Bearing the Tabernacle of Moloch (Woke Weasels, You Asked For It, Part Four.)

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.  ~Amos 5:18-24

I saw this post that I snipped, this morning. Some idiot conspiracy theorist saying they won't get the COVID-19 vaccine because "Biblical reasons" and imploring readers to "Read Revelations."

I've read Revelation, many times. More times than I should have, honestly. Almost certainly more times than this stupid idiot has. I used to be a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement, and I took it seriously, it's impossible to overstate the fact that "Yes, I have read Revelations."

Vaccines are not described or mentioned in Revelation, nor anywhere else in the Bible. Understanding of the concept simply did not exist at the time this stuff was written down or compiled into what we know today as the Bible. There was no understanding of Germs and Viruses in the modern sense. 

The Romans did develop some idea of how to avoid disease in large populations, the basics of modern sanitation, the first sewers and such, were developed by the Romans. In their legionary camps they had the sense to pipe clean water in from upstream, and the wastewater that was piped out was piped downstream so that it wouldn't pollute the camp's water supply. This is the backdrop against which Revelation was written in the First Century. 

Pliny the Elder did, in fact, understand that disease could be transmitted by insects, such as Mosquitoes, the groundwork had been laid, but the modern level of understanding of such things would be many centuries in coming, yet, and vaccines, still longer.

Therefore, in Biblical terms, these concepts simply do not exist. You need science for that. This is why the Christianity that I was taught never claimed that all Truth was found in the Bible.

This is why "Believe it harder" and more religiosity being the answer to everything was never allowed to enter my thought process, and by the time people pushed that shit on me I was old enough to know better.

The reason that Christianity took root in ancient Rome, to be quite honest, has nothing to do with Jesus Christ or Paul the Apostle. It has everything to do with the fact that the people who wrote this stuff down did so in Classical Greek and Latin, and they did use common stories and such as a guideline. In so doing, these people repackaged the philosophy of Plato, who was then still wildly popular, into a format that the common person of the time could understand more easily.

The central basis of much Platonic philosophy is that ideas are what's real, and the physical world is an illusion. Humans are but shadows on the wall of a cave. All we are is shadows and dust. 

In our modern era this was very well shown in the film Gladiator, and it's absolutely not a coincidence that this movie was massively popular among conservatives and the conservative-adjacent.

Ideas are real, you are not. Think about that for a second. Think about how that relates to the conduct of these people that you know. And then consider that while all this stuff is part of their philosophical and spiritual DNA, the average conservative (and the more "Movement" conservatives even more so) these days, along with Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, is simply too damned ignorant to know all this stuff.

And thus, in their lack of knowledge, of care for their own history or roots, they are unable to control for the biases that such things will generate.

This, and not a little of the Gnostic heresies that competed with what became the basis of modern Christianity at the time, also feeds into the popularity of conspiracy theories like Q-Anon, which simply repackage all of that shit...and not a little Nazism with the serial numbers filed off...into a format that these people can understand.

Sound familiar?

This is why I keep saying if we're not careful "Q" is going to turn into a new religious movement of its own accord.

Naturally, however, as regards the virus and real-world threats none of this shit is any good. It's not working, and anybody who's paying the least bit of attention can see it.

But the fool's answer is simply "Believe in it even harder."

These people end up like that overstressed baby ferret that is bitey and mean at the pet store and doesn't stop trying to rip your fingers off until you take it home, feed it, and give it some kind of decent social environment.

And it's impossible to overstate yet again how much pure meanness is central to the modern conservative mentality. After decades of authoritarianism, Calvinistic heresy, closeted Gnosticism and just plain shitty behavior, the central focus of modern conservatism is little more than trying to cause aggravation and stress in other people, or to outright hurt them if possible, because that's the only way these fools even know. 

And centuries of organized Christianity, particularly the American kind, portraying God as some kind of murderous asshole for the purposes of intimidation don't help, either.

Any religion where harshness equals holiness is going to create evil.

When all you have is teeth, sooner or later you're going to want to bite somebody.

If we want this crap to stop, we have to find a way to change the rules of the game, to change the environment on these people and defang those who keep using this crap to manipulate the masses. 

Why? Because the truth is, factually, even Biblically, conservatism and Christianity have stripped themselves of any other moral basis for existing besides falling all the way back on Plato's cave and the old Gnostic ideal that some people are simply entitled to more of the divine conversation, to more of God, than others are.

And some of these people absolutely do see a global pandemic like COVID-19 as a biological weapon they can use to make their darkest fantasies come true.

That's exactly why they're manipulating people to not get vaccinated, whether they're doing this consciously or simply because somebody with authority or money told them to.

And what some people want is the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a church.

The virus is just an excuse, and for some a means to an end. That some people are basically saying "Yes, please, for the love of God, kill me!" is a fucking problem here. These people absolutely are carrying the tabernacle of Moloch.

And they don't even know it.

Far too many wouldn't care if they did.

We have to stop this shit.

Part Three.

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.

Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, Saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts. ~Amos 5:25-27

The Republican Heresies (Woke Weasels, You Asked For It, Part Three.)

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

Yesterday, Marco Rubio wrote an op-ed in the New York Post, effectively threatening corporations for not supporting Republicans, literally comparing supporting voting rights to dumping toxic waste.

Seriously, fuck that guy.

Marco Rubio is a perfect example of the modern Republican mentality of "You can vote for whoever you want as long as it's us." That's all that's going on here, period. Republicans are mad because corporations, culture, democracy, etc. etc. are no longer guaranteed to be on their side, so they're turning inward and towards authoritarianism in an effort to maintain their power, which is the only thing they actually give a shit about.

Marco Rubio, Republican Senator, talking like a goddamned Stalinist Communist.

Ronald Reagan would fucking spit on that guy.

As if to underscore the point, that freedom is only ever one generation away from extinction, there's a fair number of jack off morons out there that are literally pushing the idea of Tyranny as if it's simply a normal philosophy, or a solution to some sort of problem. Of course, I'm here to tell you every one of these little fascist fucks imagines themselves as the tyrant rather than the victim of tyranny.

These are people who not only don't get why so many people have fled from or fought to resist tyranny in all its various forms...they relish the cruelty they imagine the agents of tyranny using to put down that resistance, like David Grossman, AKA that motherfucker who goes around telling cops to shoot people and promising that they'll have really good sex afterwards, or something. And that's always how it is, these motherfuckers seem to think that fascism will make their little dicks bigger.

Somebody coined the term "National Populism" to describe this shit sometime last week, but almost as soon as the term was coined the people it describes openly started pushing for a much more harshly authoritarian Statism. Well, I'm sorry, but the conservatism that I was raised with wasn't that way. People like Adrian Vermeule or Marco Rubio are, in reality, conservative in about the same way that I'm a goddamned toaster oven. In other words, they're not. It's just that simple.

From an American perspective, be it liberal or the conservatism that I was taught, this is just straight-up heresy.

People wormed their way into power. People who'd basically do just about anything for $2 much less actual power or wealth, and now that these craven assholes are out of power they're pretty much like "I'll suck your dick for some power" almost to the point of it being like a Chapelle Show skit.

Seriously the only thing worse than how actively terrible these fucking people are, is how pathetic they sound. They're basically trying to play on people's sentimentality as if they're some kind of underdog, but Adrian, there, is an administrative lawyer. He's far from some member of a persecuted minority.

And frankly, I have absolutely no issue with being labeled as a "Tyrannophobe" and I think these fucking idiots trying to make tyranny sound like some kind of wonderful, cultured thing are just ridiculous, terrible in a "Hans Gruber discussing men's fashion with the CEO before he shoots him" sort of way.

The truth, however, is that it's anything but that. Far more often it's morons like Grady Judd and Ron DeSantis trying to tell people not to vote "The stupid way" that they did somewhere else. You know what? Even if I was still a conservative...if I moved to Florida, talking to me like that is almost certainly going to cause me not to vote for you and I've always felt that way. These fucking people basically think that calling other people stupid makes them smart.

It's like dealing with a thirteen-year-old boy who's in more need of an ass whuppin than any white kid in history. 

Fuck this shit, I'm tired of these racist cocksuckers and their excuses, conspiracy theories and name-calling. Does that quite spell it out for you?

And if you don't think that that racism is exactly the causative factor here, here's Tomi Lahren from last week after Derek Chauvin was convicted for murdering George Floyd, asking "Is the Footlocker going to be safe tonight" knowing full goddamned well that she's perpetuating a racist stereotype in so doing and that's all there even is to it. I've heard some people say this kind of dumb ass shit all my life and yeah, I'm a white guy, but I know racism when I fucking hear it.

These fucking bastards racism is so important to them, that they're willing to institute a murderous, tyrannical state that tells you how to vote in order to try to protect it. 

If you can't find it in yourself to take a stand against that, then fuck you, if you think that you would benefit, or not be harmed by these fucking people you have another thing coming.

You want to know what kind of shitty, snide mentality we're dealing with? Here's Rick Santorum literally saying that white people birthed this nation from nothing, that there was nothing and no one here.

That's horse shit.

There were millions of people here, Native Americans with not just one civilization or culture, but many of them.

And the European explorers almost immediately began enslaving and exploiting those people, those they couldn't enslave they traded with and bided their time until they could build coalitions of those peoples' enemies against them and then once those empires, the Aztecs, for example, were defeated they'd enslave everybody that they could. Cultural destruction, disease and war destroyed those civilizations, yet to a great extent a lot of that Native influence still endures.

If you've ever eaten Tortillas, played Lacrosse, smoked Tobacco, enjoyed any number of treasured American stories like Hiawatha or the Last of the Mohicans, or sat down to a Thanksgiving feast, all that is stuff that came about from Native culture or because of Native Americans.

Squanto, King Philip, Osceola, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, US Army Indian Scouts, General Clarence Tinker, The Code Talkers, Ira Hayes, Mitchell Red Cloud, my bros over at the local Native American warrior veterans society...and countless others whose names we'll never know...these people are American heroes, American legends. I work with Native American people every night. Their culture is part of our wider American culture, but also American culture has become part of their cultures, many of which have melded some, but most of which still remain distinct in many ways.

And it's not even their land anymore, but Native Americans in general are still pretty patriotic about their country while still being pretty clear-eyed about how things are.

Us white folks didn't create this all by ourselves from nothing. We had help, and not all of it asked to be here either, and we collectively broke our word plenty of times.

People like Rick Santorum don't want to face that.

And they'd be willing to institute a tyrannical, totalitarian government if they could to make sure they don't ever have to.

Never forget that their desire to inflict their tyranny on everybody else stems from privilege and racism and their desire to defend both of those things, and they'll undermine the concept of truth itself and spread all manner of cockamamie conspiracy theories if that's what it takes to do it. They'd spit on God himself if they had to, in order to preserve their earthly power, knowing full well that they might just go to hell later.

But they don't care.

In point of fact a lot of these people are running full-tilt away from freedom for exactly that reason.

They don't care, and they don't even want to.

Do you?

We have the capability to stop this shit. We'd best get after it.

And I mean get after it before these people grind the legacy of every American from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to FDR and Barack Obama into dust, and stomp all over the efforts and memory of everyone from Crispus Attucks to Mitchell Red Cloud, who tried to defend it, let alone those like Crazy Horse who tried to defend their own.

These people accuse others of wanting to make "Anti-White laws" because Derek Chauvin was held to account for open murder.

They want to make anti-everybody else laws because George Floyd got a little posthumous justice.

These people would destroy America and bomb and burn its cities, destroy its lands and kill everybody they could who didn't bow down and lick their boots and wage endless wars against everybody else if that's what it took to preserve their shitty power.

And they know that there are those who will bow down because they don't want to have to make the adult decisions that it takes nor face the changes nor do the work of life that it takes to remain free.

And they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

Even though one hell of a lot of these motherfuckers would never make it in the world they're trying to create.

Think on that, for a second.

If you can't take a stand against that, or if you value your privilege or whiteness or whatever, more than your own and other people's lives, I can't help you and I don't want to. This struggle is never really over, sooner or later you're going to have to stand up.

Freedom isn't free, and if we want to keep it sooner or later we're all going to have to pay our share.

That's all.

That's all there ever is.

And if you can't understand what I'm talking about, you never will and I can't explain it to you.

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

Part Two.

 

Pride (Woke Weasels, You Asked For It, Part Two.)

Yesterday you came to lift me up

As light as straw and brittle as a bird
Today I weigh less than a shadow on the wall
Just one more whisper of a voice unheard

Tomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger?
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm

'Cause I never thought I'd lose
I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel this fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me
I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his son. ~Elton John, The Last Song

According to Newt Gingrich, "Traditional people" are appalled, appalled, I say! Supposedly, they're appalled because President Biden has rescinded the Trump administration's ban on US Embassies flying the Gay Pride flag.

I don't know any of these "Traditional people" and I say that as a former conservative Republican, former conservative Baptist, a US Air Force veteran and a boring ass old fat white guy who daily looks at the world around me and says, Roger Murtaugh-style "I'm too old for this shit!"

And I, quite frankly, don't give a damn if people who are on their third marriage (and their second one stemming from adultery, no less) are offended by US embassies flying the pride flag. I really don't give a shit when the person doing the complaining is a former Speaker of the House who was dismissed and driven out of Congress and his own party (at the time) for adultery, then succeeded by another Old White Man who'd later be convicted of sexual abuse. If this is "Tradition" there's some deep, systemic issues with it and I want no part of it. 

I'm not gay, it's literally none of my business, on a personal level it doesn't affect me. But also, I've always been a strong supporter of equality, freedom and human rights. 

Maybe it's because I was raised up mostly before conservatism fell down the rabbit hole of endless partisanship and whack-off navel-gazing while getting high on the smell of its own Cracker Barrell farts and reading a dog-eared copy of the Turner Diaries. Maybe it's just that I'm old enough to remember when things like nuclear war were a real threat and the enemy was Over There, and a real thing rather than ginned-up fear of one's own neighbors driven by the fake outrage of dubious news networks and talk radio liars.

Hell, maybe I just never was the kind of conservative that's prevalent now, sure enough there have always been a few of those people, but it sure seems like over the course of the last 20 years the inmates took over the asylum, and here we are.

But either way if this is what we've come to, having so little to worry about that we have time to be angry at who other people fuck, and positively appalled that our government is acting to support not only its own gay citizens but people abroad whose environment may not be as (legally, anyway) safe as our own, well I'm glad I got out. 

But I'd like to remind you that it's not always been so.

See, back in the day when I was growing up I had this neighbor, Mr. Whitman.

He was gay, for all intents and purposes retired and living on Disability or SSI or some such. He was also living with...which considering the time means dying from...HIV/AIDS. The house he lived in was his family's vacation home, made largely irrelevant by the fact that his Mom had moved to Florida.

Dude's health wasn't terribly conducive to doing physical labor, nor was his income level permitting him to pay somebody else to do it, so his mom paid my Grandpa to do shit like cut the grass, rake the yard, plow the driveway, shovel the snow off the walk and do whatever home maintenance needed doing...and out of that check that showed up in the mail every month, my Grandpa paid me minimum wage to do a lot of the work, whatever he didn't feel like doing, anyway. It was a job to support my tabletop RPG and video game habits and I was fine with that.

Fairly early on about the summer of 1988 or so, my Grandpa and my Mom sat me down and explained to me that Mr. Whitman was gay, and I was to treat him with the same respect as I would anybody else and that I was to listen to him and do what he said (within reason) same as any other adult person, and this was not negotiable or subject to conditions. And that was that, no if's, ands, or buts.

Mr. Whitman could be a demanding son of a bitch in terms of how neat he wanted the yard or how he wanted this or that minor project done or the snow shoveled and the walk salted (in his case as he became more frail that eventually became a genuine safety issue that we were very conscious of) but my Mom was that way too so I was used to it. He wasn't a bad guy, he had an impressive mental collection of dirty jokes and whatnot and he'd occasionally let me bum a cigar from him and smoke it while I was working. In the way of neighbors and shit, he was my friend.

Once I got old enough to drive, parking my Grandpa's truck or my Blazer (once I got it) in the driveway or at the edge of the yard (depending on whether or not the leaf trailer was hooked up to it) and playing my music became a thing. Mr. Whitman would make sure and let me know if the radio was too loud, or the rap music too vulgar, or whatever. He was religious and such things still kind of mattered in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

And over time, his health got worse. He put on a brave face and tried to hide it, but you could tell. The jokes got grimmer, he came outside to smoke less, and so on. Dude died in the summer of 1994 while I was away serving in the Air Force.

In his life, there was hardly any gay rights, nor even much of a push for the same past "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military and a few local initiatives in places like Massachusetts and San Francisco. Lawrence Vs. Texas was fully nine years in the future when he died, open LGB (and remember, we're still working on the -T part of that) military service nearly seventeen years away, yet.

I often wonder what he'd think of today's world, of LGBT rights and pride flags and bisexual furries, of the White House lighted in rainbow colors for Pride month...or even that there is such a thing as Pride month...and the fact that it was a Republican President, George W. Bush, who put real honest-to-god effort into a (still-ongoing) program for fighting the AIDS virus in Africa.

To be honest, I feel a little bad for Mr. Whitman and all the other people who didn't live to see it, and I know that around the world that struggle is still very real for a lot of people.

And it's that, that's what flying the Rainbow Flag at our embassies represents, all of it.

Sometimes all you can do is say a prayer for those who've gone on before, and do your best to keep in the fight.

And then there's These Fucking People.

Anti-Vaxxers, wearing yellow stars and deliberately equating themselves with the Jews in Nazi Germany in protest of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Is there even one "Conservative" political issue in the Western world (and America and the UK in particular) that isn't rooted in cruelty, conspiracy theory or selfishness, with a heavy seasoning of racism and whatever other forms of bigotry that they can throw in?

These people don't have to worry about being killed, not a one of them, not even close. 

Nor do they have to worry that they might die of disease. They seem to want to. In point of fact, they're claiming a specific right to risk exactly that, no matter who else they might infect in doing so.

Because bullshit ideology, fake religion and the myths they tell themselves are more important than facts, science, or even life.

Because their convenience or privilege is worth far more to them than somebody else's life. The sanctity of their right to be an asshole trumps other human beings' right to exist.

And that is exactly what Newton Leroy Fucking Gingrich fucking means when he's talking about "Traditional People" and don't you forget it.

Countless people have died because, when presented with a choice between humanity and ideology, too many people went with the latter.

Too often we choose pride, in the most negative sense, knowing that it goes before the fall.

We just don't care.

Has there been enough blood yet?

I'm tired of it. I'm too old for this shit.

Part One.

When In Rome... (Woke Weasels, You Asked For It, Part One.)

I will sodomize you and face-fuck you, Bottom Aurelius and Catamite Furius You who think, because my verses Are delicate, that I am modest. For it's right for the devoted poet to be chaste Himself, but it's not necessary for his verses to be so. Verses which then have taste and charm, If they are delicate and sexy, And can incite an itch And I don't mean in boys, but in those hairy old men Who can't get their dicks up. You, because you have read of my thousand kisses. You think I'm a sissy? I will sodomize you and face-fuck you. ~Catallus 16

My mood after this last week could be charitably described as "Blood! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls! Skulls for the skull throne!"

From idiots out in the world to idiots at work, well, I'm fucking sick of dealing with stupidity.

Last week, some conservative Republican lawyer from Las Vegas wrote an article in the Orlando Sentinel bitching about how Disney being too "Woke" was ruining the experience of Disney World for him. Seriously, people, do yourselves a favor and don't be this fucking guy. I'm serious. From homophobia to transphobia to racism and sexism to war and peace, these motherfucking people are always on the wrong side of every issue imaginable.

Seriously, in most cases all this "Woke" stuff is, is common courtesy, updated to the 21st century.

None of this sexual stuff, freaky or otherwise, is anything new. The pull-quote is an ancient Roman poet for a goddamned fucking reason.

Most of the basis for modern social conservatism comes from two sources, Greek philosophy and Roman imperialism. In other words, two of the most bisexual cultures to ever exist foisted this crap on the world. You'd think these fucking people would notice. 

Not a damned one of the sexual issues or orientations that conservatives get their collective panties in a wad over these days would have been foreign to Romans like Catallus.

And for that matter, not that many of our social issues aside from those related specifically to science or technology would be new, either. The Romans practiced various forms of abortion, for one.

But wait! That's not all!

I'm here to tell you, in point of fact, that the reason Christianity took root in the Empire was that it repackaged Platonic philosophy (which was wildly popular among Roman social conservatives) and turned it into a religion.

Rome and Roman religion did not stress or care about the myths Romans told themselves about being an Agrarian, heterosexual, rural society based around family and stuff. In point of fact, even the wealthy who did fit the mythos were able to maintain a Domus in the country and grow Grapes or Olives or Wheat...were pretty damned bisexual...and they had Gods who justified it all for them and orders of priests to do the same.

And of course it was all bullshit.

So really, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Likewise, "Cancel Culture" is basically a function of capitalism. If you disagree with somebody, or don't like them or their product, you shouldn't be forced to give them money, right?

Sometimes, in order to continue to maintaian staffing and turn a profit, corporations have to update their stuff. This is perfectly well goddamned normal. That's just life. Neither people nor corporations should sehave to subjugate themselves to the morals of 60 years ago or to some nut's debased sensibilities for the entertainment of raging dickbags.

Capitalism isn't supposed to be a moral, political or social suicide pact.

It's a goddamned marketplace of ideas out there, if you don't like Disney's product, go somewhere else.

Seriously, don't be these fucking people.

Look, dude, I'm a fat middle-aged white guy myself. Not a day goes by I don't feel left behind, or like I'm too old for this shit. Probably nine out of ten times that happens though, it's some combination of modern "Conservatives" and the internet that's responsible for it.

The difference between me and this asshole is that I don't think I have the right to impose my attitudes and beliefs on other people. I've never thought I did, either. 

I've been around the world, though. I've been to places where old conservative assholes of different persuasions run the country according to their preferences.

You want to live that way? Go try your luck in Dubai or Saudi Arabia. Odds are you can even do so while still working for an American company, because capitalism.

Nothing in today's world says you gotta stay here.

But here? This is America. Our country was founded based on working for equality. That's what the phrase "More perfect union" in our founding documents even means. Our founders, unlike Roman social conservatives, well understood that liberty is an evolving process.

It's not "Social engineering" when things change.

It's who we are. It's what we do. America was founded on the principle, on the very possibility of social change...which was not a common thing at that time and happened only gradually if at all, barring global-scale disasters or political and social movements causing it...and that's why people wanted to come here and still do.

And that's why, for so much of our history, the whole world was watching. 

That's why in the 1950's production of "The King And I" with Yul Brenner, set during the time of the US Civil War, the King of Siam and his advisors were earnestly debating tactical advice with American diplomats and offering them things like war Elephants to turn the tide.

There was a time when we knew, or at least still remembered, that we were supposed to be something different.

And if you can't hack that, maybe the problem is you.

That conservatives desire altars and thrones and societal stasis...but yet turn to agents of chaos like Donald Trump to get it...well, to me that shows how these fucking people can't go five minutes without contradicting themselves, which actually undermines their entire argument.

Undoing generations of social change...which I'm old enough to have lived through some of...would in fact create massive social change and upend our entire society.

Change is, paradoxically, our only constant.

All we have is what we want to be. Our central tenet of being as a nation is a question.

What do we want to be when we grow up?

The conservatism I was taught at least accepted that central truth.

The only aspect of it that today's "Conservatism" embraces is the immaturity.

Meanwhile, while they pitch a fit and stonewall and threaten and very loudly shout that they'll take their collective ball and go home, change continues apace.

When in America, do as the Americans do. That is all.

You asked for it.

Our culture has forgotten what the founders knew;
The American experiment is a moral, not just political exercise.
~Chuck Colson

Signs Of The Times (Q-Berty, The Series, Part One.)

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;

The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'

'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

At some point in the last couple of days, former Trump lawyer Lin Wood made the sign of the "Q" in the air, in lieu of the sign of the Cross. Shades, perhaps, of John Galt at the end of Atlas Shrugged?

If it had been written by some dumb-ass Trump-Supporting teenage Fanfic writer these days, maybe.

Fucking Christ, what the hell is even wrong with people?
The idolatry of this so-called political movement never ceases.

Note I say this as a former Christian and former conservative. These people have well and truly thrown out Christ, though their attempt to replace Him with Donald Trump appears to have failed.

This isn't the improvement that it looks like at first.

I say that because these fucking idiots appear to be wanting to party like it's 1935, or something.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, among others, were all set to form some sort of "Anglo-Saxon caucus" to protect "Anglo-Saxon architecture and political traditions."

What the hell is an "Anglo-Saxon political tradition?"

Elected kings, perhaps?

Constant, crippling wars with the Vikings?

Being defeated by the French? 

(I mean, technically the Normans were French Vikings, but they were also one of the primary groups to factor into the formation of both modern British and modern French cultures.)

No, I don't think that's it.

I don't think that's it because I distinctly remember that, in American culture at least, prattling on about "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants" began with the second formation of the Ku Klux Klan around 100 years ago, which was directly inspired by the film Birth Of A Nation, a racist film directed by DW Griffith and released in 1915 that was, in fact, screened at the White House and given rave reviews by none other than President Woodrow Wilson.

Just in case anybody wonders what they meant by "Make America Great Again."

This is what they'd replace modern concepts of freedom and liberty and democracy and self determination with.

The Anglo-Saxon Caucus appears to already have imploded, due to extreme blowback even within the Republican Party itself (I deliberately used Adam Kinzinger's quote-Tweet as an example) with even MTG herself trying to pawn off responsibility onto her staff, or something.

But I'm here to tell you, the idea will stick, if not actually gain steam with what's left of the Republican voter base. I personally know Republican voters who think that pretty much every President prior to Trump (with the debatable exception of open racists like Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson) somehow "sold out America."

And this was an effort by the worst of the Republican Party to harness the energy of that dim-witted, violent-minded, nationalist base and to turn the Vox Vulgaris being given energy and form by people like J.D. Vance, Peter Theil and Tucker Carlson into a more-coherent political movement with actual organization in Congress to back it up.

And just because the effort disintegrated in the space of a few days, don't think that means anything.

This ain't over.

If anybody's political fortunes suffer, it will be those of Republicans who pushed back against this shit.

I'm willing to bet that in a few years, Blowbert or MTG will be the House Minority Leader. In another ten years, even with the Republican Party (assuming current electoral trends continue) reduced to irrelevance, we'll wish for the good old days of Tea Party Joe Walsh, Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy.

I just read John Boehner's book. Remember that guy? The first nominally Tea Party Speaker Of The House?

He's being given a redemption arc these days because current Republicans are so insane that motherfucker almost sounds like a Democrat by comparison.

And don't think Republican voters haven't noticed this and made the same comparison, albeit negatively.

Modern Republicanism is a feedback loop of shitty behavior, shitty ideas, and shitty treatment of other people and don't you forget it.

Ideas pushed by outright Nazis and White Supremacists five or ten years ago are now the main consumable fare on Fox News.

The "Alt-Right" may have collapsed fairly quickly, but most of its ideas quietly became Republican Party doctrine over the last few years, officially or (more often) otherwise.

Don't ever think these people bitching about "Cancel culture" or higher education or Political Correctness (whatever that means) is in good faith.

They're just mad because they don't control the narrative anymore, even as regards themselves.

And these fucking people would burn down the whole damn world, would do or say anything, to regain that power. At the absolute minimum they'd like to go back to the days when even a Democratic presidential candidate had to try to sound like a conservative. Not that any of these motherfuckers are conservative in any sense of what that word actually means. The truth is, given their darkest desires, they'd just as soon go back to the days of Segregation, or Slavery, or Bishops and Kings ruling over everything. They just want the label of being conservative, to try and preserve the myths they tell about themselves to try and make it seem like they're righteous.

But you know, I remember what I was taught, and this sure as hell ain't it.

Being a conservative, in any real sense, is about trying to preserve the status quo of the society you're in and reverence for revealed Truth and the wisdom of one's ancestors. According to those things, America is and should be a pluralistic small-L, Small-D, Liberal Democracy. Yes, that means neither conservatives nor liberals would get to win all the time. That's not what these people want. That's not what these people are.

That's not what the perpetual anti-liberal Opposite Day of modern Republicanism demands, either.

And it's a sign of the time that so many people cannot, or simply refuse to, see it.

That's got to stop. If we want a better country, we have to be better citizens.

And I'm here to tell you, we can't ever let these motherfuckers live this bullshit down.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Q-Berty (Progenitor post for this series.)

No Accidents With Guns, No Accidental Fascism, either. (American Revelation, One Shots: Duante Wright Edition.)

The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own.
You are he.

There is no other wisdom, and no other hope for us but that we grow wise.

~Surak, Vulcan philosopher, as quoted in the Star Trek novel Spock's World, by Diane Duane.

There was another police-involved shooting in a suburb of Minneapolis last night. 20-year old Duante Wright was shot by police during a routine traffic stop, for all intents and purposes there's no damned reason for it. 

And now, the defense they've settled on per the town's police chief, is that the officer intended to draw and fire his Taser but accidentally drew his gun and fired it instead, mortally wounding the kid, who then tried to drive away and made it only a short distance before he died.. 

Speaking as a veteran here, and as somebody who served in a specialty code that's trained on tasers (a process which also requires you be tased, by the way) I'm not even sure how it was even possible for this to have happened as the police chief described it..

Firstly, there are no accidents with guns. There is only proper use or negligence. Secondly, an officer's Taser is carried on his off-hand side, for a reason. Specifically, so that shit like this doesn't happen. And thirdly, firearms and Tasers work in fundamentally different ways, such that it should be impossible for there to be any confusion involving the two.

Alleged incompetence is, thus, not the defense these assholes think it is.

But it's certainly of a piece with these fucking people's bumble-fuck attempts at fascism, lately.

It fits just fine with their open pushing of White Supremacy, per no less of a conservative media outlet than Fox News, and no less of a media personality than Tucker Carlson, who was trying to claim last week that Democrats are trying to "Replace" white people. I'm not sure how that works when the Democratic President is an old white man and so are a lot of the Democrats in the House and the Senate.

But then, to these people the excuse that "They're being replaced" is something they've been braying since anybody else besides wealthy white conservative men had political representation at all.

Then people have the balls to wonder why there's murders and violence toward those they consider "enemies?"

And it's funny how none of these people want to directly claim this shit, and just how full of deniability and weasel words it all is. They know it's wrong, but they want to try it anyway.

And then these gutless fucks get mad when there's opposition to their bullshit. You know, the shitty agenda they're only now beginning to speak about in public.

I'm tired of the killing, I'm tired of the racism.

But I'm even sicker of the Republicans and their propagation of this bullshit for political gain.

Just as there are no accidents with firearms, there are no accidental pushes for fascism. Republicans may not have the guts to claim their bullshit now, but they're hoping they can lull people to go back to sleep or ignore it all so we wake up one day in a society dominated by marching soldiers and cops who strut around like old Soviet KGB agents because they're used to doing as they damn well please as the Sword and Shield Of The Party. And then when faced with whatever public outrage is allowed, Republicans want to be like "Oops, somebody pushed the wrong button on the time machine" as if they can "Aw-shucks" their way out of facing even the most muted consequences for their fascistic bullshit. Republicans already want you to pretend that the Trump years, 1/6 and their continued outrages against academic freedom, freedom of speech and voting are somebody else's fault, or some kind of fortunate (for them) accident. They want to stack the deck in plain sight, and then have everybody else pretend to believe them when they say they won.

The absolute truth is, they want to push for elite rule, end democracy, and offer the populace the bread and circuses of culture war crap and racist cruelty instead of having a decent life and a say in their own country.

At least I'm not the only one. In the snipped Tweets here, well, last week it popped up on my timeline, with both Charlotte Clymer and Tea Party Joe Walsh ripping conservative author JD Vance a new one.

I damned near shit myself, at the idea that those two could or would agree on anything. But this is where we're at right now as a country. What few decent conservatives and remaining Republicans there are...are on the same side as LGBT activists, simply for the sake of our national survival. Right now the number of people identifying as Democrats is probably the highest it's been in 30 years. There's a reason for that.

Current Republicans want to live in a world where you have to give them money, and you have no recourse, and if they didn't have any enemies or political opposition to rail against to make their voters be afraid, they'd invent it, whole-cloth out of thin air if need be. And they'll gin up whatever combination of incompetence and fear it takes to make a real body count to make it seem like there's some kind of a war out there which justifies the unaccountable power they want to claim.

And no, they literally do not give a fuck how many innocent people die in the process.

They don't give a shit if Americans are blowing each other into chunky spaghetti all over the landscape with military weapons and dividing the country up by factions, so long as their debased entertainment, personal power and wealth is untouched by the conflict. In fact, they might even encourage such a war if they might gain even a little more power and wealth because of it.

I don't want to live in their world, and I used to be a Republican. 

Do you?

Do you think Josh Hawley would cut the shit, stop blaming "woke" people for everything, cut out the racism and work for unity in the face of a threat?

Hell no, he'd be working to expand the power of the State to implement his ideas of nanny-state fascism for the "benefit" of the constituents he appears to regard as at best, a rationalization, or perhaps nice pets.

But who, ultimately, he wishes to turn into nothing more than peons and serfs serving himself.

Do you think somebody like Matt Gaetz would curtail his hedonistic lifestyle or stop fucking teenage girls because there was a war on?

Bullshit. He'd sit there on the couch watching Fox News coverage of it while getting a blowjob, all the while being certain that the money and the power and the sex were both the reward for and the proof of his rightness. 

Hell, I'd argue at this point that they've even gone beyond Donald Trump. All he was, was a distraction, a rationalization. Most of these fucking people always were this bad. They just were looking for something, anything, to signal that it was Okay to show it.

Trump riled up the mob and got them baying for ever more blood, and then made no effort to control it. This is where we are now. This is who these people are, and always were. They've run out damned near all the other Republicans who ever were anything else.

And the Evangelicals did the same thing in their churches and online spaces, I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.

These people don't want to lead, they want to rule, and to do so not as elected officials, not as citizen-legislators, not by and for and of the People, but as an unaccountable elite.

And all they offer in exchange is blood. Preferably somebody else's blood.

They think that it's their right, to make the rest of us live in a nightmare. They don't give a damn who else ends up dead, or living with addiction and PTSD or mourning a generation of dead people because of all this stuff. 'Cause they're sure it won't be them.

And we're already there, and if you can't see why and who's responsible at this point, you just don't want to.

And I guarantee you these people would happily make the situation much worse, if they thought they could get one red cent out of doing so.

There are no accidents with guns.

There are no accidental pushes towards fascism.

These fucking people know what they're doing, even if they're doing it badly.

The question is, why don't you?

We don't just need to kick these fucking people to the curb, we need to break the national foot off in they ass when we do it.

'Cause if we don't, a lot more people are going to die.

They don't care. Do you?

Why don't *You* see? (American Revelation, One Shots, Caron Nazario Edition.)

Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He has loosed his fateful lightning and His terrible, swift sword.
His Truth is marching on!

~From The Battle Hymn Of The Republic.

Yesterday, there was a video making the rounds of US Army Lieutenant, Caron Nazario, being stopped by police, and then assaulted and pepper sprayed, in the small town of Windsor, Virginia. He was in uniform at the time.

Because the cops knew they'd acted illegally, he was ultimately let go.

These cocksuckers weren't scared, they were high on a power trip and thought they could get away with punching up because the Lieutenant was Black. One of the cops involved in the initial stop was a veteran, and he damned well had to have known as soon as Nazario exited the vehicle that he was looking at an officer. He assaulted the man anyway.

In one of the videos of the incident that I saw, while they were bullshitting around and trying to cover they ass, the cops and EMT's were complaining about Black Lives Matter. This all happened last December. Lt. Nazario has since filed suit in Federal court, on the grounds that his civil rights were violated.

How any of these fucking people still have a job is beyond me. 

I was a United States Air Force Security Policeman, had I done what those cops did I'd have been arrested, charged, gone before Courts Martial and almost certainly been convicted, done time and then been dishonorably discharged at which point I'd have been damned lucky to be able to get a job flipping burgers even in the economic boom of the later Clinton years.

At least, the cop that was a veteran almost certainly knows that. He just thought he could get away with his little power trip and that nobody outside his little punk-ass town would find out about it.

If a Japanese or South Korean cop treated a US Army officer this way, the same people egging on the American cops would be demanding that foreign police officer's head on a stick.

But this bullshit is okay with them, because they're cowardly racist motherfuckers.

This is an old story, and it's honestly not going to stop until people start getting held personally accountable and get their ass throwed in jail for racism, period.

Maybe it's just me, but I wonder if putting some of these motherfuckers up against a wall and having them pose for rifle shots might solve the problem faster. You know, the way they deal with these things in the kind of authoritarian countries that "Conservatives" think they want America to emulate.

'Cause I'll tell you what, if you're a cop in Myanmar (which is a favorite of the Q-nuts lately) and you talk to or point your weapon at a military officer like that, you will lose your life.

But of course in America, murderous authoritarianism is suspiciously selective.

Sure, You can get your town sued, even get sued yourself, lose your job, cause everybody else you work with to get sent for training, be a national embarrassment and this that and the other thing and sure, your name might damned well be mud among all your friends or even to the whole country after that...but unless you do something bad enough to be brought up on charges yourself...if you aren't the type of person who feels embarrassment or shame or if you're some kind of racist ideologue, for you it's probably just an inconvenience.

But this is America, we're supposedly civilized. And yet we permit our Police to do shit that a soldier in a war zone would be prosecuted for, and it's all because of racism.

For all practical purposes, Nazario will probably basically end up owning that town. But the insurance company will pay the judgement, and none of the bad actors involved will care. If they get fired, they can just find another job.

Such should not be the case.

Black people have been contributing to and fighting for this country, often with little or no compensation for their efforts, since before America was America.

We've fought a war over this and the racist side lost. I'm goddamned tired of the fact that we're still arguing about this in the 21st goddamned century.

Literally everybody who took up arms for the Confederacy, or worked for its government, was a fucking traitor. Any and all of them were liable for the death penalty. The United States Government did not at the time have to abide by the rules of war here (and truthfully in a lot of cases it did not) but at the same time history has shown that our country was far too magnanimous to people who manifestly did not deserve it. A hell of a lot of Confederates and their descendants followed the example of Robert E. Lee and submitted to defeat only on the bitterest bare minimum of terms.

And since the 1960's and Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" American conservatism has in fact been effectively Southernized. It's probably one of the darkest ironies of American history that the Party of Lincoln became the party of Southern Segregationists within a matter of a few years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

101 years before that, in the battle of Grimaldi's Landing on James Island, SC (a small action during the wider siege of Charleston, SC) the 54th Massachusetts Infantry first saw action, then fighting in several more engagements against numerically superior Confederate forces on that day, July 16th, 1863. Two days later, the 54th led the storming of Fort Wagner, one of the main gun batteries that defended Charleston Harbor. The 54th successfully seized the outer walls, but during the assault Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the CO, was killed, and the attack was ultimately repulsed with heavy losses. Of the 54th's 600 men, 270 were killed, wounded or captured with a further 52 missing in action and never accounted for. The white brigades on the line suffered similarly heavy losses.

For his courage in bearing the Regiment's colors during the action, Sgt. William Harvey Carney would later be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Oh, and I should add, these men were fighting without pay, out of protest of the fact that they were only paid $10 a month, minus deductions for clothing, room and board, with their final wage amounting to $7 a month. White troops did not have deductions taken out and were paid $13 a month.

The war would  go on for another year before this injustice was corrected by Congress.

And the 54th Massachusetts Infantry would play a pivotal role in several more battles later on in the war. 

What the fuck do people have to do, and how much longer will they have to fight, before we're all treated like human beings and this country lives up to it's stated Constitutional and legal promises of equality?

I spent much of my life as a conservative and a Republican. I was never taught that this type of shit was acceptable. Before I was any of that, I was raised Christian and I was absolutely taught that God created all people equal in His sight. God did not create by degrees. He said that it was good, He saw that it was good, and it was good.

To say that one person is better than another for some innate characteristic is to place your Self and your judgement above God's and according to what I was taught, that only ends one way, you're going to hell.

I've written about my own little bit of experience with my own service's history, about listening to those Tuskegee Airmen, and about the Black folks that I served with personally. I almost certainly wouldn't be here without some of those people.

I work with plenty of Black folks today, hell, my roommate is Black.

Most of those people just want to be let alone, same as the rest of us, to do whatever they do in peace.

If we haven't learned by now that racism serves as a vehicle for authoritarianism and that the fucking people who would abuse somebody like Lieutenant Nazario for no reason dream of having their power expanded so they can abuse and hurt the rest of us too, we aren't going to learn until its too late, and then we'll probably have to have to fight another civil war just to even have a decent shot at eventually getting these fucking people out of power and having a shot at even having freedom.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...

Either we all have that, or none of us do.

Why the fuck is this so hard?

If you wonder why I write about American Revelation and this nation facing God's judgment, well, you have your answer.

 

The Cake Is A Lie (Vaccination Diaries, Page One.)

 (In accordance with standard procedure, if you can't handle hard shit, here's a cute picture of a Ferret. Have a nice day. Be warned, this post is going to offend some people.)

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks ~Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around

I got the first shot of the vaccination for COVID-19 this morning.

Question: Does the first shot automatically enroll a person in the New World Order, or do you have to wait for the second one?

Seriously it's a valid question.

Also, I was told there would be sexual immorality, but the only people loudly and publicly committing sexual immorality or defending the same appear to all be Republicans, and what the hell fun is that?

I mean these fucking people have been yawping on and on for a year about how the COVID-19 vaccine (that did not exist for most of this time) was some kind of Trojan Horse Mark Of The Beast type of shit. Never mind what Revelation actually says, they be rollin.' Seriously, my arm doesn't even hurt. You'd think if I'd somehow secretly sold my soul to demons this morning because something something Gazpacho, that there would at least be pain.

Instead, the only pain that I feel is from being reminded yet again that every single thing I believed in for two thirds of my life, including shit that I put my own ass on the line for, appears to have been a lie.

Over the last several days the Republican Party has been furiously attacking corporations since a number of companies announced their opposition to voter suppression efforts by Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere, followed by a half ass effort by all the "Cancel Culture" haters to *Cancel Culture* all those companies...because of course in the mind of modern Republicans, capitalism and property rights (both those of corporations and of people) must be broken on the rack of racism and cut wide open and bled out upon the altars of fear and hate by the high priests of...whoever the Republican Jesus is today...and then forced to bow before the Shitty Republican Agenda before they die.

And the worst part is, half these motherfuckers don't know what it is, and the other half don't dare share that information with the public.

Because the truth is, Republicans would rather bend the knee to a king or bow down before a dictator than live with the rest of us in a free society. It's for this reason that I think all this social tension will eventually end up in a shooting war.

I find it interesting that as soon as corporations take a step in acting to protect the interests of their customers and to protect their own markets from further conflict and instability caused by Republican incompetence, the Republicans immediately turn on Capitalism...Charlie Kirk here takes a moment to compare capitalism to higher education because Booga Booga Booga something you have to have these days simply to have enough knowledge to make it in the world is somehow dangerous, a new thing, and scary. 

Fun fact, motherfuckers, as I've written rather extensively before, when I was in college I was a conservative. In point of fact, that, my interest in history and my strong beliefs on a number of subjects all worked in my favor and tended to make me a person people sought out, more often than not fora positive reasons. I mean for fuck's sake in those days I was not only tight with a group of Muslim international students, I had a hell of a lot of friends that were quite liberal...because I was an intelligent opposite viewpoint, because I would treat people with respect even as I engaged their ideas with extreme prejudice, and because I knew my shit on more subjects than I didn't...which is more than can be said for a lot of these fucking people today.

And I had the respect of people on both sides of the fence because I believed in peace, I was seriously against the Iraq War because of my convictions and because of actual life experience in that part of the world, not in spite of them. It was an unpopular view at the time, but I was used to holding views that were unpopular, in mixed company, and holding my own.

The thing is, modern Republicans think they're too good for all that.

When the truth is, if they don't manage to persuade new voters to join them, give it a few years and there won't be a Republican Party.

If you have a problem with higher education in a world where even a working stiff in a non-technical field has to be both computer-literate and internet-savvy to do basic shit like fill out a job application or file for unemployment and where simply keeping up with current events requires a basic knowledge of a lot of shit...the problem isn't higher education, the problem is you.

The truth is, Republicans want their followers to be simple-assed morons because simple-assed morons are a lot easier to take advantage of. 

That's all.

There's no common philosophical element to all this bullshit these days except utterly base manipulation on a level that'd do Big Brother...or Old Joe Stalin...proud. More to the point, Republicans know this and a lot of them are proud of it.

This crap makes me wonder what all those years of studying End Times Prophecy stuff was even for, ya know?

The days of people being able to do simple ass bullshit jobs and make a good living while not having to interact with anybody different from them done been over for awhile now.

In point of fact the easy ass bubble that a lot of white idiots liked to live in done got popped mostly because they decided to elect a moron and perpetuate conflict for its own sake...or for nothing more than their own debased entertainment...and then they're surprised when the apple-cart they decided to upset lands on their own damned foot.

And then people are surprised when the man the Right wanted to wield as a weapon against common decency in all respects...turns around and scams the shit out of the donors?

(And no, Trump was never the point. He's a figurehead, a symptom of all this shit. Trump was the ringmaster of bread and circuses while Republicans have been plotting to steal democracy, install themselves as dukes and barons and reduce the rest of us to serfdom for awhile.

Trump just made a handy diversion, and if it all turned bad on them, they could turn around and blame him.

Except that won't work either, because Trump is even now a lot more popular with their voter base than they are.

And what's all this crap even for, anyway?

Republican proclivities lean towards ancient ideas of altar and throne with big fat helpings of bread and circuses to keep the mob entertained, because a mob is far easier to control than an active, engaged citizenry while fostering division between people.

So now they're trying to take the goddamned vote away from people...and if you think that would ever stop with Black folks, well you have another thing coming.

And anything you thought you'd get out of this, you won't.

The cake is a lie, remember that.

And so is the Republican.

Redemption Songs (Holy Week In Hell, Part Two.)

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. ~Matthew 28:1-7

Yesterday, I saw this. Ronna McDaniel making a big deal about not watching Baseball because MLB came out against the Georgia voter-suppression law.

Yeah, fuck you too, bitch.

That was their call to make, if it were me I'd have made the same one. If you don't like that, I'm a tell you where you can stick it.

Republicans are only mad about "Cancel Culture" when somebody else does it. It's Easter, can't these fucking people take a day off from being soulless hypocritical bastards even once in awhile? Even for the most important holiday of their majority religion? Seriously?

Of course, who am I kidding, there's no greater sacrament in the godless theonomy of modern conservatism or Republicanism, where it's perpetually anti-liberal Opposite Day, than utter hypocritical bastardy for its own sake. 

Coca Cola came out against Georgia's voter suppression law, so some Republicans are shunning the brand, as if anyone cares.

Look, I tend to buy whatever's on sale when I go to the store, leaning more towards Faygo or Pepsi out of personal choice. But as far as I'm concerned if everything in your life has to be some kind of political statement, right down to the kind of soda you drink, you need to get a life. If literally every aspect of your existence is some kind of partisan political loyalty test, what the fuck kind of life even is that?

And no, one should not be surprised when they go through life demanding utter fealty from everybody else for basically no damn reason, that somebody is going to say "No."

This is America, remember?

We not only have the right to do that, but in being true to our own natures, sometimes we have an obligation to say no.

Actually, that right there is what conservatism is supposed to be about. If a private corporation says they believe something, tells you no, or says you have to wear a mask because of a virus and they want to protect their other customers...well, that's their right.

And in a capitalistic, multicultural, pluralistic society, if you don't like it you can always go somewhere else. Actually, these legislators do have that part right, it's just everything else they have wrong.

Of course now if you believe that...if you accept what was a core traditional conservative belief and you act on it with any degree of consistency or good faith, these fucking people will be the first to call you a "Leftist."

Like they even know what the damn word means.

Of course we're dealing with people who, were they to be disabused of their foolish notion that God is an American who votes straight-ticket Republican, they would almost certainly all instantly become Atheists  It's not America or conservatism or God that these people care about, it's the shitty political and social agenda of the Party and of the extremely wealthy that they've turned into an idol and bowed down to worship.

Let them wander in the desert for 40 years, or until they figure out where they went wrong. 

Of course the problem with that really is that these people are stupid and in throwing out that last qualifier...well, it could in fact be a very long time before these fucking idiots ever figure out where the hell they fucked it up.

Mostly because they perpetually think they never did anything wrong to start with, and it doesn't matter what about. They're Republicans, and they've canonized their political agenda as infallible gospel truth. These are, for the most part, people who think that nobody else's beliefs or identity is even real. They think we're having them on, or that we just hate them and their self-proclaimed perfect beliefs. It's really nothing more than a bunch of self-serving horse shit. The truth about it is that Mike Huckabee would die before he identified as, or allowed anyone else to identify him as, anything other than a white male Christian redneck asshole.

It's interesting to me that this Baptist minister, of all things, seems to understand neither choice nor identity on a conceptual level. That this 'Culture Warrior" fails to understand how such a thing as culture even works? Well, missing the point is par for the course for these fucking people.

The funny part here is that Christianity is supposed to transcend things like choice, culture and identity, rather than be dominated by them as it too often is.

Transcendence is not actually something a lot of these people are looking for.

Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go. That's what these people really believe.

And as I've said before, most of the things these people really believe are things they can't share with the rest of the class, because we'd beat the fuck out of them and they know it.

And then they don't even have the guts to admit to or claim their own beliefs in public. This is half of why the Republican Party has turned itself into the Chucklefuck Olympics.

Half of them don't know what they really stand for, and the other half know, but can't tell anybody, at least not in any kind of mixed company.

So naturally anything that doesn't work out or that goes against their shitty beliefs is Someone Else's Fault. Republicans have apparently bought into Stephen Colbert's joke that reality has a liberal bias, and they thought it was real. So now these fucking people are rejecting reality in favor of fantasy.

The bad part is, the fantasy ain't even worth a damn 

These idiots basically spend every waking moment of every day high on outrage and the smell of their own farts and they're constantly reacting to everything that somebody else does, because the facts and reality of the case are that they don't really have anything much worth a damn of their own. It must be a hell of a thing, I think, to live one's life in opposition to the existence of other people. It sounds like a hell of a way to live, if you ask me.

I couldn't do it. I found it exhausting to even be around people who were like that.

But it wasn't that I couldn't keep up, so much as after a very short period of time I just didn't want to. It was too much work.

Also, when you have actual beliefs other than in being a reactionary shit, being a reactionary shit just gets in the way after awhile.

You can choose to be that way, on this day, and in so doing miss the point and you do that long enough, there's going to be consequences.

Or you can choose different and start again. It's Easter, it's spring. This is America, and that's the point. You don't have to be an asshole to be a conservative.

Freedom of choice is the goddamn point, for everybody.

If you don't like your circumstances, it's up to you to do the work of life and change them.

That's how it is. That's a part of conservatism as I was taught it as well. Make your choice, but then know you get to own that choice for good or ill.

And it's only the assholes that'll tell you anything different than that. It's the assholes that are the ones telling you that making choices is bad, that you should let them make all your decisions.

Don't.

Being an adult, being free, is about making your own choices and having the guts to own them.

Christ had to choose to go to the Cross. That is the point of his night in the garden, He, as a Man, had to face death to attain the Resurrection. If you are a Christian, especially of a denomination that stresses free will like the Baptists...you have to actively choose belief and Salvation of your own free will. Most religions are to one extent or another like that. You have to choose to participate in the Divine Conversation.

And the answers don't just come to you, you have to work for that shit. As Che Guevara said, the revolution is not an apple that falls when it's ripe. You have to make it fall.

You have to work for it. (Note: This has been a conservative argument, a real one.)

It's the same with belief in America. Please, this Easter, remember that.

Choose, and start again.

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

Happy Easter.

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. ~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.

Part One.