Knoweth no man

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. ~Matthew 24:36

I know I've said this a lot lately, but, Seriously?

Apparently, and I've seen stuff like this before, there are Evangelical and Fundamentalist nuts who hope that Trump somehow causes the Biblical End Times.

I'm just sayin' I don't think all that will work out the way they think it will.

I mean, given the current behavior of many Evangelicals, now might not be the opportune time for them to be hoping that Jesus comes back. I mean, that's like the big time Evangelical Pastor saying he hopes Jesus comes back and catches him diddling the pool boy, but I digress.

We've got the religious right stuck in financial scandals, political scandals, a sex scandal or three, there's the whole Trump thing, they're also supporting murderous Fundamentalist Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia. I mean, come on, if you could work in dime-a-dozen Televangelists with bad make-up and hair, a Right-wing Central American dictator, and Sun Myung Moon I think you'd have a full 1980's bingo.

Funny thing, as somebody who actually WAS a religious kid in the 1980's, I honestly don't recall that the time period was all that religious. In fact, aside from the whole Iran thing (and the Iranians were also Soviet allies) even most of our adversaries in the Middle East were more the secular Communist type. I mean you could always point to Afghanistan (Surprise, Surprise, I know) but at that time, even the Islamist religious nuts were on our side.

You know what really wasn't a thing, back then, though? End Times Prophecy Nuts.

Granted, I was a mainstream Christian, if also a budding political and theological conservative. Granted a lot of the books this stuff is based on were written in the 1970's, but it would take the environmental worries of the late 1980's and early 1990's, the fall of the Iron Curtain, (yes) an increase in liberal attitudes more globally and the creeping approach of the 21st Century (and yeah, that really was the big one, there) to actually popularize the End Times prophecy movement. I had lapsed religiously from the early to mid-1990's but, following some severe problems in my life, I went back to Church later on.

American Christianity, like much of the rest of the country, was convinced that the turn of the Millennium was some major turning point and that it would herald the Second Coming of Christ and this and that and the other thing. The secular world was of course, worried about global warming (El Nino, at that time) the "Y2K virus" (fixed simply by changing the date-format on one's computer, but a lot of little $5 fix-it disks got sold to the technologically ignorant) and basically on all fronts the beginning of the same national midlife crisis that's led us to our current political mess.

I worked my night shift as a line cook at the Canada Creek Ranch club house on New Years Eve of 1999, made it through my shift without the world ending, and got home at around two in the morning on January 1st of 2000. As I recall, Rose (my girlfriend at the time) was still up waiting for me. We smoked a blunt, made love, and went to bed. When I woke up a few hours later...awakened by the mad barking of my Schnauzers and her Yellow Lab at something or other outside, the world as we knew it was still the same as it had been the day before as history slid by, effortlessly making itself.

There was little more that came of the "Y2K Virus" or the end of the world than a few humorous stories in the local newspapers. The casting about in the world of End Times Prophecy nuts and the online message boards thereof for the next year-and-three-quarters was subtle at first, but silently frantic. I basically exited the movement within a few days. Me and the girlfriend broke up in the Spring, I very quickly ended up with another girlfriend, we got married and then that fell apart and turned into the start of a long, acrimonious divorce process  Then 9/11 happened and despite a brief outbreak of religiosity...which my increasingly loony ex-wife provided me a window into...there was no comparable outbreak of End Times fever.

Of course, that might have to do with the Bush administration's steady insistence that the resulting war was against terrorists, and not Islam, against criminals who profaned their own faith, not the nations they hailed from, and from the fact that...flawed as their convictions may have been, American conservatives still had the courage of their convictions

Since then, the only End Times whatever that's even made a dent were Harold Camping's failed predictions in 2011, the whole 2012 Mayan Calendar thing, and this odd "Trump is going to cause the End Times" bullshit that's popped up sporadically since 2016. Meanwhile, Climate change is obvious, and cultural, demographic and social change is both causing the Conservatives and the right-wing Christians to lose their mind and combining with age, bad health choices, politics that's gotten nutty enough to cause even many of those people to vote for the other party and the aging process, the human-generated Apocalypse of the Opioid crisis, their own monstrous behavior and an utterly mule-headed refusal to adapt to ensure that by the next time we have a presidential election there's probably not going to be enough angry old scared white people to carry conservatism forward without significant change or at least a lessening of racism.

Speaking of, it needs to be pointed out that Cyrus I. Scofield, the author of the "Scofield Reference Bible" and the extensive margin-notes on which much of this modern End Times claptrap is based was a former Confederate soldier.

If that doesn't help you see how deeply racism and Fundamentalism and the modern beliefs of large chunks of American Christianity are entwined, I can't help you.

But the key is that more people are starting to realize this kind of stuff.

In short, they're probably going to get their apocalypse, but no Jesus, and for once their bullshit will mostly affect them.

Now let me teach you, as I was taught.

If you actually read the whole Bible, including Matthew 24, and not just the disjointed passages that make up the "End Times Prophecy" narrative you could make the argument that we've always been living in the End Times. Many of the events about which Jesus prophesied have already happened. There are always false Christs and False Prophets and disasters in various places and wars and rumors of wars. Sin is a part of the human condition! Revelation was written by John of Patmos to be a message of hope to oppressed people living under Roman brutality, not to be some kind of war-porn for the perpetually-aggrieved, the religiously fanatical or the sexually repressed.

Trust me, the same people who think America isn't America if Brown People can get in also think that Heaven isn't Heaven if you and I get to go, too.

In fact, the only things their heaven really consists of are gloating about themselves being the only ones there and telling their small angry god how great he is.

Sorry, but I just wasn't taught that way.

I've written most of this article with ferrets attacking my socks. If they don't get to go into the afterlife...just do us all a favor and send me where they do get to go.

I'm not interested in being an ego-boost for an egomaniac wannabe of a god.

So really, if you think about it, I guess I was wrong. These people don't have to declare Trump their God. They were just waiting for somebody with those qualities to arise for them to worship all along. All he does is fit the bill.

Matthew 24:27 King James Version (KJV)

27 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.

And no, that verse is not speaking about Donald Trump. I did a study of the Bible years ago, for my Baptist church men's group about whether or not America or any of its leaders played an important role in the events of the End Times.

You know what I came up with?

Nope. We don't. Of course that might just be because the Americas were unknown to the actual writers of the Books that became the Bible.

Personally, I've reached the conclusion that American politics and American religion alike will probably be a lot more functional if we can just get over ourselves (and particularly in the case of men in general and religious people in particular, that unending need to be told how great we are.) Bonus points if we can get over our various political, sexual and social hang-ups and try to resist the lure of confirmation bias.

We'd best get at it and stop contradicting ourselves.

It is late, choose now. The world is ever-ending.

But at the same time, the world is ever making itself anew and the End is not yet.

The message of Revelation...indeed of any true religious or spiritual tradition...is one of hope and the future, not of an end to the future. Yes, the world may end. No, we're not going to see it coming, nor will most of us live to see it, but when it happens everybody will know. So live life and stop waiting for the world to end.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

We'd best act like it.

The real war on Christmas.

Luke 2 King James Version (KJV)

2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Ya know, I have to say all that talk of a war on Christmas that we heard for years and years from right-wing Christians now seems pretty damned ironic.

It's not Democrats who are responsible for the ongoing Trump Shutdown. It's Trump, with no small amount of help from the Freedom Caucus house Republicans. It's not Democrats who are why the national Christmas tree has gone dark, it's Republicans.

There's a war on Christmas, alright, and these people were lying to you about who the enemy was.

If you don't think Republicans would cancel Christmas if they could and it would get them some partisan advantage, think again.

I worked last night, but it was slow, so I was checking Twitter off and on, and I happened to catch several rather obvious lies and self-pitying Tweets on the part of the President.

Now, I don't give a damn if nobody wants to hear this, but the son of a bitch fucking asked for it. He's complaining about being all alone at the White House. So am I the only one who's thinking that even Trump's family must not want to spend time with him?

Eh, I don't blame them. Most of us know at least one miserable, silly old man (or in a lot of cases, some other shitty person) for whom everything that happens is somebody else's fault and ya know what? Nobody wants to hang out with that guy.

Also, I can't help but feel like the Christmas tree thing is a metaphor for all that's going on.

Likewise, I'm starting to think that this whole Wall thing is going to be the hill Trump and his supporters die on. At this point, Trump is basically holding up the entire damn country for some stupid racist fantasy that most people don't want. You know what? In a democracy you can rig the game, stack the deck, engage in all the fraud and fuckery you want and if most people don't want what you want...they're going to find a way to make sure you don't get it.

I think a lot of people are starting to figure out that walls keep people in, too. I'll never understand why some people want to live in an armed camp, surrounded by walls and ultimately, with nothing much to do.

I mean, after all, what is Trump seriously doing but sitting around watching TV. Most likely Fox News, most likely pro-Trump propaganda. In effect, he's turning into his own biggest mark.

I've said before that it really does seem to me like Republicans, up to and including Trump, are acting like this mess is going to be over with in January, not in 2020, we're talking in just over a week here.

I'm starting to see why.

Look. I don't have a lot to say here. I'm going to ask you to read, again, the verses from the second chapter of the Book of Luke that are at the top of this post. I'm going to ask you to genuinely compare and contrast the words of those verses, and their meaning, with the conduct of Donald Trump and of his administration and his enablers in the Republican Party.

It's not a pretty picture, is it? For myself, as a former conservative and Republican I find it immensely sad that conservatism and the Republican Party have come to...this.

I find it even more sad...though that is certainly tinged with a sense of justice...that American Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity is likewise in the process of sacrificing itself on the altar of Donald Trump. As a former conservative Christian, I think that's pretty damned embarrassing.

It's all the more so when you've read the Bible, when you grew up learning it, learning the songs and the theology and the traditions of Christianity, when you compare the message of love and peace and service and sacrifice...That God Himself would lay down, in effect, a part of His own Being to give humanity a better shot, a better (and very non-transactional) spiritual paradigm...with the vainglory of one man. One man that American Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism embraced, thinking they'd get something out of it...even though that man was the furthest thing from a Believer.

Back in the 1950's, shortly before he was killed on an ill-advised mission to evangelize Native people in Ecuador, Christian missionary Jim Elliot wrote that "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

Trumpism inverts that, and asks us to give up our freedom, our ideals, our melting-pot culture, our values...America, basically...all those things that the Founders and their spiritual heirs imbued in us as ideas, as by nature things that we could not lose...for a false sense of temporal safety and superiority that we know we cannot keep.

Don't buy it, America. We can't do that.

We need to get this over with. Keep the pressure on, Trump is cracking.

We got half the job done in November, and flipped the House to the Democrats.

Now we'd best get to work on getting the rest of it done before this silly old man destroys us all.

If the miserable son of a bitch would destroy his own damn Christmas for some stupid idea of a "Wall" and then blame everybody else for it and lie about the results...what else might he do?

I firmly believe that Trump and his supporters would try to kick Jesus to the curb if He actually showed up.

Jesus, the reason for this season, was a brown-skinned Jew who started his life as a poor person and a refugee, a carpenter and itinerant Rabbi who at least in some spiritual sense spoke the Truth, and paid for it with His life.

If you think Donald Trump is gonna support that guy, you're wrong.

There's a war on Christmas, alright. There's a war on Christ and Christianity and for that matter every other religion in America that doesn't see things in purely fungible terms. The true faith of American conservatism is money. As I recall, Jesus had a few things to say about that, too.

They were right. There's a war on Christmas, and they didn't just sell Christmas out to the other side. They've been doing it for years, and it only recently became blatantly obvious.

Now what are we going to do about it?

A Rand Paul Christmas (Fuck You, Asshole.)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. ~Luke 2:1-11 (KJV)

Fuckin' seriously, Rand?

So, apparently after years of conservative and Republican hectoring about a "War on Christmas" the apparent purpose of Christmas, or "Festivus" or whatever...is to make a not-exactly-clever racist joke about Elizabeth Warren?

Fuck you, dude.

It needs to be said, I think. For the dumb people in the back, and the Evangelicals, and the Trump Supporters, it needs to be said that this shit is wrong.

This motherfucker is somehow managing to make fun of both the neoconservatives and anybody who wants peace, as well as claiming that Trump's bullshit Syria pullout is somehow "Ending a war" when honestly all it's likely going to do is make the war far worse, especially for the Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Forces...who've basically been thrown to the wolves here.

And this idiot thinks this is "Ending a war?" No, bitch, we likely haven't even seen the start of it yet. There's an excellent chance that the conflict that results from this stupidity will spill back over into Iraq, and could for that matter affect Israel (even as Netanyahu's coalition government appears to be falling apart) because of the resulting Iranian and Russian hegemony in Syria.

None of this is about ending wars, just like none of this is (or ever was) about Jesus or promoting Christmas or Christianity. This is about insecure small old white men who are insecure about the size of their dicks, fearful of the aging process and severely afraid of the fact that they are going to die being able to do whatever dumb shit pops into their heads and trying to somehow get out of facing consequences for it.

Listen you Labradoodle-haired bitch-ass motherfucker, Actions Always Have Consequences.

See Also: The stock market right now, but I digress.

Case in point: These two idiots.

Is it just me, or are these people pathologically  incapable of creating a Christmas display that doesn't look like it belongs in a tacky Macy's department store in some fading Midwestern mall?

It never ceases to amaze me being that the Trump family is from New York City, that their taste in decorations falls somewhere between "Saddam Hussein" and "White-Trash Fancy."

Maybe Santa Claus or Comrade Vladimir or lover-boy Kim will leave Trump a gold-plated Kalashnikov under the tree this year?

God, I hope not. I wouldn't trust any of these people with a weapon.

Oh, and speaking of Trump enablers? Ya know, I think part of me finds endless diatribes on the War On Christmas preferable to somebody who lives the life they do because of and everyday is surrounded by technology believing in the mystical powers of tech bro beard hair. I'm just sayin' I have a far better chance of being shot negligently by some dumb ass redneck idiot than I do of being killed by Daesh for any reason whatever.

Look, while rich American idiots fall down an endless rabbit hole of Stupid and are busy running the country into the ground and dumb-ass racists fret about the existential threat posed by the continued existence of Other People, various and assorted bad actors in the dark and dangerous places in the world (and even some that shouldn't be, but have been made so by others) are plotting their next move and doing so with sick, cold-blooded rationality well in hand.

For example after last month's Kerch Strait incident, and the fact that Russian troops remain massed on the Ukrainian border (and in response, Ukrainian forces have fully stood up for defense as well) there's the fact that most of the various Orthodox Christian churches in Ukraine have unified and formed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church anyway, which regardless, is probably the right course of action. In response the Russians have broken off relations with the rest of the Orthodox world, kicked over the table, taken their ball and gone home.

Keep in mind that the Ukrainian president and Metropolitan Epiphanios (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's leader) are going to Istanbul later in the same week that will see a Democratic House of Representatives sworn in here in the United States...

Honestly, I could see the Russians dropping some information on their conservative collaborators in other countries just to cause chaos (and probably the fall of at least a couple governments) at the same time, but again, I digress.

It's like the 1054 Catholic-Orthodox Split, or the Reformation, only worse because one of the major powers involved (Russia) and another allied to several involved countries that are major players (and obligated to respond if they are attacked-that's America, of course) have nuclear weapons. Greece and Turkey are both NATO members as well as countries likely to get dragged into this religious conflict, and for that matter ALL of the countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that border Russia or their boot-licker-state in Belarus have strong Orthodox contingents...some of which have already taken sides while others hope for an amicable resolution to the schism.

I don't think that's likely, because I don't see Russia acting in good faith.

And a shitload of the affected countries are also our allies and/or NATO members.

No, seriously, read the linked article. The Russians are, in effect, saying that they rather than the historical First Among Equals of the Constantinople patriarchate, should be the primary power in the Orthodox faith...or they'll kick over the table and ruin things for everybody.

If you don't see how this could turn into an epic-level disaster ya'll ain't paying attention.

And if you think people who've built their political brand on demonizing people of color (religious or otherwise) LGBT folks, Muslims, etc. won't swoon over Russian soldiers shouting battle cries about "Resisting the Anti-Christ" while they slaughter people simply for resisting their Imperial Cult...you have another thing coming. If this blows up less than half as bad as I think it might, I honestly expect a lot of the Putinist/Trumpist fifth column here in America would very quickly convert to Russian Orthodoxy just to "Own the Libs" or something something gazpacho.

As my friend Aaron has put it, when faced with the choice of choosing anything else over Movement Conservatism...the Movement Conservatives are going to choose their bullshit political beliefs. If you don't think that includes America, Democracy, Protestantism or any other damn thing, you can almost certainly expect to be wrong. There is no bottom. As regards anything that people normally would believe in...these people basically believe in nothing, at this point.

Peace on Earth and good will toward men, indeed.

If we don't pull our collective head out of our ass, and do it soon, things are going to get worse, because this might be the last peaceful Christmas we have in a long time.

The Age of Dumbquarius.

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
AquariusAquarius ~The 5th Dimension.

I'd like to take a minute here, to point out that while my Mom is a Baby Boomer, I was raised to a great extent by my grandparents, who were of the World War II generation. So, to a certain extent I heard a lot of complaints about my Mom's generation from them and their friends, oh yes, I did. One common complaint that I heard was that "the Hippies" (i.e. a lot of then-liberal or supposedly-liberal young folks of my Mom's generation back in the day) would rather sit around and smoke weed and leave the responsibility to other people. Of course, my Mom on the other hand, told a completely different side of the story, and was always very open about the financial struggles of trying to make it as a young working person in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Of course, my Mom and Dad rarely if ever had the money at that age to do a lot of the things that young people of their generation were famous for doing. My parents of course, had their various things that they did. For my Dad it was his Civil War stuff, and guns and hunting and science fiction. My Mom was always working on craft stuff, and over time built a successful business out of it, and that was her thing. My parents made sure I had a church background, but also taught me to respect knowledge, and science and truth. Of course over the years I heard stories about this or that bit of drunken or weed-fueled excess or stupidity. But you know, my parents were also pretty big into supporting conservation, and taking care of the Earth. Come to think of it, so were my Grandparents.

You know what I never heard from them? "It's not my problem" or "I won't be here to see it."

So yeah, Fuck you Trump, but I digress.

Over time, I just sort of attributed my grandparents and their friends griping and my Mom's complaints in turn as the normal friction between generations.

But, then things started changing, little bit by little bit...and a lot of people of my Mom's generation, more, I think than of the previous ones...started to become more reactionary. It's almost like they began to decide that they didn't like some of the changes that history had credited them with making.

Now, there weren't very many people in my immediate circle that were like this, and of those that were not all of them were Republicans like I was at the time. A majority of the people around me though, were actually becoming more liberal, and while I was a conservative, I could see they had some valid points.

So, I started to look at the history of things, and I realized that a lot of these people, quite unlike my Grandparents (who'd basically started with nothing much) had grown up in a boom time of staggering economic development in which the social change that their generation is lauded for causing came just a little later. I also saw that, especially as regards Civil Rights, one hell of a lot of the actual work was done by the people of the World War II and "Silent" Generations. Yes, a lot of people of my Mom's generation really did believe in Civil Rights, or Women's rights or the sexual revolution or what have you.

But you know what? A hell of a lot of people, especially in the earliest cohorts of their generation simply believed that they were special, and they should be in charge and then everything would be alright. They might profess to support the rights of minorities or what have you, but what they really believed in was partying it up. They seem to have thought, in retrospect, that they could just blaze it up with black folks and everybody would have some sort of mind-expanding experience and then everybody would go home and everything would more or less be as it always had been.

In other words, they missed the fucking point that basically everybody else was trying to make, and grew up to emulate the worst of their parents and grandparents generations.

And then the 1970's rolled around, and those people got a little older, and the realities of drug addiction, the expansion of the Vietnam War draft, Roe Vs. Wade, Watergate and the Oil crisis of the 1970's started to hit, one by one. Some people just tuned in, turned on, and dropped acid. Some people recognized the need for alternative energy and put solar panels on their roofs.

And some people Got the Jesus.

It was in the 1970's, for example, that Jerry Falwell (Sr.) first became a big name. Granted, by the time I was old enough to understand stuff, as a young kid in Christian schools in the 1980's, Falwell had turned into kind of a joke, getting himself tied up with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and various other shithead televangelists and Prosperity Gospel motherfuckers. So basically, to those of us who were mainstream Christians (conservative or otherwise) these dumb people were fit only to be laughed at.

But, then as now, there were plenty of gullible idiots who bought into it all. Then, as for much of my life, I was surrounded by a more diverse and smarter crowd than that, and I didn't see the whole mess for what it was. The 1980's was, functionally, the peak of the "Me generation" but it hadn't become toxic yet.

Let me explain this whole Falwell Jr. thing in terms of being somebody who's been up close and personal with these Fundamentalists and Prosperity Gospel shitheads.

They love their perks, oh God do they ever. More to the point, they love that *You* don't have their perks. These are the idiots who are why nobody wants to work Sunday mornings in a lot of sit-down restaurants. These are the people who will overwork the hell out of a waitress and then leave a dollar and change as the tip, or worse some kind of Bible tract. I'm really not kidding...and at the time, it was the middle-aged white people (i.e. conservative Christian boomers) who were the worst at it.

There ain't no way no Jerry Falwell Jr. was ever gonna fly some damn "Pool boy" or whatever the fuck around on no private jet or "Go into business" with him unless there was some very compromising thing that this kid had on him. You know, like some kind of illicit gay relationship or some bullshit?

When I saw this bullshit this morning, I about overdosed on irony, given Falwell Senior's numerous misadventures in over the top public homophobia, and the fact that this and the anti-abortion horse shit were what the Religious Right built its brand on.

And then this Pool Boy crap may well have been used by Michael Cohen to blackmail Falwell Jr. into supporting Donald Trump?

When I said, years back, that all this anti-gay shit would be the hill the Religious Right died on, I didn't mean it quite like this.

But that's not all there is to it, is there? No, it's this kind of privileged, ridiculously anti-reality bullshit right here. "Should mothers have careers?" I'm here to tell you if my Mom hadn't had...made...a career for herself I might not even be here, much less have the quality of life that I've had.

I'm damned far from the only person I know in that position.

It's not just the anti-gay thing, or the conspiracy theories, or the racism, or the various hard-right political bullshit things that turn up like pop culture fads do in secular culture every few years.

It's the out-and-out hypocrisy that's going to do these people in. The "Everything Trump Touches Dies" aspect of the malaise that's taken over conservatism isn't helping.

It's like when Newt Gingrich got caught fucking somebody other than his wife at the very same time as he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for exactly that same thing, only it's happening every damn day with these fucking people right now, and frankly I'm really getting sick of it.

Every day something happens with these people that would be career-ending, ran-out-of-town-on-a-rail shame for anybody else, but they just go blithely on and hope nobody will notice.

They're going to smack hard into the wall of reality soon enough.

When all you ultimately stand for is how special you think you are, basically the very best thing that you can have happen is that you get enough ass whuppins early in life to teach you that this type of shit ain't going to fly. It's either that, or you set yourself up for a bigger fall and more misery much later in life.

I say this in all sincerity...Have fun with that, Evangelicals! The world can be a cruel and hard place, and you know what? It's even worse when you're stupid and you think too highly of yourself.

The only two ways I've ever heard of that you can buy off reality for any length of time are a lot of drugs or a lot of money, things that the various extremes of the Baby Boomer generation managed to drench themselves in at various times.

Well guess what? The bill is coming due, and as Donald Trump has been finding out for the last couple weeks sooner or later, somebody's gonna have to pay it. It looks like it just might be people like him, after all, if all these various legal processes manage to outrace the cognitive decline and dementia.

As for the movement this unbelieving former-Democrat always-racist schmuck somehow ended up at the top of....well it's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here! Have fun with that, assholes!

I'm going to be honest here. I like seeing these fucking people sweat whenever somebody mentions Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Beto O'Rourke or Ilhan Omar or any of the various people rising to the occasion in the face of our current stupidity. I'm not sure why Barack Obama or even Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton doesn't elicit the same reaction...or maybe they do, but for whatever reason the last tranche of liberals in power or who were choices the Democratic Party or some of its adherents settled on were apparently less threatening somehow or at least (particularly as regards Clinton or Obama) they could work up the guts for a "Best defense is a good offense" strategy.

Honestly I'm beginning to suspect that the reason they're so afraid of these new people is nothing less than the supreme gutlessness of Donald Trump.

If this constant hypocrisy and moral relativism is the net result of conservative Baby Boomers, well I'm sure glad I came of age and learned conservative philosophy when the older generation was still in power. I'll take George H.W. Bush and the issues he had over Trump any day.

Fuck these motherfuckers, and fuck their sticking future generations with the bill for their bullshit, too. I find it very ironic that it's ultimately the Christians and the conservatives who are acting the most like they think their God doesn't exist.

I think it's hilarious that, at the end, the only defense Republicans can think up is that they hope they die before they have to face the consequences for their actions.

I can think of a lot better things to have engraved on one's tombstone, personally.

I can think of a lot better things to have to explain to whatever higher power they'll have to face in the afterlife.

But apparently they can't, and it's for that lack of imagination alone that this generational hubris and right-wing bullshit belongs in the dustbin of history.

Guys, come on. Get a fucking grip.

Per Ardua Ad Astra ("Through adversity to the stars")
~Latin Motto used by the Royal Air Force, among others.

So, I saw this last night.

And my brain said "Dafuq?"

I mean, seriously? It's not just that I know a lot of LGBT people (and have, in point of fact, previously had a lesbian roommate and a couple of bisexual girlfriends/partners in the past) but...

I don't know. We apparently have some science or tech writer (or god forbid some nerd who works at NASA) who is dumb enough to think that women somehow don't have sex unless men are present?

It's the arrogant presumption that boggles my mind here. It's like whoever wrote this article has never interacted with actual women before, or been in any kind of situation where they were deprived of contact with the opposite sex for a year and a half to three years (I'm not sure if 1.5 years is one way or round-trip) or ya know, done much but sit in their chair and stare at a computer screen all day.

I mean, fucking seriously? People are going to have sex. This should damned well be obvious.

Twitter, as usual, got right to the point. Actually, this second post is the one I saw first.

That said, it was not hard for me, as a guy, to imagine that if you put four women (or four men, for that matter) on a space ship for up to four years of some long-ass mission to Mars...you're going to end up with at least one gay hookup, hell, possibly an enduring relationship that started with mutual membership in the ultimate "Mile high club." The same would hold for a mixed-gender crew, all day. Likely, if the ship has a large enough crew, there's better than even chances it'd start out as a mixed-orientation crew whether single- or mixed-gender. AND what about trans people in space? Logic dictates this will eventually come up. If I were that sort of guy that thinks about stuff (and mind you, I am) I might be slowly working on some kind of science-fiction short story or possibly a couple of role-playing game characters or non-player characters based on this idea already.

I mean, I'm sure it's been done already and it's probably not that original of an idea, but I'm kind of just for the hell of it gaming the political and social implications of it all out in my head. The LGBT community obviously would be over the moon at such a happening, the American religious right would probably be extremely pissed. Most people, obviously, will react in a vaguely positive fashion but probably move on unless they're invested one way or another in the issues involved. What about the logistics of a possible wedding in space, or something as simple as a pulled muscle from a Zero-G booty call?

I clearly put more thought into this in a couple minutes after I read the post than the author of the article put into it at all.

I just don't fucking get people...increasingly especially white men...even though I am one. It's like some of these motherfuckers somehow think it's still the 19th century and because academia was almost exclusively white men (and they were, thus, over-studied) that they are somehow either the default for humanity (leaving aside how ridiculous that is) or nobody else really exists or that basic, well, whatever...is somehow theirs to grant to basically all other human beings.

Listen, guys, apparently statistically half of us can't imagine a fairly basic-probably kinda boring- science fiction plot, and an awful lot of ya'll couldn't find a woman's clitoris if your lives depended on it. So sit down and shut the fuck up. We don't deserve to be the default of anything. In fact, judging from the events of the last couple of years if white conservative American men are somehow the default status of humanity, sit down and I'm a tell you exactly why the aliens won't talk to us...

It's like...Ross Douche-hat's article that I saw yesterday wherein he basically made every shitty argument for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant aristocracy (and somehow people supposedly MISS this, according to him?) and thus white supremacy that I've ever heard, all while trying and failing to cloak this in some kind of retroactive Bush-era moderate conservatism, even though that whole bit is, well, deader than Bush 41 is at this point. I think Ross Douthat gets Bush 41 pretty damned wrong, also.

Guys, we're a soup sandwich. Listen to me, fellow white men. We are the fucking ridiculous stupid motherfuckers we like to accuse other people of being.

I'm from an area that had a lot of them, and trust me, old Wasp-y motherfuckers were seen as a joke 30 years ago, especially the stereotypical ones that Ross seems to pine for (and Ross is a Catholic?)

As a case in point:

An awful lot of men, these days, damned near worship some dumb motherfucker who doesn't know or can't be bothered to learn or whose ego is too damned big to recite the Apostles Creed.

You know, the theological basis of Christianity:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen. 

It's funny, these days, how Christianity only does seem important to certain people when it can be used to oppress others. Read the above text, and you tell me where that kind of crap is even mentioned.

It ain't.

The short version is, if that's what you think it's about, I don't think the afterlife is going to end up the way you think it will.

So, unless ya'll really want to live in some kind of dystopian future where the only thing we're kept around for is our dicks and for when some woman needs to get pregnant, I'd highly suggest ya'll stop thinking with your dicks (or worse, thinking with your dick-anxiety) and stop acting so fucking stupid.

Get a fucking grip and stop acting like fucking morons. That is all.

Angry old man shouts at clouds.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. ~Albert Einstein (Disputed.)

Serious question(s)

(Also, whoever wrote the post that Will snipped clearly has no concept of how military flag protocol OR even draping/folding any kind of cloth over a large object actually works.)

I've been noticing a pattern on social media, especially Twitter.

Every time one of these older high profile Republicans dies, the current one is more hated than the last one was, mostly by their own fucking people. i.e. Daddy Bush is somehow even more hated than McCain was, and so on.

And for what? No, really. What? No hand-waving, no vague excuses, WHAT?

For not being racist enough? For not being shitty enough? 

For not murdering all the people some willfully ignorant goon in Mississippi doesn't like?

For not somehow managing to undo progress all the way back to say, 1947 or so even though that would be a Constitutional and legal and social impossibility? Not to mention it'd take out no small number of the very people who claim to want this.

WHAT?

I didn't vote for either Bush or McCain, finding in both cases that their opponents made their respective cases better. But prior to that, I often supported both. Used to be you could disagree with somebody and even find fault with their performance without lighting your hair on fire and pulling wild accusations out your ass.

And where does THAT madness end?

With that in mind, a question...

Did these fucking people really expect George H.W. Fucking Bush to somehow prevent cultural and social change...even though that was never his...or Reagan's, or Ford's or even Nixon's stated goal?

And why the fuck do these jack-offs ALWAYS expect somebody else to lay down in the middle of the road and let the truck run them over...on behalf of their stupid ideology.

Hell, the last Republican who ran on stopping cultural and social change was Goldwater, and even he abandoned that effort once it cost him the Presidency...after he won like five states.

(In your guts you know he's nuts...but I digress.)

In 1996 Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole famously opined that they had become the "Liberals" of the Republican Party.

And while we're at it, even Bob showed up to render honors to Bush 41.

Democrats and what few sane Republicans are left had mostly respect for John McCain and G.H.W. Bush.

Republicans? (Aside from Never-Trumpers that is) mostly nothing but contempt and scorn...for their own damn people!

What the fucking what? What in the hell is going on here aside from the fact that current R's are a bunch of cretins and ingrates?

In Wisconsin today, and presumably in Michigan soon, Republicans are setting up budget-draining, time-consuming legal fights by passing laws limiting the power of non-legistlative government branches that (especially in the case of Wisconsin's) may be outright unconstitutional per the various state constitutions. Nobody has the money or the time for this bullshit, we've got real problems that need dealt with.

But more to the point, these people stomp all over the entire "Things as they are" basis of conservatism and set their own (previously) claimed values on fire and put huge targets on each of their own individual backs just to hang on to power for a few more minutes.

Is it just me or did these motherfuckers not think this trade through?

Look, I understand resenting some aspects of a changing world. Oh yes, I do. Anybody who knows me well or works with me will tell you I can rage for hours about certain subjects.

But there comes a point where you have to roll with things, YOU have to adjust, YOU have to change, YOU have to accept that what x and y (or xx and yy) were defined as 20 years ago may not be the way things are now, or history, the world, whatever you wanna call it is just gonna roll right over you and no one will care...and before you realize it you're just an angry old person shouting at the TV while Fox News fills your brain with poison....and yet somehow this may have nothing to do with chronological age.

Conservatives have, over the course of my lifetime, at least, repeatedly traded their own values for expediency, out of hate, or trying to get votes until now they have nothing left, not even the basis for their philosophy. All they have left is being angry shitheads and internet trolling, and slowly morphing into Nazis in an environment where that's not going to do much more than get people (including, but unfortunately not limited to themselves) beat up or killed for no reason, and all they'll get is being unemployable, prison, and maybe a shitty apartment in Moscow for the lucky few who make it out.

Republicans traded greatness for...Donald Trump...and in recent months have spit on actual greatness (or even just moderate milquetoast sanity) as it expired.

Oh, and while I'm at it here's the ultimate in smug "Get off my lawn" from Ross Douthat.

Funny thing, he can't even seem to get George H.W. Bush right. 

What in the fuck are these people thinking? They're going to go down like Pierre Laval or Vidkun Quisling and in 20 years Republican will be little more than a pejorative term, and no one will care.

What the fuck is even wrong with these people?

This shit makes me embarrassed that I used to be a Republican.

Fuck you, Republicans.

If this is what you've become I'm glad I'm a Democrat at this point.

A thousand and one points of light.

This is America: the Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans, the Order of Ahepa, the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall, the Bible study group, LULAC, "Holy Name"—a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky... ~George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States.

George H.W. Bush, 41st President of the United States, died very late last night. The news dropped right around the time I was going to work, I guess. I caught the news right around my first break, and damn if it didn't make me think.

See, I used to be a Republican. It was, in fact, Bush's leadership that led me to make that decision when I turned 18 and registered to vote. It wasn't that I was particularly a fan. Hell, I loved Dana Carvey's impressions of Bush from Saturday Night Live. Honestly, I loved even more that Bush in fact would invite Dana Carvey to the White House...and that was it, right there. I appreciated Bush's ability to see the good in people, and to work with others to get things done, even when he often didn't agree with those others. I would not ultimately vote for him in 1992 (a decision I have sometimes regretted, other times not) on the basis of his raising taxes.

I appreciated Bush's commitment to international cooperation, to peace and to the rule of law and a rules-based international order...and ultimately the fact that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the fact that instead of just talking about it, he sent the United States Armed Forces to Saudi Arabia firstly to defend our allies and secondly with the explicit intention of liberating Kuwait, and we got an international coalition together and we kicked Saddam's ass and liberated Kuwait...and then we settled in for the long haul to contain Saddam after that.

I also liked Bush's commitment to diversity, and (despite his employment of unscrupulous racist Lee Atwater in his campaign) his conviction that we needed to leave bigotry and racism behind us and move forward as one people.

My introduction to the day-to-day workings of politics was following, reporting on and writing a paper about the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for a government-class extra-credit project (Class of 1992 here) when he was nominated to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall, and to become the second African American to ever sit on the United States Supreme Court.

On one of the days of the hearings I was sick as a motherfucker, so I didn't go to school. In fact, it was bad enough that not only did I have to go to the doctor, but I was so out of it due to exhaustion (I'd been up puking most of the night) and nausea that I couldn't drive myself. My Grandpa took me to town and on the way in, we listened to the confirmation hearings on the radio. I went to the doctor, then we went to the drug store to fill my prescription and my Grandpa decided to go to the grocery store. Well, long story short, while my Grandpa was doing that I'm sitting in the truck listening to these hearings and listening to all these old Senators talking about sexual harassment and some dude named "Long Dong Silver." That was the first time I can ever remember thinking "My God, what the hell is wrong with these people?"

In fact, my inclusion of that exact phrasing in the next day's (I was feeling marginally better and not vomiting, so I went) verbal report to my class drew sharp condemnation from the teacher, who was both conservative and religious, but got a lot of support from most of my classmates so he let it stand.

And that whole story, too, was my first brush with "Political Correctness" such as it was at the time, and with the various societal currents that are still with us today, though far more strongly-backed by society, the reverberations of the Navy's "Tailhook" scandal which continue to today as well, and ultimately the #MeToo movement.

Maybe it's just me, to many younger people such an era seems anachronistic and barbaric, surely our first serious attempts at LGBT rights were still several years in the future, Lawrence vs. Texas was a dozen years in the future, Don't Ask, Don't Tell would go down as one of the first major policy achievements of the Clinton administration (and its own repeal and open LGBT service was a full twenty years in the future at this point) but it seems like we, as a nation, grappled with a lot of the same issues as we do now from both a more clear-headed and facts-based perspective. Emotion, and appeals to it, was less of a thing. I'll grant you that this could also be bad, at times.

But we couldn't have gotten to the good parts of now without going through that, first.

Also, racism was not cool, or at least the open expression of it was not tolerated as David Duke found out when he ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991 and George H.W. Bush called that shit out directly. More to the point, Duke lost, in Louisiana. This too, was a factor in my choice of voter registration. I say that as somebody whose heroes at the time included a lot of Black Republicans, including people like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and James Brown.

Now? Clarence Thomas aside, there's damned few Black Republicans, and for reasons that should damned well be obvious...chief among them being the fact that David Duke now has a fucking audience...and it's Republican.

I'm damned tired of this "Anything goes" moral relativism in America today. Given that, as I recently wrote, a generation ago this very thing was decried and warned about by conservatives and Republicans...I'm even more tired of the fact that it's their own spiritual descendants who are the mist assiduous practitioners of said moral relativism.

In fact, it has to be said, that many of the people I knew (of all races) who were conservatives, or Republicans, or both fell by the wayside along the way. For my Grandpa Thompson, it was the gun debate, and the fact that he didn't think anybody needed anything more than a deer rifle or a shotgun (a stance I disagreed with at the time, but kind of agree with now) for my Mom it was college, and that she came around to supporting Bill Clinton a long time before I decided to support Barack Obama's candidacy over that of John McCain. For other, church people, friends, family members, etc. it was their Union membership, or health-care issues or LGBT rights issues or wars or whatever.

No, not all of these people are liberals now, in point of fact most of them either aren't...or like me they are "liberals" only because that's where their fixed values or whatever point on the line that they chose to settle on has landed them. My Bush 41-era Republicanism...which has in fact changed little except for my views on certain social issues and understanding the fact that people need to take care of each other, our country and our environment...regularly gets me branded as a socialist by what few Trump Supporters I know.

As I've said before, the Republicans finally lost me in 2008. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's that I work in a diverse place and have for 15 years now, but at the time I was one of the last outspoken Republicans on my shift that most people knew. Ironically a lot of the people I know who are, or support, Democrats now do so for the same reasons people like them, or me, used to be Republicans.

For both the bad and the good in America right now, it's taken us a long time to get here.

And for now, we're stuck with this idiot, I'm not sure for how long, and every day now seems like more of a Republican political implosion than the last one was, and certainly Trump and his supporters seem increasingly desperate, likely for damned good reasons. They know what they've done, all too many of them knew it was wrong when they did it...but they did it anyway and with malice aforethought and now they're all starting to reap the consequences.

But the truth is, that they should have started reaping those consequences a long time ago. In point of fact, had people showed up to vote in previous mid-term elections at the rate they did last month it could be argued that we'd have damn few of these problems right now, Trump or no Trump.

The Republican Party is dead. Republicans killed it, I'd like to say they did so with a million little compromises of principles or values in the name of expediency. But the truth is, that in today's Republican Party Ayn Rand, Lee Atwater and Mitch McConnell or their ideas have far more power than Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan could ever dream of having...and this has led us directly to Donald Trump.

You can tell Trump doesn't understand what "A thousand points of light" meant, because he's never even considered service to any cause greater than himself.

If he doesn't understand that, I can't explain it to him.

It's not just that the Republican Party is no longer the party of George H.W. Bush or John McCain. It's that I've seen both men be viciously mocked on Twitter by people who are presumably both conservatives and Republicans, egged on by Russian bots. What the hell is that, indeed.

And who were we against, all throughout the Cold War? But I digress...

As I have said, Republicans have traded greatness for...Donald Trump.

And one of their last, and most underrated, great men slipped the surly bonds of Earth last night.

It's been telling, who has said what since.

In any case, fair winds and following seas, Mr. President.