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.