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.