...And Shineth Even Unto The West (Inauguration Day, Part Two.)

 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 24:27

It's over. Donald Trump left office like the low-class douche that he is.

A bit over three hours ago from the moment I post this, Joe Biden was sworn in as America's 46th President.

I was getting the ferrets out for playtime at the time.

Joe has already gotten to work.

Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice-President a few minutes later.

The penultimate glass ceiling in the whole damn world, shattered, by a woman of color. 

And America has a young black woman as a new poet laureate. Think about that for a second.

I remember watching Maya Angelou read "On The Pulse Of Morning" at Bill Clinton's inauguration, and I liked it enough to buy a booklet of the poem a few days later at McClean and Eakin books in Petoskey, Michigan.

At the time I was a young conservative who'd bucked my normal inclinations to vote for Bill Clinton, though I voted a split ticket. I was at the time a factory worker seriously considering enlisting in the United States Air Force, and my family was still trying to talk me out of it.

It's funny, the things you remember sometimes.

Together we rise, or none of us do.

In the intervening three hours, one of the main Q-Anon people has as much as admitted that it was all complete bullshit.

As if anybody with a brain in their head didn't know that.

And that's all there is to say about it, right there, if you wonder about the end-quote for my earlier piece (and the pull quote for this one? Well there you have it.

It'd be a relief except that all that shit will be forgotten by next week and they'll be on to their next big thing like absolutely nothing happened, like they spent the last five years rearranging their sock drawers or some shit.

Conspiracy theories and fake Apocalypticism have morphed into a new false religion, and that mess is going to be with us for a long time. Christ has been removed from all too much of American Christianity by right-wing bullshit and Trump, and I don't know how anyone's going to fix that.

But we, as a people, are going to have to do something about this mess.

In this vein, I expect I'll be trending this blog down some, and starting a new project soon, with the specific intent of engaging the issue of conspiracy theories and religion. More general posts will likely continue here but should be expected to be more sporadic in timing.

Edited To Add: I saw this a few minutes ago and it made me bust out laughing.

Here's a piece of ass-covering worthy of an Air Force Master Sergeant. Well played, Zodiac, well played.

Ted Cruz posting a picture of Joe Biden taking the oath of office, like 1/6 never happened.

When I tell you these fucking people are going to try and memory hole everything between Trump's ride down the gilded escalator and right now, I'm not joking.

To all who've followed and read my stuff these last four years, thank you and God bless.

But remember, this ain't over.

For As The Lightning Cometh Out Of The East (Inauguration Day, Part One.)

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

Are you fucking kidding me? THIS shit again?!

Last night there was a horde of religious nuts outside of Comet Ping Pong, screaming about pedophilia.

The staff of the pizza joint responded by BLASTING Lady Gaga over the restaurant's loudspeakers and drowning them out.

I'm going to point out again, that not only has this bullshit been debunked but there's a guy sitting in jail right now for showing up with a rifle because he believed in the stupid conspiracy theory bullshit, then shooting some holes in things, then realizing he was wrong just in time for the cops to show up and arrest his ass.

I'm here to tell you these fucking people aren't here out of opposition to pedophilia. I'll bet every last one of them, were their favorite Pastor or Republican politician accused of sexual abuse, they would excuse it, minimize it or think it was a setup. Every. Last. Fucking. One. Of. Them.

No, that's not it. "Pedophilia" is just a convenient scarlet letter to hang on people they don't like, and that's all there is to it. They see some random pizza place, and by extension the city it's located in, as representative of liberalism, multiculturalism, pluralism and sexual depravity.

I should note, these people define "Sexual Depravity" as sex other people are having. Whatever they do, they see as righteous, for no greater reason than it's them that do it. This extends to literally everything, if you ever wonder how these people can be so hypocritical, so shameless, that's why. They literally believe they can do no wrong. Thus, they also believe everything everybody else does is wrong.

It's Gnosticism, and they see themselves as the possessors of the ultimate truth. That's all, don't ever forget that, but as such also don't ever take their bullshit seriously, because it's nothing but bullshit. And deep down, they know. They just hope that you don't.

And they're willing to burn down the world and kill everybody else, to try and preserve this myth they have of themselves.  This is the very essence of the story of the sheep and the goats regarding judgment day. They're on the wrong side, but you can't tell these fucking people that. Well, you can, but they won't listen.

This kind of pseudo-religious horse shit has been the essence of the last five years. I woke up this morning, and this silly bullshit was the first thing I saw when I logged in.

While I was in the shower, Trump left the White House for the last time.

This morning has the feel of the calm after a great storm.

But we made it, didn't we? Most of us, anyway.

Please, today, take a moment at some point to reflect and honor those that did not.

Trump is gone the clock officially runs out in an hour and forty-nine minutes from the moment I type this.

But now, the much longer fight against bullshit, conspiracy theories, insanity and lies begins.

And that's the real fight we all have ahead of us, and don't you forget it.

This is existential, not only for our country but for humanity.

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 24:27

 

Lake Of Fire (Left Behind Is A Lie, Reloaded, Part Two.)

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 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. ~Matthew 24:23-25

Seriously?

People prayed and got their religious freak on during the Capitol Assault? I'm here to tell you some people take the Lord's name in vain every time they say it.

How in the hell does any of this shit seem...Christian...in the least?

I started out as a conservative and a Christian and quite frankly, then as now the idea that somebody would assault the capitol building of our nation fills me not so much with horror as with blood-boiling rage, and I'm here to tell you I have guns, I was properly trained in their use, and I swore an oath once. It wasn't to some weirdo Fundamentalist version of God, either.

The fact that these fucking people would try and wrap their treason up in the practice and rhetoric of religion and debase the Cross of Christ with it turns that rage absolutely incandescent white-hot and I don't give a goddamn who knows it.

If you support an attack on our country, Fuck You. If you're going to try and both-sides or equivocate on said attack, Fuck You. If you're going to try and say you did it because of religion? What the fuck is the difference between you and Al Qaeda or the Taliban?

Don't look away, no hand-waving, answer the fucking question.

Trust me, as a secular person, hell, as an American, I don't give a goddamn if the religion you use to try and justify your bullshit is Fundamentalist Christianity or radical Islam or the teachings of Satya Sai Baba. Religion has no place in our government, and the fact that those who pushed this shit just tried to overthrow our democracy does not speak well of their intentions were they to get power. It's really just that goddamned simple.

And just who, or what, do these supposed religious nuts think is "Christian" enough?

Not Mike Pence, apparently.

Mike Pence was a Congressional Evangelical well before it was cool, he sucked so bad as governor of Indiana that the Republicans in that state were glad to be rid of him, he mishandled the Opioid crisis in his state so bad that he caused a minor AIDS epidemic among heroin users, and for fuck's sake he got the job because Paul Manafort of all fucking people recommended him.

Mike Pence puts the Christian in Christian Nationalism and for all intents and purposes spent much of his political career as the clanking metallic heart of the Party Of No.

And he's not Christian enough to not be killed by these Vanilla Isis Chucklefucks if they would have caught him?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that when push comes to shove none of these motherfuckers really give a damn about Christianity, unless Unregenerate Evangelical Trumpism somehow qualifies.

And don't try and tell me they give a shit about America, either.

Some dumb bitch stole Nancy Pelosi's work laptop and tried to sell it to the Russians, don't ever tell me these fuckers are conservatives or patriots ever again.

I grew up Christian and conservative. Russia and/or the Soviet Union was considered the enemy, and that didn't really stop when the Iron Curtain fell either, Russian nationalists were standard villains of 1990's movies and novels, or enablers of other villains if they weren't a direct threat themselves.

What's different now? Did the Russians themselves change?

Or did the "Conservative" movement become anti-American?

In retrospect, the move from Christian nationalism, to American nationalism, to White nationalism and outright fascism was slow and gradual, until it wasn't. The bait and switch from American nationalism to anti-American fascism was even faster, to the point that the conservative movement and the Republican Party of today are unrecognizable from what they were even on November 2nd of last year. Trumpism itself has changed from ignorant chest-beating pro-Americanism to outright anti-Americanism if America can't be ruled by members of the Trump family forever.

And of course the vast majority of Republican elected officials are either Okay with this, or hiding from it and especially hiding from the Trump Supporters, terrified that they might get voted out and have to leave their sumptuous lives behind and go get real jobs again.

And there now exists, within the context of the conservative movement, an armed terrorist element not unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, that will try to terrify whatever parts of the government that it can into submission, because if they can't claim power honestly by winning elections with enough candidates to get what they want, as usual they'll just cheat or try to fuck the system.

And too many Republicans will just take it, either because they agree with the terrorists, or because they don't care about America and their own freedom enough to stand up. Too many people value whatever perks they get more than they value the civilization that gives them their money and perks and power, without civilization, they'd be nothing. But everybody thinks they're going to end up on the last plane out and end up sitting on a beach somewhere collecting twenty percent.

But without civilization all that money is worthless, and the power reduced to empty titles, as if they're some grand vizier of hell, some Lord of the Pit, demanding a better spot in the Lake of Fire after judgement day.

And that's kind of how it is, isn't it?

Since they don't get to watch the world burn, well, some of these fucking people would rather barbecue their own ass in hell than admit they were wrong. Some of them might just be dumb enough to not know they were wrong.

If this is American Revelation, some people are going to fail that test. We're going to have to accept that. In a sense, that's the problem with Salvation.

You've got to want to be saved. Some people...don't.

Part One.

 

Religion Of Lies (Left Behind Is A Lie, Reloaded, Part One.)

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 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. ~Matthew 24:23-25

At some point yesterday, Marjorie Taylor Green got into an argument with Georgia election officials on Twitter.

Her account got locked for twelve hours today as a result of that.

She was arguing over the same unfounded claims made by Trump and others since the election, an election in which she won, and you'll note she sure doesn't doubt the validity of her own winning of a Congressional seat. There's a reason for that.

It's all bullshit, really, and nobody knows this more than her.

Everything with these fucking people is an endless bad-faith argument, geared only towards getting them what they want right now, and that's why there's not much sense in trying to disabuse them of their conspiracy theories, false prophecies and lies, even if they did really believe it that shit will be over, forgotten, in a week...or the second the next big thing comes up...whichever comes first.

Behold, I have told you before.

Left Behind was a lie, Y2K was a lie, Birtherism was a lie, Q-Anon was a lie, Trumpism was a lie and the next big thing these fucking people come up with will be a lie too.

But lying is, by and large, something these fucking people feel privileged to do, and do without consequence as their own bad-faith arguments about the First Amendment usually end up showing.

Because it's not about what's right or what's true or what you can feel, see, touch, etc. it's about power.

And that power, at the expense of all else, is what these fucking people really worship and spend their lives in the pursuit of.

And this is what's going to destroy the Republican Party, which may not sound so bad, but I guarantee you that it will be replaced by something worse.

Before 2008 and the start of the Tea Party era in 2009-2010, for the most part these idiots were ignored and nobody took them seriously, they were resigned to petty kingdoms of churches and companies, and not a few state legislature seats. But here's the thing, over time these fucking people built a nominally-Christian Fundamentalist parallel culture that, to be honest, most people would not become aware of until John McCain nominated Sarah Palin to be his vice president...and I'm here to tell you it would take the next decade or so for this shit to fully sink in and be understood by the average person on the street who hadn't been a part of it, or around it, or harmed by it.

And shortly after that awareness was achieved, Trump finally knocked Republican Jesus off his pedestal and with the emergence of Q-Anon, itself a mutation of PizzaGate, this shit began to mutate into something else altogether and became that much more difficult to actually deal with. More to the point, I think that's the reason why it went down that way. It might not seem like much, but religion generally demands a certain level of morality, or after awhile you don't get to play anymore. But I think there's more to it than that.

Religion, for the most part, demands a certain baseline of truth, that is, that at least certain theological beliefs must be shared by all followers of a given faith to a greater or lesser degree. Thus, it gives those opposed an angle of attack. It's not much, but pushing these people to actually follow the things they say they believe works sometimes. On a certain level they know they have to maintain their camouflage.

A conspiracy theory on the other hand, is a slippery bastard. It's hard to engage because its entire basis and nature is a lie. Anybody who doesn't believe in it can simply be rationalized away as part of the conspiracy or something something Gazpacho, and at that point the brakes on behavior imposed by empathy, human interaction and shared cognition begin to break down.

Worse, as Trump became more flagrant in his contempt for laws and norms that went away too, because these people...who even then had begun to recognize Trump as their god...figured he would protect them.

For the record, no, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

But then Trump lost, and they couldn't save him legally or electorally and couldn't even pull off a coup in a country that'd never had one before and thus was severely unequipped to deal with such a thing, not out of malice per se but because too often, people are usually reactive rather than proactive, and these fucking people failed even when they had people on the inside...and while it's usually sad when a God dies...when a false god falls, it's just funny. 

When you're not one of the ones going to hell for it, that is. And that's why I detest this bullshit so much, because countless people who should have known better were turned into blubbering fools, cultists and nuts over it. I hate that, ultimately, America did this to people, and we're going to have to rethink a hell of a lot of things if we don't want this shit to keep happening.

We're going to have to hold these people accountable, and force them to take responsibility for their actions and their shitty beliefs. And that's what they're afraid of more than anything.

They fear to be held responsible for the lie.

There's a lot of people who, when they die and go into the afterlife, are going to find themselves without excuse...but with their lips flapping incoherently as they try to make excuses anyway, as if they think that God is as dumb as they are.

Pro Tip, ladies and gentlemen, it's generally a good idea to assume that the Creator of the Infinite Universe is at least a little bit smarter than you are.

All too often, the lie has become central to their identity.

And that's exactly why the Bible spends so much time on these particular subjects, and often lays out the punishments for them in such exacting detail...as if that doesn't ultimately end up contributing to the problem in multiple ways on its own, but you have to realize this stuff was written down long before there were even printing presses or such a concept as media, and even longer before radio and television and other mechanisms of constant reinforcement were even close to thought of. 

To be completely honest, either on the scale of the Church or of the village wise-woman, for a very long time, bishops or druids, orators and philosophers and priests and temples were how ideas were propagated...and very often such news as there was, was more about an idea than about what actually happened.

And for all of our claimed social and technological sophistication, we humans spent far more time in that kind of environment than we did in the modern scientific era powered by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

And I'm here to tell you, the desire for the Old Ways remains alive and well, that's what a lot of this conspiracy theory shit really is.

And if we want to keep our modern world, we're going to have to face the fact that conspiracy theories are lies and a lot of these ideas we propagated throughout our history as a species were just really shitty ones.

That's why Left Behind must be shown to be a lie.  That's why we have to keep pounding on the fact that, 2000 years later, there's still no Apocalypse, no End Times, and when an Antichrist showed up, even just in the context of America, the Christians overwhelmingly voted for him.

The False Prophet (American Revelation, Reloaded, Part Two.)

-I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
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; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned into fables. ~2 Timothy 4:1-4

A couple days ago, Franklin Graham compared Trump to Jesus, and compared the ten Republicans who voted with the Democrats to Judas.

Because it really is a fucking cult.

I mean, seriously, here's Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, one of the conservative and Evangelical titans of the second half of the 20th century, who maintained relationships with US Presidents from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, and was especially close to both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. All that does suggest a certain level of bipartisanship, and Graham himself, in his later years expressed regret for becoming involved in partisan politics.

Turns out the son really didn't learn even one fucking thing from watching his father. Or he's the false Prophet to Trump's Beast of American Revelation.

Bet you he didn't learn one fucking thing from his Dad.

And neither did a lot of other fucking people either.

"Peter, put up thy sword into its sheath, for all who take up the sword will die by the sword."

Some people want to "Plead the blood of Jesus" but carry a knife, even though Jesus was against violence and preached a Gospel of love as the Prince of Peace. Who would Jesus stab?

You can't have it both ways, you know. You can't really just obey some of the Word but then willfully try to break one of the Ten Commandments.

It's like I keep saying, whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

And again "You took notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? What the hell is wrong with you?"

And if you don't think these two problems are related; the idolatry of politics, lack of knowledge of the Word and love of violent, revenge-filled Fundamentalist religiosity for its own sake all blend together to enable these people to create a false god out of their own desires, a position ably embodied by Donald Trump for the last five years or so. Throw in a ton of secular conspiracy theories, though, and the movement Trump spawned seems to be growing beyond even his ability to control. Or maybe these fucking people just really are that stupid? Before this crap is over, conspiracy theories will become these people's true God.

Texas realtor Jenna Ryan, who flew to Washington D.C. on her private jet to take part in the Capitol assault, didn't know why she was being arrested and that she felt she was being persecuted.

Persecuted?

For trying to overthrow your government and participating in a badly-planned and worse-executed operation that the avowed goal of which became disrupting largely ceremonial Electoral vote counting and killing the Speaker of the House and the Vice President?

And she did it while spouting a soundbite-ad for her bullshit real estate business.

Bitch y'all lucky you didn't end up dead, shot center-mass with 5.56mm NATO standard rounds by Capitol Police or United States Marines (Note: The Posse Comitatus act largely does not apply in the Federal District) had the cops been better prepared or more numerous, or the FBI and the military responded faster, you could have watched the insurrectionists get routed as you bled out from your guts on the Capitol steps.

The insurrectionists could and should have been facing drones and troops and tanks and shit. In most countries, they would have been. Had these dumb bastards pulled shit like this in Egypt or Nigeria or Russia, at the very minimum she could have been arrested, most likely by military police, and would already be in prison.

Instead she gets to call consequences "Persecution."

Because America, and freedom and shit.

Whatever happened to "If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime?" Also for the record, this is the same kind of weak ass mentality that "Conservatives" have accused everybody else of having forever, and cited as reasons why they would win if push ever came to shove. Conservative fiction is rife with this crap.

Well, I guess we know how that conflict is going to go, don't we? It's as if, at the height of the Korean War in 1951, somebody had been given a vision of Desert Storm in 1991, and sort of seen how that whole Cold War thing was going to work out...and what the enemy, their doctrines, and equipment, was really made of.

Personally, I think finding some of these militia camps and launching a whole goddamned piss-pot full of Tomahawk cruise missiles from Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at the sites would not be out of line. Or put up a flight of BUFF's (B-52H Stratofortress bombers) and light the camps up with a swarm of AGM-86 ALCM C's. Flatten some places, do it publicly, let it be known, make CNN and FOX News carry that shit live. Better some dusty Militia camp in the Arizona desert now than urban warfare in Chicago or Montgomery or Phoenix later.

These people deliberately and with malice aforethought made war against their own government.

That they did it badly does not change what they did, not one bit. These people thought they were going to kill people without any resistance at all. They thought the universe was just going to give them that right.

They need to be taught that the government can always punch back harder than they can even imagine. They need to be shown that war is a horrible thing, and not some kind of a video game. We need to make examples of some of these idiots right now, that they may serve as a warning to their fellows.

And of course, I know I'm wrong. These fucking people are going to make the rest of us slug this whole thing out right down to the last spider hole on Hill 472, because they will utterly refuse to see what's going on around them, because conspiracy theories and religion have taught them not to.

And we, as a people, are going to have to face that America made them that way, and deal with it.

Part One.

Republican Sodom (American Revelation, Reloaded, Part One.)

And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. ~Genesis 18:20-26

There's this scene laid out in Genesis 18 that has always stuck with me, wherein Abraham pleads with the Lord to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, if but fifty righteous people can be found within the cities, Abraham bargains God down to just ten people, before they part ways and God goes off to see this mess for Himself and Abraham returns home.

Why did this thought cross my mind last night? Oh, well, just ten House Republicans crossed over to vote with the Democrats to impeach Donald Trump for a second time in response to the assault on the Capitol.

Ten. Not fifty, not forty-five, not forty, not thirty, not twenty...just TEN. It almost seems Biblical in terms of the amount of irony involved, or maybe it's just my weird thought process and I smoked too much weed at some point, or something.

But will that be enough to spare Republican Sodom?

Put me down for a "No" in the betting pool, please. I've seen enough over the last five years, and I rather suspect that God has as well.

The Christian in me is inclined to believe that God's mercy will not be forthcoming. The part of me that remembers what Bosnia was like dreads the place that the vast majority of Republicans have brought us near to, and would lead us closer still, were their actions not checked.

But they were, weren't they, if only just...

Is you takin' notes, on a criminal fuckin' conspiracy? What's wrong with you, man?

(Yes, these people really are that stupid.)

And here's the kicker, for the fact that a majority of us voted against them in a democratic nation in a free and fair election in accordance with the Constitution and the law, Republicans are calling themselves "Censored" and "Marginalized" and "Oppressed."

I think those words don't mean what Republicans think they mean.

I used to be a Republican and I'm not impressed with this. I'm so old that I can remember when "Speech is oppression" and other statements of performative victimhood used to be a liberal thing, and conservatives loathed the idea. But, hey, I also remember when conservatives hated things like moral relativism and situational ethics.

Now they're the main practitioners.

In lieu of leadership from the Federal government, citizens, acting on their own initiative and corporations, acting within the broad legal framework given them by conservatives, have acted to defend our shit. Sure, there appears to be a pretty solid, if largely below the radar operation to arrest and charge the Capitol insurgents, Army National Guard troops have been deployed in D.C. and in general, people are using their power to protect the country and the system is finally acting to save itself.

Granted, I never thought that in my lifetime I'd see Army National Guard troops, with weapons and all, sleeping on the floor in the hallways of the Capitol building.

So that's been a bit of a shock, this is America, this isn't supposed to be happening here.

But lest we ourselves underestimate the level of madness and stupidity we're dealing with here, the people who stormed the Capitol thought that the cops and the troops would be joining them.

That didn't...couldn't...happen.

And since none of this stuff has gone their way and now they lack the power to compel others to their sides, they're being cut off by campaign donors and social media, and losing power and profits and most of all, a metric shit-ton of easy money. It's not hard to see that these fuckers believe it's the End Times, or even the end of the End Times...without the Middle East having been turned into a slaughterhouse. They already thought the virus was the Apocalypse...and they got caught trying to use it to kill the rest of us.

Oops.

Kind of puts the lie to all of these fucking people's claims of Evangelical piety, doesn't it? I mean, along with their threats lately to kill basically everybody.

Whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill" anyway?

And I'm serious in asking that, because lately it seems all that Trump Supporters want to do is kill anybody they see as opposed to them, never mind how improbable or impossible it may be that they might succeed.

In fact, these fucking people seem to think that the rest of us not just should, but will lay down and die because they say so.

They are enraged by the fact that there's any resistance at all to them.

Even though logic dictates there would have to be, if you think about it.

They're even more enraged to find out that a majority of people don't secretly agree with them, even though the evidence that we don't has been in plain sight for literally decades.

It's almost as if they built an entire philosophy, an entire movement, on cheating and hate and lies and lack of hospitality to one's neighbors. You know, the real stuff God was talking about when He said of Israel "These are the sins of your sister Sodom..." I used to be a Republican and I can't say there's any more basis to modern Republicanism than hate, racism and tax cuts for the wealthy. If there is, I sure can't find any.

What basis has Republicanism, that it should even be saved?

Where will you stand, O Sinner, where will you stand?

You did this to yourselves, Republicans, when you made the entire basis of your party hatred for one man, then love of another.

Was it worth it? I think not.

And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. ~Genesis 18:32

 

The Charge Of The Unfuckable Dork Brigade.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade.

Last Tuesday, two Democrats won the runoff election in Georgia, the next day I had planned to write about how on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners stood together to defend our democracy, and perhaps, to set that table of brotherhood at long last.

Instead, a bunch of Trump Supporters stormed the Capitol building, and following that whole shit-show, which delayed Congressional certification of the electoral college vote by about twelve hours. I've been intending to write about this, but I've been struggling with what to write for the last five days.

Yesterday, I watched a video of the mob singing "The Star-spangled Banner" while they beat a cop to death. I guess Blue Lives don't really matter either, do they? Of course, I'm not surprised. The same people popped off with "Support The Troops" back in the day and that was just another bad-faith bullshit statement aimed at bashing anybody who didn't agree with what Republicans thought they wanted at the time, too. 

When you've stood there, at an anti-Iraq War protest wearing a ratty old BDU jacket that still has your name on the chest and a Sergeant's stripes on the sleeves getting screamed at in spittle-flecked rage by some old bearded weirdo that you know never served, who despite all their talk doesn't live their supposed conservative values, nor given any more thought to the military than his own recently purchased "Support the Troops" T-shirt, it's hard to be surprised by these things. 

And I'm not surprised, I'm just angry. No, strike that, back the truck up here. I'm madder than a motherfucker and don't you forget it.

I spent much of my life as a "small-c" moderate conservative Republican. I have a church background, I'm a veteran, and I volunteered for George W. Bush's campaign with my local county-level Republican party.

Yet I might as well be a card-carrying Communist according to these motherfuckers, never mind that Communism hasn't even been a thing since 1989.

I'm frankly tired of hearing about "Communism" from people who refuse to stop doing the bidding or sucking the dick of a KGB agent, and that is absolutely what Vladimir Putin is, and was, and ever and always will be and if you doubt me, ask a Russian. They'll tell you, there are no former KGB men.

I'm fucking sick of it.

And I'm tired of every claimed value, every single thing these fucking people claim to value being cast aside, set on fire, and left in the middle of the road to burn the very second it becomes inconvenient or doesn't play along with whatever they think they want.

These fucking people would run over their own grandmothers for ideology or profit.

All modern Republicanism cares about is Donald Trump, and the Republicans' own personal pleasure, power and wealth, and fuck you, too, and whatever bullshit and conspiracy theories can be used to justify or provide cover for this shit. And they'll outright threaten to kill you if you even so much as ask a simple, necessary question like "Just what the hell is conservative about any of this crap?

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

Now, don't get me wrong, this coup attempt was a planned operation, and it was apparently aided and abetted at the highest levels of government and there were those inside the Capitol itself, including some Capitol Police officers and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Q-Anon) and Senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz who were all too happy to jump into bed with the insurrectionists.

But that being said it was in fact, probably the worst damn operation I've ever heard of in the history of the world. The insurrectionists got in, and though there were a few apparently trained individuals trying to accomplish various objectives, none succeeded. Most of these people just milled around, did petty crimes and vandalism and took an extensive opus of photos and videos of themselves doing this shit. At least one insurrectionist was killed by the Capitol Police, several more died in various situations including one older gentleman who somehow managed to taser himself in the balls (And how is that even possible?) while trying to steal a painting of Tip O'Neal and gave himself a heart attack. Before the day was even over these people were being identified and arrested and put on No-Fly Lists and fired from their jobs and whining about the fact that they were being called terrorists.

They managed to get themselves represented by Nazi Yak-Man, Q-Anon freaks and an old guy who sat at Nancy Pelosi's desk scratching his balls on camera, terrorists is probably the most charitable thing they could be referred to as. This was the charge of the unfuckable dork brigade.

This was people you wouldn't let in your own house, storming We The People's house.

And they have the nerve to be mad when Trump gets kicked off of Twitter and all these goddamn nuts are getting deplatformed or fired from their jobs or mocked on social media.

And they can't even handle that, how the fuck did these idiots think they were going to fight a civil war?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If you don't want to be called a terrorist don't commit terrorism against an entire branch of your own government. Hell, a fair number of these people were absolutely enraged or emotionally shattered by the fact that the Capitol Police put up even a half-ass defense, or that Congress evacuated instead of just waiting for the people chanting "Hang Mike Pence" to show up and try it.

In many, perhaps most countries in the world, they'd have walked back out into the light into a phalanx of troops and tanks, killed if they resisted, and taken and handed over to the police if they didn't, thence to spend decades in prison if they didn't get executed instead. And these fucking people have the balls to be upset because they can't post on Parler anymore?

Bitches, ya'll pulled down the American flag and put the Trump flag up in its place. That makes you my enemy, along with anybody else who'd so symbolically try to tear down my country. 

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabering the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

And for what? Listen to their own words, some MAGA terrorist screaming about how "He's being treated like a fucking black person" when he gets tackled by the cops.

You know what? I want my country back, I want my country back from these motherfuckers, period.

#Election2020 #Top20

Seriously? (Salvation, Part Two.)

I'm on my way, I'm making it
I've got to make it show, yeah
Yeah
It' so much larger than life
I'm gonna watch it growing
The place where I come from,
Is a small town
They think so small
They use small words
But not me
In spite of that
I worked it out
I've been stretching my mouth
To let those big words come right out
I had enough
I'm getting out
To the city
The big, big city
I'll be your big noise
With all the big boys (So much stuff I will own)
And I will pray to a big god
As I kneel in the big church (Big Time)
I'm on my way, I'm making it (Big Time)
Uh, yes (Big Time)
I've got to make it show, yeah (Big Time)
(Big Time) It's so much larger than life
(Big Time) I'm gonna watch it growing
 ~Big Time, Peter Gabriel

"It certainly feels like the entire society is rigged against people who hold my values."

Seriously?

No fucking shit, Sherlock.

I spent three quarters of my life as a conservative.

Conservatism isn't supposed to be popular, it's conservatism.

Conservatives, you know, the people stereotypically represented by Dwight Eisenhower, Lt. Hauk in Good Morning Vietnam, Richard Nixon,  Gerald Ford, Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan on MASH. Archie Bunker, the Unfuckable Dork Brigade villains in a whole bunch of 1980's movies, Harris and Proctor in the Police Academy movies, you know, people who aren't any fun at parties because we mostly didn't go to them in the fucking first place, or get even get invited to, for that matter.

And when you did show up, you blended in as best you could, or you didn't get invited back.

We used to console ourselves, if and when we felt like we needed to, by saying it was better to be right than it was to be popular. We were the political equivalent of "Are you sure this is a good idea?" or "Eat your vegetables" or "pay your bills" and yes "Somebody really DOES need to go out there and fight the Communists" back when there was such a thing, anyway. Republicans used to know that being the adults in the room wasn't going to be any fun, and Democrats are finding this out now that Republicans have abdicated their old roles completely.

Did those values shelter a lot of bad people, of course they did. Plenty of authoritarian shitbirds, nuts, racists and various other bad actors were always hiding somewhere in the midst of all that, wearing the rest of us like a cloak of protection. And there were always those who thought enough power and control would mean they would have to be popular...but for the most part a lot of those people got laughed at for a long time, sometimes to their faces, sometimes not. There's always been some fucking fool out there, trying to immanentize the eschaton.

Nobody with a brain in their head expects that type of stuff to be popular.

When I was a little kid, I don't remember that any of the people I knew who talked that way gave a shit whether it was popular or not. Of course, that started to change when Reagan let the religious nuts into the Republican Party because a lot of Evangelicals are and always have been greedy, grasping, money hungry social climbers, but they still weren't the main body of conservatism.

Of course that started to change in the 1990's with people like Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, and the shifting of the Religious Right from the farcical sideshow of people like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker to an animating force under people like James Dobson and Ralph Reed. I'm sorry it did, and I say this as somebody who was a conservative Christian in the 1980's and 1990's and who voted Republican in 1994 and thus helped usher a lot of this crap in.

One of the biggest things I remember from the 1990's was a lot of both political and religious preaching against moral relativism and situational ethics. And hey, if you really want to not be popular (Note: The sarcasm light is on) with your fellow students in a Community College speech class...give a few speeches on those sorts of subjects, and do it reasonably well!

Just sayin.' I do actually know some of this stuff from experience.

Now fast forward to 25 years after the Gingrich Revolution, and 22 years after that speech class and here we are, the "Conservative" movement and the Republican Party have fully embraced both moral relativism and situational ethics, religion has been on its way out for awhile, and there's plenty of Republican voters who, given the chance, would literally bow down and worship Donald Fucking Trump. 

Look at it long enough and you really start to wonder how the hell these people expect some kind of heavenly Salvation from an extremely earthly wannabe-dictator who doesn't even believe in their supposed previous God. But he'd be real happy if they'd just come out and tell him he's their new one.

And these fucking people are mad because they're not popular and they feel like society is against them?

Well, bitches, when you've spent the last decade trying to tear down our political system and overall society sooner or later you need to realize that the system is going to have to act to save itself.

And so it did.

And today people in Georgia are voting in that state's senatorial runoff election, lots of people are in fact hoping to nudge the system past merely protecting itself towards actually helping the common person.

Meanwhile, Democrats have adjusted to being the adults in the room with gusto, though not always doing the right thing, and least they're trying, with maybe half of Republicans trailing behind in their wakes...more to save themselves and the system that got them elected and keeps them in power than with any good intentions...as the other half of the Republican Party and a majority of Republican voters threaten those other Republicans with bloody vengeance for...doing their jobs? Does any of this seem kind of fucked up to you yet?

Basically, the arsonists and terrorists and mad that they're not getting a free hand-job from the rest of a civilization they've spent the last twelve years or so actively trying to destroy.

It's not about right or wrong, it's about who these fucking idiots "identify" with, even though they freely mock other people for identifying as, or with, or whatever. Whatever they do, what they like, or what resonates with them is seen as holy...while anything anybody else does is literally of the Devil. How these people keep all this shit straight, I'll never know. I couldn't do it.

Trumpism in my view basically combines the very worst of both far-left and far-right politics in the dumbest possible ways, and there's no up-side for anybody but Trump, personally.

Frankly, I'm just tired of the hypocrisy and wondering how these fucking people don't drown in the sheer amount of bullshit that they spew from day to day. And then, when it doesn't turn out how they want, they cast themselves as the perpetual victims?

Fuck all that.

Listen up, fuckers.

It's like my Grandma used to say; Sometimes when it feels like the whole world is against you, the problem is you.

And that's pretty much all there is to say about it.

Part One.

Divine Wind (Salvation, Part One.)

See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta want to be saved. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series "Oz" (Season One.)

There's a disturbing trend I've been seeing lately. I've brought this up before but it seems to be getting worse.

Trump Supporters are starting to talk like suicide bombers, like cultists who are angry because the rest of us rejected their shitty orange god. A friend of mine once called these people the Kamikaze Caucus.

This is a fucking problem. More to the point if you think this is somehow representative of or in defense of American or Western culture, or even political or social conservatism, you need to go home and rethink your fucking life.

America is not built around "Great Men" we don't have "Dear Leaders" or emperors or kings any other kind of dictatorial tin-pot, we are according to our own founders a nation of laws, not men. We don't do taxidermy and stuff our leaders when they die, and America is not even built to deal with political personality cults.

People need to cut this shit out right the fuck now, even, and perhaps especially if they are or claim to be conservative.

For one thing, go ahead and tell me where either murder or suicide is somehow acceptable. Go ahead, I'll wait. And yes, that is exactly what this is and don't you forget it either.

These people who are beating off to the idea of trying to kill their political opposition, who are wanting to install Trump as a dictator, who are talking like suicide bombers? I'd bet that 90%-plus have never actually faced much real struggle, let alone the prospect of death, and they sure as hell have never been in combat in wars civil or otherwise, nor visited a country that is ruled by a dictator, nor had to clean up after any of the above.

Every last one of these goddamned idiotic fake Blackshirts thinks that fascism is something that will only happen to other people, that mass death and war are somehow not going to hurt them personally, or cost them money, that they're not the ones who will have to fight and die, or live with horrible disabling injuries or PTSD or their shit getting blow up and...well, the list goes on. Every last one of these fucking fools thinks they're the one who has the game beat, who thinks Trump won't ultimately betray them even though he's betrayed our entire country multiple times at this point.

How's that working out for Republicans in Georgia, right about now? 

Brian Kemp won the Georgia governorship by actively trying to out-Trump Trump and all he got for it was cast into the outer darkness by MAGA anyway.

How is it working out for Senate Republicans who are suddenly having to play defense against their own outgoing President and his assorted hare-brained schemes, and more to the point all the various whack-a-nut schemes trickling up from Trump's base as well?

These people are going to get caught between an irate general public and even more irate Trump Supporters over the next couple years, and they have no one to blame for this shit but themselves.

How the fuck does it work for conservative media or the voters who are so smacked out of their minds on all this stupid horseshit that they can't tell the difference between Communism, liberalism and even moderate Republicanism?

More to the point, some of these fucking people are so high on the smell of their own bullshit that they don't know, or have forgotten, that Communism hasn't really been a thing since 1989. Ya know, I was there, just a 15 year old conservative kid when the Wall came down, all excited because in a couple weeks I'd be turning 16 and get my driver's license and shit. But I watched the news and stuff, I paid attention, I was there.

With their endless lust for using words they don't understand to ratfuck enemies that mostly exist only in their heads, these motherfucking people have cast aside both the American and NATO victory in the Cold War and any good that came from the leadership of men like Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

And why?

Because most of these people are small insecure idiots who desire fascism not so much because they think it will kill their enemies (although they may say that's the reason) but because they think that then, they'll be able to touch the power of the Transcendent State at last...and no, I don't mean they think they'll be able to reach God or some other divine thing, no, they want to worship the government...as if anything in the whole damn world could be less conservative than that.

They want fascism because they think it'll somehow magically turn them into the Alpha Males and strutting John Wayne type figures they imagine themselves to be. Somewhere I have a picture of Mike Pence in a bomber jacket, glowering Bumboclaatly across the DMZ at North Korea as if he thought he could force them to submit by the sheer power of his Marlboro-Man-like manliness (that exists only in his head.) They want this shit because they think it'll immanentize some kind of right-wing eschaton and they'll get to live in heaven while the rest of us live in hell but still have to give them money or something.

They want this shit, fundamentally, because they think that then, in the right-wing eschaton, women will have to fuck them.

And in case you doubt that it's about exactly that, or wonder what the Unfuckable Dork Brigade does for fun, Jesse Kelly of Fox News is apparently spending his time jerking off to the idea of Barron Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse being some kind of sexual athletes.

Come on dude, Barron is what? 14?

Don't get me wrong, I'd probably got more than I should have at that age, but the girlfriend I had through the latter part of middle school and all through high school was a chubby, religious nerd girl whose goal in life was to do things like math for a living. 

And I was just fine with all that at the time. Still am, in fact. So yes, please define "hot conservative chick" especially one that somebody's going to score with as a young dude, because I sure don't remember any.

Not just that, I'd hardly call myself some kind of Don Juan even though I've actively tried to be just that on occasion, enough to actually cause myself personal problems here and there. But ya know, I actually cared about the partners I've had, I don't view sex as something I'm entitled to, or through a lens of wealth and power, nor would I ever even consider having killed people as "pelts on the wall."

Come to think of it, I'm honestly really glad that my own service was during peacetime, especially considering what a few of my friends had to deal with several years later in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here's a pro tip for ya, Jesse. I've never met a person who actually served in combat, much less killed people themselves, who refers to dead human beings as "pelts on the wall." 

Not because I'm anything so righteous, not because I'm a good person, I'm not. But I'm also not a fucking psycho and I understand that I have to live with what I do. And I'm here to tell you, talk like that is an awful lot to throw at a young person who may not have that understanding of life yet, and who will have to live with the consequences of their actions.

Even if you make it through war physically unscathed, PTSD is a bitch. Unless you have something mentally or morally wrong with you, knowing that you killed somebody is something that can wreck a person...and I've seen people crack under far less stress than that. Hell I've been that guy.

Kyle Rittenhouse ain't never going to have any kind of a life. He done fucked up, and no amount of cheap right-wing internet fame is ever going to fix that. Especially considering that the second he's in prison or otherwise not-useful all these Republicans will abandon him and it's quite likely the only people who will even offer him humane treatment will be those he was brainwashed into despising for no reason worth mentioning.

Jesse Kelly doesn't care about any of that, he just wants to have people he can use to further his shitty political and social beliefs, and whatever the cost to them is, well, that doesn't matter. It's not him who has to pay it. But then, it never really is, is it?

In point of fact, one hell of a lot of conservative dogma these days seems to be grounded in nothing more than self-serving fantasy, because reality is just that hard for These Fucking People.

And it's no wonder that conservatism has become a haven for cheats, conmen, crooks, fabulists, fascists, liars, scammers, scumbags, shady prosperity gospel preachers and the sort of people who think they're some kind of micro-god that can order the rest of the Universe about.

In fact, it's a wonder they have anybody else left, at this point.

And it's not getting any better.

When there's no values except pushing the danger and risk onto others while trying to gobble up as much of the profit as possible, and literally everything is transactional and grounded only in the moment and based on something as squishy as "feelings" it's honestly probably a miracle that things aren't worse than they actually are right now.

If these people have any one consistent value it seems to be that they want the rest of us to die, so they can take our stuff.

Does any of that sound conservative to you, really?

That's not a political movement, it's a criminal enterprise and if we're going to stop it, it needs to be treated that way. You cannot reason with unreasonable people.

If you want to stop it, you have to do something. You have to be a better citizen.

We voted the bastards out, and it looks like we're going to have to keep doing that.

But you gotta want to be saved.

The Kamikaze Caucus...doesn't.

That is all.