The APC Diaries.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine. ~Che Guevara

So, there's apparently some kind of conflict developing in Venezuela. Conservatives have been busy crowing about it all morning.

Me? I'm just thinking "Damn, I hope those people in the crowd made it out okay." But ya know, it looks like at the least that APC clipped a few people in the crowd.

Like, seriously, what the fuck is even wrong with these people, by which of course I mean the American conservatives, not the Venezuelans. As I understand it, two guys, Nicholas Maduro and Juan Guaido, each legitimately believe themselves to be President of Venezuela. Maduro, an autocrat, won an obviously-rigged election last year...and is wildly unpopular due to bad policies, refusal to diversify the country's economy and, for that matter, neglect of the oil infrastructure on which it currently depends. Juan Guaido, far from being some kind of conservative ideal, is a centrist Democratic Socialist...so, somewhere between a Latin American equivalent to Barack Obama and maybe Bernie Sanders. Nobody's going to sweep away socialism here, maybe refine it some or strike a balance between capitalism and the needs of the many, as democratic socialists usually try to do, but nobody's "Ending socialism."

And this Juan Guaido guy is supposedly some kind of right-wing ideal? I'm not buying this. Hell, I'm not even renting it.

This, yet again, isn't about actual ideology or policy. It's about "winning." It's about fear of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fear, not so much of socialism...but that somebody other than conservative white people will get any. As with our own domestic Trump bullshit...these idiots will maybe figure out what they actually want after they gloat about "winning" for a couple of weeks and make insufferable fools of themselves all over the internet. I've noted that actual professionals are either still pretty quiet or cautioning against buying into the right-wing narrative on this.

These fucking people have had it out for the current Venezuelan government since Chavez was in power...as if much would change under a guy who is legitimately the interim President under their Constitutional system?

Meanwhile, on the US conservative side of the fence, there has been little if anything said about the people who've been injured or killed and damned little concern for the Venezuelan people and what they might actually want. It's worth noting that food insecurity has been an issue for years, and that basic survival has been a trial for many people...and that in and of itself has nothing to do with socialism...instead being the result of an incompetently administered system that's dependent on oil for revenue, and oil prices have been down for years. Socialism isn't the problem here, stupidity and the government failing to live up to its responsibilities while glorifying the gimcrack desires and passions of one man is the problem.

Sound familiar? Oh, wait...

Over the weekend, Trump repeated and embellished his bogus infanticide claims at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The response by this NICU nurse is worth the read.

As I've said before, this shit does not happen. The entire business stems from a willful misquote of something Ralph Northam said regarding pallative care of an infant that was not going to survive due to medical conditions. It's a lie. There is nobody executing babies in the United States of America.

I'm going to ask this again, for the people in the back. Yeah, you in the red hat; How exactly do you think lying rectifies injustice?

This bullshit is going to get somebody killed, probably the wrong person, and for stupid reasons.

Likewise, How exactly does crowing about a nation's internal conflict, that fundamentally stems from food insecurity and incompetent government policies, help even one damned thing?

People are dying down there, and I'm pretty sure those people standing up against the Maduro government...and by extension its Chinese and Russian allies...don't give a damn about your ideology. They just want to have food on the table. No, everything in the world is not about you.

While I'm at it, we had our own violence here in America over the weekend, some idiot angry internet nerd shot up the Chabad Poway Synagogue in California, near San Diego.

I didn't see very many of these people who are crowing about guns and freedom and an end to socialism having one damned thing to say about that shooting.

In point of fact, the collapse of and infighting within the NRA seemed to grab more headlines, but okay, whatever.

The fact is, all these conservative culture warriors don't give a fuck about justice, they don't give a fuck about people being killed for no reason. It's actually kind of hard to see what they do care about...except of course their adoring worship of Donald Trump.

Speaking of topics like Communism and Socialism, veneration of Joseph Stalin is increasing again in Russia...and being pushed by the State...and I don't see very many conservatives even having one damn thing to say about that, either. Actually,  most of the ones who are are the Never Trump conservatives. No one else seems to care. These Nazis don't give a damn that Stalin fought Nazis, they only care about their idea of an archetype of a "strong leader." They'll edit out all the inconvenient parts later.

Actually, I don't think a lot of these people either in America or Russia even know what Stalin stood for. You bet your ass Vladimir Putin does though, KGB officers were required to study that shit. Sword and Shield of the Party, you bet.

They don't care what he stood for. It's the cruelty, stupid.

They don't care what Juan Guaido or Nicholas Maduro stand for. It's the idea of some kind of proxy conflict that will, in the end, fail as it always does to banish their American opposition to some kind of mythical outer darkness...that's what they want.

There aren't going to be American boots on the ground in Venezuela...there don't have to be. This is, yet again, another proxy conflict between the US and its allies on one side, and China and Russia on the other...and likely a chance to sell some guns and wank off to the idea of people being killed for something something gazpacho.

But ya know, fundamentally both Communism and Socialism in Latin America...are generally equated with resistance to tyranny (or at least to American economic and political dominance which were often enforced by basically fascist dictators installed by American coups...dictators who I remind you are actually venerated by the alt-Right Nazis today. So yeah, I think we need to be careful with this whole Venezuela thing, and I don't think it's a choice.

I'll admit, I wasn't terribly aware of a lot of this stuff as a younger man...not besides what I'd seen on various news programs, PBS shows, and stuff like that. In 1998 I bought a cheap copy of Che Guevara's book The Motorcycle Diaries at Borders book store in Traverse City, MI for around $10 and change. I was curious. I should add that I was both a conservative and a Republican at the time.

The book is the story of Che and a friend going on a trip across South America from Argentina to Peru, to volunteer to provide medical assistance at a leper colony in Peru. I read it, and mostly forgot about it as my liberal social worker Mom claimed the book as soon as I was done with it and it's still on her bookshelf. But, to a great extent, in describing a formative experience for Senor Guevara the book makes an excellent case for and serves as a manifesto concerning his later beliefs. Years later I read a chapter in Max Boot's book Invisible Armies about Che and how those early experiences influenced his fighting alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba and subsequent efforts to promote Communism and Socialism around the world later on...a quest that eventually killed him.

Max Boot is a conservative, yet his perspective on Che was pretty favorable. Ya know, sometimes it comes down to smart people just take note of this stuff, and the reasons for it. Sometimes it's best to leave the political bullshit outside the door and just be concerned with the human aspect.

Oh a whim, I bought The Motorcycle Diaries again last week, this time for $5 in E-Book format on Amazon, for my Kindle app. A more faceless form of capitalism than Che would ever have imagined, I'm sure, but they carry his book.

Capitalism isn't all good, or all bad. It's what we do with it that matters. Likewise Socialism is not inherently good or evil, but rather it's what we do with it that's important.

And that's the part these jingoistic morons can never seem to remember.

I'm almost afraid to ask what a manifesto for the politics of the anti-socialist crowd on Twitter might be called, just sayin.'

America is an idea.

"The Whacko:" Elections are great in principle, but this is no time for high ideals!

President Colin Powell: This is the ONLY time for high ideals, because those ideals are all we have. We aren't just fighting for our physical survival but for the survival of our civilization. We don't have the luxury of old-world pillars, we don't have a common heritage, we don't have a thousand years of history. All we have are the dreams and promises that bind us together. All we have...all we have is what we want to be. 

~From the Max Brooks novel "World War Z."

Well, as of early this morning, he's in. Joe Biden is officially running for President, yo. Or there's the Spanish video if you prefer. It was all over the news this morning that he was declaring his candidacy, and his first campaign ads appeared bright and early also. 

But it was his statement "America is an idea" that hooked me in.

I've said this before, a time or two, here or on Facebook. I've often paraphrased the above quote from "World War Z" in so doing.

To me, that seems to be the perfect "counter" to the blood and soil nationalism of the Alt-right Nazis and the Trump Supporters. Doesn't hurt that for better and worse, Joe has a lot he can fall back on to appeal to those conservatives who may be disgusted with Trump.

It's also inclusive of, without being dominated by, those further-Left who've thus far dominated the conversation on the Democratic side of the fence. And don't get me wrong, those people have their place, and certainly as long as they show up and vote they too should get a chance to help shape the future. But you have to win first.

Bernie has already not helped with that, along with his Bernie Bro fans. Last night I saw on Fox News something to the effect of "New Dem party platform: Voting rights for terrorists."

Now, what Bernie was actually saying was that he felt that even incarcerated people should be able to vote. Personally, I'm not sure I agree, I'm willing to be proven wrong and if such could help reduce recidivism and keep people integrated into society while they're in there, I'd support it. Certainly I think anybody who's served their sentence should be able to vote, and I don't think that should even be up for debate. As far as I'm concerned, if you get out on the last day of voter registration and can still get to the DMV go ahead and register. Use your mug shot for an I.D. if you have to! But, for now, I think you should have to pay your debt to society first and serve your sentence. Prison is, after all, meant as a punishment. But, minus loss of the right to bear arms for spousal abusers, stalkers and violent felons, I think the punishment should end when the sentence is up. I spent the last couple of days involved in a discussion about this on Facebook with a variety of people, mostly those firmly to the Left of myself.

And I think it was a discussion that needed to be had.

But of course, that's not what Fox News was even close to talking about. They're going to find nothing more and nothing less than the most click-bait right-wing OUTRAGE-worthy headline they possibly can and that's what they're going to go with.

Is THAT the idea of America that you want? 

I'm sick of anger, I'm sick of outrage, and I'm frankly sick of the people who claim Jesus the most being the people who'd be marching and shouting "Crucify Him!" in the streets if He actually showed up. 

"75% of white Evangelicals described the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants as a positive thing?"

Hmm, interesting bit of data, that.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 

~Matthew 25:31-45

*Also* an interesting bit of data. I wonder if they don't teach that stuff in church anymore?

But that's our choice, are we a country that accepts the stranger...or tosses them out, and likely our own most sacred principles with them as well?

You decide.

Which idea of America do you support? This upcoming election is a referendum on that idea.

And then of course, there's this.

I've...honestly never heard of anybody thinking that killing and eating one's political opposition was a valid idea before now, but as I've been trying to point out to people lately, this is the kind of stuff that's on the other side's mind these days. This idiot was supposedly angry about the media's coverage of Trump.

Shit like this is the end-result of the Fox News rage-machine constantly working on angry or gullible people who don't know or don't care that it's all bullshit. And ya know, there's something I've been noticing lately about the people at work who will make the effort to turn one of the break-room TV's back to Fox News. Where the average person, even in many cases the average Republican, will simply watch TV like a normal person might, or maybe half-watch it while doing something else...those who change the channel back, who seek the shit out? They'll sit there and stare at Fox News, zombie-like, like an ADHD kid watching cartoons. I've occasionally seen this before, but lately, there seems to be more of it.

If you wonder why my pull-quote came from Zombie fiction, there you have it. I'm not sure I see Fox News Rage Zombies as outside the realm of possibility, here.

An America where you can be killed and eaten for your political preferences...where ever such may spring from...is not the kind of idea that I'm going to get behind. Also, the other party is dominated by old white guys whose countenance otherwise resembles gas station beef jerky...so yeah, you can count me right out.

Just sayin.'

And then there's these fucking people.

Misogyny and religious woo woo bullshit all in one, this guy. I mean, seriously, Roosh the Douche here is basically one shout of "Allah Akbar" away from being the Taliban...only with a double dose of misogyny and superstitious idiocy on top of what you'd normally get.

Ya know, I've never quite understood what it is that these fucking people want from women, or want women to actually do, that might be within the realm of human possibility...but when what I have seen of them suggests that they'd regard the Republic of Gilead from Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" as hopelessly "liberal" I don't have to understand. You cannot reason with this type of bullshit, you can only leave it stewing in it's own rage and hot pocket crumbs in its Mom's basement and expect to kill it with fire if it ever comes at you.

But all that has to happen to destroy that particular threat is for women to avoid fucking them for long enough and it's going to die off on its own.

All this hate and racism is another matter. That is an existential threat to our nation and to many of the people in it...and probably to a hell of a lot of white people like myself as well.

That's the level we're at here.

Look, this election isn't about "Medicare for all" or the Green New Deal or whatever your pet policy idea is or whether or not everybody gets a damn unicorn. This election is about whether we get to keep our Democracy and the foundations upon which all that other stuff is even built or by which it might even be possible. We're up against people who don't believe in Democracy, here.

We're up against people who don't believe human beings should have human rights, who would give such things to corporations only, and maybe themselves.

We're dealing with people...Americans...who reject America on political or theological grounds, or simply because they're so greedy that they don't feel they've gotten enough out of our current system even though it's mostly favored them.

And I strongly suspect that even (or maybe especially) if Democrats win, Republicans will try to break a part of America off for themselves. Among their own, that's the kinds of things they're talking about. There have been E-mails sent out by the Trump campaign that say "This is YOUR country, not theirs." But ya know...I thought we were all Americans, here?

And that's the thing, isn't it?

This election is a referendum on Trump.

Democrats have to win. We can work on all the other stuff after that. No more putting the cart before the horse here, no more unicorns. There is not going to be any Green New Deal or Medicare for All if we lose. So, We have to Win first, period.

Joe Biden seems to understand that.

Look, ya'll, I like Joe, I support him, I've said for years that I'd be happy to vote for him.

But I'm a be honest. I'm mostly just tired of seeing Trump's stupid orange face on my computer screen or the damn TV all the time.

I've said since June of 2015 that I'd vote for a moldy ham sandwich in preference to Donald Trump.

There are other candidates I like, who I'd also support. But Joe has the best chance, and if Kamala Harris or Mayor Pete were to end up in Biden's V.P. nomination slot I'd be damn happy with that.

But we gotta win first.

Joe is our best shot. To me, he represents something left over from the Obama era, which was pretty damn aggravation free by comparison to just last night, much less the last three years. 

And that is an idea that I'll gladly get behind. I'm in. I kinda liked being able to not have to pay attention to what the government was doing for a few days or weeks, if I felt like it.

And ya know, I've never felt like I had to watch things like a hawk before that motherfucker got elected.

As one of my state's house reps said, we need to impeach that motherfucker already.

The clock is ticking down, it's time to choose, which idea do you support?

America, or Trump?

The two ideas are not synonymous, and don't you forget it.

But that the dread of something after death...

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring!

~American patriotic song.

Over the weekend, Trump attacked Ilhan Omar on Twitter again. I'm just sayin' it's getting to the point where this reality show really sucks.

Listen, I'm here to tell you that there's at least some of these people that just aren't going to be happy until Americans end up shooting at each other over their bullshit. I'm serious, Trump is a serious problem, but he's not the cause of this mess. The fact is that we have...and always have had...far-right elements who see their fellow Americans as more the enemy than any foreign dictator. We, as a country, need to put a stop to this shit right now. Why? Because we've gone from mostly ignoring those people and treating them as fringe kooks to having a President that gleefully fans the flames because he likes conflict.

We're at a critical inflection point here, as Mayor Pete said in his speech yesterday, we're in one of those spaces between chapters. We, as a people, know we have a lot of problems and we're very rapidly sorting down into two camps. Simply put, there's those that want to do something about the issues we face, and those who don't.

Those who don't...are awash in creepy obsessions, fear, and hate. I'm sorry, but it really creeps me the fuck out that Fox News has mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over 3,000 times in recent weeks.

That is some real creepy stalker shit right there.

"This country was founded on the ideas of justice, of liberty, of the pursuit of happiness." Yes, all Rep. Omar is doing here is pointing out the obvious, something that most people of good conscience believe whatever their political orientation. I believed this when I was a conservative, and I still believe it now that I'm not. But you know, we have a lot of people in the United States of America that are not people of conscience, and while it's tempting to say they're all on one side or the other...that's not true. Now I'm not drawing a moral equivalence between the two, problems are worse on the Right than they are on the Left, but the point here is we all have a lot of work to do.

I just had to delete a Facebook post because a friend of mine was being an idiot and talking stupid about the Notre Dame fire in Paris that so many of us have been watching this afternoon. I'm just sayin' even if you're an atheist (as my friend happens to be) so are a lot of French people that just lost a major cultural treasure and symbol of their country. You don't have to believe to recognize that a thousand years of history just went up in smoke, likely due to some mundane cause like an electrical fire. We all should stop and reflect on our mortality at such times. Even things that stood for a thousand years can fall...and it may be for no reason that we will ever know or understand.

Just like, fundamentally, you don't have to agree with somebody to see them as a human being, or to recognize that they are part of a great tradition that has shaped no small part of human history and to which we owe a great portion of our modern world's existence.

A huge part of our problem in America right now, is people who are too small to get past their own personal issues with stuff.

Racism, religiosity, and shit-headed fear of the unknown all stem from the same things, lack of compassion, lack of curiosity and lack of empathy. It's the same shit that causes somebody to say "let it burn" when somebody else's cultural landmark goes up in flames.

I hate to tell people that we need to start doing better than this, but it's the truth. We as a people need to stand up and tell all these small-minded bomb-throwers to sit down and shut up, and be prepared to back it up with an ass whuppin' if we have to.

Parliamentary procedure, Quiet sabotage, Strongly worded letters, talking them out of it in private, and all that kind of stuff has its place...but it's not going to quiet this mob that both extreme ends of the political horse-shoe are slowly working up. It's not going to reign in the rage that seems to dominate some people's lives.

And that's sure not going to stop the Russians from perpetually stirring the pot, in an effort to try to get us to destroy ourselves. We have to put a stop to that crap, too.

I don't know what idiots started giving these people a platform, but it has to stop. A not-small percentage of American conservatism is literally morphing into a death cult of angry conspiracy theorists right before our eyes, people who literally reject the truth they can see with their own eyes in favor of the words of some guy with a bad suit and a worse haircut on a TV screen or a website.

It has to stop.

We'd better stand up, get to work and start trying to find a way to deal with America's addiction to anger and outrage and racism and shit-headed nihilism before this ends with America's next war being between its own citizens, and that is the truth. I'm not sure how America can be saved when roughly one in four of us simply doesn't believe in America anymore, much less lofty concepts like democracy, freedom, justice and pluralism. But we have to try to find a way.

We'd best acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do...and get after it.

Gravity

Lightning crashes a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now to the baby down the hall

~Lightning Crashes, Live.

This was the very first thing that I saw when I logged into Facebook after I got home from work and some errand-running this morning. Visible scientific proof of a Black Hole, taken using a telescope (actually, many networked telescopes) effectively the size of the Earth. This is the Galaxy M87, 53 *Million* light years from Earth. This image we see is a million stars being destroyed by gravity so powerful that it will rip atoms apart before it consumes them.

In other news, Einstein was right, but I digress.

Take a moment, and consider the vast distances, the terrible speeds, destruction so vast that it breaks down even the most basic building block of matter itself, and a darkness so deep and profound that even energy or light does not escape from it. When the light we now see left this galaxy, humanity itself did not yet exist, and would not for many millions of years more. Hell, the *Dinosaurs* were still a fairly recent memory, as geological time goes. Think about that.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Not even five minutes later, I saw this. Country artist Charlie Daniels (who is still, mind you, coasting on stuff that he did in the 1970's) still harping on all the Benghazi bullshit, as if Hillary Clinton is still in government, and Trey Gowdy still has a career.

Nobody's talking about Benghazi anymore, Charlie. It's just you.

I'm going to be honest here. I've long since reached the point of white-hot incandescent rage when it comes to these small-minded, loud-mouthed malfunctioning idiots whose main goal in life seems to be gimcrack posturing and some kind of "defeat" of their "enemies" real or (as they so often are) imagined. It's 2019, Obama is out of office, Hillary Clinton didn't get elected, and one hell of a lot of people on both sides of our political line need to grow the fuck up and start realizing we have a lot of shit we gotta get done, just for the survival of our country and our species, and ultimately for the environment of the planet it lives on...for literally life itself as we know it or can even comprehend it.

Nobody but them cares about these fucking people's petty political bullshit. For the most part, if it serves any purpose at all, it's to further gum up the works and prevent real shit from getting done.

Does any of this seem stupid to you yet? Conservatives used to be the serious people who did shit like try to figure a way to get us to the Moon, now they're the people who tend to think the Earth is flat. Conservatives used to be the people who cared about truth and disapproved of foul language, now here's some Youtube meat-head promoting a known liar with both middle fingers upraised, to his ostensibly right-wing audience.

Tell me something, conservatives, what good is all this backward-looking, middle-finger-upraised make-the-liberals-mad uneducated bullshit doing anybody but the relative few right-wing media people, Republican politicians and their billionaire benefactors who promote it?!

History is replete with reactionary movements, uneducated proletarians crashing their own societies, fanatics burning down great libraries, learned rulers trampled and their cities sacked by uneducated barbarians...and for what? The fall of Rome did nothing but plunge Christian Europe into the Dark Ages. It took the rise of Islam and a completely different ethic that was not threatened by knowledge or science to keep human progress going. For all their ferocity, which allowed them to overpower Islamic armies and sack Baghdad, the Mongols contributed little to the overall scheme of things...but even the Mongols could competently run an empire while they had it. Everybody lamented the fall of Rome and the Classical civilizations it perpetuated and represented. Genghis Khan is still at least well remembered in Mongolia. What of these fucking people?

Even the people of England, a decade or so after he had died, couldn't stand Oliver Cromwell. They hated him so much they dug up his corpse and beheaded it.

Reactionaries don't end up well-remembered. Reactionaries don't prepare for the future. Reactionaries don't build starships.

But, what of people who can't be bothered to learn their own history, to know anything about where they came from or how the country they lead, or even just live in, was founded and why?

I had to learn about George Washington when I was a kid. Trump went to Mount Vernon and wondered why George didn't name it after himself, and wanted to know how wealthy George was. Way to miss the point, idiot.

In 2011, thanks to my roommate at the time being a Native veteran and member of the local Tribe's warrior society I learned about a thing that a fair number of groups were doing at the Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania.

I thought "Oh hey, I remember what that is from fifth-grade history. George Washington built Fort Necessity...before losing it to the French and their Native allies"

I learned about this in Catholic school. But yeah, go ahead and tell me how history is "Liberal."

Growing up as a kid in a moderate conservative family, I was expected to know my history, I was expected to learn about science. I was expected to care about the truth. For fuck's sake I was expected to pick up after myself and take care of my own garbage.

 If we don't know where we've been, how do we expect to get where we're supposed to be later on? If we don't take care of the things we have, or the place we live, why would we expect that we would still have them? And what are we?

That's the thing that pisses me off the most about these fucking people--NOTHING MATTERS BUT RIGHT NOW!!! For all of their calling other people "animals" it seems to be the Republicans who want to live like animals...every day just existing...nothing changing, memory like a damn Goldfish. Every day is Year Zero, nothing that happened before November 8th of 2016 even exists, much less matters, it's all about the joy of the moment...even as a lot of the things these people themselves say tell you that on some level they know it's never going to last. A lady that I know said recently that her 80-something-year-old boss came up to her and said, in effect "THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING AND WILL TAKE OVER, THE BLACKS WANT REPARATIONS AND THE MEXICANS WILL TAKE ALL OF OUR JOBS!!" all this without any particular prompting, so far as I know. Now, aside from the obvious paranoia and racism...does that sound like somebody who is the least bit confident that their beliefs, their philosophy or way of doing things is going to be successful, or is working out?

Whatever else is going on, whatever spell the right-wingers had over America for all these years seems broken. More to the point, they seem to finally be realizing that fact...over a year after I first made this observation myself. The weight of this realization seems to be settling on them like the pull of a Black Hole's gravity. At least one of them seems to understand the gig is up, and the gravity of the situation seems to be causing random outbursts.

Ya know, America...and by extension humanity as a whole...is about to face a choice. Gimcrack small-minded bullshit or maybe we can just hack doing the kind of science and hard work that can reach across 53 million light years and watch a galaxy be ripped apart by gravity. If we want to know more, we're going to have to go there, or at least get closer.

Creationists, conspiracy theorists and reactionaries don't build starships. Anti-vax nuts don't design the kind of life-support systems or life-science endeavors or medical care that might help us understand what it takes to crew starships or survive in environments vastly different from our own, and for all their talk about "Space forces" these people don't really seem to get that outside of science fiction, nobody's ever done the work of figuring out what it would take to fight a battle in space. Hell, to the best of my knowledge even science-fiction hasn't yet bothered with the physics of sex in micro-gravity, just sayin.' Just lack of gravity as directional force on our bodies changes almost everything.

When I read about this M87 galaxy, this morning, my first thought was I'll see your God and raise you a Galaxy-destroying Singularity.

Ya know, funny thing about gravity.

It'll kill you whether you believe in it or know anything about it or not.

And there came one of the seven angels... (Part Two)

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. ~Revelation 18:4 (KJV)

So, yesterday, I wrote what I wrote.

Then I woke up this morning, and this crap right here was the first thing I saw.

Erick Erickson, yo, apparently noted Christian theologian. Oh, wait, did I say that with a straight face?

No, seriously, who the fuck does this guy think he is to define what is or isn't "Christian?"

I mean, last I checked, Episcopalians are Christians. They believe, as a matter of theology, in all of the traditional creeds of Christianity and in my experience the average Episcopalian tries to act on all that as best they can. Episcopalians are likewise scattered across the political spectrum and...

Oh, right. Yeah, never mind.

None of this is about that, not really.

It's about the fact that Mayor Pete is gay, and committed two of the three true sins of Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalism (Those being abortion, denial of the self-conferred right-wing birthright of defining everybody else because Jesus, and of course, homosexuality.) Yep, He's gay, and he publicly calls bullshit on the gimcrack monopolization of the Christian faith for their own political and social purposes. Therefore he must be theologically-defined out of Christianity by the same fucking people who go to absurd lengths to try to convince themselves of the "faithfulness" of Donald Trump.

Trust me, if I had to pick one of the two to watch the offering plate I'm a pick the mayor.

But of course, none of that matters to Evangelicals.

If you ever needed more evidence that Evangelicalism is nothing more than the Imperial Cult of hard-right Movement "Conservatism," Well, here it is. These motherfuckers are so "righteous" that they'd give Jesus the boot right alongside everybody else. All these fucking people lack is an Empire...although my guess is that's why they seem so intent on trying to colonize the rest of us. Never mind that Jesus taught people should reject Empires and worldly kingdoms.

Jesus...and anything He actually said even as it's recorded in the Bible...is scarcely even mentioned by Conservatives anymore, much less actually followed.

And who might they have in mind to replace Him?

I give you the Republican casino magnate and mega-donor Sheldon Adelson wearing a Trump Yarmulke, ladies and gentlemen.

Sheldon is, of course, at least nominally Jewish, but I'm sure the Evangelicals will think of something shortly.

I'm honestly surprised that anybody beat out the Evangelicals to declaring Trump their god, but I guess I'm going to just have to admit that I was wrong and award the gold-plated dick to the Republican Jewish Coalition. We'll throw in a lifetime supply of pulled pork and cheap off-brand barbecue sauce as a bonus for heresy.

(In case you thought I was joking, yes, former Republican Senator Norm Coleman actually led the group in a prayer in which Trump literally replaces God.)

Yo, these people are literally praying to Trump. The same guy who equivocated on Nazis, for fuck's sake, and who is directly responsible for an increase in Anti-Semitism, whose policies of giving the Israelis whatever they want will almost certainly lead to a spike in Middle East tensions, and which recognize Israel's territorial claim that gives it a land border with Syria...which has both Iranian and Russian troops on the ground within its borders. Anybody want to take a guess on how that's going to end up? The whole mess is a war waiting to happen.

Not to mention, Trump's speech to the actual group was peppered with the same kind of anti-Semitic bullshit dog-whistles that people like Ilhan Omar and Jeremy Corbyn got politically mugged by conservatives for allegedly having made. The asshole specifically referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as "their" Prime Minister...inferring that the assembled Jewish Republicans were somehow Israelis, and not Americans.

And that's the point, isn't it?

These fucking assholes keep trying to define anybody who isn't Conservative, Straight, their-kind-of-Christian and White as somehow not being American...and if you're from somewhere else and want to come here Trump doesn't even want to consider you human. Also, no, being on the same political side does not even close to help you or get you an exemption.

So why do it?

(Funny how over 70% of Jewish people are consistently voting Democratic these days, eh?)

Seems like a wonderful advertisement for expanding their movement in response to cultural and social change, doesn't it?

Republican logic here is: Let's quadruple-down on every single form of assholery that's EVER got us in trouble before, after we've elected an inept buffoon as President that nobody outside of our bullshit In-group likes, and whose policies are absolute shit!

Conservatives, or at least the American ones, are setting themselves up for the kind of fall that just means there simply won't be any left after this crap all comes crashing down, I'm talking the kind of mess that has even whatever's left of These Fucking People denying that they supported Trump and telling all and sundry how they heroically gave the Trumpist goons wrong directions and publicly shunning anybody who didn't renounce the Orange God fast enough when everybody knew it was all over...

...Only to re-emerge in 20 years as an openly fascist political party that represents 15% of the population, when they think they can get away with it.

Ya know, the same kind of mess that still creates problems for France and most of the rest of Europe 74 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The kind of thing that tells you that even after Trump is voted out of office or whatever, we as a people are still gonna have a lot of work to do at fixing the problems that caused this mess.

And while I'm at it, I kinda think these Jewish Republicans are probably going to end up having some explaining to do when they meet their maker in the afterlife.

But hey, that's just me, and it's all these double standards, hypocritical inconsistencies and lies that are why I'm not religious anymore in the first place.

Conservatives at this point, one and all, act as if their God is either dumb as fuck or doesn't really exist.

I can't support that shit.

And you shouldn't either.

Part 1.

And there came one of the seven angels... (Part One)

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. ~Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride.

Revelation 18:4 OK, Let's look at this:

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. ~Revelation 18:4 (KJV)

Revelation, chapters 17 and 18 detail the fall of the "Whore of Babylon" (which historically is John of Patmos' stand-in for Rome in the text.) 

In most End Times Prophecy Movement circles 20 years ago (and I'd assume, today also) the "Whore of Babylon" was and is treated as a dog-whistle against globalization in general, global organizations in particular, and the European Union most of all.

Mostly because Ooga booga liberal multinational government something something gazpacho.

No, the average End Times Nut can't explain it any better than that. They can't, both from inside and outside the movement I asked serious questions and was met with New World Order talking points that basically originated with Pat Robertson in 1991, most of which have been proven wrong by the simple attrition of time.

Keep in mind that this phrase "A New World Order" was thrust into prominence by a Republican...and keep in mind how much current Republicans have been goaded into hating that particular Republican today.

It's of surpassing importance here, to realize that the original theology of the End Times Prophecy movement is functionally British, and mixed with a little Southern US Confederate Fundamentalism later on.

I read an article from the Irish Times on Friday night about rising radicalization and sectarianism and desire for sectarian conflict among Ulster Unionists in Northern Ireland that specifically mentioned Ulster Unionist bagpipers carrying Confederate Flags at an Alt-right Nazi rally in London that was headlined by British Nazi, criminal, EDL and UKIP founder Tommy Robinson.

Trust me, if the European Union's fundamental ideals were gimcrack Christian Fundamentalism, Far-right politics, racism and White Supremacy...these fools would be calling some other entity the "Whore of Babylon."

Let's get one thing straight. In Revelation, Babylon is Rome. Rome represents Empire, the Imperial cult and the false World System that Christianity originally set itself against, before Constantine co-opted the faith by placing it at the top of said world-system and the Christians have been defending it ever since. These fucking people aren't mad about the European Union...they're mad because they're not running it, it's not based on their ideals, and even if they somehow gained control they'd have an uphill battle against three generations of inertia pushing in the opposite direction. They're not mad because other countries have had a say in how theirs is run for a generation...they're mad because they're not the ones running the show. They're unhappy because they can't dominate everybody else. They're mad because the Whore Of Babylon keeps demanding money and won't lie down with them for free.

It's really that simple. They don't even want the Empire if they can't be Caesar.

The Irish Times article I link to above mentioned something that, I think, summarized the current issues that much of the world is facing pretty concisely, the author notes:

In the same area last week I saw two murals facing each other across a redbrick side street.

One featured multicoloured greetings in many languages and the words peace and love in soft, friendly lettering. This area has a substantial minority population of people from other ethnic backgrounds now.

The other mural, in shades of black and grey, was more traditional – this had men with guns in paramilitary uniform glaring from behind balaclavas under the insignia of East Belfast UVF, which has lately been accused of murder and drug dealing.

If that doesn't sum it up for you at this point I'm not sure what will.

This isn't really about conservatism vs. liberalism, globalization vs. protectionism, or anything like that. Those are the big words we use to sum up a lot of smaller ideas for the TL/DR people in the back. NO, what this is really about is peace and love (and desire for either) vs. conflict, power and forced uniformity that flows from the barrel of a gun...and no small amount of criminality, either.

It's really that simple...at least on the surface.

You'll note that in the mural, it's masked men with guns representing secretive groups, not uniformed military personnel openly acting on behalf of the State. Per Fox News, Republicans seem to be making a decisive pivot against the military and veterans...and particularly the benefits owed the latter.

What's really going on here, aside from the fact that Republicans pull this bullshit every time they think it's politically safe to do so...is likely that Trump, his cronies and their assorted enablers have figured out that they don't have as much support among current service members and veterans as they thought they did.

It's the same shit on either side of the Atlantic, really.

And thus, the pivot toward unaccountable secret groups that might enforce the power of some hidden right-wing oligarchy at the barrel of a gun...

I mean, let's get real here, what else did you think this Q-Anon shit was?

Whether American or Northern Irish, These Fucking People and their atavistic fear that some dark something or someone is going to come and take away their guns and their Jesus and fuck their daughter (or insert other random something-something-gazpacho here) or that somebody somewhere is doing something they don't like, all while upending their dreams of a caste system that they are forever at the top of, are fiending like broke heroin addicts for somebody...hell, anybody...to gather them up and surround them with barbed wire and machine gun pits and walls and defend them from all the things their small minds are afraid of. In effect, if they can't put everybody else in concentration camps, they want to live in one...just so they're protected and various and assorted people that they don't like are dead. God, it must be a hell of a life, to want to live that way, but I digress.

I literally don't understand this crap, and I used to be a conservative.

And apparently, at least some of These Fucking People are not any happier with the job their Dear Leader has been doing than the rest of us are, though of course for vastly different reasons.

Let's get one thing straight.

These fucking people are impatient, and either unhappy with their political prospects and the results of their electoral process, or they're just fucking terrified that they're going to lose if the current situation, let alone their ideology, gets put to a vote.

At the rate things are going, I'm going to be surprised if we make it to the next election without Americans shooting at each other, for the same reason that I've been thinking since Brexit that Northern Ireland might see a reboot of the Troubles. 

These fucking people don't believe in democracy or any other system that doesn't always favor them, they don't respect their fellow humans, and they see most (if not all) current political systems aside from dictatorship, oligarchy and maybe in some cases monarchy as being against them...but even that only holds true when the dictator, the king or the oligarchs are seen as Movement Conservatives...or whatever these people have become...or allies of the same. They only want a dictator if the dictator is their guy.

And they want that guy to tell them that it's Okay to shoot down their neighbors.

If we've learned anything from the last few years, it's that these idiots are positively butt-hurt about the existence of other people.

And their message to the rest of the world is quickly morphing into "We are coming to kill you." That's what a lot of this crazy shit, from the Christchurch terrorist's manifesto to the Q-Anon horse shit, is about. These Fucking People are trying to psych themselves up, trying to work up their courage, to go after everybody else. At absolute minimum the occasional nut will succeed in doing so.

Whether a significant portion of the body politic follows them into the breach remains to be seen.

But somewhere, they will, the laws of probability alone dictate it.

It's getting to the point where the rest of us need to be aware, and need to be prepared, and any or all of us may have to defend ourselves...and don't think Republicans are safe. When the Rwandan Genocide happened..on this date in 1994, mind you...those who desired only to kill started with most of what was then current leadership of that country. These fools will attempt to start with those they judge to be insufficiently "Conservative" or insufficiently racist, or all-around lacking in following after their tribalism and my guess is that this won't be limited to America...hell, it may not even be here that it happens...either. But it will happen.

It may not be Trump...I think chances are increasing that the ship has sailed on him. I don't think he has the level of public support he would need to become a dictator. But he has certainly awakened the fanaticism...and fanaticism abhors a question mark. These idiots will find somebody, somewhere.

It may be here, or it may not be here.

But these fools will succeed somewhere...and so we all have to be on our guard in case it's us.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Keep that in mind.

Part 2.

Campaigning with Barrabas.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? ~Matthew 5:43-46

I saw this a couple days ago, one of a number of comments I've seen regarding the Trump 'campaign' rally last week in Grand Rapids.

And it bothers me, What do these people think is so great about being so hateful?

Not just regarding the abuse heaped on people of color, the undeserving, and the vulnerable. What do you think this implies for all of us, as a nation?

I'm a white dude, I'm a former Christian and conservative, I own guns, I do or I have fit into a number of categories that this ginned-up mob claims is desirable.

But of course, I don't qualify, despite being (more or less) an old white man. I'm a Democrat, and while I'm not 100% a 'liberal' by any means, I'm damned near a Socialist compared to these motherfuckers, simply because I believe people should take care of each other and their environment. (This belief stems from my own church background and conservative upbringing, and I've always felt that way.)  I'm a working person, who has no desire to be rich nor to exploit others. I need stuff, my health isn't great, and I don't care for seeing animals, people, or the Earth we all live on being abused. I'm not big on conflict or war, especially when such are promoted by people who will never fight in them for personal gain, power, or to cover up excessively fragile masculinity.

Not to mention, I hate their president "God." Again, I hated Trump when he was a Democrat and I was a Republican, too. I hated his bankruptcies and divorces (remember, I started out as a conservative Christian, here, back when that meant one was something other than a bigot) his gaudy buildings, his gimcrack public behavior, the "Popular Culture" he often represented (It's "Popular" because it's bullshit) his racism and his vapid stupidity.

In short, I'm kinda like, screw everybody else...I know these fucking people are quite likely to target me. Therefore, if I want to survive and do it on my own terms...not theirs...I have to make common cause with everybody else in these matters, just for my own safety.

How do I know this?

Well, here's a little evidence.

One of the people I follow on Twitter got death threats simply for pointing out that Ilhan Omar looked good in her Hijab. Now, so far as I know this lady (Ida) who commented on this and was then threatened, is gay and about as likely to support the Islamic religion as I am to become a Southern Baptist. She simply Made. A. Fashion. Comment. Not to sound all stereotypical here, but isn't that something gay folks are kinda known for? Seems to me a logical thing to comment on, and especially so for a gay woman regarding the appearance of another woman, just sayin.'

In short, left to my own devices I'd regard this as perfectly natural and move on, ya know, like a sane adult.

And here's the header for the article being commented on, you'll note it's in the Middle Eastern version of Vanity Fair...which, to be honest, I didn't know there was one. Again, seems like a perfectly natural thing for somebody like Ilhan Omar to be featured in, and it has about as much to do with Islam directly as Miley Cyrus rubbing her butt on some dude has to do with Christianity.

It's just a fucking magazine. Saying that somebody in it looks good in Hijab is "Promoting Sharia Law" to about the same degree as me thinking that one of my Christian female co-workers has a nice ass is promoting Christian Fundamentalism.

One of these things is not like the other. Not that such things matter to the perpetually aggrieved on the Trump-Right, who increasingly seem to be offended by the mere existence of other beliefs and opinions and even other people.

Listen, if these people aren't made to cut that shit out, and slapped down one way or another by the rest of us, none of this is going to end well.

At least some of these fucking people seem to want to live in a Christianized version of North Korea with Trump as their Eternal President  God King  Lord And Savior and I think the body of evidence that shows none of this will work out for the rest of us (and it won't be that great for the Trump Supporters either) is pretty damn persuasive.

I mean, seriously, what the fuck do you think all this Q-Anon shit really is?

It's nothing but a Juche Fan-fiction wank-fest because yes, on some level these fucking people know that their Dear Leader ain't all that. But they want to declare him a god and try and burn everything down anyway because "Fuck you, that's why." But, on the internet, they can still pretend. Let the weak say he is a mighty man, indeed.

They know...they know...it's not going to work out, but they increasingly seem to want to try it anyway. It's the world's biggest middle finger and they want to be seen giving it, like they think they're going to get some kind of a reward for it or something.

It's like how the people in one small Mississippi town decided to fill the town swimming pool with cement, because the court had ordered it be desegregated. These fucking people have found out that they're going to have to share America with the rest of us no matter who's in power. So, all the sudden, they don't want it anymore. It's almost like the only thing these motherfuckers really care about is their desire to be racists.

Well, not just racists, but you get the idea. A little Homophobia (and misogyny, etc.) fits nicely with their plans as well.

Although, to be fair, that didn't seem to work out very well for Denise McAllister's job at the Federalist...though the reason she got fired appears to have been public comments about the boss's wife.

Can't help it if this lady is crazy and stupid.

Read the comment, read how this bitch wants to tell another human being what his "purpose as an individual" is...and if that's how they're going to speak about somebody like Yashar...imagine how they're going to talk to or about you or me.

The rest of us can't afford to make the mistake that a lot of conservative poor white folks made, and agree with these motherfuckers that our lives aren't worth anything.

And if that's what they intend for him, imagine what they have in mind for the rest of us.

Telling these fucking people "Love thy neighbor" let alone "Love your enemies" registers about as much as simply shouting "I like big butts and I can not lie!"

Love ain't what any of this is about.

Unregenerate sinful Man simply won't hear the truth. It's not just that we're dealing with people who'd throw Jesus out if He actually did show up. (Or, for that matter, they'd march in the streets shouting "Crucify Him!!!" just as easily.) These people don't want the humble Savior, they want the murderer.

Same as it ever was, except these people think that Barrabas is Jesus.

No, These angry white Trump Supporters don't want to love their neighbors...they're the kind of people who increasingly whack off to fantasies of shooting down their fellow Americans, their own neighbors, because they see us as more "The Enemy" than Russians or Saudis or The People's Republic of China (a term that, back when I was growing up as a conservative, carried with it an implied and rather loud 'Ooga booga booga' as did any mention of the Soviet Union.)

Hell at this rate I would not be surprised if we don't make it to the next election without Americans shooting at each other, because apparently a lot of these people are starting to think even Trump can't or won't go far enough.

There's only one solution to this shit. Vote the bastards out, all of them. Then be prepared for what comes next, because whatever of these motherfuckers ain't died of old age by then, they aren't going to go quietly...and the entire objective of this whole mess is basically to crap all over everything so that future generations have to clean it up and it takes longer to address the needs of the present, much less the future.

Nobody's gonna "save" us from this mess, WE have to do the work, and end this crap, and fix it ourselves.

Just as we always have been before, We the People are the last line of defense. This time, we can't drop the ball. We can't afford to screw this up. Vote Trump out. Then we'll deal with what comes next.

Let's roll.