War Dance (American Revelation IV, Part Two, Updated)

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā Ā, upane! ka upane! Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra! ~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body)

...
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.
~Ka Mate, English translation.


Ever heard of the Maori? 

They're the Native people of New Zealand. Among other things, they are known for the Haka, a war dance that many other traditional cultures believe has magical properties and is very powerful. This was in fact referenced by Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus. The most famous, Ka Mate, is the story of a Maori chief named Te Rauparaha who hides in a well, from pursuing enemies of other tribes. He evades his enemies and is rescued by an unnamed man who puts a ladder down the well so he can get out. Made world-famous thanks to its use by the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team, Ka Mate is a story of the triumph of life over death.

Why do I bring that up? Oh, no reason.

A SWAT Team in Salt Lake City knocked down an old man that was leaning on his cane waiting for the bus today, and left him to be helped up by, apparently, other cops. There have been a number of deliberate assaults against peaceful protesters, random people of all ages, creeds and colors, reporters, various bystanders, etc. Not just those that Trump deems "Enemies of the People" but everybody. There's a reason for that.

These are not the actions of brave men, and because they're cowardly shits, they think everybody else is, too. They think fear will cause others to submit to them. This is MAGA cruelty theater. These fucking people refuse to believe that anybody else might be different from them, or motivated by anything different. It's stupid, really.

But there's lots of these fuckers that are mad as hell about the fact that Derek Chauvin is being held to account for the murder of George Floyd. They're mad as hell that a lot of their superiors and union people up to and including the head of the Fraternal Order of Police have basically said "Hang the fucker" and not a few department heads have said anybody who supports Derek Chauvin can turn in their badge. They're mad as fucking hell that people see them for what they are, and they sure as fuck don't want reporters to film it. My personal opinion is they're angry as hell that people of all colors are out there protesting, too.

Conservatives, in general, are mad as fuck that a majority of the nation seems to be coming together in support of George Floyd rather than Donald Trump. And lots of cops are conservatives, if not outright fascists and many of these people have bought into the "Thin Blue Line" crap that Republicans have lavished on them for the past decade or so. Ever notice how as soon as a Black guy got elected President, these people stopped "Supporting" Federal agencies and the military and started "Supporting" the Police instead? Again, there's a fucking reason for that. Oh, and among other things the FBI has been warning since at least 2007 (to my knowledge) that White Nationalists were infiltrating police departments. Throw in declining educational and training standards, and lavish Federal spending on gear and weapons since 9/11 and there you have it.

Republicans got the cops in their pocket for exactly this sort of a time, when their poll numbers are in the toilet, their power is slipping, and their leadership is terrible.

Why? Because people who don't understand human nature, morality, religion, and a host of other things view force as a shortcut to getting what they want and worship it accordingly. Never mind that force has its limits, I mean, hell, they still haven't managed to force the majority of people to support Trump and he's been a part of the political scene...dominating it at times...for almost five years now.

However much force you have is only as good as your will to use it. That's what broke us in Vietnam, that's what broke us in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that very thing will break America. Why? Because we allowed ourselves to be ruled by cowards. Yes, Bill De Blasio, I'm looking at you just as much as I am at Donald Trump when I fuckin' say that.

The real shortcut is to break the willpower, or delude the mind. The Russians didn't need to hack out elections, not when they could easily hack the minds of conservative voters with information warfare. The Maori might not need to crack your skull with a Greenstone club or run you through with a Taiaha if their Haka could intimidate you into submission. As I said, the NZ All Blacks famously used Ka Mate for exactly that reason. In Invictus, the Springboks locking arms and staring the Kiwis down is an example of this same principle.

This is part of why conservatives fall apart in the face of a threat like Coronavirus, they can't bullshit it or intimidate it, and it doesn't know or care who they are, so they have no idea how to fight it.

And when this campaign of murder and intimidation by police goes sideways in some way and the Republicans find their power reduced or those they claimed to support not sufficiently grateful (i.e. refusing to Kamikaze themselves for the Republicans' small shitty god and large expansive tax cuts) the Republicans will move on to "Supporting" whatever the next group of suckers is that they think will support their ends, anti-government insurgents, for example...who will turn right around and kill police officers and soldiers. Republican relationships were purely transactions long before Trump came along and made it official. I can remember when Republicans as a rule were far more likely to hate cops, and Democrats were more likely to love them. I can remember when far more cops were union Democrats than were Republicans, including a longtime family friend who laughed at me for voting for Bob Dole in 1996 when Bob Dole's first move after retiring from politics was being in Erectile Dysfunction ads and Viagra commercials. My friend's running joke was that at least Bill could get it up. I got even when Bill got caught getting blowjobs from Monica Lewinsky, though. Good times, the Clinton years. Just sayin.'

In insurgent warfare, and in peaceful protest alike...and in democracy in general...the real metric of which side is winning or losing is public opinion. On the level of body counts and use of force, Indochina and Algeria counted as victories for the French, yet they lost. The Vietnam War is widely considered to have been a military defeat for the United States despite the fact that we killed hundreds of thousands of people and 50 years later the damage from that war still lingers in many places in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. There are still NGO and United Nations EOD teams digging up and disarming unexploded American ordinance on the Plain of Jars in Laos, once literally the most heavily bombed location on the face of the Earth. We lost in Vietnam because our willpower broke.

Against an insurgent force like the Viet Cong or peaceful protesters like the African Americans marching for Civil Rights or the Anti-draft protesters of a few years later, using excessive force will generally fuck you in the court of public opinion.

You have to use a minimum amount of force in counterinsurgency and you have to give the other side something so they have an incentive to stand down. Republicans aren't doing that, and they're creating thousands of images that will only be used against them for as long as they continue to exist, at this point.

No American still supports and damned few Americans even remember Ngo Dinh Diem. Hell, damned few Americans remember Thich Quang Duch either...but millions of people around the world remember Malcolm Browne's iconic photograph of the aged monk burning himself to death in the middle of the street.

American public opinion fucked the South Vietnamese government after that. Diem was eliminated in a coup that November, and the Kennedy administration shifted toward a conventional approach in Vietnam. Oops. JFK didn't live long enough to see how badly that turned out.

Likewise, In the era of what Max Boot calls "Radical Chic" people like Che Guevara became iconic images of their time...regardless of whether or not they'd been successful. (Che wasn't.)

The same applied to the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980's despite the fact that the Soviet Union was far from a democratic state. Despite ITAR-TASS and Pravda, the people figured it out. Those same people were heroes in the West, only to be our enemies twenty years later. Now, We have 24 hour cable news and social media. Unless you are ignoring everything, you know what's going on minute to minute in real time.

The image of a little girl with blood dripping down her face because she committed the horrible crime of walking down the street with grocery bags rather than cowering in the face of authority and power does not fill me with fear. It makes me think very much about the fact that I was taught to use a rifle once, and that I was taught that in an America that would have almost uniformly reacted to a sight such as this with revulsion and whoever did it would have likely had their court case be a national news event.

Instead, only about two thirds of us are filled with horror and revulsion, while another third cackle in simpering glee at the sight of the blood of the undeserving.

Funny thing but lots of these old Boomers were anti-war protesters in the Vietnam era. They grew up to be Yuppies whose stock portfolios got a bump from the spending on FIM-92 Stinger missiles that went to the Mujahideen, but they still made those same noises about freedom and peace at that point. In their old age, they've evolved into not much more than a bad parody of what they accused their own parents of being.

Funny thing, but I have not noticed any kind of pro-Trump rally 'round the flag effect. I have not seen anybody saying they were gonna vote for Trump because of the protests or the riots.

Except, of course, from the people that were already for Trump. But those people? They don't care about America, the entire Continental United States could be reduced by strategic weapons to a series of glass-edged craters slowly filling in with seawater from both oceans and they would somehow claim it as a win for Trump before they drowned or died of radiation poisoning.

If We The People do not back down, we've got this. The cops, and Trump, have lit that fuse now that tells me that this crisis of ours has a decent chance of being resolved well before the elections, and that unless Republicans break off a piece of America for themselves and each side's territories hold separate elections, the Republicans are going to get their ass kicked. Unfortunately, the second conclusion all but guarantees the first. This is the existential dread I've been feeling these last few weeks.

Do. Not. Back. The Fuck Down.

Hold Fast, we're in for one hell of a bar brawl.

But we ain't gotta take this shit, and I have a feeling we're not going to.

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen, and now is the fucking time.

Either we take a stand against the fall of night or we don't. Either we believe the things we say we do, or we don't. There can be no half measures.

Part One.

Update: This morning, Senator Tom Cotton, a US Army infantry veteran and Harvard-educated lawyer, said that protesters should be given No Quarter.

That's a problem.

Donald Trump has made similar statements in a rather less polished manner and demanded mass arrests of protesters in a conference call with the nation's Governors today, which many have found disturbing. Protesting is a fucking Human Right protected by international convention and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which itself predates all of said conventions currently operable.

And a No Quarter Order is a fucking war crime. It means that those who surrender should be killed rather than allowed to withdraw or taken prisoner, that wounded should be allowed to die rather than shown mercy and treated, among other things.

As David French (himself a former Army Reserve JAG who served in Iraq) specifically points out "No Quarter" has a very specific meaning in the context of armed conflict and military action and he goddamned well knows it. The issuing of a No Quarter order has been considered some level of war crime since the Hague Convention of 1907 per Section 23 (D) of said convention. Violators of said convention are considered war criminals under both US Federal and international laws and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. It's also in domestic terms a specific violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

This is what we're up against, people.

These motherfuckers need to be driven from power by whatever means present themselves and then denied the capability to ever have it again.

Vote, and if need be, fight against this shit like your life depends on it, because it fucking does.

These fucking people will never be content with anything short of cowering submission to Authority and I'm fucking sorry, but that's not America. It's America Or Trump at this point. Remember that.

And we didn't make it that way, they did.

Given how they're defining "Protesters" they're basically saying they'd issue a no quarter order against you for walking down the street with grocery bags in your hand. Do you want to live in that kind of country? I sure don't. And remember that these are the same fucking people who were threatening violence over lock-down stay at home orders intended to protect the public health.

But they want to shoot you in the face for daring to go get groceries.

Think about that, for a second. Just think about it. Think about how much of a totalitarian asshole you gotta be for something like this to even enter your brain pan. And that's what we're up against.

I'll have more on this tomorrow, but I'm too tired to write today.

#Next5 #Top20

The Virgins Are All Trimming Their Wicks. (American Revelation IV, Part One.)

Note: This is an expansion of a Facebook post of mine from last night. If you can't deal with some hard shit, here's a picture of a ferret and please move on.

"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity". ~Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that a riot is the language of the unheard.


Let me tell you what I see right now, what I hear and see in the conversations, in the voices and on the faces of many of my co-workers.


I see and hear one hell of a lot of white people who are desperate to go right on unhearing... and unfeeling and unseeing.


Not just as regards the riots or the killings of black people by police officers, but the virus, the unraveling of Trump, all of it. This last few days feels like shades of 1989, to me...except that WE are the East Bloc now.

Do you know what brought that about? Privilege, Whiteness, the actual worship of comfort and convenience and social status. The dedicated effort by enemies foreign and domestic to elect a fool, and then these people crowed about having gotten a meme elected as President.

A cop killed a guy, in a cruel way, for no good reason just because he was Black and the attitude of a non-zero percentage of white folks is "But I'm uncomfortable."

This is what the Bible speaks about when it says "Babylon The Great Is Fallen." In the time in which Revelation was written, Babylon was used by Christians as an allusion to Rome, then the world-empire that ruled over most of the lands in which they lived. If you preached or wrote tracts against Rome, you would be killed. Thus Babylon is used as a symbol for decadence, for empire, for power.

Is there anything, really, more decadent than getting a person elected whose only real talent was self-promotion and getting himself made into a meme on the internet, to the greatest position of responsibility in the world, just because you can? And is there anything more base and decadent than doing your level best to studiously ignore all this even as it unravels, and threatens to destroy our country, just because you think who you are or what you look like or how much money you have will protect you?

And worse, there are those who fear the destruction of our nation less than they fear the election of a member of the other political party, or a person of color, or a woman...to the very office that an old white man has bungled and degraded to almost beyond recognition.

Regarding several things, the Bible uses the words "He that hath an ear, let him hear..." But can you hear, if you have been convinced to believe things that are not true?

We have eyes to see, minds to think, and imaginations to dream up philosophy and religions that call us to awaken to the world around us and see the suffering of others and of the world itself... and do something about it.

If we know this, and do it not, we become Babylon.

Christ said that faith without works is dead. What good is it, to believe in or to profess a belief in equality, or freedom, or any such thing, only to then not act when it should be required of us because acting would be inconvenient or uncomfortable.


Why then, when the world and it's people use their voices and say "I am here, wake up!" in a way that cannot be ignored, do so many wish only to go back to sleep?

But the odds are very great right now, that if you go back to sleep you may wake up the next morning in a different country, because the lines on the map moved and you couldn't.

I remember when that happened to people.

The Cold War, the East Bloc, the Soviet Union...all these things were forever...until they suddenly weren't anymore. One day I remember hearing on the news that there was some kind of government and immigration-related shakeup in East Germany...and the next evening I was watching people dancing in the streets and taking sledgehammers to the wall that had divided their city for longer than many of those people had been alive...and there functionally was no East Germany anymore.

This is what I feared when Trump said "Build the wall" and ran a campaign on racism, that he'd turn America into East Germany. When I joked in 2015 that "Republicans are Communists now" THIS is what I was talking about...

As a little kid I watched reports of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the few days after Christmas in 1979, I spent my formative years in the shadow of the Cold War, MX (Peacekeeper) ICBM's and Pershing missiles were things that were on the news. Apartheid in South Africa, demonstrations, protests, fear of nuclear war, the fierce courage of the Afghan Mujahideen as they faced down the Red Army with nothing but AK-47's, improvised explosives and their own guts (and later our Stinger missiles) and as a young teenager I watched Ronald Reagan stand at the Bradenburg Gate and say "Mr. Gorbachev, Open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" A couple years later, the Soviets were out of Afghanistan and I was watching people climb on top of the Berlin Wall in full view of the guards and not get shot, in short order Solidarity triumphed after its long struggle in Poland, other East Bloc governments fell. On Christmas, Romania's communist dictator was executed. A few months later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and all the sudden the other bad guys of the era were gone, too and I began to realize that I would live in a different world from that in which my parents had.

But there were, and are, people who fear that kind of change. People who'd rather that the Cold War would have ended with the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army getting massacred by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Fulda Gap, then the Black Horse having to withdraw under cover from Apaches and Warthogs and flanking regiments as the next Red Army formation moved up and the Abrams tanks ran low on ammunition and pulled back to rearm, and vast air battles in the skies over central Europe as the difference in numbers started to tell on the ground and NATO traded space for time even as REFORGER plans were activated, convoys began to form up in Hampton Roads and New York Harbor and the US Navy stood out to sea in battle lines thousands of miles long as hellish weapons were locked and loaded and the crews of the Bones and the BUFFs and the Minuteman silos sweated out alert duty knowing the next alert could mean the end of everything.

There are people who would have preferred the sun-bright flashes of nuclear detonations in the middle of the night to the value of their politics, their shitty selfish God and their Whiteness diminishing.


It was also in 1989 that Donald Trump...then at the peak of his gold-plated New York Fat Cat fame...crusaded for the executions of the Central Park Five.

I was a fifteen-year-old kid in a moderately conservative family at the time. The fact that some of those kids were my age bothered me. What if some rich asshole decided they wanted me to die? Come on, this is America. 

Not a day goes by, especially lately, that I don't think...or say out loud "Come ON, man, this is America!"

But that's because I can see, because I can hear, because I know...because I want to know.

I was a conservative as a teenager and young man in part because the New York Liberals and fat cats and shit allowed themselves to be represented by...people like Donald Trump...because the Left allowed itself to be represented by a goofy dork like Mike Dukakis and as much as I often thought George H.W. Bush was only the better of two evils in that case, I felt guys like Bush more represented my views.

A few years later, voting age, more experience and a few years of social change...and I voted for Bill Clinton because I liked what he had to say on taxes and some other issues, Democrat or no.

And that's what they're afraid of. Me. The voter who gives a shit, either out of natural inclination or because he has to.

Sixteen years later, disgusted with what Republicanism had become...conspiracy theories and racism...I stopped being a Republican and voted for Obama.

Conservatism and Republicanism is no longer Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" or a high-minded commitment to democracy and nuclear detente and a thousand points of light as pitched by Bush the Elder nor the "He's a good guy to have a beer with" earthy conservatism and sincere if simplistic spirituality of Bush the younger.


No, conservatism has become embodied by a very stupid man whose only game in life was that he was born wealthy and could fool the feeble-minded. Conservatism has become not much more than contempt for everyone and everything and loyalty only to one man...even over your own self.


And that man is loyal only to his own ego, power, and wealth. And Trump's platform as of now could be boiled down to two words "He White."

Doesn't seem to register with these people that the guy who's running against him is also an old white man, a literal political institution unto himself simply because he's been around so long. But ya know, for the record I've never in my life had any issues with Joe Biden. I for one have never had anything but issues with Donald Trump.

You have to be the right kind of white person, I guess.

The kind who regards [self-inflicted] political turmoil, and things like cultural and social change as an inconvenience, who worships a golden image that represents an unholy trinity of color, comfort, and convenience...and for whom being inconvenienced or made to feel uncomfortable is the worst thing ever and who wants nothing more than for people to stop bringing things to their attention so they can go back to sleep and anesthetize themselves with being told what they want to hear and getting what they want when they want it and not having to get mad at other people for pointing out injustices.

I've never really had the option of being that kind of person. I was a Christian for most of my life. He that hath an ear, let him hear.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

If you don't care about your neighbor enough to know what's going on with them, or simply to ask how they feel or what they think, is that love?

Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy might.


But to do that, you have to know what is true. The world, both physical and spiritual, is what it is. There is a right and a wrong and it's on you to know...to find out...what is truth. Do you truly love God or anything at all if you do not seek to know it, to understand its nature?

And to read the Word, you gotta have your eyes open. To know the Truth, you gotta keep your mind open to it, yet sharp enough to divide fact from fiction.

The time to be asleep is long past, wake up, and put aside foolish things. They who have ears, let them hear; Man cannot save Man.  Anybody who believes in Donald Trump will end up in hell with him when they die.

It doesn't so much matter what it is, but you have to believe in a power greater than yourself, greater than Man, and believe in the day of judgment. It doesn't matter what form this takes. Hell, you can be an Atheist and still believe that we're all going to face the consequences if we don't get our shit together. This is really not hard. It's literally the lowest imaginable bar...

But we will all be judged on that simplest of criteria "Did you give a shit, or not?"

Have the sense to assume that the judge in charge of determining this is gonna be smarter than you are and knows what ya done, and life your life accordingly.

Sleep-walking your way through this shit in some kind of state of comfortable convenience where you feel entitled to get a trophy just for showing up ain't going to cut it.

The hour is late, wake up.

Trump is openly calling for race war and frantically urging Americans to turn their guns on each other in the middle of a pandemic because whatever control he thought he had, he's lost it, and if you don't see a problem with this, fuck you.

If you are not willing to stand fast against the fall of night, to be the light in the darkness, you cannot expect someone else to do it for you. Either you stand up, or you don't, there can be no middle ground.

It is late, choose, and choose now.

Part Two
Prequel

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13

Blood Is All Of One Color (American Revelation IV, Prequel II.)

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

Minneapolis was on fire last night.

People rioted over the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, a brutal cop who had 18 complaints of excessive force and physical violence against him. He killed a Black man live on camera in front of a crowd on Memorial Day and in spite of the victim's own anguished cries that he couldn't breathe and was dying. Minneapolis cops have a history of bad behavior, crimes and murder, including the killing of Philando Castile. And they tear-gassed a peaceful protest on the thinnest of pretexts. What in the fuck did these fucking people think was going to happen?

It took the county district attorney until this afternoon to file charges against a guy that committed murder on camera four days ago. Yeah, these assholes got fired...but they should have been arrested too.

Perhaps more to the fucking point, why in the actual fuck are American "Conservatives" from the President on down, calling for even more killing and violence? Here's a hint; From the President on down, they are calling for more death in an open, in fact nakedly racist way. "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" was originally said by a racist Southern sheriff who was threatening Black teenagers. Trump is old enough to know that this is racist. He's old enough to know that the stereotype of African-Americans as criminals and looters is utter racist horse shit.Hell, he was himself already an adult when that incident that the quote is from happened. He knows what the fuck he's doing, he just deliberately chooses to be a racist asshole.

And his followers love him for it.

There is no scenario under any American legal system in which property crimes legally merit the Death Penalty. Yet that is exactly what "Conservatives" up and down the board, are calling for.

And to those who believe this world is all there is, there is no greater 'power' than the taking of life. It's important to note here, I think, that David French, who I quote via these snipped Tweets, is an Iraq War veteran, as well as an Evangelical Christian and a Never-Trump conservative. He is also the adoptive father of a little Black girl who was born in Ethiopia.

And French has dealt with harassment and threats from actual Nazis, right here in America.

People who know what war is, who've carried a weapon in the field in the service of their country are not the ones calling for more blood, as usual.

The racists are just mad because Black people started fighting back. And while it's true that peace is preferable to war, in order for there to be peace that is not simple submission to authority there has to be a good faith effort on both sides.

Modern conservatism...unlike even that of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan...whose own efforts as much as anything else often sought to preserve one part of white supremacy by sacrificing other parts of it...current Republicans and especially Trump are in all respects enamored by the idea of their own still-great yet crumbling power, obsessed with the idea of using force (even though most have never had to face such a thing themselves) and usually uninterested in even the slightest appearance of accommodation or moderation or negotiation. In fact, they thrive on the idea that "Trump fights" and present the President as some kind of pugilistic infighter who seeks to stand up for the interests of "his" people...meaning white conservatives of a certain type and viewpoint...but of course this narrative is entirely bullshit, and when Trump fights, often everybody else loses.

Yet somehow those he causes to lose, that are on his own side, seem not to care. It's like I told my friend CJ this morning, there's a certain kind of usually right-wing person that's great at getting guys to turn off their brains and think with their dicks. It's no accident that guys that fall for that shit are all over Trump's base.

It's a rare Republican that rises above that now, and the ones that do aren't in office.

The Democrats are good at getting people to think using their brains, but when they can also reach people's hearts, as Barack Obama could, then they can really do great things.

And that's where we're at and I hope the hell Joe Biden was paying attention at his last job.

We can choose the light, or the darkness with its fires. We can rise above division and hate and racism and recognize our shared humanity and see that blood is all of one color as even previous Republicans like Ronald Reagan could, or we can die in the blood and mud using our broken rifles as clubs and with our hands around each other's throats while goons like Donald Trump cackle with glee. In the middle of a pandemic that likely means we all die. Again, we must choose between the darkness with its death and its fires, or the light and the risks that come with freedom and tolerance.

It is late.

Choose now.

Because either you stand against the fall of night, or you don't.
There is no middle ground.

Part One.
Next.

Take your guns and throw them into the sea! (American Revelation IV, Prequel I.)

In Natal, apartheid is a deadly cancer in our midst, setting house against house, and eating away at the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea! Close down the death factories. End this war now! ~Nelson Mandela, speech at a peace rally, February 25th, 1990

The revolution will not be televised. It will be Facebooked and Istagrammed and Tweeted with all manner of petty disclaimers because look at the pretty flames, not the root causes of greed, hate, incompetence and support for all the same by a government ever-watchful for ways to increase its power, and a media and tech industry that looks for the best way to make more money and try and keep Wall Street in their corner even when reporting the truth. All this during a Pandemic, and millions will die because of it.

Last night an area of Minneapolis, surrounding a Police precinct, burned as demonstrators, rioters with little or no connection to the demonstrators, fought with police. All this follows the killing of a Black man on live video by a police officer with a history of violent incidents, many involving people of color. The officer and his three accomplices were fired, they should have been arrested, indicted, and charged by now. Of interest also, Derek Chauvin, the killer, has hired the lawyer who defended the killer of Philando Castile. Even the mayor of Minneapolis has asked why these cops aren't in jail yet.

Does any of this seem fucked up to you yet?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is openly encouraging his followers to kill Democrats. Not specific people, Democrats in general. How one tells a Democrat from an independent or a Republican at a glance, I quite honestly have no idea. Of course, neither do they.

These fucking people aren't going to stop and ask your political affiliation before they start shooting. Why? Because they don't really believe in that. They will believe Trump said it was Okay for them to shoot people.
They won't be picky about who they shoot or kill by other means, just like that cop wasn't.

And other people will fight back, just like they did overnight. It's human nature to resist.

Given the Trumpist hostility to anybody who does not immediately bow to the golden image when they hear the music..."Democrat" and "Liberal" these days are terms that even get hurled at many Republicans with abandon. Anybody who is not completely 100% in the tank for Glorious Orange Leader is suspect, anybody who believes in facts, or science, or simply wants to preserve even their own life over support of Donald Trump and whatever dumb shit he said lately is considered suspect.

How many Trump Supporters do you suppose can correctly explain or identify Democratic Party beliefs or party platforms or policies, do you think?

And how many of them will simply assume something is bad simply because a Democrat said it, or they think one did? Earlier today I saw a meme that was a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a quote from a Libertarian on it, apparently deliberately wrongly attributed to AOC. The author appeared to want to test to see if Libertarians understood their own political philosophy. Based on the screen shots from the comment section, almost none of them did.

Does any of this seem fucked up to you, yet?

When I first became a conservative as a teenager, you were at least expected to know what conservatism was, and criticism and disagreements between and with and of leaders were common and flowed naturally.

It wasn't a cult yet.

But it's become that, a cult of grievance and hate and rage of which Trump is merely the current, and by far the most popular figurehead. It started with Newt Gingrich and Charlton Heston back in the 1990's...and while they had their antecedents going all the way back to Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, and even Gingrich wouldn't last, the NRA switch to culture warring in the late 1990's and the occasional shitty Congressional Republican like Tom DeLay, or political one-note songs like Sarah Palin kept the flame alive until the rise of the Tea Party...and of course by 2015 the Republicans were ready and waiting for somebody like Donald Trump to rise up...and then the Tea Party flooded the zone and made the crazy the mainstream and five years later, here we are.

Republicans aren't just ready to kill Black people, or Democrats, they're willing to make decisions that could cause them to get sick, or could even kill them. Not simply kill them, but slowly suffocate them while they lay in a hospital bed, alone, with a tube jammed down their throats.

Republicans are willing to risk dying horribly, alone, just on the off chance that they might take some Democrats down with them or even simply make someone on the other side angry or sad.

Republicans are willing to continue to follow the Fox News line of "It's no big deal, it's just the flu" even as we've passed 100,000 deaths this week.

That last wasn't something I observed on social media, but rather at work last night from a 60 year old guy who's health is awful.

Does any of this seem fucked up to you yet?

He'll believe Donald Trump and Fox News over his own eyes and ears. And my work not only decided to open back up this week, but decided to call this idiot back. My workplace seems to be trying to do things properly, but at the same time it's not my workplace itself that I'm worried about, it's some of the idiots that work there, the people who sit there zombie-eyed watching Fox News like an ADHD kid watching cartoons. It's the customers we'll be getting back in a couple days, despite operating at around 50% capacity, I'm still extremely worried, and I'm far from the only one.

And it boils down to the fact that conservatives see COVID-19 not as a lethal virus that could kill any one of us, if not all of us...but as a threat to their sense of entitlement, their imagined superiority, their over-hyped social status, their Whiteness, and even their sexuality.

And I guess all that crap is more important to them than being alive. What good is being "superior" if you can't enjoy it because you're dead?

And even now every couple weeks or so, some bunch of idiots marches in the streets or invades their own government's buildings with guns, and the prospect of armed conflict and civil war lurches a little bit closer.

In the middle of a fucking pandemic.

Do these fucking people want everyone to die?

How in the hell can you social distance when you've been shot?

Racism is America's original sin, and its become a cancer that has reached the point where it will become terminal very soon if it is not dealt with.

But some people want that because they want to have their culture wars or ethnic and racial hatreds become things that can be dealt with with bombs and guns and tanks, knowing that the other side will fight back, and that given the disease, it is very likely that the death toll would be much higher. Some people want that because they revere death like a god.

If we don't stop this, and find a way to stop it that doesn't leave those whose only goal is to abuse and dominate others holding the power in this country, we are all going to die. We have to vote them out, and then expect that they will indeed revolt against lawful authority...in the middle of a pandemic! But we have to vote them out, because then their position from which to attack the rest of us will be weaker.

Guns don't protect civilization, civilization protects civilization, speech protects civilization, voting protects civilization.

You have to vote these bastards out like your life depends on it. Because it fucking does.

We cannot have peace with people who do not believe we have a right to exist. But if we have a war, millions of people are going to die and there will be unimaginable suffering.

And worse, that's what Republicans want. They don't want you to throw your guns into the sea and use your vote. They want you to throw your vote into the sea and use your guns to shoot down your neighbors instead.

Show up and fucking vote. Then we'll deal with the next crisis.

If any of this doesn't seem fucked up to you, you're part of the fucking problem.

Part Two.

Human Capital Stock? (Left Behind Is A Lie, Postscript.)

Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated. ~Che Guevara, from a letter to his aunt.

Human Capital Stock?

Human capital stock?!

Hold on, back the fucking truck up you simpering Chipmunk-faced chickenshit goon, and wipe that stupid smile off your face before somebody leaves you picking your goddamn teeth up off the damn ground.

Human Capital Stock? I'm a working person, but I've been in management a couple times for a year or so each, and I am here to tell you that had I ever spoken like that, not only would I have gotten fired, but I'd have almost certainly gotten assaulted for saying it either right when I said it or as soon as I could be found off the property. If I'd said such as a squad leader, much less as a cafeteria supervisor or small business owner the consequences would have rained down like waters.

Hell, if I'd said such a thing live on CNN I'd quite expect that I'd be having to learn to walk with people's steel-toed work-boots jammed up my ass and maybe somebody's foot broke off and decomposing up there too.

This is America, jack.

There was a time, not very long ago in the grand scheme of things, when I was taught that people did not speak about other human beings in that sort of way. In point of fact, I'd like to point out that when I said things even one-100th of this fucking arrogant, I got told "You ever talk that way again I'm a punch you right in the mouth" and I got told that by coworkers, family members, neighbors, etc. the great majority of whom...well, they probably wouldn't rate as "Conservatives" today, but they did at the time.

In fact, I was a conservative throughout the 1990's when we decried exactly the kind of moral relativism and lack of care about anything that is all the rage on the Right these days, and I have to say, this is exactly the kind of dehumanizing language that the conservative writers of the day, especially the Christian ones, warned about.

Except of course, they blamed such things on abortion and homosexuality and secularism and figured that this kind of talk would come from Godless secular liberals, not a Republican administration or a White House that never fails to remind everybody that'll listen just how Evangelical it is and just how much they love Jesus.

Again, these very people are proof that Left Behind Is A Lie, that Christianity and Conservatism as currently constituted are nothing but put-ons, scams to try to help evil people seem righteous and stay in power. This crap is not what I was taught.

Jesus would chase this motherfucker around with a hammer and certainly beat that condescending little smirk off his fat fucking face.

In any kind of a sane world, Alvin here would be getting kicked in the nuts so regularly by working people that his annoying squeaky voice would certainly be an octave or two higher by the time he managed to disappear from public life and go hide on a remote island somewhere, never emerging from his hut without wearing a cup.

I mean, fucking seriously, have any of these fucking people ever actually read the Bible?!

I'll be ready to go back to work when my state says it's got this crap under control, and I'll be ready to go back to "normal" whatever that is anymore, when you Trump motherfuckers are gone and locked up for your crimes and the Federal government goes back to having competent leadership and takes threats like this virus seriously instead of scheming to use them to kill people...their own citizens...without whom we do not even have a country.

If this virus continues to rampage around the world for a few years, as it damned well looks like it's going to, nations will fall because of it. Those that fall will be accelerated in their destruction by Man's inhumanity to Man, by the utter refusal of some people to see others even as human beings, by words like "Human capital stock."

Where I'm at, I'm probably going to be Okay, most people around here do not seem to have that kind of mentality. My state has a few nuts, and the DeVos family, but people who care about other people are actually in power, with the backing of a substantial majority of the public.

But obviously some places on this Earth, or even within this continent, will make hell look pleasant by comparison...because especially if the United States of America breaks apart, there will be somewhere that those who believe other people are nothing but numbers, another form of capital, beneath all consideration, slaves for all intents and purposes, will end up in power. Where they will not be checked by decades or centuries of law or tradition or advancing civil rights, nor constrained by a Democratic Congress nor Federalism and state governments, nor by the fact that people on all sides of the political spectrum have guns and enough have the training to use them effectively.

And that's why these fucking people are trying to weaponize the virus against everybody else, trying to turn social distancing into just another culture war battle flag, and trying to force people to go back to work so they can get back to making money.

But America is, fundamentally, a democracy with too many brakes on their power. They've spent the last few years crawling around in the duct-work probing the defenses like the Xenomorphs in Aliens and found the system too hard to break or circumvent in many places, and the people too prone to having their own opinions. That's why they want people to go back to work and add a third, fourth, and fifth wave of the virus to the second one that's emerging.

Trouble is, it's only their own supporters they've brainwashed into believing only the things that are favorable to their worldview, it's only their own supporters who aren't trying to be safe, or who are eager to go back to work. Most Americans recognize the scam the wealthy have perpetrated now, if they didn't before. Trump has overplayed these people's hand, and done it badly and obviously and bragged about it. There will be change, and there may well be blood.

The problem is, that's roughly an aggregate two thirds of us.

.

The problem is, there's another third or so of us, roughly one American in three, who looks at writing like mine and screams, with conviction, that yes, they are indeed human capital stock and proud of it.

What they're really saying here is "Exploit me, just so I am given someone to exploit." What they are really saying is that they are absolutely fine with being slaves, just so that they get to be a better class of slaves than all or even some of the other slaves. Hell, I'll bet there's a pretty decent percentage of these fucking people that think there's no way the term "Human capital stock" could ever apply to them, because they're white people.

And they're the ones who, in the end, will end up with nothing and who will avoid being the slaves, or be liberated from that fate, only because the rest of us stood up. Capital doesn't give a goddamn what color you are.

And hell, I do not doubt that there are at least some of these people who would sign up to be slaves for, say, their outstanding debts to be paid off, without realizing that the debt itself would simply be purchased, bundled, and itself sold at a profit, so the bad guys would essentially get to make money off them twice right out the gate.

When these motherfuckers call the media "Enemies of the people" what they're not telling us is WE aren't "The People." We're the "Human Capital Stock." They hate on the media...but like any crazy motherfuckers...they can't WAIT to tell us how crazy they are, what they did, and look at that big poop they did out in the yard. Because they think it's funny, some kind of a joke.

They don't realize we aren't required to think it's funny.

Hell, there's some of these fucking people who would be slaves merely because liberals said slavery was bad, or because they want some big-talking dipshit to protect them from the evils of the world. If you want to know what the end game is, why they've turned their own people into primitives dancing around a fire shouting Unga Bunga, "Human Capital Stock" is both the why and the endgame.

That's what MAGA is, these fucking fools don't believe in their own freedom, much less yours, let alone ours.

Whatever becomes of us, as a nation, as a people, we can't afford to wait around for these sons of bitches to find their basic humanity nor waste time trying to talk them into it, because they will merely exploit that time to force their shitty agendas and shitty selfish god on the rest of us.

These people must be removed from power, and kicked to the curb and never listened to again, unless you actually like the idea of being Human Capital Stock.

If you want a better nation, one that treats people as human beings, you have to be a better citizen.

And vote, like your life and freedom depend on it, because they do.

End Of Line.

Unga Bunga! (Left Behind Is A Lie, Part Eighteen.)

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Inspire Me!

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch. We all picked the cotton but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a southern Democrat. Ought to get a rich man to vote like that

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
Ain't nobody looking back again

~Alabama, Song Of The South.

Just another day.

Just another damn day, and all over the place there's liberals and far-left idiots swearing up and down that they just can't vote for Joe Biden. They just can't, because something something Gazpacho my Unicorn is on back-order. Anything...anything...but vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Any of you fuckers got an instant political movement you can grow in six months that'll beat Donald Trump?

I'll wait.

'Cause if Trump loses, we're likely going to start losing very basic non-woke necessary things, like Constitutional Rights, freedom, health care, social security...the vote.

But yeah, you far-left motherfuckers go ahead and preen for the cameras and style for your homeys and see how much good that does anybody when there's death camps and killing fields in America and goose-stepping Nazis and tanks in the streets. Oh, but the stock market will be doing so well when the white middle class is forced to start buying at gunpoint to get the stock market back up.

And don't mind the piles of bones in the field, it's just "Enemies Of The People" after all.

A list that will grow considerably if you assholes manage to Woke the rest of us out of getting the fucking Trumpists out of power. You want open fascism in America, civil war and the collapse of this nation? Give these sons of bitches a second term, go right ahead.

Here we have Glenn Greenwald, AKA Glasnost Glenn, who despite being far-left as all get out, gay, and married to a Brazilian liberal congressman is completely unbothered by shilling for far-right dictators like Vladimir Putin who'd happily throw him in the Gulag given the chance.

Bitch, please. You live in Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro, despite being an all-around Trump-wannabe, does not appear to have screwed things up as bad, at least not yet. You are physically very goddamned removed from the consequences of your own stupid talk.

Seriously, I love how these privileged far-Left motherfuckers, despite being so anti-imperialist, anti-military and anti-xenophobia, seem to be perfectly fine with tolerating literally the most imperialist, jingoistic, xenophobic American President since Andrew Fucking Jackson.

They can't vote for Joe Biden, they can't, but they're perfectly willing to turn a blind eye (save for occasional weak-kneed criticism) toward literally the total antithesis of what they claim to stand for because GIMME MY FUCKIN" UNICORN OR ELSE

No, seriously, if you didn't hear me the first time, Fuck these motherfuckers. Fuck Glenn Greenwald and Jill Stein and all these other Far-Left Third Party idiots who seem absolutely hell-bent on reelecting Donald Trump in the vain hope that they'll get some weak collection of woke people's republics where America used to be. Fuck you, dude, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

What these people who seem to hope for America to fall like a stack of Jenga blocks that's gotten too top-heavy also seem utterly willing to ignore is the millions of deaths, and likely a fascist juggernaut formed of former red states that'll make Cold War American imperialist policy look like Iceland, and who unchecked by the rest of us just might inflict unimaginable horrors on their own people and the rest of the world in their quest for a global White Christian Empire.

What about the disabled, the elderly, LGBT folks, people of color, the poor, and all the other vulnerable populations that would suffer immensely from abuse by their own predatory racist right-wing gun nut neighbors in any collapse of the American constitutional system? A collapse, mind you, that we're heading for, likely accelerated by the Federal Government's lack of leadership and incompetent handling of the COVID-19 crisis and that will certainly be completed if we do not elect Joe Biden and the Democrats do not end up in full control of Congress.

A collapse that Republicans themselves, sensing their own very possible fall from power, may try to engineer themselves before November so that territories they control might be exempted from the people using their power and exercising their right to vote and putting a boot so far up the Republican Party's ass that Warren G. Harding will feel it.

But no, no, we can't vote for Joe or do anything to help eject the Republican Party from power because the Democrats have gotten too imperialistic and haven't given us our fucking Unicorn so if you want to vote for the Democrats you must be a privileged fascist.

As opposed to what? Those good, salt-of-the-Earth openly antisemitic and racist fascists who are chomping at the bit to reelect Trump and marching in the streets with guns because they hate social distancing and want us all to die of Coronavirus?

Fuck you, dude, You can fuck all the way off.

If you wonder why there's one hell of a lot of Democrats who down through the years went over to the Republican side or a lot of us Republicans who took longer to come over to the Democratic side it's because there's people like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Moore who are all about their performative liberalism, but could give two shits about how any of the stuff that's going on affects real people, past how much time they spend talking about it. They never do anything much to move the needle in their direction, and so far as I can tell, they don't care to.

Hell, even Bernie Sanders, as rabidly popular as he's been at times, has mainly seen his ideas gain relevance and the possibility of being enacted through their adoption by other, less "Woke" people...people like Joe Biden, for example, and the reason for that is by and large the far-left doesn't vote.

Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a gonna save us all

Well mama got sick and daddy got down
The county got the farm and they moved to town. Papa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet. ~Alabama, Song Of The South.

But they just can't vote for Joe, ya know, the guy who handily won the Democratic Primary on name recognition and nostalgia for the Obama era alone, they just can't. The excuse of the day is...one of the people being vetted for the VP nomination is Amy Klobuchar. So? Doesn't mean she'll get it, and to be honest if she does, she has a reputation for being a demanding boss and a person who doesn't take any shit. Oh, wait, kinda like Uncle Joe himself has a reputation for not taking any shit.

I still think what Joe Biden did to Paul Ryan in the 2012 Vice-Presidential Debates was a thing of beauty. Pardon me for thinking the ability to stand up and issue a bare-knuckle verbal beat-down isn't exactly what we need against a Republican President known for bullying and talking stupid.

Sorry if thinking trying to save what we already had and get things back on track isn't "Woke" enough for you, but the problem with any collapse of our existing Constitutional system is that the assholes absolutely will gain total power somewhere if that comes to pass.

And if people like the Bernie Bros and Glenn Greenwald had their way, the share of space that the far-right rules would be even bigger, because they'd rather not do their part anyway. They want a "Left" that is small, upper-class, White...and politically pretty damned impotent because after all, politics is a numbers game, not a purity game.

Ya'll need to face the basic facts that there will never be a Progressive agenda in the United States, nor any other agenda than "Fuck you, pay me" unless the current Republican Party is driven from power by a determined, irate public, and crushed by a wide enough margin that it's forced to change. This isn't the party of Ronald Reagan anymore, hell it isn't even the party of George W. Bush. It's the party of Donald Trump and if the rampant dishonesty, hate, and incompetence of this administration isn't enough to "Inspire" you to get off your ass and vote these malignant sons of bitches out of power and march in the streets to demand change and yes, potentially to fight...then I don't know what the fuck will.

You're obviously comfortable with what's going on, carry on, the rest of us will pull this thing out of the fire without you posers. Get lost.

Donald Trump has come right out and said he doesn't want people to vote. Republicans have outright said they would rather you die of disease than be able to live your life.

Trump is clearly in a state of mental decline, cracking under the pressure of the job, Trump's administration and campaign are riddled with open abuse of power and corruption and assuming we get these bastards out of power we're going to be years in cleaning up the mess, in rebuilding America, in even figuring out all the shit these fucking people have done.

And there's a non-zero chance that we're going to have to do all that while fighting a war against these sons of bitches.

And that's if we win. That's if Biden gets elected. That's if ya'll pull your head out of your own ass. It's going to be a hell of a lot worse if we don't stand up and change things in November.

I mean, come on, do you fuckers want to die?

Because that's what the average Republican wants you...and all the rest of us...to do at this point.

I don't know what more you need to be inspired to vote against this crap than that.

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

~Matthew 24:11-13