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.