In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
~Matthew 28:1-7
It's Easter, the day that Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You'd think for just one damned day these people could back off on the stupid shit. You'd think, and you'd be wrong.
From stupid, garden-variety bigotry to economic illiteracy and sociopaths wanting to "reopen" the country and go back to business as usual in the middle of a pandemic to hostility to voting in a Constitutionally democratic nation to Trump wanting to get rid of the Postal Service (!) in an information society where lots of the people who vote for him don't have the internet and don't live where FedEx will deliver, the right-wing stupid machine was in full swing today, cranking out idiocy at full volume, and (as Charlie Kirk handily illustrates above) doing so in their usual semi-literate fashion and full of pious outrage, like they think the rest of us don't have eyes to see the things that they do.
As if old people who, when they were 21 years old themselves, had to flee authoritarianism, intolerance and war should ever have to deal with the possibility of those things again?
Fuck you, asshole, fuck you.
If you cannot minister to people in some kind of decent, respectful fashion and maybe consider making them want to be Christians, knocking the heads off of statues sure isn't going to help. And all this during Holy Week besides?
Have fun sitting in jail for a year or so, kid, and I'm not sorry. It should be for longer.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. ~Gautama Buddha
20 years ago last moth, the Taliban bombed and dynamited the Buddhas of Bamyan. At that time, I was still very much a Conservative Christian, Republican-voting Baptist, and I was still immensely disgusted by that act. The destruction of ancient and holy sites is wrong, and if you think that you will never be on the wrong side of religious intolerance,
I can all but guarantee you that at some point in your life you will be wrong, unless you live in some homogeneous remote area and never go anywhere, and never change your beliefs, and never experience change within your group, and nothing bad ever happens to you, and nothing ever changes around you..
I experienced religious intolerance from Christians as a Christian, all I had to do was leave my ex-wife and start to question political conservatism, even while remaining a part of it. You want to see acidic green drool drip from the electronic threads of a Christian forum? Go ahead and take a stand that "Honor thy father and thy mother" absolutely applies when your mother is bisexual and in a relationship with a woman.
Do I think that American conservatism in general and the Christian Right in particular is capable of being every bit as debased and evil and illiterate and stupid as the Taliban? Twenty years ago, hell five years ago, I would have absolutely said NO to that. Now? Not so much.
It is a hell of a privileged mentality to think that nothing will ever change, let alone to demand that of the world for your own comfort.
It's far worse to try to change it into something that it never was, nor is meant to be.
And it's downright stupid to lionize a past that never existed outside of your revisionist history and maybe a few movies and TV shows and demand that we return to...I don't know, Hollywood's image of the Old West or the 1950's? I thought these were the same people who can't go a day without calling Hollywood fake now? Was it somehow not fake when Louis B. Mayer made gay actors enter into lavender marriages with women to conceal their sexuality, or when African American actors and actresses could only take roles that depicted them being servants?
It's funny how, at the end of the day, the only thing that ends up being real to these motherfuckers is hate.
And it's amazing what kind of debased ridiculousness they'll come up with to try to maintain a fantasy image that isn't even close to real, even though they know it's a lie.
Aren't these the same people who profess that things like "Thou shalt not bear false witness" are important? It never ceases to amaze me how the belief system that taught me to value facts and reality just doesn't anymore.
It's a virus, it doesn't give a goddamn who you are or how much money you have. It is, in fact, incapable of doing so.
Wealthy and famous people have already caught this shit right along with the rest of us, high profile Republicans have, in fact, gotten this thing or been exposed at a higher rate than high profile Democrats have, so far as I know.
You'd think they'd fucking notice. Hell, you'd think they'd fucking notice that a whole shitload of dead bodies is as likely to ruin the economy as having to shut things down for a few months, if not more so.But of course, all that would require giving a damn. And they just don't.
I'm sorry, I just can't, and I can't imagine being dumb enough to look at it and think that such would be the result of this mess, at all.
But then, I cannot imagine the logic of believing that 5G cell phone service causes Coronavirus to spread and yet also believing that incompetent, willfully ideological government inaction does not.
The virus will still kill you, even if you don't believe in it. It's just that simple. Science doesn't actually care about your feelings or your political priorities or your shitty social beliefs. It's funny how these people are just fine with the physics of bullets or stealth aircraft or how sciences like psychology might help them manipulate their voter base, but when it comes to things that they can't bomb or shoot or manipulate with pretty words, the only response they can muster is denial and making shit up.
One of the running theories about why Trump got on this idea is because there's probably going to be a lot more mail-in voting because of the pandemic, and more people voting means Republicans are less likely to win. Here's a pro tip for ya, assholes? Maybe you could try being people that other people want to vote for, instead of being reactionary shitheads who mostly get the support of big business and those who literally want to vote against other people's lives in any way that they can, so they can hate without getting their hands dirty.
Why don't ya'll try being people that other people could see voting for? Even 20 years ago, Republicans still understood this on some level, even if in hindsight we all can see where all the problems y'all have now were just getting started.
Easter is supposed to be about resurrection and transcendence and transformation...and yet somehow Republicans manage to turn it into just another day of the same old thing. It's not even an exaggeration to say that just like it was at Christmas last year, the volume of religious Easter posts on my feed...normally quite substantial...was down quite a bit.
It seems like at a time and during a set of trials that should be increasing faith, like everything else, faith is being diminished...while the business in lies is booming instead.
This seems like a bad thing, and I say that as an irreligious person.
Without truth, there is no freedom.
Without free and open communication, there is no freedom.
It's just that simple.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.~Gautama Buddha
Part Ten.
Part Twelve.
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