Oh you set your course for the furthest shores
And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and rolling sea.
And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and rolling sea.
~Al Stewart
The Republican National Convention, or what of it there's gonna be, anyway, started in Charlotte, NC, this morning. I'm just saying, I've watched old people suffer through the lingering decline and slow death of diseases like Parkinson's and Dementia before, and sooner or later the pace always accelerates, there comes a tipping point where the end is no longer in doubt.
Half of our political system is dying, and it would dearly love to take the other half down with it, not to mention the rest of the country. That's exactly what Immanentizing the "Conservative" Eschaton means.
We don't want to have anything, but we don't want you to have anything, either. They would rather hate than eat, at this point.
The Republican Party at this point is that wrinkled gray, mean old bag from White Pines, running around naked in the woods while the cops and the nursing home staff are trying desperately to chase her down before she freezes to death in the cold winter night.
Or perhaps its that shitty middle-aged domestic abuser, all flabby arms and beer gut, yelling "I'm gonna kill you, bitch" as he's hauled away in handcuffs by the cops.
Except it's worse than that, so much indescribably worse.
This is the same "We're out of ideas and attempting to land this thing on popularity" vibe that afflicted the Republicans in 1992 and then the Democrats in 2000. This is the same mentality that led people to vote for Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, the whole idea that "We should have power, Why? Well, because we've always had it before."
I've read my history, that kind of thinking only ends one way, if it goes on long enough.
It ends in Guillotines and Terrors, It ends in mass evacuations, firefights in the streets even as the regime and its army disintegrate, and tanks crashing through the gates of the Independence Palace. It ends in ethnic cleansing and wars and peace imposed from without, and United Nations tribunals.
It ends with Saddam on the gallows, defiant to the end, convinced that if he only yells loud enough, all will bow to his will.
Right up until the trapdoor opens beneath his feet.
That mentality tended to make a younger, more conservative me want to kick over the card table and tell these sons of bitches they had to go get real jobs. I personally liked Bush 41, but I voted for Clinton because I thought he'd done a crap job as President. By the same token, I liked Bush 43, but I more strongly felt that the Clinton years had not worked out all that well.
Now? It's the same old bullshit, again.
Except this time it's in the middle of the bed in an expensive hotel room, naked, with the pool boy snorting powder cocaine off its boobs and Jerry Falwell Jr. tied to a chair, watching eagerly.
Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? Too damned bad.
The other mental image I had was much worse, and involved a gaudier, shabbier hotel room in a Trump property, Donald Trump, Ivanka, no clothing, a glass tube, K-Y, and a magically-shrunken Ronna Romney-McDaniel, with Jared tied up in the corner watching the whole procedure and Lindsey Graham in a dominatrix outfit, a gimp mask, and high heels.
Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and rolling sea.
~Al Stewart
Actually, it gets even worse. These fucking people are so out of ideas that they're attempting to revive fear of a political system 30 years gone, that no one who ever lived under it wants to fully go back to, and that most Americans now living cannot even define without looking it up. And then they want to pin that on the opposition party.
Even though they're the only ones bringing it up.
I'm here to tell you, with these fucking people Everything is about the shitty agenda, and everything else is somehow a repository for their own endless wellspring of insecure fears.
There are no American Communists to speak of. Unless you consider my longstanding argument that, behavior-wise, Republicans are Communists now.
Never mind that these idiotic conspiracy theory-addled dumb ass motherfuckers are the ones in thrall to Kremlin paymasters and one former KGB Lt. Colonel in particular, namely Vladimir Putin. So, much if not all of what Beardo Von Fail-Son here is even saying could likely be chalked up to projection. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there are a hell of a lot of things about the modern Republican Party that come off as creepily Soviet.
Yet they're so afraid of everything, that they desperately would bring back even the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war, mass death in 30 minutes and eye-searing flashes in the cold night as the Air Force Base an hour from your house and the city a few hours away in which a bunch of your family members live are reduced to a light dusting of wind-borne ash...simply to create a rationale for their own existence.
Except that they want to deploy that fear, and create that New Cold War not against some foreign power...but against a majority of the citizens of their own country, because they need something, anything, to cover their own shitty hypocrisy and because a majority of the American body politic would rather be citizens than subjects.
Oh, don't worry, they'll throw China and Russia and the rest of them under that bus later, too. All Republicanism is transactional.
Sometimes, when you see the entire rest of the whole damn world as enemies, maybe the problem just might be you.
The Party's motto might as well be "What have you done for me lately?"
The only better Trump is the one that wrote that book and ratted out the rest of them.
And the only better Republicans are the ones who've thrown in with the other team and are supporting Joe Biden.
This is what those who remain part of theTrue Faith Cult are.
This is what they always have been.
The only difference is, in these last five years or so, they've finally found a "leader" who will sink to their level. They will never abandon him. These people cannot be reasoned with. You cannot appeal to the better nature of somebody who simply doesn't have one.
We have to vote them out, and then after that, unless the numbers against them are so overwhelming as to make the outcome a foregone conclusion, we're going to have to fight them off.
You have been warned.
If this was a mob in the streets of a dusty desert country shouting "Allah Akbar" or "Death To America" in response to the harangues of some bumptious mustached fool in a beret and Soviet-style uniform, while firing their Kalashnikovs into the air, millions of Americans would be screaming for blood.
But since it's the Republican Party, at the Republican National Convention, conflict, murder, treason and the dismantling of America are somehow Okay.
Or celebrated, or implicitly or explicitly agreed with.
How the fuck do you not see the problem here? Why the fuck does only one side see the double standard?
We have to stop this shit. Now.
Now the thunder rails in the great main-sails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and rolling sea.
~Al Stewart, On The Dark And Rolling Sea.
Part Two.
The Republican National Convention, or what of it there's gonna be, anyway, started in Charlotte, NC, this morning. I'm just saying, I've watched old people suffer through the lingering decline and slow death of diseases like Parkinson's and Dementia before, and sooner or later the pace always accelerates, there comes a tipping point where the end is no longer in doubt.
Half of our political system is dying, and it would dearly love to take the other half down with it, not to mention the rest of the country. That's exactly what Immanentizing the "Conservative" Eschaton means.
We don't want to have anything, but we don't want you to have anything, either. They would rather hate than eat, at this point.
The Republican Party at this point is that wrinkled gray, mean old bag from White Pines, running around naked in the woods while the cops and the nursing home staff are trying desperately to chase her down before she freezes to death in the cold winter night.
Or perhaps its that shitty middle-aged domestic abuser, all flabby arms and beer gut, yelling "I'm gonna kill you, bitch" as he's hauled away in handcuffs by the cops.
This is the same "We're out of ideas and attempting to land this thing on popularity" vibe that afflicted the Republicans in 1992 and then the Democrats in 2000. This is the same mentality that led people to vote for Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, the whole idea that "We should have power, Why? Well, because we've always had it before."
I've read my history, that kind of thinking only ends one way, if it goes on long enough.
It ends in Guillotines and Terrors, It ends in mass evacuations, firefights in the streets even as the regime and its army disintegrate, and tanks crashing through the gates of the Independence Palace. It ends in ethnic cleansing and wars and peace imposed from without, and United Nations tribunals.
It ends with Saddam on the gallows, defiant to the end, convinced that if he only yells loud enough, all will bow to his will.
Right up until the trapdoor opens beneath his feet.
That mentality tended to make a younger, more conservative me want to kick over the card table and tell these sons of bitches they had to go get real jobs. I personally liked Bush 41, but I voted for Clinton because I thought he'd done a crap job as President. By the same token, I liked Bush 43, but I more strongly felt that the Clinton years had not worked out all that well.
Now? It's the same old bullshit, again.
Except this time it's in the middle of the bed in an expensive hotel room, naked, with the pool boy snorting powder cocaine off its boobs and Jerry Falwell Jr. tied to a chair, watching eagerly.
Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? Too damned bad.
The other mental image I had was much worse, and involved a gaudier, shabbier hotel room in a Trump property, Donald Trump, Ivanka, no clothing, a glass tube, K-Y, and a magically-shrunken Ronna Romney-McDaniel, with Jared tied up in the corner watching the whole procedure and Lindsey Graham in a dominatrix outfit, a gimp mask, and high heels.
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and rolling sea.
~Al Stewart
Actually, it gets even worse. These fucking people are so out of ideas that they're attempting to revive fear of a political system 30 years gone, that no one who ever lived under it wants to fully go back to, and that most Americans now living cannot even define without looking it up. And then they want to pin that on the opposition party.
Even though they're the only ones bringing it up.
I'm here to tell you, with these fucking people Everything is about the shitty agenda, and everything else is somehow a repository for their own endless wellspring of insecure fears.
There are no American Communists to speak of. Unless you consider my longstanding argument that, behavior-wise, Republicans are Communists now.
Never mind that these idiotic conspiracy theory-addled dumb ass motherfuckers are the ones in thrall to Kremlin paymasters and one former KGB Lt. Colonel in particular, namely Vladimir Putin. So, much if not all of what Beardo Von Fail-Son here is even saying could likely be chalked up to projection. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there are a hell of a lot of things about the modern Republican Party that come off as creepily Soviet.
Yet they're so afraid of everything, that they desperately would bring back even the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war, mass death in 30 minutes and eye-searing flashes in the cold night as the Air Force Base an hour from your house and the city a few hours away in which a bunch of your family members live are reduced to a light dusting of wind-borne ash...simply to create a rationale for their own existence.
Except that they want to deploy that fear, and create that New Cold War not against some foreign power...but against a majority of the citizens of their own country, because they need something, anything, to cover their own shitty hypocrisy and because a majority of the American body politic would rather be citizens than subjects.Oh, don't worry, they'll throw China and Russia and the rest of them under that bus later, too. All Republicanism is transactional.
Sometimes, when you see the entire rest of the whole damn world as enemies, maybe the problem just might be you.
The Party's motto might as well be "What have you done for me lately?"
The only better Trump is the one that wrote that book and ratted out the rest of them.
And the only better Republicans are the ones who've thrown in with the other team and are supporting Joe Biden.
This is what those who remain part of the
This is what they always have been.
The only difference is, in these last five years or so, they've finally found a "leader" who will sink to their level. They will never abandon him. These people cannot be reasoned with. You cannot appeal to the better nature of somebody who simply doesn't have one.
We have to vote them out, and then after that, unless the numbers against them are so overwhelming as to make the outcome a foregone conclusion, we're going to have to fight them off.
You have been warned.
If this was a mob in the streets of a dusty desert country shouting "Allah Akbar" or "Death To America" in response to the harangues of some bumptious mustached fool in a beret and Soviet-style uniform, while firing their Kalashnikovs into the air, millions of Americans would be screaming for blood.
But since it's the Republican Party, at the Republican National Convention, conflict, murder, treason and the dismantling of America are somehow Okay.
Or celebrated, or implicitly or explicitly agreed with.
How the fuck do you not see the problem here? Why the fuck does only one side see the double standard?
We have to stop this shit. Now.
Now the thunder rails in the great main-sails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and rolling sea.
~Al Stewart, On The Dark And Rolling Sea.
Part Two.
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