Invasion of the body snatchers (Lost Souls, Part Four)

I am the way into the city of woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence, primordial love and ultimate intellect
Only those elements time cannot wear are beyond me,
and beyond time I stand.
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.'
~Sign above the gates of hell (variant translation) Canto III, Dante's Inferno, the Divine Comedy.

Well, there it is.

The stupidest thing I've seen all day.

That was the first coherent thought I had when I got up last night and checked my Twitter.

"Demonic connection" "radical feminism" "Witchcraft" "Attack on Masculinity" (tm)

Throw in the Kennedy assassination, Hillary Clinton and the Loch Ness Monster and I think we might have ourselves a conspiracy theory.

So, basically, people practicing whatever beliefs they want, standing up for their own rights and having sovereignty over their own bodies is...demonic?

Funny, but I don't remember being taught any of that in the various Christian schools that I attended as a kid. Other beliefs were, well, other beliefs that didn't concern us. Otherwise what I was taught tended to err on the side of personal freedom, even if it might produce results we didn't necessarily agree with. The idea of course, was that we in turn were free to follow our own beliefs. My early education had steeped me in Christian doctrines and history, so I knew then, as I know now, why that's important. People died for the right to read the Word in their own languages, nations fought wars so that their people could be free to follow their own chosen doctrines and interpretations.

I mean, sure, I spent a good chunk of my life being personally against abortion, even as I conceded that under Man's law a woman had a right to one. As a younger man, I made fun of gay dudes on occasion. I don't do things like that anymore, but I'm no one's ideal in the liberal purity-arguments today...which is probably why I put no stock in such things and think they're stupid. The point is, we're all human, we should all be free to act as such without having any religious doctrines we don't want thrust upon us. Common decency on the other hand, yeah, we should have to observe that.

But that's not what this is.

The funny part here is, Mr. Masculine here appears to have a pretty feminine-sounding name. That's OK, even if it apparently turned him into an overcompensating dickbag. The point is, right out the gate he wouldn't make the cut for his own bullshit. That's par for the course with these fucking people.

And then of course there's this guy, some idiot claiming that Latino immigrants practice "Syncretism" and thus something something gazpacho "DEMONS!"

No. No. No. No. And No. None of this bullshit in the quote is true.

Do some people practice religions like Santeria or Voodoo that are fusions of African Traditional religions and Christianity? Yes. Are those things demonic? No. Also, those aren't, by and large, Latino faiths. Most Latinos are Catholics, and even the most liberal of them is pretty orthodox. Do some people still practice Native customs? Yes, but that's got nothing to do with "Demons" either. This is just fear-mongering woo woo bullshit dressed up in Pentecostal mumbo-jumbo and superstition. The truth is that an African traditional believer or a Voudounista or a Pentecostal share much the same definition of "Witchcraft." Oh, yes, Pentecostalism is absolutely a syncretic faith incorporating elements of the Calvinistic faith of White southerners and the half-remembered practices of Traditional faiths that existed among Southern Black people. The same goes for a Catholic, a believer in Native spirituality, or a Santero on the Latino side of this equation. Syncretism exists because colonized and enslaved peoples sought to maintain some elements of religious continuity with what they had before. This echoes down to today with the common call-and-response rituals and Spiritual songs of African American churches, and with the celebration of things like Carnival and Mardi Gras among Latino and yes, white people in both Latin American countries and the United States. Those customs are a celebration that traditionally marks the onset of Lent, the time of cleansing of 40 days before the celebration of Holy Week. There ain't no Catholic priest in the world that goes around repetitively "blessing" people's houses.

Performing an actual exorcism according to Catholic doctrine is an involved process, and these days typically also might involve secular medical and psychological advice beforehand. No, what this guy is doing is generalizing the Pentecostal tendency to go around "Anointing" things with Olive oil or Wesson oil and praying in an effort to "drive out evil spirits."

Do not be like the heathen who think that God will hear them for their much speaking, but I digress. I've seen what these people do, and the nearest equivalents are found in Traditional religions, not Catholicism.

This motherfucker is just literally trying to demonize immigrants, despite the fact that no less of a person than Jesus Christ told His followers to take care of the needy and visit the prisoners and welcome the stranger.

And for what?

Because their racism and belief in white supremacy trumps their belief in Christ, every fucking time.

Seriously, who the hell sits around watching what's going on at the neighbor's house and has so little else going on that they kick up a fuss about it...and then has a gun handy to go out and threaten somebody before they can even explain what they are doing?

Who the fuck has that little to do with themselves?

And all over a guy that, to be honest, does not look to me at all like he'd be out of place in the average "white" neighborhood. Not that it matters, but if I didn't know his name and met him on the street I'd probably be surprised that his name was Arash and not, say, Joe or something. I know a guy named Joe who's white and has darker skin than that dude. I have to wonder if these idiots that sit around waiting for chances to threaten random people passing through also harass and threaten to murder Italians?

Of course, I also know a white Mexican lady, and I have Muslim friends who are white. Are those people automatically assumed to be "Demonic" as well? Or would they have to say something first? Does a Mexican accent, or a greeting of "As-Salaam Alaykum" automatically disqualify one from Evangelical Racist Exorcist Heaven?

Not that I can imagine anybody wanting to go to such a place that I'd want to spend eternity with, but I digress.

Skin color is a dumb-ass way to try and sort people.

Religion, especially arrogant, entitled religion, is worse.

Pawning it off onto arbitrary made-up evil spirits is even dumber, and more dangerous, especially given the Invasion of the Body Snatchers level paranoia that these fucking people are getting themselves into.

And the Christians keep involving themselves in this shit, typically out of fear. Mix up fear and paranoia and give it a religious cast in a bunch of gun-happy idiots and the end result is always going to be a lot of dead people.

One hell of a lot of the world's Christians, almost certainly a majority at this point, are Black, Brown or otherwise People Of Color. For that matter, there's lots of Jews and Muslims and Traditional peoples whose beliefs are not that different from those of Christians.

Yes, there are things out there that cannot be explained, but Demons, Poltergeists, etc. etc. generally are not real. People, on the other hand, are.

I was taught that the Shining City on a hill was for everybody, and none less of a conservative icon than Ronald Reagan spoke of such a view. These fools on the other hand, see it the way the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did...that their imagined utopia is only for them.

Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go. America isn't America if everybody gets some.

That's what conservatism has come to, not much more than whored-up cover for white supremacy and every other form of bigotry...because every last one of these fools thinks they'll be the lord in the manor, and not the serf in the fields.

Every last one of these idiots thinks the bad stuff won't apply to them, because they're holy, they're righteous, oh yes, that's what they think.

And this bullshit mentality dragged a hell of a lot of American Christianity down  right along with it.

Fuck that shit.

And why is this a problem? Because today, in the same session in which Trump's citizenship question on the Census was struck down, the Supreme Court claimed that it had no authority over partisan Gerrymandering and punted the question back to state legislatures.
Which will, in effect, likely enable the sorting of the country into separate Blue and Red republics to continue.

In effect they're continuing, as damned near everybody in a position of authority or importance is, to try to have it both ways, to both profit from and resist (in half-ass fashion) the current political crisis.

When we as a society are literally dealing with people who practice all forms of bigotry, deciding that other people do not have a right to exist, neutrality equals collaboration and signals tacit acceptance of genocide and murder.

Somebody needed to take a stand here. No one did. The one time we needed these motherfuckers to stand athwart the flow of history while yelling "Stop!" they punted the decision back to somebody else, who likely won't want to make it, either.

Instead of leading the lost souls even more astray for financial and political gain, somebody should have given them something to hang onto. Maybe instead of ranting about "Attacks on Masculinity" and whining about demons, somebody in the Church should have looked to the spiritual welfare of their people...and when they noticed a problem, done what was right or needed rather than what was popular.

But nobody wants to do that, often for fear of offending somebody's "feelings" or because then they might not give you their money afterwards.

Trying to play both sides, to remain neutral, is a terrible idea.

Neutrality equals collaboration. Silence equals consent. Especially now, if you're not willing to stand up and vote to end this bullshit, you're making what comes after and the fact that America will likely violently sort itself out into Blue and Red republics instead of simple voting blocs more likely.

The Far-Right wants that because they think they'll win if we solve our conflicts with bullets instead of ballots.

They won't. No one will...except for the weapons manufacturers.

Think about that, until you understand it. If you can make yourself understand it, act.

Because sooner or later it's going to be too late. If our sense of community, of decency or at least of self-preservation doesn't override our fear of offense (or the glorying in imagined offense to others) or our worship of Capitalism soon...I do not think it's not that much of a stretch at the rate things are going to imagine that separate 2020 elections might be held in separate Blue and Red republics.

That only ends one way.

And War, my friends, is hell, and it only gets worse when religious fanaticism is involved.

I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. 
Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell! ~William Tecumseh Sherman

Part 3.

Two Baptists and a neoCon walk into a bar (Lost Souls, Part Three.)

Through me the way is to the city Dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole! Through me the way among the people lost.
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
⁠Created me divine Omnipotence, 
⁠The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. Before me there were no created things, Only eternal, and I eternal last. "⁠All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"
~English Translation, sign above the gates of Hell, Canto III, Dante's Inferno, the Divine Comedy.

I saw this earlier. I'm not surprised by it in the least. As much as I may disagree with him religiously, I think it can be said that Russell Moore is a good and decent man.

It's not just his criticism of Trump, or his criticism of the Evangelical church or the Republican party in these times that tells me this. I've actually read a couple of this guy's books. One, years ago, actually was about the fact that Christianity (specifically of the Evangelical and Fundamentalist sort) had taken root far more deeply in the developing world...what he called the "Global South" than in Europe or North America. I agreed with his conclusions at the time, and I can certainly see why he would be standing up for Christian migrants now.

(His other book that I read was a history of the Azusa Street Revival, co-authored with another Southern Baptist theologian, Albert Mohler, a former SBC President. For the record, it was also on point.)

But of course this isn't about that. Why would it be?

This fucking guy.

This fucking guy right the fuck here.

As if making a payroll, or building an organization (and what has he built? It's his Dad's organization) were somehow holy tasks? In that case, wouldn't (for example) the Associated Press, British Petroleum, the People's Liberation Army, the United States Government, or Wal-Mart be holier than any church?

I wasn't aware that in any sect of Christianity, secular power translated into spiritual authority. Maybe then, the Pope should be God? Or Donald Trump? (I suspect that last probably hits a little too close to home on Jerry Junior, though.)

This is the Prosperity Gospel. This is temples of glass and steel and rolodexes full of politicians presented as spirituality. Fuck that. The evil shitty behavior, the Concentration Camps, that Falwell is trying to defend? That just makes it worse.

Jesus was a poor, brown-skinned Middle-Eastern Jew who was against the religious authorities of His time, who offered Salvation to sinners and tax collectors and healed the servants of Roman Centurions and who didn't give a fuck about political agendas.

Jesus associated with the poor and the downtrodden, not with the rich and powerful. Jesus sowed His Word among the poor communities of Judea, not among the wealthy of Rome. The Church began with the oppressed, not the powerful. There was a reason for that.

The doctrines of Christianity began to be written down, and the tone set, by desert monks and holy hermits rather than rich men in priestly robes.

When He was asked, Jesus said "My Kingdom is not of this world."

Jerry Falwell's kingdom doesn't exist outside of this one. Jerry Falwell's idea of heaven is privilege in this life. Jerry doesn't get to take that with him when he dies.

And when he dies, according to Jerry's own beliefs, the Judge who judges him will be Jesus, not Donald Trump.

You'd think he'd take that into account before lecturing some other theologian and transparently revealing what his real priorities are.

See, Salvation according to Jerry Falwell, Jr. is that he gets to do whatever he wants, and you don't. If him and his wife want to bone the same pool boy...well, that's acceptable because he's the big important preacher dude...but God forbid you be gay or bisexual.

You want to be that, I guess you gotta go inherit your own empire of bullshit, first.

You notice how love never seems to enter into Jerry's theology, or my analysis of it? That's on purpose. Jerry thinks it's wrong for two dudes, or two ladies, who actually love each other to get together, have a home and family and pets and all the things that go with love and happy families.

Love of family, love of neighbor, or love of one's children doesn't really figure into it either. In Jerry-land, family is somebody you inherit the grift from, that's about it.

The Preacher, the Pool Boy, and his Wife? That's cool though, because in Jerry-Heaven, who you get to fuck and how you get to enjoy yourself is merely a by-blow of how much power you have. Things are not for the purpose God or nature or your own biological desires intended them for...it's all about power and male ego.

Does any of this sound Christian to you? Does any of this sound like it might lead to Salvation or Transcendence of any sort? No?

That's because it doesn't, except for Jerry. But he doesn't get to take it with him and neither do you.

It's no wonder so many people are so lost.

It gets better, and worse, though.

Jerry managed to get himself trash-talked by Bill Kristol, which I thought was pretty impressive. Bill's got game. Who knew? He slam-dunked Jerry Junior on Twitter, but with skills like that I wouldn't count him out on the street, either.

Whatever disagreements we might have in terms of beliefs, or whatever there's one thing I can confidently say about Bill, about Russ, and about me. None of us has met our God yet. The former two have made this evident by their conduct. I know my own struggles with belief. Whatever we may believe, none of us will meet Him until we die and cross over into the afterlife.

The difference between us and Jerry is that Jerry sees his true "god" every morning, in the bathroom mirror, while he's brushing his teeth.

And ya know what that is? According to every Christian interpretation of Salvation from American Baptist to Catholic to harsh and cruel Calvinist to Independent Fundamentalist Baptist to online images promoting some loose interpretation of the "Four Spiritual Laws?"

That, my friends, is exactly how you go to hell.

And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased.

~Matthew 21:10-15

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess,

Part 4.

Part 2

Part 1

A line in the sand.

You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
~Molly Ivins

Yesterday, I saw this.

A fairly transparent attempt by a sitting U.S. Senator to fear-monger about the increasing number of Latino people in Texas.

Like, literally what the fuck?

Senator, it doesn't goddamned well matter what ethnicity your constituents are. It's your job to represent all of them.

But ya know, in the course of doing a bit of research over the past couple of days...it's absolutely mind-blowing to me how dismissive of other people...any other people...most "Conservatives" have become. I'll largely except #NeverTrump conservatives from that, because, to their credit, most of those people are just as appalled by all this racist shit as I am.

But John Cornyn can hardly be identified as a racist bomb-thrower like Steve King.

Or can he? Does it even matter anymore?

Somewhere, CNN managed to dig up this asshole.

"It's up to the parents to do things rightfully and legally."

I'm curious. Where does all that "Rightful" and "Legal" stuff go when Democrats are the ones in power?

No, I'm serious. Don't look away, don't move the goal-posts. Answer. The. Fucking. Question.

These fucking people only care about what's legal or right when they think they get to determine what that is.
And these people want to have a government that hurts people they don't like.

Hell, they think that's what government is for.

I live in Michigan. I'm specifically from Northern Michigan, and I've spent significant time in the Upper Peninsula of the state as well. I'm here to tell you that when Bill Clinton got elected in 1992...

If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal. ~Molly Ivins, on Bill Clinton

Well...within a year or so, there were armed anti-government groups all over the place in my state. Multiple people that I knew were in them. A guy I know once told me, somehow forgetting who he was talking to, that "The Lord wanted him to join" the Michigan Militia. He seemed to forget that the Bible tells Christians in the book of Romans that they are to obey government authorities, that Christ said to render unto Caesar that which is his, and unto God that which is His also. He seemed to forget what I was doing, and what my plans were, at the time. If he ever got his whack-off fantasy shoot-out with the government there was an excellent chance that I'd be one of the people shooting back at him, and I was a conservative, a Republican...

As regards loyalty to my country and its ideals as defined in our founding documents, and as regards stuff like racism, sexism, and any other form of prejudice I drew a line in the sand right about that same time in my life.

A line that puts me firmly on the opposite side from these motherfuckers not only socially but politically as well...and my views have actually not changed that much except on a few social issues like health care and marriage equality. Just sayin.'

These days, that basically makes me a socialist, and I've moved from where I was in 1993 on only a few issues, gun control, health care and marriage equality.

I've always believed people should take care of each other and that the government should be responsible to all of its people.

I'd like to point out AGAIN, that when that line was drawn I was a REPUBLICAN. A lot of my heroes were Republicans. What we are seeing now is, at least, not what was in power at that time on my (then) side of the fence.

(I also would like to point out that a bit over a year after that conversation took place, Mid-term elections swept Republicans into Congress and Newt Gingrich into being the Speaker of the House and that began to change...)

Instead of fear-mongering about the number of Latino residents, or caging Latino kids at the border in horrific conditions, what Republicans SHOULD be doing is trying to help those people, reaching out to them and maybe try and give them a reason to vote Republican eventually.

Most Latino people are Catholics, and decent numbers of them are in fact conservative. But, they're generally smart enough not to support people that hate them. (Unlike poor white folks, but I digress.)

So, they've spent 50 years basically alienating everybody BUT racist white idiots and the rich fools that those racist white idiots will unfailingly vote for.

Now they're on to dehumanizing the rest of us, and actively tormenting those they think they can get away with doing it to, in every way possible whether it's abusing kids or getting in the way of a vote on a climate change bill.

If you cannot find it within yourself to vote against this crap, no matter who the other party puts up, you're setting yourself up to be the next one in the cage because trust me, these fucking people don't give a good goddamn if you're a Christian or a conservative or white or whatever the fuck.

Eventually it'll get down to you have to be the proper KIND of white far-rightist Christian...and THEN the line will become who is willing to abandon Christ and worship Trump as God and it'll be the Christians in the cages without soap or even decent food and water.

Oregon's climate-change bill is a Cap-and-Trade scheme, and Cap-and-Trade is, fundamentally, a very capitalistic and market-friendly effort to address global warming, that was originally formulated by George H.W. Bush administration lawyers, if I recall correctly.

But then, popular conspiracy theory target Agenda 21 was signed off on by the Bush administration as well.

See, It's never been about conservatism, Christianity, or any of the other things they've ever said it was about. All relatively decent people like George H.W. Bush or John McCain or Ronald Reagan...or James Comey or Robert Mueller for that matter...or even racist assholes like Jeff Sessions who STILL wouldn't go against the Constitution...ever were was a means to an end, Camouflage for murderous racists and sociopathic rich fucks It was always about power, and about making sure that they have it and you don't.

It's about hurting people as an expression of power.

It's about the fact that people like Laura Ingraham don't think the descendants of slaves should get reparations because she doesn't think slavery was wrong in the first place.

It's about turning every mechanic of life into nothing more than a self-reinforcing ego trip for the right kind of white, allegedly "Christian" politically/socially "Conservative" male scumbag.

Even sex is not for enjoyment or procreation, but who gets to have sex and what kind of sex becomes about power, not what God or nature or the universe intended it for.

This will trickle down to every single aspect of life.

I'll never forget finding out that in Saudi Arabia something as simple as drinking a Coke out of the can (and thus displaying that American brand) or smoking Marlboro cigarettes rather than the lesser quality Arab or Turkish brands could get you harassed by the police.

Who would then get back in their American or Canadian built GMC trucks with their American-made guns and answer the next call on their Motorola radio because it was their power to have "Western" stuff...but they'd harass you for doing it.

While I'm at it, over there the Muttawa don't particularly have to obey the laws, either. The situation is so bad that Saudis openly joke about it and the various clerical councils in the country have repeatedly issued Fatwas to try to get the fucking police to obey the fucking laws.

Allah Akbar, motherfucker.

This is the future that conservatives want, for America.

And even "Race" is nothing more than the sorting point that's popular RIGHT NOW.

When that goes out of style or we're down to just the right kind of white people they'll simply find something else in the service of their shitty agenda.

It's not about anything else but power, and who they can fool into giving it to them and how they can keep it.

If you cannot find it within yourself to vote against that shit, whether you "like" the other party's candidate or not, fuck you.

It's not about policy or party, it's about do you wanna live in a country that puts kids in cages or not? We are and always have been a diverse and multicultural society. Do you want that to stay the way it is, or do you want nuts like this Q-Troll to determine what our culture is?

Do you wanna live in a country where one political party thinks it has some kind of a divine right to hold up progress by any means necessary, or not?

It's a yes or no answer. There can be no other way.

We cannot live with people who simply don't think the rest of us have a right to exist.

The future is up to all of us, not just them.

But if you don't vote, you give them an advantage that they don't deserve.

And if you can't be bothered to get off your ass and vote to potentially save your own freedom, or your own skin, well...fuck you.

He that Believeth in Me (Lost Souls, Part Two)

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ~John 11:25

I may have said this before, but, Seriously?

So, apparently the Jerry Falwell Jr. "Pool boy" scandal is back in the news.

Apparently, there's various nude and semi-nude pictures of Rebecca Falwell circulating.

Okay, whatever. But...as somebody who's accidentally had shit like that get out...I'm a just say one thing. Nobody, Christian or not, married man or not, is going to go to absurd lengths to hide or scrub the shit if it's just normal "Between husband and wife" type of stuff. I mean, sure, some people might really want to protect their privacy or whatever. I get that.

But ain't nobody...nobody...on this Earth, especially somebody with actual principles, especially a person that actually believes in their religion...that's going to be blackmailed into endorsing a scumbag like Donald Fucking Trump if somebody has the kind of vanilla, normal type of shit nude pictures one might reasonably expect of an Evangelical husband and wife. For fuck's sake, they're married. What is anybody who actually cares about anything Jerry Falwell Jr. says even going to say?

Even some kind of scenario involving Rebecca Falwell and another woman, with photos taken by Jerry...would be unlikely to cause anybody to even bat an eye. Normal-range kinky stuff? Same. 90% of the kinky chicks I've ever dated either were conservatives/Evangelicals or had been at some point and as regards bisexual or bi-curious people of either sex I'd say that figure is still over 50%

Which tells me there's probably something pretty messed up going on there, or maybe something involving Jerry with a dude or otherwise something that would piss off his fellow "Believers." I don't know, I don't care. If there wasn't a multi-million dollar business deal and shitty political shenanigans that have negatively effected the entire country I wouldn't give a fuck about that either.

I don't give a goddamn if Jerry Falwell Jr. likes to suck dicks. It's the 21st goddamned century, most people don't. Most conservatives, most Christians...hell even a decent number of Hard-right motherfuckers. Don't. Care. (If you don't believe me, the French hard-right is full of gay dudes, you can look this up.)

But in the long run it'd be better for everybody if he'd come clean, be open about it, and hell, ask the LGBT Rights peoples for forgiveness and work to make amends. He damn well wouldn't be the first and if he did and was actually serious or on the up-and-up in any way about it I could see him being accepted. He wouldn't even have to change his politics or religion, just his views on LGBT rights.

But that's not what's going on here. This is "Gay stuff and 3-ways for me, but not for thee" like every other debased shitty "Social Conservative" going all the way back to Caesar Augustus (Whose family, the Julii, was the kind of flaming train-wreck that made the Trumps look like pikers.) It's all about libertinism and sexuality as a mark of power...not for enjoyment or love or for its own sake.

And I can't be cool with that, no way, no how.

What's funny/sad here is that all this blackmail and shady shit was probably not even necessary.

Look at this picture. Do any of these idiots look like they needed to be told to vote for Donald Trump? Do any of them look like they'd have been swayed by a hypothetical Falwell endorsement of Ted Cruz?

Do you really think people who are going to dress that foolishly in public give a damn about what Jerry Falwell Jr. says, let alone who he fucks? All they wanna do is act like fools in public.

That lady is dressed like a flag-pimp. Anybody who will dress that ridiculously in public is either in a parade or has absolutely no pride or self-respect whatever.

I wrote yesterday about how conservatism and the Church forgetting their purpose in favor of doing stupid shit has created an enormous tranche of lost souls who, essentially stood for absolutely nothing...so as the saying goes, they fell for anything. This isn't helped by Capitalism or a culture that doesn't encourage people to give a shit about each other, either.

And the stuff I saw on social media this morning isn't causing me to reconsider my thesis, not one damned bit.

It's funny how so many people can't be arsed to care about their neighbors, and other people can't be bothered to even go outside and know that they have neighbors...but they'll dress like Liberace's stunt double to celebrate hatred of immigrants, liberals and the media in a nation that's built on immigration and the liberal founding principles of the Enlightenment and that Constitutionally has a Free Press.

How the fuck ever did we get to the point where fully a third of Americans basically hate all the things that America was founded on, or that actually were what enabled it to be an exceptional nation in the first place?

You'll note that the doctrine of "American exceptionalism" appears to have died a quiet, unnoticed death in "Conservative" circles since 2015...more or less replaced with belief in the Greatness of Trump and some dumb shit that basically implies that America sucked and apparently never had a "real" President before Trump came along...but I digress. Yes, this shit is a cult.

(I find it interesting that American Exceptionalism is basically a liberal...or at least Never-Trump Republican...thing now.)

But what is this Trump shit a cult of?

I think we've reached the level where it's not enough anymore to say that "The Cruelty Is The Point" although that certainly still applies.

The Sadism is the point.

These people will literally throw away everything they've ever claimed that they believed or cared about away...and dress like absolute clowns in public...to celebrate a government, no matter how temporary or based in illegality or immorality, that hurts the people that they don't like.

And an exceptional nation doesn't do that.

A great nation doesn't do that. Hell, even a good nation doesn't do stuff like that.

In point of fact, if any other country in the entire fucking world were acting like the United States has been under Donald Trump...America would be leading the charge to bomb that country, invade them, destroy everything we could reach and leave an occupation force there for at least a generation.

And "Conservatives" would be foaming at the mouth demanding we do it and offering up their sons and daughters for military service to lead the fucking charge.

But no, they want America to be like that...and I think they know if they want things to stay that way and for themselves not to be prosecuted for being that way...I think they know they're going to have to tear America down first.

You know, we've always had some people with some pretty shitty beliefs, and nativism and racism have always been a big percentage of those shitty beliefs.

We've faced down and destroyed people with those kind of beliefs and worse, and that's a big part of why America has the place in the world that it occupies.

Small wonder, then, that These Fucking People want to tear that place in the world down as well.

You know, I think there's going to be enough of us and I think These Fucking People are incompetent enough and I think people are pissed off enough that this whole country will come flying apart before these fucking people win.

And you know what? That's what scares me.

Because you know what? This country was never set up to deal with a large minority of its own citizens believing in nothing at all.

Except maybe racism...

We've hit the point where a third of us care so little for America, for Democracy, Freedom, or any of our values...and who have so little inside and so few principles...that if he loses at any point all Trump has to say is "Follow me" and they will do it, rabidly and without question.

And why? More to the point, why do I think that it will end the way that I think it will, with a fractured nation, and at least two countries where this one used to be?

Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the abusive border detention facilities being run by CBP and ICE as Concentration Camps, and "Conservatives" Republicans and the media fell all over themselves telling her she was out of line, wrong, etc. etc.

Meanwhile experts, historians, rights advocates, most Democrats and pretty much anybody with a soul agrees with her.

And the media, or at least most of it, appears to be hell-bent on trying to avoid hurting the far-right's "Feelings" by referring to these facilities, accurately, as Concentration Camps.

What's going on here is an attempted, preemptive ethnic cleansing.

And the fact that nobody wants to call these things what they are, that the media and too much of our political class wants to just keep letting everybody do what they will do naturally instead of sounding the alarm like it should've been...because nobody wants to hurt anybody else's feelings or take any responsibility...just means the other side is going to keep marching in lock-step in the same direction they have been.

Never mind that the demographics have already started to turn, that in whole states the majority of elementary school kids are People of Color, never mind that white conservative Christians are already a minority and have been one for years. They're going to keep that white supremacy drug high going for as long as they can.

Right now, they're trying to close the barn door and setting it on fire because it's what they can get away with.

It'll come to worse.

If these fucking people can do that to a Guatemalan or Salvadoran kid...they can do that shit to an American kid, or you, or me. I've seen it every day for the last several years. One doesn't have to be Brown or liberal or not a Christian for the howling mob to set itself on them. All one has to do is not worship their false god, or criticize Trump even once, or not vote the "right" way even one time.

Look at how they did George H.W. Bush or John McCain.

You think they'll be any kinder to the living?

It'll come to Americans shooting at each other.

They want to "Re-order" the public sphere to suit themselves...so badly that they've forgotten what their values even were in the first place. They want to win so badly that they don't care what they win or if anything of it can be sustained save their endless hate and rage.

And, day by day, these people are chipping away at our national life, aided by the Russians. I've blocked multiple obvious bots and trolls just this morning.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

When this blows up, one hell of a lot of white conservative Christians are going to die right along with all the rest of us, at the hands of this goddamned mob, that'll be egged on by foreign powers that we've been against for the whole of our living memory.

If we don't find a way to stop this, vote every last one of these sons of bitches out and then still be prepared to have a fight on our hands...and show up in enough numbers that the other side decides that discretion is the better part of valor...this is going to end with one part of America bombing another part, ethnic cleansing, refugee camps, United Nations peace-keepers, wars and rumors of wars, the whole bit.

And how did we get here?

Because we allowed at least 30% of our people to become so isolated from the common good, from education, from humanity, from their neighbors...that to them Detroit or Los Angeles or Nogales, Arizona or New York City of San Francisco might as well be a foreign country. Because we stopped caring.

Because we allowed the Church to become about debased rich people and gossip and money rather than Christ and because Creationism, conspiracy theories, debased preachers and empty religions have made part of our population so feeble-minded that the only way those people would honestly, really, believe in the words "He that believeth in Me..." is if they could be induced to believe that it was Donald Trump who said them.

Through me you go to the grief wracked city;
Through me you go to everlasting pain;
Through me you go a pass among lost souls.
Justice inspired my exalted Creator:
I am a creature of the Holiest Power,
of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love.
Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings.
And I endure eternally.

~Sign above the gates of Hell, From the Divine Comedy.

Part 1.

Part 3.

The last day of the rest of my life (Lost Souls, Part One)

Through me is the way to the suffering city;
Through me is the everlasting pain;
Through me is the way that runs among the Lost. Justice urged on my exalted Creator: Divine Power made me,
The Supreme Wisdom and Primal Love.
Nothing was made before me but eternal things
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope - Ye Who Enter Here.'

~Sign above the gates of hell, Dante's Inferno.

Seriously?

I saw this last week, and it's been bugging me ever since.

"Before Q-Anon no one had ever told me that I was intelligent, that my voice was important or my story mattered."

Look here, it's my personal judgment that this person needed a better family, better friends, maybe a better church community or a better job...or maybe just the guts to move on from whatever shitty situation they were in. I don't know. To me...it's just pathetic.

I find it a little hard to believe that no one ever offered this person affirmation before. But, at the same time...I was taught that didn't matter. If you don't like you, if you don't have self-respect...the chances are excellent that nobody else is going to like or respect you either.

But in the end, this is neither here nor there. One way or another it comes down to this person just needed better friends.

Look, ya'll, this is America, supposedly one of the greatest and most-free countries ever to exist. Now, I'm not sure if I quite believe that. But, in all honesty, and based on my own experience, if you cannot find something in America that fulfills you in some way, at least for a while, you're probably not actually looking.

And ya know, if you can't find it, maybe you can buy it, or at least some reasonable substitute that'll keep you going for a bit. I mean, just my own personal contact list has roughly equal proportions of alcoholics and pot heads, for example, though the latter seems to be decreasing slowly and the former slightly increasing.

You mean to tell me all this person could come up with was sitting behind a computer scrolling through dumb shit?

It bothers me that we have these broken people, these lost souls, who have so little going for them in their lives that they find satisfaction in an obvious bullshit-tornado of extremely obvious bullshit. You cannot even properly call whoever is behind Q-Anon a liar. The reason for this simply is that a liar has to know what the truth is, and care about it at least a little, if only to obscure it effectively. "Q" or whatever it is doesn't care, doesn't care that anybody with two working brain cells in their head knows that it's utter bullshit, metrically bullshit, bullshit-ception...all at the same time.

What even causes this kind of silly bullshit? I asked.

"Capitalism" was one answer that I got.

"These people are this way because that's the way some wealthy person wanted things."

Okay. I suppose that's accurate.

But to me, it doesn't really tell the whole story. So, I made an effort last night to poke around on Twitter and see if I could find anything.

I got no further than yesterday's Trump Rally in Orlando. Trump-Land, where it's still 2016 and These Fucking People are still going on and on about Hillary Clinton?! Private citizen, basic retiree Hillary Clinton, Hillary? Who if you don't specifically follow her on Twitter...you could be forgiven for not knowing that she's made any major public statements in at least a year? That Hillary Clinton?

I'm just saying, if you want to ruin somebody's life and make it so that people cross the street to avoid talking to them...get somebody's mind stuck on some old news, make them obsess about the past. Most of us know that guy...or girl. You know the one. That guy at work who can't stop talking about the four years he spent in the Navy in the 1970's and the one time he got his dick sucked in Thailand. That girl who can't stop talking about the asshole ex-boyfriend (or toxic ex-girlfriend) or that person, in whatever form, who never moved on from high school.

Some of us might even have been that person for awhile, and it's no fun. A lot of people grow out ot it. Some never do.

No, nobody wants to talk to those people, and deservedly so.

That's what conservatism has become. That's basically what Trumpism is, already, and it's only going to get worse by next year.

It's the political equivalent of the old rich white man driving slowly through the parking lot of the college student apartments, hoping to impress somebody. For obvious reasons nobody should be encouraging this crap.

And yes, it's getting creepy. But the gist of it is you can't count on somebody's leadership to get these people to feel good about themselves, not really.

For fuck's sake. It's. 2019. No well-adjusted human being wants it to be anything else.Let's move on, people.

What about that favored hiding place of the feeble-minded? The Church? (Yes, I know that probably sounds harsh but right now I don't actually give a fuck.)

Here, we have Trump-Supporting, Prosperity Gospel "Pastor" Paula White, presumably praying for God to open a can of whoop-ass on CNN. Look, yo, if you're looking for support for your spirituality or values you ain't gonna find it here. If this crap, and abortion restrictions and political power are the kind of stuff that churches are going on and on about these days...ya know, it's not hard to understand why anybody...or maybe even everybody...is looking elsewhere for validation.

Throw in some learned helplessness and a little outrage here and there and it's not hard to see why we're in this mess.

But ya know, it gets worse. A Facebook friend and I were talking the other day and she brought up that one of the main reasons that she left Christianity...specifically the Southern Baptist Convention in her case...was because of the backstabbing, the gossip about stupid shit like who was wearing what, or who drove whatever car. There's nothing good or moral in that kind of thing, let alone spiritual.

First they gave us Christianity without Christ, now they want a new gold-plated Messiah.

And ya know? The Church wouldn't be that way either, except that that's the way that somebody wanted it, the character they showed, the example they provided. I'm just sayin' if Christians wanted to "Save" all these lost souls...well they are supposed to be the ones with the desire, the theological mandate, the tools and supposedly the Commandment from Jesus Christ to do exactly that.

So why don't they?

Trust me, I know from personal experience that nothing ruins religion more for people than some nut walking around acting like God is their own personal smacking stick. You want to create even more lost people who look to silly bullshit to fill whatever needs they may have, keep that up, Christians, and keep tolerating false teachers among your own ranks.

Of course it's always the same shit. Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go, and if they lose a few of their own along the way...well, it's everybody's fault but theirs. Blame anything but the shitty ideology.

And then of course, there's that good old fashioned American standby, the social movement. Except in this case, it's "Proud Boys" marching in support of Trump (and apparently freedom of speech, but only for Nazis.)

I mean, after all, what could be more American, more wholesome, than a movement founded by a Canadian Hard-right idiot who likes to crawl in bed with a bunch of dudes under a Nazi Swastika flag blanket or sticks dildos and microphones up his ass on camera?

And in case you don't believe me, well, I've written about this crap before, and here you go.

Ya know, though, I think it's safe to say that not very many people seem to find Nazis all that inspiring this time around.

And ya know, there are reasons history presents these people as the bad guys...

Sure, some people on the Right seem to fetishize marching soldiers, or uniformed sameness, and of course there's the whole separate issue of white supremacy...which of course nobody on the conservative side of the fence wants to admit to even having.

I guess, at the end of the day, when you're part of a movement whose beliefs are so shitty that you can't even talk about them in public or admit to yourself that you have them...completely lost souls who think Lizard Aliens Walk Among Us or whatever other dumb shit they make up to feel good about themselves,,,is probably par for the course.

Look, if at the end of the day you need other people to tell you how great or insightful or smart you are so that you can feel good about yourself, you probably aren't any of those things, and if you want to change that you're probably going to have to learn something other than that there's a bunch of conspiracy nuts out there. You might actually have to make some effort to grow as a person or learn a thing or two.

But don't do that so that people will like you...do it for you, so that you'll be a better or smarter person for your own damned good. Do it so that you have your own inner life and aren't dependent on outside forces to feel good about yourself. Meantime, maybe the rest of us could try caring about each other more than about ideas, or shitty politics?

Maybe the Church could learn the obvious fact that the Judge it will face at the End of Days is not Donald Trump?

Maybe it's time to stop believing in dumb shit and accept that without truth, there is no freedom?

Or maybe we all just need to realize that if we don't care about each other, ain't nobody else going to do it for us.

Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would've known
'Cause I would've kissed my mama goodbye

I didn't tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he shared

Unaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to school

But who knew that this day wasn't like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chest

Call me blind, but I didn't see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn't hear nothing

Except gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn't really know this kid
He wasn't part of the class

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it's because

We are, We are, the youth of the nation.

~P.O.D. early 2000's Christian band. 

Fun fact: There was a time when even the Christians actually knew this.

Instead of getting people to believe in dumb shit because it's convenient or profitable, if you want things to be better for you, much less everybody else? Start there.

Part 2.

Do Neo-Feudalists dream of Electric Peasants?

So·cial·ism

/ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

   • policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.

     
     

Let me ask you something: What's the first thing you notice here?

I have a fair amount of experience in small construction jobs and even more in woodworking, with a little bit of metal thrown in here and there down through the years.

Before I even read the text, my eyes immediately went to the fact that the nail gun Vice President Penis is holding doesn't have an air hose attached. Likewise, the stand-up screw gun that Mother is trying to appear to be using isn't plugged in.

Speaking as a working person, just once I'd like to see Republicans do two minutes of actual work for a photo op without insulting my intelligence. This is an even dumber version of Paul Ryan's 2012 stunt in which he spent a few minutes running clean dishes through a commercial-grade dishwasher.

I've done this type of work, I've done that, too. I currently work in a kitchen.

Just for once, could Republicans manage to stage a photo op that doesn't telegraph utter, flaming obvious contempt for working people?

Apparently, sometime yesterday Mitch McConnell gave an interview in which he basically described everything from the Green New Deal to health care to voting rights to proposals for Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico as...Socialism?

I do not think that word means what you think it means, there, Turtle boy.

Just to get the obvious out of the way, why should the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico not have full representation in Congress? The people in both polities are American citizens. Why should they not have full, proportional representation in Congress? And...in the case of Puerto Rico in particular, also the right to vote in Federal elections?

There is no damned good reason for this situation, and no damned good reason it shouldn't have been fixed years ago. I presume Yertle is against it because he thinks that the Senators from these places would be at least predominately Democratic? Not. Necessarily. As recently as 20 years ago, Puerto Rican people that I knew were predominately Republican. If that's changed, Bitch, that's probably your fault. After all, why should any people, up to and including People of Color support a political party that has turned against them in every way possible, and whose debatable leader has now come out against full political representation for those people?

Action = Consequences, and standing athwart the flow of History yelling "Stop!" is only going to defray those consequences for so long. It's just plain out that simple. Political control and power only protects you and yours so long as everybody follows the rules...and in the era of Trump none other than Republicans have made a big show of not following said rules.

It's only a matter of time before other people follow suit. It's only a matter of time before the system starts to break down from there.

But Republicans don't know or care about any of that. Somebody said "Socialism" so, Beavis-and-Butt-head like, Republicans cackle and assume "everybody knows" what that means.

It has, after all, been an article of "Conservative" faith for at least a century-and-a-quarter that Socialism = Bad, mostly because then rich people would have to pay more in taxes and ooga booga people who don't have to worry about a bunch of shit would maybe be less likely to go to church or otherwise trust supernatural forces when their needs are being met by the State.

Never mind that Socialist absolutely does not equal Statist, Mexico had a mini-revolution on a state level 25 years ago that was fought by Anarcho-Socialists against the government...and today, Kurdish factions with similar views have been utterly indispensable in helping the U.S. and its allies crush Daesh in Syria.

So, Socialism Bad...unless we need boots on the ground in a war where the American public has no wish to send its own troops? Just like, Socialism bad unless we needed the Red Army to pound the shit out of the majority of Hitler's Wehrmacht while the Western allies liberated North Africa and Western Europe?

So, Socialism is only bad when Americans...particularly Brown Americans...want to make sure they get a piece of America...however small? That seems to be what Asshole Pucker-face is saying here.

I would, in fact, argue that a majority of Republican voters don't have a clue what "Socialism" even means, simply because they've never bothered to look up the definition at the top of the article even though it's knowing the word and like two seconds away from literally everybody being able to read it for free.

And I'd argue that, at least since Joe McCarthy, Republicans haven't bothered to care what that word...and increasingly any word at all...even means.

Just over a year ago, I wrote about how at least for a majority of Republicans, politics was devolving into a series of Magic Words And Phrases.

Shameless plug; That article, Fiery The Angels Fell, is one of the ones that I consider among my best work. I'd say I hate it when I'm right, but I re-read the piece this morning and I gotta say things have turned out about how I thought they would.

We've hit the point...largely out of unreasoning "Conservative" fear of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and maybe a little of Bernie Sanders and where was that in 2016?) where "Socialism" has become nothing more than a Magic Word used by Republicans to scare the base...who, mind you, have profited nothing by Republican tax cuts and anybody who's even been paying the slightest attention knows this.

Except of course that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are more accurately considered Social Democrats. You know, the kind of people who Stalin detested enough to name-check that philosophy and explicitly call social democracy a moderate form of fascism. So yeah, Commies they ain't, at least not by the words of the guy old Tailgunner Joe was most afraid of.

But ya know, it's worse than that. People who regard civil rights, education, health care and voting as "Socialism" and some kind of a threat to their power...are at best an annoying anachronism (and mind you, I was taught these things were important by conservatives) and at worst, a threat to modern human civilization.

I'm just sayin' it seems to me like the average Republican at this point never quite mentally got past the age of 14 and thinking the Neo-Feudalism and giant robots of the Battletech universe were just great.

Truth is, it's not a bad game system, the level of universe-building is utterly impressive...if a bit dated being that all this was originally put out there in the 1980's...and they never retconned it to account for current events at the time. In actuality it hardly supports one political view in particular, taking instead the notion that centralized authority became necessary as humanity propagated across the stars. A number of the nations and quasi-national military forces are, in fact, described as Socialist...a couple using that dated Cold War definition in particular, in fact...but the world as built has its liberals, its libertarians both conservative and socially-oriented, and hell it's anti-State Iconoclasts as well. Not just that but in the early 1990's the writers pretty much assumed LGBT equality or at least acceptance would be a given...and that what racism there was had largely realigned more according to culture and faction than skin color. One of my favorite characters in the novels was a Black Samurai...another was his factions spymaster, whose name clearly suggested South Asian descent.

The trouble is, the people who nominally grew up to be today's Republican Party never got past the part about riding around in some giant walking tank while being the Baron of some planet or other.

Just like they never read any deeper into Starship Troopers than that one had to serve in the government or the military to be a citizen or any deeper into any Heinlein novel than whatever gun happy bullshit supports the latest tear that the NRA is on.

Yeah, you could try maybe being an embattled Chinese future-Communist struggling to hold things together under the rule of a mad dictator and using Mechs that were built out of what you had, not what you wanted, or a Japanese-culture-based super Ninja or maybe a techno-Samurai who'd best his political rival in a game of Go before the two of them strap up in 60-metric-ton walking tanks and blast the shit out of each other...or a German-Scandinavian merchant-warrior with an even bigger Mech commanded by incompetent generals who had a tendency to lose the war even if you won the battle. But anybody who's played this game will tell you that the system stacked the deck totally in favor of the Anglo factions both past and present, to the point where such was a sore point with more dedicated fans.

The thing is, in a lot of cases the average citizen who doesn't have millions-in-whatever currency in assorted accounts doesn't make out all that well, often at best going into the field with a ballistic vest and a laser rifle against weapons that'd wipe out an entire platoon at once, or working in a factory or field or mine somewhere and hoping that shit doesn't get raided by pirates riding metal monsters.

For extra points, I had a week-long argument last week at work poking holes in a co-worker's adoration of the Warhammer 40K universe (much to his annoyance, and I've played that game as well, and it sucks) and if you think the Battletech universe is shitty you ain't seen nothing yet. (It's a literally fascist universe ruled by a catatonic dead guy in which faster-than-light space travel is accomplished by short-cutting through hell.)

And that's the kind of science fiction that a lot of Republicans read...and read badly, I might add.

But we live in the real world, where the only way to hold shit together is to be as fair as possible to as many people as possible, even if it doesn't make everybody happy and only works sometimes...and where, like it or not, heroic shit is best done on a smaller scale, like in how you conduct yourself. It's not glamorous but that kinda beats the alternative.

And I frankly prefer a future where at least most people work at least somewhat together for the betterment of all to any of the alternatives, both historical and fictional or theoretical.

On Twitter last week, I watched a video...shared by somebody who's political leanings I'm not sure of save that they appear to be on the anti-Trump end of the conservative spectrum...that showed two guys messing around with a fairly basic robot, one getting the thing to do various tasks and the other smacking it with a hockey stick and otherwise being real abusive, to disrupt its efforts. For the record, the poster was appalled and said "They're going to remember this, and they're going to kill us all."

That story has been written a few times too, in the various iterations of Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, and the Terminator movies...among others. I have no mouth and I must scream, anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?

Don't any of these motherfuckers read decent science fiction, or at least watch movies?

If we, the living, in the present day don't throw motherfuckers like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump out of office at the first available opportunity...well, just remember that some people's idea of the future is Conservatives and Robots that they can abuse and you and me or any descendants we might have (much less any resistance by the robots) don't appear to factor in at all.

And that, my friends, is why Mitch McConnell thinks education and health care and peace and everybody getting to vote is socialism. You have to be alive to have Constitutional rights.

...

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.