The Lie of the "End Times" "Prophecy" "Movement."

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ~Matthew 7:15

Fucking Seriously?

Rick Wiles, Anti-Semite, Fundamentalist nut, former advertising executive, false prophet, Islamophobe and wearer of bad suits predicts that he'll soon have to "go underground" to escape the murder of Christians in America.

Really?

I have to ask, is anybody "going underground" over the murder of Jews in America?

Has anybody "gone underground" over the murders of Black men by police?

Has anybody "gone underground" over the mass murders of concert-goers? Latinos? School children?

Did anybody "go underground" when nine people in a historic Black church were murdered by a white supremacist?

'Cause ya know, it's funny, Black churches that actually wanted to worship Christ have had to "go underground" in the past.

What about LGBT people, including those who are Christian?

How about the mass abuse of the overwhelmingly Christian Latino migrants at our southern border?

What about the children of non-Citizen members of the United States Armed Forces who are deployed overseas? What about children adopted overseas by members of the military, even if the parents are citizens?

Of course, the problem here is, as far as Rick is concerned none of that is real, As far as Rick is concerned "Christian" means "White Calvinist Big-C "Conservative" Evangelical Who Voted For Donald Trump, Who He Thinks Is Basically Jesus."

At this point if those people and other generic Trump Supporters get beat up, their heads shaved and tarred and feathered in some sort of American Epuration Sauvage, followed by an Epuration Legale which means a lot of Republicans get tossed in the clink for awhile, my basic answer is "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

Speaking as a former conservative here, Rick...and likely somebody who ticks more of the boxes than you do...I'm damned tired of killing. I quite suspect that most actual (rather than default, like me) liberals would likewise be against killing Christians. Wouldn't mind seeing some butts kicked in the street, but that ain't murder. People might be against their bad behavior and hateful conduct...but that doesn't mean anybody wants to murder Christians in general...let alone you in particular.

Hell, I had to look you up on Wikipedia to even know who you were...and I've heard your name before.

What you're doing here is projecting.

And, Rick, like it or not, so far murder and stealing and terrorism seems to be your side's game, not everybody else's.

But of course, to cowardly, shitty little fanatics like Rick Wiles...who, for the most part can't or won't tell you that their real faith is in White Supremacy and Far-Right politics because even they know it's shit and they don't have the guts to own it...even the existence of different ideas is considered an existential threat because they know their bullshit won't stand up in the light of day, to a critical eye or even challenge on its own terms by a person who's looking at the whole Bible and not just the cherry-picked parts that fit some kind of Gospel Of The White Jesus type of agenda.

Military dependent kids? Hell, these fools even want to go after corporations and various social media platforms that more often than not have proved to be very friendly to These Fucking People down through the years...because no amount of friendly is friendly enough.

These Fucking People want everybody from Facebook and Twitter on down to you and me to shout their own beliefs back at them and then set ourselves on fire for their own amusement. As with their (Orange) Lord and Savior, their "Chosen One" as he's named himself, no amount of self-abasement is too much. To these kind of petty fanatics, even the whole world remaking itself around their pet issues would never be enough. They would just find new ones.

Because it's not about Christ, it's not about Conservatism, and it sure as hell ain't about the "End Times." Hell I think even Whiteness might be expendable in the long term. It's about motherfuckers gonna fuck mothers and then they want to be glorified for being shitty little motherfuckers and any pointy-headed crop of fools that'll do that will work, in the long run.

It's just that, before Trump anyway, there's historically not been a lot of money in the cult business unless you can fool people into thinking that your cult is "Christian" and maybe have a bunch of pretty white girls as your front people. See also "Fox News."

Oh, hey, speaking of Fox News and projection; Some Fox News idiot said "Millennials are obsessed with self-love" and "Don't want to have anything to do with God or having kids."

Got that, kids? Become Christian and have a bunch of white babies and vote conservative so these cowardly rich shits can keep the money in the family while the planet burns and your children starve and a measure of wheat for a Denarius, but do not hurt the oil and the wine, and all that.

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers.

They're the ones who don't give a shit about God...in addition to ruining the whole God thing for one hell of a lot of the rest of us. Like I said before, nobody hates God more than these fucking people do, at least when it comes to actually doing anything that He says.

Oh, they'll talk all holy and shit. But these people? They're so holy that if Jesus showed up again they'd be shouting "Crucify Him!" in the streets. These are the people who, when given the choice between the murderer and the Son of God, will choose the murderer every fucking time.

The truth is, just like Trump, these people believe that Man is everything and the Universe was made for us and blah blah blah, all those same fake-ass "Western" conceits that have been with us since the days of Aristotle and Plato.

And that stuff was crap then and it's crap now, especially if you believe in the Bible or ever have.

It's not all about us, the universe exists for itself, and was not made for us, and we are but travelers here. If there is such a thing as God and He did create the world...why would He not punish us in the next one for abusing His creation?

That's the thing, none of this actually belongs to us.

But you can't tell that to these motherfuckers.

While the jungles burn and the oceans rise and the ice melts and people begin to be displaced by the effects of Climate Change...which are visible to any person paying even the remotest attention, these fucking people shout "Look at me, look at me! Look at me and how holy I am!" And then in a fit of inspiration, they shout "Look! He is Coming Soon!" And while everybody's looking away in this direction or that, they're stealing the money out of the offering plate.

If we're in the End Times, they're of our own making, born of fear of our own neighbors, hate and racism and shitty ideas and a suicidal desire to keep giving more to those who already have too much.

And these End Times Prophecy shits are balls deep in all that, waiting to blow their own loads in an orgy of self-gratification and self-worship, secure in the supposedly-hidden knowledge that it's all crap and that if a God they don't really believe in is planning something, they'll be dead before it gets here.

And there's nothing Christ-like about that, is there?

Guarantee you they'll make me out the bad guy for pointing it out, though.

I used to be a member of the End Times prophecy movement. I didn't get that deep into it, but I damn sure found out every bit of it had been a lie when I woke up to a normal day on January 1st, 2000.

And if we all find a way to get through this, we'll still all be the bad guys and they'll just move on to another dumb thing that supposedly points out that we're all going to go to hell while they get to gloat about it.

And if God supports that kind of garbage mentality, then he is not God and we need not worry.

And reduced air quality from half the Amazon burning will kill people in real life, just as surely as any imagined fire from Heaven.

If there's an End Times, that's it, right there.

But if we learn to control ourselves and not be too greedy...as any mainstream religion including Christianity says we should...we have it in our power to stop this mess.

Think on that.

The (Orange) wine of the wrath of God.

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name. ~Revelation 14:8-11

Have we reached peak stupid, yet?

I know I keep asking this. Yesterday, Trump attempted to order American companies to find alternatives to doing business in China, and then attempted to order...by Tweet...a number of shipping companies to search their packages for drugs. No, not Federal agents, not police, not "cooperate with X federal agency" he wanted the companies themselves to do it.

One: Trump has no authority, Constitutional or otherwise, to do this. This is America, God doesn't have the kind of authority Trump is trying to claim for himself.
Two: Private corporations generally don't have their own Narc units. That's what the feds, or the local cops, are for. How the fuck did you even get this job?

Oh, right; Idiots.

Listen, ya'll, it's not just that Trump appears to have no idea of how his government or the world actually works...he appears to be mostly incapable of learning, as well as in the grip of some form of cognitive and mental decline. In short, this motherfucker should never have been elected in the first place, and needs to be gotten out of power one way or another, soon. And, the Party that nominated and has enabled him needs to be banished to the Outer Darkness, the kind of electoral wilderness that you don't come back from.

The Amazon is on fire. China and Hong Kong appear to still be on a collision course. Russia is still a threat. North Korea is becoming a worse threat. There is a probably-global recession starting. We're in a trade war that we have no way to win, and this absolute jackass is blathering away on social media like he thinks he's some kind of reality show kingpin, still?

Fuck this guy.

Listen, ya'll. I'm sick of furrowed brows and "I'm very concerned" and strongly-worded letters and social media rage and this goddamned moron in general.

And I am damned sick of the fact that the only people more invisible than Congressional Democrats in condemning this latest round of idiocy...are Congressional Republicans.

It's your credibility and reputation that are getting trashed here, Republicans. As far as I'm concerned nobody with an "R" after their name should ever live this crap down.

This is not a time for people to sit back and hope they can wait it out. If you do that there's not only no "wait" there's no "out" either. This is not a time to sit back and hope you'll profit from this mess. You won't, it's just that damned simple.

We don't have time to fuck around. This is the kind of time when everybody from national leaders down to the most common of the common people need to screw their courage to the sticking place, stand up and tell Donald Goddamned Motherfucking Trump what he can go do with himself! Trump and every last Republican office-holder at every level in this country should be run out of Washington D.C. and every state capital or other large city in the USA on a fucking  rail.

Any questions!?

Lately I keep hearing how conservatives seem to view everything as some kind of zero sum game, or think that life is something that must be earned.

There's no thought of the idea, like I was taught, that if you were born you already done "earned" your life.

There seems to be no thought among these people that there even *Is* a higher power or something greater than themselves.

There's no thought that hey...God is the one who creates life. And this from the people who self-appointed themselves as "The God people" in American politics, sometime back.

I started out as a Christian and a conservative and I was taught that life...ALL life, not just human life...had intrinsic value. 

Of course, like me, almost none of the people who taught me that (the ones still living anyway) are Christians anymore, and none of them are still conservatives. Should be noted the one person who is still a Believer (my Grandma, who is 96) has always been a Democrat. 

The thing that bothers me about this lack of belief in the intrinsic value of life is...Okay then, who determines who or what has value? Banks? Rich people? The "Tribe?" None of the things these people put forward as values these days fits with anything I was ever taught about this stuff. It seems like the things these fuckers actually value are things they know they can't speak publicly about, hate, racism, sexism etc. 

Like, what is even the meaning of life...or death...or anything else without some kind of fixed values that one can actually relate to other humans with and speak about? 

Without life having intrinsic value what's even the damn point of getting out of bed in the morning?

Just sayin' if you think that Trump and the Republicans care about you, you're wrong, they don't.

But they sure as hell want to spit in your face, and still be worshiped just the same. More to the point, they want you to not have a choice.

At this point, I think these fucking people all know they're going to hell. All they've ever cared about is profit and power in this life.

Yet so many these people claim to be Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians. They've all at least heard what that religion says is on the Other Side. They know.

They just want to take the rest of us with them.

Don't let them have the satisfaction.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Six Hundred, Three Score and Six, but Orange.

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13: 16-18

This morning, while sweeping the floor in the break room toward the tail end of my shift at work, I saw this.

No, my day has not improved.

Aside from the obvious pitfalls of any person who is not a member of a group trying to tell people in a particular group how to vote...and the fact that this is America, where how you vote is nobody else's damned business besides your own...I think it's just wrong for your basic silly old white man to try to act like he knows more about some other people than they know about themselves.

I mean, it's typical privileged bullshit, to the point where our society has assorted slang terminology to describe exactly that, and that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Note, the situation did not improve.

Next, Trump quoted some internet nobody, some conspiracy theorist named Wayne Allyn Root (who I actually had to Google to know who he was) who was trying to say that Israeli Jews love Trump "Like he's the King of Israel, like he's the Second Coming of God."

I feel like I need to point out here, that Trump doesn't appear to be any more popular in Israel than he is anywhere else...except among the Israeli hard-right and Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories. Trump, and Republicans, are being played for advantage, for money and political power by the fanatics in Israeli politics...people for whom the entire basis of their way of life is that they don't believe in Christ, and indeed don't believe in many of the same things that American conservatives believe. Even most people on the Israeli hard-right and many religiously conservative Jews in Israel support abortion and LGBT rights, for example.

But, at the same time that's not the point. Look at Root's language. "King of Israel" and "Second coming of God?" Firstly, No, that's not how Israeli Jews feel about Trump. That's how Wayne Allyn Root feels about Trump. Secondly, and more important, as I've mentioned before I'm a former conservative Christian and former member of the End Times Prophecy Movement.

The sort of language Root is using is the language of Anti-Christ, and in particular the exact same sort of verbiage that Evangelical End Times fiction uses to describe the Anti-Christ and how they imagine the Jews would react to him or her.

I'm serious. Go and read the Left Behind series, or various books by Hal Lindsey, or watch any of innumerable cheesy, badly-done Christian-produced movies on the subject and see for yourself. Go ahead, I'll wait.

But wait...it gets better! Trump essentially goes on to say that he knows better than everybody else does what's good for them.

Listen, as I've said before I used to be a conservative. This is the same exact kind of dumb out-of-touch paternalism that Republicans have spent at least my entire life accusing Democrats of having.

This is what happens when conservatives abandon actual beliefs in individual freedom, limited state power and religious-based values for crazy woo woo stuff about how the previous President is a "Secret gay Muslim."

Thus, showing that they can't see the evidence right in front of their faces (like the fact that the man has a happy wife and two beautiful daughters, for example) and they don't know (or care to learn) even the most basic facts about Islam and how that religion relates to sexuality. As with Christians, yes there are plenty of LGBT Muslims. Unlike LGBT Christians, however, in the Islamic World those people don't have the support of secular society...so life is infinitely harder. While the idea of a "Secret Gay Muslim" in America is ridiculous (and in America and other Western nations most Muslims support LGBT rights!) in places like Egypt or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, however, there's plenty of Muslims who are secretly gay.

It's a subtle difference, but it's there. Obama ain't from any of those places either way.

No, short of a very, very strictly-spelled-out set of circumstances...that basically doesn't exist in our modern world...you can't be and there's no reason to be a "Secret" Muslim because that religion requires a number of very public acts and behaviors, like prayer five times a day at certain specific intervals...this being something I've observed in public spaces even in my own home town...and also certain body-modesty and dietary requirements. I've quite honestly never seen that Barack Obama or any of his immediate family members observed any of that stuff. In fact, somewhere I remember seeing a clip of Obama fist-bumping the counter-person in a barbecue restaurant where he and some Secret Service agents had gone to pick up some food for the First Family and members of the Detail.

It turned out, in the course of the video, that the subject of sexuality did come up...because the counter guy was gay and was wearing a shirt with a rainbow flag on it.

Islam is generally, vaguely hostile to homosexuality in the same exact way that Christianity is, and for the same exact reasons. In fact, just as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are most often hostile to LGBT rights in America...so are the various interpretations of Islam that are most hostile to America often the most hostile to LGBT people...and for the same reasons as their supposed Evangelical and Fundamentalist and politically Conservative enemies are.

And, Takfiri nuts aside, mainstream Islam does not condone the targeting of civilians or mass murder in general.

You know what all the conspiracy theories were for? I think this stuff was put out there for a purpose, to strip away people's desire to seek, or even respect for, the truth. I think it was put out there to encourage fanaticism, and ultimately, to help promote false doctrines.

I mean, if you believe Barack Obama is some kind of secretly gay Muslim in spite of all the obviously visible, publicly available evidence to the contrary is it really a big stretch to believe that Donald Trump is god?

Is it really?

All this conspiracy stuff is basically some combination of insanity and projection, and there's nothing holy or righteous about that.

The President of the United States is talking, today, like he either thinks that he is the Anti-Christ of Revelations, or like he's having some kind of major psychotic break.

And neither of those things is good for anybody.

Trump's numbers are not great, his disapproval ratings are basically almost the highest they've ever been and that's before you consider the fact that the numbers say we're at the start of an economic recession. Trump is resorting to open racism and seems more out of touch with reality on a daily basis.

If you think any of this is a good situation, or that it will benefit you, then you are a fool and it's as simple as that.

And if you think any of this mess is "Godly" then I'd suggest that you've probably signed up for the wrong side and maybe you should re-think that as well, while you still have the option.

Read the stuff in Revelation that's towards the end, imagine yourself facing that judgment. The phrase "Lake of Fire" comes to mind. Think about what the Bible says happens to those who took that Number, which is representative of the false world-system and the false religion of the Beat.

Think about it. Think hard, and for your own good.

Because especially if you are a Christian, if ya'll signing up to follow somebody who's walking around accepting being called the "King of the Jews" in the modern day, that's the risk. Hey, it's your beliefs. I'm not a Born-Again anything anymore. I'm just telling you what I read about lakes of fire and eternal punishments.

As far as I'm concerned, if you make the choice to replace INRI with TRUMP you deserve what you're going to get.

If you think you're going to get something by following along with this mess, read this again and note how the cult seems to demand more and more of its followers as time goes on. If you think you're going to be able to sneak out the back door with some money or a few right-wing activist judges in your pocket...you're probably not any safer from the cultists than I am.

And if you think Trump wouldn't demand that you worship him, so that you could eat, then you probably don't know much about people with personality disorders.

We need to get this guy out of power, not next year, not tomorrow, now. Impeachment, 25th Amendment, whatever, I don't care. But we need to do it before this madness swallows up our whole country,

God has not seen fit to bring about the Apocalypse yet, but there are still many people in America who desire one...mostly because they want to punish those who they see as rejecting their beliefs.

And if you want to get technical about it, according to those people's own doctrines the first box in that first list of seven judgments just got a big check-mark. And I guarantee you those people will end up loving that the Big Bad is on their side, and they will reinterpret everything else accordingly.

And no, they don't care where that lands them in Eternity. They want to feel all saved and righteous now, while watching the rest of us burn. This is their religion.

Think about that. Where does that leave the rest of us?

It's not about policy or your favorite candidate anymore, it's about getting Trump and these people out of power before they kill us all. Vote...because that's what they're afraid of. You know what can stand up to apocalyptic cults and religious woo woo?

A constitutionally secular Democracy where their god and its doctrines don't get a vote, that's what.

Punch More Nazis.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
~Malcolm X.

Over the weekend, 1.7 Million people protested for Democracy in Hong Kong.

On Saturday, dozens of people from various fascist groups clashed with anti-fascists and protesters in Portland, Oregon.

Whatever they were trying to do appears to have failed...but at the same time they're calling it a win because Trump Tweeted support for them.

What the fuck ever, dude.

Antifa and the protesters started their day off with an interfaith religious service and meditation.

The Proud Boys started their day with a bunch of people getting knives confiscated.

Seems like there's a trend here, already. A particularly critical article that I read earlier today still pointed out that while Antifa can be violent, there's no actual comparison between them and the far-right in terms of either the amount of violence or the threat to life and limb. Antifa might beat somebody up...but the Proud Boys and all these other motherfuckers can't wait to shoot somebody or stab somebody. One side has a proven track record of ass whuppins' but the other side has a hard-on for murdering the people who they see as against them. And ya know, if these idiots wouldn't go to Portland with the express intention to start shit, I highly doubt the Anarchist community in the Pacific Northwest would do much more than mock the fascists on social media. The fact is, there's an order of magnitude of difference between the two sides.

So much for the media's search for a false equivalency between the two. Idiots.

 In point of fact, the Portland protests were far more about dancing, music, solidarity and weird costumes than they were about violence.

That's actually pretty typical for Portland.

Of course, what nobody is bringing up, is that that's the actual problem. There's nothing these fascist dick-bags hate more than ideas that are different from theirs, people who don't conform to whatever their idea of people is, and people having a good time...except maybe that there were those in attendance who were more than willing to use force to defend those who were simply trying to have a good time. That, honestly, is probably the biggest threat of all to the right-wingers self-constructed narrative. They want to stereotype the "Left" as people dancing in unicorn costumes, guys dressed in black who are ready to beat the fuck out of you if you lay a hand on somebody kinda busts their bullshit narrative.

And speaking of bullshit narratives, Right-wing journalist Andy Ngo (?) spent all weekend trying to make it sound like various and assorted innocent conservatives were under violent attack by vicious Leftists. Listen, ya'll, if somebody comes at me with a hammer...as right-wingers appear to be doing here...I'm not gonna ask their political affiliation, I'm going to defend myself.

The main video I kept seeing was of some ridiculous looking dude who calls himself "Based Spartan" and wears a Marvin-The-Martian looking fake Spartan helmet getting chased off by a bunch of protesters, some of whom threw drinks at him. Mind you, he was the one who kept trying to hit people. Two things about that. First off, if this is the quality of people that your movement is attracting then I think it's safe to say the people dancing in the banana and unicorn costumes are the ones who are winning. Secondly, what the hell is a Vietnamese American doing trying to support actual fascists and white supremacists? Andy, bro, you're "supporting" who'll likely turn on you the first time you says anything even mildly critical of one of them.

And then of course, there was the big conservative meltdown yesterday and today over the fact that the New York Times started its "1619 Project" yesterday...a presumably continuous effort to tell the history of slavery, segregation, racism and the effects thereof. As I've said before, I used to be a conservative. I grew up on history, most especially the history of the Civil War and its causes and effects. I'm just sayin' if you have a problem with history...specifically the true history of the United States of America in particular...don't try to insult my intelligence by calling yourself a Conservative.

History is what it is. Small "c" conservatism is based on revealed truth, the wisdom of our ancestors, and ya know, a hell of a lot of history and hopefully understanding the mistakes made therein, so as to not make new ones.

But that's not what we're dealing with here. Movement conservatism relates to actual conservatism in about the same way that Takfiri ideology relates to mainstream Islam.

I.e. it doesn't.

Of course, trust me, if there was an actual movement aimed at putting Confederate statues back up instead of taking them down, or at lionizing the Antebellum South instead of pointing out the uncomfortable truths about Slavery...guys like Erick Erickson and Newt Gingrich would be all about history.

Hell, I've read books by Newt Gingrich about the Civil War...dude is a competent historian. He should know better than this.

But he doesn't, because of ideology. An ideology, I might add, that even he doesn't want to confess to having.

Ya know what? You can't argue with that sort of logic, you can only punch the person who has it right in the face. I think these Antifa dudes are on to something.

And I think it needs to be said, that the Republican Party appears to be coming out as openly fascist.

If you don't see that as a problem, that means you're a fascist, too.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression. ~Malcolm X.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: ~Romans 1:21-24

Yesterday, Iowa Republican Steve King asked "Would there be any population of the world left?" If not for incest and rape.

Just sayin' dude, MY parents weren't related, were yours?

While I'm at it, I have a church background, but I was never particularly encouraged to take the Genesis creation story and the whole Adam and Eve thing all that literally, for reasons that should be obvious.

Rape and incest are wrong. If you can't see that, you fail at humanity.

Remember what I said about China, yesterday?

It seems like it damned well ought to be problematic that a publishing company owned by a billionaire is producing Bibles, of all things, in Communist China. Cheap labor and economic issues aside, it seems like a slap in someone's face to produce religious books in a country where all religion is technically still a crime and Christians and Muslims in particular are persecuted. I'm just sayin' I'm not religious anymore...and I'm really tired of these people and their god in particular...but there seems to be a lot wrong with this situation, and the fact that this billionaire asshole can then go ahead and get a tariff exemption for his Bibles? Yeah, I think Jesus would chase these people around with a whip of cords, but hey, what the fuck do I know?

I can't fit my head far enough up my own ass to see these fucking people's point of view.

I suppose, though, that's why I can see the economy starting to tank, what with the Dow Jones down 850 points yesterday, and the Bond market in particular being hit hard. Bond markets tanking is a hard and fast indicator of recession, and I've been seeing a lot of smaller, under-the-radar signs of it around the world for awhile, not to mention business has been down at my work, well, since 2016. All this crazy shit has had old people in particular not spending money. Or maybe health care costs prevent them from going to the casino, these days?

Meanwhile Trump is blubbering and wish-casting all over Twitter about what he "thinks" (Read: Wants) to be true. He's sounding an awful lot like my ex-wife trying to "Speak Words Of Prophecy" over our marriage, toward the end, when things were obviously failing.

And that is how I know this mess is going to come to some kind of crashing, screeching, horrible end, quite possibly sooner rather than later...and that even worse crazy shit will likely follow. It's just the vibe I keep getting.

And not just that, but that the rest of the world is just as tired of this crazy bullshit as I am. The big difference between America and China is that China is not a democratic country and doesn't have to care if I'm tired of it. America on the other hand, very much has to care if its citizens and people with influence in other countries whose actions can affect those citizens are tired of the government's bullshit.

It's kind of like how, toward the end, my Mom refused to give me cash or loan me any money...because she was tired of my ex-wife's bullshit and didn't want to risk her ending up with said money.

Just as I've noticed a massive surge of public disgust over Trump's racist bullshit, among other things, I see the Trump administration trying to play the religion card by proposing to allow contractors to discriminate against LGBT people and...get this...unmarried pregnant women. Never mind that pregnancy status is already something that is a protected category under Federal law. Never mind that every single situation is different, and that we have freedom of religion among other things here in America. Nobody has to live by conservative dogma or Evangelical beliefs...and for that matter plenty of Evangelicals have kids out of wedlock, just like every other group. People have sex, what people do outside of the job and that does not affect the job or their co-workers at it ought not to be any employer's business.

Once upon a time, this was a conservative viewpoint.

And then there's this fucking bullshit. One of the chicken plants raided by ICE just fired a bunch of its Latino workers, putting a total of 10% of one entire town's population out of work. I'm a just leave this here, from this article:

'The state’s largest agricultural product is chicken, and longtime residents say the arrival of Latino immigrants has filled classrooms, revived communities, and sustained local businesses. “If they removed every illegal in town, we’d be in big trouble,” Martha Rogers, the 76-year-old CEO of the Bank of Morton, told me earlier in the day, as she contemplated what might result from last week’s raids. “I’m for limiting who can come into this country. But people who are already here, who have jobs and are contributing? There should be some avenue for them to be legal.” She praised the outreach efforts of the local churches and charities, who were now helping the families whose breadwinners had once supported them. “I don’t understand how they think that’s better,” she said, of that role reversal. “Who is that better for?'

Who does this help? Who does this serve?

Nobody.

The one common thread with all this shit is that the cruelty is the fucking point.

And there's not one damned thing "Godly" about that.

Think about that the next time some Evangelical "Conservative" wants to talk to you about Jesus, or about how they think everybody should work for everything, and whatever.

This isn't about Christianity, or even conservatism, or even money except in the most round-about way. It's about cruelty and power. It's about trying to dictate who can do what...regardless of economic reality.

All I see these assholes doing is crashing the economy and finding excuses to put people out of work, to make other people be poor, for no damned reason.

Except the cruelty, that's their reason.

And we wonder why the economy is starting to crash?

This isn't Baator, you can't make the engines run on blood and souls.

If you're not willing to stand up and vote this shit out, you are complicit in that cruelty.

It really is that simple. If somebody like Tea Party Joe Walsh can see the light and own his past actions and thinks Trump needs to be voted out in a Republican primary, or the general election...why can't you?

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

That's America right now.

Conservatives, you want to go home and rethink your life.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
~Do You Hear The People Sing, from Les Miserables

I've been following the protests in Hong Kong, for the last few weeks.

I find it interesting, that against such odds...and despite the extradition bill the protests started out against now being officially dead, the protests have continued.

Despite reports that the Chinese People's Liberation Army is allegedly deploying troops near the Hong Kong border with China, these people press on...their protests now apparently a general call for Democracy and against Mainland encroachment.

Meanwhile, certain fucking idiots, by which I mean Donald Trump, seem to be doing their level best to take the side of the oppressor, here.

That seems an odd juxtaposition vs. America's previous history with this sort of thing, and especially considering that the protests are using the tactics of a number of American protest groups and are patterning their efforts on the Ukrainian Revolution...which Americans were eyeballs-deep in instigating, up to and including the late Republican Senator John McCain, in company with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. In point of fact, some Hong Kong protesters have even flown American flags.

Of course, Trump and his Supporters could give a shit about democracy here, so what else can one expect from them?

But the difference is that Americans have a history of going all in to support those who stand for the values we support, against long odds with nothing but their guts. I suppose that has everything to do with out own founding myths, national origin and the mythology around it.

Thing is, I get more of an Arab Spring or perhaps Boston Massacre vibe about this situation than I do a Tienamen Square situation, rather suspecting that some Chinese person will be the Crispus Attucks of a modern anti-authoritarian movement, on a more global scale...despite the local nature of the protests and the situation. The whole world is watching, unless of course you're a Trump ass-kisser.

But like I said, Trump and his supporters don't believe in Democracy right here at home. So why should anybody suspect they would even care about anything going on halfway around the world?

They certainly don't believe in anything that came before them that's good about America.

In point of fact, I don't think these fucking people believe in America at all, at this point. They'd be fine with splitting the country, so long as they got some part of it.

Since the Republican Party has at least informally assimilated every other alt-right Nazi talking point, I rather expect calls from leading Republicans for a "White ethno-state" to start soon enough. At this point, they have to know the majority of the country is against this crap. Or, to put it another way, when you've lost The Mooch, public disgust has to be outpacing your ability to rationalize it away.

Let me put it another way; The former Virginia attorney general tried to say that the Statue of Liberty and the New Colossus were about "Immigrants from Europe.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~Emma Lazarus

I don't see any stated ethnic preference there, do you? I sure don't.

This, right here, the contrast between Emma Lazarus and Kenny the Racist, is the difference between Trumpism and the middle-of-the-road conservatism that I grew up with. For fuck's sake my Dad had a solar panel on the roof of his shed to provide power while he was working...in the 1970's. It's not that we were particularly "Woke" it's that my parents had seen the effect of the oil crisis, and the conservatism a lot of people practiced in those days actually was about conserving some things.

Listen, Republicans, when you're starting to lose people like life-long Iowa conservative mothers and Tony The Mooch, I think it might just be time to start reconsidering the Politics Of Fuck You (!) and the racism.

When you're crapping all over your own party's previous achievements like the Endangered Species Act, and all over America's long-standing commitments to democracy and freedom around the world...and trying to turn the Land Of The Free into some kind of giveaway for rich people instead...I think it might be time to hang it up and go home.

Tell me, Republicans, what exactly do you believe in?

Can you even say it out loud?

I didn't think so.

Today's Republican Party, and for that matter, today's Evangelical religion, look less like traditional matters of conservative politics or religious faith than they do some kind of suicide pact.

With whom or for what I'm less certain about.

I know only that it unless this crap is stopped soon, we face an excellent chance that it's going to split the country and that states like Iowa will end up being a very different kind of battleground than what the normal political term implies.

I know only that those who claim today's "Conservative" label don't care about their fellow humans at all, let alone anything I was ever taught conservative values meant. I know only that the last person today's Evangelical Christians want to listen to is Jesus Christ.

And there's something sad that goes with that.

The Christian hymn, "Sing Hallelujah To The Lord" is one of the two main unofficial protest songs of the Hong Kong democracy protests. It's a simple praise and worship song, reportedly taken up because a group of Christians was holding a prayer vigil early in the protests against the Extradition Bill and started singing it.

That song was entirely composed during a workshop at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa in 1974.

Sing Hallelujah to the lord .
Sing hallelujah to the lord .
Sing hallelujah ...
Sing hallelujah ...
Sing hallelujah to the lord ...
Sing hallelujah to the lord .
(sing hallelujah to the lord)
Sing hallelujah to the lord ...
(sing hallelujah)
Sing hallelujah ...
Sing hallelujah ...
Sing hallelujah to the lord ...
Sing kristus risen from the dead...
(sing kristus risen from the dead)

And I can recall a time when Conservatives and Evangelical Christians would've been all in to support the Hong Kong protesters on that basis alone.

Especially when one considers that the opposition here is literally Godless Communists. That the troops forming up are literally the People's Liberation Army, i.e. Communist soldiers armed with many of the same type of weapons that were a lot more familiar to one hell of a lot of Americans from recent combat experience in Vietnam.

There was a time when, with that information in hand, Evangelicals would've been demanding the deployment of a US Navy Carrier Battle Group offshore to protect the protesters.

But of course, Republicans have forgotten about anti-Communism. They've forgotten what Communism was. They want to do business with Communists. They want a Communist to help them with electoral subterfuge next year.

The truth is, Republicans damned near are Communists now, just without anything that helps the average person. If anything, it's a kind of Communism-in-reverse, endless socialism for rich people, nothing but upraised middle fingers for everybody and everything else.

This isn't going to end well, least of all for the Reds.

Listen, conservatives and Evangelicals, this crap, and what comes from it ain't gonna be worth it.

Ya'll need to go home and rethink ya life.

Dead Men's Bones

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.~Matthew 23:27

Ah, so we've finally hit the point where some of the Evangelicals have had enough, have we?

What was it?

Trump saying in public that he did not need God's forgiveness?

Trump saying, again in public, that he could murder somebody and not lose votes?

Was it the lying?

No? Was it the fact that this asshole can't even talk about the subject of religion, particularly Christianity, without a tone of mocking insincerity? To the point where he even mocks Mike Pence, and other religious folks in his administration behind closed doors?

The adultery, the cheating on his taxes, the Executive orders based on animus against Muslims, that even led to citizens and Green Card holders being detained?

The lack of guidance to agencies that led to all manner of abuses?

The constant abuses against the LGBT community, and any other "out-group" these people could find?

The equivocation on, and thus support to White Supremacists? Like when that Nazi kid ran that lady over two years ago today in Charlottesville?

Was it "Very fine people on both sides?"

The open racism? the rank incompetence?

The coddling of dictators, including Kim Jong Un, whose family is responsible for savage persecution of Christians?

Was it the kids in cages? Christian Latino kids I should add...and the overwhelmingly Christian families that have thus been split up?

The electoral defeats last November?

The endless crazy shit and divisive rhetoric since then?

The fact that if somebody gets a serious weed up their ass and starts a new civil war you can look at an electoral map, or perhaps one that shows Trump's current standing in opinion polls and about predict where the battle lines will be drawn?

No? It wasn't any of that?

What was it? Oh, Trump said "God damn" a few times.

Seriously?

Come on, that wasn't any fucking mystery, he's been swearing enough to shame a sailor all along. Where the fuck have you been?

Listen to me you God Damned Souless Mother Fuckers. If you want a reason why I am not a Christian, there it goddamned is.

If you people can't be bothered to give a fuck about basic human rights, common decency, laws, morality, or even something so basic as what other people and the rest of the world thinks of your stank asses right about now, if you can't be bothered to listen to what your own GOD says about how the foreigner, the poor, or even other people in general should be treated, Why in the actual goddamned fuck would you expect anybody else would take your beliefs, your faith, your so-called "Witness" seriously?

You sure don't!

Ya'll have been looking for any and all excuse to bow down before Donald Trump and call him your Lord and Master ever since this whole thing started.

But supposedly somebody got their panties in a wad over Trump saying "Goddamn it?"

My guess is that you see it all coming crashing down soon, and consciously or not ya'll trying to find a way out.

Too late. Lay down with AntiChrists, wake up with strange marks on your forehead or right hand.

Ya'll signed up with the enemy of everything that Jesus Christ ever stood for or taught. Fuck you!

In a few months or years here, when all this crazy bullshit is over and we're all picking up the pieces and your nasty ass goes to Evangelize somebody and they spit on the the ground and walk away, it's not that they hate your God.

At least, not any less than you do.

It's that they hate you, and your shitty behavior.

When that moment comes, are you going to sit back and think "Hey, maybe I shouldn't have done that."

Or will that be somebody else's fault, too?

Don't look away.

History wll judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. ~Cesar Chavez

Yesterday, I had to finally break down and mostly stay off social media for most of the day.

Whatever the other facts of the case may be, millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail in the small hours of Saturday morning, having only just been taken off of suicide watch after a previous attempt.

I'd gotten sick the night before, some kind of virus with flu symptoms and vomiting, my head was pounding for much of yesterday and I didn't need the aggravation of dealing with a billion conspiracy theories spawning in real time right before my eyes.

So I played with ferrets all morning and spent most of the afternoon playing Skyrim.

I'm here to tell you, I could give a fuck about Epstein. Yes, he was an evil man. Now he's dead, and I feel sorry for the devil because the devil has to put up with his ass now.

This last week saw two mass shootings, the first, in El Paso, Texas, was a racially-motivated White Supremacist terror attack against Latinos. The second, in Dayton, Ohio, appears to have been a case of a violent racist and sexist asshole with a gun.

That was followed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Mississippi that snared 680 Latino immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, in the Trump administration's likewise racially-motivated pogrom against Latinos.

The raids...on purpose or otherwise...coincided with the local first day of school and thus left many children without parents to pick them up, or without a way to get home, or into their houses once there.

And because of course, 300+ of the 680 people in question were found to be citizens, or legal immigrants, and released. It's not about immigration status, it never was. It's about racism, period. It's about making racist conservatives feel like "Something is being done" even though the reality is that nothing constructive is being done...because the truth is that for something to be done they would have to arrest and perp-walk and charge and try and convict a billionaire or two.

Also, yet again, it's funny how in the minds of all the "Family"-friendly Evangelicals and shit, only some people actually get to have families, or have the integrity of their families respected, etc.

The vast...if not overwhelming majority of these Latino immigrants are Christians, left to their own devices many, if not most of these people would tend towards small-"c" conservative Catholic social mores that could translate easily into moderately conservative political ones that 25 years ago would have made these people a natural fit for the Republican Party. They could still be today. IF, that is...they did not have White "Big-C" Conservatives, the Republican Vichy Establishment, the President and anti-immigrant hard-liners in government agencies lined up against that possibility.

I read the comments, like Jim said. A lot of these so-called "Conservatives" who support this crap really are nothing but racist human garbage.

Plus, in our society as it actually is right now, being a moderate conservative most likely makes you a Democrat...or at least one of their voters for the moment.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like government policy here is going to do nothing more than to exacerbate an already-bad situation. In a diverse, multicultural and multi-ethnic society the President has decided to throw gasoline on the simmering embers of racial hatred for his own political profit, and of course, ultimately everybody will be targeted, or face the eventual backlash for supporting this crap...or end up fighting in or fleeing from the resulting ethnic conflicts and politically-tinged wars.

In summary, we all go down or at least take hits from this crap, while those responsible will get fair trials, kill themselves while awaiting trial or shuffle off this mortal coil due to old age while awaiting trial or hiding out from the consequences. And for what? So sociopathic rich Conservative Baby Boomers could loot the country one more time before they go? So white racists could kick somebody else in the teeth one last time before they start to fall into demographic obscurity in a few years? So some fool could give a guy like Vladimir Putin a chance to instigate a second U.S. Civil War?

And of-fucking-course, rather than face up to any of this shit...or answer my question...what does the Internet collectively do after the news broke yesterday morning but gleefully go off chasing down dumb ass conspiracy theory rabbit holes?

There's a hell of a lot of people in this country and around the world who need us to not get distracted or look away right now.

So, naturally, what do Americans in general and white people in particular do, but aimlessly look away from this mess that was created as much by liberal apathy, purity-testing and triumphalism as it was by conservative fear, gullibility, hate and racism? Why face our problems?! We can make up new ones! It's only those people over there who are suffering, and not us.

And don't think that the Latinos, for one, don't have a sense of what's actually going on here.

For too many people it's easier to make El Paso and Dayton about guns or mental health or video games than it is to face up to the hatred, racism and sexism that are the actual motivating factors. Yes, limiting access to weapons will probably help a lot and it still needs to be done.

But ignoring these underlying problems will not make them go away...even if we found a way to disarm every misogynist , racist nut or right-wing extremist in the country.

And jumping down rabbit holes over how some millionaire died or about this or that political policy somebody proposed or whatever isn't helping.

Unless we start to focus and stay on Congress and other aspects of the power structure so that they do what needs to be done, they won't. Don't think your skin color or social status will protect you, it won't.

As I have said so many ti mes, too many people only care about keeping their place in the magical city. They don't give a fuck about you...or me.

Fuck that noise. It will be us, fellow white people, before you know it. In some places it already has been...even if those people are too snookered by crazy rhetoric about abortion or guns to see the threat. This situation will even affect all those members of Congress and wealthy people, even though they think it won't.

But we can stop this, and you know we can. We can save ourselves and yes, them. We can save our civilization.

How do I know this?

Today is the first day of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic holidays. The 'Feast of the Sacrifice' honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at God's command.

And...

We live in a world where even a Fundamentalist Christian-nationalist dickbag like Mike Pompeo has no choice, by dint of his current place in the world, than to wish those people a happy holiday.

Listen, ya'll, and listen good. All these so-called "Conservatives" the goons and the gun nuts and the racists and the Republicans...and GOD but I wish that one had not become a synonym for the other in that case, but it is what it is...and all these other motherfuckers...they know their time is getting short. That's why they want to do as much damage as they can in the amount of time they have left.

But to get them to slink back into the political wilderness...much less defeat them completely...you have to stay on task and you cannot keep jumping every time some motherfucker shouts "Squirrel!"

At the end of the day, we'll find out eventually what really happened with Epstein. The investigations into the stuff he did are all still ongoing, for fuck's sake. If he died because somebody wanted him to we'll find that out as well. These murderous nuts in our government are the type of people who can't wait to tell you, one way or another, that they're murderers, or nuts. If there's a cover-up give it a week or two and they'll screw up.

But if you want these motherfuckers to succeed at killing America, for ideology or personal profit, keep chasing after conspiracy theory crap instead of staying focused and paying attention to the big picture.

Don't look away.

There's a lot of us who can't afford to.