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.