F. U. 43 (Mitch McConnell and other stories, Part One.)

Imam: Just because you do not believe in God, Mr. Riddick, does not mean God does not believe in you–

Riddick: You think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? You think he could start out in some … liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe in God? You got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God … and I absolutely hate the fucker.

~From Pitch Black

 57 to 43.

That's right. After facing possibly even their own deaths on January 6th, 43 Republicans voted not to impeach the man most responsible, so even though a majority of the Senate voted to convict, the vote still fell short of the two-thirds majority required.

Multiple people have compared the conduct of those 3 Republicans to jurors in the trials of Klansmen in the Jim Crow South.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Meanwhile, on the conservative side of the fence, all the problems that led to exactly this mess are just getting worse. The conspiracy theories, the hate, the racism, and the list goes on. 

There's nothing else left of conservatism. Seven Senators, maybe a few dozen House Reps at the most. Republicanism is dead, it's the Paranoid Shitty Little Haters Party now. I mean, for fuck's sake, when they're even ranting about NASCAR...literally the most unabashedly conservative and Evangelical sport there even is...being against them? Fuck, I mean I don't even really know what to say to that. 

Instead of standing up and stopping this bullshit, as only they could, instead of asking "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Republican elected officials and leadership and right-wing media either are actively encouraging this bullshit, or they're cowering in fear from it. Mitch McConnell tried to have it both ways, somehow I don't think that's going to work out for him.

MAGA is a jealous god, in the exact same way that Marxism-Leninism once was, and will tolerate no deviance from its belief in Trump's infallibility.

And make no mistake about it, while most Republican donors, elected Federal officials and this and that would just love it if the Trump era went away quietly...MAGA and Q and Trump maintain an iron grip on many state-level Republican parties and a slowly shrinking yet increasingly fanatical percentage of the Republican voter base. And instead of standing up and trying to fight back, most Congressional Republicans who aren't on board with this shit cower and equivocate and try to have it both ways.

Mitch McConnell said he thinks Trump committed crimes and should be tried in the courts for what he did, and it has to be done, true. But, the place to start in trying to stop this, Yertle, was in your own house.

Anything the courts, or corporations, or the donors or the elites or the Democrats or moderate and Never-Trump Republicans (and trust me, from the perspective of the average MAGA idiot I'm repeating myself here) do will only deepen Trump's and his cult's sense of martyrdom and reflexive paranoia.

This is a conspiracy, one big damn conspiracy, and everyone's in on it!

Including NASCAR, apparently.

Please, take a moment and consider how much of a paranoid, stupid moron somebody would have to be to believe that, and to believe that 5G is somehow controlling their brain waves.

As opposed to 4G, 3G, the internet, or hard-wired land-line telephone communications? I mean, why start now? Why didn't they start with the technophobic bullshit back in the days of ATM cards, dial-up internet, flip-phones and message boards, back when Google didn't stalk me at the pet store, when paper job applications were still a thing and it might take me all day to download something if I got online at my Mom's house?

I mean, what's even the point of doing it now, when the Mark of the Beast is made technologically irrelevant by these little bricks of technology that we all willingly carry around with us, and often can't even function without? My debit card has a chip in it, what more purpose would putting a chip in me even serve?

It only even starts to make sense, honestly, when you start thinking in terms of it not being about any of the things these fucking people say it's about. It's all bullshit.

It's about preserving at least some kind of White-superiority patriarchy type bullshit, which is exactly what it's going to be when the majority of those 43 Republicans are old white men.

When we live in a country where one of our two main political movements is dominated by 70 and 80 year old white men whose sole guiding value is fanatical resistance to change in a rapidly and vastly changing world, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? If anything, these last five years should show that all these fearful, silly old men have neither the power nor the wit to stop any of these changes and they aren't even really trying, but they sure will try and make you afraid, so that you give them power over your life, which they'll then use to rob you blind, and rob your children and grandchildren and their grandchildren and all these silly old fools don't care because they'll be dead by then. More to the point, when pushed on the issue, that's exactly what they'll say. They won't be here to see it. 

So let's kick the can for dealing with every other problem down a few more generations, too, huh?

How's that actually working out so far when...just to use the Senate numbers as an example...57% of America including some conservatives wants to step boldly into the future, or at least not be mired in the past, and 43% of America be like MAGA! Unga Bunga! 5G is Satan! and looking at Asian and Black and Brown people who were born here, that they know were born here, and telling them to "Go back where they came from." How does this work out, exactly? 

How do you find common values with some of your fellow citizens when even religion has been replaced with an ever-shifting vortex of conspiracy theories, all to protect a bunch of secular beliefs that a majority of these people don't have the guts to even admit to having?

You cannot reason with unreasonable people. You cannot claim a shared faith in anything with people whose only approach to everything is in bad faith. For fuck's sake, the only reason these fucking people even bothered to claim to believe in Christianity was to have something to hit others over the head with.

You can't reason with that shit, the only thing you can do is continue the work of removing it from power. We're off to a decent start, but that's all it is.

We've got a long road ahead. If you want a better country, you're going to have to be a better citizen.

If you want things to get better, you have to vote Republicans out, all of them, at every level.

And fuck the conspiracy theories, religion, and any other bullshit they'll use to try to stay in power. It's not like they really believe in any of it anyway.

It's all bullshit, at least to them. We have to acknowledge this and act accordingly.

We have to kick them out of power, and keep it that way.

There's no having it both ways.

On the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond,
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
A nice little pond.  It was clean.  It was neat.
The water was warm.  There was plenty to eat.
The turtles had everything turtles might need.
And they were all happy.  Quite happy indeed.

They were... until Yertle, the king of them all,
Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small.
"I'm ruler", said Yertle, "of all that I see.
But I don't see enough.  That's the trouble with me.
With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond
But I cannot look down on the places beyond.
This throne that I sit on is too, too low down.
It ought to be higher!" he said with a frown.
"If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be!
What a king! I'd be ruler of all that I see!" 

~Yertle The Turtle, Dr. Seuss