From Tail-gunner Joe to Moscow Mitch

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
~Joseph N. Welch, US Army general consul, to Joseph McCarthy.

So, Mitch McConnell doesn't like being called "Moscow Mitch."

He calls it "McCarthyism" that Democrats and even some Republicans are calling him out for blocking various election-security bills, and saying that he's Un-American.

Never mind that the Russian corporation RusAl is building a huge aluminum plant in Kentucky. If one wants to get really technical, given who RusAl is owned by, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and his relationship to the Russian government and Vladimir Putin, the fucking thing damn well ought to be named the "Hero Of Socialist Labor Mitch McConnell Aluminum Factory."

And the son of a bitch...whose party is currently bent over with the Russians balls deep in them, kept aloft on a sea of Commie dark money and information warfare...has the nerve to get mad?

There's a reason, as I've said before, that I keep using that word. Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent. There are no ex-KGB agents, the KGB was the "Sword and Shield of the Party." Putin has even gone so far as to revive Josef Stalin's personality cult and reintroduce "Young Pioneers" style youth programs as well as making extensive use of old-school KGB tactics, but updating them to the Information Age.

Say what you will about old Joseph "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy. That motherfucker at least understood that Communists and Russians were the fucking enemy.

Granted, the actual reason for Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts was basically demagoguery in the service of building his own power base. He accused an awful lot of people, actually mostly his fellow Republicans...of being Communists.

Like Donald Trump, he was hugely popular with a certain type of authoritarian assholes.

Joe started out as a local judge, served as an officer in Marine Corps aviation in WWII (where his actual nickname was a lot less flattering than the one he would later try to give himself) and ran for Senate after the war. His first few years in the Senate were unremarkable, he was considered a moderate Republican but was also an engaging speaker and thus he ended up giving a lot of speeches around the country on various topics. His national notice and resulting fame came from an incident in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he held up a sheet of paper that he claimed had a list of 205 Communists on it that supposedly worked for the State Department. That was on February 9th, 1950.

McCarthy spent the next four years or so bullying, showboating, and picking huge public fights with the Army, the CIA and the State Department, until it all came crashing down when the televised Army-McCarthy hearings revealed him to be a cruel, reckless, small man who sought to do nothing more than build up his own power by hurting other people. He was ultimately censured, and became a public nonentity while serving out the rest of his second term before he died of Hepatitis stemming from his alcoholism in 1957. Aside from a small number of far-right motherfuckers who've tried to act as his apologists down through the years...his name and legacy remain so soiled that even Mitch McConnell can comfortably use it as an epithet.

Ironically, a Democrat won the special election to replace him and then remained in office until 1989.

But the tendrils of Joe McCarthy's influence seep down to today. For one thing Roy Cohn, his lawyer, later mentored one Donald J. Trump.

So yeah, I think it's rich that any Republican...much less the current batch that spends its time fear-mongering about Communism and Socialism (while breaking America in the service of a Communist!) would have the guts to accuse anybody else of McCarthyism.

Again, for the 100,000,000th time, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union fell on Christmas Day of 1991. Even the Chinese aren't really Communists anymore.

All that the accusation of Communism or Socialism by Republicans against Democrats is, is a stick to beat them over the head with and a trope to fool the feeble-minded reactionary white idiots out there.

You know, the people who Republicans basically steal from the most while dealing them backlash politics and racism like some backwoods Kentucky heroin dealer offering a free hit to the rail-thin lady that's paid up her debts and sworn to kick the habit that she picked up after her health insurance and Opioid prescriptions ran out when she couldn't go back to work after the accident.

Tell me one thing, people: Has blame or hate or nativism or racism or voting for the party of big business and tax cuts solved any ONE of the problems that you actually have?

Republicans, for all of their power, keep constantly acting like angry losers. There's still a steady trickle of people leaving, and I kind of feel like all of Trump's efforts to consolidate power and protect himself using the executive branch really aren't going to amount to anything...not least because just like everybody else the number of actual people in those agencies who support him is decreasing.

Even as one third of us drinks deeply of the Trump-cult Flavor-aid on the daily, two thirds of us are consistently against him. Every day there's some new stupid scandal, and both a panoply under-the-radar economic warning signs and a plethora of un-addressed international threats...all of which have been ignored and would likely be handled very badly by These Fucking People.

And to top it off, if the Republicans don't put the brakes on the divisive talk I think there's an excellent chance that by November of next year, Americans could be shooting at each other and each side might hold separate elections in its own territory.

And that seems to be a feature of, rather than a bug in, Republican plans.

for all of the Democrats' herd-of-cats affect, I have a feeling they're most likely going to nominate somebody that's relatively moderate...yet scrappy...like Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden.

AOC, Ilhan, Rashida, etc. represent a substantial part of the Democratic electorate...and each seems to be popular enough in their own districts that they're likely not going anywhere anytime soon.

But they're all junior House Reps, who knows where they're going to go in the long term?

If *I* were a Republican strategist, I'd be striving to make Marianne Williamson the face of the Democratic Party, not the Squad.

Of course...just like even the Chinese aren't really Communists anymore...Republicans aren't really conservatives or religious people or any of the other things they said they were for all those years.

Here's the thing though, having actual positive principles other than your own self and what's best for your ego or your wallet will keep you going through one hell of a lot of adversity.

Most of these motherfuckers can't even stand up to accurate criticism or exposure, for fuck's sake, just like Tail-gunner Joe couldn't.

We'd best remember that, and act accordingly.

Party like it's 1959

 Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings — not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply embedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand — without rancor or hatred — how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it. ~Lyndon B. Johnson, Civil Rights Act signing speech.

On Saturday, Trump attacked Representative Elijah Cummings on Twitter.

I'm fucking serious when I tell you this garbage reads to me like something out of 1959, not 2019.

The racist tropes are all pure old-school Southern Segregationist crap, anyway.

Today, for no damned good reason, Trump started shooting off his mouth about Al Sharpton. Why?

I have no fucking idea, to be honest. You tell me how the hell Rev. Al is relevant these days...or indeed, ever has been. Don't get me wrong, I kinda like the guy, he's pretty much that harmless old bullshitter minister that anybody with a church background will have dealt with at some point. He doesn't mean any actual harm...but he's not above using his position for his own gain a little here and there. Speaking as a former Christian, I might kinda like the guy, but I'm gonna watch his hands when he reaches in the cookie jar. Still, he's far less malevolent or even outright corrupt or political than Jerry Falwell Jr. for example. So far as I know, there's no pool boys or shady affairs or "arrangements" in Al's past and if there were, I'd more or less expect he'd be up front about it, in a "Hey, I might as well enjoy part of God's Creation" sort of way.

And speaking of bullshit artists, as Trump himself observes here, Rev. Al has associated with both Don King and himself in the past. Remember that, Trump doesn't have associates or friends, he only has people he hasn't betrayed yet.

His supporters should remember that.

The Evangelicals should remember that.

And the Republicans should remember that.

But, there's something else I would like to point out here. I think there's something going on here that is actually worse, and that I think not enough people have picked up on.

Al Sharpton is, of course, a Baptist minister.

Elijah Cummings is an active member of his church in Baltimore, New Psalmist Church, which is also Baptist.

Hey, Evangelicals, do you seriously think Trump gives a fuck about your religion? Or are you just riding the lightning until it breaks, to see what you can get out of it, until he throws you under the bus too?

I've posted about this before, but here in the snip below we have Robert Jeffress, Trump-supporting Pastor of First Baptist church in Dallas, saying that "Walls are not un-Christian because there will be a wall around heaven.

Listen, asshole, I've read the entirety of the Acid Trip of John of Patmos multiple times and I'm here to tell you that it while yes, it says there is a wall, it also says the gates are always open.

And unlike most white conservative Evangelicals, I'm pretty sure Elijah Cummings or Reverent Al would not only understand what that means, but be able to answer questions with a theological interpretation of their own without looking anything up.

These motherfuckers, on the other hand? Donald Trump, Robert Jeffress, and their supporters?

I am increasingly certain that these people don't believe in the Lord, or at least, that anything Jesus did or said falls a distant third to their politics and stupid racial theories.

Not too long ago, I read a bit on the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC and the Dylan Roof shooting there. That church was burned to the ground at least once by white racists, and for some time after met in secret. The Black Church was persecuted by white racists for decades, if not centuries.

Some other Black churches that were burned down several months ago, whose rebuilding I recently contributed a little money to, included a couple of Baptist churches.

I looked it up, the most commonly reported Christian denomination in South Carolina? You guessed it, Baptists.

It's the same throughout much of the South. So, quite frequently on a historical basis we not only have Christians persecuting other Christians on the basis of race...but White Baptists persecuting Black Baptists in particular.

I spent much of my life as a Christian...and most of that as a Baptist...I'm sorry, but I have trouble squaring that up with sincere religious belief as I have known it to be. I started out as a Baptist, and I'm well aware of Baptist history and of the schism in the mid-19th century over the issue of slavery.

And as far as I'm concerned...coming as I do from the American Baptist side of the equation...there was absolutely a time when Southern Baptists believed more in slavery than they did in Jesus Christ.

Of course, if one follows current Southern Baptist Convention leaders and theologians like Albert Mohler and Russell Moore (which I do) a lot of these guys are pushing hard for racial equality and racial reconciliation within their denomination.

But I am a habitual reader of the comments on social media in general and Twitter in particular. There's a lot of the asses in the pews that are convinced that there are "Schismatics" and "SJW's" and "Socialists" trying to take over the SBC.

Whatever.

I was a Baptist, I have ample experience at dealing with Southern Baptists, hell the last Baptist church that I was a part of was part of a small association of independent Baptist churches and two out of three of the degreed no-shit theologians that we had, had received their ordinations from the SBC. The chances of that denomination being "taken over by socialists" are precisely zero.

One of those guys, Brother Larry, was the Pastor of my own Church, Victory Baptist...had fought Communists in Vietnam as a US Army soldier. Trust me, ain't no socialists taking over the SBC. They've still got people like that guy.

Like me, and for many of the same reasons, Brother Larry was pretty anti-racist too. Unlike me, he was a registered Democrat, though on the conservative end of that spectrum. I'd be willing to bet he was more conservative by any metric I'd recognize than most Trump Supporters are.

I wonder if the Trump Supporters would call him "socialist?"

And I've gone down the rabbit hole and looked at the timelines of the kind of people who say that shit, one hell of a lot of them are Trump Supporters.

These are people who call anybody to the Left of Robert Welch "Socialist" at this point, especially current and former conservatives and people with religious backgrounds who don't agree with their bullshit.

These are people who have a cult-like attachment to a man.

That man has a history of anti-religious tendencies, and said on a national news program that he didn't think he needed God's forgiveness.

I'm warning you right now, that when all this blows up and Trump gets impeached or voted out or thinks he will be and tells his followers to follow him alone, or whatever and there's bound to be at least some fighting...that when these fucking people break off a piece of America for themselves (and I am increasingly sure that's exactly how this will play out) the very first people they will persecute...whether Black, Latino, or White...are all going to be Christians.

It's not about Christianity or conservatism or immigration status or liberalism or national origin or even politics in any traditionally American sense.

It's all about race...and in particular the association of whiteness with hard-right conservatism and male-dominated patriarchy. It's about that some people basically want a caste system in a country that was designed not to have one.

Christianity is only accepted by these racists to the extent that it can be bent to that purpose.

Ultimately, racism and white supremacy co-opt or corrupt all other beliefs or ideologies a person claims.

That's why I say these people don't believe in God, only their bullshit racial theories.

And Trumpism, much like Marxism-Leninism, is a jealous god, and will tolerate no competing loyalties.

I've just worked my way through all the Tom Clancy novels that I read as a younger man, and I'm here to tell you, that these motherfuckers are acting exactly the way Tom Clancy wrote Soviet and Chinese Communist characters...only with considerably less restraint, because authors have to write believable characters to get their shit published.

There's a reason that I say I'll be surprised if we even make it to the election without Americans shooting at one another, and that there is an excellent chance that Blue and Red sides will simply have their own elections in the territories they control. That's where all this divisiveness leads to.

And here we have Trump trying to drive a stake through the heart of the diverse society that liberals, moderates and even many conservatives worked hard over generations to create.

And there was another mass shooting today.

It's already starting, and it will get worse. It's time to stop trying to have it both ways and pick a side.

Freedom, or Trumpism. Americanism, or Racism.

Hell, for Christians it will come down to being forced to choose between Jesus or Trump.

The only thing the racists are ever going to do with the Cross of Christ is set it on fire.

It really is that simple.

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,   

Marked the mastodon,

The dinosaur, who left dried tokens   

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom   

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

~Maya Angelou.

Repenting For Republicanism.

Consulate Guy: There must be some mistake!
Murtaugh: Say what?
Consulate Guy: Listen to your friend here, I think he knows what he's talking about. You don't want to go to South Africa.
Murtaugh: Why not?
Consulate Guy: B...Because you're Black.
Leo: You are. [to Consulate Guy] He is.
Murtaugh: Of course I'm Black, that's why I want to go to South Africa, to join my oppressed brothers and take up the struggle against the tyranny of the racist, fascist, white minority regime! One man, one vote! FREE SOUTH AFRICA YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH!
~From Lethal Weapon 2.

It's official.

As of this week, Republicans have basically become the villains of every Republican-authored, big-screen pro-America morality play from the 1980's, in which at least half of the actors were usually Republicans.

This last week or so, much like Joe Scarborough above, my Twitter feed has been full of people saying, in effect "God forgive me for ever being a Republican."

Hell, I've basically said as much myself.

Joe's sentiment came out of the discussions about Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress.

For myself, I've seen this crap building up more and more over the last few years.

Last night I was moved to absolute rage by the fact that some old biddy in a North Carolina restaurant was caught using the N-word in reference to two other patrons and when called on it, she said she'd do it again.

And aren't these the same fucking people who keep trying to act like Racism is something that "The Left" is just making up?

For much of the time when I was coming up, the Republicans were still for the most part, the party of facts and reality and having a moral compass 20 years ago, there was a cottage industry among conservatives bashing Political Correctness and Postmodernism and openly making fun of what we thought of as the other side's "Do whatever you want" mentality and lack of fixed values. Media from the evening news to the much-younger Internet was ablaze with such critiques, shelves in bookstores Christian and secular alike groaned under the weight of volumes about this debate.

Now?

Rush Limbaugh, leading PC-critic from the 1990's, is somehow trying to claim that Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are not African-Americans.

I mean, Dafuq?

Yo, just sayin' Rush, my own old-school conservative upbringing tells me that if my eyes and ears and personal knowledge of the culture I live in click on "This person is African-American" when I see them...yeah I'm probably gonna go with that instead of some crackpot internet conspiracy theory.

It's a lot less mental work, for one thing.

But under Trump, "Conservatives" are engaging in levels of postmodern woo woo bullshit that "The Left" of the 1990's would have never even thought of.

There are no facts or reality, there is only Trump, who has apparently become their god.

Apparently, he is not omnipotent, and his enablers at Turning Point USA were not smart enough to spot an obviously, yet cleverly, altered Presidential Seal that mocked Trump.

God, but I'm getting really tired of stupid people.

Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?

Too bad. Fuck your feelings, snowflake.

I'm serious, what the hell is wrong with these people? Minnesota Republicans put up some kind of kleptomaniac shoplifter who's facing felony shoplifting charges and who has previous convictions for drunk driving and fleeing from the police, and who has stolen some 267 items.

And here's the kicker. This lady, Danielle Stella, is a Special Education teacher.

That's right, somebody somewhere trusts this drunk, this thief, with their kids. Seriously, have Republicans given any thought whatever to what they're teaching young people with all this ridiculous bad behavior?

Somehow, I don't think Representative Omar has that much to worry about, at least not if that mess is the Republicans' ideal of a quality candidate.

She's pretty damned popular in her state and particularly in her own district...which I already knew as I have a number of friends and relatives who live in Minnesota.

If these people don't get their ass kicked up one side and down the other in the next election, it'll be severe political malpractice.

In any case, I too would like to say God forgive me for ever having been a Republican.

I no longer recognize these people, their values, or even their idea of what leadership looks like.

In fact, I was in most cases taught the opposite from how things are now. And I'm fine with that.

The values I was taught as a young conservative Christian Republican are totally absent from the Republican Party as it is today.

In point of fact, most of those values make me a Democrat now, and firmly so, it's not even close.

And you know what? I'm just fine with that, too

Apollo 11, 50 years on...

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind."
~Neil Armstrong.

50 years ago tonight, on July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

50 years ago, it seemed like the world was on fire. America was tearing itself apart over various political, racial and social issues. The Vietnam War was still raging full force, and the Cold War had no end in sight, with the ever-present threat of nuclear Armageddon always potentially mere minutes in the future.

But, for all too brief of a moment, people all around the world came together to follow the events unfolding on the Sea of Tranquility, in reality a dusty plain on the face of our Sister-world in the deep, cold dark. For a brief span of hours, every person on the Earth could feel like a brave explorer as we all faced the unknown together, as one people.

I'm a hit fast forward now. 

The world is still on fire, America is still tearing itself apart over the same political, racial and social issues, and trade jungles for deserts and even the wars are still raging.

A new cold war is in the offing, and even the threat of the nuclear flash...of the cold dark night suddenly becoming brighter than a thousand suns...seems insidiously invigorated.

Add to that Climate Change, Conspiracy Theories, Cyber-warfare, Nationalism, Racism, Religious Fanaticism, Sexism, Terrorism, War...It's not just that we haven't learned one damned thing...it's that some of us seem literally hell-bent on making things worse, for no reason in particular, or for political gain, or wealth, or hell I don't know, maybe some people really do just want to watch the world burn.

And, none too coincidentally, the United States of America had a Republican President at the time.

Now, compared to Trump, I'm fairly certain that Nixon...who signed legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency, greatly expanded the roles of women in the military, actively worked for peace with Communist China and who...faced with a vastly, fundamentally different electorate, a different GOP and a different political climate...resigned when the heat got too bad and he was about to be impeached...would basically be considered just another pinko socialist by today's Trump Supporters.

This despite the fact that Republicans used Tricky Dick as a political Revenge Totem for half a century.

As if he, or for that matter Reagan, would ever be accepted in any capacity other than dead object of worship today.

And for all that, what have we really accomplished?

Oh sure, the cars are cleaner, the computers are far more advanced, the environment is better protected, (most) people are more conscious of the humanity and rights of others, but also the weapons are more deadly and numerous, the bigots are still out there, and the political crisis just rolls on forever, even though the only way to stop it from becoming much worse is to bring it to a speedy resolution, nobody has the guts this time around. If anything we have even less care for each other or social consciousness across the board than we did 50 years ago.

But the world is also drowning in willful ignorance.

This may not be a popular opinion, but I think if you want to foster better values than we have right now, find a constructive way to get rid of all these angry, bored idiots that want to do nothing more than upset the apple-cart, put them working toward something productive, and hell, improve technology while we're at it...I think the answer is we should make a serious effort to re-start manned space exploration.

Humans need frontiers, it's part of our nature. We need something to do with ourselves and as this world gets smaller and more interconnected, we keep finding out over and over again that an angry, bored, idle, comfortable, entitled mind is a terrible thing.

And you deal with that, by giving people something to do, and the means to do it.

We need to start reaching for the stars again, so that we can stop reaching for each other's throats.

Seriously, we need to knock this shit off.

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34 (New International Version.)

"Send Her Back" Trump Supporters chanted last night, at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina.

Congresswoman Omar responded to cruelty and savagery with grace and poetry. The lines she quoted are from the poem "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou.

Ilhan Omar was brought here by her family, refugees from Somalia, when she was two years old. There is no back to send her to. This *Is* home, in all respects, and judging from her reaction and for that matter her choice of poetry with which to respond, this lady is as American as it gets. If you look at how Americans face down adversity when there's long odds, this totally fits our cultural pattern. It's not just the choice of words...but the choice of poets as well. Maya Angelou overcame great hardship and adversity in her life, and eventually composed and read the Inaugural Poem at Bill Clinton's first inauguration.

There's one hell of a lot of other people in Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans, who could stand to learn a thing or two from Ilhan Omar and her three friends, I say.

There are too damned many, increasingly many senior Democrats as well as most Republicans...who hate Trump but they think they'll be safer if they wait him out, rather than stand up.

Meanwhile, America continues its free-fall descent into chaos and superstition. Here we have some damn fool imparting religious-sounding significance to Q-Anon conspiracy theory bullshit and somebody's baby picture...and this stupidity *Was* the top trending item on Twitter for part of last night.

I mean, come on, people. What the fuck? On the one hand, we have anti-immigrant Nativism...on the other hand we seem to have an emergent belief in demons, devils, sacrifices and witchcraft that is different from the kind of stuff peddled by bullshit artists and Juju men found throughout sub-Saharan Africa only by its apparent reliance on the internet and social media.

I hope I'm not the only person who finds this confusing, especially since these same people would most likely refer to African Traditional Religion as being demonic. But how is all this personality-cult conspiracy theory woo woo bullshit and belief in all these made up unseen forces any damned different, except that it's overwhelmingly practiced only by white people?

Like, I'm serious, I know a decent number of non-white conspiracy theorists...and for that matter, traditional religious believers as well...Native American traditional practitioners...and they don't act like this. For that matter I work with a guy from Zimbabwe, who I've discussed this kind of stuff with, and he doesn't act like that.

So what's these fucking people's problem?

This garbage is the result of over 50 years of Republicans pushing fear, hate, racism, religion, sexism and willful stupidity on the American public. Of course, two generations-plus in, and there's little difference between the Republican Party and most of the conservative portion of the electorate. 50 years ago this weekend, Republicans helped get us to the Moon. "We came in peace for all Mankind" as the plaque left on the Sea of Tranquility said.

Now, Republicans don't want to be bothered to have peace with their own neighbors, let alone elected officials from other parts of the country...and they have reached the point of not even recognizing the American-ness of other Americans. This will not end well...and I am increasingly certain that that's the point.

Think the wealthy have it easy, or have too much political influence now?

You just wait until BP finds itself dealing with the Republic of Louisiana instead of the U.S. Federal EPA or watch how Boeing and Lockheed Martin react to a Cold War between North Carolina and South Carolina, or until some enterprising son of a bitch decides to go all the way north and buy himself the Alaskan state university system. Stuff like that is basically the end goal here, the wealthy's dream shot. You think they get away with a bunch of shit now? Wait until they have more net worth than whole small countries that exist where US states used to be.

The Republicans seem to be 'getting' that they're not going to be able to get all of us to go along, that likely even a majority of Americans and others who are here are not going to just roll over for them...senior Congressional Democrats aside...but ya know, they're pretty damned well invested with this divisive bullshit, and I'm kind of getting the vibe that they can't stop...or maybe they're just not smart enough to. But they sure seem like they're more intent than ever on trying to break off a piece for themselves. If you keep stoking people's rage eventually somebody's going to act out on it. If you keep flicking matches into dry grass it's gonna start a fire sooner or later. If you keep the pot simmering long enough it's going to come to a boil.

That's physics, and I don't see human nature as being too much different.

And ya know, when they get their wish, there's going to be at least some of them that wish they hadn't. There's going to be chicken-shit Congressional Democrats who wish they'd done something, except maybe Nancy Pelosi who seems like she'd be perfectly happy being the first President of a new Bear Flag Republic. At the rate we're going there's not going to be any need for schemes like CalExit, America is exiting us!

There's going to be one hell of a lot of us who were made various and assorted promises by America, or who were entitled to various earned benefits, who are gonna be pretty pissed off. I used to be a conservative, I never saw any reason to "Shake things up" or otherwise upset the apple-cart and frankly I never understood why so many people who claimed to be conservatives were so keen on that very idea.

Right now, these fucking people seem hell-bent on kicking over the table just to watch the rest of us scramble to try to pick up our cards and keep in mind where we were at in the game. These fucking people have literally become the Anti-Americans...shitting on everything our country and system were ever based on and wiping their asses with the Constitution even as they accuse everybody else of doing the same goddamned thing. These people project so damned much they might as well be a PowerPoint presentation.

I was taught that America was built on immigration, and that America was not only or just a physical, geographical space but an idea...and Americans are not an ethnicity but a kind of "Chosen People" who had all made the choice, whether they were born here or not, to buy into this idea we call a country. You can be born in China...and still end up being an American, or even a West Virginian. That is the entire basis of America.

Ilhan Omar or WeiJia Jiang are as American as Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell...and certainly, at least they aren't taking money or ideological direction from America's enemies.

Screw "Blood and Soil" nationalism. To hell with White Supremacy.

I've fucking had it with this stupid bullshit.

And I'm going to tell you straight up, if you're okay with it, fuck you.

Light and Darkness, Part Three.

America counts millions of Muslims among our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms, and dads, and they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth, and it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do. I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by, and may God bless us all.

~George W. Bush, remarks at Islamic Center of Washington D.C. September 17th, 2001.

Let me tell you a story.

There was this guy, once, he was going through a rough time in his life. He was in the process of getting divorced, and because of this many of the people he had previously relied on for support in times of trouble were mostly no longer present in his life. On top of that, there were the constant Yahoo Instant Messenger arguments with the ex-wife, who he was also still fucking on a fairly regular basis even though it never started out that way and he always knew he shouldn't. He was trying to move on with life, working two jobs, repairing his college GPA, building new networks of friends, restarting old friendships and rebuilding strained relationships with family.

And on top of that, he was losing his religion.

Then, as now, it seemed the world was on fire. He'd literally seen it on TV a couple of months before, when the second airliner hit the South tower of the World Trade Center, he was more aware than most of an under-the-radar tide of religious craziness that had followed, which had also impacted how his life was going.

There were some people who made things a little easier. College friends from different countries and cultures...or from the same, but with similar life-experiences...younger women who might offer physical companionship without judgment, Atheistic, Agnostic, and non-Christian religious friends who might answer questions or provide the kind of spiritual support that most of his fellow Believers had brutally slammed the door on...it seemed, for no damned reason.

Wasn't he the same person he'd been a year, or two years before? Not to many of them, he wasn't.

On this particular Friday night, some of his Muslim friends had asked this dude if he might join them for something they had planned. All were going to the house of another guy everybody knew...the hippie liberal Pagan college professor some of these people, including our protagonist, had a class with, who'd responded to a question about a local space for worship by offering his own back yard...the only caveat being that he wished to observe.

So, this dude and several of his friends all packed into a couple of cars and drove out to the old man's house one chilly November evening. They were of multiple nationalities, Arab-American, Egyptian, Turkish, and his friend from a former life who was simply visiting and wished to join in. That man was a convert to Islam, with skin as black as a night in the desert.

By the time they all got out to the old guy's house, he had a fire blazing in the fire pit in his back yard...and it had begun to get dark. He'd arranged some things, having done his own research. Most of the Muslim men, and the one woman present, each donned a long robe, most of them white, save for the Egyptian dude, whose robe was multicolored and that seemed to evoke the Coat of Many Colors that Joseph is said to have worn in Genesis. The young Turkish man also sported a bright red Fez. The African-American gentleman...who had no robe, as he was not a Sufi or anything similar...was appointed to some kind of religious duty by the others, the disabled white non-believer was asked to beat the drum that would be used to keep the time, and our host was seated in a place of honor for the gathering, as the honorary Sheikh...despite his own beliefs being damned near antithetical to theirs...but it was his house.

And so the drum began to beat, in procession the dancers passed the host three times and offered greetings as brothers...for the brotherhood of all Mankind  is an important Islamic belief, and doubly so for Sufi mystics...the man given the religious duty began to chant...

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.

And each Dervish turned on the ball of their left foot and began their whirling dance.

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

The chanting...called Dhikr...is meant to invoke "Remembrance of God."

And deep into the cold Northern Michigan night, a group of people all sought a loving communion with God.

I was the guy on the drum, the accident I was in several years before that pretty much means I can't dance worth a crap, but they wanted me to join them anyway. 

I cannot tell you how long the dance, nor the chanting nor the drumming went on, only that time itself seemed to drop away and that, by the time the last of the dancers fell out and we all packed up our stuff and drove back to campus it was well into the small hours of Saturday morning, and my visitor spent a few hours crashed out on the extra bed in my dorm room. I cannot really describe the effects of participating in all this except to say that I felt more at peace than I had in some time, and it held for just long enough to keep me sane.

Only some of those people were Americans, only some of those who weren't would go on to become Americans...but they all took the time to care about at least one of us, when too many of our own couldn't be bothered.

And it's things like that, that are why other beliefs, other cultures, the simple hospitality between human beings when they decide not to be assholes to each other, should be important to every last one of us. My Medieval History professor didn't have to offer them a place to do their thing, they didn't have to invite me, my visiting friend didn't have to take the time to pitch in...we could have spent the evening playing video games as we'd planned weeks before.

My friend, by then a civilian IT guy and a Michigan Air National Guard Security Forces Lieutenant, graduated and Commissioned the year before after some years working his own education around deployments and duty shifts as an active duty Airman, would soon be deployed to Afghanistan, and later to Iraq, where he was wounded...and he was glad to go and do his duty.

What a different time that was. Among other things, I was a conservative, a Republican, and only in the very slightest sense apologetic or questioning about that as of yet,

But it was a different Republican Party, with leadership that, incompetent as it could often be, still seemed to recognize the concept of "You don't shit where you eat" and "starting ethnic conflicts at home is bad" among other things.

And people on that side of the political fence still had some guts and common sense. Within a year, Trent Lott would be forced to resign from Congress over his praise of Segregationist Strom Thurmond's 1948 Presidential run. God, I miss even that Republican Party...the one where racism was still bad...and those people are why I quit being a Republican.

Now? Every last one of these motherfuckers...and not a few Democrats as well...fears losing their place in the magical city more than they fear losing the civilization that sustains it and them. A majority of these assholes, whether it be Mitch McConnell or Mitt Romney or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi, would rather be an American equivalent to Islam Karimov or Vytautas Landsbergis, ruling over some decrepit successor state...than stand up and take some fucking risks to protect what we ALL have right the fuck now. We don't have to fight to get it...we just have to fight to keep it. 

Speaking as a former Republican...as somebody who liked Reagan, who came of age during George H.W. Bush's term, and who initially enthusiastically supported George W. Bush...this bullshit pisses me off.

It pisses me off even more as a Democrat who became one mostly because the Republican Party gleefully tossed me out the airlock when I wouldn't mindlessly repeat obvious bullshit about a Democratic Presidential candidate being born in Kenya...or accept a Vice-Presidential nominee who was the same kind of Holy Roller nut-bag as my ex-wife...and in no small part because I would not ignore my own knowledge of how stuff actually works.

As I've said, I voted for Obama and I'm glad I did. Now, more than ever after the last few days.

If Republicans don't like that, don't like me, or don't like the country that they were (more or less) hired to govern, they're more than welcome to get the fuck out, as far as I'm concerned. Hell, guys, maybe the North Koreans or the Russians are hiring. It'd be a win-win.

I don't necessarily agree with The Squad on every issue, I don't have to, they're obviously a damn sight better than Trump. Would I rather that AOC, Ayanna, Ilhan or Rashida spend their first couple of terms fetching Nancy Pelosi's lattes and learning the job? Hell yeah, but the situation we're in doesn't allow for that and if Democratic senior leadership has fallen down on the job that damned much, maybe it's time we try something different? Do I like it? No, but I didn't vote for this mess in the first place. Too many other motherfuckers straight up dropped the ball, though.

And for fuck's sake, Obama didn't finish out his first Senate term before he ran for President, that turned out OK and god damn but I miss that guy right now. 

Putting too much value into outdated metrics and things that don't apply to the average person is a big damned part of what got us Trump. The vast majority of the people I know don't care how Wall Street is doing, they're struggling. Nobody gives a shit about stock options when they have to borrow $20 to get through until the next payday...and they just got paid.

And among other things that's how you end up with socialism, but I digress.

Also, I'm just sayin' when a nationalist, racist lout like Boris Johnson says you done fucked up, Donnie, you done fucked up.

Old Boris doesn't exactly sound all that thrilled about potentially leading a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country...but at least he seems to understand that if he ends up being PM that's what his fucking job will be.

Just fucking saying.

This shit is ridiculous.

As things stand right now, I see way too many people ready to throw everything away because they don't like how the future looks, because it's brown or female or comes wrapped up in a Hijab or she openly believes in social democracy and taxation schemes that don't put even more money in the pockets of the ultra-rich at our expense.

I'm tired of "Conservatives" who have forgotten what that word means, who think it only means "conserving" their political power, social status or wealth and the hell with our environment, the planet, what's good about America and all the stuff previous generations have fought for.

But I'm damn tired of "Liberals" who refuse to be, ya know, liberal. And I'm even more tired of people who are so jacked up on their pet policy positions or what color of a wrapper is on the future or whether this person is more "woke" than that one, or whatever.

There's fully a third of the population of this country that's basically joined a cult. But if we want to keep that 33% from being the wedge that splits America...we're all going to have to pull together, Republicans are gonna have to stand up just like Democrats, and older white Democrats are gonna have to stand up just like young Black or Brown ones do. From where I sit right now, it looks like too many people don't have the fucking guts.

And let me tell you, that's the way this ends, keep letting people do as they will, for profit or political points, encourage only those who will naturally stand up or see their own privilege or work for a higher good than "what's in it for me" to do so...and that's exactly how you get a bunch of more fucking people that don't. Do you think we'd have ever won a war, or survived any given national emergency or existential threat if only conservatives or liberals had done their duty to the republic in any given case?

Somebody brought up that "Flight 93 election" bit the other day. I had to remind them that, in that analogy the "Flight 93 election people" aren't the passengers. They're the angry men in the cockpit shouting "Takbir" as they nose the aircraft towards the earth and firewall the engines. The trouble is, the plane is America, and the rest of us are the damned passengers, fighting to survive and take our future and our lives back from the fanatics who've taken control of things.

And if you don't think that's going to end badly, you have another thing coming.

The smart thing to do here would have been to not teach people to be unquestioning, rabid fanatics regarding politics and religion, each with barely more going on in the brain-pan than some illiterate Pashtun tribesman in the mountains of Afghanistan who can't read the serial number on his AK-47.

Fanaticism, Racism, Theological Primitivism, Tribalism. These are not the attributes of advanced societies.

But it sure as hell wasn't liberals who gutted education budgets and started preaching about the glories of the Dark Ages.

And you know what? I'm here to tell you that my Twitter feed is full of people who were responsible for exactly that, who recognize that this mess has gone too far and become dangerous. People like Bill Kristol, David Brooks, David French, David Jolly, Justin Amash, Rick Wilson, Tea Party Joe Walsh, and others. Even many people who actually fucking voted for Trump have turned against him and found ways to stand up, on whatever basis they could. There's people I wouldn't agree with about one other damn thing in the world...that I can agree with about Trump and how much of a threat to all of us this bullshit has become.

The question is...why can't you? Why can't you find common ground with your fellow citizens...even those you may not otherwise agree with...and then act?

Like it or not, this is a Democracy. A majority of our elected leadership is only going to get off their ass if We the People make them.

America is all of us. Black, Brown, White, Native...Christian, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Sikh and yes, Atheist...Bi, Gay, Straight, Trans...Poor, rich, somewhere in the middle...Citizen, non-citizen, legal and undocumented alike. What happens to one of us can happen to all of us, if we permit it as a people.

And when we cease to be one people, to embody the spirit of E. Pluribus Unum given to us by our forefathers...who said that America was as much for the Christian as for the Mohammedan, the Hindu and the Infidel of every denomination...when we let these rich motherfuckers atomize us into all these "Special interest groups" (to use a turn of phrase from my generation) that's when we die.

Maybe not as individuals, or even as cities, states or whole regions...

But that's when America breaks down and becomes two or three...or four or five...countries instead of one.

And if you think things are ugly now...you ain't seen nothing yet. If it comes to that the only people who profit will be the weapons manufacturers.

We can stop this, but only if we get off our ass, stand together, and maybe, most of all, care about one another if nothing else on the basis that we're all Americans.

Because either we are, or we're not. There can be no middle ground, hemming and hawing or hand-waving here. That's what Trump is counting on people trying to do. To say this one is, but that one isn't...because then we will fail.

No. Either it is, or it isn't, across the board. One of these things is not like the other one. Are we, or aren't we? It's a yes or no answer.

It's really that simple.

The light, or the darkness with its fires.

You pick.

Part 1

Part 2

Light and Darkness, Part Two.

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. 
~Ronald Reagan

"Go back where you came from!" Trump basically Tweeted this morning, referencing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tliab. Of course, the problem...as is usual with this particular racist line of insults...is that three out of four were born here, and thus come from here. The only one who didn't, Ilhan Omar, came here as a refugee with her family when she was Two and had no capability to have control over her own circumstances whatever.

I spent most of my life as a Republican, I grew up in a moderately conservative family. I've said it many times, that if at any point along that way I'd have talked like Trump routinely does, I'd have got my ass beat, either by family or friends that actually cared, because we all knew that type of shit was wrong.

But I spent most of my life as a conservative. I've seen shit like this. There are plenty of damn reasons that this kind of crap used to be strongly opposed and reacted against when it came up. It was, at one time, considered to be policing our own. Some things are not done in the better places, we don't tolerate that kind of talk here, etc. I can remember when talking like this crap meant the end of one's political career...even as a Republican.

In my own life, I've about come over the table at people for this kind of talk. During a gaming session I once pulled a sword on a guy for derogatory comments directed at the only female player...who, being Native, was also the only person of Color...at the table.

And everybody else who was there later said they were glad I did what I did. 

Conservatism used to be about judging people by their capabilities, moral character and contributions...not by the color of their skin or where they came from. I had it drilled into me from multiple vectors...nearly all of them at least "small-c" conservative by today's estimations...that one did not judge people by their color, by their culture, or by their national origin. Insofar as criticism or judgment of such was acceptable it was usually related to specific acts or cultural things most people found to be abhorrent...Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia and some other African countries, for example. I should add, that such criticisms 20 years ago could be pretty bipartisan. I should also add that 20 years ago, Republicans could reliably be counted on to support religious freedom across the board.

Tribalism was something we mocked and attributed, rightly or wrongly, to illiterate savages like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is what I came from. No, I have not always been as supportive of LGBT people, or the non-religious as I am now. But I, when I first registered to vote as a Republican at 18 years old, damn well knew better than this garbage.

And now, what's left of the Republicans *Are* the people who practice tribalism, and they're fast becoming illiterate savages that literally resemble the fucking Taliban in more ways than one. A Republican candidate for governor in Mississippi is under fire for throwing a fit about a female reporter having been assigned to his travelling press group. He called it "Leftist intimidation." Wait a minute...women having jobs is "Leftist intimidation?" 

Sorry, but even at my most conservative and most religious I always understood that most households needed two incomes to survive decently...and if a woman's education, inquisitive nature or natural talents led them to a career in journalism...I was fine with that, or at the very least recognized that it was not for me to say what somebody else did.

Oh, right, this asshole is of the same bullshit persuasion as Mike Pence, that is he thinks he should not be alone with any woman other than his wife. He wanted the female reporter to have an assigned male chaperone.

If that sounds Islamic...specifically like something that would be required in Saudi Arabia or Taliban-era Afghanistan...that is because that's literally what it is. Allah Akbar, motherfuckers.

Except...that analogy has a big gaping hole in it. In that the United Nations recently ranked a teenager in Bangladesh as more likely to live to 50 years old than one in America.

And why might that be?

Well, for starters, Americans who are able are now going to other countries to get their medications because the cost of things like Insulin have become too high. This is personal to me, as I'm at serious risk of becoming a diabetic later in life due to a family history of exactly that. My Dad, a diabetic from childhood on...died from complications of diabetes, and other relatives on both sides of my family developed it much later in life as well.

Unless something major changes, in a few years here, I could be one of those people walking out of a Canadian drug store, grocery bag raised in triumph. Health care should simply not be an entirely for-profit enterprise. 

Right here, in plain sight, America is morphing into the Conservative Venezuela...because too many of us think it's more important to give rich people more money than it is for even we, ourselves, to have a decent quality of life at a level that we can afford.

And yet, it actually gets worse than that, as we've become a nation that abuses children in concentration camps, that tolerates child sexual abuse to an alarming degree, and in fact, has done so for far too long. Alex Acosta, Trump's Labor secretary, just resigned in disgrace for cutting Jeffery Epstein a sweetheart plea deal...as a prosecutor in 2007. Rapper R. Kelly, who was also recently arrested...has been known to be a sexual predator for just as long...and far too few people could even be bothered to care.

And while I'd say a majority of people are mad about the camps, there is a large minority that is vocally against AOC and mad at her for pointing out how terrible the conditions in those places are.

And yet again, our society bends over backwards and contorts itself into ridiculous positions to try to say that both views are valid. 

Listen here, when you've got two thirds of us want to move forward at varying speeds...but forward still...and another third of us that want to slam on the brakes with the aim of eventually going backwards into some imagined and idealized past, that's a problem. We as a nation have been far too generous and given far too much leeway to assholes...and as always happens, the assholes have decided we didn't give them enough. If we continue to enable the assholes, they'll wreck the ship anyway. If we don't, they're going to either have to be defeated or cut loose...or they'll break off some part of America for themselves...and if you think those people will be content with (for example) the Republic of Alabama...you have another thing coming.

Whatever kind of legalistic or religious bullshit they come up with to justify it is just that, a bullshit justification, a proof-text to try to cover for whatever shitty things they want to do anyway, and it should be taken about exactly that seriously, rather than given media coverage as CNN and Fox News do their level best to outdo each other with competing ideologically opposed takes.

No, that's not how this works. The Bible says that light has no fellowship with darkness.

And yet, all too often, it's the Christians who seem to be in some sort of a race against each other to show submissiveness to some form of authoritarianism, no matter how abusive, even to them. For example, this idiot who is saying it's "Biblical" to lose weight when told to even in the rudest and most demeaning terms...when such is not expressed as "Hey, maybe you should lose some weight because eating too much isn't healthy." No, she expresses it as a command, not as a statement of concern.

As I've said before, my ex-wife was rather plus-sized and if I would've talked to her like that I'd have been sleeping on the couch...if she didn't just grab the kid and some of her stuff and leave, right there.

And she was a Pentecostal. I was a "small-c" conservative Baptist at the time and we consciously made an effort to live according to the Word as much as we could.

But one thing was specifically stated right out the gate and that was that abuse was not acceptable.

It's strange to me now, that some kind of a "right" to abuse others seems to be the one thing conservatives will actually fight for. Given that all of us, to varying degrees, have given way to the modern world...it seems a very odd hill to die on.

But that is exactly what they are doing.

Exclusion, Patriarchy, Racism, a seething desire for revenge against slights real and imagined, and a ravening desire to abuse others simply to show their own claimed social "power" have become...not so much the hallmarks of modern conservatism, but simply all that is left of it.

Ronald Reagan and his desire to defeat the Soviet Union, to tear down walls and have America be a shining city on a hill would be no more welcome in today's Republican Party than Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation would be.

Republicans *Are* the party of Concentration Camps, Russians, Walls, and of condoning physical and sexual abuse and trafficking children for sexual purposes. 

Like I said, the Bible all these people claim to love says that Light has no fellowship with Darkness. It's time to make your choice, and to do so firmly, and to vote accordingly to end this crap. Make no mistake, that is what we have to do if we are to remain a whole country.

Because false equivalency, indecision, malfeasance by conservatives, non-participation in the political process, purity politics, tolerance of bad behavior by powerful bastards, unicorn-hunting by kooky liberals and whatever-you-guys-want apathy is going to end us if we don't.

And if we cease to be a whole country, our enemies will pick us apart and turn us against each other until the next cohort of refugees in the world is Americans fleeing what used to be our country.

And speaking as a former Republican here, I don't see any other end but ethnic conflict and political conflict and collapse along the same lines as the Yugoslav wars if the current Republican program is allowed to remain unfettered and Democratic leadership continues to do nothing.

If we don't reign in this political equivalent of a drunken bar loudmouth he's going to be the end of us. The man simply does not believe in America.

When people as diverse from one another (despite their similar origins) as Justin Amash and Rashida Tliab can agree that we need to impeach that motherfucker...maybe, just maybe, we should fucking do something.

Part 1.


Part 3.