Hollow Man (Left Behind Is A Lie, Part Seven.)

 Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ~Joel 3:9-14

"I like people who weren't captured?" We're still on that shit?

"I like people who weren't captured" says Trump, the wannabe-warrior-king who's almost certainly never taken a punch that wasn't scripted in his entire life. Does this goddamned fool think those WWE matches with his friend Vince McMahon were real?!

I like people who weren't captured, says the guy who the only reason he's never been to jail is an army of progressively more skeevy lawyers and willingness to throw endless amounts of money, or at least the appearance thereof, at them and hope they buy into the con.

"Reopen the economy" say a bunch of fucking people who've never worked a real job or worked up a decent sweat that they didn't want to in their entire fucking lives.

You first, assholes. You first. What Chick-Fil-A are you gonna volunteer to work at when they open up for dine-in customers again? Yeah, flip that chicken sandwich on the grill there, Ainsley. Hey Laura! They need some cups for the soda machine! I mean, if they're brave, and so right, why not? Could we possibly see a Fox News Babe working a shift waiting tables at Olive Garden just to prove to the world that it's safe?! I mean, come on, it would be the ultimate "Owning of the Libs" wouldn't it? Better yet, she could donate the tips to COVID-19 research! Make it a win-win for both society and the newfound orthodoxy of the right-wing Cult Of Other People's Death. I mean, if you so fervently believe it's safe, what have you got to lose? If you're right, you're right and you get to go down in history as having both been right and had the guts to go out there and show the courage of your convictions!

*Sound of crickets chirping*

Yeah, that's what I thought.

How come these fucking people are always so brave with other people's lives, or profligate in their spending when it's other people's money.

Conservatives apparently only care about your life until you're born and you cease to be a stick they can use to beat your mother with.

Once you're born, your life becomes expendable, inconvenient to them.

Your money becomes something to take.

But not theirs, never theirs, they're special...or something.

Somehow, for most of the last 40 years these fucking people have been able to con other people into taking all the risks for them, while they pocket most of the profits. If you want to know why they're so desperate to "Reopen" everything, that's why. Their bullshit, like most cults, is dependent on keeping you busy enough that you don't have time to think about what's going on, to consider the effects on your family, your finances, your health, your life...or even your spirituality. In fact, the truth of these matters is that these fucking people, the Fox News Babes, the Republican politicians and the wealthy...they really don't think you have any of those things. If their reaction to this virus crap has taught us anything it's that they see other people as having appeared whole-cloth from nothing to serve their needs, then disappearing when they don't need us anymore. Of course they think we're expendable and they can just get more. Hell, there's people who volunteer to go along with this shit because they think they'll get a little slice, but then they don't and they live lives of quiet seething hatred because of it.

But that's Okay with the privileged and wealthy, because those who believe in their bullshit but then get mad when they don't get anything for it until they kill themselves with Opioids or shoot themselves in the head are still spending money in the right places before they die.

It's funny how Conservatives spent so long accusing everybody else of being the "Culture of Death" but now they're relentlessly going after the people who are simply trying to do what is necessary in the face of the COVID-19 crisis to preserve not only their own lives...and just as often the lives of their children, elders, immune-compromised family and friends, or medical professionals or police officers they know. It's funny to me how nothing and no one that these people ever said they cared about before matters to them anymore.

But did they become this way? Did they become and Independent Fundamentalist Death Cult over time...or were they really always like this, and simply adept at using people in their movement who weren't that way as camouflage? I'm sorry, but I can't imagine Barry Goldwater or Bill Buckley or Chuck Colson or either George Bush or John McCain or even Ronald Reagan talking like this and his administration actually did bungle the US response to the AIDS epidemic.

And yes, they screwed that up in part on purpose because there were people in the Reagan administration that were religious nuts or biased against gay people.

Apparently, there appears to have been at least some kind of a shift in "Conservative" sexual morality.

I will make a note of the fact that in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Donald Trump was a Democrat and self-identified New York Liberal, or at least he played one on TV, operating as at times the very face of the Big City Fat Cats that rural white people like me tended to despise on general principle. And even then, hell, especially then Trump's penchant for the lurid and salacious was legendary. I'm fully aware that this is the case with lots of wealthy people on both sides of the line. I'm saying there was a time when conservative people at least could convincingly disapprove of such behavior, and often did especially when it was somebody on their own side as people like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart found out the hard way.

Now? MAGA Baby, and if the "spoils" happen to include a teenage girl or boy or two, well that's just the way the balls bounce during the old in-out, don't they? Fuck you, I got mine, "Feminism is done, were doing it the right way now." Yes, I kept the misspelling on purpose.

Okay, Genius. "Right way" for what? Tell me something, when was a grown-ass-man putting a teenage girl in a sexual situation ever Okay? I'm not sure about you, but such things have been illegal and more to the point immoral for at least as long as I've been alive and aware of such things.

Modern conservatism is less Atlas Shrugged and more the mutant love-child of A Clockwork Orange and the Turner Diaries.

Maybe we shouldn't let people who can't tell the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma" and "let's eat grandma" and who appear to desire to offend others and think primarily with their dicks, dictate morality or public policy on any matters sexual or otherwise.

And maybe, just maybe, we as a people shouldn't let these fucking idiots turn some part of the United States into MAGAfghanistan so they don't get to implement their shitty sexual and social desires, eh?

If they're so right and they're so brave and so fit to sit in judgment of other people's lives, or even our right to exist, how is it these fucking people can't stand the least bit of public criticism of themselves or their putative leaders? If they're so right, or so righteous, why exactly to these fucking people have to lie about it so goddamned often? If they are so strong and their dogmatic beliefs so correct, why do both they and their beliefs seem to be burning away like a vampire's flesh when exposed to the bright sunlight of public scrutiny?

I woke up this morning to find that Trump had apparently seen yesterday's "Mourning in America" ad on Fox News last night (I guess it aired during Tucker Carlson's show) and proceeded to have quite the meltdown about it.

Too damned bad, I say. There is no right enshrined in the Constitution or the law that says anyone may be free from criticism, in fact it quite explicitly says the opposite and specifically endows us with a free press to make such criticisms and Donald Trump or any member of any political party that doesn't like that can go piss up a rope.

No one has a right to not be called out or criticized because of who they are and sure as hell nobody has a right to endless conveniences or profits on the backs of others or at the expense of other people's lives, nor to endless consumerism when people are dying, supply chains are stressed and hell, whole industries may disappear simply because there's no way they can really function in the kind of slimmed-down socially-distanced world we might just have to live in for a few years and you know what? If they can't find a way to adapt or didn't save up for a rainy day, preferring shareholder profits over preparedness..,well then maybe they need to go. Personally, I'd rather not live in a world where cruise ships or golf courses or Karen's right to go to Applebees and get waited on is more important than people's lives.

But then, I've never been afraid of change. I might not like it sometimes, but it's a part of life. My entire generation will never have the power or wealth that our parents did, simply because there weren't enough of us for Capitalism to restructure itself around keeping us happy for money.

And in fact, capitalism hasn't done too bad of a job adapting to our changing requirements and technologies either. I'm pretty sure Generation X and the Millennial generation and whatever they're calling the next one down this week will be fine. But ya know, we're going to have to adapt more, because these fucking people refused to.

But you have to be alive to adapt. As I understand it, things in death and the afterlife become rather static. I have no particular fear of death, but I have no desire to light myself on fire for capitalism or rich people's profits, either.

Trump and conservatives can take their "Warrior" talk and jam it right up their own asses. This is a virus, not a war. More people dying does not actually fight the virus, trying to go back to "normal" doesn't work when normal stopped being normal either six months ago or four years ago...depending on how you want to look at it.

If they wanna be the big happy warriors, let me offer a modest proposal.

Conservatives fucking love a leader who leads from the front, who gets his hands dirty, who goes into the field with his men.or who even makes a modest show of appearing to do so...and especially if they talk a good game, besides. Why the fuck do you think Douglas MacArthur was so popular? It wasn't because he was a good General officer. Hell, the main campaign he fought on his own, his way, the way he'd been trained...he got his ass kicked up between his shoulder blades by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy trying to defend the Philippines and it wasn't even a close run thing. After he got evacuated to Australia he got a more capable battle staff to do the planning for him and for that matter the American way of war changed, but he still talked a good game and new how to stage a good photo opportunity and for that matter he was massively popular in places like the Philippines in part because of his Biblical allusions and messianic complex.

Y'all wanna prove how tough you are Mr. All Go No Quit Big Nuts Warrior President Sir? You wanna prove you're right? DO YOU?!

Make yourself a fucking deal, set it up. Hell, Advertise the fuck out of it.

Hell I'm sure you have some fast-food franchise owner or some greasy spoon diner guy for a donor somewhere. Tell them to open that shit up. Tell them you'll fucking be there at their Burger King, Habib's Shawarma Shack, a Red Robin or Sammy's Steak Pit or whatever and tell the whole damn world you'll be there to put on a white apron and a pair of non-slip work shoes and flip the first damn burger that somebody orders onto the grill. Hell, get one of the Fox & Friends Babes to hold your coat while you do it. I bet there'll be people lining up 'round the block in their MAGA Hats and Trump swag just to be seen. I would not doubt that some of these people would fight each other and get their buddies to put that shit on YouTube just to be the guy that could say they got served that first burger or steak or two cooked personally by Donald Trump. Carry it out to them personally and you'd probably make somebody's life, much less day.

You want to be that guy, that's how you do it.

Show some physical courage. Give a fuck!

I mean, fuck, dude, showing that you can grill properly has got to be worth a couple points electorally, especially in the South. I can personally vouch for it that if you can show you make good barbecue, that'll throw states like Illinois right back into the swing-state category and it'll guarantee Indiana and probably Ohio based on the southern parts of the states alone. and give you nothing to ever have to worry about again in Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, and the Deep South on general principle.

You want to get reelected? You want to go down in history as a great man and save the fortunes of the Republican Party from your own fuck-ups, lies, misdeeds and stupidity?

There's a very simple solution.

Just once, be that guy, show that you are the man you say you are. Show you got some guts!

Open up a place. Be like, Hey, Corona, I'm here, you wanna take a shot at me!?!

Work a fucking eight hour shift like most of the rest of us have to and walk out of there with your head held high and some grease on your shirt and a "Fuck this place" attitude like the rest of us have every goddamn day five days out the week for most of our fucking lives. Certainly, unlike most of us, you'd do it to the sound of people cheering.

But...

Democrat that I am, guy that's always hated your fucking guts since 1989 that I am, I know I can say that, and can I say it with a clear conscience.

Because you won't. Because you're not that guy.

And deep down, you know it too.

I refuse to die for other people's money.

But the difference between us, Mr. President, is that I do not refuse to work for my own.

I will however, be perfectly fine with socially distancing until this virus shit is over, because I do give a damn about other people. I don't have to like this mess, nobody does, but we are all in this together. Until we all realize that, things will only get worse.

Left Behind is not a lie because of the bad writing or dubious theology, it is a lie because spiritually it denies that one truth. It allows a person to say that they are Godly while leaving the Self on the throne of their soul. It's a lie for the same reason that MAGA is a lie, because it scratches the itches and tickles the ears of the gullible even when it would be easier, safer, and better even for the ear-tickling false prophet if they told the truth. When people preach false doctrines, lies become The Truth to them. Do that long enough and you can't tell the truth no more. But neither God, nor the Universe, nor whatever else is out there has to agree, and it doesn't.

You want to bend the universe to your will? You gotta be that guy who can show people they have the chops to fucking do it. That Donald Trump is not that guy has made our world worse. That there's no there there is everybody's problem. That he has convinced a bunch of fools that he can do no wrong may kill us all.

Sooner or later, we're all going to have to face facts and decide whether we believe in truth or not. We all face our own valley of decision.

It really is that simple.

Part Six.
Part Eight.