Muzzling the Ox (Fight The Memeocracy, Part Six.)

For the scriptures say thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. And, The laborer is worthy of his reward. ~1st Timothy 5:18

So, my work is raising wages.

This is something that's badly needed because since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown and coming back to work...we can't keep people, which makes the job harder (no matter what it is) and since people can go to MacDonald's or Walmart (among other places) and make more money, well, lots of people have done exactly that. It's capitalism and a free society, yo. People are going to react accordingly.

(As for the header photo, this is the future Republicans want.)

Anyway, this week when the announcement was made that in June they're giving us all a raise, some people, mostly older white people, complained about it. As if it was the worst thing in the world that somebody else might be making the same amount of money as them. Apparently, some people value the idea that they make 18 cents an hour more than some other person MORE than they value their own wages going up if somebody else's go up too.

Apparently, relative status is one hell of a drug. 

Much of the sniping back and forth that I've heard and seen about this is all between older white conservatives. What those people think about the rest of us including our Native American employers I'm not going to bother to speculate, I already get the idea.

Apparently, one hell of a lot of Americans are Stockholm Syndromed to some really fucked up stuff.

Meanwhile, As I've said before America is not working out for a lot of Americans. 

And some of the people that I know are just fine with that, if it gives them a tiny little sense of superiority for five seconds.

And on top of that, some people, politicians and religious nuts especially, would rather force women to have babies than make sure that they can support a family...and meanwhile no one, absolutely NO ONE, has the least bit of interest in telling men (particularly white conservative men) to control themselves, keep it in their pants, pay attention to their own religion's teachings regarding sexuality, or even practice safe sex...let alone act like respectable human beings or stick around to support a family. No, the onus for all that is placed on literally everybody else, up to and including the government and our social safety net...which a hell of a lot of these fucking people then in the next breath say they want to get rid of. How in the hell does any of this make sense?

I'm serious, this one weird old white lady that I work with thinks the company shouldn't raise wages and the government should just get rid of all that unemployment and welfare stuff and force people to come back to work. I tried to tell her that it simply won't work that way. She wouldn't hear it. When I point out that in a couple years she'll be on social security...well that's different. But then it always is, isn't it?

Low wages, more people, no protections and fewer resources for those people except for more and more guns with continually less and less restriction on their possession and use, it seems to me that this adds up to a dangerous powder keg that directly contradicts what conservatives say they want, which is supposedly an orderly, static society with them in charge that's kept in place by the use of force. Oh, don't get me wrong, there'd be plenty of that at least in the beginning, until law enforcement and eventually military forces were gradually overwhelmed by (or joined with) vast mobs of armed desperate people. I realize these same fucking people think that they'll have a corps of armed, radicalized followers they can put between themselves and any opposition while they escape, but what happens when those people don't have anything either, when your followers are hungry too they tend not to keep following you if something better turns up, and where do these fucking idiots think they're going to go? Relative status only holds things together for so long when things start to unravel.

Ideology first becomes cold comfort, and then no comfort at all, when reality says you're broke and so is everyone around you.

I've never been especially poor, but in the part of Northern Michigan where I spent my teenage years, generational poverty and poor health outcomes are endemic, and for the most part if people find a way out they don't come back. For those who can't get out, don't have the resources or fail to make the leap from poverty to adequacy, despair, drugs, escapism of every kind, Fundamentalist religion, mental illness political radicalization and weird sexual bullshit tend to fill in the gap and distract people from their bad quality of life. The Prosperity Gospel false religion is particularly rampant in an under-most-people's-radar sort of way.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of low-wage service jobs, especially during the summer tourist season, and a fair number of decent working people actually do them, but especially in the various small cities up there, immigrants and Jamaican seasonal workers have been doing most of those jobs for 25 years. (Enough so that Black and Biracial people are now a visible minority in Northern Michigan.)

And I'm here to tell you, Republicans hate those people (and by extension, love the hard-working Jamaicans with whom they share some values, like homophobia, and who don't vote in this country) or at least they used to. 

The shitty old Elks Club motherfuckers that I used to know, used to drink with and play golf (badly) with, they think it's all a big joke and if the rednecks knew what those old country club guys said about them in private...they would never vote Republican again. George W. Bush and even Dick Cheney were the fucking exception. Think Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, The Koch Bros and What Became of Charlton Heston. Well, that was 20 years ago, since then the Tea Party and then Trump came along and the people with all the crazy issues and the weird sexual bullshit are the only ones who are left...well, them and Ted Cruz///and it's like these new ones looked at the shitty old guys I used to know and said to the Universe at large "Hold my beer."

In point of fact, most of those old guys, the ones who are still alive anyway, they're not even Republicans anymore, or they're Never Trump Republicans. Most of them just got left behind somewhere along the way. For one guy that I know, it was the racists coming out of the woodwork. For another it was people like Caitlin Jenner and Milo Yiannopolous. The paths to extinction are many and varied.

If anything, the Tea Party and Trump interlude may well go down as a pleasant interlude before the storm. I'm 100% serious here. This bullshit is getting worse.

The absolute worst tendencies of the old shitty Elks Club motherfuckers are combining with the addiction to relative status of the base, the conspiracy-theory driven bullshit of the Trump years and a bottomless, vast nihilism that only seems to get worse by the day. If it's not stopped, this is going to end with Americans shooting at each other, them first and then the rest of us shooting back in self-defense. 

Odds are, as it did after 1/6 the State will act to save itself, and there's simply too many of the rest of us in a lot of places. But, given the balkanization and polarization that Republicans have created it's inevitable that they'll end up with enough assets to set themselves up if they decide to break off a piece of America for themselves...an outcome I've viewed as possible since about 2006 and as increasingly likely since 2015 or so. But for some people the bloodshed, carnage and cruelty will be the point.

We're dealing with people who think every enemy of America from the Confederate Army to the Nazis to the Bosnian Serbs to the fucking Taliban were the good guys.

So yeah...

They'll have a little fascist banana republic and their base won't care, so long as this person makes ten cents more than that person, and so on ad infinitum...and one has more bananas than the other does. I guarantee you whatever media services they have will endlessly trumpet the immorality of all of us who are on the other side making $15 an hour or whatever and just trying to live our lives

Because in Republican-land, just trying to live your life without the Party or religion (or both) signing off on it is immoral, and how you live has to be approved of as well.

(This is, mind you, not what I was taught and I used to be both a Christian and a Republican.)

And if you won't go along, or you protect yourself from this shit in any way or you end up on the other side of the line? Get used to this kind of bottomless disrespect and hate. These people think you shouldn't get shit in a paper bag when they think you're on their side and increasingly, they'll tell you it right to your face.

A hat shop in Nashville started selling yellow Star of David patches with "Not Vaccinated" on them, sparking accusations of Anti-Semitism and a national backlash. The owner blames everybody but herself for this. Because of course, nothing is ever the shitty old white person's fault.

Except, wait for it, not everybody thinks that.

The Stetson company has apparently severed ties with the hat shop over this bullshit and deservedly so. Trust me, conservatives love that brand. This is absolutely going to leave a mark.

I can't wait for Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to argue on the Senate Floor that the Cowboy Hat industry should be de-facto nationalized as a result.

And arguing that every single aspect of life should be subordinated to government and religion (but only when its theirs and they have an iron grip on power, otherwise it's Yippee-aye-yay, LIVE FREE OR DIE MOTHERFUCKER!) is exactly what they are doing and will continue to do. 

Party of Small Government (TM) my ass. And they're mad because everybody from corporations to common citizens to members of the government and military are doing whatever they can to defend America from this bullshit.

Literally everything these motherfuckers ever said was a lie to cover for the worst aspects of humanity. People like Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, John McCain, etc. they were just part of the cover, camouflage that was discarded when the assholes, the fanatics and the racists felt like they didn't need it anymore.

I mean, I get it, when you can get people to believe that their own employer, a private corporation, raising their own or somebody else's wages due to free market forces in order to remain competitive in a free market system and attract workers in a free society is somehow a bad thing, you really don't have to bother with much in the way of excuses anymore.

Relative status is a hell of a drug. So is Fentanyl, just sayin.'

The only true thing some of those old Republicans ever said was that they hated their voters.

Thing is, some of those voters sign up to be hated, because that's what they think life is.

If we want to remain a free society where one can choose such things as where they work and go somewhere else if it's not enough, we're going to have to address this issue.

If we want a better country, we do indeed have to be better citizens.

Part Five.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

I'm getting really tired of "Communism." (Fight The Memeocracy, Part Five.)

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

Evidently, at some point this morning Robert Reich got into an argument with Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter, which is a little like me getting into an "argument" with my Schnauzer, as in, I'm saying words while he just drools on the carpet and ignores me. 

I mean, the fuck? 

You stupid bitch.

Let me repeat myself yet again, Communism hasn't even been a thing since 1989, my Mom and I watched it fall live on CNN while we ate a Dominos supreme pizza and I complained about there being black olives on it. I cannot stress this enough, Communism literally has not been a thing since November of 1989 and I'm sorry, but you'd have to be fucking retarded to think otherwise.

It's gone, it doesn't exist, even the Chinese are not Communist anymore except in terms of political theory and lately they're mostly using that as a cover while they're exploring switching to outright fascism on the advice of American advisors connected to Peter Theil.

More to the point, you dumb broad, you realize you're arguing with Robert Reich, right?

You know, the guy who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor during one of the most explosive periods of economic growth in the history of this country, and the world for that matter. Maybe if MTG wasn't too busy going full Fatal Attraction on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez she might know that.

Of course, the actual issue here is that she almost certainly does know this, or something like it. 

And it's always about "Real hard work" and "Building the Economy" until it isn't and you wake up one morning to find that the Leader and a bunch of cronies you never heard of before are the only ones who have any money and that you can go to jail for even asking "Why?"

Marge just hopes she'll be the Leader, or at least one of the cronies. In the sense of what's left of the Republican Party at least, she's already most of the way there.

And this is going to end badly.

I mean this is literally the case every fucking time you run this experiment. Plug in whatever other variables you want, God, Guns, the Great Pumpkin, it always ends up the same way. 

Here's how it ends: Somebody else has ALL of whatever it is while you're left with nothing, bathing and shitting in the same water-filled bomb crater and avoiding getting murdered or raped by the armies clashing in the streets, and then the fascist leadership offs themselves so they don't get put on trial by the invading armies and held accountable for their crimes. 

Or they get ganked by partisans and hung from a gas station canopy. Then you still have a better than average chance of ending up with nothing, subsisting on food aid from the allied coalition that liberated your country and whatever you can grow in flower pots at the refugee camp. But at least you're alive and you can stand there and listen to some old guy say a few words about freedom before going on about your day.

And then somebody else comes along and offers you cabbages and you vote for them because well, hot damn, you didn't have any before.

And then some other idiot pops up, calling them Communist for not hoarding the vegetables.

I mean, fucking seriously, does this stupid bullshit ever stop?! 

Communism has literally not been a thing since 1989, while Fascism is continually trying to reboot itself and infect the system...and if you don't think that's what calling universities "Communist" is, you have another thing coming. 

Likewise, with calling the Labor Secretary who presided over one of the most capitalistic periods of American history and certainly of my own lifetime a "Communist." Normal, sane people don't do shit like this.

I was a Republican in the 1990's. I served in the Air Force, got hurt in a car accident, got out and it took me awhile to get back on my feet again, but by the later part of the 1990's I was working two jobs and had a profitable small business on the side and my income never even noticed that the dot-com bubble popped, although the profession I was getting an education to go into sure did and as a result I've never really used my degree all that much. But suffice it to say I never had much of an objection to the economic policies of the Clinton years, or the early Bush years, instead most of the objections I had were on moral grounds.

But of course the lady who cheats on her husband with a bevvy of ugly Crossfit clients and pushes a slew of conspiracy theories and Anti-Semitism while heaping abuse on Latina co-workers can't really say much about that, can she?

I am completely not kidding, the immorality of it all just plain makes me angry.

If Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz or Wheelie-Ghoul Madison Cawthorn worked any other job in this country they'd get fired for cause, denied unemployment, and likely investigated for and arrested for crimes committed on the job...much less their assorted activities away from the workplace.

And they'd deserve it.

But they're in Congress so, NOPE, it's all good, at least if you're a Republican who bows down before that golden statue of Donald Fucking Trump!

This shit is disgusting.

And note I say that as somebody who used to be a Republican.

Can't these fucking people just let the rest of us alone? I'm honestly sick of their bullshit.

Of course the truth is, they fucking can't, they're pathologically incapable of it until you knock their fucking teeth out of their head and then they'll spend the rest of their lives resenting you for it because these people just aren't wired right in the goddamn head.

We as a culture, as a society, need to learn the word "No." We need to figure the fuck out that no amount of money is worth certain things. That those with money have to be held to the same standards as the rest of us, and that money or social status or the ability to talk real good don't grant a person special rights.

We need to internalize the ability to not care if these motherfuckers are mad. We need to be able to say "Go ahead and be mad, I don't give a shit" and fucking mean it, and punch them right square in the face if they try their bullshit again.

And we need to face the fact that a broken culture has created a situation where a third of the population is just plan evil, mentally broken and/or morally deviant, and we need to start addressing this problem right the fuck now.

The idea here is to deprive them of power and strip them of influence so all they can do is gum their food while staring at the TV in impotent rage, or perhaps crash wedding parties at their stupid resort to ramble about the "Good old days" or what the fuck ever. The only reasons these goddamned idiots ever got so much power were Fox News and voter apathy.

And it still baffles me how it took so long for people to get that a network with an unhealthy focus on US politics that's owned by Australian and Saudi Arabian uber-wealthy people might be a bad actor.

And it took people who effectively believe that "Fox News is too liberal" getting to Congress for that shit to really set in. Think about that for a second.

And we need to face the fact that we have a political party in this country that demands you be a member of it first, and all other things after that, even your family rates like sixth or seventh on the list. In most places, that's a cult...and that's what the Republicans have become. All other things must fall before a Republican dogma that is so shitty they can't even tell us what it is most of the time, and when we find out...well even they don't want to own up to it.

If such is the case, why believe it at all?

Of course the answer is, a lot of them don't, they're just utterly amoral people, moral Black Holes who will do or say anything to get what they think they want, if Communism was a sure path to power, they'd take that on-ramp too and don't let them fool you. Just don't expect them to really believe it.

Think I'm wrong? East Germany was full of Communists that used to be Nazis, but were given a pass because the Soviets needed people to run the local government. And modern Republicans are just itching to be somebody else's colonial administration, just so that somebody else meets certain...expectations...and looks a certain way while offering them a regime of petty cruelties to enforce.

I'm getting tired of accusations of Communism from people who'd happily sign on to any totalitarian regime they thought looked like them.

If you want to stop that crap, you know what the answer is.

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

You have to show up, and you have to keep showing up.

And we have to do it forever, we can't snooze on anything.

They sure won't.

Part Four.

What's even the endgame here? (Fight The Memeocracy, Part Four)

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

A couple days ago, Madison Cawthorn said that the British would not have surrendered at Yorktown if George Washington had been wearing a mask.

Excuse me?

First of all, George Washington took steps to expose troops under controlled conditions to diseases like Malaria and Smallpox in order to immunize them and prevent disease outbreaks among his soldiers. 

Second, as regards Yorktown in particular, General Charles Cornwallis and his army of British regulars and German Hessians knew they were fucked. They were caught between American and French land forces and the French Navy at sea, they had endured daily bombardments for over three weeks and made several failed attempts to break the siege or spike American and French guns (partially successful, but the guns were repaired each time) and they'd lost their outer defensive works. The British had even tried to evacuate, getting only a few hundred soldiers out before the weather bottled their ships up in harbor and their remaining ships were destroyed. Legend has it that a cannonball from the final volley of artillery fire smashed through Cornwallis's dinner table. 

There effectively was no room for any funny stuff by that point, and in fact, as a final slight to Washington, Cornwallis himself did not attend the surrender ceremony, instead delegating that duty to his executive officer, Brigadier Charles O'Hara. George Washington in fact refused to accept his surrender and forced O'Hara to surrender to his own second in command, Benjamin Lincoln. Yorktown was the last major action of the Revolutionary War

All that was just off the top of my head, see, I had to slog through learning this history in elementary and middle school...because I went to Christian schools and at the time. Christians were obsessed with pre-modern American history, from Columbus to the signing of the Constitution, but with particular emphasis in the Lutheran school (in California, mind you) on the Pilgrims and various English explorers and (incidentally) pirates...because a fair number of pirates, particularly those of New Providence in the Caribbean (today part of Colombia) were Puritans, and in fact were a branch-off of the American Puritans, which included the Pilgrims and shit.

That summer, when a bunch of us went to a Christian camp up in the mountains we all had great fun singing "Yo ho ho it's a Pirate's life for me" because of that.

The next year, we moved and I switched schools to the same Catholic school a couple of my Mexican friends went to, I got a huge dose of the history of the Conquistadors and the Missions in California and, incidentally, Native American history as well, not only the history of the Mission Indians but also because that school had a fair number of Native students...mainly military dependents who had one or both parents stationed at either MCAS El Toro or MCAS Tustin.

For fuck's sake, I can still quote from Johnathan Edwards "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God" from memory, Colonial American history is like catnip to conservative Christians, I'm serious.

So it's really no wonder, especially considering the political situation in the UK right now, that yahoos like Madison Cawthorn are effectively saying they want to give it all back, with the accrued interest of 245 years of American expansion. 

That might conflict with his oath to the Constitution, though.

And since they couldn't find some way to get most of us to go along with their selling America out to a foreign power (though it was mainly the Russians, in real terms) Republicans tried to get Americans to ignore COVID-19 and hope it would go away...and all the evidence points to them doing this because they wanted even more people to die than actually did.

A year and a half into this thing, with the disease itself beginning to be under control in the United States, and they're still pushing this crap.

There's only one real problem with all that. It's their voter base that primarily believes them. Effectively, they've ended up killing one hell of a lot of their own people and they seem intent on killing still more. The general idea seems to be that they figure that way rich people will save a few cents on their tax bill or some such bullshit.

And there's still, after all this, people buying into this stupid, selfish ideology who are willing to throw themselves under the bus so rich people can pay a tiny bit less in taxes or whatever.

And of course, "Conservatives" justify this by insinuating to people that if they believe in it hard enough they might get rich too, or alternatively if it wasn't for [Insert out-group of choice here] they might be rich already, while making sure it's as hard as possible for people to get the education (and fat and happy on various forms of bread and circuses so they don't have the initiative) that they'd need to actually have the knowledge and the skills to become wealthy. 

And of course, education has its own way of undermining the current forms of conservatism that are in fashion, so there's that, too.

So Republicans want you to be dumb, poor and sick while having no faith in or knowledge of your own country (despite all their own jingoistic braying like jackasses) and for all intents and purposes they don't really seem to even care about their own professed religion except that they seem to want to usher as many people as possible into heaven or hell on their watch.

Democracy (and politics in general) is a numbers game and your power derives from the position you have, not the idealization that you want. Republicans seem to have the two confused, and along the way they've allowed their Party to become a home for every shitty ideology known to man and I'm sure they're working on concocting worse ones to justify the next wave of cockamamie bullshit already.

Of course this is what happens when you mistake memes (internet-based or otherwise) for ideas and don't investigate anything past how you initially "feel" about it. When you spend your life reacting to everything on a gut level, you're going to get some shit wrong.

But lately it seems that's all they do.

What's even the endgame here?

Note I ask this as a former Republican myself, I can't even recognize these people anymore.

Part Four.

Tell The Fucking Story. Ask The Fucking Question. (Fight The Memeocracy, Part Three.)

Capt. Ramsey: Think it was a mistake, Mr. Hunter?

Hunter: Sir?

Capt. Ramsey: Using the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hunter: Well, if I thought that, sir, I wouldn't be here.

Capt. Ramsey: Interesting way you put that.

Hunter: How'd I put it, sir?

Capt. Ramsey: Very carefully. [Chuckles]

[Men laughing]

Capt. Ramsey: You do qualify your remarks. If someone asked me if we should bomb Japan, a simple "Yes. By all means sir, drop that fucker, twice!"

[Men laughing]

Capt. Ramsey: I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'course, that's the way the Navy wants you. Me, they wanted simple.

Hunter: Well, you certainly fooled them, sir.

Ramsey: [chuckles] Be careful there, Mr. Hunter. It's all I've got to rely on, being a simple-minded son of a bitch. Rickover gave me my command, a checklist, a target and a button to push. All I had to know is how to push it, they'd tell me when. They seem to want you to know why.

Hunter: I would hope they'd want us all to know why, sir.

The other day, Ted Cruz shared this Russian propaganda video, which shows scenes of Russian soldiers doing PT, paratroopers jumping out of an IL-76 Candid transport, and a soldier firing a bolt action rifle from a prone position in the snow...with this same thousand yard stare spliced in throughout. I don't speak Russian, and neither does Ted Cruz to my knowledge so I'm just going to run with the theory that Ted got a boner off of whatever imagery he thinks the Russian propagandists were trying to convey.

(Mind you, I can point to half a dozen US military recruiting ads I've seen just in the last 24 hours without even going looking for them that are better-done iterations of the same exact theme.)

The video then cuts to a cartoon of a young woman with two Moms, doing routine family stuff and protesting for equality and LGBT rights, and the narrator of this video talks about her Moms getting married, about graduating at the top of her high school class and then joining the Army, ending with a scene of a female recruit on an obstacle course, and then with the actual Soldier introducing herself. 

It's well done, my only objection to it at all is it's a cartoon...but then everything gets turned into cartoons these days and I suppose if you want to reach the young people who are why this is so, you probably are going to have to make some cartoons. 

So, on balance, I'm just fine with that. Unlike the Russian military, the United States Armed Forces is an all-volunteer force and you have to do what you have to do in order to recruit enough people from a diverse and ever-changing population to get the job done. That's just the facts of life and the truth is, it's literally been that way for just a bit longer than I've even been alive.

As I've discussed elsewhere, people have lots of different reasons for enlisting, and the military has always had to pay attention to that because, like it or not, right or wrong, since the draft ended in 1973 the military has to put itself out there like any other employer, although the truth is it did that before, too. We as a people (Unlike a majority of the Russians, I should add) have always had strong currents of initiative and volunteerism when it comes to this stuff. We've also always had a lot of people with a restless desire to see the world and a low budget for doing so on their own terms, and these are always things that the government and the military have sought to take advantage of. Yes, I used that word on purpose, though I do not do so in a negative light. It's simply a fact of life that our country is not based on some authoritarian ideal and we have to give people a reason to do stuff. So, for the most part, we do.

And we have always, always, either at the time or after the fact, given these people recognition and told their stories, for recruiting purposes if nothing else. It's as simple as that. It's ever and always a numbers game, not only a question of quality but one of quantity as well, and trying to make sure you have both and have it in the right place at the right time and well-supplied enough to get the job done. If that sounds grim, well it kind of is, and if that bothers you...good. This stuff isn't really supposed to be fun, but recruiters have to make it look as appealing as possible, hence the cartoons.

Hence, as I've written before, things like me standing at attention and sweating in dress uniform in a university auditorium while some old black dude who was a Tuskegee Airman and a no-shit fucking hero back in the day talks about the difficulty of doing something as simple as getting gas in Cairo, Illinois, during segregation...or of finding a place to stay in Tennessee or getting lunch in Louisiana or finding a place to take a shit in Mississippi.

Sometimes, people are just owed respect, and owed a chance to tell their story as a goddamned fucking courtesy and I cannot and will not tell you it any other way.

And sometimes, it's going to be your duty to stand there and fucking listen, so that others will see and so that they will know that said acknowledgement is being given, because in a liberal democracy public opinion and public perception of the Armed Forces and the State are metrics that matter. 

Because hey, there might be people in the crowd who are thinking of signing up!

We don't "Deserve" her story "shoved down our throats." She goddamned well deserves a right to tell her story and hey, somebody figured out how we can actually use this to get more people to enlist!

From a literally American perspective, isn't that a win for all sides?

Isn't that the kind of thing we say we want?

I mean, for fuck's sake they even do similar things in places like Russia and if anything, they probably do them even more there than we do here because it's even more of a survival issue in authoritarian states with conscript armies and throughout the former East Bloc and Soviet states there are monuments and parades and laws granting recognition aplenty to the Heroes of the Great Patriotic War and the Warrior Internationalists of the misbegotten Soviet adventure in Afghanistan because of it.

Right-wingers have this angry stupid delusion that some godlike authoritarian figure will just say "Jump" and they'll all snap to attention instantly and say "HOW HIGH, SIR?!?"

One only needs to look at the last five years to see how much pure unadulterated horse shit that is. Authoritarian governments often have very high amounts of avoidance of military service, because they're authoritarian governments and serving in those countries itself tends to be shitty.

One of my best friends in college was a veteran of the Egyptian Army, a conscript who spent his time as a gunner on an M1A1 Abrams tank. While the military in Egypt is very highly regarded by the public and one of the few aspects of the State considered to be entirely an institution of the People...and as the world saw during the Arab Spring, it's also often legitimately seen as a bulwark against certain excesses by the State...my friend often likened his service to a prison sentence.

Given the conditions he described to me through clouds of Hookah smoke, he ain't wrong.

That's how military service and public opinion often come together for the global Other Half. Think about that for a second.

We all ought to be damned grateful that Emma gets to be in a cartoon while promoting an ethic of volunteerism and national service.

And speaking, somewhat uncomfortably, of things like public opinion...

...Especially keeping in mind that I'm a former conservative and Republican myself...

I can remember when shit like this would've gotten Ted Cruz run straight out of Texas on a fucking rail.

I can remember when saying anything in favor of Russia or the Soviet Union might get you beat up. 

I can remember when doing something like sharing Russian/Soviet propaganda would have literally been the end of any conservative politician's career...and they weren't all Republicans, either.

And I can remember an even longer period of time, like literally my whole life before the last five years, where talking shit about the United States Army for any reason would have been the end of any Republican.

So, perhaps the question is, if being a United States Army Corporal with two mommies is not acceptable to these chucklefucks, then what the hell is?

Oh, right, goddamn, I'm sorry I asked.

Anthony Bouchard, a Wyoming state senator and the son of a bitch they dug up to run against Liz Cheney...just created a massive scandal for himself, supposedly attempting to prevent a media expose' about the fact that when he was 18 he got a 14-year old girl pregnant. That he married her does not make it right.

Where I come from, that's called Statutory Rape and the old hard-edged conservative in me says this dude shouldn't be running for Congress, he should be running from jailhouse booty bandits. Is that wrong for me to think that? Well, I'm here to tell you in the (now-deceased) Republican Party that I came up in, such a thing would've been a common sentiment...right or wrong.

But today that guy is a candidate, likely running with the backing of the party establishment (you know, the people who taught me this stuff, or at least their ideological descendants) and it's Liz Cheney of all fucking people who is seen as the outlier.

The girl committed suicide, and their son won't talk to this asshole, so I have to assume there's a reason for that.

There was a time, if you'd asked me, that I'd have told you conservatism and Republicanism were all about family, and morals, built on the basis of revealed truth and the wisdom of our ancestors. Change was fine, but let's be careful about it, you know?

Nowadays it's not any of that. Nowadays they could give a fuck about family or values, they just want an excuse to fuck teenagers.

If there's any such thing as Republican family values it's that Republicans literally only value one kind of family, until they don't.

Hatred of social change is just an excuse for all that. 

Conservatism as it is, has become nothing more than a meme to be used to excuse and justify bad behavior and shitty treatment of others, throw in glamorizing and glorifying our national enemies for a few shitty culture warrior bonus points...and don't forget to add in stealing a bunch of money.

Now, these people want to do nothing more than shout "Yee-haw" while placing the rest of us in harm's way. People like Red Cruz would rather get their ass conquered by the Russians and live in bomb shelters in a disease-ridden, irradiated wasteland than live in a changing, diverse, liberalizing America where they might have a little less power and have to learn to do with just a little less money.

And the last thing they'd ever want you to know is why.

Now the question is, what are we going to do about this crap? Because if we won't do something about it, nothing else matters. Another lesson I learned back in the day was "You get what you tolerate."

Tell the fucking story. Ask, and answer, the fucking question. 

"Why?"

Hold those that are in power accountable and make them answer you. And if you don't like the answer, hold them accountable again and get them out.

Change the fucking meme. Period.

Not only while we still can, but because we still can. Yes, we can.

That is all.

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

Choose languageAfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBanglaBasqueBelarusianBosnianBulgarianBurmeseCatalanCebuanoChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKinyarwandaKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianNepaliNorwegianNyanjaOdiaPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScottish GaelicSerbianShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSouthern SothoSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTatarTeluguThaiTurkishTurkmenUkrainianUrduUyghurUzbekVietnameseWelshWestern FrisianXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Part Two.

Immanentizing The Eschaton, Revisited (Fight The Memeocracy, Part Two.)

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

Earlier this week, I saw this. Nothing much to see here, just Elizabeth Bruenig, a New York Times columnist, advocating for some sort of Theocratic Monarchy, ideally ruled by decree by Jesus Christ Himself, in the United States of America.

If you would have told younger, conservative, Christian me this would happen 20 or 30 years ago, I would have punched you right in the mouth.

Among other things, God simply does not work that way.

On a fundamental level, belief requires faith. Faith requires unanswered, indeed unanswerable-in-this-life questions, or it isn't faith, it's certainty. In real life, God does not show up and say "Hey, I'm God" and do a few miracles and say "Worship me." Also Jesus is not an American citizen and was not born here, and there'd be some Constitutional issues involved, not to mention the whole damn point of this country.

God does not get a vote here.

Nor do prophets or Saviors.

Plenty of people have tried to claim that label though, usually with some really fucked up results.

And I'm sorry, but I've been either a religious or more loosely 'Spiritual' person for my whole life, and certainty is something to which no one is entitled.

To expect the Creator of the Infinite Universe to violate His own laws and the way that He set things up...just so you can finally put down your childish fears and embrace your even-more-childish needs to bow to authority or strut around claiming your own rightness...for fuck's sake it's positively asinine. 

I mean, who the fuck does this person even think she is?

I was raised Christian. I went to Christian schools. I was literally taught to read and write with the Bible as a major part of the curriculum on some level until I finally enrolled in public schools as an eighth grader because my Mom and I moved across the country.

I was taught God just does not work that way. God does not magic the universe around to suit our needs, rather, we have to do the work of life. I'm not really a fan of the old saying "God helps those who helps themselves" but in a certain sense, it is accurate. You have to do your part, but sometimes God or the Universe or whatever you want to call it might help you along, too.

Thing is, God, or rather childish, unthinking belief in God certainly enables a hell of a lot of people who don't want to "help themselves" to make a good living, or maybe just get by, at somebody or everybody else's expense, too.

While I'm at it, in terms of secular history, the track record of Philosopher Emperors and kings and such is not actually so great either. I've read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius several times over. They were mostly composed while Marcus was on campaign in Germania, during seasonal pauses in operations and when he was ill. History knows Marcus Aurelius as the last of the Five Good Emperors who defined Second Century Rome and the Empire's high water mark, but to his contemporaries, the Caesar was more General than Emperor and his son who would succeed him, Commodus, turned out to not much be up to the task and was ultimately assassinated.

Plenty of European kings have tried to claim they were philosophers, usually with poor results. 

In history there have been a few, some of the Greek and Roman philosophers, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Saladin. Mohandas K. Ghandi, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, I'm sure you can think of others you believe fit the bill. But the point is, Leaders or notable would-be leaders who exhibit a true spiritual nature are rather rare for a reason.

Things of the spirit and things of this world require different sets of attributes. Good leaders are, fundamentally, pragmatic, tempering their personal impulses and spirituality with enough belief in reality that they're not going to try to immanentize some sort of eschaton.

Some of our Presidents have actually made some respectable (or not) attempts, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, Reagan, either Bush, and of course Barack Obama. Along the way, these people have collectively defined Americanism and what a lot of people refer to (often disparagingly) as American Exceptionalism...and the truth is, those people are often not wrong in disparaging it and we as a people tend to deserve their doing so.

And there ain't a single damn one of them who ever, literally or figuratively just gave it all up and said "Jesus take the wheel" much less attempted to violate the laws of God and Man, much less reality or space and time, to make it so. God simply does not work that way. God cannot work that way, else He is not God.

Plato said that Man is but dust and shadow, I think you could make the argument that in that analogy, Plato's cave and Man being the shadows cast by the fire...well, if the fire gets too close the dust burns up and the shadow disappears. We, in this life, are not meant to stand before the divine. Indeed, according to Christian doctrine most of us simply would not be capable of it. You have to die first, that's why it's called the Afterlife.

This is why God in all of the Abrahamic faiths and the many related religions spoke through Prophets.

But there have been few, if any, modern prophets and the real ones do not seem to claim that label. Abraham Lincoln clearly spoke prophetically more than once, there are and have been others in all walks of life even just in our country. Bob Marley, Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain, Malcolm X, MLK...and I will say I have been blessed to know a person or two I've thought of as such. Speaking prophetically is about far more than telling the future, or being a spiritual leader, technically it requires neither of those things, only that one be able somehow to tap into the Divine Conversation, the ebb and flow of the Universe, whatever you want to call it and speak that which is true in such a way that people hear not only with their ears but with their souls. 

Such people tend to leave a mark on history, and in whatever capacity they were here for they tend to become legends.

But they also tend to be given temporal power only briefly, if at all, and usually for a specific purpose. And too often, they have their work undone by others. It's a hard way to go, and it's not always your choice.

Of course, none of that is what people like Elizabeth Bruenig want. They want to convert the Universe into their personal security blanket, effectively to undo all of reality to address the fear that gnaws at their souls.

And they want this crap no matter what it does to other people. 

Because, fundamentally, to people like this...other people simply don't exist, they aren't real, We're all just shadows on the cave wall. Ideas are more real than people to them and they live in constant, deadly fear that their ideas might be wrong. That's why so many of these motherfuckers end up being shitty little authoritarians who want to remake the universe in their own image.

Jesus said to Pontius Pilate "My Kingdom is not of this world."

And indeed, historically theocratic regimes usually end up as collapsing Empires ruled by craven, dishonest and incompetent men as they're overrun by somebody else's horde, or they're overthrown from within and turned into secular states when the people who have to live under that shit get tired of it, or they collapse under their own weight and become a bunch of smaller countries. The pages of history run red with this stuff.

But you can't tell that to these fucking people, or, more accurately they often just won't hear it.

Well, for all of our sakes somebody better start fucking listening. That's all.

Part One.

Fatal Distraction (Fight The Memeocracy, Part One.)

Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? ~George Carlin

...

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

Choose languageAfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBanglaBasqueBelarusianBosnianBulgarianBurmeseCatalanCebuanoChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKinyarwandaKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianNepaliNorwegianNyanjaOdiaPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScottish GaelicSerbianShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSouthern SothoSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTatarTeluguThaiTurkishTurkmenUkrainianUrduUyghurUzbekVietnameseWelshWestern FrisianXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Last week,, I saw this...rather creepy...exchange between MTG and Matt Gaetz. I guess they were talking about going to Arizona and holding one of their Substitute Trump-rallies there or something. I guess that didn't pan out, but let's look at this...

"Election Integrity."

Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins..

I can't imagine the DOJ trying to interfere with what the people of Arizona want...

You mean the people who voted Donald Trump and Martha McSally out? Is that "The People" you're talking about, you dumb hoe?

You mean the people whose votes you're actively trying to cancel, so you can try to bring Trump back in some kind of pale imitation of every dumb-ass, short-lived "Restoration of the Monarchy" that there ever was?

Look here, as one of The People (TM) I'm goddamned sick and tired of being used as a justification for Whatever Republicans Feel Like Doing Today, especially considering that it often directly contradicts what I was taught as a Christian, a conservative, and eventually a young Republican myself, 30 years ago.

Even a fair number of Republicans in Arizona are questioning this "Audit" and the demands and methods of the fly-by-night org conducting it. But then it's not like the name "Cyber Ninjas" doesn't itself invite such questioning, right?

Nor the fact that so far, everybody that these idiots have put in front of a camera is either a flaming racist or obviously fucking nuts. It seems to me that people ranting about stuff like Bamboo fibers and the Illuminati would cause certain questions to be asked, like "Are you insane?"

Their entire actual methodology so far seems to be "Get as many people's private information as possible" which makes me think that the whole goddamned thing is nothing but a scam and somebody's eventually going to try and rob an entire state or subject it to identity theft.

Of course, these are the same fucking people who just threw out Liz Cheney, of all fucking people, for being too honest.

Think about that for a second. 

This is the daughter of the guy who sent the world down a crazy rabbit hole and lit half the Middle East on fire over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that simply did not exist.

And all she actually did was admit that Trump lost and refuse to sign on to the Republican "Big Lie" that he didn't.

She did, for all intents and purposes, the literal minimum necessary.

And people have called her Presidential material because of it.

Why?

In the last five years, Republicans themselves have destroyed everything that they ever stood for or ever were before, and they did it for Donald Fucking Trump, who has basically thanked them for their trouble...for their constant abasement towards himself...by letting them twist in the wind. And what's worse, they're continuing to lie to themselves about how popular Trump is, and for what?

You can certainly make the argument that it's about power, or he lets them do what they want, or whatever, and in a sense you're not wrong, either.

And yet you are. It's not any of that...or I should say it's not just any of that. The truth is, if it was just any of that stuff they'd have gone with Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz. Please Clap.

The truth is so much more banal and idiotic, which just makes it worse.

They did this to themselves, and the country, for cheap internet fame.

Because whatever else Trump was, he was a fucking magnet for dumb shit on the internet. His capacity for saying stupid shit, his ugly orange mug, his rambling racism and various insults toward anything and everything made him an instant attention-grabber, an internet sensation whether you were against him or for him, and whether we like it or not these days we're all functionally held as a captive audience to some dumb shit that somebody saw on the internet.

And nobody knows this better than Republicans do, or former Republicans like me, particularly those of us who were stuck dealing with the crazy 20 years ago and should have seen all this coming.

And 20 years of Internet Nihilism and memes later, here we are. If anything, we're lucky things aren't much worse.

Internet Nihilism is a big part of what brought the world Vladimir Putin's long tenure, or Brexit, and the continuing viability of social heroin like fascism and racism.

1/6 was predicated on cheap internet fame. That's why the FBI could bust those people using their own social media posts as evidence. The Revolution will not be televised, it will be Facebooked and Hashtagged and Instagrammed and Twittered. "Look, Mom! I'm overthrowing the government!"

Think I'm wrong?

Standard capitalism or conservatism as written would impose constraints on people's behavior, and demands on people's efforts, energy and time. 

If you have to enforce what you say on the world stage ("invade everyone") up to and including potentially the use of force, that takes effort and requires a certain level of engagement with reality and you have to do stuff the right way or even more people die. For that matter, you also have to make sure what you say might even be a little accurate or it all falls apart no matter how much you bomb shit, or threaten to, and you look weak no matter how much bellowing and chest-thumping you do. (See Also, Kingdom, United; Post-Brexit.)

Likewise, standard capitalism ("Invite everyone") is a hungry beast that requires constant feeding or shit starts to backfire. You're always going to need more people. If you don't want to pay good wages and something happens (Like COVID-19 and assorted relief programs because of it) that enables them to, anybody who can is going to find ways to opt out of the system which means you're going to need even more new people and that's all there is to it. 

Human nature guarantees that no response to this short of raising wages, improving working conditions and dealing with the virus effectively is going to work. In point of fact, a hell of a lot of those people will end up expecting to have better jobs to go back to work to, and that those they consider to be of lesser status will have taken the jobs they had before...and this is and will be by no means exclusive to white people...and the sick part here is, under a standard capitalistic system with continual immigration they aren't actually wrong in real terms.

Under the kind of closed system that people like Matt Gaetz think they want, they'd find that not only a lot of white people, but many in more established black and brown communities simply don't want to do soul-crushing low-wage service industry type jobs...and in one hell of a lot of cases they'll go without before they go back to that shit. It's fundamentally a status thing. (Again, See Also; Kingdom, United: Post-Brexit.)

Is that wrong? Yes, it actually is in a moral sense, but that's how shit really works. 

No job should be soul-crushing. 

But, Try telling that to the asshole customers, particularly the anti-mask conservatives who are still wearing their Trump hats six months later, that I have to deal with every work night. These are the people who'll make a mess just so I have to clean it up, while thinking "Dance, monkey, dance!" and then they'll leave 23 cents on the counter by way of "compensation" knowing full well that I can't take tips.

If you want to actually change things, you have to make things better.

Of course that's exactly why conservatives are rabidly against making things any better.

They think it's somehow better to force people to do what they want, to not engage, to not speak to those they deem lesser than themselves. They might disparage George W. Bush for wanting to "Invade everywhere" but the truth is the modern Republicans who've succeeded and superseded him and his type think it would be ideal if they could just have men with guns force their way upon the world.

But in a democratic, capitalist, open society that requires engagement with the world to function, none of this works that way. There's always going to be resistance. And in a free country, eventually the other side is always going to start shooting back.

So, If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. Because if you don't, this is what you're going to get.

A video dropped last week of MTG going full Fatal Attraction outside of AOC's office in 2019. As Reed Galen remarks here she's one rabbit short of full Bunny Boiler crazy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is now in the position of filling the attention-void left by the banishment, collapse and subsequent wilting of Donald Trump. She's getting an assist from Matt Gaetz, but she doesn't really need it.

And MTG, who had this crazy meltdown in front of AOC's office in 2019, was literally a Conservative Internet Rando establishing her cred as an activist at the time.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Apotheosis of Cheap Internet Fame, at least Donald Trump had a business and stardom (however questionable on both counts) before he got into politics. Her entire bit, her entire operation could then and now be summed up as what I, frustrated, refer to as "Internet Dumb Shit" and she's ridden that lightning into being the person setting the tone for the future of the Republican Party.

I'm warning you now, that FOX News and people like Kevin McCarthy will never be able to catch up, much less keep up, if nothing else because they are not products of the Internet-driven Post-Information Age as much as MTG is. On the "Conservative" side of the fence it's her (and soon to be, people like her) that are running the show. I'm willing to bet that even Kevin McCarthy will have gone the way of Liz Cheney by November of next year.

Even Matt Gaetz is disposable, and MTG will shank him if his own scandal gets any worse...and the airheaded media will call her a hero for it.

I'm not going to lie, as disturbing as the thought is, it's worth noting that I think this probably won't be the first time or the only way she's fucked him, either.

As for Qevin McCarthy?

The knives are already out for his dumb ass. His last words may well be "Et Tu, Margie?"

Don't doubt that Lauren Blowbert will be his replacement as House Minority Leader, and the Republicans will hail this as part of some commitment to diversity, including intellectual diversity, claiming the high school dropout who worked at MacDonald's brings something to the table, and they'll get people like Newt Gingrich (who for all his faults, mind you, is a no-shit historian) to chime in on that act.

The mob will roar its approval.

And the rest of us had best prepare accordingly, and be prepared to do the work to stop this bullshit.

Otherwise, it's "Welcome to the Memeocracy."

Think I'm kidding? Start the clock and we'll see where they're at in a year. In a year, maybe less, MTG or somebody like her will have replaced Trump as the Republican Jesus.

Bet you it'll be worse than even I think it is. As certain friends of mine say, I've thought about it more than they have already.