It's All Bullshit (Conspiracy Theories Are False Religion, Part Two.)

Whose song is that remembered?

At random, serpenting
Through fatty coils, emerging
Some other thought it's thinking
This light
Stands above the
Houses
On the ground
This illumination
Visited upon the whole land

Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
The lord is coming soon.

~Soul Coughing, Unmarked Helicopters.

"Real Americans?" 

There's something that I'm getting real damn tired of.

As if I, or the Latino guy I work with, or the Muslim lady who rang up my stuff at the grocery store after work this morning are somehow not American, even though all of us were born here.

I'm at least as "Real American" as these assholes, maybe more, because I at least try and make sure my word is worth something when I give it. That's what swearing an oath means, Captain, but you should have known that. More to the point, you don't get to choose who's an American and who isn't. The Constitution and 56 years of modern immigration laws spell all that out.

Speaking as a real American here, yeah, I'll admit I've had probably more than my share of conversations about the Bible. That's what happens when you actually believe in things of that nature as being more than a scary-faced Tiki at the edge of the village, when your faith demands that you care for others instead of telling them to stay out.

But I've also had day-long conversations about some pretty esoteric shit. I'm a gamer and I have been for most of my life. It goes with the territory.

But that's not what you're on about, is it, Pete?

Standing for the national anthem? That literally wasn't a thing I, or anybody that I know, talked about before Colin Kaepernick started doing his thing. By dint of life experience, I stand, but I don't begrudge others different choices, and for the same reason. The Constitution I swore to defend gives everybody freedom of speech, not just the people I like or the ones that say shit that I agree with. But again, if you were the person you say you are you'd know that.

I'm sick of these people. Pete Hegseth's "Man of the people" routine is faker than Madison Cawthorn's claims that he got accepted to the US Naval Academy. These fucking people are even more out of touch than the "Ivy League Elites" they pretend so studiously to hate.

Cancun Ted Cruz graduated from Harvard, not Baylor. For that matter, Captain, your education is no slouch, or did you forget that was part of the job? 

I've sat and eaten with people in diners who could and did casually quote the Bible, Ronald Reagan, Saint Augustine and Thomas Sowell with equal fluency, all over bacon and eggs.

I've never had a conversation about the Tenth Amendment in my life. I only remember what it says because of high school and college government classes.

Pete's even bringing it up isn't a reference to some mythical people who believe in the Constitution and talk about it over burgers and fries, it's a reference to an entire sub-genre of cockamamie conspiracy theorists who think the Tenth Amendment makes the States supreme over the Federal government, or something...despite the direct implication in the text itself of the opposite and the stated supremacy of Federal government and laws over those of the States.

I'm tired of people like Pete Hegseth and their "Man of the people" routine because I know that what little use they have for people like me or most people who eat in diners...but especially people like me who have the education and experience to know utter bullshit when we hear it...is as cannon fodder for their shitty political and religious agendas. Pete wrote a book titled "Crusader" in the 21st century, and he said all this shit while standing on a stage that is specifically shaped like a Nazi symbol. I don't give a goddamn what his dumb ass thinks about anything.

These fucking people would crucify Christ again, and they'd do it while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."

And let me tell you something else, while I'm at it.

I'm goddamned sick of these people bitching about Communism.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Communism very rapidly ceased to be a force in world affairs after that. If you were seven years old when that happened, you have no damned business talking about it in anything other than a historical context.

These people know they lost, and they know that as their movement runs smack into the wall of reality over and over again they're going to lose still more. That's why they're talking like this, likening their bullshit culture war to the Cold War. 

They think if they can just activate and mobilize and get their people fanatical enough, they'll win. I have to say anybody who thinks that has a pretty shitty understanding of how the Cold War actually went down. Others have directly compared the modern Republican Party directly with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1970's and I think that's a pretty accurate comparison. 

If the Republican Party wasn't right in the middle of openly self-replacing with something even worse, I wouldn't have a problem with that at all. Note I do say this as a former Republican.

Here comes the super copter
Here comes the noise it makes
The demon was an idea
The demon is awake
Scratch mark traced across the
Surface of your mind
This hour, now upon us
The hour, now arrived

Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
The lord is coming soon
Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
They said it was a weather balloon.

~Soul Coughing, Unmarked Helicopters.

And I'm tired of the fetish for apocalypse and violence, too.

Especially when most of these people wouldn't last ten minutes in the apocalypse world they'd like to create for all the rest of us. If you can't be bothered to do something as simple as wear a mask to protect yourself against a virus when civilization is still standing, you sure as hell aren't going to have what it takes to survive without civilization.

I think, more than anything, I'm just tired of the hypocrisy, I'm tired of the racism, and I'm tired of the fact that any of these fucking people think any of this is an original idea or that anybody in the world doesn't know what they're really about.

The problem is that about a third of Americans know exactly what's going on here, and they sign up anyway.

What are we going to do about that?

Part One.