Divide and Hamberder

Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually.

The tongue devises mischief; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.

Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. ~Psalm 52:1-3

Fuckin' seriously?

I'm only gonna say this one time but I'm a say it loud for the slow people and those in the back. What the FUCK kind of supposed-billionaire even eats Burger King and McDonald's and Wendy's food? What the FUCK kind of President would serve that kind of shit at the White House, and what the FUCK kind of classless moron would serve that shit to a national championship college football team, and seem proud of doing so?

To his everlasting credit, one of the players responded to this outrage by saying "Our nutritionist is gonna be mad." You bet your ass they are. Hell I wasn't even there or even close to being there and I find this bullshit humiliating and rage-inducing.

You see, I used to be a conservative, a Republican. Like it or not, for better and worse I was more strongly influenced by the Greatest Generation than by my Mom's generation, i.e. the Baby Boomers. AKA The People Who Got Us Into This Mess.

My Grandfather, a conservative Union Democrat, Navy veteran, retired firefighter and city worker and all-around old guy, a doer of odd jobs and tough jobs and stuff that needed to be done because it was the right thing to do, who worked hard most of his life and taught me things like respect for authority, knowledge and nature, process and progress and science, but also tradition and work ethic and occasional but well-used profanity, drilled into me the words "Some things are not done in the better places."

The White House, by definition, should be one of said better places.

Likewise, I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that not paying Coast Guardsmen would be one of those things that's just not done. My Grandfather, a Sailor and later Naval Officer via the Navy's V-12 program would have probably gone off on the person who said Coast Guard families should "have a garage sale" rather than, ya know, be paid like they're supposed to, by a functional government.

And I can tell you for damned sure that he'd have had a lot to say about the conditions described in the report about the USS Fitzgerald container-ship collision, and the trash and bottles of piss on the ship's Bridge described therein. I blew up about it myself yesterday. Stupid, lazy people doing a half-ass job has in my view been a national security issue ever since a lazy worker started a fire (in an attempt to get out of work early) that gutted the Los Angeles-Class Submarine USS Miami in a Maine shipyard. Oh well, the asshole is only going to owe the government $400 MILLION in fines and restitution when he gets out of Federal prison. No Sub of that class was ever lost to enemy action, but one was lost to a lazy American worker. Think about it. Think about that kind of shitty mentality infecting the military now. That puts us on par with the type of stuff the Russians are known for...but the Chinese and a lot of these other people Trump is trying to incite conflicts with? They'll kick our ass up one side and down the other. You'd probably get executed for urinating on the Bridge of a Chinese warship.

Because some things are not done in the better places.

I'm honestly kind of glad that my Grandpa is not around to see that our country has finally, at long last, come to this level of silly bullshit and Republican-authored broken government and dysfunctional agencies.

Endless small wars, endless deployments, cutting of corners and watering-down of training, and for what? To put half-trained Sailors in harm's way under dishonest, disinterested, dysfunctional and incompetent officers?

And for what? You ever notice it's almost always brown people, Muslims, and/or people in poor countries that our super-expensive weapons of war and expensively-half-trained military personnel are being deployed to fight against, while our current Republican administration claims it's tough on real threats like Russia because they drag their feet on even the slightest efforts to inconvenience the damned Commies? And yes, that's what Putin is and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Else he would not be engaging in efforts to rehabilitate the image of Josef Stalin.

And do you know why these motherfuckers...from Putin to Trump to your asshole Republican State Representative keep getting away with this shit?

Racism. That's one of the big reasons right there. Keep people fighting over petty beefs and worthless bullshit and different rules for different people, and this one being better than that one, so they are too distracted to realize that their futures and lives are being stolen, and unite against you and boot your ass out of power.

Of course, there are small rays of hope even on the conservative side. When Tea Party Joe Walsh of all fucking people, no friend of minorities he, is calling out Donald Trump Jr. for saying stupid racist shit...well when you've lost that fucking guy...

It's basically all over but the shouting. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of shouting, though.

A lot. The only thing they hate more than the rest of us...is each other.

And then of course there's this motherfucker, who I've also written about previously. Steve King, also known as the Last Republican Representative Standing in Iowa, and a white nationalist dick-bag, was stripped of all of his committee assignments yesterday by House Republicans. I understand that Nancy Pelosi is also considering action against him. As far as I'm concerned if there's any justice in the world Steve King should get booted from Congress and his next job damn well should involve being forced to shovel cow shit at some experimental power plant like the asshole Republican staffer in World War Z.

The thing is, Steve King has been at this forever, and Republicans only acted against him when the political costs of not acting got too high. All these Republicans tripping all over themselves to rake him over the coals today? Where were they in 2012, or 2014? I'm glad they're doing something about King now...but this entire mess, like everything else about these fucking people, is fundamentally dishonest.

But why the racism, and the shutdown (And NOW? When Republicans previously had full control of all branches of government for two years?) and all this stupid shit up to and including the shitty fast food? Why the broken ships and dysfunctional crews and chains of command? It's a distraction.

Republicans are losing their grip on the People, and have lost both control over and even the slightest interest in our democracy. In that context, do you really think they're going to trust the Military? Trump has low approval ratings among the fucking troops (44%) same as with everybody else. The troops, reflection of our wider society as they are, are trending Democrat. But then it's either that or accept a worldwide Russian Mafia putsch and I don't see them standing for that, either. A lot of them might not like Democrats much, but I'm pretty sure they like Russian criminals less, and you can't separate the Mafia from the government or the intelligence agencies or the oligarchs over there.

There's a reason for all the "Support the Police" and "Thin Blue Line" crap, and it ain't because they actually care about or support Law Enforcement, it's just another vector for racist crap, and hopefully (in their minds) co-opting more users of force to replace the ones they've been losing their grip on for a decade, or to cover their ass while they steal more money and shit on the way out the door. Divide and conquer, it's a game as old as the rise and fall of civilization itself.

What scares me is who are Republicans going to "Support" next? Anti-government insurgents? And how is that going to affect our civilization?

Civilization, the entire damn point of what my Grandpa said when he said "Some things are not done in the better places." Whether we necessarily like or agree with each other all the time or not, we should act as civilized men and women and resolve our differences accordingly.

How is any of this mess even considered conservative? These people don't care about conservatism. That stopped being an effective Republican meal ticket the first year I voted, Bill Clinton had a lot of conservative ideas...his going after Bush on taxes, aggressive foreign policy, welfare reform, among others.

Conservatism isn't what Republicans want, it's just a bullshit opportunistic label. Republicans want to sound all pious about the sanctity of (heterosexual) marriage while getting their dicks sucked by their mistresses in the car on the way home from the fundraiser, and that's all it is. Trump is just a symptom of 25 years of Republicans being the Party of Newt.

Hell, Rashida here reads more like a conservative according to what I was taught that meant than those who are against her do. That's basically the same thing I said about Hillary Clinton in 2016.

It should be noted, while I'm at it, that my Grandpa spent part of his time in the Detroit fire department assigned to an Engine House that I'm pretty sure today would be within the boundaries of Rashida's district.

I like this lady. I like her attitude and ferocity but most of all the humanity she demonstrates. To her, this stuff isn't a game and it sure as hell isn't an ideology.

You want to know the way forward? The way to preserve civilization? This is it right here. This is how you have the rise of something better out of this mess. This is how you avoid that Fall that so many in the Republican apocalyptic cult seem to be craving even as they exhibit their own gibbering fear of death...and all the dividing and conquering in the universe won't keep that clock from running out.

You have to care about people, or none of whatever else it is that you do even matters.

Together we rise, or none of us do. That's not socialism, it's common sense.