Not Peace, But A Sword (Happy Q Year, 2021, Part Two.)

Indiana Jones: Half the German Army's on our tail, and you want me to go to Berlin? Into the lion's den?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Yes! The only thing that matters, is the Grail.

Indiana Jones, Sr.: What about Marcus?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Marcus would agree with me!

Indiana Jones: Two selfless martyrs. Jesus Christ- [Henry Sr. slaps Indy]

Henry Jones, Sr.: That's for blasphemy! The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it's a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?

Indiana Jones: This is an obsession, Dad! I never understood it. Never! Neither did Mom.

Henry Jones, Sr.: Oh yes she did. Only too well. Unfortunately, she kept her illness from me. Until all I could do was mourn her. ~From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

So, I found out yesterday that a friend of mine's little brother is a Proud Boy. Then, I hunted up the thread on Facebook, call it morbid curiosity.

It's dumber than I realized, and I knew this shit was pretty fuckin' dumb.

This kid claims to be a Seventh Day Adventist...and Seventh Day Adventists...along with other similar groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses usually are peaceful and reject involvement in worldly affairs. Part-way into the conversation he starts ranting about Blue Laws and "Traditional culture" and how these things will lead to the glorious appearing of Christ and the Rapture (which I'm not sure he doesn't think those things happen at the same time) and how it's his "duty" to try to help create a government that will force Christianity on people so they don't die when Christ returns.

Or something something Gazpacho.

I'm a former conservative. I'm a former Christian, and something in my brain is going "What the fuck?"

It's like this, and take it from a former Baptist, here. If you don't accept Christ because you want to, you don't accept Christ. You cannot make a person Believe, they have to want to.

The dominant traditional cultures in Biblical times were never the Israelites or the Christians. In point of fact during the life of Jesus, the dominant "traditional" culture of the world as those people knew it was Greek or Roman in character and practiced a lot of male bisexuality, I have to wonder how that fits in this fool's definition of traditional values? As for where Jesus came from, the subject local culture was Aramaic-speaking Jewish or Hellenized Syrian, and those who rejected Greco-Roman ways also rejected much of what these idiots would call "values." The culture of today's Middle East has not changed that much, and you can still see this.

I was specifically a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement for four years, and I got pretty deep into it, enough to know that Millerite-descended churches like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists were often specifically thought of as heretics by the conservative and Fundamentalist Protestants that made up the main body of the End Times Prophecy Movement of the era.

And those churches generally do not accept doctrines like the main End Times Prophecy narratives as I was taught to understand them. They have their own interpretations, which are not the same. I knew people in those days of chat rooms and message boards who would go over this in some detail, even getting into the nuts and bolts of these movements and their founding members and how some of them engaged in occult practices...as was not uncommon for American people in general in the first half of 19th century, among other religions, Mormonism was born out of these same trends.

As one might guess, this kid hasn't the slightest idea of anything he's talking about. The beliefs he's professing are nothing more than modern pop-Evangelical End Times crap that's even mutated well away from what it was when I was part of the movement.

Among other things, instead of leaving matters of justice or vengeance to God, the modern beliefs have mostly abandoned the pre-Tribulation Rapture in favor of belief in the "Christians" making some kind of heroic stand and physically fighting the Antichrist.

According to what I was taught, there would already be plenty of people who would do that, and the Bible foretold that those people would lose...because Man cannot throw off what would ultimately be a cumulative result of Man's corrupt ways and godless world-system...it was an article of faith of the movement that I was a part of that Man's Utopian urges were misguided, that only God could redeem the World....and that it would happen, but when God so chose.

But of course Man gets impatient.

No man knows the day or the hour, not even the Son, but the Father only.

And that's aside from the fact that the Rapture is a false doctrine, it's not even mentioned as such in the Bible, but rather is a certain interpretation of a few selected verses.

In the comments, my friend talks about how his little brother talked about "reporting him" to the "new government" for being a "Leftist" to "save himself and his kid."

Well, little bro, I have to ask what's wrong with you, that you'd want to live in that kind of world?

Also, speaking as a somebody who was a child of the late Cold War, during whose formative years the Soviet Union was still a thing, and who as a teenager still expected that one night there might one night be sun-bright flashes to the southeast and northwest of where I lived at as my state's two Strategic Air Command bases were destroyed, the wail of air raid sirens in the distance, and the scream of jet engines splitting the night as BUFFs screamed past at treetop level, gunning for some payback, gone to visit the same fates on Engels and Tartu that'd been inflicted on K.I. Sawyer and Wurtsmith Air Force Bases...

I have to wonder, what do you think Communism even is? 'Cause what you're saying is exactly what the Communists would do. Splitting up families to prove the power of the State, and encouraging people to 'Inform' on each other are exactly things that the Communist Party did, and stood for.

There's a reason that men, real honest-to-God conservative Men like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were able to stop Communism with a combination of Capitalism and moral force, and that they took pains to make sure that physical force was used only around the margins or in proxy conflicts.

People who don't believe in anything think that the greatest power is to take life. They don't understand that the Soul is immortal, and that there are far, far worse fates than mere death. Fear not those who can destroy the body, but fear He who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

Seriously why the fuck do you think people can do such a thing as resist guns and police and physical force with protest signs and moral force? It's that. People don't have to have guns to not be afraid of your dumb ass.

And this is America, aren't we supposed to be better than this type of shit? 

Listen, kid, what you're proposing sounds far more like the Stalinist totalitarianism that even the Soviet Union had given up by the time I was born than it does like anything else. 

I've been saying since 2015 that Republicans are basically Communists now for a goddamned reason.

Excuse me, just what did we bother going through all that work of winning the Cold War for, anyway?

It gets worse.

This dude goes on to rant about putting people in concentration camps, for no better reason than because those people aren't fascists, apparently.

I'm not sure what the fuck any of this is, but it's not America, it's not conservatism, it's not freedom.

And these fucking people are even turning on the Republican Party. These fucking people are even mad that the system, as expected, took full measures to save itself and continues to do the same. What the fuck else did you idiots think would happen?

Think about that, for a second. Y'all built this, Republicans. We have actual Americans that are this fucking dumb, You're the ones who broke this kid, Republicans, you did this.

I don't believe for one second...especially if this is the quality of the Enemy...that whatever they try to do on January 6th will have much more effect than these fucking people embarrassing themselves even more. It's not for nothing that I know people who've asked me if the Proud Boys were simply a group of right-wing homosexuals. When their leader, Gavin McInness, routinely sticks stuff up his own ass live on his show because something something Hillary Clinton, it's hard to imagine how an actual old school traditional conservative could reach a different conclusion.

All this contradictory bullshit is the product of confusion, and stupidity. There's no better or kinder way to put it and I'm not sorry. Somebody needs to tell these people what is true.

But here's the thing. There's somebody out there watching this crap, with their brain engaged and the wheels turning and sooner or later if this crap is not checked it will result in insurgent warfare and terrorism. Sooner or later people with their brains engaged and their eyes open will start actually learning shit, because they have to, as combat is probably the most Darwinian learning environment with the hardest learning curve there is. If you want to stay alive sooner or later you have to stop trying to immanentize some kind of right-wing Eschaton and actually do things a certain way, and that way doesn't give a shit how many cereal brands you can name off when you get shot and laughs at the fact that you punch like an interior decorator and really can't shoot. If these idiots want to be alive, they'll get over stuff like that real quick when the shit hits the fan and start acting according to what's really going on. That's when they'll become a real threat.

Yes, a lot of them will crumble, lots of them will die, but some of them won't and it doesn't take all that many to create a hell of a terrorist problem.

And that's why we have to stop this crap now.

Before these confused functionally-illiterate morons kill more people.

I can't put it any more simply than that.

Not Peace, but a Sword

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of their own household. ~Matthew 10:34-36

Part One.

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne, let my armies be the rocks and the trees...and the birds in the sky. ~Henry Jones, Sr. after he's caused a German fighter to crash by scaring a flock of birds into flight with his umbrella. From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Predators (Happy Q Year 2020-2021, Part One.)

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before!
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle, see his banner go!
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus go... [Sounds of violent struggle, burst of static, and the station changes.]

Well long, tall Sally
She's built for speed, she got
Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby
Yeah, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah

Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah, ow

Well, long, tall Sally
She's built for speed, she got
Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah

Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah. ~Long Tall Sally, Little Richard

I used to be a conservative. Really, I did. And I'm not sure what we've been seeing from these fucking people these past few months, but conservatism ain't it.

Since Trump the election lost they've tried to use the courts to overthrow the will of the people and abolish Democracy, threatened military coups only to be told to go fuck themselves by the military and since then they've spent all this time conspiracy-theorizing and jacking off instead of doing things like passing needed Coronavirus relief, passing routine defense bills and working with the incoming administration for a smooth handover of government.

And, frankly, they're outright fantasizing about everything from a Chinese invasion to a domestic military coup. Never mind that China can't project power that far. Never mind that moving 50,000 soldiers (especially without enough dedicated airlift and sea-lift assets) is as hard to conceal as the rising of the sun. Never mind that the Air Force and the Navy would've detected and destroyed any Chinese invasion force pretty much the minute it left it's own economic exclusion zone. Never mind that had this somehow actually happened and such a force did slip through, half the Pacific rim would have seen the United States Navy and Pacific Air Forces kick the People's Liberation Army Navy's ass into the next universe, there would have had to be a Chinese invasion of Canada...which I can't imagine would have gone that well...and thus a full NATO response. Never mind that that FOX News would have camera crews covering every second of the monster redeployment of troops that would happen, the operation to support and/or liberate the Canadians, everything from the mustering of local National Guard companies to clouds of C-17 Globemaster III's landing at Dow Air National Guard Base in Bangor, on those monster runways at what used to be Loring Air Force Base, and for that matter at every other useful runway in the Northeast, not to mention of the fact that full-conventional US military hyper-war against a country like China that's about 20 years behind us would almost certainly make Desert Storm seem like a protracted military campaign by comparison. It would be bloody as fuck even for us, but it would be short, especially against an expeditionary force at the end of long supply lines that run through hostile territory.

Never mind how our troops appear to have actually voted, after years of Trump's rabid disrespect for the military, and never mind the apolitical nature of the United States Armed Forces as an organization, not the fact that Republican losses were not, in the grand scheme of things, really all that bad...

And sure as hell not as bad as the collapse of civilization, destruction of one's country, death, destruction, and war.

Except, there's this guy I know, old guy, Trump supporter, works a service industry job. You know, the usual. I pointed out to him one day "Ya know, I find it interesting that all these Republicans who rabidly supported this dude two months ago are heading for the exits, have turned on him or are real quiet."

Mostly because I do, in fact, find that pretty interesting and not a little funny. My bet is that starting in 24 days they're going to do their damnedest to pretend the last five years never happened, or was all a joke, or something.

The old guy's response? "I still support him, 100%, The rest of these motherfuckers can all go to hell."

Now, this dude lost people to the virus, and has, on the whole, been suspiciously quiet since about the spring of 2017. He has not profited by this mess, not one damn bit. But he's still all in for it.

And not one bit of any of this was enough to save Donald Trump. Not even if there was a real war with China going on would it have mattered one damn bit in the context of how our system actually works.

And since then, on Christmas morning some nut blew himself up in Nashville, taking down communications for the entire city in the process. We have American suicide bombers now. Think about that for a second, think about it in the context of not only American, but Western culture and religion, of our cultural win conditions, of our understanding of the human will to survive.

These fucking people can see the end, if they don't accept change or try to broaden their appeal, or give up the racism or try to care about anything but their personal profit. They know in four, five, at the most ten years they'll be completely outdated. More to the point they know without Trump, Republicanism is reduced to "Please Clap" like Jeb Bush in 2016, only worse.

Extreme right-wing bullshit and rabid desire to maintain white superiority, if they can't maintain white supremacy, is turning these fucking people into American equivalents to Daesh and the Taliban in ways that Christianity...even the Fundamentalist kind...just couldn't do all the way down to a doctrinal or theological level. I see so many of these people having stripped Christ out of Christianity and trying to replace him with Trump as a way to try to get around that. But Trump is on a base level, a coward, who'd never sacrifice anything for anybody, so that doesn't really work either.

But still, they want their shitty philosophy to go out not with a bang or a whimper, but with its hands outstretched reaching for somebody else's throat. On a certain level, it doesn't really matter whose it is.

That's why the Republican attitude about the virus, and the shitty Trump administration response to COVID-19 and any talk of "Herd Immunity" should be understood as cover for an attempted genocide.

Modern Republicans, far removed from Reagan's desire for peace or the professed regard for life held by Bush 41 or Bush 43, see mass death and "fewer people" and think "more for them." Everything is a zero sum game, so they think they're going to get more if a bunch of people die. As long as it's not them (as individuals) they don't really care.

They think of themselves as the predators, like a pride of Lions on the savannah but they don't know jack shit about Lions.

Never mind that enough dead bodies would crash the economy and wreck civilization all by itself.

There is a perverse nihilism at the heart of all this, almost a preference for conspiracy theories and hate and woo woo religious crap over facts and reality and anything that doesn't mark upper-class conservative white people as 'special' in some way.

These are the same fucking people who love them some Social Darwinism but they hate the theory of Evolution with the fire of ten thousand Blue Hypergiant stars...not because of some religious imperative, but because science doesn't make them the center of the universe or give them the power over others that they crave.

And if we don't start dealing with the hate, self-centered nihilism and vapid preference for unreality, and find some way to de-radicalize American conservatism, one way or another we're going to be stuck with a lot of these problems we have right now for a very long time, and as these people's numbers shrink and they fall by the wayside in no small part to their ideas literally killing a lot of their own people, their attitudes and violence are only going to get even worse.

These Fucking People would rather believe it's the End Times than accept equality with other human beings. Think about that for a second.

I wish I had something more positive to say going into the new year, but I don't.

We're going to have to deal with this problem, and fast, or even more people will die.

That's all.

Debasing Redemption (Last Christmas In Trump Land, Part Three.)

 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

It's Christmas Eve.

Naturally, yesterday Trump pardoned some more people, including Charles Kushner. Old Charlie hired a prostitute to seduce his brother in law, filmed it, and then sent the tape to his sister in an effort to prevent her from testifying against him.

Merry Christmas, Chuck I guess. He also pardoned debased traitorous pervert Paul Manafort and arch-Republican bullshit artist rat-fucker extraordinaire Roger Stone

Now, a question for you conservatives in the back; How in the hell is any of this appropriate?

It's Christmas Eve, for fuck's sake and the Tijuana Donkey Show Presidency is in its full glory braying and sweating on stage as the fat sweaty man who's enthusiastically grunting and thrusting and humping the jackass endeavors to finish before the cops show up.

It's CHRISTMAS EVE, For fuck's sake! Can't you fucking people give the rest of us one damned day of peace and quiet and not shitting all over everything like you think you have some kind of a right to do so?

I mean, I fully realize that what's left of the Republican Party in general, and Trump Supporters in particular consider ideas like peace on Earth and good will toward men to be anathema to their shitty philosophy, but come on, don't you fuckers ever take the day off?

But more than that, there's something about this stuff that seems even more problematic, at least to me.

The Republicans, God's Own Party, to hear them tell it, are the ones acting like it's all bullshit, as if they, of all people, are the ones who know that God does not exist.

It shouldn't be any kind of news that this shit they're doing is wrong.

And they're doing this right now, in this season, because they think they have some kind of power to transcend morality, or the end justifies the means or something?

Or perhaps they think that God is Okay with how they conduct themselves?

Wrong. One only needs to read the Word to know this.

All the power they've amassed like the demented little Saber-toothed squirrel-critter from Ice Age stashing acorns...and it didn't matter worth a shit. In a democracy, it doesn't matter how much power you have. If people don't like you, they don't have to support you or vote for you.

One has to wonder where this hubris, this sense of entitlement, even comes from.

Unless these fucking people think they are God.

You know, 19 years ago tonight I was driving home from work, from a second-job that was my only job during school breaks, back to my Mom's house in the middle of the kind of snowstorm that makes it feel like you're driving inside of a ping-pong ball, and I had the radio on to keep awake.

I remember flipping stations because I was bored and I came up on this bit, I wanna say it was on some Christian station or other but the truth is I don't remember. 

The discussion was about that Biblical scholars and historians had determined that Jesus was actually born in September or October, not December. It occurred to me that perhaps we humans ought to try to act more like we try to at Christmas time all year, promoting charity, peace and goodwill, because if you're a Believer, do you really want to get caught acting like an asshole on the Lord's birthday? It was the tired insight of an exhausted line cook trying to keep his mind occupied and stay awake, sure.

But it stayed with me. 

Shouldn't we be doing better than this by now?

And why aren't we?

I don't have an answer, you think about it.

Merry Christmas.

Part Two.

I know how hard it is in these times to have faith. But maybe if you could have the faith to start with, maybe the times would change. You could change them. Think about it. Try. And try not to hurt each other. There's been enough of that. It really gets in the way. I'm a God of very few words and Jerry's already given you mine. However hopeless, helpless, mixed up and scary it all gets, it can work. If you find it hard to believe in me, maybe it would help you to know that I believe in you. ~God (As played by George Burns) from the 1977 film "Oh God."

Amerikastan (Last Christmas In Trump Land, Part Two.)

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star
We three kings, we three kings

Born a king on Bethlehem's plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

Oh, star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light
We three kings, we three kings

~We Three Kings, Traditional Christmas Hymn.

On September 16th, 2007 several military contractors of Erik Prince's 'Blackwater' company opened fire on crowds and traffic in Nisour Square, Baghdad, Iraq. They killed 17 people and wounded 20 more. This severely strained Iraq-US relations for a time, and both the FBI and Iraqi law enforcement carried out investigations. After several years of investigations, trials, appeals and legal wrangling several of the contractors involved were tried and convicted of crimes.

Trump pardoned four of the men involved last night. 

Last night at work I read a Twitter thread about a kid named Ali Kinani who was shot in the head during the Nisour Square massacre and how when Ali's father...who was himself a doctor...opened the passenger door of his SUV to try to save his son's life and tend to any wounds suffered by his two sisters, Ali's brain fell out of his shattered head and landed in the street.

And Trump just pardoned the motherfuckers who did this crime. 

This was a kid, he wasn't hurting anybody. Had those men held their fire Ali would be a young man now, college age, maybe over there working and raising a family of his own, perhaps serving in the Army...or maybe given his family's status, even attending a university in a Western country like France, the UK or the USA, contributing to the economy there, growing, learning, thence to perhaps take a Western idea or two back to Iraq with him and help to make his country better and more free in ways that Operation Iraqi Freedom never could.

That right there, that lost potential and snuffed out innocent life, is the true cost of war.

The people who start wars in our modern world, these pasty old soft-handed white-bread butterball turkey-looking motherfuckers like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove...and do not for one damn minute forget that Osama Bin Laden was of the same sort of social class. These people...they don't have to bear that cost, not in any recognizable way, and some of these people are still actively making trouble for people in our society and the world. 

Yet it's worth noting that even Karl Rove considers Trump's post-election conduct to be a bridge too far.

But it's under the watch of people like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and Karl Rove that organizations like Blackwater came to be, although the mercenary profession is as old as war itself, that is not our way. People like Erik Prince think in terms of aristocrats and mercenaries like the Carthaginians or the old feudal German states. But the American way of war is...and always has been...citizen soldiers raised theoretically in defense of a common and generally secular ideal like democracy rather than a profit margin or politics or religion.

America is not Carthage or Sparta or East Prussia or even Hesse-Kessal and Hesse-Hanau, no matter how much conservatives may thirst after an aristocratic, militarized society mostly lacks an army and hires mercenaries for defense, and that practices war for profit on an official basis, nor one of order and uniformed sameness like Nazi Germany or North Korea, nor are we a modern Sparta where war is what we do, even though we're pretty damned good at it. More to the point, America never will be one of those kind of societies no matter how much Republicans may wish it was. 

And America is not Iraq. either. Most of us don't shout Allah Akbar (God is Great) or any such thing when our party wins an election or the local favorite Association Football club wins a match.

And there's a reason for that, historically. It's not because we're a bunch of godless fucks, though some may think that. It starts with the Constitution and our founding ideals. Even American religion ran more with the utopian vision the Pilgrims had than with their harsh, strict Calvinist doctrines, to the eternal frustration of people like the DeVos family.

Much of America is far more about the "Protestant Work Ethic" than it ever is or was about the actual Word of God, and quite honestly nowadays even, and perhaps especially, conservatives have stripped Christ right out of the equation, often for all intents and purposes right along with any concept of ethics or real work. For far too many, America has become a country where you get rich by being rich.

I get that being is easier than becoming, and it's easier to tear down than it is to build up, but these dueling desires within conservatism for chaos and death, or order and stasis, or order and stasis for me but disease and death for you over there...none of this shit is compatible with either a free society or a competently-run not-free one, either. These people can't go five minutes without contradicting themselves and in that contradiction lies the death of our civilization.

This bullshit has to stop. Rights come with responsibilities too, or it's not freedom. This constant desire and ideology built around trying to be constantly counting coup on largely-imagined opponents has to go.

Think about that, as we count down the days until the day we celebrate the Birth of the Prince of Peace.

And perhaps spare a thought or two for Ali Kinani, and those like him throughout the world, and give a thought to what might have been. How many George Washington Carvers or Thomas Edisons or Marie Curies or Jonas Salks has America left dead on the battlefield before their time, or stuck in low-wage jobs instead of living out their potential. Think about that before you back some political assault on the internet and technology or some stupid rich man's war or start bellowing about Chinese "Communists" or calling your Democratic-voting neighbors Communists. If we don't start maximizing our potential and working together in the face of threats like climate change and COVID-19, and yes, living and thinking more communally...a lot more people are going to die. Don't think you won't be one of them.

How many people who could have cured cancer or invented a longer-lasting lightbulb or something have died of the virus?

And conservatives, please for the love of God stop calling everybody who disagrees with you a socialist or a communist, it's fucking puerile and stupid.

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989, people, I was there. The fall of Communism wasn't some kind of clever disinformation, it really happened. As a teenager I saw normal people just like me smash down the Berlin Wall.

Sure, I'll grant you that everyone from American G.I.'s to Afghan Jihadis had a part in making that possible, but even Ronald Reagan aspired to peace, not war. When I was a kid there used to be a barn in Brighton, Michigan that had "Paying for nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity."

I was surprised, years later, to find out that the people who owned that farm were conservatives, who my aunt and uncle who lived nearby actually knew...and often disagreed with, but in an amicable way.

And there were people who prosecuted German and Japanese war criminals, who would almost certainly fit in with the Trump administration, but they did their duty anyway.

There was a time when conservatism was at least...more than this garbage, more than one small angry Orange man. It's everyone's loss that it's not that way anymore. It's everyone's loss that too many of these people would happily make America or some part of it be like Afghanistan, and then call that "Great."

But America will not truly be great until it respects the life of a small child and reveres the peacemaker more than its leaders fear the social media posts of a bullying con-man.

It might be easy to make a nativity scene featuring the baby Jesus, but it's a lot harder to follow the ways of the adult Jesus, and isn't that what these people will try and tell you it's all about?

Part One.

Crossing The Rubicon (Last Christmas In Trump Land, Part One.)

Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her — just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions. But to be born a girl in today's Afghanistan is to begin life centuries away from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved. It is to live under conditions that many of us in this hall would consider inhuman.
I speak of a girl in Afghanistan, but I might equally well have mentioned a baby boy or girl in Sierra Leone. No one today is unaware of this divide between the world’s rich and poor. No one today can claim ignorance of the cost that this divide imposes on the poor and dispossessed who are no less deserving of human dignity, fundamental freedoms, security, food and education than any of us. The cost, however, is not borne by them alone. Ultimately, it is borne by all of us — North and South, rich and poor, men and women of all races and religions.
Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. 

~Kofi Annan, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 2001.

As I understand it "Crossing The Rubicon" has become a hashtag and a coda for the fact that Trump Supporters seem to think Trump should find a way to overturn the election, overthrow our Democracy and install himself as dictator or king or something.

Here's the thing, how did crossing the Rubicon ultimately work out for Julius Caesar? 

Sure, he seized power, but he was assassinated by the Senate and plunged Rome into one of the more legendary of history's civil wars. and both events have always been so, both were after all the subject of plays by Shakespeare.

To be clear, there is no longer any Constitutional or legal or moral means for Trump to remain in power, neither Congress as a whole, nor the government, nor the military, nor even his own party as a whole backs Trump's desire to remain in power. It's only Trump's cult and his assorted appointed lackeys and certain boot-lickers in Congress that actually support him in this matter, and even enough of those people recognized that our system is more important than the man. 

We The People have moved on, enough of us to matter anyway, and the cultists are pissed.

Meanwhile, the typical shitty Republican attitudes are rising back to the fore, Mitch McConnell for example wants the stimulus amount in the COVID-19 relief package to be a lousy $600. That's fine for somebody like me, and I'll take it, but I know people who are basically drowning in bills, who are absolutely suffering on all sorts of levels right now because they're the only ones in their families who still even have jobs, due to the pandemic. Some of them even have relatives who are raging Trump Supporters who are mad as hell that he lost while they wait on their next welfare check, and no, I'm not even joking. 

That stimulus amount needs to be more to the tune of a couple grand per family or household if not per adult person with add-ons for any children present, for the duration of this thing, at least until we can get the economy back on its feet and the virus under control. 

And that, my friends, means taxing the wealthy on a basis that's commensurate with their overall wealth.

Note I say this as a former conservative who knows exactly what that means. 

Yes, I know we're dealing with people who are so stupid they're entirely fine with torpedoing national defense because people on Twitter were mean to the President. You can't sue somebody for something somebody else did, this is not just a basic American ideal, it was a part of pre-Trump conservative thought. 

Hell, the fucking internet itself has been a dream for these fucking people and they're mad because it doesn't serve them exclusively? Fuck these fucking fuckers and I don't care if they get mad that I said that.

Our society has goddamned near broken itself in the name of giving rich people more money. If America goes the way of the Soviet Union, which I'm sorry to say looks likely eventually if not right now, it will ultimately be because of this one stupid fact. As excessive as our military spending is, it's nothing compared to the revenue we don't collect as a nation because we don't tax the rich on a fair basis. And that shit is still not enough for these fucking people?!?!

I'm not saying pitchforks and torches, guillotines and Molotov cocktails, or even 25mm Cannon shells and Hellfire missiles are the fucking answer. What I'm saying is, if there's some kind of revolution or some shit, as beat up as I am I can still teach somebody to use a rifle or something. As old as I am and as long ago as it was that I learned it I can still explain to somebody how actual Christians are really supposed to treat the poor, and I almost certainly know more about the history of this stuff and why what passes for Republican policy for the last 40 years has been a bad fucking idea.

And not only do Republicans want to make that shit worse, they want to use this virus to kill people, which would erode our tax base even more, and then they've gotten a large, very loud and very stupid minority non-wealthy of Americans to sign on to a political suicide pact where they're the only ones who are going to die.

A hell of a lot of Republican voters aren't agreeing with Marie Antionette's "Let them eat cake" attitude, they're screaming "Let us eat boot leather and virus particles" because they think it makes them better than liberals, or maintains the power of the rich or supports white supremacy, or some stupid shit.

Some people think the Trump administration's basic policy of using COVID-19 to "Cull the weak from the herd" is a good idea, without realizing that since they don't have billions of dollars, they're the weak in this equation.

And worse, a lot of these goddamned people are too goddamned stupid to even realize that's what it's about.

In point of fact it's even worse than that. I can't say this enough. With a political party full of ass kissers and enablers who manages to appoint both-siderists, enablers, fanatics and/or lazy good-for-nothings to almost every relevant post in our government there's a substantial faction of These Fucking Poeple who think that (for example) Mark Meadows or Mike Pompeo hasn't been shitty enough.

There is a decent percentage of so-called "Conservatives" who will not be happy until they see televised executions of their mostly-imagined enemies and news broadcasts of Americans shooting at each other in the streets while large parts of our population face death by disease or starvation and the word 'freedom' used for its intended definition is a dirty word. 

Why? Because that's what These Fucking People think the ideal human condition is, conflict, death and slavery. In the end, These Fucking People will be mad that Trump did not hurt or kill enough people for them.

The cruelty is the fucking point to them. It's really that simple. 

As we count down these last few days before Christmas, millions of people who believe more in Donald Trump than they ever did in Jesus Christ will pledge their undying fealty and love of a brown Middle Eastern Prophet was born in poor circumstances to a conquered people, who would grow to preach compassion, mercy and resistance to the ways of the World.

And for that, He was betrayed and crucified.

It is perhaps the ultimate travesty that Man has taken the words of that holy prophet and that Man by his conduct continued that betrayal and death down through the centuries by people for whom religiosity was more important than spirituality and for whom power mattered far more than the Truth. I believe not only that Man will ultimately pay for that, but that we're paying for it right now, because all God has to do is let us face the consequences of our own actions.

What's even worse is that These Fucking People will, at the end of the day, rationalize away even their own claimed politics and theology in pursuit of what they want right now.

There was a time I thought Republicans stood for something.

I was wrong.

We, as a people, need to get these fuckers out of power and keep them that way if we want to be alive for next Christmas.

It doesn't get much simpler than that. I don't know what more I can do or say to tell you that you need to care about other people, not just for their good, but for your own.

Republicanism is a cult of death and earthly wealth, and it's been allowed too long to claim the faith of Jesus Christ that preaches compassion and eternal life through compassion.

This needs to stop, and it needs to stop right now.

Matthew 2 (King James Version)

1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,

6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.

8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:

Listen, people, it's your call which vision of the human condition you want to embrace. One of these things is not like the other. The ways of Jesus and the various other Prophets and Spiritual figures around the world, and the ways of the World and people like Donald Trump are not compatible. One of these things is not like the other one. You cannot claim both. Even for the non-believer (in anything) one cannot follow both compassion and greed, between love and hate.

Light hath no fellowship with darkness, even, perhaps especially in this time.

Make your choice. Cross the real Rubicon.

But know that you are the one who has to live with the consequences of it, eternally.

 

Fuck These Fucking Fuckers (I'm sick of this shit, Part Two.)

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; ~2nd Timothy 4:3

Hey, Congressman Asshole, I've got two words for ya; Fuck. You.

Hey Jim, I have a job. But right now, a hell of a lot of people don't, because of the pandemic.

No amount of giving money to big business or loans to your friends or immunity to lawsuits for spreading the virus or anything else on the Republican wish-list is actually going to solve that. Donald Trump hasn't done dick to fix it either.

Maybe it's just time you fuckers face the fact that your ideology is shit.

Conservatism used to be about giving people a hand up, instead of a hand out. Teach a man to fish instead of giving him a fish.

You? You just want to give people a clenched fist, and then pollute the river so there are no fish. 

Fuck you, I've got mine. That's literally all you Republicans stand for now, and I say that as somebody who used to be a Republican.

Since the Tea Party wave that made you actually be known outside of Ohio and gave you the Freedom Caucus to be a part of so you had other people to practice foolishness with, that's been the entire Republican mantra. Government exists only to preserve the power and wealth of the few, and should be a malevolent force in everybody else's life, oh, except that everything, literally everything should be a partisan political issue to keep the Unga Bunga flaming shit throwing outrage monkeys that make up the most active part of your base on point all the fucking time, so they run interference for your fucking ass and would vote for a half-empty moldy spaghetti can with an (R) next to it.

All so you can keep power you don't deserve and haven't done jack shit to earn, so you could try to seize minority rule because you know in another four, five, maybe ten years at the most your ass is gonna be obsolete and no one will care what you think, much less vote for you. So you wanted to make sure you'd be the only one on the list, and you thought somebody like Donald Trump could help you with that.

Isn't that right. You thought you could play for all the marbles, get back everything you imagine you've lost over the last seventy or so years.

Except the joke's on you, Jim. First your party lost the election and Mushroom Dick is on his way out, and second, nobody has any marbles right now...except the virus. 

You know, the virus that's killed 300,000 Americans and infected a bunch of your buddies and doesn't care who you are or what your politics are or how much money you have. Congratulations, all you need to be is a warm body.

My workplace is barely scraping by, having to modify practices and leave areas unstaffed because so many people are out sick, either awaiting test results or knowing they have the virus.

I'm doing Okay, but a hell of a lot of the people I work with are struggling.

And lots of those people are the lucky ones, they still have jobs to struggle with. 

Between the virus and the economic downturn caused by it, and by our government's maliciously incompetent handling of this crisis, one hell of a lot of people simply don't have jobs anymore.

That's not their fault.

And in lots of cases, Unemployment simply doesn't pay enough to get by on. That too, is often maliciously so, because of Republicans.

And in a hell of a lot of cases there's no jobs for them to even go back to, and lots of the 'Essential' jobs that are hiring by nature put people at risk. Not everybody can handle that, or is going to want to.

If you want to leave people to twist in the wind because you simply don't feel like helping them, or it's against your bullshit ideology, well, you're an asshole and you need a better ideology.

If anybody wonders why I'm not a Republican anymore, I present as evidence this guy right here.

Fuck you, Jim Jordan.

Part One.

Vote The Fuckers Out. (I'm sick of this shit, Part One.)

Pink elephants on parade
What'll I do? What'll I do?

What an unusual view!
I could stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But technicolor pachyderms
Are really to much for me
I am not the type to faint
When things are odd or things are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain't
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!
Chase 'em away!
Chase 'em away!
I'm afraid need your aid
Pink elephants on parade! ~Pink Elephants On Parade, from the Disney Movie "Dumbo."

I'm honestly starting to think these Republican fuckers are collectively drunk, or on some kind of fucking drugs, or...I don't know, fully a quarter of our population is having a mass psychic break or some fucking shit. I'm not fucking joking.

The fucking Q-Idiots have some kind of crackpot idea that the Chinese People's Liberation Army tried to invade the United States through Maine (Maine? Why not Alaska or Hawaii or the West Coast, you know, somewhere that would geographically make sense?) claiming as evidence pictures and video of a trainload of M109 Paladin self-propelled Howitzers...probably being shipped from the storage depot at what used to be Loring Air Force Base to some port facility thence to be shipped to whatever units will be using them next. Likely whatever field artillery brigades they belong to are converting to a different system. This shit happens all the fucking time. They are also claiming that an F-16 Fighting Falcon crash in Michigan (which I've found no evidence that there even was one) was actually a shoot-down, and apparently the Chinese are also invading Wisconsin, though I can't imagine how, or from where.

These fucking people talking this shit? They're people who have no idea what even a major live-fire military exercise looks or sounds like...and such can be heard miles away...who've never heard the rolling thunder out of a clear sky from an artillery training exercise or a bomb-comp, or positively felt the deep rumbling through the soles of their boots when a B-52H Stratofortress drops a stick of bombs on a target several klicks away, or heard the ripping linen sound of a GAU-8 30mm cannon and the scream of TF34 jet engines overhead as a tactical control party calls in a strike on a simulated enemy position filled with dead trucks and old M-60 tanks. I mean, come on, you can find Youtube videos of this stuff. I'm serious.

Far less glamourous but all the more useful in this would be the Air Force radar crews and drone operators, the Navy sailors standing long watches at sea and presumably now, the Space Force people watching the satellite feeds whose job it would be to detect and deal with any of this type of shit before it ever got to our borders, what about the massive disrespect this crap heaps on them?

But of course, if you think about it the truth is actually worse. What's really going on here is that these fucking people are hoping somebody would attack the United States, because they're mad that we've rejected their god. I don't know how they don't realize that not just the our military and our people wouldn't take this lying down, but neither would our allies. I mean, what makes these fucking fools think the Canadians would let another armed force into their country?

(Well, except for the generalized paranoid-conspiracy-theorist idea that everyone is plotting against them, I mean.)

And yet that somehow manages to not be the dumbest thing I've seen yet this week.

When I logged into Twitter, this post was the first thing I saw. Apparently somebody that's going to be on Biden's white house staff called Republicans "Fuckers" and Marco Rubio rather performatively got his panties in a wad over it. 

No, seriously, these fucking people fucking shit all over everything for the last twelve years and they still have the fucking nerve to get mad over profanity?

Fuck you, Little Marco, and fuck the Elephant you rode in on, too. If there's a better example of the emptiness of American conservative Christianity and the utter lack of values in the "Conservatism" that claims it, well at this point, I can't find any.

Take your performative fake outrage and shove it up your ass.

Marco Rubio is a perfect example of talking because one has the capability to talk, and for no other reason..

But while we're at it...CAPTAIN BIBLE QUOTE STRIKES AGAIN!

I mean, seriously, this little fucker has the gall to quote from the Bible and then lie about Facebook with the two right next to each other. 

And what's with this little asshole's hard-on for starting shit with the Chinese? The Cold War is over, dude. The Communists fucking lost, even the Chinese aren't really Communists anymore. (And your beloved corporations and fellow conservatives love them for it and are all too happy to borrow money from them and outsource our industry to them and I don't see you saying jack shit about that.)

And if you really have an objection to Republicans being called racists...why do you permit so many fucking racists to be in or to support the Republican Party, thus fueling such accusations?

But of course, the hypocrisy seems to be the goddamn fucking point for this fucking guy.

Just like, for a hell of a lot of the Republican base at this point, the crazy done runneth over and I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how in the fuck anybody can believe this fucking ridiculous bullshit.

Of course the truth is, a lot of them really fucking don't, a lot of this shit seems to be some sort of a contest about who can say the most dumb shit to prove that they hate liberals and moderate Republicans and pretty much everybody else who isn't a doctrinaire Trumpist (as if Trumpism ever had any fucking tenets besides glorifying Trump and the self-abasement of his supporters?)

How many of these fucking people even know the first thing about Communism, rather than simply equating it with "Anything to the Left of Augusto Pinochet?"

'Cause I've studied the history of World War II and its aftermath, some of which was required reading back when I was in school, and if you don't think kids in Christian schools in the 1970's and 1980's got a healthy dose of anti-Communism in their educations you haven't fucking been paying attention.

And trust me, American liberalism and Communism ain't even on the same goddamned fucking page, not even close.

Communism hasn't even been a thing since 1989.

Hell, American liberalism would qualify as moderate conservatism throughout most of the rest of the developed world. For fuck's sake, far-right parties in Hungary and Poland have far more generous social programs that most American Democrats are even proposing here. 

But none of this matters to modern Republicans, for whom words themselves mostly don't have meanings, except for the emotions they wish to invoke and the reactions they intend to elicit.

There's no real thinking involved in this proposition, because the people who've done the thinking don't want anybody else to.

It is, in fact, the Republican Party that has become the dangerously authoritarian outlier, and they're mad and regarding the election as "Stolen" because people voted against them?

This is America, the Vote is the whole goddamned point.

And here's the worst part; I crawled through the river of shit that was the "Patriot Party" trending topic on Twitter earlier, and there's plenty of people out there who think the Republicans aren't authoritarian or cheating or shitty enough.

Take it from me, I'm a former conservative with an ample history of dealing with religious nuts, Republicans have no idea of the bug-eyed crazy jerkoff bullshit they've been playing footsie with for decades, they always just thought it would disappear whenever it became inconvenient or they didn't need it anymore. They were wrong.

The Republicans, being the mercenary bastards than they mostly are, will end up having to fight against this crazy bullshit just to save their own fucking asses, same as the rest of us, they just don't know it yet.

The difference is, they'll be mad because they didn't get paid for it.

It's like this, Republicans; People who are trying to use a deadly virus to kill their fellow citizens, who will make up total absolute bullshit for no reason, and who will turn on even their closest allies for the smallest imagined slight, they don't give a shit about you, your shitty economic and social views, or your dreams of total power...because they have their own. They don't give a damn about the government. Trump thought he was going to be King. His base? See, they have people they don't like that they...whether you intended to tell them this or not...thought for 50 years that they were going to get to exercise power over, and that for the most part didn't even close to happen. You insinuated it. Trump promised it. They thought Trump was somehow magically going to make it 1953...or 1859... again, and he caught on and told them as much.

And they didn't get that. And Republicans, it looks like they're going to blame you. These are the people who didn't want the New Deal anymore when they found out they were going to have to share it with Black people. Now, they don't want the Republican Party anymore, because the Republicans couldn't save Trump from (mostly) himself or the wrath of the public.

And enough people showed up to vote, that they couldn't steal the election for Trump.

But of course MAGA is so swacked on conspiracy theories that they can't/won't see that.

And now, Republicans, they want to burn down your Party.

And who made these people this way? Oh, that's right, Republicans did. Have fun in hell, idiots.

We need to vote these fuckers out, all of them, before they manage to screw this shit up worse.

***

Author's Note: Every use of the word "Fuck" in this article has been brought to you in honor of Marco Rubio.

So this is how Idiocracy dies? (Electoral College Day, Yo.)

Rita: You think Einstein walked around thinking everyone was a bunch of dumb-shits?

Joe: Yeah. Hadn't thought of that.

Rita: Now you know why he built that bomb. ~From the film "Idiocracy."

 The Electoral College voted today, and certified Joe Biden as the President Elect.

So this is how Idiocracy dies, with Constitutional procedures and voting?

Meanwhile, over the weekend the Proud Boys scuffled with protesters and random people in the streets, and some of them wore skirts (No, those are not kilts) wrote "Fuck Antifa" on their butts and then mooned the crowd.

In the 2006 cult classic Mike Judge film 'Idiocracy' there's this scene where the main character goes to a movie theater only to find that the feature film "Ass" is basically nothing more than three hours of a shapely cartoon ass, farting.

That's kind of the vibe I get from these morons, at best. The alternative is much worse.

Just sayin' if you're bent over with a skirt hiked up and your ass hanging out, "Fuck you" isn't really the message you're sending out into the world. They did this, and then acted like they'd won a great victory. If this is immanentizing the right-wing Eschaton, just leave me the fuck out of it.

A friend of mine asked me the other day, if the Proud Boys were a bunch of confused homosexuals.

I had to tell him I don't really have much of an answer, but according to the idea of what conservatism is that I was raised with, it sure looks like the answer could be "Yes." Certainly, as another friend of mine pointed out today, these are men who were never taught properly how to be men.

These are people who learned their idea of manhood from old John Wayne movies, "Promise Keepers" preachers and rap videos, never mind that if you ask anybody who knows anything, all three of those things were lies.

And this is what's at the heart of Trumpian cultism; Anger without reason, confusion, and lies.

Veneration of a Man instead of God, done in proud defiance of what the Bible says about that...by people who seem to have "bringing about the End Times" on their bucket list. I used to be a Christian, I can tell you how that ends, but you ain't gonna like it.

Christianity without Christ, conservatism based on capability, rather than purpose, and Manhood without the conduct of being a Man, or at least without what we were taught back in my day was the acceptable way to conduct yourself.

And why? Why is this happening, what made it come to this?

Capitalism, Fear, Selfishness.

Functionally, it's because conservative elites and the wealthy thought it would work better for them if more people were stupid, and if they could set up an environment where people would be "free" to follow their base impulses, where there was no truth and "feelings" were the currency of the realm.

And now the mob they've ginned up is turning on them.

How's that working out for you now, Republicans?

Y'all deliberately, and with malice aforethought, framed every cultural disagreement with the rest of us, or even your own moderates, literally every single conflict, as a great battle or existential crisis, and then when our country actually had one you were nowhere to be found, or out there actively making things worse, and yet I guarantee you, that will not be enough for the howling mob.

Have fun in hell, idiots.

You bought the ticket, now you get to take the ride.

Now that conservatism itself is spiraling into a state of existential crisis, and about to be eaten alive by the drooling mob it helped to create, no one who's in a position to do anything about it seems to care. And no one but the mob is listening, and they're angry, at you.

And you can't litigate your way out of that. Like I said, have fun in hell with your mob, idiots.

Lizard Brain

Simon Adebisi: See, we are all of us bad men, even you. I know you have come to destroy me.

Kareem Said: Simon, I don't want to destroy you. I want to help you change.

Simon Adebisi: That is what would destroy me.  

~From the HBO Series "Oz" Season 4, Episode 8 "You Bet Your Life."

Over the course of the last five years, I've come to believe that basically everything Republicans said they stood for, for at least the last 25 years, was a lie. 

Over the last one month and four days, I can see that even the things these fucking people have said they believed in since Donald Trump slimed his way into our political discourse are nothing but bullshit. After five years of an endless firehose of bullshit from an increasingly dementia-addled liar, too many Republicans no longer know which way is up. After five years of covering for the same with slavish devotion, even as they cursed Trump behind his back, too many Republicans no longer care enough to try and find their way out. 'I go to parties sometimes until four, it's hard to leave when you can't find the door' as that old song goes.

After just five years of "Conservative values" being whatever Donald Trump said they were, Republicans have forgotten that there ever was anything else, and more to the point they stand exposed for this, whatever spell they had over the electorate as a whole is broken, and the only thing they had to hold themselves up was, in fact, Trump.

Republicans made it that way, on purpose, with malice aforethought.

And now that Trump is going down, for reasons that should mostly be obvious, they have nothing to stand on. Worse, because even some of them did their jobs and ran elections in their states the right way, even their own voter base no longer trusts them.

I tried to tell them, whether it was hate for Obama or love for Trump, making your entire Party, indeed entire political movement all about one guy was a bad idea. Now they have nothing to stand for, or on.

But nature abhors a vacuum. Faced with an absolute lack of conservative or Republican leadership, and having been on a diet of increasingly cult-like Trump-worship for the past five years, the Republicans' idiot lizard-brained voter base itself is rushing in to fill the gap, while too much of it doesn't know anything, hasn't the slightest idea of how anything works, and hasn't been taught any of this stuff because Republicans spent 50 years defunding education and another 30 years spreading hate for profit on talk radio.

And that's what the base has been left with to hang on to, hate. Hate, and unwavering blind worship of Trump.

True enough, one hell of a lot of Republicans...and their base...have accepted that reality is what it is and simply moved on. They'll try again in another four years, or at least try to keep the Republican Senate majority.

If you haven't noticed, those people have been cast out of the tribe.

Not only that but MAGA in general, and Trump in particular have the knives out for them.

I strongly suspect that these motherfuckers are going to end up making the Bernie Bros and the Progressives look level-headed before this is done, except that they already have found their unicorn and have no need to hunt one up.

Of course the difference between modern Republicans and the Democrats as a general rule is that Republicans absolutely will line up behind some random drunken bum that somebody fished out of a dumpster and bought off with a bottle of Jim Beam, so long as that bum has an (R) next to their name and expresses enough hatred of liberals and moderate Republicans. People like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are proof of this, especially the former.

Not that what's left of the Republican base is, itself, any better. Part of the problem is that political partisanship is a hell of a drug, and for a lot of these people it has become a substitute for religion. This is what happens when you have a generation of teaching political conservatism as Christianity. 

And I'm here to tell you drugs and religion are two of these people's favorite subjects, since the "Get High On Jesus" crap from the 1970's and the increasing push to spread Pentecostalism and the Prosperity Gospel in American Christianity, drugs, money, and religion are increasingly blended together and seen as one and the same. More to the point, when you can get high off your own brain chemicals...who needs anything else?

Throw in 20 years of the glorification of reality-show stupidity and simple indecency, mix with five years of Trump-cultism and the picture to your right is where that ends up. 

I found this picture on Twitter, if I have to be scarred by having seen this, so do you.

I'm not sorry. I can remember when conservatism and/or Christianity meant that a person wouldn't conduct themselves like this, or dress (?) like this or go out in public this way. I can remember when people had self-respect.

This bullshit is getting out of control and if you can't see that we need to start doing something about it you're part of the goddamned problem.

I'm not sure how we're going to do this or what we're going to do about it, but realizing that you have a problem is generally the first step towards fixing it, and having the moral courage to face the journey that it takes to do that. From my own experience it's a long, hard road and it's usually pretty hard to tell where it will end up. 

But I can damned well tell you where it began.

Assholes like Newt Gingrich, and Tom DeLay, and those who are like them, adulterers, cheaters and liars who were oh-so-conveniently forgiven upon their adoption of either Evangelical vaguely-Christianity or Right-wing Catholicism...until their personal proclivities or various hypocrisies became too much and might become a negative, and then they were out and that was that.

Modern Republicans lack even the level of conscience, intelligence or scruples that they had 20 years ago, and that wasn't much.

But here's the thing, they didn't have a President who embodied the shittiness of people like Newt Gingrich until Trump came along. Now? They crave to have nothing else, again, ever. They want to be able to mainline being told how great they are by a fake-ass racist reality TV clown who couldn't make a profit running a casino and who's kept afloat by billions of dollars of credit...forever. They want incompetent government, societal disruption, and The Cruelty Is The Point...forever.

Think about that, for a second, because they won't.

And that's what we have to do something about.

Voting Trump out was only the beginning. Even now, Republicans are studiously trying to ignore that the last five years since Trump slithered down his golden escalator are a Thing That Never Happened, And Even If It Did, It Wasn't Our Fault.

Because nothing ever is, is it? Come on, really?

If we ever want to have a better country, we have to be better citizens.

And we have to vote these Republican motherfuckers out, all of them.

This lizard-brain crap ain't going to cut it.