Eating Their Own (Republican Zombie Land, Part Two.)

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Behold, I have told you before.
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:24-27

I kept seeing this picture making the rounds a few days ago.

During this press conference in which Trump was seated at a kiddie-sized version of the Resolute Desk, he told a reporter "You can't talk to me that way, I'm the President of the United States!"

Here's a pro-tip from a guy who learned most of what he knows about leadership either from veterans or during his own time in the United States Air Force: Respect is earned, by every action, every day. It's literally a 24-7-365 proposition and it takes only one fuck-up to lose it all. Yeah, that's a hard road. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the fucking kitchen.

But there's one thing time and tide have taught me, that I'd hasten to add here; If you have to bellow about how "You can't talk to me that way!" Oh hell yes they can because you're not That Guy.

You're not the guy that people would charge into battle and die for, you're not the person who commands respect simply by bearing or competence or leadership skills. You might inspire sycophancy, but in all honesty most of the people drawn to you are that way not because they want to do something for you, but because they want to get something from you.

And with Trump, if he ever understood the difference he certainly no longer seems to care.

In fact, with Trump, that seems to be the draw, the total lack of leadership skills, of ability to face another person and tell them "No, this is the way it has to be done." To a 13-year-old, Trump would perhaps be thought of as the cool adult who lets them get away with a bunch of shit.

And it's true, as long as they give proper glory to the Giant Orange Butthole the Republicans and Trump Supporters have largely been left to do whatever they damn well please, which is why aside from tax cuts, routine stuff that absolutely has to be done and one insufficient COVID-19 relief package, the Trump Era, such as it was, is mostly going to be known for executive branch malfeasance, hot air, and political masturbation. Which, in all honesty, works fine if you're a wealthy Republican and your entire brand is built around doing nothing while things get worse and the common person's life gets harder.

Except that, in the end, it didn't really work because the farrago of bullshit that's required to actually sustain this paradigm has begun to boomerang on the Republicans, and the right-wing media bullshit machine that does the work pledged loyalty to Trump Over Party years ago.

And they know all this, or at least the smarter ones do, but these fucking people have pushed the idea that Trump is some kind of go-getter and hard working pious Very Serious Person as much as anything because they think other people are blind or deaf or stupid and well, mostly to cover their own bullshit.

So now that they've smacked hard into the wall of realty a lot of these people don't even know which direction is "Up."

Trump Supporters are threatening to boycott the Georgia runoff elections in January, and even accusing people like Brian Kemp and Ronna McDaniel of conspiring with Bernie Sanders, dead foreign dictators and the Democrats to deny Trump reelection, or something something gazpacho. Essentially, accepting basic reality now marks one as a detestable Republican In Name Only or something, and even now these fucking people are swarming some fake hearing in an Arizona Hyatt hotel ballroom trying to "gather evidence" to prove their conspiracy theories.

As multiple people have said on Twitter, this thing in Arizona has all the actual legal effect of a Furry convention, and they're apologizing to Furry conventions for the comparison. It's not just a safe bet at this point, but it's a proven fact that Furries are generally better people than Republicans are, and Republicans have absolutely no one to blame for that more than themselves. In the last five years they've taken every single thing they ever said they believed in before and set it on fire, leaving it in the middle of the road to burn.

They've replaced all that with an unholy trinity of fascism, racism and wanton desire to "Own the Libs" whatever the fuck that even means. Understand, too, that tracks well with the fact that a large percentage of the Trump Supporters that I've ever talked to either can't or won't say why they support him.

But it's usually something along these kind of lines, that These Fucking People always seem to think that this or that Republican will be the one to just kill the people that they don't like, as if such a thing were possible in a top-down, organized way in a country whose Constitution says that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. No, we don't always perfectly well abide by all that, but when we don't, it's as often as not bad actors within the system (and those who try to shield them from accountability) rather than the system as a whole. An organized effort to kill off whole sectors of society because some chucklefuck on an internet-based TV channel doesn't like them seems unlikely to even leave the studio as a coherent idea, not least because every single one of these dipshits has differing ideas of who "The Enemy" even is.

How many Republicans would these assholes kill for not being Republican enough, or shitty enough?

I'm going to guess that number is pretty high these days.

Pro tip here: Murderous assholes really don't care who gets murdered as long as the total includes maybe a few high profile people they don't like. It's the murder that's the point.

And seriously, whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

The cold, hard truth here is that Republicans don't give a damn about America, unless it's theirs and only theirs and they get to determine who lives or dies based on their feelings of the moment and for no other reason, with no accountability or ever even having to think about why.

It should be evident that the sober, serious conservatism and Republicanism of the past is deader than Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Most of what these fucking people believe today is nothing but a bunch of tribal Unga Bunga bullshit with no basis in reality, it's the Scopes Monkey Trial fundamentalists meets Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society in the dirty restroom of a gay bathhouse in Moscow, and then these fucking idiots wonder why they lost the election?

I think Stonekettle sums it up pretty well: It's not heaven if everybody gets to go.

It's not America if everybody gets to have some.

Be glad we voted Trump out, and to a great extent held the line otherwise, but Y'all in Georgia better show up.

We're going to have to keep voting these motherfuckers out until there aren't any left.

If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.

'Cause otherwise, when they're done eating their own, these fucking Zombies just might eat you, too.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch (Thanksgiving in Republican Zombie Land, Part One.)

 *Awk* Don't eat me. ~Mr. Cotton's Parrot, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest.

We have now reached the long-awaited point where American conservatism smacks hard into the wall of reality.

And apparently, these fucking people's immediate response has been to back up, rev the engine hard, and hit it again, and again, and again, and again.

And I should add, they're doing this for Donald Trump, of all fucking people.

And since they didn't have the sense to bring much of anything else with them, they're starting to eat their own...and in fact finding that they like the taste.

For once in his miserable, shitty life, Erick is right. These people do need to repent.

But they've become so blinded by partisan fanaticism that they can no longer recognize God.

We've already seen the MAGA rats turn on Fox News, because their independent Decision Desk called Arizona for Biden on election night and none other than Rupert Murdoch stood by his own people as he damned well ought to have, and told Trump what he could go and do with himself.

Now-former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell attacked Georgia Republican Governor (and fanatical Trump ally) Brian Kemp and accused him of being in league with Bernie Sanders and the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for doing his job and signing off on his state's election certification.

And the last three weeks have seen more cockamamie ideas and conspiracy theories than I can count, because of these fucking people's inability to accept that Trump lost the election fair and square, even when he did everything possible to lose it.

And this happened because conservative talk radio, Republican donors, think tanks and TV media spent 50 years in a race to see who could say more crazy shit to keep the base charged up and voting, and their money flowing into the engines of right-wing-infused capitalism like so much leaded gasoline...with predictable results for the consumer.

And then, Republican donors and politicians alike always presumed the mob could be ginned up whenever needed and put away when it was inconvenient, never realizing that their gutting education and promoting Fundamentalist Christianity was eroding the base's ability to see what was going on for what it was, and to actually fill that role. With the rise of FOX News in the 1990's and conspiracy theorists in the early 2000's  and the Tea Party after the election of Barack Obama, the base became a continuously-baying mob, ever more strident in its demands for blood, ever more militant in its desire to strip-mine itself and the lives of its own people to further improve the lot of people like Charles Koch.

The motherfuckers who pushed a radical libertarian agenda beyond the bounds of all reason or sense are...surprised that the GOP went 'more radical than promised.'

Color me unimpressed by this.

They were fine with the horde of decaying, ravenous red-capped zombies they created when it was marching, arms outstretched and moaning "MAGA" towards other people...but now that they see it might eat them alive too they're like "Hey wait a minute, you promised us you wouldn't be this radical."

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. As somebody who was ran out of conservatism by these chucklefucks that you motherfuckers radicalized, I'd just like to say I not only have no sympathy, I have negative sympathy, my lack of sympathy warps the space-time continuum. I am an Event Horizon of "I don't give a fuck."

Welcome to the party, pal.

Some of us have been stuck dealing with this shit for years. 

Some of us got ran out of belief systems such as conservatism and Republicanism that were in fact once known for great things, but now leave only a legacy of bad debts, unpaid, and a horde of decomposing, shambling monsters where almost half of our body politic used to be. Spare me your feigned self-awareness and remorse, Charles, you knew damned well what you were doing. You just never thought it would get pushed to the point where it threatened your finances, your ideological priors, your life or the vitality of your political movement.

Like Big Government, the MAGA Zombies were just fine when they were only a weapon you could point at somebody else.

But right from the beginning, with these fucking people, pretty much anything only had value if it could be used for their personal profit or weaponized against somebody else, in truth, the less deserving their target was, the better they liked it.

Seriously, ever notice that the only parts of history that people like Tom Cotton ever seem to actually give a fuck about are colonization, genocide, murder, slavery and war?

And it's funny how these people never seem to consider that the Native Americans might have a perspective on the Mayflower and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that would differ from their own. Basically, the Wampanoag saved the Puritans from starving to death and within a couple generations, after a couple of bloody wars, the Wampanoag and their rivals of the other tribes who'd allied with the Puritans and become known as the "Praying Indians" were nearly extinct and their land belonged to their killers.

It's like Malcolm X said, Black people didn't land on Plymouth Rock, that rock landed on them.

But don't worry, Tom Cotton is just fine with that part. This is exactly why he didn't care when Trump showed up, pulled the guts out of the Republican Party and crawled inside it like a Tauntaun.

In fact when that happened, Tom started looking for ways to turn it to his advantage.

And that's all Republicans are mad about, that they weren't able to turn this situation to their advantage enough.

And because they did that, and because one and all they cannot Constitutionally or legally find a way to save Donald Trump, there's a non-zero chance that there's going to be serious blowback on them. For example, Republican voters in Georgia are threatening to boycott the Georgia runoff because Trump lost the state and neither of the Republican candidates could do anything about it.

The Republicans are trapped in the department store, with a horde of red-hat wearing zombies scratching at the doors.

Good luck, motherfuckers.

So, Murderers get endorsement deals now? (American Revelation, Revisited.)

Sarek: Klingon justice is a unique point of view, Mr. President. Genesis was perfectly named- the creation of life, not death. The Klingons shed the first blood while attempting to possess its secrets.

Klingon Ambassador: Vulcans are well-known as the intellectual puppets of this Federation.

Sarek: Your vessel did destroy U.S.S. Grissom. Your men did kill Kirk's son. Do you deny these events?

Klingon Ambassador: [proudly] We deny nothing. We have the right to preserve our race.

Sarek: Do you have the right to commit murder? ~From Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.

So, Mike Lindell AKA the "My Pillow guy" and washed-up 1980's child star Ricky Schroder paid the $2 MILLION bail for Kyle Rittenhouse, so now the murderous little asshole is out on bond.

And then the Black Rifle Coffee company gave him an endorsement deal.

Hold the fuck on...murderers get endorsement deals now? As if he's some college basketball star that just was the number one draft pick for the NBA?

Now hold the fuck on. I had absolutely no issues with endorsement deals when it was Michael Jordan or Shaquille O'Neal or even Colin Kaepernick, Hell, I had absolutely no issue even with an athlete like Kurt Schilling being extremely political and supporting Trump. Agree with people or disagree with them if somebody who is famous for their contributions to acting or sports or society in general wants to endorse a product to get paid or support a cause or a candidate, I'm fine with that.

But I draw the line at anybody giving an endorsement deal to some kid who's only even known...much less famous...because he murdered two people. This isn't a case of some rapper with a couple big albums out there who shot somebody, or Plaxico Buress shooting himself , or some actor who beat somebody up. No, any of those people right or wrong at least had to do something else, something somewhat positive or that involved doing work, to get to where they were before they did the crime.

The only reason anybody in the world other than his family and some people at school know who Kyle Rittenhouse is, is because he killed two people who were only even there because they were exercising their Constitutional rights or walking down the same street as other people doing that.

And neither protesting nor walking down a street where there's a protest going on is even remotely a criminal act, both are in fact protected under the law. Neither act is, in the slightest way, deserving of death. And they sure ain't deserving of some little punk ass from another state who can't even drive his own self there to be taking it upon himself to be judge, jury and executioner all at the same time.

As my African-American (and Christian) friend Tim would say...maybe he can make a rap album when he gets out of jail?

 But the American political Right immediately tried to make a hero out of the little fucker.

And a Trump ally with a ubiquitous presence in late-night TV commercials ponied up the money to bail him out of jail

And the Black Rifle Coffee Company gave the little asshole an endorsement deal?

Murderers getting endorsement deals for products. Think about that for a second.

Now, when the glory and the spit-shine have faded and time and tide have moved on and Kyle Rittenhouse is Inmate 20R7B simply trying to avoid boredom, drug addiction, insanity or jailhouse booty bandits and not catch COVID-19 or get poisoned by the toilet wine like everybody else, will he still be their hero, their murderous Michael Jordan?

Or will these absolute motherfuckers have moved on to somebody else by then, keep in mind this dude is likely looking at a minimum of 40 years before he'd even get parole.

What about when he gets out, as a 60 year old man, in need of care, a job, and support?

I am here to tell you, the transactional Far-right will not give a shit in four months, much less 40 years. In point of fact he's served his purpose already as far as they're concerned.

Chances are by then, the only people who will notice let alone care are those organizations like Prison Fellowship Ministries that specifically exist for the purpose of helping inmates.

The people who want to live vicariously through what he did will not give a shit.

That is exactly the stuff of Christian End Times Prophecy and Christian fiction except that LaHaye and Jenkins were too chickenshit to think it up and work it into Left Behind, except they decided they liked shitty non-subtle dog-whistles against homosexuality better.

The thing is, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is in the Ten Commandments, which don't say anything about being gay or not being conservative. If any of these people believed in even one damn thing that they said they did you'd think this would be something at least some of them would take issue with.

But they don't.

And with Trump clearly on his way out of office and all the guns and hate and political power they could muster having proved insufficient to keep him there, these motherfucking people will absolutely fall back on using shitty little criminals to try and accomplish their political goals.

Think about that for a second, think about what that will do to our society or where that might lead us. Think about that the next time some conservative talks to you about "Supporting" the troops or the police.

Makes you wonder who they'll "Support" next, doesn't it?

The same fucking people who will tell you all day that they believe in a God that says "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder" and that profess ironclad support for laws that declare murder illegal and in fact fanatically support the Death Penalty for many crimes, but especially murder, just gave an endorsement deal to a fucking murderer.

If Kyle Rittenhouse was a Black kid who'd shot two people over a dice game or a dime bag of weed these same fucking people would be all up in everybody's face saying that murder is wrong and a sin and bemoaning the decline of the family and demanding more "Law and Order" and asking where were the parents.

But he's a suburban vaguely upper middle class white kid who apparently professes far-right politics and likes guns. So it's all cool, or something.

There's nobody in the world who acts more like they believe there is no God than the American "Conservative" Christian.

And that's why I believe in Revelation, or at least, the American kind.

Left Behind Is A Lie, Revisited.

#Election2020 #Special #Top20

The Enchanted World (Left Behind Is A Lie, Revisited.)

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Apparently there's some kind of horse shit going around the internet via One America News Now, that says Trump somehow won 410 electoral votes, somehow including both California and Hawaii.

Dafuq?

Note I say this as a resident of a state that flipped back to Blue myself.

Supposedly, the military found this information on a Dominion server.

Couple problems here: 

First, The Dominion voting machine company neither has offices in Germany, nor manufactures all of the voting machines used in the US.

Second: The military doesn't investigate anything much in Germany, unless it happens specifically on US military installations, by treaty if there's something that happens involving US citizens, interests or personnel, the German police investigate, perhaps assisted by the FBI or military criminal investigation services, either automatically or by their request depending on the nature of the issue, and all of this is spelled out in publicly available documents, but that's just what I remember off the top of my head right now.

Third, has whoever made this crap up ever been to California or Hawaii, let alone lately?

Seriously if anything ever should have spelled the end of these fucking people's belief in some kind of magical Republican utopia it's 'living in America these last five years.'

I'm serious. Aside from judges, tax cuts for the wealthy and the reputations of American Christianity and "Conservatism" being largely ruined...and a budding conspiracy theorist fascist movement that thinks Fox News sucks and neither current Republicans nor Trump were cruel or evil or racist enough, what has anybody gotten out of this mess, least of all the average Republican voter?

 Here we are now, entertain us. I feel stupid, and contagious. ~Curt Cobain, Smells Like Teen Spirit

Oh wait did I say that out loud?

But of course that's not really what I'm on about here, is it. That's right.

What happens to these people when Joe Biden is sworn in as President on January 20th, 2021?

What happens when all the facts about the last five years, Russia, kids in cages, foreign manipulation, the Federal Government's bungled COVID-19 response, obviously-corrupted judicial confirmations and Billy Barr's Justice Department start coming out?

What happens when there is no Apocalypse, no Rapture, no Conquering Christ on a white horse, no Y2K virus that brings the modern world crashing down?

Most likely, the same thing that happened to Harold Camping's followers on May 22nd, 2011. Pretty much the same thing that happened to anybody who bought into the 2012 Apocalyptic horse shit, or the Y2K bullshit, or basically every apocalyptic prediction in the history of humanity.

Let me spell it out for you: One way or another there's always at least some True Believers who completely lose their ass on this stuff.

This time, to hear them tell it, literally millions of people bet their souls on Donald Trump in one way or another.

Too often, such things end up with mass death, Jonestown, Heaven's Gate...you get the picture.

There's always some bullshitter somewhere who recants and converts to something else because they might go to jail or get shot if they don't.

And there's always people who went absolutely all-in on said bullshitter's lies who end up looking really fucking stupid when the truth comes out.

This time around it was some mailman with (apparently) some pretty severe issues in Pennsylvania who fell apart, along with their story, once it all got questioned by the FBI and who immediately recanted when questioned. Today, it's Rudy Giuliani, who as of not too long ago made a complete ass of himself in a PA courtroom and had his case better explained by those who were arguing against it, in the course of their demolishing said arguments.

What happens to these people when their magical world does not come to pass?

Drugs?

Fuck, I don't know, but we'd better be prepared to find out, as millions of Americans clearly have no connection to reality at this point.

We'd better start doing something about that. If there is no truth, freedom dies.

Previous Postscript.

Part Eighteen.

Part One.

Prequel.

#Election2020 #Special #Top20

You bet that Tommy sees (Brave New World, Part Three)

Yes makin' mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep, Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap; An' hustling drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit Is five times better business than parading in full kit. Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, how's your soul?" But it's "Thin red line of 'heroes" when the drums begin to roll, The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll, O it's "Thin red line of 'heroes" when the drums begin to roll. ~Tommy, Rudyard Kipling

It's Veteran's Day.

So naturally, even as every Republican in the country is trying to kiss veterans asses to try and make themselves look good, the Republican Party is plotting to try and disenfranchise military voters because, apparently, a majority of the troops did what you would expect and voted against the guy who called them suckers and losers and who let the Russians put bounties on their heads.

Fuck, it's almost like actions have consequences or something.

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers.

I'm frankly fucking tired of this idea Republicans have that the troops are all supposed to be Republicans or something. I was, but I never voted a straight Republican ticket in my life. Even when I was an Airman, well, my local House Rep (Bart Stupak) was a conservative Democrat and I'd met him and liked him and thought he did a good job so naturally, I was gonna vote for him.

Hell, the first time I voted, in the 1992 Presidential election, I voted for Bill Clinton. Decent number of R's down-ticket, sure, but I was mad at Bush over tax increases and it was as simple as that. 

But of course modern Republicanism allows for no such levels of independent thought. It's a house of improbably-stacked cards, each and every one dependent on all the other ones, and not only as it is but as they tend to see it you have to believe it all or it's not good enough, and then you have to light yourself on fire and suffer in silence while you burn. As Fox News is finding out to their detriment now, and as a host of people have found out in the last five years, it's not enough to be merely conservative or Republican these days.

And most of these fucking people don't know how anything works, least of all anything as complex as a national election.

You have to buy the whole package, and a couple hundred bucks worth of Trump swag, and donate to his legal defense fund, knowing that at least half your money is going to pay off campaign debts.

You don't just have to buy the whole shitty package, you have to debase yourself with this crap while you do it. Even if you know better, because anything less than 100% blind partisan loyalty gets you thrown off the sinking ship into the freezing cold water.

I saw something this morning that people are switching to woo woo shit like One America News Now because Fox News is "too liberal."

...And for pretty much the same damn reason that Republicans are turning on the Troops for daring to have enough of a sense of self-preservation to vote for the other guy.

Fox News does better when Democrats are in power, not much changed other than Trump getting voted out, so it's no real loss to Fox or Rupert Murdoch.

Then when Fox's Decision Desk called Arizona for Biden, Trump-world flipped a bitch, as I understand it Trump called Rupert Murdoch personally to complain. Rupert basically told him to go fuck himself and stood by the call and his people. As far as I'm concerned, that was the right thing to do. Trump made a fatal mistake, the petty satrap tried to tell one of the people he was beholden to what to do. Apparently Trump never learned, you don't throw shit uphill.

Likewise, if you're a petty wannabe authoritarian, it's a bad idea to alienate the military. Oh, sure, you can suck up to the police and all that all you want, but if you are against the troops (as Trump consistently has been) and you ever need the people with guns to protect your ass, well, police vs. trained soldiers only ends one way.

Whether it's media moguls or the troops, you don't alienate those who protect you and expect it to end well.

But this whole mess is the rotten fruit of conspiracy theories, false religion, and runaway partisanship mixed in with a generous amount of stupid hate and willful ignorance, generally believed in by immature, small, stupid people who've never faced real crises in their lives before this last year, or who simply think it's a crisis whenever they don't get their way or when someone calls them out for their endless soul-sucking contempt.

I'm tired of this bullshit. If you believe in trying to disenfranchise any American voter for any reason, don't ever say you support the troops, because you don't. I swore to defend the Constitution and democracy, and to protect all Americans and their freedoms and rights from all enemies foreign and domestic.

And if you'd seek to disenfranchise military families or service members at all, or any of the people of this country on whose behalf we and our brothers and sisters maintain eternal vigilance, while you kiss our collective ass to try and make yourself look righteous...let alone do it on this day, by default, that 'all enemies foreign and domestic' part? Yeah, that means you.

And in this life or the next, there will be a reckoning.

That spell it out for ya?

Part Two.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" 

But it's "Savior of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot; 

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; 

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees! 

~Tommy, Rudyard Kipling

Tear Down This Wall! (Brave New World, Part Two.)

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Yesterday, the Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, and the transition has begun!

Good. I've been saying for months now that I just want this crap to be over.

I mostly just feel like the last four, maybe even five years was nothing but a long ass grind, a big waste of time that didn't need to happen and benefitted few, if any, Americans in any real way.

It's been a long damn ride and I'm just tired of it.

May I suggest
May I suggest to you
May I suggest this is the best part of your life
May I suggest
This time is blessed for you
This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright
Just turn your head, And you'll begin to see, The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight
The reasons why
Why I suggest to you
Why I suggest this is the best part of your life. ~May I Suggest, Red Molly

But ya know, I've seen multiple people in the last couple days compare this moment to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th and 10th, 1989.

I think that's mostly right.

At that time I was just a 15 year old kid who was a couple weeks from getting his driver's license. On that particular day, November 10th, I'd had a counseling appointment in Alpena that I'd gotten out of school a little bit early to go to, we had gone to the grocery store and the mall, and my Mom let me drive home. It was pretty well past dark by the time we'd gotten home.

Fun fact; We'd just gotten Cable, thus catching us up culturally to things like CNN, MTV, rap music videos, sports channels and the very beginnings of the 24-hour cycle we all take for granted now.

After unloading the groceries and warming up the Pizza my Mom had gotten from Dominos, we sat down in the living room and turned on the TV, which happened to be set to CNN. We watched, transfixed, as people partied it up and streamed through checkpoints while armed guards stared blankly, with rifles slung, and the common people, everyday Germans from either side, took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.

The common person was right there live on international news, doing what all the bombers and jet fighters and guns and tanks in the whole Western world up to that point had not been able to accomplish.

The world was changing, had changed, nothing would ever be the same again. Whole worlds of possibility had opened up within the span of hours, a whole separate world of evil and repression, gone in less than one day.

There is a world
That's been addressed to you
Addressed to you, intended only for your eyes. A secret world
A treasure chest to you
Of private scenes and brilliant dreams that mesmerize. A tender lover's smile. A tiny baby's hands
The million stars that fill the turning sky at night
Oh I suggest
Oh I suggest to you
Oh I suggest this is the best part of your life. ~May I Suggest, Red Molly

I saw this last night at work, and I posted on Twitter a briefer version of what I've just written.

I heard later on this morning, that some of the shitty conservative old people on First Shift were freaking out when the election got called for Biden.

Imagine, to look at a moment like this and not want it to be happening. 

That, right there, was the bent little old guy who is one of the two people who normally relieves me in the morning.

The other First Shift worker, an older lady who's a bit older than me, like me, she voted for Biden and mostly just wants all this evil shit to be over with. I actually spoke to her about it all on Thursday morning.

And my African-American roommate and I have been cracking up about "Conservative" overreactions to all this stuff on Facebook all week.

And the kid who told me about the old First Shift guy's reaction is a fairly politically-centrist moderate Democrat, part-Native, married gay dude whose main topics of conversation, when its up to him, are his husband and their adopted daughter. 

He wasn't even born yet in 1989, and wouldn't be for about a year and a half yet. Dude is very much the sort of person I wouldn't have even thought of even existing when I, as a young kid in 1987, heard Ronald Reagan say "Mr. Gorbachev, OPEN THIS GATE! Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"

And you know what? I'm perfectly well cool with that. Human progress demands change and exposure to new ideas and new people.

For all of his faults and misguided beliefs and wrong policies, I think somebody like Ronald Reagan understood that. At least he had grand, sweeping visions about things like nuclear disarmament and world peace, at least conservatives back in those days had some solid ideas they could openly share with the rest of the class, even if they often didn't live up to them.

I miss those people.

I want America to go back to being that country that motivates people to tear walls down, and to not be the country that threatens to put up walls around itself.

That's all.

Part One.

#Election2020 #Top20

Oh Say Can You See... (Brave New World, Part One.)

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ~The Star-Spangled Banner.

At around 4:20 this morning, Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump in vote counting in Georgia, and the lead kept widening after that.

In that moment, I knew what my college friend Mohammed must have felt when the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt toppled Hosni Mubarak in part because Christian and Muslim Egyptians alike stood up and said no, no more. We're tired of you and your police and your repression, of your blatant corruption and lavish hypocrisy. 

The people stood together, they prayed together, they got the Egyptian Army's enlisted soldiers on their side and enough of those in power and in command of the Army heard the sound of a million people praying, saw the football hooligans duking it out with the police, and the young men fearlessly climbing on top of the tanks and they took Hosni Mubarak and threw him in jail and went to the people and said "We hear you."

I remember reading his Facebook post that day.

I never thought for the life of me, that I would ever write something similar. But here we are:

Americans, be you Immigrant or native-born, whatever your creed, color, race, or religion, and even your citizenship status here, so long as you're here in good faith..

THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY!

Not Donald Trump's, not the Republican Party's, America is not defined by and does not belong to the ultra-wealthy, or to some vast conspiracy cabal either foreign or domestic, but to its people, all of us, no matter who or what we are, and to any who have come here seeking a piece of the dream that is America. 

But some people, they don't want to be included in that, they want to rule over it. Even though they know how it turned out, they'd rather be the Serbs than the Bosnian Muslims. Yes, when somebody calls themselves a "Nationalist" that is what they are saying.

And that is exactly the kind of mentality that we, as disparate colonies of the British Empire, rebelled against, isn't it? In the British Empire of the time, you weren't shit if you weren't the right class, or kind of British dude.

And Gods forbid you be Irish, let alone Black or First Nations or from the Indian Subcontinent.

And the worst part is, there's some people ain't learned a goddamn thing since.

You want things to be better? You have to make them better, ain't nobody going to do it for you. People expected Donald Trump to just insult and yell at some people and thought somehow magically they'd get whatever they wanted. How did that work out for any of us?

For nearing a quarter-million of us now, all it got a whole bunch of Americans was dead. Yet I read last night that the hardest-hit COVID areas overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

How's that working out now?

I'm tired of the same old shitty conspiracy theories with no basis in reality, the same old shitty fear, held by cowards who've never so much as bothered to step up and do anything difficult or face anything, because it's easier to outsource that sort of thing to somebody else, and then just ignore them when they tell you something you don't want to hear. I for one am goddamned tired of being "Thanked for my service" by people who could give a shit about the country, or the Constitution, or the freedoms, rights, and values, that I swore to defend on behalf of ALL Americans.

And please note that I was a young conservative at the time. Apparently those words meant something else back then.

And from the bottom of my heart, through the lens of that experience, I have to say I'm tired of seeing essential workers, or medical personnel or political leaders or aged Supreme Court Justices be put on another imaginary pedestal while they continue to do the work of life in the face of horrible, unnecessary adversity on behalf of people who could give a fuck about them, who too often don't want to do the work of life themselves.

And here's the thing; I can see it coming for the cops, now that they've been proven to be unable to suppress change.

I'm tired of ignorant, lazy, racist stupid motherfuckers who would rather make up wild assed conspiracy theories than simply face our observable reality...which is quite hard enough without making up new problems. I'm tired of people who'd rather hate than eat, who'd rather kill and steal than be alive, whose only recourse given the fact that they can't is to imagine some kind of epic special life that will be there just for them when all their "enemies" or the people they don't like have all been killed or enslaved.

I call it "Immanentizing the Conservative Eschaton."

But it doesn't work like that.

You still have to do the work, and be able to show your work. You want to make America great again? GREAT! You see some trash thrown on the ground? Pick that shit the fuck up! You see somebody doing a crime? Let somebody know. Somebody in the government doing something? Maybe your ass should find out for yourself what it is before you go off into crazy land or go out and hurt somebody. You want shit to get done? Do it! If there's work to do at your work, do that shit too, you're being paid to be there anyway. If you see somebody being bullied, help them. If you see someone less fortunate, obey the words of your own supposed Lord and Savior and give that person a hand up.

You gotta do something, not outsource that shit to other people.

I've known way too many people, many of them supposedly conservative and religious, whose only real skills are cashing government checks and hating on their neighbors, but these same people will go to their Holy Roller church and listen to some dumb person mouthing random nonsense and then get up there and testify how God blessed them because they cashed their welfare check that morning.

But then they get mad and act all judgmental if somebody else gets any, especially if that person is a person of Color or a white woman with mixed-race kids.

That's not what I was taught, I was taught better than that, in church, by people who were Christians and conservatives back when those words meant you were something other than a bigot and if you cannot understand this, then I cannot help you and frankly after the last five years I've no wish to try.

If you cannot show mercy to others, and win or lose with grace, all the time not just when it is convenient or suits your mood...well, fuck you. The Good Book says that as you sow, so shall you reap.

And some people really need to reap the fucking whirlwind.

If you want to have a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

This is your country, my fellow American. This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York Islands. If you can't stand up for it, and elect leaders worthy of it, and follow the values we all are supposed to embody then what the fuck are you even doing here?

'Cause I'll tell you one thing for sure. Those of us who've stood up and held back the fall of night for these last five years, a lot of us are real damn tired right now.

The next time it might be your turn, and there are people for whom you will never be conservative enough, or white enough, because their grievance or their hate or their lust for power is endless and ever-shifting.

Eventually, you're gonna have to.

I've been overseas, I've seen such things as mass graves, and burned out tanks rusting in the desert and I've seen the kind of world some of these fucking people think they want to live in.

I've been to a bombed out, burned up country where there ain't much health care except whatever the United Nations doctors can do, where religious leaders from other nations demand conversions to fundamentalist religions like Salafist Islam as a condition for aid and then sodomize little boys when they think no one is looking, and where there ain't no women's rights and there's damned few men left to do as men ought and protect the women, because the country and constitution that guaranteed them is only so much ash and rubble, and the men died fighting in the war, or were massacred for no fucking reason worth mentioning. 

I've spoken to many people from places far worse than the little bit of Bosnia that I saw...because there's people that don't even have the peacekeepers or the UN aid or the peace agreements.

Several of my friends and a couple relatives would later go on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they saw much worse things, and where they were warfighters, not peacekeepers.

Civilization is a fragile thing, I hope we've learned that.

The fall of night is ever-present.

To hold it back, you have to be the light, as best you can.

This is your country. Not Donald Trump's, not belonging to any fool who bellows "Follow Me!" and then takes your shit...or your life...either through negligence or with malice aforethought.

According to what I was taught you got to be worth being followed. Leadership is hard, citizenship is hard, Truth can be a tough thing to face.

But if we don't, we may just wake up one day and find that this is not our country as surely as Americans did when Redcoats occupied Boston, or Charles Town, or New York.

This is your country. But you gotta keep it that way.

Not by evil deeds, exclusion and hate, but by compassion, fortitude and generosity.

And let's not forget Justice. That's going to have to come, too.

Together, we rise.

Or none of us do.

#Election2020 #Top20

I Voted (American Revelation: Final Judgment.)

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. ~Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

I voted.

I went and voted this morning, my polling place is the township hall and it's right down the road from my house.

Despite the fact that I saw more people there than I ever have, more than at my previous polling place at that time of the morning, either, too. It wasn't quite as many people as I saw in 2004 and 2008 but both of those years I voted in the evening, so maybe it was more crowded on that count. I don't know.

But today...today just has a different vibe than, well, most days in the last five years, to be honest.

And that's good, because frankly I'm just tired of this goddamned flaming shit show and that's really all there is to it.

I'm tired of this gold-plated orange asshole and his endless contempt for everybody but himself, I'm tired of his gibbering Twitter posts and his monotone speeches and his drooling idiot followers and I'm tired of the endless bad faith of the manipulative sociopathic fanatics who play all of the above like a fucking cathedral organ for no better purpose than lining their own pockets and pushing an ideological and religious agenda that anybody to the Left of the 12th Century should have a problem with.

I'm tired of the fact that conservatism itself has been jacked to the point where even somebody like Ronald Reagan couldn't recognize it.

I'm tired of the fact that the party of Lincoln, of Eisenhower and of Reagan embraces Confederates and Nazis and Communists with equal gusto and seeks not to do so in order to change them, or even gain some advantage but simply out of star-struck admiration for other authoritarians.

I'm tired of the fact that the party of the guy who said "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!" has become a party not of men like Ronald Wilson Reagan, the man who won the Cold War, but the party of the angry shitty little John Birch Society fanatics who'd have walled off America and left the rest of the world at the mercy of Soviet Communism for no better reason than their own cowardice and insularity.

I'm tired of people who've never been more than 100 miles from where they were born and never even seen, or made the effort to see, one thing that would cause them to question the things they believe, and who are proud of that fact. I'm tired of those fucking people trying to dictate to the rest of the citizens of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy...and the rest of the world...how we live our lives and what we should do.

I'm tired of the people who think the way we teach our history should be nothing but a warm yellow stream of self-affirming drivel that tells them nothing about their own country that they don't want to hear. Don't piss in my ear and try and tell me it's raining. I'm an American, I used to be a Republican, I served my country and as an Airman I got to see quite a bit of the rest of the world.

America is a great country, but like all countries have it's done some evil things. If we don't confront our legacy of oppression, of racism, of warfare against the undeserving be they Indigenous or Iraqi, how do we expect that we're ever going to do better than that? Take it from a recovering addict, you have to admit you have a problem, that you have an addiction, before you can find sobriety.

Doing nothing but telling yourself how great you are all the time tends to get you nowhere. Let them beat their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears and let the weak say that he is a mighty man.

You have to love your life more than you love your Sin if you want to overcome it.

And perhaps more to the point, as somebody who's seen some of the world's dark and dangerous places and witnessed the aftermath of Man's inhumanity to Man on an industrialized scale in places like Bosnia and Kuwait, I'm fucking sick and tired of Americans who see other Americans as enemies and who will not be satisfied until they witness mass killings of their own fellow citizens that are done for no better reason than the fact that they're shitty little haters.

I, being a former Republican, voted for Joe Biden. Not because I necessarily like him, but because it's him or Trump.

And we don't need four more years of that crap, period.

It's America or Trump.

We don't have a thousand years of history. We don't have one common ethnicity, one culture, or one language. We're the melting pot, the superpower built by the sons and grandsons of another teeming shore's huddled masses that yearned to breathe free.

We're America, all we have is what we want to be.

And that's what this election is about.

This is American Revelation. This is our judgment of the sheep and the goats, Today.

If you haven't already, Vote.

One Lone Candle (American Revelation, Final Judgment: The Last Day.)

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down, 'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

Last night, in Georgia, Trump left his rallygoers alone in the long dark night yet again. This is the third time this has happened.

As the old military saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

There's nobody that Donald Trump and his assorted ass-kissers, dead enders and family members hold in more contempt than their own supporters. And why should they not? These fucking people all know, deep down, what they are. So what does that make anybody who supports them? It's functionally a sick feedback loop of abuse and contempt, and the only thing these people end up hating more than each other is the rest of us.

But it says something, that Trump keeps leaving his own ardent supporters in the cold and the dark. What do you think he means for there to be for the rest of us?

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

This morning, gunmen stormed Kabul University in the Afghan capital, the campus was successfully evacuated despite several dozen casualties, and last I knew Afghan National Army and the police had killed most of the gunmen and were gradually hunting down the rest, and the attackers had been identified as local ISIL affiliates.

Substitute right-wing militia nuts and any American university, and this is the future conservatives want. Like I said, I think we've hit the space where they know they're not going to win over the whole country, let alone get a majority behind them. If they can't break off some land for themselves and then declare war against the rest of us, we're going to have one motherfucker of a terrorist problem.

And if you think there isn't some MAGA nut who's fantasized about shooting up Berkley or Harvard or some other college or university I'm going to go out on not much of a limb here and say you're wrong. These people thirst for control over education and science and the politicization of both...and if they can't have it, then they want to destroy those things for everybody.

And just as Daesh is so extreme even the Taliban are fighting them, it's likewise telling just how many Republicans have come out swinging against MAGA.

In the end, I think the Republican Party under Trump has swung so far to the Right that they've lost a lot of their core supporters.

And fundamentally, there's a reason these people don't care. Whether it's the President abandoning his fanatical supporters in the cold dark night with inadequate transportation, or two women in Chicago stabbing a shoe store security guard 27 times because he told them to put a mask on, these people can always be counted on to do the worst possible thing. For a long time, I thought it was just shit people being shit people.

But in recent days it's amped up to a level where I think there are bad spirits at work here, evil being drawn to evil like moths to a flame.

If you want to fight back, you have to show up.

We have to stop this shit, before they get worse, because too many of these fucking people don't just wish they could be shooting at the rest of us, they want the government to do it for them. Deprive these people of that power, and some of them will still do it, but it won't be as many.

Vote them out, and then be prepared to fight them off.

Tomorrow.

This is American Revelation.

This is our Judgment Day.

Vote.

Economic Anxiety, Yo.

Takbir!

The dark is generous and it is patient, and it always wins.

But at the heart of its strength lies weakness.

One lone candle is enough to hold it back.

Love is more than a candle; Love can ignite the stars.

~Matthew Stover, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith novelization.

 

Economic Anxiety, Y'All (American Revelation; Final Judgment: The Sheep And The Goats.)

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

I just saw this tonight.

Should say, I did Nazi that coming.

J.D. Vance is worried about America's fertility, because it's Daylight Savings Time. I'm not sure how anybody could make that leap, personally.

But it seems like there's an awful lot of misogyny behind that statement, for one thing, and probably more than a little racism.

Which is kind of surprising to me that I had that thought, because I've actually read Hillbilly Elegy and I really didn't see very much of that sort of thing in the book. I'll grant you I didn't agree with a lot of J.D.'s conclusions, but I did see that there were a lot of times where he was willing to say shit that most people won't even touch, let alone do so from a conservative perspective.

He specifically attacked the old "Welfare Queen" stereotype, from the Right, and pointed out that of the "Welfare Queens" he's known...they're all White.

This has been my experience as well.

He also criticized the general lack of work ethic, even, perhaps especially among conservative White men. This is something I pretty regularly go off on both online and off.

So, yeah, seeing this was...well, that all too common shock these days of finding out that somebody you thought was intelligent is just another damn nut. I find this type of shit incredibly frustrating.

Not to mention, it's pure horse shit. I've probably had more sex during Daylight Savings Time than I have the rest of the year, in any given year throughout my life. For one thing, when I was younger I was usually working a lot in the summer. Also, I've been to college, and since a couple of those years coincided with my divorce and having an ex-wife that I was trying to piss off so she'd go away, well you do the math.

Perhaps more to the point, whose 'fertility' is adversely affected by Daylight Savings Time? Do White men become less horny in the fall? Do White women be like "No, honey, I don't wanna fuck, it's Daylight Savings Time. I have to mainline the Pumpkin Spice before it goes out of season again."

Also, does this supposed lack of fertility affect Black people, First Nations, or other People of Color also, or is it just White people?

I have questions.

Ya know, back in 2016 when Hillbilly Elegy was the hot new thing, Vance was often expressly presented by the media and looked at by conservatives and liberals alike as some kind of a Trump-Supporter-Whisperer, and he himself said he was both excited for and terrified by Trump and at times expressed much skepticism of Trump himself.

I'm here to tell you, people, not everybody who does that is your friend.

Of course, once the initial effort to "identify" with Trump Supporters fell apart in the face of revelations that no it wasn't "economic anxiety" or some desire for genuine change that led people to vote for Trump, but the same old-fashioned shitty racism, well, not long after that Vance faded from prominence and public attention and because nobody needs an Illiterate Goat Fucker Whisperer, we all know an illiterate goat fucker when we see one, and since it was one should've-been-crippling scandal a day at the time, hardly anybody even noticed, much less cared.

But when basically the next thing I see, several years later, is this kind of silly woo woo bullshit I'm going to think "Well, nothing of value was lost."

And please note this is what Trump-World considers an intellectual.

Proceed Accordingly.

VOTE.

Weekend Edition.

Takbir! (American Revelation, Final Judgment: It's The Weekend.)

 "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts." ~Lyndon B. Johnson campaign slogan, 1964 (Referencing Barry Goldwater.)

...

And the smoke of their torment ascends for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name. ~Revelation 14:11

I saw this yesterday. In Texas, Trump Supporters tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road.

This is America, this is not supposed to be happening here. This is the kind of shit that we routinely deplore and issue stern warnings about when it happens in other countries. This is the exact kind of shit we were going to invade Haiti over in 1994. But I guess violent rejection of legitimate elections and holding up normal shit because the world doesn't like you is fine if you're white.

This is the type of shit we bomb other countries for.

And if you don't think Republicans are cackling with glee as they hope they can split the country and goad us into bombing ourselves, you have another thing coming. I think these absolute motherfuckers know they wouldn't get the whole country, so if you're not one of theirs they want you to know, and to see, that the cost of your freedom is dueling jets in the sky and a steady stream of death in an Alabama that they've turned into Al Anbar.

Because they know if you're not one of theirs, that it will cause you pain that your continued freedom is painted with the blood of the hero and the innocent alike.

Because they know those who are their own will charge gleefully into the fire, throwing themselves onto the wire so that the second wave might climb over their backs into the firebase, with ancient AK-47's, sharpened sticks or their bare hands, to fight for that endless hate, that upraised middle finger, for white supremacy.

For the demons gnawing at their souls. 

If these people were led by an angry bearded man shouting "Takbir!" and shouting back "Allah Akbar!" in the call-and-response way of Islam as they fired their guns in the air in some dusty Middle Eastern city, they'd be dead. If they were doing that in America, and trying to hunt down a politician of either party, they'd not just be dead, but the skies would be full of Reaper drones hunting down all their friends, too.

Why is it different when it's angry white chuckleheads whose only real difference is their fealty to a godless American wannabe Saddam?

I'm going to be honest here, I'd intended for this to be a weeklong series that would include an installment every day of the week running up to election day, but the last two days and most of today I've at long last been just plain wrecked. It's effectively been exhaustion down to what I'd call a spiritual level. I'm not one to routinely speak about things like spirits and supernatural stuff, but I have to say that I feel like in these last few days before the election, there's bad spirits running amok with these Trump people.

In the context of American Revelation, it's like the Devil knows his time is short, that his time will soon be at hand, and that judgment will rain down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

And his followers, they know it too.

But this isn't just about Trump. This is, fundamentally, the sum total of conservatism now fully divorced from morality, still trying to stand athwart the flow of history yelling "STOP!!"

You see, that is perhaps the most screwed up thing about this mess.

There are those who believe that Trump and Trumpism represent the end of history, a status quo that must be maintained and preserved at all costs. Even if that cost is America, even if that cost is their lives and the vote. These are the people who speak about this demented old man as if he will never die. 

And that he will somehow shield them from death, and grant them his sternal life that he doesn't have.

They think Trump is Jesus.

In spite of the evidence of aging, of dementia, of the damned virus, that we see every day.

They speak as if their current ongoing emotional ejaculation and upraised middle finger that they just have to have everyone see will go on forever. 

But nothing on this Earth lasts forever.

There are people in this country, who believe in Trump more than they ever believed in America, more than they ever believed in the vote, more than they ever believed in Jesus Christ.

Yet most of them claim to be Christians. Most of them claim to believe that nothing of this Earth is eternal, and yet most if not all of them act not only as if Donald Trump will never die, but as if there will never be another time that is not right now. 

Seriously I've spent the last five and a half years spending my days deciding between aggravation and annoyance at this whole ongoing shit show. 

I'm hoping like hell there's a light at the end of the tunnel on Tuesday.

Because if there isn't, this crap will never stop.

Having had a taste of acting like this, of blocking traffic and holding up other people's lives, not out of protest or for a purpose, but in celebration of their false god, do you think these people will ever stop, unless we stop them?

I seem to remember that when it was Black Lives Matter or Native Americans at Standing Rock blocking commerce and construction and traffic these people flew into a homicidal rage and wanted corporations and the government or random people in their cars to just straight up murder people.

But I'm guessing they think this is Okay because it's them.

How many people are they keeping from their families, from their homes, from their jobs, with this silly bullshit, with this ecstatic celebration of Donald Trump?

Remember this the next time some Republican tells you that family, home, tradition, or work is important.

Because it's not, except to the extent that it can be used to beat other people over the head with for mostly imagined failings and mostly fake moral judgments. Angry grievance and petty outrage over shit that's none of their business is the lifeblood of modern Republicanism, and it has been in increasing amounts since 1994. Why the hell do you think Newt Gingrich is all in for Donald Trump? Why do you think Rush Limbaugh supports Trump?

Because in either case and equal measure, he's the one who really built this, and he knows it. Newt and Rush are the Two Anti-Witnesses of American Revelation, the two lampstands illuminating a generation of American Bullshit that has led us to this point.

It's time to end this, it's time to rip the idols out of the temple.

If we don't, it's going to be the end of us.

This is American Revelation.

America, or Trump.

Last Post.