False Religion, to Own The Libs. (Left Behind Is A Lie, Again, One.)

Thou Shalt Not Kill. ~Exodus 20:13

I saw this earlier today.

At some TPUSA conference, some idiot from Idaho asked Charlie Kirk "When do we get to use the guns?" and "When can we kill the Democrats?"

As if some dipshit like Charlie Kirk can somehow magically make all those things like criminal law and human morality go away.

As if other people wouldn't shoot back, as if the government and the military wouldn't react.

There's something wrong with these people. 

A person with some kind of an adult perspective on life doesn't ask questions like that...as if it's all a game, or something. Whoever this guy is...he has a very childish understanding of life, asking a question like that in a manner that suggests a little kid asking if they can have another candy bar.

To his half-ass credit, Charlie Kirk half-ass denounced the guy, saying that if he acted on that, it would hurt the cause and that conservatives would be repressed or some shit.

Seriously?

These fucking people are getting to the point where they're basically living in a fantasy world, and far too much of American culture and capitalism in particular...to say nothing of politics...is simply trying to see what it can get out of these idiots instead of pointing out reality and showing leadership and teaching proper conduct...I mean, seriously, I grew up Christian and conservative. Whatever happened to the idea...to the Biblical Commandment...that killing people is wrong?

And they're going to do something horrible, and provoke a conflict where people will die in great numbers, and then act like everybody else is the bad guy for defending themselves. I'm tired of these fake-ass martyrs and their murderous bullshit.

At least the Taliban seemed to realize that sometimes it's good to be human, once their war was over.

I'm not sure these people will ever do the same, or that they are even capable of such.

Today, in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the judge ruled that the Prosecution could not refer to his three victims as "Victims."

I mean, seriously, what else would you call them but victims of a crime, of aggravated assault and murder?

What sort of Orwellian bullshit would these assholes have the rest of us come up with, just to avoid themselves having to face the fact that one of their little pawns killed people, none of whom were doing anything that would be considered a capital crime. What's it going to take to get these fucking sociopaths to understand that this little shit killed two people and wounded a third in a state where he didn't live, inserting himself into a situation that didn't concern him, claiming to defend property that he did not own and the little fucker is on trial for that crime?

I mean seriously if this little punk ass had been anything other than an affluent white kid with fascist sympathies these motherfuckers would have demanded...since he took a firearm across state lines to commit a crime...that the Federal government step in and charge him and that he face the death penalty. 

The truth is, half of these so-called "Conservative" dudes out there are whacking off to the idea of shooting people themselves, but they're too chicken shit to actually go out and do it.

And the other half are mendacious little fascists with violent fantasies of their own who don't want to get their hands dirty and are perfectly happy to use Charlie Kirk's audience member or Kyle Rittenhouse as pawns to enact their violent fantasies. 

It's a nihilistic death cult. 

Do we dare ask who gets to be the death cult Jesus?

It sure ain't Jesus.

These fucking people think if they can't have totalitarian control over what everybody else does...well then nobody should have anything at all...and they resent the American legal framework...as imperfect as it often is...for the fact that it generally gives people rights.

I keep trying to tell you, these fucking people literally do not believe in human rights, not for actual humans anyway.

They would replace our modern understanding of life and rights and stuff with, in effect, a system of privileges dependent on one's class and race and wealth and institute a totalitarian system to enforce it all.

American "Conservatism" has gone so far to the Right that it's leaving fascism in the rearview mirror. They're going to have to come up with a new name for this horse shit soon. And the fact that these fools are simply refusing to engage with reality is only part of the problem.

The whack-a-nut conspiracy theories, and the refusal to engage on the basis of reality and empirical truth are, in and of themselves, becoming a false religion.

When you start by telling yourself over and over that the world was created in six days, that a bunch of mythological claims about how things work are more true than testable reality concerning those things...and when emotion and feeling good about yourself becomes more important than moral behavior or sound doctrine, you set yourself up for this kind of shit.

Jim Caviezel did a pretty bad-ass job of playing Jesus in The Passion Of Christ years ago. I'll be honest, I would not have imagined at the time that he would go on to be a believer in some obvious bullshit like Q-Anon. I have to wonder just what happened to him.

Sadly, in all honesty it was probably just that he had to go down this road simply to maintain relevance as a conservative actor. 

There's been a strong push towards being ever-more crazy for at least a generation with these fucking people, and the internal logic of conservatism has collapsed under the weight of the collective madness.

And ya know, I'm sorry, but I think all this was ginned up with malice aforethought. No, I'm not big on conspiracy theories myself, but there's pretty strong evidence that certain bad actors have encouraged this lockstep March Ever Rightward and now that it's hit the wall of reality, those same people, the Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson types...are encouraging their followers to back the truck up and hit it again...and again...and again.

And they don't care who dies.

They just want to not have to contribute to society, pay less in taxes, and propagate shitty social values for their own benefit.

Meanwhile...from the other direction, from that of their base...there seems to be a growing conviction that the only thing that's true IS the conspiracy theories, and what they want to believe.

These people have already removed Jesus Christ and the judgments of Revelation from their End Times theories and replaced them with Anti-vax bullshit and Q-Anon like I said before. That didn't come from Fox News, that came from people like my ex-wife and one of my ex-girlfriends, from people where I used to work and from various Youtube morons and small-time preachers. But it's trickled up.

These people are going to reach a point where they decide that they themselves are the Saviors, except they're not going to die, or sacrifice, for all of Humanity...they don't care about being the mediator between God and Man.

No, they're going to kill...and they're going to do it for their own glory. And they'll tell themselves whatever they have to so that they can feel righteous while they do it. Hell, they don't care about God at all, except insofar as they want to be Him.

And this is, ultimately, the pernicious bastard child of the Prosperity Gospel and assorted Pentecostal shenanigans, but now untethered from Christianity or from any pretense of doctrine...or even religion in any understandable sense...at all.

It's all the same shit, fanaticism for the sake of fanaticism, but with themselves as the center of the Universe, and with Donald Trump (or anybody they can find who's even worse than he is) as a figurehead golden bull to worship.

Want to take a guess where all the rest of us stand, in that kind of a cosmology?

There is no eternal life in a materialistic cult of self and selfishness.

The rest of us had best start doing something about this shit, and soon.

Before these people realize that Left Behind is a lie and decide to make their own Apocalypse. Before they realize that there is no eternal life and no god in their own belief system that they've created...and use that as a rationalization or a stepping-stone to something even worse.

That won't end the way they think it will.

But they don't care.

They will see the Eternal Death that their former religion says is their due as some kind of opportunity. They will twist it around to make God Himself the bad guy.

And I'm here to tell you, when that time comes these fucking people will make the Taliban look sane and reasonable by comparison...and I guarantee you they will start with targeting Christians and other religions and anybody with any kind of morality other than their own twisted version.

They won't call Evil good, and Good evil then...they're doing that already.

In that sense, there is no coming apostasy, it's already here.

If you're not willing to go down the unending rabbit hole of crazy with them, you will be The Enemy, to them, akin to the Devil himself. Left unchecked this will consume even those who orchestrated it...we're already starting to see it with these people turning against Fox News for not being crazy enough.

It's not going to stop until the rest of us step up and stop it.

Or there will be no more victims, just whatever terminology they make up to comfort murderers.

We have a problem, slowly coming together in this rising anti-faith.

We need to do something about it.

That's all. 

We have to stop this shit, or more people will die.

I can't make it any simpler than that.

"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From the Novella "A Colder War" by Charles Stross.