For the wages of sin is death. (American Revelation II, Part 4.)

When a mind does not know itself, it is flawed. When a mind is flawed, the man is flawed. When a man is flawed, that which he touches is flawed. It is said that what a flawed man sees, his hands make broken.
~Dak'kon, Planescape Torment.

So, evidently today American troops retreating from Syria were greeted upon arrival in Iraq by Iraqi Kurds throwing stones and shouting "Fuck you!"

And, for that matter, they left Syria being pelted with garbage and rotten fruit as well.

If you don't think this is a metaphor for our place in the world because of Trump, and post-Trump, you have another thing coming.

It's going to be the work of generations to regain the trust of the world, and our former place in it. And by the time we get there, we'll be facing a People's Republic of China that's in a similar position to America in the 1950's, militarily if not economically...and itself having been financed by American capitalism.

I've seen a number of Republicans, like Marco Rubio, make negative comments about these Kurds throwing rocks. Too damned bad, I say. This kind of stuff is the least of our problems in general, but for Marco in particular it shouldn't even be on the radar.

After these last couple of weeks the Republican Party deserves to be run out of power on a rail, wearing a nice new coat of tar and feathers. Seriously, fuck Marco Rubio and his Bible verses. These people are legitimately angry that we've left their brothers and sisters across the border...allies who fought and bled and died for us...to twist in the wind. All because of some shady secret deal that Trump made that, quite likely, only benefits him.

As others have said, though, Trump is the symptom, not the problem. He's the symptom of 80-some million privileged idiots who don't know anything, and don't want to know anything...because they figured out a long time ago that if they don't know anything they can believe whatever they want.

And seriously, they choose with malice aforethought to believe a lot of nonsensical dumb shit.

Well, boys and girls, this is what your shitty "beliefs" have gotten us, a President who thought he should have a "Victory Day" because it's too hot on the Fourth Of July. No, seriously, fuck these motherfuckers.

These fucking people, every last one of them, have spent the last three years attempting to do nothing more than turn the previous 240 years of American history into some kind of gimcrack celebration of themselves. Remember that these fools, one and all, were so pathetic that they bought into the character Donald Trump played on TV instead of paying attention and being aware of the shitty con-man that anybody who'd been watching anything other than the Apprentice and WWE for 30 years was god-damned well expecting him to be.

But it's worse than that.

Today, Trump called the Constitution "phony."

You know, our founding document and the basis for our entire government, that he supposedly swore to uphold.

As I've said before, when you elect people whose Word is shit, then America's Word becomes shit as well. An awful lot of our power in the world was simply based on the fact that the rest of the world thought they could trust us and the idea that the Man Behind The Curtain was at least somewhat competent. Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen. That level of trust is now gone.

And it's going to be a long, hard and in all probability bloody road to get it back. Why? Because American soft power functionally no longer exists at this point. 70+ years of work by American Presidents, diplomats, military personnel and average citizens alike is down the drain.

It's tempting to say this is because of one man, but the truth is there's an entire political party, and an entire segment of America's wealthy, dedicated to protecting this clown and trying like hell to get him a second term if he can survive the first one.

Why? Because they want their tax cuts.

About that? Oh yeah, getting our previous level of power in the world back ain't gonna be cheap. Imagine if you will, Cold War style defense lines stretching from the Finnish Arctic to the Ukraine to the Golan Heights and protecting whatever's left of Kurdistan from the Russians, while quite likely also covering our Gulf-State allies from the other direction protecting them from Iran...and don't think we won't also be having to protect Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and I'm going to go out on a limb and say Hong Kong will eventually be added to that mix as well...from Communist China.

And we're going to have to do it knowing we have less money than the Chinese do.

So yeah, it's either going to be "Tax The Rich" or get used to basically being a vassal to a Communist superpower. I can remember when even suggesting that America bend over for Commies would get you beat up. Now? We're paying our own enemies to lay the groundwork for beating us.

Also, I'm going to guess that American Capitalism is probably going to have to find some other source of cheap goods besides outsourcing everything to the Chinese. Unless we want to fund our own destruction.

See, Russia is, fundamentally, a one, maybe two-trick pony. They have their information warfare, and a good amount of military power left over from the Cold War...which provides a basis for the modest upgrades they've managed of late. But they don't have the economic power that China or the US does.

And we're busy squandering our power, because Trump is a moron. Screw the rest of the world! This goon thought he was going to get to remake America in his own image and turn it into a celebration of himself.

Fuck that stupid bullshit.

And while we're at it, never forget that Trump and the Republicans can't even be bothered to care about our own people.

They lie to us constantly, for one thing.

And I don't know about you, but I have a problem with people who lie to me.

You can want the lies to be true all day, but your wanting it does not make it so. Actions have consequences, decisions made on lies rather than on facts and truth will tend to have adverse consequences, and right now on a daily basis I see those consequences piling up all around us.

People will die, because too many American conservatives bought into an obvious lie and too many American liberals couldn't be bothered to get off their asses to stop this shit.

And since Impeachment is steadily becoming more of a thing, to the point where even just enough Republicans are starting to see the writing on the wall, I worry that Trump's fanatical base will resort to violence to try and keep him in power. So, we'll likely have to deal with that, too.

All this, because in 2016 too many people couldn't be bothered to see past their own pride and selfishness to do what an awful lot of them now know they should have.

There's a reason Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

There's a reason the Bible says "The Wages of Sin is Death."

Think on that.

And know that it's going to fall on all of us to put things right.

Yes, You too.

Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Five.