Who needs Zombies when we have Republicans?

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
~America the Beautiful.

When I got to work the other night, I saw that Fox News has already begun fear-mongering and spreading disinformation about Coronavirus.

Then, the next day, I saw this.

I'm not sure I get this shit. One news source sounds like it won't be happy until you're hiding under your bed with a shotgun, getting your Fox News alerts on your cell phone and waiting for the world to end...then this sack of shit tries to blow it all off as some kind of effort to "get" Donald Trump.

Because of course, it has to be. Conservatism, meet your orange Messiah.

I don't think he's gonna get you into heaven, though.

I really don't get these people, I just don't. They seem to want the end of civilization...but then expect that while they're hiding under their bed with a shotgun waiting for Boko Haram or Bernie Sanders or whoever they don't like this week to come crashing through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, that when they plug their phone into the one wall outlet they can reach...it'll still charge, their favorite fear-drug will keep broadcasting, etc. etc. The world is ending, but the President is still campaigning for re-election, the stock market just took a major (and probably overdue, to be honest) dump, and will likely tank even more...but it's still trading. Life goes on, and somehow the addled and blinded mob pretends that it doesn't.

Yet because Bernie Sanders idiotically enough praised the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro's literacy program on Sunday, to hear "Conservatives" tell it you'd think that common citizens were fighting Zombies in the streets of New York City with baseball bats, pipes and hockey sticks while rich people watched it all absent-minded like on CNN as the Army massed in the suburbs, setting up its full Cold War green kill-power to try to show the 24-hour news cycle that "something" was being done.

Yeah, except this ain't World War Z, and I'm nowhere near as good of an author as Max Brooks. And no, that doesn't excuse Bernie's abrasive attitude or political stupidity...

And then I see this.

Acting deputy secretary in Homeland Fucking Security and the son of a bitch is using a Johns Hopkins Coronavirus map app?

Say what you will about Bernie Sanders or Mike Bloomberg, I somehow think either one of them would be smart enough to be getting their updates from the CDC and various intelligence agencies, and if either didn't understand something I rather suspect they'd at least have a person with a brain in their head nearby to tell them to at least keep their questions in-house rather than Tweeting about it like they're Joe on the street and displaying their utter ignorance before all and sundry. I mean, don't get me wrong, I could see either of those guys screwing it up some other way, but not like this, not something that should be this goddamned obvious.

And of course, why would Republicans let something as serious as a global pandemic that's threatening to crash the global economy and already has the United States economy well on its way to recession get in the way of a good old fashioned political rat-fucking by somebody's ninny of a wife who has no business being any closer to people in government than an after-work cocktail party?

Not to mention, if it hasn't already it's about to slam the door on a hell of a lot of global just-in-time supply chains but good...kind of hard in this day and age to compile lists of "the disloyal" to weed out, all without computers and networks that function, because without a functioning global supply chain we're not much more than a few weeks or months out from just that as things stand. So, unless your old bag bitch ass wants to write that shit out by hand I'd shut the fuck up.

 'Cause ya know what? That's how they did it back in the day. You want to try and act like you're some kind of Dark Ages Catholic big shit motherfucker? Get out a quill pen and write it your own damn self...except oh, wait, in the kind of world Opus Dei thinks it wants to go back to, European women...right along with their men, even men of power...often did not know how to read and write.

In the Dark Ages, the Islamic World was a place of science and learning, while Charlemagne and his lords struggled to master the high art of writing their own names.

Oh, and don't ask what that kind of world might hold for Clarence, either. I'm pretty sure neither of you want to know.

Here's a pro tip from way back before they had computers, when global pandemics took longer to spread and your ass wouldn't have been allowed to speak to a man in any position of power other than your husband, Ginny.

Republicans act like they want to burn heretics, and yet somehow for all their claimed conservatism and historical understanding and religiosity, they don't understand that one sure way to be branded a heretic or a witch and put to the question (torture) and condemned to the fires was to be a woman seeking power or even control over her own life or anything beyond that which the Church dictated was acceptable.

And here's another freebie for your dumb ass:

The loyalty of civil servants, elected representatives, government officials and military personnel is the the Constitution of the United States. The Framers put that in there for a goddamned reason, because they didn't want to live in that kind of a world and neither do the vast majority of people now living today.

Stick that in your angry-ass looking mug and chew on it, bitch.

And then there's this goddamned nut, some Eastern EU Nazi-wannabe from the look of him.

In this guy's world, Literacy is "Communist."

Listen folks, I was taught to read and write by Christians, Baptists specifically, most of them certainly conservatives. These were people who did not shy from telling me that the Church of a different historical era would have wanted me to be an illiterate fool, so as to preserve its own power. It wasn't enough, they taught me, to just believe. You had to know what you believed, and why you believed it, and believe it because you wanted to. That meant knowing Church doctrines and theology and the Word so you could check for yourself if somebody was lying to you.

And checking somebody's words against the Bible requires being literate.

Understanding what the Bible says, requires being literate, not only in how to read words and string sentences together, knowing the Word requires an understanding of culture, of history, and of the principles of rhetoric and writing so as to understand parables and themes.

Because let me tell you something, if these faithless sons of bitches will lie to you about some virus that can take your life on this Earth, they'll sure as hell lie to you about the Truth. They'll sure as hell lie to you about the Word of God so they can take your life in the next world, too.

Because these people? From the lowest MAGA-hat wearing schmuck all the way up to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? They don't want to be Presidents or even kings, they want to be gods.

Without literacy, without understanding, they could tell you that the Bible is an auto parts manual, or that an auto parts manual is the Bible. And don't think these fucking people don't have just exactly enough contempt for their own followers to try precisely that, if this mess goes on for much longer.

And don't think many of their followers wouldn't be braying like jackasses right along with them if they could be convinced such might scratch their itch for partisan hatred or upset the people they don't like.

It's not about Jesus, and it never was. It's not, in any meaningful sense, about political conservatism as that term's meaning is commonly understood. It's about hate, and nihilism, and power and wealth for the very few at the expense of the rest of us.

A functioning modern nation, or hell even an agrarian Enlightenment-era republic that still held part of its populace in chains and denied the vote to all but property-owning men...requires and always has required an educated and informed citizenry and an effective non-partisan government apparatus to run it. These fucking people? They don't want that. If you think they give a fuck about America other than what they might steal from it, you have another thing coming.

Any functioning political or religious system, let alone a thriving one, requires educated people who give a shit to provide input to keep it from stagnation and death.

By that estimation the Republican Party died ten years ago. It's since turned into an undead horde that's trying to kill us all.

One more thing: The pull quote, that first stanza of America The Beautiful? That song was written by a teacher, Katherine Lee Bates, who is today generally understood to have been a lesbian and lived with another woman for most of her life.

Yet conservatives sing that song all the time.

Education, expertise, facts, history, and proper theology matter, people. Truth matters, even when it's inconvenient, in fact especially so, because if you go by it and live according to it, it can be an absolute defense if you're accused. By the same token, after awhile, if you don't believe in the things you say, it shows and people are going to find out. Respect is earned, by every action, every day. Like one's credibility or honor, once lost...you can't get it back.

There is a baseline of reality, period.

To believe anything else is to end up accepting the absurd notion that a virus cares about your politics.

It's time to get serious and drive these motherfuckers out of power. Vote, among other things, like your life depends on it...because it probably does.

Yes we can, again (Part Two.)

We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen. ~Mitt Romney

Yesterday, Clint Eastwood endorsed Mike Bloomberg.

Clint Eastwood, Action movie actor, Army veteran, film director, former mayor of Carmel-By-The-Sea, Hollywood Republican, That guy.

He endorsed Trump in 2020, though he went quiet a very short time later, and as regards the results, none too pleased is he, apparently.

Welcome to the party, pal.

If you're a Republican and you've lost a guy like Clint Eastwood, it's basically time to hang it up and go the fuck home.

But it's not Clint's or Mitt's or Ronnie's or George's party anymore, is it? Speaking as a former Republican myself I think that's pretty damn sad.

That the Republican Party has, for all intents and purposes been taken over by the drooling, howling mob of Y'all Qaeda dipshits is even more so.

Either Republicans have abandoned everything they ever claimed to believe in, set it on fire and left it to burn, or it was all a lie in the first place.

Neither option is great for a person like me, and all I did was vote for the sons of bitches up until 2004. By 2006 they'd lost me, and in 2008 I voted for Obama and never looked back. I voted for Clinton in 2016 and I'll vote for whoever they put up this time.

Because that's where the line marked "Decent people" is now.

Imagine how it must be for Clint Eastwood, who essentially set his reputation on fire with a rambling 12-minute speech, haranguing an empty chair that was a supposed stand-in for Barack Obama.

Dirty Harry, That Guy...reduced to sounding like a silly old doddering fool arguing with an empty chair and both promptly and deservedly getting blasted on social media for it...all for Republican dogma that basically boils down to "Fuck You" and "More money for me."

His reputation never quite seemed to recover, and aside from American Sniper...not much of what old Clint has done since has even managed to get my attention, until this.

And of course, people like Kevin Sorbo and other Hollywood Trump Supporters will probably try to use Clint's exit to boost their own profiles.

The only thing this Republican bullshit ever gets is worse.

I've hit the point where I feel like not just now, but for a long time, conservatism as it's slowly morphed into its present state has been becoming something that's no good for anything but taking people in, chewing them up and spitting them out the second they're no longer useful.

As I've said before, the reactions of these fucking people to the deaths of George H.W. Bush and John McCain proved to be instructive to me. Republicanism has become a cult.

And if we don't all take a stand against all this crazy fanatical Trump crap, it's going to devour America...and all of us.

I don't know about you, but that's not the epitaph I want.

If Clint Eastwood can stand up and endorse one of the other party's candidates I think that needs to be a wake-up call for a lot of people.

If we want a better country, we have to be better citizens.

Yes, we can.

It is the tragedy of Republicanism that all they can say is "No, we can't."

This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
~Barack Obama

Part 1

Yes we can, again (Part One.)

 And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A. we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

That was Bernie Sanders at some point yesterday.

The. Fuck?

I'm not going to lie, I'm about as sick of Bernie as I am of Trump, and so far as I know I'm not the only one. It doesn't help that I'm a one issue voter at this point...and that one issue is getting rid of Donald Trump and getting Republican assholes out of power.

Mostly, I'm sick of the entitlement, and I'm sick of this stupid idea that there are something something Gazpacho secret hordes of "Progressives" in places like Iowa and Wisconsin just waiting to vote for this guy.

And that's a bunch of crap. I literally know one rabid Bernie fanatic. To my knowledge, he doesn't vote.

Yes, a hell of a lot of (white) people seem to like Bernie, but just as many people (in general, in more demographics) don't. Lots of Black and Brown people do not like Bernie, and while he seems to resonate with a small sliver of the Republican electorate...most of those people fall into two camps; They're either Never Trump and thus provisionally on our side anyway...or they're "burn it all down" upset-the-apple-cart, we just want to have a revolution types who ought not to be listened to anyway.

And then Bernie, or somebody who's running his Twitter account, Tweets this silly bullshit?

Let me tell you why that's a bad idea; It's a bad idea because the other side's silly bullshit is "Should Black people have rights?" or "Should our global economy and modern society exist?"

That's what Trump is saying when he's saying that Gone With The Wind, which came out in 1939, should still be winning Oscars in 2020. In 1939, Isolationism and Segregation were ideas that were alive and well in the United States of America, although at least for some (mostly white) people, Democratic Socialism was very much a thing. Abroad, fascism was also on the march, and even here in America, Nazi rallies filled Madison Square Garden. Yet also, at the same time, Communist Party USA was very much at the apex of its existence...though it'd soon be kneecapped by the Soviets themselves by changing priorities when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed...something even the Soviets at the time admitted would likely only buy them a few more months to prepare against the German war machine...months that, as history would have it, they didn't take advantage of because Stalin "had faith" in Hitler's word.

Remind you of Putin and Trump? It does me.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

Ya know I've been studying this period of history, along with the Civil War, since I could study things...and the war that started that September, two and a half months before Gone With The Wind was even released...was pretty goddamned bad for a lot of people, and shattered the Eurocentric international order that had existed before.

What Trump is saying, is that he wants to go back to the way things were when he wasn't even born yet. What Trump is saying, is that he wants to go back to a time when Black people could only be in movies as servants, and then they often weren't allowed to attend the premieres of films they were in.

And the drooling mob, most of which has never actually seen Gone With The Wind, roars its approval. Hell, I'm 46 and I've never seen the whole thing and I never cared to. Outside of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" I'd be hard-pressed to quote anything from it.

This is the kind of backward stupidity we're up against.

And for all this, Republicans effectively treat Trump as God.

Sovereign?

Unlimited grace?

I'm a bit confused here, whether Matt "Drunken Ambulance Chaser" Gaetz is referring to Trump as if he were Jesus Christ, or a king.

Neither is good, neither is what America is supposed to be about.

If you, whatever your politics, cannot see that America was not designed for this kind of crap and that it's dangerous no matter who does it, you're part of the damned problem.

The absolute truth is, fuck anybody who looks at their one group and says "you can't stop us." I don't give a fuck, your group is not as big as Trump's cult and that's all there fucking is to it. The absolute truth is that if we as a people want to take our country back from all these fanatics we have to stand together. Because if we don't, fuck Afghanistan, fuck Iraq, fuck Syria and fuck Ukraine, the next war Americans fight in is going to be right here in America and nobody in their goddamned right mind wants that shit. The problem, of course, is that there's too few people in their right mind in the first place.

I'll vote for Bernie or whoever, if I have to, because like I said I'm a one issue voter and that one issue is getting rid of Trump.

But I ain't gotta like this situation, and I don't.

We've reached the point where neither Barack Obama, nor John McCain, let alone Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, could likely get elected on their own party's ticket...and I'm going to be honest, that scares the shit out of me, because I remember what I saw and what things were like in certain places 25 years ago and I've studied what happened 46 years before that, and I know what's next.

Imagine if you will, a second US Civil War, but with three factions, rather than two...the only people who will profit are the weapons manufacturers and the coffin-makers. That's where this mess is taking us.

It's got to stop.

It's a mess now, but it will only get worse if America keeps dividing itself into far-right and far-left camps and the center evaporates...and because there are a hell of a lot of people like me who'll vote Democrat no matter who they put up...oh yes, the center will evaporate. I'm a goddamned centrist former Republican. This Trump situation has already pushed me further "Left" than I ever imagined I'd be in this life...and part of that is simply because that's where the "decent person" line has moved to.

While we're at it, it might just pay to take a hard look at who's on the other side of that line, and for what reasons. Republicans have, functionally, broken the country...because they thought they would get money and power for doing so.

Whatever direction the Democratic party is moving in ideologically, they're all we've got to stop this mess. We gotta get Trump out, we can fix the rest later.

And that will take decades, which will also have to be spent dealing with armed idiots who will still be referencing Gone With The Wind like it's a good thing, in 2039. If you don't see that as a problem, or think we need to start trying to do something about it, I can't help you.

Bowing down is not an option, but neither is giving up your soul, and the more divided we are, the easier it is for the bad guys to win. We don't have to like it, but we do have to live with it.

We can do this, but we need to stop making things harder on ourselves.

With the destructive power of today's weapons, keeping the peace is not just a goal; it's a sacred obligation. But maintaining peace requires more than sincerity and idealism—more than optimism and good will. As you know well, peace is a product of hard, strenuous labor by those dedicated to its preservation. It requires realism, not wishful thinking. ~Ronald Reagan

Part 2.

The stupidity of modern conservatism, Part 2.

Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages, That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: And whoso fall not down and worship shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. ~Daniel 3:4-6

I saw this on Monday.

"Fox News is so biased it's disgusting, they do not want Trump to win."

Fox News. The same network that I said the other day should just merge with TBN at this point and they could just cut out the pretense and call themselves the "Trump Ball-washing Network."

I see this fucking shit all the time, Fox News is so blatantly, childishly obvious about lying for Republicans in general and Trump in particular that it's not funny. And they're not even good at it, the lies are blatantly obvious at this point. Fox News has become the ITAR-TASS of the Republican Party.

But "They do not want Trump to win." Sure, bro. Sure they don't.

The actual truth here is that Trump isn't getting enough of an ego-boost from Fox News, and has moved on to stronger drugs. I mean, I'm really not sure what more they could do, except perhaps have one of those Blonde, vapid Fox News Babes come and tit-wank Mushroom Dick every goddamned morning.

Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and appears to be a willfully unhappy person on top of that. There is literally nothing that Fox News, Republicans, etc. etc. can do that he'll ever be happy with for long, and eventually even his Y'all Qaeda base isn't going to do it for him. When we're up to dumb-shit tractor-pull stunts like having 'The Beast' presidential limo on the track at Daytona and this Professional Wrestling-type feud he's trying to gin up with Bill Barr, it's not hard to imagine that, like a Heroin addict who's been at it too long, he's trying to find a way to inject the cheers of his drooling mob straight into his veins.

But, like any addict, fundamentally nothing will ever be good enough.

And when somebody with the kind of no-shit reputation and hard-earned experience that Mike Pompeo should have is reduced to, in effect, screaming "Love me, daddy!" in front of an international forum and then trying to bully other countries that have absolutely no damned reason to go along with the American Conservative Lockstep March Ever Rightward Into Oblivion...out of self-preservation if nothing else...well, ya'll in some trouble.

This is what Republicanism has reduced itself to, willingly, on purpose, with malice aforethought.

Somehow, this observation managed to be an upgrade from the day before when I saw that Richard Dawkins is apparently defending eugenics.

Yeah, like I'm going to trust either a fanatical right-wing racist or a militant Atheist so strident that he turns MY increasingly-tired-of-religion agnostic ass off from wanting to consider Atheism purely on grounds of not wanting to be associated with this rabid dickbag, with a dangerous concept like Eugenics, especially given the horrors that idea has inflicted on humanity?
Fuck these motherfuckers.

This isn't the first time I've seen something (See my commentary about Richard Spencer, among others) that suggests to me that at the end of the day, there IS no such thing as "White Enough" for these motherfuckers. This is does, however, back up long-held suspicions that I've had for years about people like Richard Dawkins. Basically, science without morality is fucking dangerous, proceed with this crap at your peril.

And let's not forget the daily dose of paranoia.

There's a Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama spouting paranoid bullshit about "Sharia Law" taking over in ALABAMA, where you cannot throw a rock without risking hitting a Pentecostal or Southern Baptist church.

Listen, folks, at the end of the day do you really think these fucking people are actually that damned paranoid that they really believe Alabama is somehow going to turn into an Islamic State? At first blush, yes, it does look like some goddamned paranoid half-wit pulled this out of their ass because something something Gazpacho, but if you don't think there's evil conniving motherfuckers that would use such statements to eliminate any Christian opposition to their plans...especially considering that at the rate he's been going for the past couple of weeks Trump probably will try to declare himself Christ before the election...you seriously have another thing coming. There absolutely is no being "Christian enough" for these assholes, either.

And I know this from hard experience 20 fucking years ago, the current state of American Evangelicalism much more resembles my ex-wife and her nonsensical false prophecies than it does anything I was taught when I was being raised in church as a young Christian kid.

Why Love Thy Neighbor or do the hard work of living a Christian life according to the Word and obeying God as you understand Him, when you can have all of the self-righteous power-mongering without doing any of the work?! Why try to live the right way or do the hard work of dealing with anything that makes you uncomfortable when all of your problems and anything you don't like can simply be dismissed as a Jewish plot?

Pro tip here: Jesus was a Jew. Yo, the Bible doesn't even try to hide that fact.

And if you don't think they'd use that as an excuse to throw Him out the second anybody insists on caring for the poor, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, etc. You clearly haven't been paying attention.

Conservatism today is the Gospel of Fuck You, I've Got Mine.

But it'll get worse, it's turning into the Gospel of "...And I want to kill you and take your stuff, too."

We are dealing with people who'd rather hate than eat, who'd rather kill and steal than live...and only their having wormed their way into positions of power lends a very thin veneer of legality to this.

But aren't these the same people who claim to follow Laws not made by Man, who demand that everybody else should as well?

Funny how when push comes to shove, they throw even the most basic laws laid down by their own Savior right out the window and then expect you to be stupid enough not to notice, or to think that somehow you're one of the "deserving" ones who will somehow be exempt from their shitty bullshit, and you know it never works that way in real life. So, as a final rationalization, they offer that "Those People" will be hurt more than you will, so it's all good, right?

Insert class or ethnic or racial hatreds here, pretty much. Fundamentally, hate is their final offer. At this point it seems to be all they have left, or at least all they're counting on.

Republicans think you're stupid, oh yes, they do. And if they can't convince themselves that you're stupid they'll just assume you're as shitty as they are.

Listen up, yo. If you haven't figured out by now that Republican religion is a complete and total crock of shit, generated purely to get Man's approval for their shitty agendas, I can't actually help you.

If you can't watch Donald Trump do something like pardon a shitty criminal like Rod Blagojevich and not realize that these sons of bitches who are in power now never, ever, believed in one goddamned word that ever came out of their own mouths before this Trump bullshit started, as far as I'm concerned ya'll dumber than them blondes they put up there on Fox News to please the dicks of shitty old white men and ya'll more confused than Ben Carson in a history class and have less pride or self respect than Devin Nunes does.

These people don't give a fuck about you, they don't give a fuck about your beliefs or your morals or your religion...and they have driven out, mocked, ridiculed and very publicly fired anybody they could who did give a fuck about any of that stuff.  I mean, seriously, when Mitt Romney is all that appears to be left to defend conservatism as most people have traditionally understood it, ya'll in some trouble.

Listen, nobody is going to stop this shit, but us.

We have to vote the bastards out, ALL of them, we have to fight. We have to do it like our lives depend on it...because they almost certainly do.

The stupidity of modern conservatism, Part 1.

As your body grows bigger, your mind grows flowers. It's great to learn, 'cause knowledge is power.
~School House Rock Anthem.

A few days ago, Trump spelled Devin Nunes' name wrong in a Tweet. While this was not terribly unusual, I found that the response to it sort of was.
For example:

Imagine abasing yourself before Donald Trump, only to find out that he doesn't know your fucking name. Go on, just think about that for a second. Imagine what kind of low-life, no self-respect shitty person you'd have to be to keep on supporting that guy. And then imagine, that dozens of your fellow Republicans would go on to ape Trump's misspelling of your name. What does that say about Republicans, do you think? Imagine being that guy, and finding out that all your buddies care more about not contradicting their newfound Orange God...than they do about treating you like a proper human being?

You know, the semi-literate fucking dumb ass who suddenly is trying to look like it's a natural thing for him to be quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, as if to claim that staunch abolitionist, supporter of Democracy and transcendentalist philosopher like Emerson would somehow endorse his stupid play to become king of America?

Here's a pro tip: During most of Emerson's life the primary partisan issue dividing America was slavery. During that time, about the only people that northern Abolitionists typically disliked more than white slave-owning Southerners...was the British, because especially in the minds of people like Emerson who'd lived through some of the conflicts with the British crown...the concept of Monarchy was utterly anathema.

But ya know, the level of stupidity that I kept encountering over the course of this week actually can get worse.

Here is Dr. Trump Ball Washer, *Cough* excuse me...Dr. Robert Jeffress saying that Christians don't care about Trump being a non-believing, lying adulterous scumbag because of his "pro-faith policies." You know, if you were an actual Believer, you might understand that on a deeply fundamental level there's no way that you're ever going to get an apparent Atheist like Trump to make the United States a more Christian nation. If you were an actual Christian, you might see that you and your people have to be more than a political special interest group that seeks to get stuff from the government in the most morally relativistic way possible. If you'd ever believed any of the words that came out of your own mouth, prior to 2016, you'd likely see that you're literally gambling the reputation of your faith and your present and future Christian witness...and that of all of your brothers and sisters in the faith...in exchange for getting a few right-wing treats now, most of whom can easily be undone by the next President, without Congress or the voters having any form of redress whatever until the next election.

It seems like there's a basic comprehension fail at the root of this. Perhaps a basic comprehension fail in the service of getting stuff, but a basic comprehension fail regardless.

If anybody wonders why I'm an Agnostic? People like Dr. Robert Jeffress, that's why. These are the same fucking people who preach against abortion and adultery and homosexuality while walking around with Donald Trump's balls in their mouth.

Not to be outdone, perhaps intending to make sure my week went out with a bang...my friend CJ found this shit.

White. Nationalist. Reggae.

Reggae is the most popular form of music in Jamaica, a synthesis of Jazz and Soul and R&B that is deeply linked to the Rastafari religion. While it does often contain a powerful undercurrent of 'Black' liberation, in practice it rarely comes out specifically that way. In point of fact some of the greatest Reggae Artists, like Bob Marley, are generally considered great humanitarians in a more general sense.

Fundamentally, the reason that Reggae has an audience besides Black people or Jamaicans, up to and including this nitwit on Facebook is because it speaks to the human condition and resonates with something in the souls of all people.

Let's look at this:

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pits

But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but our self can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill di book 

~Bob Marley, Redemption Song

Is there any component to the lyrics of Redemption Song...Rastafari dialect or no...that even mentions ethnicity or race? No, there is not. Rastafari, like any decent religion, is about liberation of the soul from earthly constraints and woes, not at the expense of another, but in an effort to participate in the divine conversation and reach out and touch that which is infinite in the first place.

Perhaps more to the point, what the fuck is this stupid silly bullshit? White Nationalist Reggae? Let's change some variables here: How about Black Liberation Country, or life-affirming Swedish Death Metal? It's such a contradiction in terms that all the rational mind, even one of average intelligence, really can do is fucking laugh at it. I mean, did somebody just completely fail basic reading comprehension here, much less ability to parse basic themes or have the slightest understanding of culture, geography or history?

No, and it's just more of the same old stupid shit: "Hey, it's us, the white people. We're here to appropriate your culture and take your shit without the slightest awareness that most of it came about as a reaction to us destroying your culture and lives and sense of place in the world and shipping your ancestors across the ocean from where they were born to begin with."

As Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station often says "No more self-awareness than a dog licking its own asshole in public."

That's Whiteness for you, and keep in mind I'm a white guy quoting another white guy talking about it. I mean, seriously what the fuck is wrong with people?

I saw yesterday that apparently Russian news sites are claiming there's a second US Civil War brewing.

Ya know, given the level of stupidity I'm seeing lately I'm not the least bit sure they're wrong. I think a lot of people on the Right know they fucked up at this point. A lot of people in the middle and on the Left are legitimately angry. There seems to be a growing desire particularly on the part of conservatives in particular to try and shoot their way out of the problem. And there's a grim realization on the part of a lot of liberals and even-slightly-sane conservatives, that one way or another, the only options that exist in such a case is are shoot back, or to die.

Because of course, the "problem" as conservatives are choosing to see it, is that "Other people exist." If you really expect these dipshits to see that they fucked up and look at their own behavior you haven't been paying attention. Hell, most of the people who've even said one thing against either Trump or the current ongoing racist shit-show have been anathematized by their fellows and have even more of a target on their backs than you and I do.

Trust me, there's no better way to make these people hate you than to remind them of what the truth actually is and call bullshit on their fantasy.

Murder-publicans.

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. ~Malcolm X.

A few days ago, I wrote that there's a lot of supposed "Conservatives" and Republicans out there, that aspire to be murderers. A couple hours ago, I saw this.

Some fucking "Oathkeeper" asshole wannabe threatening Virginia state delegate Kathy Tran, over who the hell knows what.

So, how did we go from "Pro-life" to threatening to murder babies with baseball bats?

How in the hell is this acceptable? As far as I'm concerned this Dave Briggman asshole should get his ass whupped, then go to jail.

I mean, who in the fuck talks like that to another human being?

Who, other than a modern American conservative, could have such little regard for the life of a child or the sanctity of the family?

Don't look away, answer the question. How in the hell is this acceptable?!

All my life, people have been meeting brute force with soul force, campaigning, organizing, protesting, working together. LGBT folks, non-Christians and People of Color, among many others. But, for that to work, at least some of the people on the other side have to have a conscience, or at least a limit of endurance somewhere along the way  Public opinion generally tells after awhile as well, and fundamentally politics is a game of addition and possibility, not of purity and subtraction.

Actually, for a lot of Republicans, that's true. The Republican Party is getting smaller.

But it's also going from conspiracy theory crazy to strap on a bomb-vest crazy.

Republicans have set everything they claimed to believe in on fire. Republicans have been campaigning against abortion for 40+ years.

But now, just straight up infanticide is Okay, so long as the child being killed is the child of a Democrat?

Republicans have spent four years losing their minds, and about ten days now getting much worse.

And they're still at it.

Sooner or later, it's going to come down to a fight. Sooner or later brute force is going to have to meet brute force. The rest of us have to love our freedom, our lives, and our neighbors as much as they love their hate and racism and the thoughts of killing everybody else that they whack off to.

Sometimes soul force doesn't work and you have to fight.

And if you want to survive that, you have to win.

Nobody cares about Dixville Notch.

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. ~Malcolm X.

The Chinese keep trying to make it sound like the Coronavirus outbreak is under control, but the general consensus is that the numbers they keep feeding the rest of the world are fake.

Last night, I saw video of Chinese government officials ordering people to weld apartment building doors shut.

Does that seem like "under control" to you? It sure doesn't to me.

I saw something last week that said if this situation isn't resolved by February 14th, the world economy is going to start feeling the effects as all those just-in-time supply chains start to run out of stuff, which will have massive second-order effects on the world economy, starting with the USA...and our economy is basically already a mirage, at least for the non-super-rich. People in some areas of China are going back to work, which many people theorize will simply spread the virus faster.

I saw a video of an old man committing suicide, and another of a person apparently committing suicide, and yet another of some dude ramming his car through a police barricade. Does that seem like "Situation normal" especially in a country like China? People are being beaten for not having face masks, even when they simply do not have the money to buy any.

Even if you have money, there may simply not be any surgical masks to buy. I also read a few days ago, that Chinese people in other countries are buying masks to send to relatives in China.

Meanwhile, governments in the rest of the world seem not to be doing very much at all, and the PRC internal response seems to be a Potemkin village, except as regards where brutality is concerned.

Pro-tip, Chi-Coms, diseases don't get intimidated. What happens when the Police are incapacitated by infections, or the People's Liberation Army? It doesn't take more than a few to incapacitate an entire unit. Who will care about the power of the Party or the State at that point?

If this situation continues to escalate, don't be surprised if the Chinese bomb their own cities and massacre their own civilians.

Might be a better idea to give a fuck about your own people, rather than just your own power base and personal image.

Why do I bring this up? Because this is what the decline and fall of civilization looks like. This virus got its start in the coastal cities, allegedly in a major commercial-grade fish market, and spread to and took off in Houbei province in the interior, especially in the city of Wuhan...which is a major transportation hub. What happened there translated into effects on most of the rest of China. A lot of the photos and videos that I saw last night were from Heilong Jiang province, right on the Amur river and thus, the Russian border. Think about that for a second. This thing threatens the whole world, and there's functionally no way to contain it. It's a virus, strands of DNA attached to a means to spread itself. Russia is next, then Europe and Africa, then us, although to be fair, many countries including the USA already have at least a few cases...and some deaths and recoveries as well.

Why, indeed, do I bring this up?

Because while China is in chaos and our President spent yesterday evening talking all kinds of stupid shit at a rally in New Hampshire and hoping to disrupt the Democratic primary by doing so, the media was nattering endlessly about five primary votes in some tiny town called Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, including how the sole Republican voter (and somebody else) voted for Mike Bloomberg, thus handing Magic Mike a plurality of the votes and winning him the (nonexistent) Republican primary in the town.

Doesn't this seem a bit...counterproductive...when the world is on fire and the Republicans are openly, proudly broadcasting to all and sundry that they don't give a fuck about any democratic anything that does not exclusively favor them? I mean, these people have turned on every single one of their own who won't go along with the fascist shit-show even if it's just one time...and the media and Twitter spent half the night chattering about five votes cast in the first town where today's primary election started.

Maybe it's just me, but some people's priorities seem massively out of whack with reality right now. America, as usual, is parochial and self-obsessed.

I get that.

But right now, Trump is ramping the existential fear-mongering up to 11. Never mind that the Democrats don't have the slightest means (not least in a democracy they wish to preserve) to "take everything, take your wealth, take your guns." That would be theft, illegal and wrong, not to mention unconstitutional...and anybody with a brain in their head and the least understanding of US history and society not to mention the Democratic Party's actual platform knows this.

Of course if you have a brain in your head at a Trump rally, you're most likely there as an observer, not a participant.

Does anybody really think, at this point, that these fucking people will accept it when they lose? They've already been programmed for endless war against anybody who's not some kind of hard-right fascist dickbag by 30+ years of "Conservative" talk radio as pioneered by Rush Limbaugh.

More to the point, this is the apotheosis of making literally everything some kind of hair on fire existential crisis. I have an ex, who at this point cannot seem to tell fantasy from reality. She claims to be part of some kind of Christian prepper group. No, she does not know how to survive, even for a little while, if things go to hell. She's never butchered an animal or grown her own food, never fired a gun (and I offered to teach her 20 years ago) never hunted and probably can't use a compass, read a map or (with her health) walk long distances...much less defend herself physically.

And I checked out her group's website. The group is basically an anti-Dominionist, anti-Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal survivalist group. My ex doesn't seem to have even paid the least bit of attention to that, instead thinking she'll get money and power by being some kind of "facilitator" or some dumb thing. I think she figures she'll bullshit and manipulate and "pray" her way out of trouble. When things go to hell, nobody's going to have time for that...and she and a lot of people like her are in for a rude surprise as to what the one thing of value that they actually have even is. I ain't saying that's right. I'm saying I listened to what my bros said when they came back from Afghanistan.

And very little of it has anything to do with what right-wingers think the collapse of civilization will entail.

And that's why this kind of crap is dangerous. If things go as sideways here even only as bad as they have in China, a hell of a lot of these people will kill themselves, by doing stupid shit, by negligence with weapons, by religious dumb-fuckery and by in general thinking that they know a lot more than they do. Not a damn one of these fucking people has ever lived in any society that wasn't America-as-it-is. Not a damn one of these fucking people has ever lived in anything but a democracy with all the conveniences and freedoms the vast majority of us still enjoy.

If anybody thinks that's going to continue indefinitely in a situation where roughly a third of the American body politic wants to pull civilization down around its ears because endless hatred or personal resentments or racism, and every last one of them thinks they'll be the Lord of the Manor, the Swell with a field full of slaves to do his labor, the Warlord, or just some kind of tough guy who women throw themselves at, or possibly all of the above....you have another thing coming.

There's a lot of Republicans, hell, a lot of gun-loving white dudes in general, that basically aspire to be murderers.

Mostly because they wouldn't survive in any other sort of circumstance using that weapon, especially when people are shooting back. And of course, there will be people on the other side returning fire, accurately. There always are.

I bet a bunch of these people have thought about welding doors shut and trapping a bunch of people. But how many of them actually know how to use a welding torch without setting themselves on fire, let alone do so under combat conditions with people shooting at them?

How many Americans can bear down and focus and ignore bullets zipping by your heads?

Lots of people think they're going to be John Wayne. They forget that even John Wayne wasn't really John Wayne. In a more modern sense, a lot of people seem to think they're going to be John McClane, from the Die Hard movies. How many of those people are even as fit as Bruce Willis?

Real life ain't no action movie. And you ain't gonna be king.

And it just, numerically, physically, etc. doesn't fucking work that way. It's usually just one guy, whoever can browbeat and bully and manipulate, and maybe shoot a few people, and he's almost certainly not you.

Only one guy gets to be Radovan Karadzic. You're not that guy.

Oh sure, civilization will prevail in some places, maybe even most places, but would you want to live in one of the places where it doesn't? Whole vast areas of the United States were totally unaffected by the Civil War. Sucks if you lived in Maryland or Virginia or Tennessee, though...let alone Georgia. There were whole countries in the Balkans that weren't severely affected, or affected until later, by the breakup of Yugoslavia. Situation was kinda hell on the residents of Mostar and Sarajevo right out the gate, though. Can't you even manage to care about other people?

If you don't want to live with air raids, bombings, social disruptions, power outages for days at a time, terrorist attacks or troops in the field, why do you think anybody else would?

We need to stop this shit, show up in enough numbers to vote the Republicans out that they have to reconsider the course they're on, or at least enough to localize the damage...and then still be prepared for more conflict.

This has to end, I'm sick of the hate, I'm sick of these people pissing all over everything I was ever taught that America was supposed to be about, and my question to you is...why aren't you?

 If you want to win, you have to care more about human rights than the motherfuckers care about taking them away from you. You can't live with or reason with people who don't think you have a right to exist.

Remember that.

Like tears in rain.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

Over the weekend, white supremacists marched in Washington D.C.

Hold the fuck on, is this 2020, or 1920?

This morning, I woke up to find that "Hanoi Jane" was trending on Twitter because Jane Fonda was one of the presenters at the fucking Oscars.

Seriously? Are we still fucking around with "Things that offended the Baby Boomers 50 years ago?"

Are we living in the 21st century, or stuck in some sort of time warp that repeatedly returns us to 1972? I'm 46 years old for fuck's sake. Jane's dipshit trip to North Vietnam and posing on an NVA Anti-Aircraft gun happened before I was even born. I'm sorry, but I think it's past time we get over it, and there's only one side of our political spectrum that's perpetuating this silly bullshit.

Yes, conservatives, I'm looking at you.

I mean, come the fuck on, people. Why in this day and age, are we still dealing with the same type of shit that we were a couple of years before my Grandpa was born, or the year before I was born?

Admittedly, one part of this country has made tremendous progress just in the last decade...while another is still dealing with shit from decades, or a century ago, because people can't accept stuff that didn't even happen in their generation, or in the case of Baby Boomers, stuff that they themselves may have been instrumental in bringing about, because it didn't end up with them being considered special enough, or something. Why the fuck do we have to waste our time with these assholes trying to re-litigate the 20th century? We could be halfway to the nearest stars by now, or could have cured cancer, or any number of other great things...except that some people would rather die of cancer or choke to death on our own polluted atmosphere than stop hating Black people.

If you don't think that ends up being a problem for everybody, you have another thing coming.

Also, as of last week apparently, starting with Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast (and just why do we even have such a thing, again?) and continuing with none other than Jerry Falwell Jr. conservatives, including Evangelicals...are now preaching about the glories of irreligion, at least as regards any religion that might constrain behavior or negatively affect one's Party loyalty. As I've said before, there's getting to be something very...Soviet...about the Republican Party.

And that is, that all must be subordinated to some stupid ideology, irregardless of doctrine or fact or personal belief. I'm serious, if you don't see what's wrong with that, I can't help you.

And mind you, Republican ideology is defined by hate and racism and shitty attitudes...and it was that way long before Donald Trump showed up.

It started with the Southern Strategy, as admitted to by Republican strategists like Lee Atwater themselves.

In point of fact, it's become so much more that way, that even the original avatars of this problem from a decade ago...a bunch of the Tea Party Republicans, of all people...have become out-caste within the Republican Party, mostly because they have some kind of principles, or at least some loyalty to something other than a shitty political program.

Tea Party Joe Walsh, of all people, has dropped out of the Presidential race and declared his intention to support any Democrat, even if it's a 'socialist' like Bernie Sanders.

If that guy can get it together, why can't the Bernie Bros and the Iowa Democratic Party do so?

Over the last few years I've watched this dude go from rabid StormTrumper to full-on supporter of the Democrats, often grappling with his own issues live on social media. Maybe there's a message there, America, it's time to get your shit together and do the right thing.

The other day, James Carville, once the head political honcho of the Clinton campaign and later, White House, said much the same. It's time we quit screwing around, and start getting shit right.

Despair won't help anyone, division won't help anyone either. Apathy and ignorance are the enemy...and if we don't stop this mess, apathy and hate and willful ignorance will kill millions of people and this mess will end with Americans shooting at each other. It may end that way anyway...but if we hand the advantage to the side that wants to shoot down their neighbors it's only going to be worse.

Why? Because if we allow Donald Trump to be re-elected, we're handing America over to silly fools who are threatened by...a Korean film director giving the acceptance speech for an Oscar for a Korean film...in Korean.

Like, the fuck do goddamned morons like Jon Miller think he's going to do...start talking in Esperanto?

And do you know what the sickest part of this stupid bullshit is, as far as I'm concerned? I don't give a fuck if he works for The Blaze or not, Jon Miller is a Black dude and you'd think he'd understand that no amount of talking like a white racist is ever going to make his dumb ass safe from the actual white racists, who can always just find one of their own to say racist shit after they get rid of him one way or another.

Twitter, for its part, was amazingly quick with the ratio, including this little gem by Katie Phang. "Hey Jon, if you don't like Koreans, go fuck a dog." Now I'm not sure about the mechanics of Korean insults as I have only the barest familiarity with the language from having briefly been over there one time...but it sounds pretty bad. I'll admit I laughed my ass off.

And ya know, an awful lot of this crap is being driven by small men who are afraid that other people will laugh at them...so they want to kill those other people.

That's got to be a hell of a way to live, just sayin.'

And even Conservatives seem to be saying that one hell of a lot of their own people are nuts.

Supposedly, the CPAC people have said they couldn't guarantee Mitt Romney's safety were he to come and speak.

Of course, in the same breath they have officially branded him a "non-conservative" whatever that means.

Personally, I wasn't aware that Matt Schlapp and the CPAC nuts had the power to dictate to people what their political beliefs are. But then, I've been a "non-conservative" based on my own personal morals since 2008 and I'm not about to let the people who allow their event to be a busy week for male prostitutes (but still claim the power to determine who is or isn't a conservative) tell me what I think, or even take them seriously in any way, shape or form. I mean, come on, Mitt Romney was the Republican Presidential candidate in 2012, with none other than Paul "I make my interns read Atlas Shrugged" Ryan as his running mate.. Are you telling me that things have shifted so much further to the Right that Mitt Romney no longer counts as a valid conservative?

Then who in the hell does?

If somebody, anybody, reading this thought "Donald Trump" well then, you have all the evidence that you need that Republicans have turned into a cult. When I was a staff member on a website for ex-Pentecostals, it was a common statement among new people joining the message board that the only person in their churches that they knew for sure was going to heaven was the Pastor.

And that is evidence of a cult-like situation.

Listen, people, we've got to stand up and we've got to start getting this shit right, because as bad as things are right now, these people are not going to stop making them worse. It's like a heroin addict chasing a high, and having to smoke, and eventually inject, ever greater amounts of the drug just to get the same level of high.

If you don't think these fools would rip down America, collapse our government and institutions and legal system and military just so they could get a chance to try to shoot down their neighbors, you have another thing coming. Don't take my word for it, don't take the media's word for it. Go and vote in November and throw the bastards out, because while we can't really stop them from trying something anyway, they'll be in a much weaker position of they know they are facing an angry and united body politic, and that's all there is to it.

 Because if you think that these motherfuckers will stop with politically disowning people, or firing people, or threats, I can't really help you and I don't know what to even say.

They want to hurt and kill people, that is their goal. No, they haven't thought one iota past that, and they never will, until it doesn't work out like they thought and then they'll still keep at it until somebody else's flag is flying over their capital and the smoke is billowing from the leader's bunker. It's really just that damned simple.

And if we don't start fighting back, or better yet, acting intelligently to prevent conflict by coming together, what the hell are we, and what are we even doing here? If the threat of fascism doesn't motivate you to get off your ass, what the hell is it going to take?

Disabled people? Old people? Poor people? If the threat of cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security...you know...programs that likely go a long way towards keeping you or people that you care about alive don't motivate you to show up and turn on these motherfuckers, what will?

Because I guarantee you, all these fucking bastards are looking to do is screw everybody and direct as much of our country's money as they can into their own pockets...and then stick the rest of us with the bill once they're all dead and in the ground and can't be forced to pay up.

Somebody needs to reclaim America from the racists. The only somebody that's available, is us.

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Because they're already showing us what the alternative will be if we don't.