Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
~Amos 5:8-12
Seriously, ya'll. what is it with "Christian" schools in Kentucky?
A couple days ago, a bunch of teenagers from a "Christian Academy" in Lexington, KY, posed with a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pretending to choke and grope the cutout.
I would just like to point out that if I'd done something like that at that age and my Grandma would have found out about it, I'd have been sent out into the woods with instructions to pick a switch for her to beat my ass with. It's not that we were all that "woke" in modern terms. That set of grandparents was old school conservative Democrats, I was a young moderate Republican. It's simply that this kind of behavior is wrong, and where I come from, abuse of women...or joking about it or the simulation of it...was not tolerated.
As I've said in the last couple days, there were times I got in hella big trouble for a lot less than this.
Back in January I wrote about the Covington Catholic school kids incident at the pro-life march in Washington D.C.
And then this stupid shit just happened.
Seriously, how is this kind of behavior "Christian?"
What kind of Lord Of The Flies bullshit program are these schools running?
For any who've never read it, the novel Lord Of The Flies by British author William Golding is about a group of British schoolboys, marooned on an uncharted jungle island during a war...generally assumed to be World War II. The boys start out organizing and electing leaders, but soon a majority of the boys turn idle and devolve into base tribalism and superstitious fear of a mythical "Beast" that unscrupulous leaders manipulate to maintain control of the "Tribe." They end up hunting down and attempting to kill those who sought to maintain civilization, until at the last moment the boys are rescued because a passing warship has detected the smoke of fires the boys set on the island. The story ends with the boys weeping over their lost innocence.
I suspect, intentional or not, that there's an allegory in there somewhere.
I strongly suspect that when American and British conservatives either realize, or start facing consequences for, the things that they've done...that there's going to be a lot of weeping. When these fucking people realize they've pissed away whatever credibility they had for generations...or maybe forever...I wonder if they will stop and think about it as the boys did when an armed Royal Navy officer stood before them and asked why they were behaving in such a warlike fashion...
And then even the officer turned to stare awkwardly at his own warship.
Nah, I rather doubt most modern conservatives are capable of that much introspection or self-awareness....let alone remorse.
And like a teenage boy being questioned by Mom when she finds online porn purchases on the credit card statement, suspicious stains on bed sheets and too many tissues in the garbage can, McCarthy accuses and projects.
What he's really saying is how dare you point out publicly available information to, ya know, the public!
It's like that old Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin didn't study and when he gets called on by the teacher he just stands up there by the blackboard shouting random answers.
Except that Republicans aren't just not doing the work, here, they are also having bottomless contempt for the American people, you know...the people who elected them and whom it's actually their job to try and govern.
All too often they...and their followers...don't want to do the work. The funny thing is, they don't want anybody else to do it either.
There is a subset of Americans of all social classes, that really does not want to do the hard work and heavy lifting of life. They're the people who go to work and then walk around and play on their phones as much as possible, The guy you offer something to and then it sits there for a week and when you remind him, oh, he forgot. They're the members of Congress that, once elected, really don't seem to do much of anything but try to keep their place in the magical city. They're the reporters who care more about keeping their TV show or stirring up the mob than they do about the truth, which is supposed to be their job.
They're the people who, instead of standing up for what they know they should, make false equivalencies and say dumb shit...when what we actually need is the truth, or at least a firm moral stand.
And if you wonder why we have Christian school kids acting like ungodly little shits and glorifying the abuse of women and various other evil deeds, look no further than Kevin McCarthy and Moscow Mitch McConnell.
There was a lesson that I learned much earlier in life that the character of an organization, of a unit..of whatever...flows from the top down. Therefore, it's important to make sure that you have competent leadership that's of decent character.
If you have shitty citizens you get shitty leaders, which creates more shitty citizens.
The funny, sad, part here is that all of these people claim to follow a God and a holy book that describe their expectations of what good character is, in some rather stark terms, with harsh consequences for those who refuse to obey.
I guess they hope that publicly-available information isn't Tweeted or otherwise pointed out to the public either.
If you want a better country, YOU have to be a better citizen...and yes, a better person.
Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.
As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.
Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
~Amos 5:18-24
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