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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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