Pravda.

Words that do not match deeds are unimportant. ~Che Guevara

I saw this yesterday.

Some idiot Yellow Vest Nazi in England, shouting "Shame on you!" at Royal Navy officers, sailors and veterans for...I don't know...doing (or having done) their duty.

Tell me again, how conservatives  and these Nationalist motherfuckers just love the military. (And yes, this crap is the same in any country.)

Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station had an interesting thread on this topic yesterday.

Basically, at this point it's my take that conservatives and nationalists only even give a shit about the military when it can be used to further their agenda, or score political points. That's what a lot of this "support" of the military and veterans seems to boil down to these days, people wanting to score points in some imaginary whatever that exists only in their heads or wanting to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves without having to put any actual work in.

Trust me, veterans don't generally care if some goober of a cashier "appreciates" them, most just want to live their lives and not be constantly bothered about stuff like their military service.

I wonder how many of these "thank you for your service" fools might stop doing this shit if they got a hobby, joined a church or a photography group or even, yes, a shooting club or something? Or just walk your dog and go talk to people. Do something to feel like you have your own worth instead of expecting other people to carry the load for you.

The fake veteran-worship is, to a certain extent, generated by Republican bullshit. There's also a certain element of guilt on the part of the Baby Boomers over how Vietnam veterans were treated, including by many Boomers themselves.

That's a part of it. But I think there's another element, too.

You'd be amazed how many people anymore don't leave the house that much, let alone talk to their neighbors. I saw something not too long ago, that said Fascism is helped by social isolation.

Honestly, I think that's a lot of where this whole Trump thing came from. He said "Follow me" and a bunch of followers who didn't have anything to do with themselves...who had mostly given up on the traditional "Conservative" outlets of church groups and fraternal societies, and who mostly did not have the experience of things like interaction with different people, military service, travel, etc. all said "HELL Yeah."

I have a theory that the success of a given bullshit conspiracy theory, cult or gimcrack political movement in this day and age is inversely proportional to how many losers it makes feel like heroes.

And something that goes with losers needing or wanting to feel heroic is that they often feel the need to try to tear down actual heroes, successful people, or even those who have simply achieved adequacy and have nothing to prove. Thus many of these people also adopt Trump's perpetually aggrieved attitude as well as his never being happy with anything.

But at the same time, I think there's also something more sinister going on here, and it's not just in America...but everywhere.

Governments that represent everyone, and military forces that protect everyone are, by definition, a threat to those whose greatest desire is to shoot down their fellow citizens, their neighbors, and then squat in the ruins with their Bibles and their guns while eating salted rat (or each other) and peering suspiciously out of the gun ports of their bunkers. Such things are an even more profound threat to those who regard only their culture, political viewpoint of religious subculture as representative of civilization or deserving of humanity.

I'm not sure how we can continue to have a civilization when roughly 25% of Americans (a number that seems to neatly dovetail with the number of registered Republicans) simply don't believe in civilization as a concept, or at best simply attach the term to "their" culture or country without grasping or even trying to understand what the word "Civilization" even means. And of course, the fact that this, or that, didn't go their way is never their fault. The Right has absolutely mastered the arts of blame, learned helplessness and victim-hood...just like it used to accuse the Left of doing.

And then Fox News and talk-radio turn them into rage-filled spectators in their own lives....and the President tries to amplify this, and conspiracy theories point it in all kinds of crazy directions. My Grandma always said TV rots your brain. Since I stopped watching it about the time I got married (we didn't have cable, and the internet was dial-up) I have observed that this is very much true. I never re-started watching TV, despite consistently having Cable or living with somebody who did since then.

I've been making a point of sort-of paying attention to Fox News when I can, this week, and I've come to the conclusion that relying on that crap for news is about like relying on the Bible for an understanding of the classical world and the early Roman Empire. One or two of the names mentioned might be the same...but that's about it. Fox News is more real-time mythology than information.

As I said before, I have observed that certain people watch Fox News like ADHD little kids watch cartoons, with kind of a zombie-eyed glazed over stare. If TV rots your brain, what does TV that promotes hate and rage do to it? Today "Conservatives" from Trump on down have been making a big deal of the fact that washed-up character actor James Woods got himself kicked off of Twitter again...claiming there's some kind of Leftist-led effort on the part of Twitter (a corporation founded by Libertarian Jack Dorsey) to silence "Conservative" "Thinkers." Note that absolutely nobody on his side points out that Woods indeed did routinely break the site's rules, and that they were well within their rights to shit-can him.

Just sayin' I mostly know of Woods from Family Guy episodes, are ya'll really sure this dude is the role model you want? If he's a thinker, no wonder our political dialogue seems like the mutant love child of the Enclave from the Fallout video games and Spongebob Squarepants at its dumbest. This shit only gets worse when people don't even know their own history.

Combine that with a 24-hour news cycle that has to spend a lot of time filling dead air for money, and people who have been turned into spectators regarding their own existence don't have a short leap ahead of them for seeking fulfillment or glory through others instead of trying to find themselves and make their own.

The Anti-liberalism, Anti-Semitism (and anti-everything-else for that matter) and the desire to shoot people simply grows out of this. When everything sucks but nothing is ever your fault and you not only feel rage and resentment at slights real and imagined all the time...but have such things amplified and encouraged by the media that you consume...even as you yourself feel no incentive to change or do anything; I guess it ends up being, I don't know, easier maybe...to just blame somebody else.

And with or without the government being involved in it, that rage is eventually going to stop simmering and just boil over.

I was always told it takes two, for any kind of interpersonal situation. It takes two to have a fight, two at least for most of us to have a job, two make a baby, to have a marriage work (or fail) or to legally dissolve the same. There is always you and always the other. Yeah, once in awhile it does all fall on one person, but in most of our lives that doesn't happen on a constant basis.

Just sayin' being offended that other people exist seems like a hell of a way to live.

Increasingly, it seems like a bad idea to be like that, just sayin.'

Last week, for the hell of it I downloaded The Hunt For Red October, and The Cardinal Of The Kremlin. In reading both, I've noticed something that I find pretty interesting. Read something like that...written by a conservative in the 1980's, and then compare and contrast it to today. You'll see some interesting stuff. For one thing, I've observed that as of right now, at least, Trump Conservatives and Republicans sound an awful lot like how Tom Clancy wrote Soviet characters.

Everybody is corrupt, everybody lies, more to the point they know they're lying, but most of these people don't say anything for fear of the consequences.

I'm not sure how anybody considers that to be conservative. How do any of these people, in their own lives, determine what is true?
Without truth, there IS no freedom.

Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist. ~Leon Trotsky

Does this quote remind you of anybody else?

Ironically, the other night I saw some conservative idiot refer to teachers as "Commies."

But ya know, I guess it holds up.

In a movement or society built on lies, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Do it.