Good Friday In Babylon (Holy Week In Hell, Part One.)

And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This Is The King Of The Jews. And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.
But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. ~Luke 23:38-46

I worked last night. CNN happened to be on the work TV system.

They spent the whole night going back and forth between talking about the Derek Chauvin trial and the Matt Gaetz sex scandal.

It's Good Friday.

Don't these motherfuckers ever take a damn day off? And I don't mean CNN, I mean these evil shits who've completely jacked conservatism, the cowardly shits that let them, and the dumb shits who support all this silly bullshit.

I keep hearing people say that the Chauvin trial is frustrating, or hard to watch...and the people saying this are not wrong. 

The testimony I've seen on TV, a 911 Dispatcher, an EMT, on-scene witnesses, a police sergeant and George Floyd's girlfriend...and numerous discussions and posts that I've seen online...all paint a picture of dangerously undermanned police departments full of people who shouldn't be there, who are trained to use excessive violence (for no better reason than some stupid fascistic idea of "authority" that's leaked into their training) who willfully ignore their own supervision and the safety of other agencies. And they do this openly because they have the cover of unions whose sole role at this point seems to be protecting officers from consequences for misconduct, and a cult-like public following among conservatives and the conservative-adjacent.

We've got the Police doing shit to their fellow American citizens that soldiers in a war zone would be prosecuted for. You absolutely can shoot and kill the enemy, but death effectively by torture is a war crime.

And here we are, as a people, allowing war crimes to be done to us, by us, and how much fucking sense does that even make?!

And it all traces back to racism, primarily but certainly not limited to racism against Black Americans.

Do I have any of this wrong, so far?

And yet America would not be America without Black people. Black people did much of the labor that built this country's early economy and they were not compensated for their work. Think about that for a second.

But from the Antebellum era to the 54th Massachusetts regiment of volunteers during the Civil War to founding their own colleges and universities, to Great Migrations that fueled northern industrialization and urban renaissance and the Harlem Hellfighters during World War I, the destruction of the "Black Wall Street" of Greenwood, Oklahoma, on up to Doris Miller at Pearl Harbor, the Tuskeegee Airmen, the Golden Thirteen and the Montfort Point boys...Black people have spent an awful damned lot of time busting their ass and literally fighting to gain the equality promised them by the abolition of Slavery during the Civil War, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act and essentially embodied in the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

A few years before that, an African American friend of mine...an officer in the Michigan Air National Guard by then...was severely wounded in Iraq.

I heard last night that somebody, driving by, shouted "Black lives don't matter" at a Black lady my boss knows while she was putting her groceries in her car.

Every single goddamned day, white Americans spit in the face of their fellow citizens of color, of different religion or sexuality or this or that kind of social status and spit on those people's contributions as if they think they, lazy-ass white people who can't be bothered to know anything built all this they damn selves and yeah, you know what? I'm a white person, but I'm goddamned motherfucking sick of this shit.

It's the 21st fucking century, for fuck's sake.

27 years ago as a young, serious Airman in dress blues I stood and listened to Tuskegee Airmen talk about serving their country, and coming home and then having to deal with segregation. Literal goddamned heroes whose fighter groups never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action and who saved thousands of lives at the cost of a great many of their own...only to come back here and be told they couldn't use the same damn sink or toilet as everybody else.

And today, if these supposed "Conservatives" these Republicans who are nothing but traitors to not only Abraham Lincoln but every other President before Trump ever get their way, subtler but more insidious restrictions on voting will bring some of that shit back.

If you're Okay with that, FUCK YOU!

If you're Okay with Republican Federal and State representatives passing around young girls and using them for sex, FUCK YOU!

Look, I don't give a damn, I was taught that shit like that was wrong and I see far too damned many conservatives these days doing nothing but making lots of excuses for every bit if illegal, immoral and wrong shit that comes down the pike.

And it's entirely because these fucking idiots don't believe in America, they believe in ancient paradigms of altar and throne, that men of power can do as they please, and that financial corruption and moral lasciviousness are the material rewards of power and of providing the Bread and Circuses culture war-fighting bullshit that the conservative masses crave. 

Embody our grievances, no matter how much they're nothing but bullshit, performative insecurity and simple, base prejudice, and you can do as you goddamned well please. That is exactly what Republican voters have been telling these fucking people for fifty years. Message received, apparently.

Why? Because the truth is none of these fucking people believe in America or conservatism or God anyway, not by any standard of morality or policy or practice worth mentioning, at least. There is no greater evidence that it's all bullshit...that it always was all bullshit...that not only does nothing matter, but nothing ever did, than the conduct of the modern conservative Republican.

All God, or anything else is to these motherfuckers is a club to beat others about the head with, or a scam to enrich themselves. And I spent all my breaks and a good amount of the time I spent cleaning the break rooms and dining areas getting my nose rubbed in this bullshit last night.

I used to be a Republican. I remember when Newt Gingrich got stripped of his speakership and run out of Congress for a hell of a lot less than what Matt Gaetz did. But Newt didn't have the Q-Anon crowd...a conspiracy theory that's supposedly against pedophiles...trying to cover for his ass or claim that this is some kind of elaborate sting operation or something something Gazpacho. All things considered, the devil's had a pretty good day, and he mostly has the Evangelicals to thank for it.

And all this energy and time is, fundamentally, being wasted on people who suck at everything.

There's this video I've seen going around of Marjorie Taylor Greene overdramatically deadlifting a whole 50 pounds, and then kipping a bunch of pull-ups. That is not the correct way to do them. Any high school gym teacher, much less professional physical trainer or, god forbid, military drill instructor would rightly call that cheating...as well as dangerous because it can fuck up your back and shoulders...and rip you a new asshole for it. This is not how you do PT.

And she calls that her "COVID protection."

Bitch you can't even do pull-ups right. Show me you can do one hour of proper physical training and do it the right way, the first time, and then we'll talk. Of course, I know she wouldn't even if she were aware of me saying that. These people think they're too good to have to live by the same laws and rules and standards as the rest of us.

And the truth is, no amount of physical fitness by itself will protect a person from the virus.

And we have allowed These Fucking People into our public life and public services, and to dominate one side or our politics to the point where it's easier for a sane Republican to go and become a Democrat without changing much (if any) of their views these days, than it is to try and stand up for intelligence and reason and sanity on their own side of the political aisle way.

And it's been that way for nearly 20 years, at least.

Well I'm fucking tired of it. The more serious question here is, why aren't you?

There people need to be taught, again, that there are greater powers in the universe than their own egos.

As it is, it's not just that they're going to hell, they're trying to drag the rest of us down there with them.

It's Good Friday. Together we rise, or none of us do.

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.

Part Two.