This kid that I work with, he had a bad night last night.
He's from a family of "Conservatives," religious nuts, and Trump Supporters, but of course I repeat myself.
And he's none of the above and struggling with having to deal with all this bullshit.
I tell him that I have a church background, that I used to be a conservative...and of my own journey from conservative Christian to Agnostic outsider.
I tell him, that his family's claimed beliefs, as he tells them to me, seem as alien to the Christianity that I was raised with as men in Keffiyehs and Ski masks and desert robes...or old Soviet uniforms...firing their guns in the air, waving black flags and shouting "Allah Akbar" from the backs of Toyota Hilux technical trucks in some dusty valley in Afghanistan would.
There seems to be no love in his people's religion...unless it's love of Donald Trump. These fucking people talk about Trump more than they talk about Christ...and with the same wild-eyed devotion towards the former than they used to have towards the latter.
Their single-minded dedication to Donald Trump seems an awful lot like Daesh or the Taliban's dedication to Jihad.
And the truth is, the more these fucking people talk, on their own, the more sure of this analogy I become.
I kind of think my friend understands, but I'm not sure.
I'm not going to lie, the whole Kyle Rittenhouse thing seems darkly fascinating to me.
Mostly, because I remember being 17 years old, being a gun owner, a person of strong opinions who was even then thinking about enlisting in the United States Air Force, a young conservative...and for that matter having my own car and the ability to go places...when the damned thing was running, at least. But, honestly, most of the time at that age I could have gave a fuck about politics and my main priority was getting through until the next time I could get my dick sucked, or whatever.
The thought of wanting to kill somebody never so much as entered my brainpan. In those days, people tended to beat each other up, a killing of any sort was, quite often, a big deal. In point of fact, shootings were, rightly or wrongly, more associated with inner-city drug crime than right-wing nuts...who themselves were not taken seriously by most mainstream conservatives, like me.
And the militia movement and all that crap was still a few years in the future.
The thought of going to another state with intent to try to "defend" stuff that didn't belong to me from people that mostly weren't trying to steal it anyway would have probably made me bust out laughing, had someone suggested it.
And the sick thing is, not one damn person who should have done right by this kid did it before he shot those people, and they've done worse since. There's his Mom who's basking in newfound Republican-fame...which seems to be like internet fame only dumber. There's his lawyer, who seems to be trying to monetize the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse is his client, and bringing political partisanship into it. All of this seems both really dumb and a gross violation of both his client and his professional ethics.
For one thing, if I committed a crime, I sure as hell would not want my case politicized. Not in this sort of climate, no way, no how.
Seriously, if this kid had real parents, had his Mom just done what my Mom would have done and said "I ain't gonna drive your ass nowhere, and you ain't leaving the house with that." Or had the cops done their actual job and arrested him before he killed somebody, or even just took his weapon and sent him home, he could be home playing video games, sneaking internet porn and hoping he could clear out his search history before his Mom found it (and probably facing a misdemeanor-level charge of Brandishing, at most) instead of sitting in a cell.
How come nobody on the Right has even so much as brought up the question "Where were the parents on this one?"
What about the simple fact that three people got shot, and two of them died, for no good reason. And when all these people have got their fame or their money off this kid and he spends the rest of his life, or any part of it that's worth living anyway, in prison...I'll bet you not one of these assholes comes to visit him or even gives a shit in any way. Whatever life...whatever dignity...he is able to eke out will be under some pretty bad conditions while dealing with horrible shit.
Go ahead and tell me how these fucking people have so much regard for "Life" because I fucking love that story. To hear these fucking people tell it, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
The damned manipulate the deceived in the service of the greedy and sociopathic, and this is modern "Conservatism?"
Where is the belief in revealed truth and the wisdom of our ancestors, or the preference for 'things as they are' upon which traditional conservatism rests?
Where is the love in these people's religion, or the redemptive, saving power of Jesus Christ? And what is God, besides being a rationalization?
These fucking people have traded Christ for Trump, and most of them can't or won't even tell you why.
By comparison, when I started out as a Baptist, even when I was a kid I was damn well encouraged to know what I believed and to tell it to anybody I could get to listen and that included the 'why' part.
Trump's just a man. In any kind of Christian theological understanding, Man cannot save Man, only God can do that. I mean, sure, you can argue that Jews and Muslims are covered under the Law, or something something Gazpacho. Others? Outside the framework of the God of Abraham, so who can say...but the understanding that I was given was that the way, the truth, and the [Eternal] life was, and was found in, Jesus Christ.
And according to what I read in Revelation, that goes out the window if you start worshiping idols, or a man. As I said, Man cannot save Man.
Especially when Man is an adulterer, a blasphemer, a mocker of God, who casually commits every one of the Seven Deadly Sins and breaks each of the Ten Commandments, and commands his followers to do the same.
It's almost like somebody's getting a cut from the take whenever one of these fucking people or their followers goes to hell.
And like any good marketing scam, they're going to do what they can to keep the numbers up and the money rolling in, and they'll do anything to ensure the next quarter's profitability.
And if you wonder why we're in American Revelation; That's Why.
Welcome to the End Times.
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