Lies, Death Cults, and more Lies (American Revelation, Final Judgment: Day Three.)

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. ~Amos 5:10-12

Shorter Tucker Carlson: "The Dog Ate My Conspiracy Theory."

Seriously, what the fuck is it going to take to impress upon the American public in general and conservatives in particular, that These Fucking People are nothing but a bunch of liars?

If Republicans are so righteous, if their cause is so just...why do they have to continually lie about it?

Why is it, these days, that you cannot get many Republicans to openly speak about what their beliefs are or why they like or support Trump?

And of course, you also have to factor in that so many Republicans, including many of the conservative thought-leaders from the last Republican administration, are so adamantly against Trump. And let's not forget that most of the Republican ad people apparently joined the Lincoln Project.

Thousands of people every day are being sickened by COVID-19, and FOX News wants to talk about...Hunter Biden?!

It's foolishness.

I'm pretty sure there's a reason for all that.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of reasons.

And I'm pretty sure I can tell you why they won't say what's really on their minds.

Because if they told you what they were really thinking there would be one hell of a lot of Conservatives being hanged from lamp-posts and shot in the street.

Let me tell you a dark little secret.

In conservatism there is, for all intents and purposes a Cult of "Population Control."

It's a Libertarian, strip-mall Death Cult.

Basically, the premise of this is to simply let people...old people, sick people, people with various medical and social needs that have costs over time...die off in the interest of "controlling excess population" and saving money and what have you and so that these fucking people don't have to pay as much in taxes in order to maintain government, civilization and society. Some of this comes from Ayn Rand, some of it's just basic privilege and racism, and an awful lot of it is just plain selfishness.

And here's the thing, COVID-19 finally gives them a shot at this, mass negligent homicide, and they somehow think they won't be getting their hands dirty, or something.

But they forget that the rest of us have ears to hear, eyes to see, and minds to think, that are not clouded by terrible ideologies.

If Republicans' cause is so righteous, why can't they talk about it in public, and why do they have to keep lying about it?

The Word says "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor" meaning "Do not lie."

Lying by hiding information, by omission, and by spreading false information is still lying.

The Word says "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder."

Killing people by foolishness, negligence or omission of proper care is still killing them.

Republicans want to kill you, and destroy your country, and if they had their way they would prevent you from knowing that you were dying even as they profited from your death.

Hey, Republicans, we see you.

And we're going to vote you out. It's really that simple.

And you'll go.

'Cause it's that, or you all hanging out at the Esso with Il Duce and friends.

You pick.

Day Two.

Alone In The Dark (American Revelation, Final Judgment: Day Two)

I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.'
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! This body dropped not down.
Alone, alone, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on my soul in agony. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Last night, Trump held a rally at the local municipal airport in Omaha, Nebraska. After it was over, he left, and left thousands of people in freezing temperatures with inadequate transport to get back to where their cars were parked. A number of people suffered medical issues, and several were hospitalized with hypothermia. I spent most of last night at work thinking "What the fuck?"

As many people have pointed out, this is the perfect metaphor for Trump's life, for Trump's mentality, and for Trump's Presidency.

People left waiting in the cold, while he flies away in glory, having basked in their adulation and wasted their time, honestly about the only thing that might make this whole set of circumstances better for this asshole is if he were allowed to charge these chumps admission to hear him talk stupid.

But as for me, I've had frostbite and hypothermia, such things are a risk for people who hunt or participate in various winter sports in a place like Northern Michigan and bust through a weak point in the ice on a frozen lake while ice fishing like I did as a teenager and then have to get both to shore and up to the house while soaked to the bone in freezing cold. That whole ordeal sucked. Or for those of us who live close to their workplace and have a broke-down truck, but still have to work on a shockingly cold late December night, and when it happened to me, I was a still-relatively strong person in my mid-20's. Sure, I'd been disabled by an accident, but I could tough out the chill in my bones. The frostbite on the part of my face not covered by my scarf, not so much. In the end, it was a quick trip to urgent care in Alpena the next morning that my work actually paid for. All I could think about half of last night was how miserable of experiences those things were.

 

In northern Michigan, throughout the Northern Tier states, and across the Great Plains this stuff is a real, legit risk, not an idle threat by any means. People who live in these places know that...or they should, and those organizing public events certainly should...or they should be held responsible when they do not.

But of course, as ever, Republicans simply do not give a shit.

And this of course extends to claimed boilerplate beliefs and the actual pillars that hold up our society, too. The Constitution, corporate sovereignty, personal freedom, property rights, all must fall before that actual arbiter of what modern "Conservatism" is about:

"How do I feel right now?"

Seriously, these fucking people want the government to effectively take ownership of corporations and tell them what they can and can't do...

...And what's that called, again?

Communism.

And it's worse that this isn't over any actual public good, but simply how these fucking people feel right now, about their fear that they might just lose their ass in this election, for real and maybe for good this time.

Because they've disgraced themselves, and they know it. They just think they're entitled to have power anyway. For no better reason than they've had it before.

Functionally, these right-wing, wealthy assholes are mad because society, social media and the internet doesn't coddle them enough.

And do you know what the funny part is, here?

The Internet, even more than the Wild West of which places like Nebraska were once a part, has as a whole been the Great Libertarian Frontier.

The business model under which the internet tends to operate has long since been predominately a conservative and Republican wet dream. Regulation? Hell, the damned internet in its modern form has been around for a generation now and corporations and governments are still trying to figure out how to regulate the goddamned thing in the first place, as not only the technology but internet culture and social interaction itself mutates faster than most people can keep up. 

Maybe we ought not to have a government run primarily by aged wealthy white men who have neither the capability nor the incentive nor any inclination to even try to keep up?

But they're sure as hell mad about their imagined "censorship" of conservative opinions, aren't they?

Here's the thing, assholes.

You know what your real problems are?

Algorithms. These filter everything on social media for the sole purpose of providing content that users "like" so as to keep them engaged for longer and drive up ad revenue.

Ya know, Capitalism.

But again, these fucking people think Capitalism itself, and the mighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market ought to tremble before "Conservative" Butt-hurt and pants-shitting fear of, well, everything.

Bullshit.

The answer here, that word too many people are too adverse to using these days is "No."

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Here's a pro tip. No matter what anybody does...it doesn't matter if Twitter comps self-identified far-right conservatives 1000 "Likes" per post and 10,000 imaginary followers and puts their bullshit at the top of every feed. These Fucking People will never be happy. They will never be satisfied. Hell, that's their entire business model.

And if they ever get it? They'll still happily leave you alone in the dark and the cold with dangerously inadequate transport once you've cheered for them and boosted their endlessly shitty egos.

As often as not, simply as an expression of their endless contempt for everybody else, and because they think it's funny.

It's past time we, as a society, tell these assholes to go fuck themselves.

Vote them out. ALL of them.

I've had some long nights in stir. Alone in the dark, with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life. ~Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, The Shawshank Redemption.

Day One.

The Light And The Darkness (American Revelation: Final Judgment, Day One.)

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. ~Chief Seattle.

Imagine, if you will, a divided America in 2050; "Blue" and "Purple" states on one side/ "Red" States on the other side.

Each has a different President, dueling domestic and foreign policies, and open economic and even military conflict between the two sides. Even some states have split with one part joining one side, and a different part to the other, Texas for example.

The Blue and Purple states have very contentious politics, outright physical brawls might even sometimes erupt in the halls of power. But ya know, everybody gets a respite in non-election years, but on the whole life is a little better for people, the creeping tide of inequality has begun to be reversed, racism has mostly been driven back underground and even forced from police forces, which have reformed only grudgingly but reformed nonetheless. Public health has improved and disease, viral or otherwise is not rampant, people take care of themselves...and each other. 

It's a diverse society, at the crossroads of global trade, and despite, or perhaps even because of infusions of immigrants from Africa and Latin America neither conservatism nor religion has suffered. In fact, it has thrived. Thanks to the influence and passions of those Black and Brown believers, church services often have the same kind of energy as concerts and parties. Despite the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment, at long last, and Constitutionally-guaranteed access to abortion and health care, abortion rates have been in decline for thirty years, and even the continued electoral success of The Lincoln Party has not changed any of that. Drug legalization and sexual freedom are balanced by education and a degree of social responsibility.

Despite all that has changed, in most places the main face of government remains the local mail carrier.

Also, people with guns are a fairly rare sight unless it's hunting season, or unless you live near the front and there are active local self-defense forces and troops around. Of course, there's the endless uncertainty and sacrifice of what the world calls the American Internal Conflict and the government euphemistically refers to as "The Emergency." whether it's close by or far away, that people try to put out of their minds until the news cycle or the rumbling thunder of dueling jets in the sky or the death of a family member at the front brings it into your life up close and personal.

This is the future Trump Supporters want.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. ~Revelation 9:1-4

On the Red side, Donald Trump is long dead and ensconced in a gilded, guarded tomb, stuffed like Vladimir Lenin. 

His children and grandchildren have just cruised effortlessly to reelection cycle after cycle. It's not a democracy, but for appearances' sake and the bread and circuses factor it maintains the trappings of one. The endless churn of politics and ratfucking never stops, even though there's only one party now. Since the retreat from Washington and the cities in the early days of 2021, there has only ever even been a Provisional Government. Government and Party are indivisible, in the public sphere it effectively has no name, it is simply The Party, as if there were no other, and had never been. 

It's literally the only way conservatives in this time will accept government at all, on shitty principle.

Those who are in opposition, or out of political favor might briefly cause a stir here and there, but then they disappear and are never heard from or spoken of again, or they are simply shot in the streets, because men with guns are omnipresent, entirely politicized, and largely empowered to do as they like so long as they do not strain overmuch on the leashes held by their masters.

And no one cares who they kill or what they do to the living, so long as that person is not wealthy, white, and politically connected.

And it's these people and their guns and their foul dispositions, not the affable local mail carrier, who are the daily and most visible representation of the State.

There is no social welfare, except for the ultra-wealthy who remain in political favor, and only so that they may remain wealthy. Stupendous mansions surrounded by fortress walls rise out of dirty, dangerous, disease-ridden and overpopulated shantytowns and slums. The owners, if they cannot maintain and defend green, guarded thoroughfares for their own benefit, simply travel to and from their momentous abodes by helicopter. In a society defined by contempt, there's no one those put in power by the masses want to look upon less than the masses of people who put them there, or who allow them to continue to remain so.

And the faces that look up reflexively from their grossly underpaid labors at the sound of rotors chopping their way through the smoky air are almost uniformly white, male faces, and outside of those who are elites, few women and fewer of what few racial and sexual minorities are present make themselves known. It's better to keep a low profile if you don't have money, status and above all political reliability to protect you.

Abortion has been illegal for nearly the whole existence of this new nation, made illegal by the six member Provisional Supreme Court as one of its first acts, but that hasn't actually changed much, 
 babies are routinely found in trash cans, left at churches, and so on. It is, in fact, not uncommon for those in this position to list the President as their father, or January 14th, the date of the Tweet that started it all, as their birthday once they get old enough to answer the question. Such is seen not as an admission of lack of knowledge, but as an expression of patriotism. 

It's these young people, along with the masses of the urban poor and whatever rural folk the press-gangs can catch or overpower, who are most often pressed into service in the armed forces, in a long struggle that State Media refers to as an endless flow of victories but that somehow, never really changes much, the best ones get sent to places like China or Russia for training, and as many as are intelligent enough to and who can do so find ways not to come back.

Because it's a society of barriers and fences and fortifications and walls, of patrolled borders and daily escapes and hidden resistance fighters in an insurgency that invites endless crackdowns and collective punishments that only the wealthy ever seem to truly escape. and for those without the connections or the wealth to choose their own destinies, the only True Faith, is the worship of the State.

In this land, the only morality, the only political philosophy, the only truth, is what those with power say it is. All too often, they can be gay, or do drugs or practice sexual immoralities or steal to their dark hearts' content...and you cannot. They can have freedom and political participation and rights, not you. In their ideal world, they get to use and abuse the rest of us.

And it doesn't matter to them that there's a lot more of us.

To people who believe that who you can have sex with is a measure of power, incestuous drug fueled orgies that would shame the fucking Romans are absolutely not sinful if you're powerful enough. If sex is not a consensual, choice-based union between two people who love each other, but the simple dominance of a man over his sex object of the moment, it's a safe bet that on a fundamental level, anything goes.

That is conservatism stripped of morality. Caesar Augustus was a conservative.

That is the world these fucking people want to live in. And this is the level of utter immorality and incompetence that they're willing to bring to the table, or maybe just the best they could get, in order to get that world.

Either we show up, and show up in vast numbers to vote these fucking people out, or we deserve what we're going to get.

We have to vote these people the fuck out, and it has to be a fucking landslide.

And even if it is, even if they lose their ass as badly as it looks like they might, chances are they'll just break off whatever areas did vote for them and try to make their own country.

But we have to fight back against this shit anyway, for as long as it takes. It is simply a matter of right and wrong.

Conservatives were the people who taught me that worldview, who taught me the distinction between right and wrong, and why it matters.

That they have forgotten it means that they must pay.

 I can't put it any simpler than that.

When I saw that "American Conservative" article this morning, I was extremely offended. Americans already have a "Father of our country" George Washington.

That anybody would want to replace him, much less replace him with Donald Trump, should offend everybody.

Since Trump slimed his way down that golden escalator in front of a crowd of actors paid to cheer for him, conservatives have been basically shouting "Daddy! Daddy!" not like an excited kid, but like some bottom gay dude being sodomized in a dirty truck stop restroom.

And for the most part this is not out of sincere beliefs, but because they think, financially or ideologically, that they are going to get something for it.

If that's what you want for the country you live in, for the people you live with, or you're so hung up on your own ideological purity that you refuse to stand up against this shit, then maybe you need to face the fact that you're a terrible, shitty person.

And then go fuck yourself.

This is judgment day.

You're either going to be a sheep or a goat, you're either going to help to aim us back heavenward or you're going to start an inexorable slide into hell.

You make the call.

It's America or Trump.

And it really is that simple.

In the face of Revelation, what are We? (American Revelation V: Part Ten.)

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comes into thy kingdom.
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke 23:39-43

Seriously?

Trump flew a "Thin Blue Line" flag instead of a regular American flag at one of his rallies.

I like Presidents who fly the American flag, personally.

But it's more than that, it's the symbolism I find offensive. The whole idea of "Citizens" above and "Criminals" below a certain imaginary line is wrong.

Just because an idea or a symbol is popular does not make it right.

Criminals are citizens, too. I learned this from my family, from my high school government class, from my Air Force Security Police training, hell, I learned this in Church. You don't stop being an American, or a citizen, or a human when you do a crime...and yes, I know this from experience.

At every level of our justice system, from being read your Miranda rights when you are arrested to the appeals for a person on Death Row there are checks and balances, laws that are meant to check the enforcers' behavior, and to guide the defense and the prosecution, and ideally to protect life, yes, even unto death, there are automatic appeals when a person is convicted and condemned and sent to Death Row to await execution.

But it's more than that, too, more than Man's law could ever address.

I was raised and taught to follow a Savior whose last chosen act was to redeem the criminals condemned with Him. 

If we don't stand up for the least among us, for the criminals, for the oppressed, for the sick, even for those who fall through the cracks of our society or reject it entirely, what are we?

If we don't believe in Justice, and if we don't recognize that there are higher judges than Man and his petty ego, what the fuck are we even doing here?

If civilization, government and society do not strive to protect the weak from the ruthless, why even have them?

American movement-Conservative Christians, who are by far majority-Protestant, love to talk about how religious they are.

We all love to talk about how much of a beacon of progress and this, that and the other thing America is.

But while Trump was having his "Blue Lives Matter" flag-rally, Pope Francis was making the decision to make an African-American, Wilton Gregory, Cardinal of Washington D.C.

Think about that, for a second. He's the first one in this country. It's 2020. 

So far as I know there have been Black Catholics since there's been a Catholic church, and there's even some Black saints, at least two that I know of, hell in 2019 an African American man named Augustine Tolton who was born into slavery in Missouri in 1854 and later became the first African-American Catholic Priest was given the title of 'Blessed' which is the first step in the canonization process. There should've been Black Cardinals and stuff in America like 100 years ago.

The United States of America is is a country, at this point, where for at least one out of three of us, petty rage, racism and shitty hatred is more important than citizenship, more important than our own freedom, more important than life, and more important than God.

How does anybody, even the people who have this mentality, think that any of us will ever be free so long as this condition persists?

When power and hatred are more important than life, how is anybody supposed to look at this mess and call it a free society, or even call the people who believe in this shit free as individuals?

When whether or not you're happy as a person depends on somebody else being unhappy, when whether or not you see yourself as free depends on somebody else being enslaved, and when you spend your own life judging things by your relative status to somebody else...

What are you? Are you an individual, a person? Or are you just willingly enslaving yourself to systems that everything going all the way back to the Old Testament calls unholy in the hope that you might get something out of it?

And the rub here, is that a lot of the people who do this shit consider themselves not just believers, but exemplars of Christianity.

How that works when you're one of the people who would have been shouting "Crucify Him!" in the streets of Jerusalem, I don't know.

How does it work that even as most of the rest of the Western world and two thirds or more of their own country rejects murderous authoritarianism, American conservatives are infinitely doubling down on exactly that?

How are so many of us...but more to the point so many of the Conservatives so devoid of identity, of personal belief or principles, that they have their very identity and sense of self based on one man, and how are their standards so damned low that it's Donald Trump?

It seems like for most of my life, it sort of went without saying that if you were a conservative...hell, if you were an American in general...but if you were a conservative in particular, you should be able to go through life without worrying that much about the government, or who's in the government.

But now we've got people whose feelings get hurt if you criticize the President, to the point where these soulless boot-lickers will call you a "Traitor?" Traitor to what? 

Seriously, is having a President who says racist shit really that important to people?

For one thing, being able to criticize one's leaders is the very point of Democracy, of elected leadership, and of freedom of speech as I was taught these ideals, by conservatives, by Christians, the overwhelming majority of whom were white people. I mean fucking seriously I had one Latina teacher...Sister Maria...in Catholic school in California when I was in the sixth grade and the next time I was being taught by a person of Color was when I had a Black training instructor in the Air Force. I had a couple more a few years later, during my first attempt at college...and it took until then before I was taught by anybody who was an identifiable, much less self-confessed liberal.

Yet what all those people taught me, much less my own belief that I have an inalienable right to be alive regardless of the vicissitudes of my own government and its utter disinterest in protecting the lives of its citizens...damned near make me a "Socialist" today, and in the eyes of the Trump Supporters, they certainly do.

What are we, if we as a people continue to put up with this crap?!

No, answer the question.

No excuses, no hand-waving, what exactly is important to you?

Because if "Conservative" judges, the political power of people who hate you, White Supremacy or Donald Trump is the answer to that question than you, yes you personally, have a problem: 

You're every bit the Subject of that Pharaoh in ancient Egypt that Moses called all those judgments down on, or the microchipped drone of the Beast's global empire in Revelation who can see all around that God's judgments are being rained down upon your world, but your own bullshit beliefs, your own pride, and your own refusal to change is more important that the truth, or even more important than your own life.

And you, yes, you personally, deserve every bit of This American Revelation and to come face to face with God and His judgment when COVID or internal conflict, war, or starvation because Republicans reneged on promised societal benefits or social safety nets kills your ass.

Maybe we can't help you, maybe we can't reach you. Hell, for all I know maybe you've got some equivalent of that spiritual mark that means you've rejected God and accepted the false system of this world instead.

But if we, the rest of us, do not stand up to you and fight for our own freedoms and rights in the face of your hatred, what are we?

I don't know about you, reader, but I ain't going out like that.

Vote, because we're citizens, not criminals or subjects and because yes, our lives really do depend on it.

That is all. That is the question.

What comes of this election, on November 3rd, is what we are.

Think about that.

VOTE.

Part Nine.

The dumbest *Possible* Eschaton (American Revelation V: Part Nine.)

All you kiddies remember to lay off the needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. ~Abbie Hoffman

Yesterday, a Miami police officer was photographed wearing a Trump mask in a polling place.

Do you even America, bro?

Not to mention, who'd you blow to keep your job all this time if that's the level of attention you pay to the regs?

Fucking seriously, electioneering within a certain radius of a polling place, and voter intimidation, have been illegal forever.

Every polling place I've ever been in has signs to that effect posted, also per Federal law.

To their credit, the Miami P.D. jumped on this situation as soon as they heard about it, which was pretty quickly considering the asshole got caught by the local Democratic Party chairman and was almost instantly Twitter-famous. Generally speaking, when it comes to any profession that carries arms, two rules consistently apply in such a way that no Judge Advocate, no Union or any other damn thing will get you out of the consequences of breaking. #1 Don't throw shit uphill, and #2 Don't do anything that attracts mass negative attention to yourself and your team and especially don't make your superiors look bad. Also, dude violated two very specific Department regulations, no political attire while in uniform and no foul language while on duty. Have fun at your next job working loss control at Walmart, asshole.

Seriously, if I'd done what this motherfucker did as an Airman, I'd have been lucky to walk away with an administrative separation or a Bad Conduct Discharge, either of which would have come via Article 15 nonjudicial punishment after Article 32 proceedings declined to send the case on to courts martial. 

What this guy did was commit two Federal felonies and get caught on camera doing it. A member of the military doing that and being that stupid about it would almost certainly be arrested, charged, tried, found guilty, likely incarcerated and at the conclusion of their time as a guest of the US Disciplinary Barracks-Leavenworth or Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar they'd be dishonorably discharged. 

These laws and regulations exist for a reason.

Things like the franchise, nonpartisan institutions and the rule of law are what separates us from barbarians and petty tyrants and don't you forget it.

That so many Republicans from the voters on up have forgotten this is unforgivable. 

That so many Americans would rather be petty corporate goons or Russian-backed satraps or the white equivalent of drug-addled illiterate Pashtun goat-fuckers than people living in a democratic first-world society who exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship tells me maybe we should send a lot more people over there for awhile, and let them see how they like it.

The actual damned problem with that logic is, there's one hell of a lot of people who should theoretically know better who think they'd go to a place like Afghanistan and be the petty warlord reclining on his throne, puffing away on an enormous Hookah while Kalashnikov-armed thugs bring him the day's haul from the peasants in the poppy fields, smoke some hashish or maybe some  opium, get stoned and sit around watching pirated copies of American movies..

Nobody, and I mean nobody thinks they're going to go to a place like that and be the Catamite lashed to the back of the truck until the headman of the local Lashkar wants his dick sucked. Or, ya know, go there and just plain end up dead. And that's the problem, isn't it?

Way back in 2015 I started to note fairly early that there were far too many privileged white people, especially on both far ends of the spectrum who were willfully ignorant of the ways things could go wrong, who always assume they'll be Okay, and who didn't and still don't give a shit about other people.

And worse, there's those, many of them far less privileged, who simply want the chaos and destruction because they think they'll profit by it somehow, or at least be entertained in some way.

Which brings me to yet another issue.

Trump keeps bringing up this idea of Joe Biden "Taking away God."

First of all, that tells me that Donald Trump doesn't believe in an infinite God who created an infinite universe and who is all-knowing and all-powerful. If God can be "taken away" by Man, then He is not God. 

I'm increasingly convinced that for Trump and a lot of his followers, religion is nothing more than some kind of magic show woo woo bullshit entertainment and none of these people really believe in anything at all.

Let me say that again, it's all bullshit, for a majority of these people all it ever was, was bullshit. It seems like anybody and everybody who cares in the least these days has voted, is voting or is planning on voting for the Democrats.

Including me, I'm a former Republican.

Voted for the Contract With America and the Gingrich Revolution, I did.

Hell, I volunteered on a GOTV effort for George W. Bush's campaign in 2000.

Goddamn, do I feel stupid.

That it's come down to this is a bitter goddamn pill for someone who spent more than half his political life so far as a Republican. The high-minded principles of Ronald Reagan or either Bush, the sweeping vision that at least went with the paranoia and shitty behavior of Richard Nixon, and the relative moderation of somebody like Gerald Ford all have no place in today's Republican party. Yet Kim Jong Un, the Taliban, and Vladimir Putin just might. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, of "With Malice Toward None, With Charity For All" and "Mr. Gorbachev, Open This Gate! Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" has become the party of dictators and kings, and sounded suspiciously Soviet while doing that. The party that united America in the face of terror on 9/11 has become the party of the fucking Taliban.

I feel like half my life was a lie, in the service of another lie, for an ideology of lies. If these fools don't think I'm angry enough about it to go out and fight somebody over that they're goddamned wrong.

And, as I write this, Twitter is aflame with trending topics related to Rudy Giuliani getting caught in a compromising position in front of a young actress that was playing the role of a reporter interviewing him in the new Borat movie.

Rudy, who once boasted about how glad he was that Sacha Baron Cohen never "got" him.

Trouble with that kind of track record is you only have to screw up once and it's over. That just happened.

And this guy was "America's Mayor" on 9/11 and had a real shot at being elected President in 2008, but he fell apart in the primary and that was that.

He's going to go down in history as Donald Trump's free lawyer and Impeachment causer.

Well, Donnie, you get what you pay for.

If you'd ever been a real businessman you'd know that.

I'm tired of these goddamned fools and their play-pretend paste up "righteousness" and shitty judgmentalism toward everybody else. I'm tired of the same silly bullshit day in and day out like America has turned into a never-ending episode of "Jackass."

If this is their idea of "Immanentizing The Eschaton" count me the fuck out.

Vote these motherfuckers out. All of them.

You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. ~Abbie Hoffman

Part Eight.

Take away from me the noise of thy songs, I will not hear the melody of thy viols (American Revelation V: Part Eight.)

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. ~Amos 5:21-24

There's something that needs to be said, here; Words have meanings. Laws have to be respected. Precedents must be observed, and, like it or not things have to be changed according to process when they don't work.

The Trumpist disrespect for basically everything is starting to really bother me. But, perhaps more to the point, it also bothers me that these idiots think no one else has any sense of agency. These fools clearly think other people are not going to act, react, or try to change anything. These are clearly the people who've managed to get through life without getting their clock cleaned for talking stupid, or something.

They likewise assume that God is somehow like them, on their side, or otherwise agrees with them, or that there is no "real" point of view other than their own.

It's really stupid, actually. More than that, it seems to me to be the height of hubris to go about this way and that as if the Universe automatically agrees with you...especially when it clearly does not.

"I hate, I despise your feast days, I will not smell in your solemn assemblies." 

That verse, in and of itself, seems pretty straightforward about the fact that God is not going to approve of everything that Believers do.

But it's funny how the believers in the shitty Republican agenda either persuade themselves that God doesn't get a vote...or they think He agrees with them, always.

It's funny how none of these motherfuckers anymore ever asks "Am I doing the right thing?"

And with the rise of Q-Anon and shit, it's quite honestly past time for people to start asking serious questions of themselves and others, and while they're at it, stop proof-texting and actually start reading things like the Bible and the Constitution and serious eschatology and theology because this chucklefuck idea of "just believe it" because it tickles their ears or satisfies their confirmation bias is going to put a lot of people on an express elevator to hell.

Whether "Q" is Russian active measures or some dumb bullshit made up by some idiot in New Jersey, the truth is that this shit has taken pretty much all the conspiracy theories, mashed them together, and started stirring the resulting toxic sludge into a stew that looks very much like the beginnings of a religion; More to the point, Q-Anon-ism is both the kind of Christ-less Christianity of which the Beast of Revelations could have previously only dreamed and the sort of cult with a potential for random violence based on total bullshit that could make Daesh and the Taliban seem positively reasonable by comparison.

These fucking people claim to be against human trafficking and pedophilia, but it seems like anytime these motherfuckers are confronted with either, or with an actual concrete way to do something in any real, concrete way about the real-life problem, they refuse.

That's because Q-Anon isn't about protecting children, it's about trying to rat-fuck Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans. That's all it is.

But it fits well with the Godless Theonomism of the Trump Republican Party, which substitutes a deeply agnostic greed, a shitty agenda, and the worship of a man for God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In fact, if we want to get the sense of what Q...or Trumpism...might look like as a religion, we need to look no further than the constant, inane self-reverential ramblings of Donald Trump himself, or the callous twisted irreligion of Bill Barr's "Catholicism" or for that matter the willfully ignorant Stepford Wife cruelty of Amy Coney Barrett.

In that faith, we are all damned, understand that right now. In that faith, the only reward some people may get is that the more-damned will get to have their boots on the throats of the less-damned at some mythical point in the future, dangled just beyond the mind's eye like the premise of a badly-written Christian end times novel, invisible, yet always there. 

It's that unspoken reasoning These Fucking People are using when they tell you they don't know why they support Trump. They know, but they're absolutely terrified of the idea that immanentizing their shitty right-wing eschaton might actually involve personal risk or physical pain or that somebody else's bootheel on their face might cause them to rethink their bad life choices.

It's the kind of thought process that casts listening to experts and science as a bad thing when the only thing that'll get us out of this is expertise and science.

And it's enough to make you understand why God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden and why it seems like He spent most of the Old Testament feuding with and punishing the Israelites in a frustrating cycle of abuse, apostasy and repentance where those on the outside looking in are never sure which is more in the wrong, but all know they don't want these two crazy fuckers to be their neighbors because there's bound to be a 3:00 A.M. shouting match in the front yard about just how much money did your dumb ass spend on that golden calf statue, anyway?

Yeah. All these thousands of years later things have not improved. The only thing that's really eternal is These Fucking People.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

I think I kind of understand now, what God was getting at with that remark. I don't want to listen to these fucking people either, Lord.

Fuck these motherfuckers. You can't reason with this shit. Vote these people out and be prepared to kick their asses if they try anything funny after that. Maybe a good old fashioned Biblical-level beat down is about the only thing these idiots will understand.

I don't know if there's another answer, but I do know this path we're on as a country right now cannot continue.

Part Seven.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins (American Revelation V: Part Seven)

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. ~Amos 5:8-12

As things spiral out of control, with Republicans and Trump having at long last lost complete control of the narrative and things looking pretty grim, there's an old line of argument that I've been seeing pop up again. It goes like this:

"Reagan conservatism has not failed, it has only been failed." Or another old standby; "True Conservatism has never been tried."

Even in their own minds, Republicans have already begun to prep for heavy casualties and triage the damage. It seems to go without saying that Trump is in trouble and not one damned thing he's doing is working. Among other things, as I pointed out on Twitter last night anybody who's ever worked in Information Technology for any length of time can spot all the flaws in the current Hunter Biden conspiracy theory...and it seems like most people are doing just that. 

So, on the other hand, Republicans are falling back on simple accusatory judgmentalism, as if their accusations should be taken at face value simply because they're the ones making them.

Amid all the noise, noise, noise it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle that Susan Collins got caught funding two specifically Q-Anon candidates for the State House in the Aroostook County area of northern Maine. Judging from the look of the one I've seen a picture of, Kevin Bushey; dude being a silver-haired old man and all, and from the (admittedly pretty general) bio that I've seen...which mentions that the guy is an Air Force veteran. I'm going to guess he was at some point back in the day stationed at Loring Air Force Base, a place I went to once, that seemed to brood in the kind of quiet isolation that induces stark-raving madness in so many horror movies. 

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY! ALL work AND NO PLAY makes JACK a DULL BOY! But I digress...

Enter into the picture this guy's church, which he is naturally very active in and which appears to have gone full Q-Anon...to the point of having actual Prayer "Kill lists" of organizations, which I have seen, and likely of people as well...which I have not seen any evidence of but which follows logically.

And to keep the Mainer references rolling, the place's theology is pretty much The Shining hooked up with Under The Dome as narrated by the crazy preacher from The Stand.

It's not that Stephen King couldn't have thought this one up, I suspect he may have, but figured the manuscript would be rejected out of hand by the publisher as too unbelievable.

Yet here we are, and here's their Kill-Bill-esque list which is a pretty bipartisan laundry list of just about everybody these fucking nuts hate.

The church and some groups associated with it advocate for the use of military force to accomplish their goals, not use of force by somebody else, but by these fucking people themselves.

And this is Christianity, in the age of Trump?

I've long worried about a possible merger between "Spiritual Warfare" type Pentecostalism and Q-Anon, and given that the Prosperity Gospel and Trumpism already effectively merged five years ago, I'm going to warn you that we're probably looking at the rise of a particularly murderous cult here; If it has not arisen already, that is.

The Assassins; For Jesus. Allah Akbar, motherfucker.

"Christian Taliban" will not end up being far wrong.

And before you think I'm joking consider the following;

These kinds of people, and these sorts of churches have a terribly bad habit of claiming some kind of God-given authority for shit that they already want to do anyway...and it doesn't matter whether said thing is against the Lord's Word or the Ten Commandments or whatever at all.

It has been my personal experience that these fucking people will do whatever they want and ex post facto invoke God and Jesus and some kind of special spiritual dispensation to do whatever they damned well please as a general rule.

I've seen that cover everything from adultery (and every other kind of sexual immorality imaginable) to blasphemy, to lying and outright theft, can murder be too far behind?

And the Republican Party and Susan Collins gave this dude money, doubtless they see it as a transactional arrangement in keeping with the times.

I'm a just say it right now, this was not some kind of oversight. This was done with malice aforethought by some nominally-rational asshole somewhere. 

The ISI always thinks it can control the Takfiris, right up until they're clashing with the Army in the northwestern tribal areas. Other Army regiments will always say that the Taliban would never dare enter their area of operations, right up until the Americans show the base CO dozens of classified counter-battery radar tracks indicating that yes, indeed, that mortar fire originated from within five clicks of your Gray Castle, Colonel. Here's a couple of drone feeds indicating that yes, they're right here within sight of your men. See that timestamp in the lower right corner? And all of your British-accented finery isn't hiding the fact that at the minimum you're Okay with that fact.

Cue the deep concern and furrowed brows and "They'll look into it."

And then throw all their musty WASP-y gravitas into politically defending that shit.

That will continue well past the point where people have died, and when it gets too bad to deny, they'll just lie about it. When Maine Army National Guard soldiers are dying in firefights with these Takfiris For Christ, people like Susan Collins will retroactively deny any connection or responsibility and profusely shed crocodile tears on the behalf of "Fallen Heroes."

And when they lose, these fucking people will deny that fact for as long as they can, in the hope that they can lie and steal some more before reality catches up.

And they think that the rest of us don't know that.

And they either think the God they want to jam down the rest of our throats doesn't really exist, is dumb as fuck, or is somehow Okay with all of this bullshit.

And you can cite chapter and verse saying otherwise all you want, but it won't register.

You cannot reason with people who will ever and always only act in bad faith, you cannot shame the shameless, you can only defeat them.

I suggest we adjust our expectations accordingly. People are going to die, and Republicans will laugh about it.

Part Six.

Fallen (American Revelation V: Part Six.)

Freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now', they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. ~George W. Bush

I saw yesterday, that people in one majority-white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, had a fifteen-minute wait to vote. While another nearby majority-black area had a line that took about five hours. Somebody that I follow on Twitter said that they waited eight and a half hours to vote.

Thanks, Republicans. Thanks to you motherfuckers, the rest of the world can now successfully argue that the Democratic Republic of the Congo...or the United Nations, for that matter...is a better-organized entity with more workable elections than the United States of America.

It's time that we, as a country, face up to something. A large minority of our people...certainly at least a third of us...simply do not believe in Democracy or rights or indeed anything that does not 100% favor them right now, on a minute-to-minute basis. 

And if you listen to them talk, these fucking people are saying they want total power, forever, such that a person should have to ask their permission to even walk down the street.

And their only consistent ethic is "FUCK YOU!"

Or perhaps the bizarre-to-the-point-of-nonsensical political counting coup of "Owning the Libs" whatever that even means.

And then they're the ones who habitually wrap themselves in the rhetoric of freedom and rights. But the only rights they seem to care about are the rights to say "Fuck you" or to kill and steal.

Just because they want to do it with laws and politics instead of guns and knives does not make it be something other than what it is.

More to the point, in a civilized society; How does that work, exactly?

How in the hell does anybody...even on their side...call such a state of affairs "Freedom?"

How in the hell do we, as a people, ever expect to remain free when one third of us does not believe in freedom on a conceptual level, except maybe for themselves, contingent on their emotional state at the time?

That kind of mentality is hugely problematic even without there being a kind of Oppositional Defiant Disorder vs. Reality in these people's minds?

How does freedom of the Press, not to mention governance on any level, work when the President is infected with a deadly virus and refuses to have any care for himself or others?

How exactly, do we expect anything of our government or society when the President's own family seems to view his position as primarily a money-making opportunity for themselves?

If this is how rich people conduct themselves, as a fucking rule, I quite frankly think we need to start setting up a lot of Guillotines and put into effect laws concerning their use, and maybe, just maybe, rethink who we look up to as a society. Why? Because it's pretty goddamned clear that these fucking people...and the donors who give them money...could give a shit about any of us.

In fact, if anything, they seem to want us to die in vast numbers.

All for the greater glory of Wall Street, and yet I'm not sure how any of these fucking fools think they can have a country, or an economy, without the people that are needed to run both. It's a classic case of the wealthy forgetting how or why they get, or have, their money in the first place. Couple that with a vast, seething contempt for everybody who isn't them, and there you have it.

We need to get these fucking people out of power if we want to keep having a country, let alone remain free within it. 

The thing that bothers me, now that all this is being exposed and laid bare before our eyes...is that there are still people rabidly following this shit, to the point where they're willing to go to rallies and risk getting COVID-19 just for some temporary feeling of power...or whatever they think they're getting out of this bullshit.

And these people's rank dishonesty and vast seething hatred now seems to extend to democracy itself.

Seems like, in a democratic nation, you're in the wrong business if you're in politics and that's what you really think.

After all, how the fuck else did you get that job?

Sure, Democracy might be flawed and messy and occasionally produce stupid results...but how else would we choose our leaders? What other method have we ever had? This is America, and the whole point of America is that this country was founded in opposition to the emperors, kings, petty satraps and warlords that were the norm of human governance in the 18th century.

What else even is there, Entreating the Gods? Gladiatorial combat? Kill your way to the top? Magic 8-Ball? Vision Quests? I'm gonna be honest here, none of that shit really works or ever did, and it seems like, flawed as it is, we already have a workable system. Maybe if you can't honestly, lawfully get elected under that system you need to change your ways, expand your voter base, or otherwise, you need to do something. Our system is not going to sacrifice itself just so you can have power, especially when your ideology literally becomes more shitty by the day.

I used to be a Republican, I'm a basic white guy, and I'm going to be honest...there's nothing for me in modern Republicanism. I don't get anything out of it, except worse living conditions. So why should I support this crap? Tell me why, show your work! Of course, these fucking people can't do that because the best answer they can come up with for why they should have power is "But they've always had it before" or "Because somebody we don't like might get it." I can't support that on any level.

Republicans are losing and people are waiting eight hours to vote against them because they're shit, because their ideals are shit, because even the religion they offer is nothing more that sycophancy toward a shitty, selfish God that is little more, even to them, than the Big Republican In The Sky. The Republican Party, as a whole, has become nothing more than an anthropomorphic, living representation of Ayn Rand's absolutely terrible novel "Atlas Shrugged" which can, in fact, be called a novel only by degrading that term.

And they're mad because people are reacting to that like real people would, not like the people in the novel that Rand wrote as cheering when their employers abandoned society. Modern Republicans not only think they have some kind of a right to take bodily autonomy away from women, or rights away from other groups of people...they think that those other people should cheer for them and vote for them while they do it, on the off chance that somebody else might end up having it worse.

It's not just that they're filled with hate of all kinds and all manner of shitty selfishness and they think they should be worshipped like gods for it, it's that they're so out of touch I have to wonder if epic level amounts of drug use are involved.

For example: What's their idea to try and bring back, for example, suburban white women? They try to cast Mike Pence as a sex symbol. You know, the dude who calls his wife "Mother" and is probably the most unsexiest motherfucker ever to fuck a mother, if there was any sex involved, which I sort of question because after all, a fly did land on his head and stay there for like three minutes.

That sort of suggests that Mike Pence would only be considered sexy if you're a Necrophiliac.

When you're so out of touch that Mayor Pete, the boring midwestern white guy who, in a normal world would probably be a Republican by dint of his moderate personality, his prior service as a US Navy intelligence officer and his religion, can be considered a "Rhetorical Assassin" against you, fundamentally for simply pointing out the obvious, it's time to pack it up and go home. Or, on a more base level...as 25-years-ago me might have opined...you got beat by a gay dude...it might just be time to pack it up and go home.

Now, personally, I like Mayor Pete, and I'd have been all in to vote for him if he'd been the nominee.

But he's exactly the type who should have been able to be a loud-and-proud gay Republican if he'd wanted to be, and had Republicans followed the trajectory of the Bushes and lots of their philosophical leaders instead of that of Conspiracy theories, FOX News, Fundamentalist religion and their baser, hateful racist elements, that might have been possible.

But it isn't, and I'm glad he's on our side.

Same with the Lincoln Project people, literally current and former Republicans who've dedicated themselves to getting Donald Trump...and in many cases their own party...out of power. Some of them want to De-Trumpify conservatism, or rebuild it along earlier lines, others have effectively switched sides. I'm glad they're on our side for now because fundamentally it's going to take all of us to get these assholes out of power.

And if you think this fight is going to be over with a Democratic election victory, or even Biden's inauguration, you have another thing coming. Just as it took generations to jack the Republican Party so far to the Right that it became anti-American, undoing the damage will likewise be the work of generations, and we will face other crises at the same time.

Climate change, and a probably right-wing insurgency, for example. Republicans have fallen a long way.

And that's why they have to be both driven from power and kept from having it ever again. If that seems like a lot of work, too bad.

But the work has to be done, and done right, and pursued vigilantly until it is complete.

Why? Because if it isn't, these fucking people will take away your vote, kill you and take your stuff, or let you die of disease while the world burns, simply because they think it's funny. This is what we're up against, period.

That spell it out for ya?

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. ~George W. Bush

Part Five.

Also, Fuck You Lindsey Graham.

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
~Revelation 18:1-6

 

 

South Carolina Soviet Socialist Republic (American Revelation V: Fuck You Lindsey Graham Edition.)

 In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity. ~Che Guevara

In 2015, when Trump started talking about building a wall, I said "So, Republicans are basically Communists now?"

This, this right here, is exactly why I said that.

Yesterday, Lindsey Graham said "An African American person or an immigrant can go anywhere in South Carolina, so long as they're conservative, not liberal."

Do you even America, bro?

No, I'm fucking serious you asshole closet-case. Listen to me, and make sure your brain don't fall out your dumb head.

This is not the South Carolina Soviet Socialist Republic.

This is America, according to what I was taught America is, by Christians, by conservatives, America is not the kind of country where one's success or failure in life is determined by whether or not one joins The Party. This right here is some pretty damned Communist-sounding shit, as far as this former conservative Republican is concerned.

This is America, where one can and cannot go should never be determined by one's political affiliation or the color of one's skin, but simply by whether or not a person has the capability to get where they want to go. Anything else smacks of the closed cities and fences and guard towers and walls of the Communist Bloc of my youth.

If Black people can be told where they can go, or what they can do, the rest of us will absolutely not be far behind. 

Power only craves more power, and the monster that Lady G insists on feeding has no bottom and has an insatiable appetite for more...

Like I've said you could pour this entire country and everyone and everything in it down that space where Donald Trump's soul is supposed to have been, and you'd never fill it. My ex-wife has a personality disorder, this whole Trump thing ain't my first rodeo.

And more to the point, this stupid bullshit shows that Lindsey Graham doesn't know jack shit about Black people, most of whom are, in a lot of ways...especially as regards religion...pretty damn conservative...just not in the kind of way that involves telling other people where they can and can't go or what they can and cannot do.

But this isn't about arguing capability vs. purpose, or Christian doctrine, or even navigating one's place in the world.

This is about power, and the fact that a small, angry, shitty man is for once in his life having to fight for that which he thinks he deserves...and the truth is, he doesn't, and he knows it.

The polling is dead even, or maybe with Jaime Harrison a little ahead, depending on the day. Also, Harrison is kicking Lindsey Graham's ass up between his shoulder blades fundraising-wise.

And that just makes him more angry. Lindsey Graham doubtless thinks he should be getting all that money.

See, These Fucking People (a term I picked up from Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station) i.e. people like Lindsey Graham, they don't really believe in anything, except power and their own capabilities.

And they love to exercise that power. They worship that power and crave more like a Black prosperity gospel preacher craves and worships money...and at least the Prosperity Gospel preacher has to pay lip service to a power higher than himself and be seen doing so with convincing enough passion that a whole lot of people will believe he's praying to Jesus and not for the fattening of his own wallet.

And Lady G, she really can't do that, can she? I mean, the old gay bear, he ain't what he used to be...or something. Hell, the last time I ever saw Lindsey Graham say something with any degree of passion it was that "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we'll deserve it."

Prophetically spoken, but the timing was off by about four years judging from how things are going.

And look where Lindsey Graham is now (cue Sad Trombone noise.)

I mean this in all sincerity and I say it as a former conservative: Fuck this Commie-Wannabe Motherfucker, with a train, sideways, while it's running.

Integrity Above All
Service Before Self
Excellence In All That We Do.
~United States Air Force Core Values.

You know how you know what kind of an absolute shit person Lindsey Graham is?

He's a retired South Carolina Air National Guard officer, a Judge Advocate General to be specific. I know the values he was supposed to have lived by, oh yes, I do.

And this? This ain't it.

For all the values he was supposed to espouse, uphold, and literally put his life on the line for, for all the oaths he swore, for all the time as a JAG and as a Congressman and as a Senator that he had in, for all his time in supposed-public service...

Well, you see all that ain't shit. It's worse than nothing, somebody else should have had his spot. See, at the end of the day Lindsey Graham's word ain't shit.

I don't know about you, but where I come from that is supposed to be the measure of a man.

And here's Lindsey Graham freely and openly stating that, at least behavior-wise, he'd gladly turn the United States of America into a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics if it would keep him in power and serve the interests of those who make up his power base.

I don't know about you, but that's not the America I want to live in. We don't have a thousand years of history or all that many unifying factors. All he have is what we want to be.

And I don't want to be this.

Do you?

Vote.

Vote the bastards out.

All of them.

Because as of right now we still can.

It really is that simple.

And after this, it gets a lot harder. If you don't think Republicans will try to split America to see if they can break off a piece, well, you ain't been paying attention.

Part Five.

Do you even Conservative, Bro? (American Revelation V: Part Five.)

Barbara: With a cute little rear end like that, you'll be the belle of the ball. Your dance card'll be filled every day. You'll be so popular, making all kinds of new, close friends. Big, ugly, hairy friends! Not that you'll ever see what they look like, 'cause you'll be facing the other way.
- Ken Kessler: You're very good at this. You should write children's books. ~From the film Ruthless People 

Democracy isn't the objective?"

Okay, smart guy. Tell me then, what is the objective? Why have I been voting since I registered to vote (as a Republican, no less. Man, do I ever feel stupid now) in 1991 when I turned 18 years old, why did I raise my right hand and swear an oath to the Constitution, what is even the point of, well, most of my life?

For those in the back, and apparently some of the Republican Senators out there, let me explain something in very fucking simple terms.

Without people having a say in their government, in how things are run, in their lives and in what goes on in their own country, it's not liberty, peace, or prosperity, not really.

Well, it might be unimaginable prosperity for a very few at the top, but that's about it. Your profits are not my objective. And if you think you can hold a society together that way, you're wrong.

Without Democracy, we are at best pampered pets, subjects, not citizens, having as much say over our own lives as a dog does over the actions of his master. At worst, we are slaves, well-fed or otherwise, and whether we "flourish" or not is subject to the whims and vanities of people like this asshole, and not by our own capabilities.

Without Democracy, our purpose in life is not even ours to find, nor do we rise or fall by our own initiative, but all this is instead dictated by the State per its own needs or by the political doctrines and various dogmas of the moment.

That sounds an awful lot like fascism, or maybe Soviet Communism without any of the parts that sort of helped people, sometimes. Your ideas, Senator, sound pretty damned Soviet to this former Republican. And I will not live under such a system. Do you even conservative, bro?

In point of fact, I'd rather DIE than live under the Senator's ideas of me "flourishing" without having a say in HOW. I'd rather die, with a rifle in my hand if need be, defending the Constitution and country WE ALREADY HAVE as I was once trained to do. What happened to the basis of conservatism being "Things as they are" not "things as we wish them to be" or reverence for revealed truth or the wisdom of our ancestors who built the small-L, small-D, liberal democratic system that we have? Flawed as it is, it's better than the alternative.

I don't want what I do for a living, where I live, how much money I make or who I love or where I work or how or even IF I worship God determined by a right-wing apparatchik in Utah anymore than I'd have wanted all that determined by a Communist apparatchik in Moscow.

This kind of bullshit is exactly what I was taught to fight, BECAUSE I'm an American, BY conservatives and liberals alike, BY Christians, because there was a time when people knew their histories and remembered things like that there was a time when people died for the right to read the Word in their own languages, on their own time, and draw their own conclusions from its pages.

You and your belief that you will be the King in his castle or the Lord in his manor while the rest of us are the serfs toiling in the fields directly interferes with that, with the very basics of what I was taught conservatism, revealed truth, or the wisdom of my ancestors all even were.

Freedom may be messy, but at the end of the day, without it life really isn't worth living because life isn't even ours to live. If you don't like how others live, LEAD. BY. EXAMPLE. Show them the Truth. It's on them to follow it, or not. 

If you can't do that, maybe you need to pick a different set of beliefs.

This has been a conservative argument.

Not that a large majority of these fucking people could be described as conservative, by any accurate definition of that word.

I got home from work this morning and besides getting deluged with posts about Mike Pence having a fly land on his head and stay there for awhile, I almost immediately saw Mike Lee's idiocy.

Then I saw this. Six right-wing terrorists apparently plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, my state's governor, overthrow the government and start a civil war. Then they got busted by the FBI and the Michigan State Police.

Right there is what These Fucking People think of America, Democracy, and the will of the people all in a nutshell, in a nice, neatly wrapped little gift box, handed to you on a silver platter.

I hope that you can infer the depth and breadth of my hatred for these people and their fucking bullshit by the fact that I'm quoting from "Ruthless People."

If you haven't believed me when I tell you that first we're going to have to vote them out, then we're going to have to fight them off, I'd suggest that you start. These fucking people are not trying to win the fucking argument, at least not by any conventional...or even unconventional...means that a sane person would recognize. No, as I've said before, these idiots are trying to immanentize some sort of right-wing Eschaton. 

And they're so fucked up on this silly bullshit that the goddamned Vice President doesn't even notice when a goddamn fly lands on his dumb head.

These fucking people don't want to live in America, they want to live in a place that's basically Gonzo Afghanistan with bigger guns, more drugs, and nukes, where their followers are basically a bunch of illiterate savages who will do what they're told and be dumb enough not to realize that their own corpse-like, flyblown, mealy-mouthed overlords really fucking hate them.

And you and me? What do we get in their world? Well, if we don't get shot, we get to die of some perfectly well avoidable or preventable illness, and then the local warlord gets to take our stuff.

I don't know about you, but I don't see anything conservative about that, and I'm saying that as a former Republican.

If you're not outraged by this goddamned fucking bullshit, you're not paying attention.

Vote the bastards out, all of them.

Part Four.