The Demon-Haunted World (My American Dark Age, Part Three.)

March, march to my own drum
March, march to my own drum
Hey, hey, I'm an army of one
Oh, I'm an army of one
March, march to my own drum
March, march to my own drum
Hey, hey, I'm an army of one
Oh, I'm an army of one.
~The Chicks, March March (From the upcoming album, Gaslighter.)

I keep seeing this. Pictures and videos of some dumb ass wealthy St. Louis couple that clearly don't know how to use their weapons, pointing them at peaceful protesters who were simply walking by their gaudy mansion on their way to demonstrate in front of the mayor's house.

Let's look at this seriously.

#1 Neither one of these fools is even holding their goddamned weapon properly, fire a rifle like that and you'll likely burn your hand, for one thing. Also, holding a pistol in the same diffident, disgusted manner that one might hold a recently filled dog-poop bag is probably not a good idea if you plan on firing it, and having your finger inside the trigger guard is a straight up violation of basic firearms safety. Also, neither one of these idiots has their eyes on where the muzzle of the weapon is aimed, and at multiple points in the assorted videos I've seen these fucking idiots keep pointing their weapons at each other.

#2 Basic rules as I was taught them, when I was a kid, before I had even the slightest bit of professional training: Always treat every weapon as if it is loaded and do not load it or chamber a round until you have to. Do not ever point a weapon at another person or have your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot. Always know what is downrange in the direction the weapon is aimed.

#3 These people were armed with weapons they do not know how to use, and were reacting with pants-pissing fear to unarmed peaceful protesters who were on their way somewhere else.

And then these fucking idiots managed to draw the attention of the entire country, by being fucking idiots.

And Matt Gaetz (R-Natty Lite) says "This is all of us?"

No bitch, it ain't, not by a long shot, it ain't. I might also be a middle-aged fat guy, but I'm not afraid of other people, and peaceful protesters don't bother me and hell, I'll gladly accept somebody who has even a totally opposite viewpoint from me if they aren't racist, believe in peace, and don't want to hurt people. Other ideas don't scare me. Also, I well remember that I was taught how to use a rifle, a few times including by actual professionals, and this ain't it. Not by a long shot, it ain't.

And Jesse Kelly calls peaceful protesters who simply want the police to stop killing Black people "rioters" and "zoo animals?" Speaking of other things that would've got me shit-canned from more than one job that I've had in this life...

It's becoming hard to not believe that conservatism is racism, and racism is conservatism. It wasn't always like that, but These Fucking People have kicked everybody else out.

Therefore, if only by default, the fucking racists became the ones who defined the philosophy. I don't like this, but it is what it is. I hung on for as long as I could trying for some other result, for all the good it did.

What the hell kind of small-ass demon-haunted world do you have to live in to be this scared of unarmed people who would have just kept walking if you hadn't come out and made an ass of yourself? And just how in the actual fuck do Matt Gaetz (R-Wild Irish Rose) and Jesse Kelly (of "Scalp the liberals before they kill me" wank-fest infamy) each manage to pack so goddamned many racist stereotypes into one fucking Tweet? I mean, I'm old enough to remember when talking like that would get my ass beat and my hide tanned and stretched out on the side of the shed. Hell, I got told "You say that again and you won't be able to sit down for a week" for far less, and I was raised conservative. But when I was coming up, racist talk was considered wrong and snide remarks might get you beat up, so what the fuck do I know?

But then, as certain friends of mine constantly point out, I look at things with some degree of logic.

So, I guess we live in one where yet another Youtube racist got suspended because he's a Youtube Racist and Stefan has a sad because his "Philosophy discussion" came to a crashing end BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING RACIST. Now Scott Adams AKA Nazi Dilbert Guy who never met a bit of woo woo bullshit he didn't like is claiming that he got fired from not one, but two jobs for being white. And how does that work, exactly, given that...well I'm honestly not sure that Scott Adams has ever had a real job?

Meanwhile actual cops Nazis manage to be even more pathetic. Elijah McClain, a black teenager, was killed for (apparently) no damned good reason by the Aurora Police Department, and these violin-playing kids decided to hold a vigil or something...because Elijah was a violinist or whatever...and the police department sent riot police to break up the protest, also for no goddamned good reason.

Seriously what in the hell kind of a candy ass fearful shit do you have to be, to be afraid of a bunch of kids who are playing their violins in the park? Perhaps the kinds of fearful shits who end up getting fired when they get caught hankering for a race war on live audio?

(And then these same racist sons of bitches wonder why people think police departments need to be reformed, their budgets need to be cut, and something about their training needs to be seriously changed?)

At this point, if you're not seeing that some changes to both conservative politics and policing need to be made and that racism ought to be driven from the public square, with anyone who advocates for it wearing a nice new coat of tar and feathers,  then you're part of the fucking problem.

These people's pointless, pants-shitting fear of goddamned near everything is going to get a lot of people killed, hell, it already has. The same fucking people who until a few months ago were banging on endlessly about the Sanctity Of Life are pretty much ready to kill millions if it means they won't have to look at Black people or wear a mask to protect themselves from a deadly virus and they're willing to throw away their own freedom and bow down before a police state that demands nothing less than cowering conformity and submission so long as they get to keep their privilege and racism.

They fear the demons in their own heads, which are of their own creation, so much that they would plunge our society into chaos, destruction and war. They'd rather have explosions in the distance every night, the scream of different kinds of jet engines overhead and mass reports of combat casualties and war crimes. Anything is better than having to face what they actually are, and change even a little.

And given the chance, knowing that as King said, a riot is the language of the unheard, they are desperate to go right on unhearing and go back to sleep, and sleep right through it all until the tanks crash through the White House fence and whatever form of government these fucking people installed is told by people with bigger guns that its power has crumbled and they've nothing left to turn over.

These fucking people automatically assume that if other people have basic Constitutional rights and human freedom and rights, including a right to express yourself, or to not get shot, that it will somehow automatically mean their own deaths, even though they've said that about every single moment of cultural or social change that has ever happened and that's always what these fucking fools have been afraid of and it never works out that way in real life.

But ya know, when you want to murder people just because they're telling you not to kill them, you just might be the fucking demon, delusions in your own head aside, and you might just have never deserved the power this country gave you in the first goddamned place, because you're a piece of fucking shit. If your belief system is founded on the fact that you must have somebody else to oppress, then fuck you. You don't just deserve not to have power, you deserve to be ripped from your power and privilege and forced to have to see how the rest of the world lives and what people have to go through so that you can have your big house and your money and those guns you don't know how to use. And if that inconveniences you, or makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad.

If you'd point guns at peaceful people just to keep the scales over your own eyes, if you would kill people to save a dime, or to not have to face that you're that kind of sociopath, then fuck you.

You don't deserve to have power or dictate anything to anybody and you deserve to bear the full burden of the judgment that history will give you.

Lunatic dreams create a nightmare reality for the sane.

Part Two.

Part Four.

Words We Say To God (My American Dark Age, Part Two.)

(As per regulation, some shit is about to go down. If you can't deal with that, here's a picture of some ferrets, move along.)

“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water (he cups his hands) and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again. ~Thomas More, as depicted by Robert Bolt in A Man For All Seasons.

I lost somebody today. His name was Blizzard. He was an elderly rescue ferret, found in a box outside the local pet store during a snowstorm in January of 2019. Hence the name. He's the white ferret on the bottom of the pile in the header photo.
I did the best I could to give him a good life for the last year and a half. But for me to be in a position to do that, somebody else...didn't.

I don't know what Blizzard's 'real' name was, how old he was beyond a range of four to six years that the vet game me from looking at his teeth, and that from his condition on the day he came into my life, that he'd been fed some pretty crappy food.

His passing was not unexpected, but is sad, just the same.

I was taught that when you take on a pet, you're in it for life, theirs or yours. You have to be there all the way to the end, and so it was this morning.

That said, because of dealing with Blizzard's sudden turn for the worse yesterday I wasn't in any shape to write.

I've been slowly trying to get my thoughts together about the news that Russian military intelligence is paying the Taliban bounties for American troops that they kill and...then we find out that Trump and the Republicans knew this three months ago and didn't do shit about it, except to try and weasel Russia right back into the G7.

If I have to explain to you the volcanic level of rage that's been building up, you'll never fucking understand it. And I shouldn't have to. If you're an American, you should get this. Some things should not need to be said.

For myself, I'm a former conservative Republican, I'm a veteran. I served in the United States Air Force.

Integrity Above All.
Service Before Self.
Excellence In All That We Do.

Duty, Honor, Country, have to be more than just words.

If you take that oath to be a member of the United States Armed Forces, an Elected Official, or a Federal employee...you have given your word to uphold the Constitution and defend something greater than yourself. You have created a Law Of The Universe that only applies to you. As Robert Bolt wrote and Stephen Colbert famously quoted "When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands, like water..."

One of my bros died in Afghanistan in 2003, another came back with severe PTSD and would commit suicide in 2010 because of that and other issues. Yet another was wounded in Iraq in 2005 and became permanently disabled when the vehicle he was driving hit an IED. He lost the use of his right arm and would ultimately lose hearing in his right ear.

I'm asking you, as an American;

What are our lives worth?

What are our lives worth to our country, that it will not stand up against those who would put a monetary value on our lives and mark us as targets for simple murder for hire in spite of decency, honor, and the fucking rules of war?

You ever get the vibe that Republicans want to leave the rest of America in a box in a parking lot somewhere with a sign on us that says "Free to good home?"

In the last few months as crises pile up and their poll numbers tank and more and more people end up hating Trump...Republicans have made it crystal clear that they regard nearly everybody else in America as an enemy to be either destroyed or subjugated. From killing Grandma to restart the economy during the lock-down, to the George Floyd murder, to cops shooting at reporters, conservatives and Republicans have made it plain that either through action or inaction, they wish to destroy any aspect or institution of America that won't bend the knee...and by bend the knee I mean completely subjugate itself to the will of Donald Trump and to the constantly-shifting dogmas of modern Republicanism that flow from him to the point where any thought of anything else is considered treason. In effect, the Party wishes you to disregard the evidence of your eyes and ears as their first and most essential command.

And they're not afraid to throw the military under the bus, either.

You know how long I had to deal with constant "Support The Troops" jingoism that only got worse the less Republican or supportive of wars and shit that I got? Then there's the "Thank you for your Service" bullshit, not because the person saying it genuinely had anything invested, or really gave a shit, but because the second they saw my hat, or the ratty old BDU jacket that still has my name on it and the rank insignia of a Senior Airman on the shoulders, or one of several ratty old T-shirts, or whatever...I ceased to be a person and became simply a totem before which that was the proper offering. Fuck this stupid bullshit.

You know what I want? A government that treats its own citizens, all of them, like human beings and doesn't throw the troops or veterans under the bus because the current President has a massive man-crush on a dictator and likes the idea of being the bottom bitch.

But yet, at the same time as Trump and the Republicans want to take it from any dictator that'll give it to them, they want to punch down on just about every other American who is not massively wealthy or famous simply for being famous, and they are endlessly pissed that there is resistance to this most-shitty of ideas. They seem to think that everybody else should suffer in silence for the greater glory of Donald Trump and #MAGA and not even get to have an opinion about that. All other thought besides the Party's thought is treason.

There comes a point where you have to stand up. There comes a point where there is no living with or any more trying to reason with people who don't think you have a right to exist. We are fast approaching that point, where each of us will have to decide between America or Trump, and Republicanism or the Republic itself...and among other things we're going to have to vote accordingly, and probably even fight, to protect our own lives.

Because if we don't, these people would gladly tear America apart and kill millions of people, abandoning the rest of us like a ferret left in a box to die in the cold.

They're going to try it anyway, but they will be less successful if we all stand together. Maybe at this point "less successful" and a long grind of dealing with this problem is the best we're going to get.

But we still have to do it.

There comes a point where we have to stand up against all enemies foreign and domestic if we wish to remain a free people. If you don't think God, or history, or the Universe or whatever will judge you for what you do in this time...you might be part of the problem.

Just remember if they'll sell out the military, they'll sure as hell sell you out.

I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution Of The United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, So help me God.

~United States Armed Forces oath of enlistment.

And note that this oath is quite similar to the one taken by elected officials.

We're either a nation of laws, or we're not. We either believe in the things we say we do, or we don't.

This isn't hard.

Part One.

Part Three.

Also, Read This.

What is an oath then but words we say to God? ~Thomas More.

Fiery The Angels Fell, Again (My American Dark Age, Part One.)

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

"You don't call the doctor when you need your car fixed, or call the mechanic when you're sick. Why would you expect Trump, a non-believer who doesn't even understand the basis of Christianity and has never been a conservative, to make America either more Christian or more conservative?"

This was a question I asked, repeatedly, of conservatives and Evangelicals throughout 2015 and 2016 as Trump gradually overwhelmed the rest of the field of Republican candidates. Nobody ever really had much of an answer, or even tried to, honestly.

I started asking this question specifically after I saw the video in which Trump said he'd never asked God for forgiveness...which the Lincoln Project helpfully re-posted this morning on Twitter.

It stuck with me, that I never got much of an answer. Of course, I missed the fucking point in the first damn place. I'd have had a perfectly valid question...if any of this shit had ever been about Christianity or Conservatism in the first place, and it wasn't...ever. Not to These Fucking People, anyway. We've already seen how much they hate any legacy-conservative Republicans that they could direct their hatred at, like George H.W. Bush or John McCain.

I saw a Tweet the other night from some Trump Supporter, shared ironically by Bill Kristol that basically did nothing more than kick organized, legacy conservatism in the nuts for no reason, and in point of fact the Tweet he quoted was a link to an article that was nothing more than a pro-Trump anti-conservative partisan screed, simply based on the fact that the current president of the Heritage Foundation, herself an African American woman, expressed support for Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests. The article itself was a hell of a piece of work if you care to read it. It's nothing but Ad Hominem garbage aimed at everybody, but that's what These Fucking People do. Completely missing the point, of course, that it doesn't really matter who George Floyd was, or what the fuck he did or didn't do...nothing he was ever even accused of doing was a death-penalty crime AND don't we have courts and laws for that? I mean, I get that modern "Conservatives" basically are racist idiots. I get that think that anybody who attracts the attention of the cops or whoever else they see as "their" users of force is somehow guilty of something. But isn't this America, where people have rights to things like trial by a jury of their peers, and don't we have a Constitution and an entire legal system to determine things like innocence or guilt?

We're either a modern, Enlightenment-inspired civilization based on Democracy, Rule of Law, and the truth, or we're not. There's no middle of the road here. Our Constitution and legal system even as currently written functions under this assumption, that this is and always will be what we are. Consider for example last week's SCOTUS decisions, particularly that concerning LGBT workplace protections and the protection of DACA by the Court, as an example of this.

On the other hand, over the last several years I've watched American Movement Conservatism throw away all this stuff, item by item, line by line, one bit of code after another until what is left is decidedly Post-Modern in much the same way as a work of modern "Art" by Andres Serrano or Robert Mapplethorpe would be. It's nothing more than a political version of the infamous photo of a crucifix suspended in a jar of the artist's urine...exactly the same sort of bullshit that the conservatives of my childhood and teenage years would have been vehemently against. They have invented a Christless Christianity that's in search of a god...and then raised up a man who'd gladly take on the role. They've created the ultimate nonsensical "Secret society" simply by creating a giant conspiracy theory mashup and structuring a bullshit In-group around it. It doesn't matter what you are or what you stand for, you just have to hate "Liberals" as much as they do. "Liberal" or course being defined as "Anybody they see as being against them, or who isn't an outright Trump suck-up.

It's like having a President who routinely rails against flag-burning regardless of the 30-year-old Supreme Court decision on that subject, while constantly shredding every single value that flag stands for or ever did.

It doesn't matter what you are, you just have to be as lost as they are.

All they've got is somebody who says "Follow me." It doesn't matter that he's going off a cliff.

We, as a people, can either get this bullshit under control or it's going to kill us. These fucking people, these Fascists and Q-nuts, Racists and Trump Supporters...and of course several flavors of extreme Christian religious fanatics besides, would gladly burn down every element of Western Civilization all the way back to the fucking Dark Ages in their pursuit of some kind of religious or right-wing utopia where they never have to look at anything 'different' and the main purpose of government or the State, such as it was at the time, is protecting the Elite or the Nobility and fighting wars against whatever enemies are available.

If you think they give a shit about modern society, or technology, besides whatever is required to produce the weapons needed to kill more people, think again. Given the rise of automated manufacturing, all they really need to do is try to hang onto the knowledge of how to make the things that make the things for a couple more generations...humans optional...and they'll figure out the rest when they get there.

If you don't think somebody like Bill Barr has visions of being some kind of American version of Rodrigo De Borgia and the kind of unaccountable power that such would entail, dancing in his head, you have another thing coming. If you don't think these racist monsters would gladly trade the life of every person of color, LGBT person or "White" person that disagreed with them...and the lives of millions of their own followers as well...for that kind of power, you haven't been paying attention.

And they've convinced literally millions of their people that the only thing worth living for is the idea that they might get to have their boot on someone else's throat before they die.

Appeasing these fucking people or hoping they'll go away after awhile isn't going to work. Bowing down sure as hell won't work, unless you'd rather be alive than free, and yeah, fighting them one way or another might be dangerous...but so is getting out of bed and going to work every day.

Civilization and freedom require a certain level of risk, our founders knew that. Being a citizen requires a certain amount of courage, intellectual curiosity and rational inquiry. That's literally why our system is structured the way it is.

Trump and his enablers and his racist mob are counting on people's apathy and cowardice, greed, materialism and willful ignorance to hide their own multitude of sins and keep the populace distracted until it's too late to do anything about it. It doesn't matter how many guns you've got to protect yourself if you're a slave to hateful ideologies and ignorance all so that some rich motherfucker can pick your pocket while you're screaming at anybody that's better educated or different or not from around here.

More to the point, a lot of these assholes know this. They just go along because they think eventually they'll be the rich guy picking the pockets instead of the rubes getting fleeced. They think they'll be the Lord in his castle and not the serfs in the fields.

And it doesn't work that way. Whoever that guy is, assume it's not going to be you.

We have a civilization here, and all the tools we need to right the ship, and at long last an active and engaged public. What the fuck do you think the conservatives, and the cops, and the Republicans are all suddenly so afraid of?

We The People, that's what. Remember that.

And people had to die to get us to wake up.

Why else do you think they'd rather burn it all down and have some kind of a stupid race war? And know that they'll try, just to keep the graft going somewhere, if they can't have the whole country.

Vote the bastards out, and then be ready for what comes next.

Because it will come.

If you don't think these fucking people would love to turn their bullshit Culture Wars into actual shooting wars you ain't paying attention. If you don't think their petty obsessions with basically nonexistent groups like "Antifa" and all the Q-Bullshit would just be used as excuses to kill people, you have another thing coming.

When I tell you it's going to come down to a fight, and we'll be dealing with people who don't know why they lose or even recognize or understand the 'old gods' of our modern society, fucking listen!

And there are millions of these fucking idiots who will Kamikaze themselves for these shitty beliefs, while the motherfuckers that brainwashed those people sit in some bunker somewhere, count their money and smugly congratulate themselves as their followers die from diseases and war and take millions of other people down with them. They don't care about civilization, they want to hurt people and make money off of it.

Hold fast, and don't back the fuck down.

They sure won't.

Part Two.

I wrote this in 2018, it still holds up.

Barbarians In The Shining City (American Revelation IV, Postscript.)

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come. ~Caesar, Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II, William Shakespeare.

I saw this over the weekend. A video of a bunch of white morons dancing at the Trump rally in Tulsa. The feed? Some dipshit group called "The Deplorable Choir" that basically sings home-made pro-Trump propaganda songs that are every bit as awful and dumb as that sounds like it is. The caption: "This is the side of Trump rallies that the media doesn't want you to see."

My friend tagged me in this same picture on Facebook, Caption: "If I had to see this, so do you." My response; I saw it dozens more times than I wanted to over the weekend.

Seriously if you need the "media" to know that most white people can't dance worth a shit and look like fools trying, you aren't paying attention to, ya know, life.

But these idiots act like this is somehow some kind of a big reveal, that the "Liberal" Media somehow doesn't want you to see? And then they act like posting in a public forum like Twitter somehow isn't going to cause everybody to see it?

Fun fact. The Deplorable Choir actually posted the video this image is taken from twice. They deleted the first one because too many comments making fun of this shit popped up on the feed.

And that right there should tell you anything you'd like to know about these fucking people.

And here we have Rudy Giuliani ranting about Black Lives Matter on FOX News, basically saying that if police officers aren't allowed to gun down Black people in the streets for no reason that hordes of Black people will come and take your stuff.

Rudy Giuliani, once "America's Mayor" with a better than average shot at the Presidency himself, once the very face of in-most-things moderate Republicanism (unless you were, rather infamously, a ferret owner or his cousin/first wife, and I'm not joking.) talking like a damn Segregationist Dixiecrat right out of 1850...and it's 2020.

Will the real Rudy G please stand up...
Please stand up...
Please stand up...

No, seriously, who the fuck is this guy? When my roommate told me about this, this morning, I was like "What the fuck?" Then I sat down and logged into Twitter and there it fucking was.

America's Mayor, everybody.

Unless you're black and you have the temerity to think you shouldn't get killed for no reason.

I can remember when talking like this got you ran out of politics and respectable society, period.

First, they came for Police brutality, then they came for the Confederate statues...and now the fucking right-wing conservative Christians are basically shitting themselves in fear that somebody's going to come and take their Jesus away.

In all seriousness right-wing idiots here and there have been saying "Statues of Jesus are next" for a few days and yesterday Shaun King said some dumb shit that every Black person, liberal or other person of color that commented on it basically just laughed off. Shaun King may be Black, but he is not taken seriously by the vast majority of Black people, or really, anybody other than the Bernie Bros last I knew. At least one of the comments I saw was pretty much "Shaun King is mad because Jesus is not white, but he is." Yet every pants-shitting comment I saw by "Conservatives" took his stupid comment about how statues of a "White Jesus" should be taken down both seriously and extremely literally.

What an awful thing it must be to live in this kind of a demon-haunted world. I'm serious.

In any conflict where they face any kind of direct threat to themselves, it's not that these privileged white conservatives will lose. It's basically that they've already lost. They're so filled with fear, with their wills so pre-broken by Fox News and right-wing talk radio and constant racist bullshit that they would shatter like glass. You cannot be constantly trained to utter pants-shitting fear and then suddenly become courageous. It doesn't work that way. War is not about destroying the other side, first and foremost, it's about breaking the will to fight in the first place.

Any fighting these people tried to do, would be lashing out, trying to force submission...but they would find themselves incapable of much of a strategy, likely run themselves afoul of the law and a host of other things, face all the more public backlash for it, and then try to bluster their way out and probably fail in most cases.

Ya know, like the cops finally overreacting against a determined public in the George Floyd protests and getting smacked around by public opinion and exposure as being a bunch of bullying cowardly shits themselves, and it's funny how just like that, public support for the police and even most of the right-wing "Thin Blue Line" bullshit just sort of disappeared in a matter of a few weeks.

All the guns and political power and legal immunity in the world won't save you if you're a fucking coward who melts down the second some other person actually says what they think of you.

And if I had to guess, when something other than right-wing conservatism or fascism comes along and shows itself to be the stronger tribe, one hell of a lot of these fucking people will switch sides, simply because boot leather is boot leather and to a bootlicker it tastes all the same.

Don't get me wrong, that's not likely to be an improvement. Apparently, yesterday a United States Army Private was arraigned on terrorism charges for sending sensitive information to White Supremacists in an attempt to facilitate an attack on his own unit.

He was ready and willing to throw his own bros under the bus, for white supremacy. First off, this is treason, straight up, and while terrorism charges are fitting I think he ought to be charged with treason, too. Second, speaking as a veteran here, I wanna knock this dude into next week. What in the fuck kind of lowdown filthy son of a bitch do you gotta be not just to betray your country, but your own brothers and sisters in arms? In the military, everybody lives in everybody else's space, everybody depends on everybody else, and in something as simple as an FTX (Field Training Exercise) everybody's life depends on everybody else doing their duty and doing their jobs to the best of their ability at all times. Anybody who doesn't understand that shouldn't be there in the fist place.

But it's worse than that. If you can look at those people who you live and serve and sweat and may die with, and say that the Knights Of The Flabby White Ass have more value?

Fuck you.

You are not just my enemy, but the enemy of every Airman, Coast Guardsman, Marine, Sailor or Soldier that has ever honorably served the United States of America and more to the point, the enemy of every citizen from the Jail House to the White House who has ever, with good intentions, exercised or stood up and demanded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution those people all swore an oath to.

You are, perhaps even more so, the enemy of the immigrant, or America's allies, and of every person around the world who ever saw America as the Shining City On A Hill.

You are the enemy not only of America's history and traditions, but, if you claim to be a conservative, even your own.

This is what Conservatism has become. This is the Truth of American Revelation, as revealed by Donald Trump whether he intended for it to be so or not. This is what these fucking people are, racist monsters who would just as soon throw their own people under the bus if it would earn them a dime or a moment of cheap internet-fame.

But, God forbid they be criticized or called out or shown to their faces to be anything other than what they claim they are...even though they know that what they're claiming to be is complete and total horse shit even as they say it. Not a thing these people say is trustworthy, not a goddamned word that comes out of their mouths at this point should be accepted in good faith, because the chances are pretty fucking slim those words were said in good faith.

These fucking people are desperate to be seen as good white Christian people, trying to live orderly, prosperous and simple lives while being persecuted by some nebulous and shifting "Other."

But when you try and set it up not just so that your order, prosperity, religion or simplicity comes at the expense of or on the backs of or from the blood of other people...but so that this is the only way by which it comes...you're not the good people.

YOU are the hordes of Barbarians at the fucking gates, and don't you forget it.

Being too cowardly to admit the truth to yourself does not make it go away.

Part Twelve.

The Face In The Mirror (American Revelation IV, Part Twelve.)

Gonna make a change,
For once I'm my life
It's gonna feel real good,
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right

As I, turn up the collar on
My favorite winter coat
This wind is blowing my mind
I see the kids in the street,
Without enough to eat
Who am I to be blind
Pretending not to see their need?

A summer's disregard, a broken bottle top
And one man's soul
They follow each other on the wind ya know
'Cause they got nowhere to go
That's why I want you to know

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and make a change.

~Michael Jackson, Man In The Mirror.

Trump had his first big rally since March. In spite of the fact that anybody who knows anything begged him not to, in spite of having to move it back a day because of massive public backlash over originally scheduling the thing on Juneteenth.

Just over 6,200 people showed up. Seriously?

Bad poll numbers, K-Pop Stans and Tik Tok kids, the fucking virus, the vast, yawning Abyss of shit-headed incompetence that is Brad Parscale? There's a fair number of contributing factors and theories as to why this is so. If this can be considered insurgent warfare, the party in power is losing, and deep down, these fucking people have to know it by now.

But that's 6,200 goddamn people anyway, in a relatively red area of the reddest of red states and Trump couldn't fill a third of the goddamned arena, and that's not even what stuck out to me about this fucking shit.

"The Degenerate Left claimed Trump had health issues after drinking water with 2 hands, today he drank with one and tossed the glass to the side. GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER! TRUMP DRINKS WATER WITH ONE HAND!"

First of all, Deanna Lorraine is a goddamned conspiracy theorist nut who ran in the Republican primary in Nancy Pelosi's district, and she's already out.

Second, if she thinks drinking water with one hand makes Trump the greatest President ever, just wait until she finds out about Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton, or either George Bush, or Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford or even Richard Fucking Nixon. Ya know, all of these guys, even Shrub, had some kind of higher-order accomplishment besides drinking water from a glass...

Some unknown calamity could have reduced Oklahoma to a huge, glass-sided crater overnight and this dumb fucking bitch would still call it a win for Trump. I'm fucking serious.

It's like Trump Mad Libs. "Trump is Great Because ____________________"

No, it's more like "Trump is Great and most of these fucking people can't even tell you why they think that." I'm serious. Since this whole mess started I've heard all type of talk about how Trump managed to hack the Conservative Amygdala or the Collective Unconscious or Dopamine blah blah blah, or "The Cruelty Is The Point." This last seems to be true, but why wasn't this also true for, ya know, Truman, who actually nuked people, or Nixon, who is probably the ultimate personal embodiment of Republicanism as it is vs. what it pretends to be?

Fuck all that, I think it's because Trump says racist shit.

Yeah, you could make the argument that they like the fact that Trump acts like he's a swaggering bully except that the greatest argument against that fucking bullshit is, well, Trump. When faced with the least bit of opposition, he turns into a simpering coward. Being a bully, or a dictator, or some kind of a strongman requires a degree of physical courage. It's not like being a cop, or a soldier, or a member of a mob. You cannot draw strength from or camouflage yourself among those around you. You're the dude. The Buck Stops Here all the more in a dictatorial regime, and such countries often live or die by the personal fortunes of their authoritarian leadership. See Also; Muammar Gaddafi.

And Gaddafi is at least well remembered throughout Africa, especially for his massive foreign aid programs, personal philanthropy, and promotion of Islam...despite the fact that he himself was never an observant Muslim. When he was killed, hundreds of thousands mourned his death.

Who is going to remember Trump in a positive light, besides boot-lickers and racists, the feeble-minded, those who want to steal, and wannabe fascists?

Who will cry for Donald Trump?

Perhaps there's a better question to ask here:

What has Donald Trump ever done for anybody but Donald Trump?

During this whole time, I've never actually met a Trump Supporter who could or would tell me why they supported Trump, except in the most vague sort of way like "I like what he says" which of course means they're fine with Trump saying racist shit. Is the racism really worth it, though, when it could be your life?

It's like I keep saying, some people would rather hate than eat. Some people would rather kill and steal than be alive. I find it telling that these same fucking people tried to weaponize a deadly virus against all the rest of us, and were thwarted by such an easy thing as people wearing masks.

And consider how Trump politicized that, basic health stuff, basic life and self-preservation type of shit.

Look in the mirror, America, because this is the motherfucker one hell of a lot of us see staring back at us right now.

What's next on his list of accomplishments? "Trump wipes own ass, film at 11?"

The big argument going on right now in America isn't over political ideology or social programs, hell it's not even over religion...which is what I always thought it would come down to. No, it's about racism and ultimately, how racism ultimately affects everything else. It really is the Original Sin from which most of our other evils flow.

And, fundamentally, one of the main reasons we're having this debate is...well, Donald Trump.

And if America fell tomorrow, we wouldn't be remembered for being the first major nation to be a democracy. We wouldn't be remembered for our bloody Civil War, or for technological innovations, or defeating the Nazis, or developing nuclear weapons, or putting a man on the moon. We'd be remembered for Donald Fucking Trump, because yes, he does represent a substantial minority of Americans, people who, fundamentally, don't care what that face in the bathroom mirror when they're brushing their teeth looks like, or says about them.

We don't have a shared, single culture, we don't have a common language, we don't have a thousand years of history. We're America, all we have is what we want to be.

And that's what this moment is about. What are we? Who are we? What is the character of the United States of America? I don't have some pithy answer here, I'm asking you.

Fundamentally, Donald Trump is American Revelation.

He is, like it or not, serving as the Revelator of what is true, of who really believes what, even of who simply possesses basic humanity and leadership qualities.

Who do you want to be? Which side are you on?

The Bible states in the Book of Revelation that there are only two sides. The first is those who wish to participate in the divine conversation and have their names written in the Book of Life held in the hands of a carpenter and itinerant Rabbi who rejected earthly power and wealth and was crucified between two thieves. Then there are those who reject the divine in favor of the false systems of this world of which the Beast is the apotheosis...and it's telling that the Christians themselves have, in their own religious fiction stories, often written the Beast as someone very like Donald Trump.

Personally, I don't think it's quite a binary choice in that way, not every person who accepts Life (in a spiritual sense) will be Christian. I no longer identify as religious, to me "Allah Akbar" and "Jesus Is Lord" simply signify different understandings of the same things. On the other hand, not every person who rejects the divine in favor of the World will not be one, in fact many if not most of those people will probably be privileged white Christians. I suspect a great many of them will reject Christ for Trump, if they have not already.

And to my knowledge, in our American context, far more Atheists or Agnostics or simple non-religious people have chosen the side of life than have chosen the side of death, so there's that, too.

It's...complicated, but where one stands can still be determined in simple ways; for example, simply say "Black Lives Matter" on your Facebook feed and see what comes out the woodwork.

And as regards that subject in particular...race...there really are only two sides. Two sides that inform every other side we take on everything else in America.

As regards American Revelation, there are...can be...only two sides.

Look yourself in the face in the mirror, and you make your choice.

America, or Trump.

Part Eleven.
End Of Line.

A future of Juneteenths (American Revelation IV, Part Eleven)

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ~Exodus 20:3-5

It's Juneteenth.

On June 19th, 1865, United States Army General Gordon Granger read a proclamation at Galveston, decreeing that all slaves held in the state of Texas would henceforth be free.

It's 2020, why in the fuck are we as a country still having this argument 155 years later?

And why is it, that between a quarter and a third of us are, even after all this stuff that's happened, Impeachment, COVID-19, the George Floyd killing and protests, and five years of dumb shit since Trump declared himself a candidate for President...why in the hell are there people, still, who are basically ready to bow down and worship this dude?

Is it really that important to these people, to have a President that says racist shit?

Apparently it is. "Conservatives" have turned on basically everything they ever said they believed in, as of today that includes Rule of Law, the Judiciary and the Supreme Court.

Admittedly, Trump has not had a good week legally, the extension of civil rights protections in employment to LGBT people, DACA protected, among other things. But that's the thing, isn't it? If we don't have a system of laws and protections and rights, that's independent of the whims of whoever the President is...we don't really have anything at all, do we?

It's been a bedrock principle of Western legal theory since the 12th century that even kings should not be above the law. How is it, then, that it's the "Conservatives" who seem to want to undo every check on the power of rulers all the way back to the Magna Carta?

Conservatism itself, as a philosophy, is based on the principle of "Things as they are."

How they got from that longstanding belief to "Conservatism is what Donald Trump says it is" in so short of a time, I'll never know.

Or maybe I just don't want to.

How we got from Republicans being the party of Abolitionists, Lincoln, and the Union to Republicans being the ones waving the Confederate flag and the ones who, if they could, would put everybody they could reach in chains and force us, as a society, to re-fight every battle of the last 160 years simply because they want to protect their power and racism for just a little longer, I will never understand. And no, I don't want to, not really.

They wish for us not a future of liberation consisting better health care and trans rights and a more equal and just America, but a post-Apocalyptic hellscape where America has been torn asunder and people are again having to liberate their neighbors from the yoke of chains and slavery because some dipshit economist told these fools that if they could work out a couple months worth of free labor, it would rev up the stock market..

There is such a thing as God, and such a thing as right and wrong, and facts and reality are most definitely a thing. Republicans used to be the party that understood...and yes, often literally preached this stuff.

Now? It's LOL Wut MAGA Bitches Trump 2020!!!

That rumbling turbine sound you hear is Abraham Lincoln, spinning in his grave.

And the Republicans' collective attitude is that anybody who won't support whatever the hive-mind decides, from Geraldo Rivera all the way up to the Supreme Court itself, not to mention Abraham Lincoln, and every former President still living, gets voted off Republican Island.These fucking people don't want to live in a functioning country, they want to have their ears tickled by false prophets on a constant basis. It is, in fact, even worse than that. All too many of these fucking people believe the lie is their right.

And as of a couple days ago, now, Republicans are, in fact, basically declaring Trump to be their God.

Mike Huckabee, of all fucking people, Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, is effectively declaring that Trump is some kind of equivalent to Jesus.

I can't help but feel like something bad is going to happen, if nothing else, the virus will get worse. All Trump has to do is drop a few racial slurs and these fucking people will fall down and worship him.

If we want a better nation, if we want to start fighting and winning the future instead of constantly fighting to liberate ourselves from the chains of the past, we are going to have to start, and keep, being better citizens. And this ain't it. I can't put it any more simply than that.

There's this scene in the Civil War film, Glory, where as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers marches by plantation houses near Beaufort, South Carolina, Sgt. Major Rawlins (played by Morgan Freeman) approaches a group of Black children. He says to them "That's right, ain't no dream. We run away slaves and we come back fighting men! Run home, tell your folks how Kingdom Come, this is the year of Jubilee!"

And that's our choice, Jubilee, the freeing of slaves, the canceling of debts and the settling of accounts, or Juneteenth...which, don't get me wrong, was in it's own way a great and wonderful day.

But remember how much those slaves in Texas had to suffer, and for longer, in order to be freed. It seems to me that we can do better than this cycle of subjugation, suffering, and liberation, again and again, and the "Conservatives" would see it never stop, because they would profit from the conflict.

Liberation is good, but why not address the underlying issues so that war and subjugation and liberation aren't necessary at all, or are less so? This is America, either we are all free in the first place...or none of us are.

Part Ten.
Part Twelve.

The Serpent In The Garden (American Revelation IV, Part Ten)

There's a man workin' in a field
See's the rain and it's burning
He's saying this can't be real
As he sees the color of the fields turning
Far away the men too busy getting rich to care
Close their eyes and let it all out into the air
Hoping nobody else would care

Look out any window
Look out any open door
Look out any window
See what's going on in the world around you. 

~Look out any window, Bruce Hornsby and the Range.

Serious question, people.

Without looking it up, can anybody here tell me who Juan De Onate was?

It's a historical question.

No? Well, Okay. We'll come back to that later.

Likewise, can anybody here tell me what the schools of Constitutional law called Originalism and Textualism are, and what they mean, or what they stand for? Doctrines and principles and words matter. What is the "Correct" outcome for some ideological fanatic is not usually the [morally] right outcome for everybody else.

Also, can you tell me where the Galwan valley and the region of Ladakh are located, and why they are suddenly important? Or why a sudden reigniting of the Korean War would be a bad thing?

These seem like small things, but they're not, not really.

I'm serious. History has a purpose or we wouldn't record it, knowledge is power, and if you don't think that even in some roundabout way Republicans know...or at least still know this you have another thing coming. They're just trying to bamboozle you into believing in nothing at all and doing what you're told without thinking about it.

Of course, the sad fact of the matter is that many Republicans these days are themselves extremely ignorant of history, or they still believe the glossed-over version of it that they got in elementary school, or the "Lost Cause" narrative of the US Civil War, that seeks to glorify the Confederacy and minimize slavery, all in support of racism. This effect naturally extends far beyond Civil War history itself.

And while we're at it, we need to consider the role of religion in all this, and the bastardization thereof. I have a church background, but over the last 30 years or so I've seen American conservative Christianity gradually ground down to just three major rules:

#1 Don't have an Abortion.
#2 Don't be an LGBT person, unless you're in porn and it's there for me to get off on.
#3 Support the rich, and most of all Vote Republican.

None of that shit is in the Bible, Frank. In point of fact even the admonitions against homosexuality are more complicated than simple homophobia if you actually consider the context and the history and the kinds of things the contemporaries of the Jews did to people that they defeated in battle.


The simple, sad fact is that none of this stuff matters to these people...the ones bitching about Gorsuch, or complaining about the protests or ranting about the riots or refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it started out being important, but over time, it became simple camouflage...along with Ronald Reagan, either President Bush, and Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney. Why else do you think the MAGA cult hates those people so much?

Anyway, somebody got shot at some point yesterday, at a protest in New Mexico.

Just some random right-wing nut, from the look of things, shooting an innocent person because they were at a fucking protest, exercising their God-given rights per the Constitution.

The shooter was immediately mobbed by the crowd, beat down with a skateboard, and arrested by the cops while street medics jumped in to assist the victim until the paramedics showed up.


And here we have the victim, being carried to the ambulance by SWAT team members who are virtually indistinguishable from soldiers, as if this were happening in Al Anbar rather than Albuqueque.

It really seems like there should be a less heavily armed way to do this.

And here's the thing. What was this protest about? The protesters were trying to remove a statue of Juan De Onate, New Mexico's Mexican-born Spanish Conquistador. Remember the question above?

How many white people who've never lived in the American Southwest actually would know who Juan De Onate was without having to Google it?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and tell you that I'd guess the answer is, probably not very many of them. It's understandable, a bit of state history trivia that the average person who doesn't live in a given area could be forgiven for not knowing.

Except that there's people out there...all too many of them ignorant of the history itself...who are willing to kill people over it.

You want to know who Juan De Onate was? He was a Mexican-born 16th century Spanish explorer and military officer, born in 1550, who explored and claimed for New Spain (as Mexico was then known) much of the American Southwest, as well as leading expeditions as far north as the Great Plains, who eventually became governor of Nueva Mexico, and would go on to lead several more expeditions. He was recalled to Mexico City, forced from power, tried and convicted and exiled from both New Mexico (for life) and from Mexico City (for five years) and incarcerated for a few years because of his cruelty to the Pueblo peoples and his use of excessive force against Native Americans in general. After he was released from prison he went to Spain where the King appointed him a mining inspector. He died in Spain in 1626 and outside of the United States there are no statues of him that I know of.

Did you know all that? As it happens, I did. I'm not one to put much stock in statues, but this is sure as fuck one I'd help to pull down.

This guy was a piece of shit, who so far as I'm concerned doesn't deserve to have a statue anywhere, much less in the United States.

The reason that I know who he is and the reason that my antennae went up when I heard the name was because I am familiar with the history of the American Southwest, having been all over that part of the country when I was a kid, including to a place called El Morro National Monument...effectively a giant rock jutting out of the plains of western New Mexico that has a pool of water at its base, and as such was inscribed and painted on by travelers from prehistoric Native Americans all the way to later Anglo-American pioneers. Juan De Onate was one of the people who made such an inscription. El Morro became a National Monument in 1906. I went there in 1985.

The chance that some random Q-Nut knows all this stuff or has ever been to that place or studied that history seems to me to be rather small. But "This is only the beginning..." Ooh, scary.

(Not really.)

Some Q-Nut posted about the New Mexico shooting basically threatening Civil War or at least mass right-wing terrorism...because people were pulling down the statue of a racist Mexican conqueror? What? Excuse me? Hello? is this thing even on?

These people want to start a war, over racism, and they want this very badly, indeed. They literally do not care about anything else, nor care to know anything else.

In fact, to them, not having to know shit seems to be a mark of privilege.

Why?

Because if you don't know anything, you can believe whatever you want. Let me give you an example of how perpetually triggered and reactionary these fucking people are.

For awhile, my handle on Twitter was "Hurones Mexicanos" which simply means "Mexican Ferrets." I change it every so often and this was simply one such case but more than once while that was the name on my account I got jumped by one of these triggered racist morons and told to go back to Mexico...a place that white, American-born former-conservative me has only in fact been to several times as a fucking tourist. Nothing that I am, or ever was, actually matters to these people. Nothing that Neil Gorsuch or even Antonin Scalia is or was matters either. They are only looking for an opportunity to kill and steal. They would rather hate, than eat.

These fucking people could give a goddamn about Juan De Onate, they're just looking for a rationalization to kill people, and literally anything will do, because killing people with their guns is all they actually believe in.

And the point of conspiracy theory bullshit like Q-Anon is simply to strip people of any fixed or foundational morality so that they will do what whoever is pulling the strings wants them to, and I've long theorized that Q is nothing more than a Russian intelligence operation, information warfare aimed at making Americans dumber and more reactionary and more willing to shoot their own neighbors because something something Gazpacho. If you think the Russians give a shit about whatever dumb shit they have to feed these motherfucking idiots, you have another thing coming. They will keep stirring the pot until these fools boil over and kill people for their dumb-shit conspiracy theories.

Don't take my word for it, look at what they say.


And did you notice how quickly the conspiracy theorists jumped to the defense of white racism, or of something peripherally having to do with it? This, even though they would almost certainly harass a person with a Spanish name if they got the chance? Again, the context of the statue doesn't matter. The context of the words doesn't matter.

The primary value here is racism, all else is camouflage.

Last night some idiot pastor said publicly that he preferred the term "White Blessing" to "White Privilege.

No, motherfucker, it's privilege, conferred by Man, not some blessing given by God. Cut that shit the fuck out before you embarrass yourself.

Seriously, I say that as a white dude.

Whiteness isn't a blessing, it's a social construct created by Man to justify his hate and shitty behaviors.

Trying to claim that evil and hate and racism is a blessing or holy doesn't make it Okay any more than a terrorist shouting Allah Akbar as they shoot people would make it right for them to do that. God is not stupid, and either you believe that He is the Creator of all...or you don't. There's no middle ground here.

It wasn't Woke Liberals that taught me this stuff, it was Christian schools that set me on that path.

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, Red, Brown, Yellow, Black and White they are precious in His sight...didn't y'all have to learn any of this stuff or sing those songs, the same as I did? Like I've said before, the truth is simple, Man makes it complicated because he does not want to obey.

If there's anything we should know from history it's that religious fanaticism and right-wing authoritarianism always turn out badly.

Why is this hard?

Why does us falling flat on our face right now, with all this stupid shit, matter?

It matters because, China and India are engaging in armed clashes that could easily escalate into a full-scale war over a remote Himalayan river valley called the Galwan valley in a sub-region of Jammu and Kashmir known as Ladakh.

If you don't see the potential threat to everybody posed by a possible war between two superpowers that each have huge armed forces, nuclear weapons and populations well in excess of a billion people, it's not just that I can't help you. It's that I don't want to try.

As I understand it, Chinese and Indian troops have slugged it out with everything from bare fists, clubs and rocks on up to full on firefights between infantry platoons with rifles and machine guns and there's been sporadic use of heavy weapons, and casualties on both sides for the first time in 45 years.

And at the same time, North Korea has blown up one of its own diplomatic facilities in South Korea as tensions between those two countries continue to escalate.

Ordinarily, were this administration the least bit effective or sane, this crisis would have American diplomats, possibly all the way up to Mike Pompeo himself shuttling back and forth between Beijing and New Delhi and burning up considerable bandwidth via secure communications to try to resolve this crisis. The US Navy should be putting Carrier Battle Groups off both the Chinese and Indian coasts right now, but it almost certainly isn't. We as a country, should be stepping up to deal with a potentially global crisis here.

But we're not.

In point of fact, given his own views, shitty as they are, if he was who he says he is Donald Trump could be the dude, due to his claimed affinity for Chinese President Xi and similarity of views with Indian Prime Minister Mohdi, to go in there and make a deal and resolve this thing...and whatever happened with the election or our own multiple domestic crises he'd probably finally get himself that Nobel Prize on the merits of having defused a war between two nuclear powers.

But he isn't and we're not and instead of being the world leader we have been for 75 years and should still be being right now we're navel-gazing and falling down the same old rabbit hole of shitty bullshit that, in a sane world, we'd have resolved 150 years ago.

Racism is America's Original Sin, the Serpent that pollutes our Eden. It's the central evil from which most of our other evils and national neuroses springs. The fact that we have not dealt with it is slowly killing us, much as my own addictions nearly killed me more than once. We have to love our country and love our lives more than we love that sin, if we want to survive, much less be the country we could be...or should be.

And right now racism is exactly what is causing us to fall from our place in the world, just as the world most needs us.

If we cannot conquer this evil in our own hearts and set ourselves on the path to healing and do it real damn fast, maybe we never deserved the things we had or were given in the first place. Trump came to power because of the twin evils of apathy and racism. It's really that fucking simple. We cannot allow this to keep happening, because the gun nuts and the Republicans and the Q-Nuts will gladly shatter America and turn it into a nuclear Bosnia just to keep their own personal perks and power if we don't show up as a people and tell them No.

The Democrats have to defeat Trump and the Republicans have to be removed from power, the protesters have to win, the statues have to be pulled down, if we want a better country we have to be better citizens and we have to fix our shit.

Or we'd better get used to a world that's on fire.

Does that spell it out for you?!

Part Nine.
Part Eleven.