And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. ~Revelation 17:1-6
Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with these people?! I've been seeing this kind of stuff for awhile now, conservatives and [So far, mostly Christian] religious nuts saying they won't take a vaccine for COVID-19, because somebody made up some bullshit thing about Bill Gates and 5G and Booga Booga Technology Is Out To Get You or some such stupid thing.
Meanwhile, conservatives continue to have one big childish meltdown over the virus and social distancing intended to combat its spread. I get that for a lot of these people this is their first crisis, or at least their first crisis where being white and conservative didn't automatically reduce the effects, so for many it seems like the end of the world, but come the fuck on, people.
It's a crisis, it's not the End Times. I don't know how the hell people have such easy lives that this thing seems like the end of the world to them, but this crap has to stop, because doing stupid shit here, not social distancing, and making things worse on essential workers and even just people who are trying to get through the day can and will make this mess worse for everybody. Dumb shit and lies will sure make this thing worse, and might even get more people killed. The thing that's really starting to bother me is that conservatism as almost a whole has become completely divorced from reality.
For that matter, Michelle Malkin...who is herself not white...has styled herself as a mother-figure to white supremacists and somehow managed to pull this off. More like, she's the mother of bullshit searching for the relevance she previously lost back in about 2007 or so.
Now I realize that this is a political movement that's found its spirit animal in a semi-literate geriatric narcissist of a failed businessman, but you would think that wouldn't be causing the average conservative on the street and especially the spiders that hide further up the web and try to manipulate everything to lose their minds and utterly forget their own basic survival instincts as well. Yes, I know, a lot of these people think it won't happen to them. Well as somebody who's had various it's happen to them I'm here to tell you, yes it will happen to you and you need to start acting like you think it might because it's not just your life at stake, but other people's as well. And it's not going to get any better if people don't stop acting like idiots about this damn thing. What is so hard to understand about that?
And at a time when people need to have trust in each other and their governments, it's fast becoming the case that almost anything said by a conservative who isn't some kind of Never-Trump person or otherwise out of favor with the hive mind can be assumed to be a lie.
That lady in Texas with the salon? She was recruited to pull that shit and break social distancing, it was nothing but a slime job aimed at, well, all of Texas in general because these fucking fools have decided that social distancing is "Liberal" and of course, they want you to die. All these zero sum game motherfuckers think they can use the virus to kill you and then take your stuff when you're dead, or at least that's my theory anyway.
And why, you ask, do I feel that way?
Because among other things, the same people as always are still reacting with barely concealed glee over the killing of a Black man in Georgia back in February, and to the credit of the Never Trump people, I will say that I've seen them take the lead in calling out this bullshit, much of which (of course) seems to be mostly being shoveled by libertarians and Trump Supporters.
The line for awhile, at least among some of the people that I know, is that conservatism is a death cult.
I agree, to an extent, but I think it needs to be said that it's getting worse than that.
Sure, they want people to die for a variety of reasons, lots of these people are extremists, basically Nazis who believe in Eugenics and want to try to kill off the aged, the disabled, the "unfit" the "weak" and whatever ethnic or racial groups they don't like. Sure, that's a given.As somebody said a few years back, the cruelty is the point. Inflicting pain for its own sake is in fact, the goal. But there's something else at work here, at least since the virus came along. Perhaps it's a manifestation of End Times 'buck fever' or a manifestation of the mass negativity of these people, perhaps it's something more sinister, I don't really know. I'll try to explain, bear with me.
There are people out there, who seem to be intent on repealing all human progress made since the 15th century, although at least some of them seem to imagine that they might keep at least some modern technology or something, certainly they want to replace modern medicine with various and assorted woo woo bullshit, "energy" crystals, "essential oils" and homeopathy or some shit.And ya know, I kinda get it, I don't like going to the doctor either. But without modern medicine I'd be dead or at the very least incapacitated and dependent on other people for basic needs and survival, and probably not surviving in any way that makes it worth it to be alive.
And I'm related to people who had polio, my Mom had it and still has back problems to this day because of it. I've known other people as well, I used to know a guy who ran a watch and clock repair shop down by my Aunt's house that my Dad or my Grandpa took old-style pocket watches to a couple times. The guy who owned and ran the shop used a wheelchair, because he'd been rendered paraplegic by polio as a kid. Hell, I remember having the Chickenpox myself, and that shit was no fun at all. Vaccines are important, and in any number of cases legally required, for a damn reason.
And it's not just stuff like that. I did some prowling around that "Liberty Hangout" feed the other day, some of these supposed "Libertarians" are full on in favor of fascism or monarchy. Certainly people in any number of places seem to want to go back to Jim Crow and open racism. A lot of these fucking people really do want to go back to things that had an actual, measurable, empirically provable body count that went right along with them.
These fucking people want you to die.
But it's worse than that, and it doesn't get any better from here on out.
These people want to lie to you, they want you to believe their lies, they want to steal from you and then they want you to die in a way that they can profit from, and then on top of that, they want you to go to hell, this in spite of the fact that by the conservative Christian standards I was taught most of these fucking people took that downward escalator a long damn time ago. Personally, I think that's actually part of it, they're miserable bastards, they know how it's all going to come out in the wash, they just want to take as many people as they can with them, because why the fuck not? They already make no bones about insulting your intelligence and obviously, provably lying to you, and that's in part because they know their base is going to make a big show of believing this crap just because they think they'll make the other side mad by doing so.And here's the thing about that. That picture of the steering wheel up above with all the rocks glued to the airbag cover, thus turning it into a studded wheel of death should the driver get into an accident and the airbag deploy?
Even money they're an anti-vaccine nut and a Trump supporter at this point. It's almost a guarantee that they're one or the other, because woo woo bullshit is part of the brand.
But here's the thing, and this is where I've got these people. All this "Energy" and "vibes" stuff, crystals, homeopathy, and silly New Age bullshit used to be literal snarl words for Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians...many of whom wholeheartedly support Trump. It used to be that this kind of crap would get an Evangelical or a Fundamentalist ranting about New Age crap and preaching about the devil and quoting "Do not suffer a witch to live" faster than you could say Silver Ravenwolf.
Now?
Yeah, sure, some of them might still do that, but twenty years of conflict, some of which could have been avoided, a decade of conspiracy theories and silly bullshit and five years of Donald Trump have stripped away any moral authority that those words once had.
And deep down, they know it, otherwise they wouldn't be gleeful about murders, supporting liars, and thronging in the streets to celebrate the unraveling of our country and society by demanding that we unravel it further by all dying of disease.
They know, they don't care. And they don't care that we know, either, because do you know what the difference is between the person with the crystals in their car and the average Trump Evangelical at this point?
Nothing, except which magic words and phrases they're using.
The reason that both the MAGA nuts and the anti-vaccine idiots, many of whom used to be at least theoretically the crunchy hippie type...or at least affected that appearance outwardly...are fusing into one group is because Trump makes the lies and the magic words and phrases Okay. Hell, listen to how he talks. Trump offers them an unholy trinity of consumerism, racism and himself in place of the truth with substantial side orders of feel-good woo woo crap, self pity and toxic masculinity...and they take it.
But here's the thing. Without truth, there is no freedom.
It seems almost funny to me now, that I learned this from conservative Christians. Now there's one hell of a lot of those people who would rather feel good about themselves than be free. Sure, it feels good to hear what you want, but that's also the reason I was taught to check what people said against the Word, or against my own common sense.
Now? Those people are the people shouting "Lie to me, baby!"
It seems very remote to me now, the more that I think about it, that there was a time when one could be a Christian and a conservative without being a bigot and a conspiracy theorist or hating liberals so much you want to throw away 600 years of human progress.
But that's why the rest of us have to stand up for the truth, for what can be empirically tested as well as what can be discerned in black and white on the pages of holy books, and for what can be seen in actions and conduct.
We have to save these people from their own silly woo woo bullshit, as much as anything else because if we don't, it's going to destroy us too. That's what they're saying when they say they won't take a Coronavirus vaccine. They want that shit to happen.
The virus doesn't care who you are or what you believe. Truth is what it is whether you believe in it or not. And if we don't put a stop to this crap soon, we who don't want to die are going to have to look forward to living the rest of our lives like we've lived the last few months.
I don't want to live like that forever, but I feel like I have a right not to get sick, too. This seems like it should be obvious.
T
And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.
The beast that thou saw was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into pers dition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits.
And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he comes, he must continue a short space.
And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition.
And the ten horns which thou saw are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. ~Revelation 17:7-12
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