We Return Fighting (American Revelation VII, Part Eight.)

We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.…

We return.

We return from fighting.

We return fighting.

~W.E.B. Du Bois

I saw this early this morning.

Paul Gosar, fundraising with white nationalists, again. Same shit, different day.

When a majority of the dude's nine siblings call him a traitor to this country and say he shouldn't be in Congress, maybe they have a point?

And of course, House Republican leadership won't do shit about it.

Of course, I find it interesting that a guy named Nick Fuentes thinks he has any business being a white supremacist or running an event called "White Boy Summer" to start with, but I'm sure I already thought about the implications of all that more than he did. Does this fool not realize that he associates himself with people who'd just as soon shoot him in the back for no better reason than his last name is Fuentes?

But it was the name of his little tour that sparked something in my brain and I spent a good chunk of the morning reading up on the Red Summer of 1919, an orgy of anti-Black violence by white people against Black folks (and in a number of cases, Black retaliation as well) in the middle of both the post-WWI economic downturn and the Great Migration, there were riots in 36 US cities and a couple of rural counties in Arkansas and Kentucky and a firefight between the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th US Cavalry and a posse of white men in Bisbee, Arizona. (For which, as it turns out, the troops went almost entirely unpunished except for a number of those involved being sent back to Fort Huachuca.)

All in all, the nascent FBI and other government agencies were more concerned about the possibility of Communist or Socialist infiltration or Union organizing of the Black people than they were with the criminality and violence against them, which in some cases was planned and very organized. 

102 years ago it was a Charleston shooting or a 1/6 every day that summer and nobody who was in power cared.

No, there was not one new thing in the Trump administration's Justice Department. In fact, this is the future conservatives want.

Republicans will, no doubt, try and bring up that the country was run by Democrats at the time, but the truth is Republicans now are closer to Woodrow Wilson than they were to Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan.

A friend of mine said years ago that Republicanism was dead, and most "Conservatives" were basically racist Democrats in the old Segregationist mode. That's what they want, basically.

"Nationalism" is just the label they thought was perhaps the most sanitary.

Over the last couple of weeks I've watched the conservative movement's descent into Anti-Americanism and ravening madness with a mix of anger and shame. I used to be a conservative, I'm a veteran. I was a Republican voter right up until Sarah Palin accepted the Vice Presidential nomination and I knew right then that things were officially fucked up beyond all recognition and there was no saving the situation. 

So I got out. It was all I could do.  It's only gone downhill from there.

These people are descending into madness, paranoia and racism, and they're positively enraged that they live in a country whose government is making an effort to treat all its people as citizens rather than their personal subjects.

They're planning something, too. That much seems fairly obvious. It won't be either well-planned or well executed, nor will it likely have any basis in reality, but it will happen, like a 21st century equivalent of Caligula sending Roman legions to collect sea shells so that he could claim to have conquered the ocean. But it'll get people killed, don't doubt that. These people are, as I've said before, trying to immanentize some kind of right-wing Eschaton and they're convinced that they're surrounded by heretics and traitors and that all manner of [what they imagine to be] evil forces are conspiring to stop them. In other words, whatever they're going to do is almost certainly based on fantasy rather than reality and that actually makes things even worse.

The rules of war presume competency, for example.

All type of people, Democrats in Congress, Leftist alarmists, members of government agencies and the military and political strategists alike presume we're dealing with people who will act in their own best interests, with some level of rational actors, and honestly they're doing that because, for many, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

We'd best get cracking on doing exactly that.

The truth is, this is going to be like that episode of the Twilight Zone where a bunch of milquetoast midwestern white people, having a cocktail party, hear on the radio that something is about to hit the Earth and they end up fighting over who gets to go in the one kooky neighbor's bomb shelter.

These fucking people, who've so far denounced most elements of government and society, including but not limited to higher education, law enforcement, the military, and whole industries as insufficiently "Conservative" for their purposes, have already voted most of the rest of us off the island.

What they want basically seems to be some kind of tightly controlled agrarian, anti-educational, anti-technological murder-ocracy like Khmer Rouge Cambodia, where everybody's either a serf, a servant of the elites or some kind of a soldier charged with keeping the serfs in line, where schools and universities have been converted to prisons and where anybody can be denounced by anybody for insufficient loyalty to The Party, and handed over to thugs who will beat a confession for "Crimes Against the People" out of whoever is available.

And since they can't, they'll accuse everybody else of trying to do exactly that because these people have all the awareness of a dog licking it's ass in the middle of the street. They are moral bottomless pits, a lot of them are just plain fucking nuts, and one hell of a lot of these people aren't very smart, either.

That doesn't make them less dangerous, it makes them much worse. Like I said, the rules of criminal proceedings, of evidence, of war and the prosecution of war crimes under international law all presume some level of competency.

To compare what they want to the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia is probably inaccurate. They likely would do worse and do it based on dumb shit conspiracy theories and internet woo woo, if they could, but there's a key caveat here.

Except of course, none of this will affect the "Conservative" elites, for whom it'll basically be The Killing Fields but with an Applebee's and a mall. 

These are the people who, when COVID-19 was at its worst, wanted life to go on as normal for themselves while the rest of us just died, and who saw the George Floyd protests as an opportunity to kill people. 

Adjust your expectations accordingly and stick to them, because it's going to get worse. We're finding out it already was worse, America under Trump came within a knife's edge of Apocalypse and all that stopped it was one General telling these assholes to go fuck themselves.

We could be dealing with the incomprehensible right now.

That cannot be stressed enough.

And the people responsible, or who are close to those who were? They think it's funny and that any attempt to find the truth, get to the bottom of things and restore the system to functionality is a big joke and should be met only with contempt.

You can't reason with that or expect bipartisanship, compromise or good faith from people who have that sort of attitude and worldview. It's these kind of people who have held America back so that the America of today is in some key ways not so different from the America of 102 years ago.

That is, in fact, what a key element of American conservatism is, maybe always was. Racism is the glue that holds their entire movement together, the only thing the wealthy will give to the common person to win them over.

You cannot reason with that or appeal to its better nature.

What can we do?

We wear down that glue until the whole mess falls apart.

We return fighting.

 

Critical (American Revelation VII: Part Seven)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Well let's see, it's been an eventful week or so, what with Republicans freaking out about Critical Race Theory (a legal-educational concept that's been around since the 1970's) and trashing the military (a, if not THE beneficiary of conservative "Support" until this last week) so, where does one even start with this shit?

Well then, I saw this post about Pat Robertson calling Critical Race theory a "monstrous evil" and even as he admitted that People of Color are oppressed, he seemed to be trying to justify that oppression by saying that if we try to study or understand structural racism in society and how it impacts law (which is what Critical Race Theory is) then something something Gazpacho white people will be the slaves.

In other words, this is the same shit racists have been saying forever, because their deepest fear is that they'll be treated the same way as they've treated other people.

For fuck's sake, Pat, why didn't you just come right out and say your wrinkly old ass is fucking honkey racist. I mean, Jesus, this shit is the same kind of bullshit that Southern Segregationists said about...well pretty much every advance by Black folks and other people of color until they were assimilated into the Republican Party and just stopped talking about it in public. Evidently, such discussions continued apace in private where moderate Republicans like myself who never bought into this racist bullshit were not included.

I'm going to level with you all here, if I ever said anything like this in my life, my Mom would've found out about it and beat my ass black and blue. Can't sit down for a week? Fuck, by the time she got done with me I wouldn't know what a chair was. I'm fucking serious, this type of shit simply was not tolerated in my family and it's not like we ever made any special effort to be anti-racist or educate ourselves on the topic. We recognized that this shit is, simply, wrong.

Racism. Is. Wrong. 

Hell, even racists implicitly acknowledge this, not least when they get offended if you call them a racist. Hell even after fourteen years of this bullshit (counting from when the anti-Obama conspiracy theory shit got rolling) I've yet to meet a racist asshole who is proud of being a racist asshole.

It's almost like every last one of these motherfuckers knows it's wrong. They just want to do it anyway.

Humans are pretty much all the same within the constraints of biological sex and gender, acknowledging that the latter is fluid as a cultural, mental and societal construct that may not mesh well with who an individual person is.

 And it's funny how conservatives, the supposed champions of individual rights, trip over that exact concept when the rubber meets the road. They only care about "Individual rights" when it comes to ownership, power, social dominance and wealth. They could give a fuck about individual rights if you want to live according to your gender or sexuality or be left alone by the State (and others) regardless of your color.

Indeed, according to modern conservatism "Just wanting to live your life" is something they seem to think should be a crime. In fact, these people act more like Soviet Communists, or The Party of Orwell's 1984 than the vaguely-libertarian conservatives I grew up around and who educated me. FOX News tries to make all these nuts who watch it feel like they're some kind of political insider, and that only goes double for Newsmax and OAN and all these nutty conservatives on social media. They seem to want people to believe that if only they believe it hard enough, if only they march in lockstep a little harder, they too could be having lunch with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lard-Ass, all they have to do is believe.

Ever notice how nobody ever openly says what they believe, or what they want people to be marching towards? Well, I'm here to tell you, intentionally or otherwise, Pat "Crypt Keeper" Robertson just spilled the beans.

Bare minimum, Individuality for me (regarding things that I want) but everybody else is all the same according to how we want to classify them...is, at best, a shitty philosophy. That is especially understandable when you realize that people are pretty much the same wherever you go, and regardless of the country or the culture, political conservatives and religious nuts are very likely to be raging hypocrites with a fetish for use of force and weapons.

And I'll note that in a lot of the rest of the world, said fetish doesn't actually apply to the military or the police, which are seen as organs of the State (as they are, and should be) rather these fucking people like the idea of having their own guns to use to force others to do their will (which is also true of American conservatives) or they support forces which are, by definition Anti-government (as in the Islamic world in general, and places like Afghanistan right now in particular) at least until such forces become the government and do something they don't like. In other words, civilization is not usually a thing political and religious conservatives usually support unless it grants them totalitarian control of people's lives. 

Of course, historically the desire of these kind of people for power and control never seems to be sated by simply having it, or going up to a certain limit and then saying they've arrived at their vision of an ideal society. This is why I've said these people don't want America, they want the Killing Fields with an Applebee's and a mall. If you don't think that a Khmer Rouge Cambodia type situation is what these people want; I give you the Trump Administration's COVID-19 response, 600,000+ dead people, and the fact that it's come out that when the George Floyd Protests started happening, Trump wanted active-duty military personnel shooting people in the streets until the Justice Department and the military basically told him to go fuck himself. 

Trump didn't want America, he wanted a killing spree in his name, as always, the cruelty was the point.

Modern "Conservatives" don't want America, they want totalitarianism where you're forced to salute the flag with somebody holding a rifle pointed at you to make sure you do it just the right way.

And American far-right conservatives have finally figured out that the military is very, very unlikely to ever actually help them with that. I mean, I could've saved them the trouble and told them this 25 years ago  

Nobody knows that corrupt, autocratic regimes full of morons with totalitarian aspirations end badly more than the United States Armed Forces does. We've evacuated enough of their former leaders under cover of night as defeat by the other side closed in, for fuck's sake, or helped the people who wanted to bust a cap in they ass and then given shelter to their disgraced relatives.

Funny how it seems like the only way to prevent that type of shit usually boils down to civilization, people having a say in their own country, and strong national governments that make a real effort to translate that say into national policy. In other words, civilization.

Just pointing a weapon at somebody doesn't usually really accomplish much of anything, you have to know what you're pointing it at and why, and often increasingly how to do so without incurring the wrath of domestic or even foreign public opinion or riling up other enemies too much. The General was right, increasingly, you have to be educated and well-read to be a soldier. 

It wasn't any different 25 or 30 years ago and when people like George H.W. Bush and Tom Clancy were setting the tone this was pretty well understood. I mean, hell, Bill Clinton won the Presidency in large part by painting Bush 41 as an out-of-touch egghead, repeatedly smacking him in the face with "Read my lips, no new taxes" and playing the aw-shucks ignorant hick on TV that he was anything but in real life...only to have Bush 43 do the same type of shit to Al Gore eight years later, then in 2008 Barack Obama ran against John McCain only to be undone by Sarah Palin. The truth, however, is that all these guys were to one degree or another intelligent men who were well educated and well-read and who tended to make decisions, good or bad, on their interpretation of the actual facts as presented by capable advisors.

Modern conservatism doesn't even want conservatives to be educated, much less well read and there's no greater example of that than Lauren Boebert, who dropped out of high school and only got her GED when she decided to run for Congress. I think the downward trend started when Conservatism, Inc. functionally forced Mitt Romney to run against himself and his own previous record in addition to Barack Obama. The truth is, corporations, the donors, wealthy people in general don't seem to want people in government who are intelligent and can make the right decisions for the right reasons. They just want people to do what they're told.

And sooner or later unless this bullshit gets put in check "What they're told" is going to come down to "Kill people." 

And at the end of the day, these fucking people don't need the State for that, not when they have a movement big enough to basically be its own country. Figure if they even get half the people who voted for Trump last year, that's over 35 million people and certainly enough for them to rip off a chunk of America for themselves.

Remember what I said about how these people basically want the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, but with a mall?

That could be the future of some part of the United States of America unless enough of us say no. Motherfucking One America News Now just came right out last week and said that's what they wanted. Note to the Appeasement Republicans and the Bipartisanship Democrats, you cannot appease, have things in common with or reason with people who don't think you have a right to exist. To say that these people are Nazis is probably a disservice to history. Left to their own devices these idiots would plumb depths that the Nazis barely scratched the surface of, and we'd best be aware of that. These people are moral bottomless pits, and they would sooner kill the world than be forced to face that fact, and they'd sooner destroy themselves than take any action to correct it.

The basic psychological tendency of sinful, unregenerate Man to view himself as the "good" guy in all circumstances, regardless of whether his actions are actually good or not, is one factor there. Another is decades of American exceptionalism, a philosophy concocted to try and prevent the least bit of examination of collective or individual circumstances by Americans. For a people so obsessed with relative status, we're far less interested in the actual status of other people than in our own usually wrong mental image of ourselves relative to our inaccurate mental images of others. The results, quite frankly, have been both farcical and very dangerous. Hundreds of thousands of people have "Owned the Libs" right into their own graves, now.

And all the guns all these people had didn't do them one damned bit of good. You can't shoot petty insecurities, racism or weaponized cultural memes that get people to destroy themselves...and, you'll notice, most of the people most affected by this shit, most of the people still dying are these fucking people's supporters who still believe all the woo woo bullshit.

And they don't care.

Because quite frankly, enough dead bodies can still wreck shit, and don't forget the cruelty is still the point. If you think these sociopaths care who they're being cruel to, you have another thing coming.

The people who thought this shit up, as represented today by Donald Trump, are even trying to use our own inflated national self-image and the multitude of exceptions we as a people like to grant ourselves to exempt our Self from basic decency as weapons to beat the actual freedoms, physical circumstances and standard of living...and in the age of COVID-19 even life itself...out of the average real live American person.

And around a third of us eat that shit up like hotcakes as long as we get to look down on someone else who's consigned to a worse form of peonage.

All too many of us are happy to sacrifice others to the Evil Elder Gods in the hope that we will be eaten last, it's a particularly banal and stupid form of cruelty that the people who are responsible for spreading it laugh about...

All the way to the bank in some foreign tax shelter of a country.

Republicans have basically become the very kind of people that Ronald Reagan, among others, railed against. Modern Republicans are all too happy to serve as the anti-everything puppets and petty satraps of exactly that "little intellectual elite" so long as they get their cut of the money and the power and a little racism doled out like drugs to a fucking street hobo.

And what's worse is this new "little intellectual elite," you know, the people like Peter Thiel and Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin, among others, isn't even American...and hell, neither are a lot of their wannabe petty satraps and warlords, look at Seb Gorka, for example. These people are from Australia and Germany (though holding citizenship in NEW ZEALAND) and Hungary and Russia and they all have designs on America for which they seek ways to avoid having to have the consent of its people, and they have the goddamned bloated perforated green-pus-leaking balls and grotesque purple priapism to fucking rail against "Globalism?"

FUCK YOU, dude, FUCK YOU. Are you fucking kidding me?

The situation we're in is fairly well critical.

But if you think Critical Race Theory is anywhere near the actual fucking problem, you'd best damned well learn what Critical Thinking is, and do some of it.

'Cause at this point, these people simply aren't going to get all of America, too much has slipped away from them or was never theirs to start with, but they will almost certainly get somewhere. 1/6 failed, but if they try it again in some State capital where most people already vote their way?

It will almost certainly happen, and be followed by death, destruction, and war.

And when that happens, if you think the amount of anti-military shit being spewed out by Fox News and Tucker Carlson, or Newsmax or OAN is too much...you ain't seen nothing yet. They will drag out every skeevy thing the US military ever did from Wounded Knee to Abu Ghraib and back again with detours to My Lai and Operation Ratline and you'd best be prepared for it. You think Tucker's smarmy mug is insufferable now? 

I'm here to tell you these fucking people will positively radiate savage glee as they trash talk the United States Army National Guard and whatever active forces are supporting them, denying or minimizing their victories while showering the enemy with endless praise and sympathy, and anybody who's held accountable for this becomes an instant martyr as the Right is suddenly all about press freedom.

And they'll sing the praises of the Trump Lost Cause when they say it all could have been prevented, even as Russian-built T-72 Tanks sporting Confederate flags duke it out with Abrams and Strykers in the Kentucky horse country.

Right now there's wannabe-insurrectionists plotting the next op and, if caught, they'll try and say it was a joke like Blowbert did.

But this is a deadly serious matter, brought to you by people for whom history (their view of it, anyway) is likewise a deadly serious thing...because that's how they justified Segregation, and White Supremacy, and all the evils that went with them. It's how they still justify the white superiority that is the legacy of all of the above.

I know people, people whose ancestors were not even in this country when the Civil War was fought, people who aren't even all the way white their own damn selves (although, for the record, they ain't Black either) who know every local story of this or that local firefight between Confederate and Union troops that happened near where they live and all the atrocities that went with that war, and they will throw that shit at you like they hold a grudge about it personally.

Because they do, because they buy into Good Old Fashioned Prosperity Gospel Calvinism (or its more Unga Bunga and inconveniently mixed* bastard great-grandchild, Pentecostalism) or Movement Conservatism or Southern culture or some other such hoohah and ALL that shit has decided that America Is Inconvenient.

*Note: Pentecostalism, functionally, is a fusion of African Traditional Religion and Christianity no less than Haitian Voodoo is. Let's see some America First, racist White Jesus-following Redcap try and rationalize that shit!

(And they will!!)

[Yes, I get it, we're dealing with idiots here.]

From personal experience having had this conversation before and the only defense they have is just straight-up denial. 

Shortly after that discussion, I gave this dude that I used to know my book about the Azusa Street Revival...which had a glowing Forward by Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention and anti-Trump fame...and he didn't talk to me for about a month after that, it was glorious. Should add that at the time, me and a whole bunch of his fellow Fundamentalist Christians had all ended up on the dude's shit list because we questioned some things, and that's the way it's gonna go for anybody who actually tries to reach or reason with these people on any level. 

I did it for years. At best, it kinda worked, with some people. For the record, none of the ones it worked on were the rednecks who bought the whole narrative to start with.

A lot of people sit in the breakroom at their work reading the Bible, looking all serious not because they're really studying God's Word, let alone internalizing or memorizing its passages, but simply to be seen doing so, because that's what they think Righteousness looks like.

And that's what we're up against, people who deny even the basic purposes of the Bible even as they sit there looking so righteous pretending to read it. You think they haven't been doing the same with America and the Constitution and all that for all this time?

We got some real problems, and Critical Race Theory ain't one of 'em.

Part Six.

Cometh Hell's Legions (American Revelation VII: Part Six.)

Jerry Landers: How can you permit all the suffering that goes on in the world?
God: Ah, how can I permit the suffering?
Jerry Landers: Yeah! 

God: I don't permit the suffering, you do. Free will. All the choices are yours.

~From the film Oh God.

I saw this yesterday. Some idiot conservative baseball (and politics) commentator literally joking about the fact that one of President Biden's two rescue dogs has died. As if the death of an innocent animal is funny. 

When the inevitable social media backlash happened, he doubled down. It's still ongoing. I had to block and report the fucking asshole, because my own dog passed away a month ago and I'm still dealing with that.

By the way, this chucklefuck writes for the National Review, in case you thought that shit was even worth using to line a ferret cage.

In any case, it's proof of the theory that the cruelty is the goddamned point, in miniature.

This dude thinks other creatures and people's suffering is funny. Of course, people like him anymore tend to think everything is funny, or some strange coincidence or weird conspiracy, because then they don't have to take responsibility for anything in life, not least of all their own shitty behavior. And when they get called out on it, they either blame everybody else but themselves, or double down infinitely in the hope that they can just shout louder than everybody else and their critics will go away. 

This is modern conservatism, yo. This is what they've become. It's genuinely hard to say whether the evil or the performative moronism is more of a driving force, as they seem so closely intertwined.

This weekend, Mike Pence got booed and called a traitor at the "Faith and Freedom coalition."

You know, just in case you ever thought that any of this crap was ever about faith or freedom. 

Well, I mean, in a very limited way it is, it's about their "freedom" to force their "faith" and their politics and their shitty social beliefs down your throat for no damned good reason other than their own power...

And Mike Fucking Pence doesn't qualify anymore.

Think about that for a second.

Mike Pence, the epitome of the Gingrich/Bush 43-era Ghoul, the clanking mechanical heart of the Party Of No, an Evangelical so old-fashioned he calls his wife "Mother." And this fucking guy isn't good enough for these assholes.

(But the thrice-married, adulterous, boorish incompetent-mass-murdering racist wannabe-dictator who thought the Pences were yokels for doing a normal thing like having pets is apparently superior to God Himself in these fucking people's debased imaginations, you just go right on ahead and think about that for a second.)

So far the "Faith and Freedom coalition" has featured such hits as Dr. Ronny "Candy Man" Jackson, former US Navy doctor and fucking drug dealer who should be in prison instead of Congress, opining that cheating in elections and rigging district maps is fine and the only valid politics is Republican politics, and Rick Scott still bitching about football players "Kneeling for the pledge of Allegiance." Because evidently conservative politics these days not only destroys people's morality, it also eats their brains right out of their damn heads.

You know, just in case you thought faith or freedom mattered worth a shit to these motherfuckers, who have also been quite busy all weekend opining that Juneteenth should not have been made a holiday, even as Rick Scott and Ronny Jackson (among others) were perfectly happy to take the day off themselves.

Of course, last week these same fucking people were all rooting for Vladimir Putin. As if we needed anymore proof that the conservative movement in general and the Republican Party in particular is morphing into an Anti-American and yes, anti-Christian terrorist group and it's not even doing it slowly anymore.

And when I say both Anti-American and Anti-Christian, yes, I mean exactly that.

Last week, before the Vatican told them no, US Catholic Bishops were threatening to deny Communion to Catholic Democrats over the issue of abortion.

How in the hell is that "Christian?"

These people stomp all over the Cross of Christ, deny His Word, selectively ignore the doctrines of their own Church and take God's name in vain every time they fucking say it. 

I mean, you can just tell that these Bishops resent having a Pope who doesn't dress like Liberace's stunt double or legitimize their petty hatreds/

No, it's not about Christ to them, It's about that people like them damn well remember when even the King might be not much more than an illiterate barbarian and they functionally ran European society while doing all type of fucked up shit supposedly in the Lord's name. 

And they got away with it until they got their ass handed to them over a couple centuries in the Crusades and people started gradually getting tired of their shit, and since then...basically since seconds after somebody finished wiping Marie Antionette's blood off that Guillotine blade, these cocksuckers and their anti-spiritual forebears have been trying to push back against the values of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the revolutions that ripped that ultimate power away from them. And ya know, it's funny how most of the countries where that rule was actually applied are mostly irreligious now. There's a fucking reason for that.

But of course this is America and we have no shortage of angry, willfully ignorant people who've been bamboozled by modern conservatism into thinking that the modern society that's all they've ever known is somehow the most evil thing in the world. Because, apparently, ignorance of this country's history and its purpose is so pervasive that these fucking fools would rather go back to the kind of governments our founding fathers rebelled against. 

Hell, not just kings, but even further, they want to go back to being Dark Ages peasants ruled from the shadows by effete Bishops dressed more ostentatiously than a goddamn Pride float because the King was an ignorant fucking moron who thought writing his own name was some high art form, but he had a big sword and the loyalty of a bunch of like-minded lesser ignorant buffoons and all any of them wanted was a chance to live high off the hog and an enemy to go and fight, and the Church was only too happy to legitimize this for the sake of its own power for around a thousand years before things even started to go sideways.

And nothing ever changes with certain kinds of people because just as there are always scheming assholes who seek to do no work and have unaccountable power and privilege for it, there will always be those who will hand power to such people because they themselves don't want to do the hard work of life, or simply don't want to think about anything.

Life is so much easier when somebody else tells you what to do, according to some people. Then they'll get drunk or do so much drugs that they pass out in the street because hey, their cause of "Owning the Libs" is so righteous or something, It's not like they're shit people who surround themselves with other shit people and want shit people to rule over them, or anything...and then they basically expect everybody else to be their goddamned therapist and how the fuck does that work, exactly?

But our Founders, rooted in Enlightenment values, knew that the only way for our country to remain free, long term, was to have an informed, thinking citizenry that was active and held government to account.

But for some people it's apparently easier to be some kind of illiterate goon spewing profanities at the world, who would not be out of place in Taliban-era Afghanistan (and who looks and acts like he'd be just fine with all the drugs and shit) to assault a police officer on camera and then have his lawyer try and say he didn't do what he had somebody record him doing.

And here's the thing, he thinks you're the stupid one, if you accept modern American society.

Even though he's never lived under anything else, either, even though in the world he wanted, he'd likely end up being the catamite tied to the back of the truck until the local warlord got horny, if he didn't just plain end up dead.

These people somehow end up with massively overinflated views of their own competence and toughness because they watch movies like Die Hard and think they're going to be John McClane.

And the bitter old manipulators who hang back in the shadows are only too happy to whisper in their ears and send them against the rest of us, knowing they'll likely lose, but not caring just the same.

Because the cruelty, the damage done to society, and the death is the fucking point.

And they'll hold up some bloated demented bozo who looks like death warmed over with a coat of orange paint to these illiterate barbarians as their "reward" if they succeed. Worse, the idiots will go for it because the idea of some fool like Donald Trump being in power entertains them or tickles their ears or they want the racism and the stupidity.

And when this horrific bullshit ultimately kills a few thousand US military personnel, tens of thousands of insurgents and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians regardless of their political persuasion, and inflicts endless horrors on our divided country, people like that Baseball Crank motherfucker and the Bishops will laugh about it if they think no one is listening, because the cruelty and destruction is all they really care about.

This is American Revelation, and cometh hell's legions.

Now what are you going to do about it?

That's not just the real question, it's the only question that even matters.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." ~Ronald Reagan

Part Five.

Black Horse (American Revelation VII, Part Five)

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. ~Revelation 6:1-6

My friend Aaron sent me this on Twitter a few hours ago.

Literally a rage-filled article by some entitled bitch that writes for the Federalist, blaming the Federal government for the cost of her favorite Chipotle dish going up by a few cents.

Lady, if you're really that underpaid that a matter of 32 cents or so breaks the bank for you, may I humbly suggest you get a second job.

Or maybe write down your bullshit ass complaint on a sheet of paper, fold it up Origami style with a bunch of pointy ends, and stick it all the way up your entitled ass.

I mean, fucking seriously?

"Chicken bowl, brown rice, black and pinto beans, Pico, hot salsa, lettuce, cheese, sour cream — that’s all I want." ethereally seasoned with a dash of the frustrations, struggles and tears of grossly underpaid service industry workers, too, I guess.

Would it have been better to turn the workers out into the street during the shutdown? Or just stay open and let them and their customers (which apparently includes you) all die of the virus?

Maybe throw in a little civil disorder, rioting, various people having to kill and steal just to survive? That a little more what you wanted? Ya know, I wrote about you and I didn't even know it. I mean, fuck civilization, it's not a real Apocalypse until the Proles are murdering one another in the streets over meager food supplies.. and then getting slaughtered by militarized police and the National Guard, too?

Maybe throw in a Zombie apocalypse that you can watch live on CNN while you try and ride out in a swanky mansion on Long Island with a shitload of survival gear and a bunch of Mercs for protection? (Sorry, couldn't miss the World War Z reference.)

I mean, for somebody who is apparently low-enough income that 32 cents actually matters on some level, Kylee has that super-wealthy 1%-er FUCK YOU I'VE GOT MINE! attitude down perfectly.

I get that the Federalist and its entire purpose is to propagate shitty Anti-government, far-right political views on behalf of a small clique of shadowy wealthy donors who fund the goddamned rag, but Jesus. These people don't want America, they want the killing fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia with a mall...and a Chipotle apparently. 

Not only do they not want to pay jack shit for their own damned food and stuff, they don't want the company to pay the workers worth a shit either. Now let's apply that logic to her job and see if she likes it. Let's see if she likes having to string together four or five writing gigs and a part-time service industry job to make ends meet...and writing articles on her breaks to make a deadline?

Given her attitude, I quite doubt she has that problem, but I personally know people who do at my own work and they're damned grateful that our wages just went up.

I mean, hell, do you know what *I* did during the shutdown, while collecting that Unemployment that Kylee bitches about so viciously (but I'm willing to bet, that she also benefitted from herself) I wrote every day, it was my way of maintaining some kind of a work routine when I otherwise could not. Call it my upbringing, or perhaps a remnant of military service, but I have to have some kind of routine and in the absence of work I made one of my own. I did it for no better reason than I was bored and had the capability and initiative...and for once, the time...to do so.

What did you do with your time? 

'Cause I know one hell of a lot of people in the United States and around the world for whom the last year and a half has been nothing but a struggle and I knew several people who, doubtless would look upon that as an upgrade if they were able to, on account of, ya know, being dead and unable to look at much of anything.

And maybe it's just me, but having been there, it seems like it just might be a good deal easier to be conservative...or to practice any or all of the things conservatives (formerly, at least) considered virtuous, when one has money?

I mean, just for starters it's hard to find the drive to do extra work, for which one is not paid directly when one has to struggle just to come up with how or where their next meal is going to come from. But ya know, a bit over two months of Unemployment benefits let me do exactly that. Isn't that worth something? It certainly was to me, and it blew up my readership enough that someday I just might be able to make a little money off of doing this type of stuff.

Isn't bettering oneself...conservative? 

Especially when one can do so without any additional costs to the State or anybody else? I mean, everything else was shut down so my writing pretty much was what I had to work with. I'd have been on Unemployment anyway...and since my work reopened as early as they could for better and worse, I wasn't on it for all that long.

If the fact that employers are having to raise wages now because people in a free society finally had the time to realize that they were being underpaid and had the capability to do something about it...doesn't that still get filed under 'Capitalism?'

(Yes, I'm aware that none of this is really about any of that stuff.)

Or does capitalism...backed by infinite socialism for the top earners only...only get to apply to the wealthy and their political hangers-on? Infinite money for y'all, nothing but infinite jackboots for the rest of us? 

No thanks, I'll pass.

The truth here is that Kylee, like most of these fucking people, is just mad that she can't clap you in irons and force you to make her taco bowl bullshit for free. It's as simple as that.

No, the underpaying retail- and service-industry complex that these idiots structured too much of our economy around pre-COVID so they could pay Americans slave wages wasn't going to survive contact with any kind of crisis, and it sure won't survive something like future conflicts with China or the disruption of another pandemic or a major war or a possible American internal conflict either. Dealing with escalating major crises on the scale that we are is eventually going to require a bigger tax base than low-wage service jobs provide...even with taxing the rich.

We are going to have to generate a new middle class for that, and for that matter, more rich people too. Giving an ever-smaller group of people ever-larger fortunes isn't going to cut it. Offering others, lower down, racism and relative status and broken promises and magic beans was eventually going to run out, too. They just thought they could string everybody else along for 20 more years or so, enough for the current crop of Rich Old White Guys to be dead and thus, for it not to be their problem.

They know...they knew beforehand...that it was all bullshit, they just wanted to ride the lightning until it broke and see how much they could get and now they're mad because reality and Trump blew up their grift.

And if you wonder why "Conservatives" are so mad about things like "Critical Race Theory" or history in general or companies having to raise wages to attract workers and keep competing in the marketplace, that's why.

Because the last thing these motherfuckers can...or will...ever do is admit that they were wrong.

And they want you to pay the cost for that, too. Even if it's with the cost of your own life.

But not them, they're special, or so they say.

It's all bullshit. Their whole philosophy is nothing but a bunch of lies and rotten bullshit and anybody who tells you anything else is either a fool or a liar.

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

Part Four.

Rain Down Fire (American Revelation VII, Part Four.)

Through me the way to the suffering city;
Through me the everlasting pain;
Through me the way that runs among the Lost.
Justice urged on my exalted Creator:
Divine Power made me,
The Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love.
Nothing was made before me but eternal things
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here. ~Sign posted above the gates of Hell, Dante's Inferno.

...

To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. ~Deuteronomy 32:35

This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Such a statement, however, implies a willingness to meet whatever comes clear-eyed and with the courage of one's convictions, to live or die based on the certainty that God, or the Universe or whatever one chooses to call those things beyond our ken has done their part and so we must do ours, regardless of what actually happens, even though any given day may by definition be our last one. "Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie, glad did I live and gladly die" as the old poem goes.

To have faith, to take life as it comes, however, requires the absence or at least the diminishment of fear rather than a vast, yawning abyss of it. If God really made the world, and in so doing ordained my first moments, would not He have foreknowledge of my last as well? Would not my crossing over into the afterlife be as seamless to me as my entering into this life? Would I even know the difference?

Even divine punishment, were such to come, would be based solely on my own actions, which *I* know I committed, either negligently or with malice aforethought, do the crime, you're going to do the time, so to speak.

Assume God is smarter than you and knows what you did.

Such a viewpoint, however, requires a worldview founded upon something other than fear.

I keep seeing this statement by Marjorie Taylor Greene "COVID-19 is a bio-weapon because God would never create a fatal illness that harms people.

Really?

The Old Testament is full of stories of God destroying entire nations, harming people and sending plagues, and based on forced compliance, Obey me, or I burn your city, strike your firstborn dead and curse your descendants for a thousand generations. For fuck's sake it is the entire basis of the paradigm as outlined in the text. This was a system that got so out of hand God himself sent His Son to Earth to sacrifice himself in horrible fashion in order to fix it! Don't these fucking people know how to read warning labels?

God knows he's perfect and we're not and we can never be but he expects us to be. And he punishes us if we're not, you know what I'm saying? God is the ultimate gangster. The supreme mob boss, you know what I mean? Forgiveness, live by his code. Deadness, if we don't. Yo, he never has to talk to us face to face and he never has to explain exactly why he does what he does. Know what I'm saying? Nigga sits up there in Heaven somewhere, drinking a cappuccino, chilling [singing] "Got the whole world in his hands." 

He got the whole world by the balls. In Excelsius Deo and all that shit. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series "Oz" Season 1, Episode 3.

God is the ultimate gangster. If the suit fits, wear that motherfucker.

I've read the Bible cover-to-cover multiple times, the assessment presented by the character of Augustus Hill is not, in any way, shape or form, actually wrong.

And here's the kicker; For most of my life, Fundamentalist Christians of every sort reveled in exactly that ideal. Everybody from the harsh Calvinists who ruled South Africa in my childhood to Jerry Falwell talking about how God hated gay people to any given random nut on the internet over a decade later, if you said God is some harsh psychotic asshole that'd blow your face off at the slightest provocation, the basic answer they'd have for that might be a slightly theological "Yep." 

They got off on that shit. I am utterly not joking.

As I've written before, one of the main inflection points in my exit from Christianity was some dude raging against LGBT people literally for weeks on a Christian message board, and because the staff refused to do anything about him and ultimately about that thread in any kind of consistent fashion, the incident basically wrecked the entire community.

I guess, given her Q-Anon insanity, I'd have expected something like that from Marjorie Taylor Greene, but thus far it's not that way at least not when she isn't in front of a camera or a crowd. Instead she's becoming mostly known for silly bullshit like these comments about COVID-19 and religion, and for passive-aggressive attempts to start shit with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, that and I think she's got some disgusting thing going with Matt Gaetz.

Despite her own murderous fascism and equally murderous intentions toward most people, Marjorie Taylor Greene's theology is far more "God, the Devil and Bob" than it is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." And you know, the funny part is back in the 1990's I read a vast number of Christian-authored books that predicted exactly this, the only thing they got wrong was that they believed the warm fuzzy theology covering up complete denial of Truth and murderous intent would be authored by liberals rather than by supposed conservatives.

Oops.

These vapid statements by people like Marjorie Taylor Greene have lately been making me angrier every time I see them. Assuming such beliefs are real, they imply that God is exactly as depicted in the cartoon "God, the Devil and Bob" a bearded, light-beer-drinking hippie God who eats Corn nuts, kind of a cosmic Jerry Garcia, who happily relies on the lowest common denominator of humanity to save the world and prevent the Devil from manipulating Him into destroying it.

If that is so, why the vast webs of conspiracy theories? Why are you even worried about any of this shit, much less in Congress? Wouldn't it be easier to stick to CrossFit, kipping your pullups and cheating on your husband with assorted gym customers? I mean, all's forgiven...for you anyway, by your hippie God...right? Why make a fool of yourself on the national stage?

Except, somewhere along the way lust for fame and power entered the chat.

And these are the things that define these fucking people.

Their fear...which leads to hate.

Their lust...which ultimately leads to greed and desire for power.

And their raw, vast insecurity, which leads to conspiracy madness and everything being everybody else's fault.

More to the point their fear, their insecurity and their lust are each such a vast, yawning Abyss, that you could in fact likely stuff an infinite God or two in there and not fill it. If we've learned anything in the past five years it's that these fucking people are moral holes with no bottom. And they will never be satisfied by anything. One can observe the goings-on in the United Kingdom with regard to Brexit and draw that conclusion fairly easily.

And I think it's because, on a basic level they don't believe in anything much at all, or rather that their beliefs are so watered down that they might as well not exist. This is what happened when American Christianity gave up small neighborhood churches and teaching the Word in the hope that somebody might walk away with a Christian idea or two sticking in their head, for the vast stadium-like megachurches and focus-grouped soundbite teachings of the Prosperity Gospel...and only then started demanding that people obey. They turned God into a cosmic Santa Claus for themselves, but then decided they wanted to use Him as a club to beat other people over the head with.

It doesn't work that way.

I grew up with hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers" and fire and brimstone preaching was not something I was unfamiliar with. Nowadays lots of these "Christian" pop songs are fundamentally indistinguishable from vapid pop-culture bullshit and these people rely on Fox News and politics, not to keep themselves straight, but for a daily dose of "Screw your neighbors, anyway."

The thing is, Christianity (or for that matter Islam or Judaism as well) is about your relationship to an eternal God. The entire concept is that you are the one who requires salvation in some way. "Saving" society (all too often a code for inflicting your own bullshit on other people without their consent) doesn't even enter into the discussion, because it's taken as a given that the world is fallen and cannot be perfected, or that it is overrun by unbelief, or that the scriptures primarily concern your own group and others are held to a lesser standard. In other words, mind your own damned business.

God doesn't give a damn what those gay people over here or doing, nor those Pagans over there, we're talking about you right now.

But sinful Man likes to try and cover up his wrongs by pointing out the alleged faults of others. It doesn't work that way in the end. You're not going to be judged by what other people did, but by your own actions and intentions. Stop blaming your bullshit on other people.

But that's the thing isn't it? In these people's view, the gods are not examples or leaders but justifications and rationalizations for what they already want to do anyway and that really is all there is to it.

Despite MTG's talk about God never harming people, she's a member of a blood cult whose god is small and mean, a twisted monster who can't wait to send people (other than them, anyway) to hell, but whose meanness is also used to force compliance within the group, even as leadership or those connected to it are allowed to commit an endless array of sins and no one else is even allowed to comment on this. Accountability itself is held to such a high standard that it's never practiced, yet Heaven isn't Heaven if anybody other than them gets to go...and the only one they're ever certain is going to heaven is the Pastor.

It's always that way.

In the end, the modern Conservative god looks not so much like some Jerry Garcia knockoff from 20 years ago...but suspiciously like Donald Trump. Kind of explains a lot, doesn't it?

The thing is, I was taught you have to accept and study the whole of the text, which in some cases means reconciling certain things is going to be above your pay grade...and you have to accept the bad as well as the good. Not only are you not going to win all the time, but sometimes you might just lose for a reason. Yeah, you might fall, but in the end it's "Did you get up?" that's what matters. We are all citizens of an imperfect, vast and wonderful world and it's what we do in that world that matters, with the idea that we should do what we can to make things better.

Trying to Immanentize the Eschaton and perfect the world, rightly or wrongly was seen as the goals and the work of the Antichrist, and that, especially that they expected people to be giving up belief in the Almighty for the eventual worship of the State, was what was going to cause God to rain down fire. 

It's funny how that belief has been turned on its head, isn't it? It's funny how certain so-called Conservatives now seem to want the State to solve all your problems and shape your world-view for you and this, that and the other thing, and how these same people want to use the State as a steel fist to smash their enemies, real and imagined, rather than simply believing in Karma or that one reaps as they sow and that higher powers will sort it all out in the end.

But after 30 years of End Times Prophecy bullshit, or maybe just about the same of talk radio and a generation of FOX News these people's heads have been filled with so much bullshit, their hearts filled with so much hate, and they've taken on the instant gratification mentality of America so much that they want it all right now, and they want to see it instead of just having faith that X or Y will happen. That's what Donald Trump was supposed to be for.

Since God never really was going to be that big stick, just for them, they needed some other thing as a stick to beat their enemies, real and imagined, about the head with. This need resulted not in worship of the State but worship of the Man, and under his continued rule of their lives (which these people, lacking compulsion, are allowing) every kind of immorality flourishes, all the more openly every day.

And that, historically and theologically, is exactly what causes God to rain down fire.

In fact, likely with that knowledge, they're doing it all the more in the hope that the fires will consume all the rest of us as well. The cruelty really is the fucking point.

Others can investigate it, prosecute it, imprison it, even suppress it by force but this mentality will persist to whatever degree it can until the fever breaks within these people themselves and until that happens even any attempts to limit the damage or suppress this shit will only cause those who believe in it to double down infinitely until they destroy themselves.

Even in that regard, they will persist in the hope that their self-destruction will mean the destruction of others. They offer themselves to the Devil and the Beast of Revelation in malign, mocking parody of Christ's sacrifice and substitutionary atonement, in the hope that it gets the rest of us incinerated.

And this they call righteousness.

I'm not sure what we're going to do about this mess, but we'd best think of something.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. ~Revelation 13:4-8

Part Three.

#Top20

Forever War (American Revelation VII, Part Three.)

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me, it's not my family
In your head, in your head they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What's in your head? In your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie-ie, oh

~Zombie, The Cranberries

I saw this on Twitter the other night.

Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station Retweeted it and said "Bet you $5 she has 'Love Jesus' in her profile" and sure enough, she did.

Hate has no home here.

Fairly anodyne statement, right? Most people, on the face of it, will agree that it is wrong to hate.

Yet the first thing one of the I Heart Jesus people thinks when they see it is "I hate your sign."

Now, on a personal level I've never been particularly fond of these kinds of signs. No one should be hateful and as I was taught it, certain things should go without saying. 

The only problem with that is, eventually if enough people don't say it, it has to start being said again after awhile, and it's funny how it's the conservatives and the "I Heart Jesus" people who made it that way. It's like all that talk about reverence for revealed truth and the wisdom of our ancestors, not to mention decent behavior, was all bullshit.

No, actually, with the current crowd it's not like that. It is that.

They hate you and me, and pretty much everybody else who isn't them, or effectively adopted into grace by them. You too can become part of the club, you just have to say the right words (and for the record, no, those words aren't some Christian confession) in the right code, just ask Donald Trump. Hell, hate the right people and there will be people who will make up the statements of faith for you and then make a pile of money off of writing books about it. People bent and twisted the Word beyond all recognition, lied and just plain made shit up trying to convince themselves that Donald Trump was a religious man, only to have Trump himself virtually ignore their efforts, so then they rationalized even more, and I'm here to tell you the situation has not improved. In point of fact, it really looks like Jesus has been replaced, at least in these people's minds, by Trump.

The only problem with that is that Trump is just a man, and theologically in Christian terms, Man cannot save Man.

Agnostic that I am, but one with a background in this stuff I feel comfortable in saying that according to these people's own rules...they're going to hell. More to the point, they're the people who are most responsible for this.

And no one cares less about that than they do. The cruelty is the point, even among themselves.

It's really starting to feel, to me, like these fucking people don't care if they "win."

Or rather, like some Takfiri Muslim screaming "Allah Akbar!" as the bombs fall around him...their cultural win conditions are no simply longer the same as ours.

Winning isn't really the point, that's why even in 2017 at the height of their power these people quite literally kept acting like aggrieved losers, ever unreasonable and unsatisfied. Simply winning wasn't enough because it wasn't even the goal, not as we understand it. But on the other hand, because they never acted or looked like winners, they really were never accepted as such and a hell of a lot of people simply ignored them or moved forward anyway.

In one sense, it's a long con. To imply an end to their "Holy and righteous struggle" would imply that eventually the checks would stop coming and these motherfuckers would have to get real jobs. As long as they can block or stall change, make everyone's life harder and find a way to blame somebody else while getting paid for it all, they'll do that and call it a win.

Fascism, hegemony, hell, even Christian End Times Prophecy or social conservative Culture War narratives imply some sort of "Win" or at least an end-state or an Eschaton that must be Immanentized, at which point it's at least theoretically game over.

That's not what these people want. Call it the Cold War narrative if you want, but of course the Cold War eventually ended. Perhaps the Neoconservative "Forever War" of the US slouching from conflict to conflict might work a little better...but for multiple reasons it doesn't really work for me. Among other things, even that has rules.

I prefer the analogy of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland. From the late 1960's until 1998 the Irish Republican Army and assorted other groups waged an insurgent war of shootings and terrorist attacks against the British Army and assorted Ulster Loyalist paramilitaries until eventually the costs and lack of public support led the British to negotiate with the IRA resulting in the Good Friday Agreement, and peace.

Except...a much lower-grade insurgency has continued since and now Northern Ireland appears to be headed for The Troubles 2.0 except this time it's the Ulster Loyalists committing terrorist attacks and rioting because while the majority of these assholes voted Leave in the Brexit referendum (although Northern Ireland itself collectively voted Remain) the end product wasn't quite Brexit-y enough for them, because of course Brexit itself was never the point, asserting dominance over their Catholic neighbors was what they wanted, and they didn't get that.

So, their next step is violent conflict. I suspect it's going to be much the same here, peace lines and snipers and walls, Continuing insurgencies, Easter peace agreements, and soldiers in the streets. That's what the Bad-faith Right wants, and unfortunately we as a country have a history of giving these assholes at least some of what they want, eventually.

This time, we should not, and it's really that simple.

Part Two.

You risk YOUR life (American Revelation VII, Part Two.)

You step outside, you risk your life. You take a drink of water, you risk your life. And nowadays you breathe, and you risk your life. Every moment now you don't have a choice. The only thing you can choose is what you're risking it for. Now I can make these people feel better and hang on a little bit longer. I can save lives. That's reason enough to risk mine. ~Herschel Greene, from The Walking Dead.

Freedom.

That's a word I keep hearing a lot lately.

When Democrats say "Freedom" they tend to be talking about concrete, discernable things; Equality, Fair wages, Human rights, Social safety nets, the Vote. 

Self-determination, in all its forms, whether it's pretty or messy or we like the results or not. That's democracy.

I was a conservative, like it or not, I like things presented in such a way that I find them understandable. I don't much care for hokum in all its various forms. Don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining.

Freedom.

When Republicans say "Freedom" these days it's...this kind of stuff "Florida just hosted the largest concert since the Pandemic began because FLORIDA CHOSE FREEDOM OVER FAUCI-ISM! USA! USA! USA!"

Excuse me, what the fuck does that even mean? You chose "Freedom" over listening to the medical experts that were trying to save your life and the lives of your constituents?

Call me crazy but that sounds an awful lot like a good way to end up dead, and last I checked the number of COVID-19 deaths is at least 600,000+ and still climbing, albeit much more slowly now. The virus meanwhile is still ravaging other parts of the world, Brazil and India for example, it's caused governments to fall in Africa, and who knows what other disruptions lie ahead.

These people are shouting "USA! USA!" all the way to the grave. That's fascism.

And the practitioners of it seem to have a desire to be their own victims as well. How the fuck does that work?

It seems like having a good time might (still) not be the best priority right now, and I say that as somebody who just went without a mask last night at work for the first time in over thirteen months because I'm fully vaccinated and the heat and humidity were literally making me sick the other night despite the air conditioning. So I had my boss make a copy of my vaccination card and filled out the proper form.

The point being, one has to strike a balance between health and safety on one side and comfort (or, if you will, entertainment) on the other side, or even between different shades of health and safety.

At this point the Conservative Movement, responsibility-wise, is pretty much like that old fat guy in a cowboy hat, walking three feet at a time because he can't get his breath and pulling a little oxygen tank on a cart behind him...all while puffing exuberantly on a Marlboro Red 100 cigarette.

And in terms of preparedness concerning the virus, they're whistling past the graveyard. India is a petri dish of over a billion people. Think about the staggering scale of that for a second.

God knows what else might crop up in the next couple of years...and then on top of that these people want to disrupt our society and obstruct or possibly even destroy our government and break apart our country because "their" guy didn't get reelected.

And like angry, manipulative little children they're willing to blame whoever they must (as long as it's not themselves) tell any lie or make up whatever dumb shit it takes to try and get their way. I'm sorry, but where and when I come from that sort of thing got a kid's ass beat until they stopped doing it. Let that shit fester long enough, it goes on until they're a grown person who's dead or in jail because they never learned how to control themselves, have morals, or tell the truth. Is that really how you want to live, or be remembered, conservatives?

Most of us grow out of that sort of shit by the time we get old enough to drive a car.

But then most of us aren't smug rich little fucks like Tucker Carlson, either.

If you've passed a high school government class you should know how things like citizenship and voting work and what the requirements are, on a basic level.

Like I said last year, I haven't seen a protocol for social distancing when you've been shot...and I still haven't over a year after the first time I wrote that. 

That's what this mess is going to come to if it's not stopped, and stopped right now. And yes, I'm looking at guys like Joe Manchin and Merrick Garland when I say that.

And as for you Republicans, I'm going to say it again, and louder, when people want you to be dumb and play up your prejudices and appeal to your bigotry, they are not your friends, they're trying to manipulate you. Tucker Carlson isn't some truth-teller, he's a smarmy little rich boy who wants to get richer and he wants to get that way by picking your pocket.

Are you cool with that, really?

These people are coming right the fuck out and saying that they want to put your kids to work instead of sending them to school. 

Job sites? If we, as a society, were halfway serious about the future we'd be teaching kids to program robots because in 20 years *That* is going to be who's on the "job site" straight up, and the only human workers around will be the architects and civil engineers and shit that are directing the things and the skilled-trades people who maintain them. My bet is the operators will be dozens or hundreds of klicks away in an air-conditioned facility running hella big computers that need a cool space...if there are operators at all...because we might well be talking about AI by then, too.

Then they're saying that your kids (and your) working conditions should be a "State's rights issue" like that wasn't already decided by sixty years of labor struggles and the worst economic crash the world ever saw.

They're also not too subtly saying that they want to put your 14-year-old daughter into a grown-ass adult work environment where she might well be approached by some grown-ass man whose idea of big fun is railing some little girl. And lest you think I'm kidding, it's always pictures of young women that Libertarians put up when they say this kind of shit.

This ain't the Trickle-Down economics Libertarianism of the Reagan years anymore. One of these people's avatars in Congress, Matt Gaetz, is actually under Federal investigation for human trafficking.

Again, think about that for a second.

This is what happens when you elect people who don't care about the future or preparing for it, but who sure do care about pleasing their dicks and their most debased sexual desires at your expense.

And here's the thing, there's one hell of a lot of patriarchal conservative white men who are just fine with that, because that's what they aspire to be, protestations of religiosity are generally nothing but horse shit in this case.

And no, they don't give a shit about your daughter, or any other woman right on up to Vice President Kamala Harris herself. When fucking Geraldo Rivera thinks the dumb shit people are saying has gone too far, it's probably time for these people to check themselves.

And again, as for y'all Republicans, when these people are shoving racism at you like chum out of a boat to a slew of hungry sharks...it might just be time to start asking yourselves why instead of eating that shit up like bloody red meat.

It's like an old bro of mine said back in the day "If the best thing you can say about yourself is what color you was when you came out yo mama, it's probably a good idea to evaluate yourself and do a few things differently."

Funny thing about me, and the Black (Afro-Cuban, in particular) Airman who said it. We were both Republicans at the time.

Republicans don't have to be this, in fact they would be far better served by broadening their tent, reaching out to other people besides white conservatives in general and conspiracy theorists and racists in particular. They choose to be this, with malice aforethought, because change is too hard or something and because all they have in their hearts is hate.

You don't have to be this, either. You can choose not to be, and start again. It's not that hard, I did it, because it was easier for me than just following along when all this crap started. Having a group to identify with wasn't that important to me. Being popular wasn't that important to me. Hell, the way I was taught if you're a Christian and a conservative ain't none of that is supposed to be popular.

And you'd do well to actually look at the stuff they're mixing in with it to try and make it all be "popular" and note that they still can't seem to get more than a quarter or so of the population (and falling!) to rally to this crap.

It might just be time for you to take a look at why that is. Don't look away, don't wave your hands around, stop and really look at this bullshit.

Oh, and regarding vaccine research, Marjorie Taylor Greene said "I don't believe in evolution, I believe in God."

Now first of all, there ain't one damn thing says this is an either-or question. You can believe in both Evolution and God, I do (more or less.)

I was a Christian for most of my life, but when I was a kid I was taught religion in religion class and science in science class and the two subjects didn't mix very much. Anybody who objected was generally told to go pound sand. Maybe that's the difference between the 1980's and today. 

But here's the thing, this crank is around the same age as me, assuming she really is a Christian, she is without excuse.

I've seen a fair amount of stuff I couldn't explain, but one thing I've never seen (or even heard of!) is someone actually healed from a disease by prayer alone. Normally, in my experience there's prayer AND you go to the fucking doctor because we're modern people, not savages dancing around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga!" As I was taught it "Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

If you want to look at it that way, God gave us brains, He gave us reason and science, so that we could figure stuff out and do for ourselves...you know, that old conservative mantra. "God helps them that helps themselves." In reality, there's some truth to that, but far too often it's just used as an excuse to be an asshole and that's not right.

An example I remember hearing about in church was fighters for one side or the other in Sierra Leone's civil war went to the local witch doctor, demanding some salve that would make them invulnerable to enemy bullets, and when they got it, they tested it out by having some other group of goons shoot them and they all died. As for the witch doctor, he was beaten for "failure."

This is the kind of shit that happens when religion is devoid of common sense or morality, and whether we're talking back in the 1990's or all the way back to the Crusades or the people who got sick and died because they thought God would protect them from COVID-19, it always ends up the same way.

More. Dead. People.

Honestly it seems to me that this is a feature, rather than a bug, of conservative politics and religion.

The cruelty is the fucking point.

And, lest you doubt me, they're saying so themselves.

Art Laffer (whoever the fuck that is) said on Fox News yesterday regarding wage increases that "The poor, the minorities, the disenfranchised, those with less education, and young people" aren't worth $15 an hour.

Your daily dose of relative status for the day, I guess. We can't all be old rich white guys.

Fuck him, anyway.

Every last word that he said is nothing but fucking bullshit and I say that as a veteran and somebody who has worked in a shit-ton of service industry jobs.

You know who's most willing to work? You know who's lean and hungry and ready to learn the job, and whatever it takes to do the job" "Minorities, the poor, the disenfranchised" that's who. Because this is America and that's how you move up. Seriously, some of the hardest-working, and for that matter most fun to work with, people that I ever worked with in my life were Jamaican seasonal workers in Northern Michigan. They'll work minimum wage for 14 hours a day, take all the overtime you can give them and have a good time doing it...and working around them doesn't feel like work! I'm being god-damn serious here. One of the hardest working people I know in my own workplace is an immigrant from Zimbabwe.

I'm completely not kidding, if you gave a country like Nigeria just a fraction of the resources and technology that American people take for granted that country would probably be a real Wakanda in a very short period of time.

(And again, on a serious note, China has made a point of investing in Africa. Shouldn't we? Isn't this a potential national security issue?)

You want my honest opinion? You know who's not worth no $15 an hour? Lazy privileged rich white kids. I live and work in a college town, we get a hell of a lot of those too, and most of them don't last and end up nothing more than humorous anecdotes shared by us old-timers years later that only the two or three people who were there who might still be around even understand.

My own work just raised our wages, not out of some politically-correct reasoning, but simply because they have to in order to compete with Subway and Walmart, or even just limit the turnover in the workplace, which has been crippling for quite some time now.

You know what wealthy conservatives like Art Laffer, Donald Trump, and Mitch McConnell, and the New Hampshire Libertarian Party are really mad about?

That they can't just clap you in irons and force you to work for free under the threat of the lash or the barrel of a rifle. Mitch McConnell yesterday was blaming Democrats and Unemployment insurance for people not wanting to come back to work. Somehow, he missed the fact that the reason a lot of people don't want to come back to work is actually shitty treatment and shitty wages.

You know, the overly-dependent on service-industries economy that didn't survive contact with a pandemic the first time. What happens if there's another disruption like a major war or something? What if it's with China and all that industry we outsourced is suddenly on the other side of the line?

What then? Do they care?

These people are assholes, Nazis and sociopaths, or at best quisling enablers of the same, who only care about their own profits.

And you know what the sick thing is? There's always some fools, mostly white, who'll look at this and be like "Yes, Mr. Republican Sir, I'll sign up for that" because racism or relative status or to "Own the Libs" or some such bullshit.

Or simply because they'll empty their pockets for the chance to kick down on somebody and think they're somehow coming out ahead.

I'm tired of people signing away their futures for empty promises and magic beans and various prejudices, and I'm even more tired of living in the kind of society that willfully tolerates this sort of manipulative horse shit, day in and day out, because too many goddamned people are Stockholm-Sydromed to rich motherfuckers who could give a shit about them.

Every day you risk your life.

Do you really want to risk your life for some rich person's profits and sinful sexual desires?

Because that's what all this authoritarianism they keep pushing is about. That's what they want, while YOU Obey and work for shitty wages, they want to fuck 14-year-olds and amass more wealth than one person could use up in a thousand lifetimes.

Is that what you want running our civilization.

I sure don't.

If you wouldn't tolerate a person like that in your peer group, why do you want them running the country?

Maybe we as a society better rethink a few things.

Maybe when somebody starts talking about "Freedom" we need to start asking:

Freedom for whom, and to do what? 

I used to be a conservative, conservatism isn't supposed to be a slaver's bill of sale.

Is that what you want to risk your life for?

I don't. I won't. Fuck that.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. ~Revelation 13:1-6

Part One.

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