckAnon?

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. 

I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail;
  I plotted and planned for his good.
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold,
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair,
  in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul,
  I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town;
  I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. ~Robert W. Service, the Ballad of Pious Pete.

Listen, yo, and listen up good.

I don't follow conspiracy theories. I don't have time for that type of shit. I don't have the patience for it and I don't suffer fools gladly, either.

But this "QAnon" shit takes the cake. I keep hearing about it, and I saw recently that this crap apparently goes too far for the likes of Jack Posobiec and Scott "The Dilbert Guy" Adams.

As I understand it there's almost a state of civil war in Trump-World over this dumb-shit conspiracy theory in which, apparently, everything is a symbol for something else and words have no meaning.

Who in the hell has time to even try and figure out what means what? Or is it all random and experiential, like the crazy ramblings of a Pentecostal church whose members are fucked up on their own brain chemicals in the middle of a guilt-fueled Altar Call on Sunday morning Repenting after a Saturday night full of alcohol, cocaine snorted off well-to-do cousin Emma's belly, Opioids, restroom-cruising homosexuals and truck-stop Lot Lizards chased by weed, half the dollar menu at Taco Bell and seven gallons of coffee to sober up for church?

Am I the only one who thinks the right-wingers are getting really fuckin' desperate, and just throwing shit at the wall in some kind of an effort to see what will stick?

Oh, fuck no. That was last week. Over the weekend, I guess, at least some of these motherfuckers started performatively declaring their allegiance to a hostile foreign power, and TeeSpring or what the fuck ever actually printed that shit, so this has been going on long enough that it's available on their website.

Meet James Alicie and Richard M. Birchfield, also known as two motherfuckers who are GOD-damned lucky they've never met me on the street while wearing a shirt like that. I've been to jail, bitch, I'm not afraid to have it on my record that I fucked up some traitor for being stupid enough to advertise.

I mean, fucking seriously, these two assholes both look older than me, so they lived through more of the Cold War than I did and should goddamned well remember that it was us and the Soviet Union that spent 43 years being ready to nuke each other at the drop of a hat because flocks of geese looked like Russian bombers on a primitive 1950's American radar set or because Soviet officials misinterpreted exercise Able Archer '83 as the run-up to a nuclear first-strike.

I spent part of the 1980's living within a short enough distance of two Marine Corps Air Stations (El Toro and Tustin in California) that helicopters or jets overhead was not an uncommon sight. I spent another part of the 1980's and early 1990's living within an hour's drive of one Strategic Air Command B-52 bomber base and maybe three hours drive-time from another (though much closer as the crow flies.) Had the shit hit the fan none of us would be here, but either blast concussion or thermal pulse...or radiation a day or two later...would've gotten me long before a lot of the rest of ya'll.

The Cold War ended with America and NATO victorious with hardly a shot fired between the two major powers (and most of what incidents there were making them look like the bad guys.)

Meanwhile in every single war since, American airmen, marines, sailors and soldiers have faced enemies armed with legacy Soviet weapons...weapons designed to kill us, specifically. Enemies armed with those weapons severely wounded one friend of mine and left another suffering from PTSD.

...And these two motherfuckers would rather be Russians than Democrats?

"The North has got him." --Yukonism.

No. This isn't insanity.

For the far-right, anyway, and for a certain spectrum of greedy, power-hungry Republicans beyond them...all that Free trade, Global Engagement and Human worth stuff wasn't political ideas...it was lies.

Not only are these motherfuckers "Saying the quiet part loud" as the saying goes, but like any conspiracy nut, drunk-uncle racist or little kid...they can't wait to tell you what their big deal is. They can't wait to tell us all the shit they've spent the last 50 years not being able to tell us, whether "us" is more "normal" Republicans, the Democrats or people like me who spent some time somewhere in the middle.

Yes, I think they're desperate. Yes, I think their performative moronism (aside from the fact that a lot of these people are really fuckin' stupid) is an attempt to distract us from all the fucked up wrong shit they're doing...and an attempt to distract themselves from the fact that basically, in terms of cultural dominance they've got dick. They know politics is downstream of culture and they can see a backlash forming up, and they know the longer this goes on the worse it's gonna be.

But, I also think at least some of these people were bullshitting all along. I think all this is a long-game, but very badly executed power grab. We need to count ourselves lucky as hell that they picked a complete fucking moron like Trump for their figurehead.

Then of course there's the "Destroy this village to save it" idiots and the religious nuts who are so desperate to "Save" America (without ever specifying for what or from what) that they've forgotten just what "Salvation" itself is supposed to entail, not least in terms of personal conduct.

Like some gamer who rolled a "1" on his character's bluff check, they can't wait to give up the plot and blab stories of their own supposed cleverness all over even though the plot isn't quite complete or fully successful yet at this point.

In other words, this bullshit is basically the plot of every bad movie, ever.

The backlash is building, the ground is shifting, and the smart ones are starting to realize just how fucked they all are.

More to the point, I've sensed a change in the air...while a lot of people are desperate to get this over with so they can go back to business as usual...I think the Right's spell is broken. These motherfuckers have gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar, their dick in the prostitute and their name on fraudulent stock trades way too many fuckin' times and people are finally starting to wise up.

So what to do?

Honestly? Vote out these shitheads...all of them...stop giving their moron ass voters a platform and let them keep chasing down their conspiracy theory rabbit holes and religious dumb-fuckery while the rest of us move the fuck on.

I'm fucking serious, these people are starting to make illiterate Pashtun members of the Taliban look smart. At least those people seem to understand how to use their weapons properly.

And what the fuck is even going on with this silly bullshit? Who has time or the emotional energy to spend worrying about the decision by various parties (including corporations and the government) to phase out single-use plastic straws in favor of paper, metal or reusable hard plastic straws? Who even cares about that? I'm the guy who'll reuse a Styrofoam cup, lid and straw several times per night at work. Assuming I have a straw I don't give a damn what it's made out of. Do these fucking people not realize if paper straws cost a penny less for a box than plastic ones, that's what we're all gonna be using anyway...because no corporation with a functioning accountant is going to miss a chance to save a penny six billion times?

Listen, conservatives, ya'll done lost your minds and I'm fucking done with your bullshit.

Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way. ~Ronald Reagan, farewell address, 1989

Whatever history ends up writing about American conservatism, I hope that it includes the fact that conservatives didn't just fail to live up to the words of their own greatest patron saint...but that, in the end, they didn't even try.

Bread and circuses.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Anyplace is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
But me myself I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us out of here
been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living
~Tracy Chapman, Fast Car

See this little guy? This is Little Dook, my oldest Albino ferret, when I got him back in 2015. I wasn't planning on getting another ferret when I decided to get him, but I'd walked into the pet store (having asked if they could order me a white ferret a couple of weeks before) only to find that they'd gotten a little tribe of four Albino kits. Little Dook was the smallest of the baby ferrets. He fell asleep contentedly in my hands and I stood there holding him in my hands, swaying to the music, as Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" was playing on the radio at the time. I couldn't leave the little guy there.

Fast Car is a song about deep generational poverty, written from the perspective of an African-American woman. I was just an eighth-grader in a small-town almost-all-white Northern Michigan school when I first heard it, and it always stayed with me. Having experienced poverty a little bit after my Dad died, for a while until my Mom got on her feet, I guess it always served as an audible reminder of how the other half lives. If you ask me, that's something more of us need.

A legit solution to generational or minority poverty is something that would take all of our efforts. I believe it still needs to be done, though.

As for Little Dook? This is him today, and you'd never know he was the runt of his litter.

Why do I bring this up? Oh, no particular reason, sort of a Zen moment I guess, to focus myself before I rip into somebody...

Look, I'm only gonna say this one time:

What in the actual fuck is even going on here?

Here we have Kaya Jones, former Pussycat Doll and current sagging-breasted has-been, currently of the 'Boobs hanging out" school of conservative thought, "Triggering the snowflakes" by presumably exciting the dicks of a bunch of Trump-supporting guys that she would never give the time of day to in real life. 

I mean, come on, seriously. What the fuck? Was this supposed to do anything but run down my supply of brain-bleach?

How in the hell is this supposed to even look like anything more than attention-grubbing performative moronism for "Likes" on social media?

That's exactly what it is. That's all it is. Unfortunately it illustrates a larger problem. that I've seen as getting worse lately, and I feel like I gotta say something.

I'll start here. In her quest to "Own the Libs" by posting a poor-quality cheesecake photo, Kaya apparently forgot what she was doing and who her intended audience was and walked straight into a buzz saw of Evangelical indigration. Listen, lady, I hardly know who your one-hit-wonder ass is and I could care less but you should know that as a two-bit, has-been celebrity that's all they can usually get...THEY care. The pinch-faced angry Evangelical crowd hangs on your every word, because you're all they have. You should have known, pinch faced Evangelicals are gonna pinch faced Evangelical.

Oops.

I barely scanned the comments, mostly because they all looked the same as they always look any time anybody...whether in the oddball-politically-correct forms of the current "Conservative" nut house climate or not...has the urge to act a little bit human for five minutes.

Now, from my point of view, these people...both Kaya Cheesecake and her mob of  super-uptight high-religiosity followers...are about as "Christian" as I am a Twelver Shiite Muslim. That is to say, they're not. It's at once more complicated than that and far less so.

Both Christianity and conservatism as I was taught them are a set of beliefs and philosophies that start first of all with the Self. You accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and believe in the Bible *Or You Don't.* You believe in things like free trade, global engagement, human worth, limited state power and personal responsibility *Or You Don't.* 

There are no half-measures, in each case one of these things is not like the other. Christianity and conservatism each contain a fair number of contradictory impulses, combine them and there's even more. So, everybody has to pick and choose a little bit, but the whole point is none of this is meant to be easy.

Easy, on the other hand, is exactly what people like Kaya...and Trump...want to make this stuff. They want to pick and choose based on convenience and feelings even as they try to hold everybody else to the full extent of everything in order to make it easier for them to take advantage.

Don't forget that a lot of these pinch-faced Evangelicals, though, lead lives in which their daily and nightly doings would shame a goat. They're desperately trying to push the entirety of their beliefs off on Kaya to make themselves feel righteous. It's the same reason they convince themselves that Trump is a Believer...it's not true but they desperately want it to be so. They want this because their beliefs (and their brittle egos) demand constant outside reinforcement.

But see, here's the catch. When you die you don't get to take any of that outside shit with you. It's just your soul, and God, and at the end of life if your faith is nothing because you depended on all this outside reinforcement, He is going to see it, and react accordingly.

Spirituality is a constant, ongoing relationship between ourselves and forces that we humans can barely understand and could never find all the answers to. The universe is filled with terror and wonder, God or Allah or Yahweh or the Gods or whatever you want to call it has the answers to questions we dare not even ask...for all too often even the most enlightened of us do not truly want to know the answers. In the face of this, organized religions and political philosophies like conservatism or liberalism try to provide a framework to the human experience, a guidebook for our sojourn here, upon our planet floor.

The truth is that all this is infinitely complex, but it can be equally infinitely simple. 

That said, if you wanna ham it up and shove your boobs in front of a camera I don't have a problem with that. I just don't see anything terribly conservative about it and I remember very distinctly just what Christian and conservative sexual morals entail. As far as I'm concerned you can't be a conservative in your politics and a liberal with your boobs and expect me to take you seriously. You can do it, but I'm a laugh at you. Don't get me wrong, I've seen plenty of boob shots, hell I've seen some extremely Christian and conservative boob shots, but you know what? They weren't public boob shots intended to tittilate the general public. They were for me, and they came with an admonition not to make them public knowledge. Conservatism as I was taught it views sexual matters as a private thing, between two people. Gay or straight, religious or not, as long as all involved are consenting adults and nobody makes it my business...it's none of my business.

Older, more liberal me feels much the same way. What you do is your business. If I'm not involved don't make it mine. If anything, I have even less tolerance for busybody Evangelicals now than I had before...and I've never had much.

How do all these people square all this crap with the Bible, much less basic human morality? Trump lies and lies and lies, abuses people, says racist shit and scams people and all this is supposed to be OK? No, no, no, it doesn't work like that.

"Has Mom been tested for STD's?" I read that last night, it was a quoted text from one of Paul Manafort's daughters to somebody. Evidently, Paul Manafort would force his wife to have sex with groups of men while he filmed it.

How is that conservative? How is that Christian? Your political goals are not worth what this permissiveness is doing to your politics or your religion.

You wanna know what it looks like to me? It was ALL a lie, a lie meant to keep money flowing into the pockets of those who already have too much, a lie to preserve hate and racism and white privilege for just a few more years and maybe get another war, some gratuitous cruelty, right wing judges and a tax cut.

I don't have to ask God what He thinks of that, I can read it in the Bible that sits on my desk. But that's why Betsy DeVos & so many of these fucking people hate education isn't it? It's a threat to those people and their power that I can read it & make my own conclusions.

Boob-bait, guns, all these carnal pleasures, aren't a threat to these fucking people. It's bread and circuses. Empathy for others, knowledge, morals...and voting...those are a threat. Always remember that Caesar Augustus was a social conservative. THEY haven't forgotten.

If you think modern society being swept away and being replaced by an illiterate mob that's kept entertained with blood sports, free bread and sexual debauchery wouldn't be just fine with the rich, think again. Platonic idealism existed side by side with this stuff before. Jesus Christ wishes he had the influence over Christianity & Western Civilization that Julius Caesar & Plato had.
But even Rome had a lot of bulwarks and firebreaks against despotism and excess. Not least, the People. They couldn't vote you out, so somebody would kill you. Listen, if you don't want to be the next one getting thrown to the lions (real or figurative) in front of a roaring crowd, conservatives, now might be a good time to develop some backbone and ideological consistency.

This is why consistency, a moral compass, rule of law, sometimes strict moral codes and THE VOTE are required for people and society to function. It's not all about who has the most money. The richest man who ever lived was a Roman gladiator. Do you even know his name?

I thought not. That should tell you how important fame, money & power in our temporal world are. No one cares that many Romans were religious, nobody worships their gods anymore. It's the things that can't be bought with money or taken by power that are the most important.

How much money did Jesus have? How many kingdoms did He rule? How many cool pics did He post? Aside from working as a carpenter, how many especially masculine things is Jesus recorded as having done? Not a one. His Kingdom is not of this world. Yet even Trump has to lie & claim following Him to please the mob. That's the value of Truth. Even a liar has to pretend to follow it, even if only to try to please other liars. We mortals are but shadows and dust.

But let's try to make things better while we're here instead of screwing things up worse.