We Dare To Defend Our Rights (Arsonists V.)

[n response to a soldier saying death is honorable] Kashiwara died of honorable dysentery. ~Saigo, from Letters From Iwo Jima.

I just saw this.

What the fuck is it with these people, really?

They would rather fight to the death against conspiracies that exist only in their own heads...but do so by lashing out at very real governments and people, which will certainly result in very real death and pain...than get a simple shot and spend 15 minutes or so waiting to make sure there's no adverse reaction?

Of course, these fucking people believe [Checks Notes] That COVID-19 is basically some grand super-secret plot against conservatives or some shit, and that getting vaccinated will, I don't know, something something Gazpacho Argle Bargle Deep State COMMUNISM! Fuck, I don't know, it's impossible for me to understand these fucking people's thought process. Actually, it really isn't that hard anymore because there doesn't seem to be one and this entire mess is pretty much like some kid shouting at a random adult "You can't tell me what to do!"

A friend of mine has long said that this virus is a lot of these fucking people's first crisis. Throw in the actual incompetence of Trump and others and I suppose to those inclined to be conspiratorial about all type of shit, who also happen to be dumber than fuck, it's got to look like some kind of conspiracy. 

It must be, because in these people's heads the Gospel Truth that is "Conservatism" can do no wrong. If I had to guess I'd say that when the dust settles from all this bullshit, their line is going to be that "True conservatism has never been tried" or that "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed."

Actually, I've heard that shit before, too.

Anything to protect the selfish, shitty philosophy by which these fucking people define their lives, I guess.

I suppose the truth that there really is a damn virus and Republicans have handled the matter with utter incompetence...on purpose and with malice aforethought, with intent to profit politically and otherwise from large numbers of people dying...is probably too much for these damn fools.

I used to be a Republican, and the longer this goes on the less I understand it.

Or maybe I do.

You just have to check your brain at the door, put on the jackboots, and stomp on that shit hard 'til it doesn't work anymore.

When these people say "rights" they're not talking about their Constitutional or legal rights, you know, the kind you have to be alive to actually possess. No. That's not really it. When they say "rights" they're talking about everything from [their interpretation of] Constitutional and legal and social rights to hierarchy and their mostly-imagined place in it. To these people being "Conservative" is little more than being "Not liberal" (and there's a whole bunch of bullshit they append to that word as well) just like being "White" is basically defined as being "Not Black." 

On a certain level, too, they think they should have the right to own other people. What right do you really think the motto of the state of Alabama "Audemus jura nostra defendere" (We dare to defend our rights) was/is actually referring to?

And people on that side of our political fence are fine with this horse shit.

These people see the Democrats and increasingly most not-explicitly-MAGA Republicans (or those who have their own priorities other than serving Trump) as having "sold out" to other people in general and to Black people in particular...simply by merely believing in white superiority rather than outright White Supremacy...and they hate other Republicans, even those who vote with them most of the time...for being merely conservative rather than some sort of Football Hooligan-like fascist Ultra or sweaty overweight internet troll.

What they're saying is, functionally, they want...need, in their minds...the right to be RIGHT. It's the ultimate divorce between ideas and people. They think, even if they're dead, somehow their spiritual rightness will go on, or something. The Hive is all. What they want, basically, is to have what they think be seen as Correct, and for any other belief to be seen as secondary. To dictate terms to demographics or reality or the rest of the world...or be allowed to imagine they are doing so. This was the Republican modus operandi for a long time. To let the rubes think they had the power, and to offer them nothing but racism and rob them blind instead of anything that might help. And they want the right to kill if they see people as rejecting this imagined power and their very real shitty worldview. 

They want governments to tiptoe around them to avoid their anger as if they're radical tribal Islamists in Pakistan and the only way the government can control them is to send the Army into the northern tribal areas again...and of course nobody wants to do that because then people die, and the nuts invariably care less if it's them. 

They hope the rest of the world will eventually just settle for the sort of shitty tedious equilibrium of the Pakistani army troops in the big gray castle, letting the drug smugglers and Taliban alone so long as they don't operate in the town or any important parts of their AO that somehow doesn't include certain villages or the route over the mountains to Kandahar.

And essentially, most of these people are more angry tribal radical than actual doctrinaire fascist. 

Except that the people who are manipulating them, the Tucker Carlson types...are actual fascists who hope at once to both use these people to fulfill their goals and to get them to die of disease by not getting vaccinated, but not to die until after they've served their purpose. Normally, it seems like these two ideas would contradict each other.

And of course in normal times, in normal terms, Fascism is one of the far ends of the paradigm of Statism...on the rightward end of the spectrum there's also nationalism. On the leftward end of the spectrum there's socialism and further along, Communism. But these aren't normal times and normal terminology is less accurate in describing these people. Yes, they absolutely do believe in there being some kind of transcendent state...defined by things like marching soldiers, torchlit rallies and persecution of enemies rather than transcendence through meditation or prayer.

Or to put it another way, these people want to be the Pakistani Taliban gangs who go around trying to stop aid workers from vaccinating children for Polio. They want to be the people who shot that girl in the face for daring to get an education, and to shoot people for daring to do things like have sex or live their lives or walk down the street with a grocery bag. 

And if they can't do all that, they want to go down fighting, to try and immanentize their shitty eschaton by force.

They're fascist, alright, time was I'd have said religious fanatics also, but their religion is basically also fascism at this point. They just utterly reject the idea of government or politics or the people to actually deliver on this. Thus their fascination with Donald Trump, with guns, and with magical conspiracy worldviews. Effectively, they want somebody to bullshit the Universe into giving them what they want. 

Hence my use of the phrase "Atavistic non-state fascism." Basically, it boils down to they want to kill anything that's outside of whatever narrow spectrum they define as "Normal." Increasingly, that is expanding to include most of modern American government and society as we know it. All they know is they're angry and dumb and they want to tear everything down.

Basically, both the fascists and the tribal nuts share the goal of burying civilization and society under a really big pile of dead bodies. They just have different ideas about whose bodies it will be, and the tribal base is too dumb to realize that the rich fascists want them to die, too. 

I'm serious, nobody has more contempt for Republican voters than Republicans do. And people will die, unless we as a people step up and stop this bullshit.

The virus doesn't care about their politics. It will absolutely take that challenge...and win.

And no matter what the state of politics is, people are never going to stop being gay, having sex, doing what they want even if conservatives dislike it, etc. That's just life. Other people have a right not to give a shit what you think.

These people don't understand that part, either. In fact, given that Republicanism has basically rolled over faster to Nazi motherfuckers like this guy than the Weimar Republic did for the actual historical Nazis...I find his reference to "Weimar America" hilarious.

He only wishes it was that way, trust me.

And what these people don't understand is that once they start shooting at people, other people will shoot back and probably they'll end up killing a lot of their own, too. And the other side won't. They'll bank on things like short, sharp campaigns of insurgency and terrorism that will fail, but will hurt or kill lots of people anyway.

They don't care if they win. They just want to make sure that if they lose, so does everybody else. To them, anger is life, compromise and intelligence are equated with death. Death is easier than citizenship if citizenship means everybody gets a piece of the pie or can fuck who they want, how they want. Rage and revenge for imagined wrongs is easier than freedom and rights. 

Control of the narrative, of profits, and of sexuality are things these morons think they have some kind of "right" to have.

It doesn't really work that way. Your politics don't give you some kind of Right To Rule. This is America, not the Galactic Empire or the Imperium Of Man.

On an individual basis, these fucking people don't care if they get anything, they just want you to not have anything either. 

They don't care if they end up with some dirty, fascist banana republic that used to be Alabama where they live on four thousand dollars a year, as long as they get to be prejudiced, dictate the private lives and sexuality of other people, and generally act like braying jackasses in public while loudly proclaiming themselves "Orthodox Christians" while pushing beliefs and politics that are anything and everything but actually Christian. All the better if, by doing so, they can reduce America in some way, make it smaller, weaker, more divided. They long for their culture wars to be real wars.

Theirs is a world ruled by paranoia about somebody else having an unauthorized orgasm in an unapproved fashion in the privacy of their own space where you can't even see them, and willingness to impose nothing less than totalitarianism to control that. It's no wonder they go bananas about things like public health whether it's sex education, vaccinations or wearing masks.

The truth is they view those things as things that should only be for themselves. For the rest of us, they want nothing but religion, work, and submission to their totalitarian control. 

And that's what they think it is when anybody else tries to tell them what to do. It's all projection. Rod Dreher and those like him are less Christians than they are arsonists of the soul who want you to burn in hell, one way or another. They just want to also be the ones who determine who goes there.

And no human being can (or should) have that right, theologically or otherwise.

We really need to stop this.

I demand the right to not have to put up with this stupid bullshit.

And if you don't...what the fuck is wrong with you?

Post IV.

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

Mean Girls (Arsonists IV.)

Hospitaller: So, how find you Jerusalem?

Balian of Ibelin: God does not speak to me. Not even on the hill where Christ died. I am outside God's grace.

Hospitaller: I have not heard that.

Balian of Ibelin: At any rate, it seems I have lost my religion.

Hospitaller: I put no stock in religion. By the word religion, I've seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the "Will of God". I've seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness - what God desires - [pointing at his head then heart] is here and here. And what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man, [smiles] or not. ~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

I saw this this evening.

Ilhan Omar and Lauren Boebert spoke by phone today, and evidently instead of trying to act like a goddamned civilized human being, Blowbert simply doubled down on her previous behavior. Omar hung up on her.

Good.

You cannot reason with willfully unreasonable people, you cannot expect truth from the willfully mendacious. You can't expect an overgrown teenager like Blowbert who had enablers instead of parents to suddenly start acting like a grown-ass adult. And thus far, Blowbert has shown she has reactionary shitty views about basically everything from COVID-19 to LGBT rights, and she'd rather be a right-wing pop culture icon than a legislator. She sure as fuck doesn't want to do the job.

And make no mistake about it, the Republican Party has shown that people like Lauren Boebert represent its future. After all, Donald Trump is old, his bullying, cowardly, lying old ass has maybe a few years left and that's all. And say whatever else you want about Trump...the man had limits. There were a hell of a lot of people Trump didn't have the guts to talk shit about in public. Maybe that's limits born more from cowardice than ethics, but at least it's something.

Lauren Blowbert doesn't even have that.

Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz. Ronny Jackson..the Republican Party has made no bones about the fact that these people represent what it sees as its future...and the wider global Authoritarianism, Inc. and assorted corporate goons line up enthusiastically behind them because they want as many people in positions of power in the United States who don't know shit about anything as they can possibly get. 

Vladimir Putin doesn't want these people in power because he likes or agrees with them. He wants them in power because they'd be lucky if they could find Ukraine on a marked map, let alone manage any kind of wartime situation competently...and he knows they'd be far more likely to shrink away and half-ass the response to anything he did out of simple cowardice and lack of scruples.

And plenty enough American bad actors, corporate or otherwise, know all they have to do is throw money at these bitches and they have new lackeys in Congress, just like that.

But more to the point far too many of their fellow Republicans right here are Okay with this bullshit or at least afraid to speak up about it out of fear of angering the fascist mob that serves as a majority of their voter base right now;

And that's exactly what it is, fascists.

Ilhan Omar rose from being a poor refugee to being in the United States House of Representatives...hell, to being one of the people who set the tone for awhile. Omar is the first naturalized citizen of African birth in Congress, the first Somali American in Congress and the first Muslim woman in Congress. She's shown a fair amount of grit and leadership, I think. And she's shown herself to be a worthy successor to Keith Ellison, who I figure had to be a tough act to follow. I have relatives who live in that congressional district...older people and more old-school Democrats who doubtless see Muslim Congress-people as a new and different thing but they've never had any complaints about either Ellison or Omar that I've heard about. I know from Facebook posts I've seen that they voted for both.

Lauren Boebert on the other hand, is basically a spoiled high school mean girl ho who never even finished high school, much less grew up. She made the jump from working person to restaurant owner to right-wing activist without much apparent effort at all. But she sure knows how to play the petty political bullshit she had to have learned from doing all that. Trust me, anybody who got their politics from working in food service isn't somebody I want in Congress. (I worked in food service, too.)

Apparently, she campaigned on wanting to carry a weapon on the House floor.

For the love of God, why? What's even the damn point of this?

It's not even an original idea, people did shit like that all the time in the 19th century and there was occasional violence between Congressmen. The current rules that forbid carrying weapons in Congress exist for a damn reason, though they do seem to be broken from time to time.

And I'll tell you one thing for sure, I've known plenty of Evangelical Christian women just like Lauren Boebert, who think they and everything they do are special and that no rules apply to them. Like in the End of Days, when the judgment comes, they think they'll just be able to smooth-talk Jesus out of sending them straight to hell, or something.

I've absolutely learned the hard way not to turn by back on these kind of people.

Look, if you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. If you want to be a better citizen you have to elect better people to represent you in our representative form of Democracy. 

And this? This ain't it, people.

People like Lauren Boebert don't recognize their fellow Americans as fellow citizens. Hell, they don't recognize anybody who's different from them as a fellow human being.

And the real sick thing is, if she had this ongoing thing with Omar in any other workplace in America, Lauren Boebert would have been out the door the first that the Human Resources department heard about it.

And in our system of government, having these fucking people in the legislative body that's by definition supposed to represent everybody is a terrible idea. It's really that simple. Hate has no place in proper governance. Why the hell else do you think Republicans want this shit to infect our government?

They want things not to work, They absolutely don't want a government that represents everybody.

I've been saying for years that "Left Behind Is A Lie" but the truth of it is that Republicans absolutely do want an America where a lot of people...preferably people they don't like but they'll move the goalposts on that, too...get left behind. The cruelty is the goddamn point.

And with Trump out of power...the Republicans are betting on people like Lauren Boebert to keep their shitty agenda going...to keep things not working, especially for the average person. The last thing conservatives want, after all, is progress.

That spell it out for ya?

Hilary Faye : Mary, turn away from Satan. Jesus, he loves you.

Mary : You don't know the first thing about love.

Hilary Faye : [throws a Bible at Mary] I am FILLED with Christ's love! You are just jealous of my success in the Lord.

Mary : [Mary holds up the Bible] This is not a weapon! You idiot.

~From the film Saved!

Part III

 
 

Sovereign People (Arsonists III.)

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

 I saw this earlier today.

Some "Conservative" essentially arguing that improving public health costs too much and is too hard, so why even try to do it because the virus will just keep mutating anyway.

Well, with that sort of logic, why do anything at all?

Everything is difficult at some time or another, almost anything can cost too much, in the judgment of one person or another. There has to be some sort of baseline effort and prioritization of just what the fuck we're doing here.

Of course, the Elephant in the room with people like this is that it doesn't cost too much for them, In fact, they might benefit from it. But these fucking people invariably don't want anything that might cost corporations or rich people money. Because sure, you might be some old fat hairy redneck who works at Tractor Supply, but goddamn it if you believe in all this shit hard enough you just might be a CEO someday.

Horse Shit.

But if you poke it with a stick long enough you'll eventually get to them having an objection to public health because Black people or old people or whatever might live longer, or women might have abortions, or whatever it is that they don't like.

TL:DR is that the people for whom everything is TL:DR seem to think they should somehow have power of review over every single line item government action or expense and they have an expectation of instant gratification...they want what they want, so fuck you. Otherwise, why spend money on anything? The "Fuck You" is the point here.

Another thing is that these idiots don't want to take responsibility for anything, least of all other people.

It's the same old selfish bullshit, the same old rationales that Republicans and rich people have been using to try and tell America that we can't have anything at all to varying degrees for a hundred years.

And yet...screw the "Small intellectual elite" Reagan spoke about. These fucking people seem like they'd be perfectly well content to let Donald Trump and a small crew of FOX News personalities make all their decisions for them! This isn't conservatism. This is monarchism that's too dumb to know what monarchism is.

And then these people who are angry all the time and wonder why nothing works wonder why they're angry all the time and nothing works.

It's because the last thing you fuckers really want to do is take responsibility for self-government and the society you live in and educate yourselves, speak to the people around you and develop consensus  and thus have a real say in how things are run. 

They think some loose idea of self-improvement is the answer to everything. But the problem with that is individual effort isn't how you run a country or a society. Sure, you can go around trying to solicit big money from individual rich people for some $80 million dollar project...or you could, via legislation...ask 80 million (or more!) people to contribute $1. Which is easier? Individual effort, or collective effort? Which $80 million would come with more conditions on its use? The one rich guy you owe who's going to expect and demand big things from you for that money? Or the 80 million people who aren't even going to miss that dollar?

And it works the same way with public health. Yeah, sure, you can expect one guy to save your bacon all you want...but probably there isn't anybody who can do that with a changing global pandemic. It seems like it's easier to simply ask and reasonably expect (and enforce via legislation) that as many people as possible get vaccinated.

The right wing loves the idea of the Superman...but then does everything possible to prevent one from arising and anoints the biggest bullshit artist they can find with the title instead. What they don't realize is a billion Clark Kents (that is, average people) can get a lot more shit done than one Superman.

But that might cost some rich person money, because the effort and will of such large groups of people is expressed through governance, policy and taxation. So Republicans don't want to do that.

You'll notice none of these anti-government, self-improvement chucklefucks has any actual ideas for how the entire human race should combat a virus.

And there's a reason for that, because the truth is they don't even give a fuck about anybody other than themselves. I suppose self-improvement is easy when you have millions or billions of dollars or can at least bullshit your way into an endless line of credit by making yourself the face of obnoxious wealthy people for 40 years.

Actual self-improvement takes education, hard work and knowledge, and more often than not, collective effort by a group working toward the same goals be it an Alcoholics Anonymous group, a church, a military unit, a small company or a Yoga class.. But of course that's not what these people are talking about. Their idea of  "Man's relation to Man" (to use Reagan's term) is that it shouldn't really exist. A lot of these people bought way too much into Ayn Rand and her selfish worldview.

They want the power without the effort, and fundamentally, deep down they think societal degradation and the virus and their own mythology about themselves will get it for them. They're still thinking they can bury civilization under a big enough pile of bodies.

"Going Galt" has been replaced by some right-wing version of the Imperial Japanese Banzai charge.

They want the Killing Fields, but with a gym, a mall and some stores. It doesn't matter to them that it's mostly their own people dying at this point. They think some kind of atavistic, non-state fascism where everybody dies is, fundamentally, the answer to the problems of life. They see endless conflict not as a tragedy, but as a thing that gives meaning to their otherwise empty lives.

And who dies because of it means less than nothing to them.

Don't be these fucking people.

If you want a better world, you have to give a shit, about yourself and other people.

And if you want a better government? Maybe start by governing yourself and your own impulses.

Is that so hard? Having self-control, being sovereign over your self and your own desires was a bedrock principle of the conservatism I was raised with. That's how you get to the "sovereign people" that Reagan was talking about in the pull quote.

But Republicans aren't the party of Nixon or Reagan anymore. They're the party of Trump.

And all they know is they're angry, but even that's somebody else's fault. Far from mastering their emotions, they are ruled by them. These people are arsonists of souls, but they can't even be bothered to know according to their own claimed philosophies what having a soul is!

If you wonder why nothing works, Republicans, start there.

Part I

Part II

If You Can Keep It (Arsonists, Part II.)

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

I saw this yesterday.

The city government of Oroville, California (a small city in northern California) is attempting to declare itself a "Constitutional Republic" because these idiots don't want to comply with federal and state mask and vaccine mandates.

I submit that the absolute LAST thing any of these fucking people give a shit about is "Freedom" or at least the freedoms or rights of anybody other than themselves. That's always how it is with these people. They want to do what they want to do and that's "Freedom" but they're the first ones to cry oppression and tyranny when anybody else wants to do anything.

Seriously. Make Republicans Act Like Adults Again.

'Cause among other things it's kind of hard to be free when you've died of perfectly well preventable causes. I literally do not understand this shit. All sorts of people get vaccinated for all type of stuff when we're kids, when we join the military or certain professions, when we travel overseas, etc. WHY IS THIS ONE DIFFERENT?!

Don't wave your hands around, don't look away, answer the fucking question.

Why is THIS vaccine somehow different, and political, when (for example) Anthrax or Smallpox is not? Why do people want to fuck around on this one. Yes, I get that there's a lot of conspiracy theorist chucklefucks who are just plain fucking stupid and a lot of eugenicist conservative politicians who'd just love it to pieces if everybody making under six figures mysteriously kicked the bucket, but then they'd have to cut their own grass, serve their own food and various other things us normal people have to do, and I don't think they'd like that very much. Of course, I don't think any of these people are really thinking that much at all.

Everybody on the Right has some kind of half-baked ideological angle and since COVID-19 is most people's first real crisis they're all trying to find ways to bend it so they can use it to serve their stupid ideology.

Listen up, yo. It's a virus, it literally cannot think on that high of a level, it doesn't give a shit, and it will infect you just the same as anybody else because it's a virus and it doesn't give a good goddamn who you are or what your shitty politics are. It is not capable of that.

Oroville, California, is a small city with a population of around 20,000 that is hugely dependent on federal and state funding because of environmental conditions and its rural location. Like most such small municipalities it doesn't do that much on its own and it depends on everywhere else around it, national transportation networks, power grid, social programs, etc. 

If I were the Governor, much less the President, all that shit would be gone. I'd give everybody who wanted to leave the option to, hell, provide full support for them to do so. Then, I'd cut it all off, figure it out your own damn selves, grow your own food, keep yourselves free of disease, support your own old people, etc. and I'd keep the Army National Guard and the state police on standby in case things got out of hand or for when they wave the white flag.

And, somebody starts some shit, then it's on like Donkey Kong. Let's see how your AR-15 holds up against Abrams tanks, Bradley IFV's, Apache gunships, Strikers, A-10 Thunderbolt II's strafing with 30mm cannons, bombing runs from B-1B Lancers dropping sticks of Mk. 117 bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from offshore. I hope y'all invested in a good air defense system, motherfuckers. 

And I'd make a national example of these morons and their leaders. You want to have a "Constitutional Republic" without obeying the Constitution and legitimate federal and state authority, without even giving a shit about your own neighbors, your own people? Fuck you. You can stand trial for treason in front of the whole goddamn country with that shit televised on every possible channel. 

And I'd make sure the message got sent to the rich vaccinated conservatives spreading this Antivax bullshit and increasingly divisive far-right politics that if this keeps up much longer, if they cause more people to die, I'd find a way to hold their asses responsible.

I'm quite serious, we as a people need to stop putting up with this moronic opposite-day horse shit. We, as a society, need to stop putting up with this crap and when somebody pulls this "You're not the boss of me" bullshit they get paddled like the shitty overgrown children that they are, in public, with their friends watching. If they can't or won't feel shame...find the limit where they will.

This shit is a social cancer that's threatening the very existence of the United States Of America as a whole. We, as a people, need to stand up and start doing something about it.

As regards the virus, We've tried reasoning with these people, we've tried telling them what to do, we've even tried, to a great extent, bribing them with everything from cash to guns. And for all the good it's done us there's still 40% or so of the country that's not vaccinated...and for roughly 25% of us overall it's a politically-motivated, ideological refusal not only to get vaccinated but refusing to take any precautions whatever.

And now some of these motherfuckers are trying to half-ass secede over it?

Let me ask you this?

Do you think a cop, a public official, or a soldier that won't take a simple shot will do right by you, or take a bullet for you? Do you really?

Do you think some smarmy, smirking rich thug like Tucker Carlson actually gives a good goddamn about you as a person who's simply watching his show?

Do you think some COVID-19 denialist politician like Lauren Boebert even gives a fuck about her own constituents? Or is she more interested in trying to act like she's hot shit and be some kind of right-wing movie star?

More to the point, do you think a nation run by these people would be "...Of the people, by the people, and for the people" for very long? Or would it just be an endless exercise in the government robbing you blind and giving everything to rich people, while offering you only cheap entertainment and racism in return? Remember that modern "Conservatism" as a rule does not think government should be a public good, but rather entirely beholden to private interests. If these people had their own country it'd make the Alien franchise look like Star Trek.

At best, it'd be a lot more Ayn Rand than Ronald Reagan.

If you think the people trying to break off their own little dumb ass town for some "Constitutional Republic" {that ignores the Constitution) have your own best interests in mind, you're dumber than I thought.

Do you think somebody who'd wipe their ass with a valid order in front of their Captain is going to listen to you, citizen?

I'm tired of this bullshit.

It's the usual stupid right-wing showboating, and when it doesn't turn out the way they wanted none of these fucking people will take any responsibility for it.

If you want to protect your freedoms, if you want to live in a better country, you have to be a better citizen, you have to be a better person, and you have to care about the common good.

And with another COVID-19 variant bearing down on us, I shouldn't have to tell you what all those words mean in real life. Public health means giving a shit, about everybody. Get the damn shot, wear a damn mask, and we have to take care of each other. It's just that damned simple.

If you can't understand that, what the fuck is wrong with you?

When the framers were done drafting and had voted on the final makeup of the Constitution and sent it to the states for ratification, Ben Franklin was allegedly asked what manner of government they had given to the people.

He is alleged to have answered "A Republic, if you can keep it."

If you can keep it. This isn't just some half-baked idea. You have to actually give a shit.

Also, this may be relevant.

This too

Bottomless (Part I.)

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good!
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold, With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit; In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. ~Robert W. Service, The Ballad Of Pious Pete.

I saw this earlier today. A doctor in Texas, Dr. Ingrid Skop, tried to say that it's Okay for a nine-year-old girl to have a kid. 

I mean, what the actual goddamned fuck? 

First of all, just because a person is biologically capable of having sex doesn't mean they should do it. Second, I can kind of remember being that age. Even the slightest interest in that sort of thing was at least a year or two away for me I think, and I did start kind of young...but not going anywhere near that far. The thought wouldn't have occurred to me. But the whole idea that a nine year old could make those kind of decisions or would even think of that stuff on their own, much less handle the emotional aspects and shit? No. Just no. That's not how any of that works. Like I said, none of this would even have started to occur to me for awhile yet when I was that age.

I mean, seriously, who even thinks this stuff up? Who the fuck would want to? This is the sort of thing that makes me, as a person, want to reach for my shotgun and I *Don't* have any kids. (A fact I'm rather glad for, these days.)

And the fact that it's some "Pro-Life" person and therefore most likely religious, well I'm sorry but that just seems kind of sick, to me. I'm sorry, but the main thing I remember hearing from those kind of people about anything to do with having sex was "Don't."

Instead, they're basically justifying sexual abuse and God only knows what else because "Abortion is bad" or something. 

As if anybody in the world thinks a woman or girl having an abortion is a good thing?

No one does, that I know of. At best, it's a serious matter. At worst it's a tragedy. 

But it's necessary, because among other things a rape victim should not have to have her rapist's kid. To use the doctor's example; A nine-year-old girl, coerced or manipulated into a situation likely beyond her understanding, should not then also have motherhood forced upon her. This isn't really that hard.

I can remember when pretty much everybody thought kids having kids was bad, and when there were even some rap songs and shit that promoted using condoms. Now there's almost a cult of irresponsible unprotected sex...if not simply a cult of the male orgasm...that all too often dresses itself up in the Christian religion.

Rape and sexual abuse are illegal and wrong but they happen, and he perpetrators are often hard to bring to justice. In point of fact, Conservatism and religion (especially conservative Christianity!) are usually ass-deep in protecting people who do shit like that. (And then, the same people will then point to a hypothetical ten-year-old mom and call her a social problem and an example of immorality and try to deny her social services, etc. etc.)

So, there has to be some kind of societal remedy, to help the victim after the fact, if nothing else.

And hell, plenty of times consensual sex ends up working out badly, doesn't it? So, what about that?

No, I don't like any of this any more than you do. But I'm not the one publicly justifying this shit or supporting anti-Abortion laws. One can dislike all manner of things without thinking they should be illegal. I don't like abortion much, but it's none of my business if a woman needs...or even simply wants to have one.

Also, pro-life my goddamned hairy ass. 

A hell of a lot of people who get forced into sexual situations too young or that they otherwise didn't want to be in end up with PTSD or other mental problems, and never get to have a normal life again. How is any of that "Pro-Life?"

This is stuff we need to make a serious effort to address as a society. Glib one-liners by monomaniacal fanatics are absolutely not the answer.

And it gets worse.

After telling a bunch of lies about a completely made-up encounter between herself and Ilhan Omar, Lauren Boebert made a bunch of homophobic comments about Pete Buttigieg and his husband being parents.

At this point if she worked literally anywhere else in the whole damn country, Blowbert would have been fired for cause and charges of harassment would likely at least had to have been considered, if not pressed.

Bitch, first of all your honkey ass white conservative suburbanite fake-Christian bullshit is not aspirational for everybody, nor is your stupid gun bunny bit. Second, just because this is your personal experience of life, that does not automatically make it the truth for everybody and other people are not holding out on you or trying to take away your Jesus or whatever by being different than you are. Seriously this warmed-over wannabe-movie-star foolishness is getting old. There was a time when members of Congress were at least supposed to have some measure of dignity or something. Hell, I used to be a conservative Republican, and this? This ain't it.

Hell, Secretary Pete is closer by far to what I was taught a conservative was supposed to be than Lauren Boebert is. He's held office, he's religious, and he's a veteran. And, being a gay man, he's married. Don't tell me there wasn't some thought put into all this?

Lauren Blowbert on the other hand seems to just make it up as she goes along, and that's effectively become the template for "Conservatism" in general.

There's just no bottom with these people.

And unless We The People develop a hard floor of What We'll Tolerate, there's never going to be. Pro tip based on life experience: You get what you tolerate.

And if you tolerate a political movement that has as its core values things like abuse, cruelty and greed, you're going to have problems because of it.

That's all there is to it. Some things are just wrong. I hope we don't have to re-learn this the hard way.

There's a lot of people who seem to want us to have to. Not for some grand ideological point, but because they're debased motherfuckers who think they'll get to really enjoy themselves hurting and killing and raping and stealing from other people.

And they're trying to sell this garbage as some kind of righteousness, or claim it's justified because somebody else is supposedly worse.

These people are moral bottomless pits.

There is no bottom.

Unless WE make one.

Part II

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

Arsonists (Part I.)

Fiery the angels fell, deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of  Orc. - Roy Batty, Blade Runner. (A deliberate misquote of William Blake's "America, A Prophecy.")

What the fuck is this bullshit?

Some fireman in California, given a letter of noncompliance for refusing to get vaccinated, wiped his dirty ass with the thing and handed it back.

He did this in front of his captain and his Chief.

He's now on administrative leave.

Sorry but as far as I know refusing to obey orders, or such gross misconduct is bad enough. Doing it right in front of your line supervisor and department head is a career ending move.

I don't get this bullshit. 

There's something wrong with these people.

You don't just light a career as a cop or firefighter or a military troop or a nurse on fire and destroy yourself for no damn reason but I've seen multiple people in these professions do this shit live on video, as if choosing to martyr themselves for Antivax bullshit, cheap internet fame or Donald Trump.

And I'll never understand it.

Not least because these are jobs where the respect of your peers is important and as such your word has to be good. Respect is earned by every action every day, by sustained superior performance. Service before self, integrity above all, excellence in all that we do.

I'm not unfamiliar with this stuff myself. Thus the thought of refusing a lawful order...a routine thing in fact, that no one ever said shit about 25 years ago...seems absolutely stupid as fuck to me.

Especially considering the consequences and that anyone refusing would be administratively separated and sent home were made plain as day.

All these people have to get all sorts of vaccinations as a matter of course. It's not even a question.

So why the fuck is this one any different?

And why are conspiracy theory nuts, politicians and internet dumb shits egging this shit on?

Is nihilism just that much of a drug to these people?

I know there's a lot of idiots out there who think something something Revelation and the vaccine is some kind of  Mark of the Beast.

But that view is not supported by, you know, an actual reading of the scriptures. I used to be an End Times Prophecy guy. I know my stuff here.

The Bible is pretty explicit on what all that entails and this ain't it.

But I know people who believe in this bullshit who've basically thrown Jesus out of the end of His Word and replaced Him with nothing but Antivax woo.

Remember that Man cannot save Man.

You can impress Antivax ninnies all you want. If you're a Christian and you effectively rejected Christ to do it the Bible says you're going to hell.

And that's just one obvious issue with this whole mess.

I get a lot of it is political tribalism and people who think dancing around a fire shouting Unga Bunga is something to aspire to.

But people literally shitting all over their career prospects or rejecting without apparent cause or introspection the religion they claimed defines them? I just don't even understand that.

The people who spread this garbage are arsonists of souls.

But how can they get so  many people to burn themselves up?

What's even the damn point?

Part II.

Part III

Stone Of Hope (Ahmaud Arbery Post II.)

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners sat down at the table of justice and voted to find three white men guilty of murdering a young black man. I'm not sure it's justice raining down like waters or righteousness like a mighty stream, but goddamn, I'll take it. It's definitely a start.

Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse met with former president Trump yesterday. And *He* got away with his crimes.

Because reasons, or something.

Among other things, as I remarked yesterday it seems like the prosecution in the Arbery murder case was much more ably led, and the facts of the case more clear-cut despite previous prosecutorial and police misconduct in not charging these three motherfuckers until national notice and political pressure forced them to. On the other hand, Rittenhouse was arrested the next day, no questions asked and no screwing around.

Worth noting though, that while I was writing this I saw that the former Prosecutor who didn't want to do her job was arrested and booked like a common criminal for failure to uphold her oath of office, misconduct and violation of public trust. I saw her mug shot on Twitter.

Good.

But I'd also argue that Authoritarianism, Inc. (Both in terms of its US Republican and foreign wings) wasn't going to go and launch some balls-out effort involving millions of dollars and every far-right celebrity they could scrape up to save three butter-faced inbred Hills Have Eyes mutant looking motherfuckers who were basically a canoe full of tourists away from trying to reenact Deliverance no matter how you slice it. Nobody's going to get rich off trying to make three stereotypical Georgia rednecks into right-wing cultural icons, they'd just get laughed at.

Same with the former prosecutor. Nobody's going to save her.

It's been my experience, though, that the average MAGA is far closer to being these perps than to being Kyle Rittenhouse, so maybe they should damned well take note of that, too. 

Just a thought. If you're not pretty, young, or preferably both, the old perverts like Gosar or Trump and the young perverts like Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn aren't going to notice you, certainly not in the same way. And if MTG manages to get him first, I rather suspect nobody else is going to want Kyle after, they'll be afraid what they might catch.

Of course, there's another factor in play here too. This case was just straight-up naked-ass old-fashioned racism with about the most stereotypical perpetrators that would be possible unless somebody built some in a disused secret Nazi lab. 

There's supposed to be a layer of separation between the racism and the crime in order to provide plausible deniability for all the dog-whistle racists. The Rittenhouse case had that, being a shooting at the protest following the shooting of a Black man. The Arbery case didn't have that and thus didn't get the attention from far-right money and politics.

Kyle Rittenhouse was and is a racism-laundering operation. That's why he went on Tucker Carlson and said he wasn't a racist and he supports BLM. (There's also a non-zero chance that Rittenhouse was just trolling his own supporters, too.)

But it's more than that. A lot more, if you think about it, and all the hidden layers are what make this shit so insidious.


While racism is important to these fucking goons, it's less important than their culture war rage bullshit unless it can be worked in directly, and preferably unobtrusively. They like to hide that shit, and right now it's Culture War above all. Or, as Rick correctly makes the connection, the Kulturkampf. Yes, that's right. Weimar Germany and Nazi Germany after it had a Culture War, too.

Think about that, for a second. Just go ahead and give it some thought, I'll wait.

And I'll give you three guesses who modern "Conservatives" think were the good guys, but you're only gonna need one.

And think about how many of the old standard-issue Republicans either just roll over for this shit or enthusiastically jump in. I've said before that "Conservatism" is going full Weimar Republic in rolling over for these assholes and it's kicking out anyone and everyone who won't vote for the Enabling Acts, preemptively, just like the Nazis eliminated the Communists as a voting bloc in the Reichstag before they made their move, not after.

Because after all, these people's egos are brittle and even one or two people resisting might hurt the feelings of the wannabe-Nazis. Ya know, if this ever comes down to a fight like these fucking people want, given their performance thus far, if even some, let alone most of the rest of us get our acts together...these people are going to get their ass kicked. 

But lots of people will still die who do not need to, and there will still be a vast amount of disruption and suffering and that's the goddamned point.

Both the point I'm trying to make as to why we need to nip this shit in the bud preemptively and the point for them, because cruelty and disruption are always the point. And for them, so is trying to make a big show of everything because they think they'll impress people with this stupid bullshit.

They keep talking about history.

Let me tell you a story. 

In February of 1994 I was a young Security Policeman in the United States Air Force. The local university was having a Black History Month event at which a few Tuskegee Airmen would be speaking. The higher-ups thought it would be a good idea for the local Bomb Wing to represent, so a bunch of us got told to go get our dress blues and drive into town for this thing. Hey, I thought, easy duty!

So I spent a fair amount of time that evening standing at attention while some old black dude talked about having been one of the Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group, a no-shit hero whose unit never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action over Nazi-occupied Europe, only to come home and find out that little if anything had changed. Segregation was still in effect and all that. This guy talked about how he'd drive from Chicago down to Mississippi to visit family and how the Jim Crow bullshit started at Cairo, Illinois. Yes, the 1950's, the good old days of the Negro Motorist's Green Book and segregation. You know, what the MAGA's are talking about when they say "Make America Great Again." These people were honest-to-god heroes and came back to an America that didn't want to let them use the goddamned bathroom same as everybody else.

Think about that for a second.

That's America's history. 

I'd heard some of it by then, sure, even in High School. But the Tuskegee Airmen and much of that history was only just beginning to be a trending topic at the time. I was ashamed that my country put these people through this shit, but proud of my Service for giving them a fair shot, and most of all I was proud that they took it and overcame all the obstacles set against them and became fucking legends, contributing directly to the overthrow of that oppression. But the truth is, they shouldn't have had to do all that. The oppression never should've happened in the first damn place.

In terms of the military it would be three more years after the end of that war before the desegregation of the Armed Forces and took nearly twenty more years and much effort, pain and suffering for them and their people to have legal equality in any civilian context...and despite the milestones of 1948 and 1964 we're still working on making that full equality a fact today.

They should have been treated the same way as every other citizen and judged and inducted and trained the same way as everybody else was even at the time. They were sure expected to fight and die same as everybody else was! The way I was trained, and treated and quartered (my roommate in the Airman's dorms was Black) and this and that and the other thing should've been the standard all along.

That's our history and that's what those jurors in Georgia had the guts to face up to, and what the jurors in Wisconsin did not. That's what Movement Conservatism and most of all Authoritarianism Incorporated don't want people to face, to deal with, and to maybe effect changes because of.

The fact that some people did have that courage, at least, is one more stone of hope.

And I'm here to tell you that people facing our history and seeking to do something about it and change things for the better is exactly what the authoritarians and the racists and the revisionist historians will try and fight a new civil war to stop.

We have to be prepared for this.

Together we rise, or none of us do.

As long as any one of us is still not equal or free, none of us really are.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Post I.

Conservatism, Goddamn. (Ahmaud Arbery, Post I.)

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.

I saw this tonight.

The prosecutor in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery taking apart the killers' defense team with absolute righteous fury.

Good. I'm happy to see this, too, considering that the Prosecution in the Rittenhouse case clearly did a pretty half-ass job. I suspect, quite deliberately so.

This is America, a Black man walking (or running) down the street shouldn't be anybody's goddamned business, especially if he's got running clothes on or something like that and is minding his own business. In fact, I'd say shame on you for worrying about it, mind yo own damn business.

It's a thing I hear and see from people on occasion, that they're bothered by the simple existence, let alone the presence of a non-white person in or near their bubble. And my answer to that is, are you a grown ass adult human being or are you a mouse? Do you have eyes in your head? Who are the people, for real, who do the most crimes and the most stupid shit with guns? White people, that's who. A Black person or a Muslim person is a hell of a lot less likely, statistically and otherwise, to do something to you than somebody like Kyle Rittenhouse.

When I lived in the city I was usually a lot more worried about idiot white redneck neighbors than I ever was about Black people or Mexican people or the fucking Taliban, not least because it's been my experience that a non-white person is a lot less likely to do something stupid with a gun, and we had a negligent discharge or two in my old neighborhood. I have for a long time genuinely worried more about being shot negligently by some white idiot than I ever was about being shot deliberately at all, let alone *Any* person of color doing anything at all to me.

And I'm real sick of my fellow white people using racism to cover up or justify their own wrongs. I'm just plain tired of racism in general. The only difference between a Black person and me is the color of their skin. It's the 21st goddamned century. There is literally no excuse for this fucking bullshit at all. Whether it be some kid getting shot for no fucking reason, or even shitty stupid racist posts on neighborhood social media groups. So there's a Black person in your neighborhood? SO THE FUCK WHAT?!?! 

Are you just that much of a goddamned baby that you cannot handle the fact that some other human being looks different than you do? Or talks a little different? Or has a different culture? Bitch, it's a whole big damn world out there and I'm here to tell you, I've been the only white person, the only Christian, the only American in a room plenty of damn times. And guess what? Most of those times I did not have, and did not need, a weapon.

The entire world is not out to get your dumb ass and even if it was, preemptive violence is not goddamned justified. What the fuck are you afraid of? 

And remember, these three murderous goons spent awhile chasing this kid down before they shot him. This was not a case of defense of anything at all. If you're trying to protect something and all the other guy is doing is running away, you chase them off and be done with it. You do not pursue with guns until you catch them unless your intent to start with was offense.

And that's what I don't like about all these idiots who think they need to carry a gun to feel tough.

I have ten guns sitting over in my Grandpa's old gun safe in the storage closet in the back room and you know what? I've never felt the need to take one of them to the store with me.

And what the fuck kind of loser are you that you consider the color of your skin to be an accomplishment, or define yourself by what you imagine the negatives of other people may be?

And tell me something, fellow white people? What the fuck makes you think, had it been you, that you would have been any safer than these three dough-faced The Hills Have Eyes looking motherfuckers who were clearly Jonesing to kill somebody, to the point of having weapons and vehicles close at hand and having clearly thought about their human-hunting tactics some?

And tell me something the fuck else, people.

What the fuck makes you think a lawyer who will say In Court, On the Record, that a Black dude who was for very obvious reasons wearing fucking running shoes at the time had "Long dirty toenails" is ever going to be trustworthy or would ever do right by you?

Firstly, it doesn't speak well of this person's competence or honesty.

Secondly, Even if that were true, which it isn't (and how would she know anyway?) What's even the point of saying it, other than racism,  of trying to claim that this American citizen, this clearly free young man, was somehow some kind of equivalent to a runaway slave from 170 damn years ago? 

I'm here to tell you...and I've looked this up. Some of the very last people born during slavery died in the early 1970's...a couple years before I was born in fact...at ages like 110 years old. No one now living lived under American chattel slavery or knows anything about it from more than academic knowledge or family histories. So why does this shit even have a hold over people?

You have to fucking want it to, I guess.

You ever wonder why America seems to be going backwards, with so many people dissolving into crazy conspiracy theorists, fascists, Nazis, racists, etc?

A big part of the problem it seems to me, is that people who should be leaders, spiritual and otherwise, would far rather pander to or profit from all this silly bullshit than be actual leaders and say to their people "Hey, this is ridiculous, silly bullshit, what's wrong with you?"

Or far too often, the "leaders" are the kind of deranged people or just out and out liars who are out there making up more stupid shit themselves for fun and profit and because that's what they think their followers want to hear.

And the churches in particular seem to be loaded with this garbage.

Let me ask you something? The Bible says that all people are equal in the sight of God. If you believe in God and the Bible, what's even the point of arguing with this?

Second, the Bible, Christian tradition, and many denominational beliefs and laws and regulations are generally very specific about what happens if people do not believe the proper things, have the right interpretations, etc. In my experience, what the vast majority of such things are was laid out long, long before our current educational and theological-knowledge vacuum. Most of this stuff is pretty well known, certainly to the people who profess it.

And any Christian who's ever claimed the belief system long enough to listen to a sermon knows the consequences, especially of things like blasphemy or putting one's own opinion above God or of directly contradicting the Word. TL. DR. Without a real good explanation and divine forgiveness, you're going to hell.

So tell me something, folks?

Whether it's some dumb old bat talking about shape-shifting aliens trying to fuck her or some baritone preacher in the back woods of Wisconsin with a fake southern accent trying to tell you that white conservatives are the only "Godly" people...why would you listen to that kind of shit?

Why? 

And I'll note here that in practice, Christianity...especially the American kind...seems to have a lot more tolerance for this kind of bullshit than a lot of other religions do.

What's even the damn point?

These people don't care if you die or end up broke or go to prison or go to hell. These conspiracy theorists and shitty preachers and racists and Republican politicians. They only want glory and money and power in this life, in this world. To them it's all a lie, a like they can use to get things. They don't care if they go to hell, because they believe they're just dirt and worm food when they die anyway. Deep down, though, they have to suspect that there's something to it all, and thus the one thing they really want to do is use their Earthly power to make sure they bring as many people to hell with them as possible. They long ago lost the plot on America, on Christianity, or on conservatism and in fact all three of those things are just words to them. Magic words and phrases they can use to get what they want.

I was taught something different. I was taught that all people are equal, that every last one of us is a person created in the Image of the living God, that the Ten Commandments were real things with real meaning, that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" meant exactly that, and that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing power in the universe that knows what you done, and will hold you to account, and He is smarter than you are. God isn't stupid, he isn't in on whatever con you think you're running, and I can't imagine He has much tolerance for bullshit.

Apparently a lot of people weren't taught this, or were taught it so badly that they might as well not have been. If they were, maybe that young man who had a bright future ahead of him would still be living.

And ya know, there's one hell of a lot of people out there that believe in fascism or racism more than they ever believed in God or Jesus. Considering that Jesus was a swarthy, brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jew with a big black beard and long black hair and the simple clothing of a carpenter and itinerant Rabbi. Do you really think these three inbred chucklefucks who shot down Ahmaud Arbery wouldn't have also tried to shoot down somebody like Jesus?

There are monsters out there. They are revealing themselves for what they are. Not because they are so monstrous that no one can do anything...but because they think it's safe. We need to make it unsafe to be a monster again.

These people want to shoot down their own neighbors, and they'll make up a reason if they have to.

If you can't stand up against that, and try and do something to stop it, what the fuck does that make you?

Don't look away, answer the fucking question.

Fuhrerprinzip (On Bullshit, Fascism and Republicanism.)

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

I saw this last night.

And I was like "Wut?"

Some unnamed Twitter idiot claiming that, somehow, the COVID-19 vaccine was not only somehow, vaguely in terms of Something Something Gazpacho TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION! Argle Bargle more powerful than God! Bats are birds! Ann Margaret! I swear these people are down to just randomly shouting bullshit word-salad answers like that strip in Calvin & Hobbes where Calvin forgot to do his homework and got called on in class.

But...and here's the thing...no matter how goddamned motherfucking stupid it is, no matter how damned godless, or how much it shits all over everything else these morons claim to believe, at least some of these fucking idiots will believe that shit. 

You know, like the 100 or so Q-Anon chucklefucks still gathered in Dallas awaiting the resurrection of JFK Jr. Or maybe these people have just thrown in the towel and aren't even trying to make sense anymore. I don't get it. This shit drives me crazy. It's not just dumb, it outright goes against everything Christianity, conservatism, etc. etc. etc. has preached as long as these beliefs and philosophies have even existed. More to the point these fools are not the least bit subtle about this grab-bag. word salad bullshit.

Oh, of course, I get it. For some of these motherfuckers it really was all a lie, all along, and their true religion, shielded from prying eyes in the inner darkness of their own minds, was always fascism. I get that.

It's funny though, if you think about it. The Nazis believed all type of New Age, Transcendentalist arglebargle too, and they went so far as to impose the German "Volkisch" neopaganism of the time on German Christian churches. These days, I'm wondering just how something similar might go over with the right-wing Evangelicals when these people decide to rip off a bunch of disjointed chunks of this country for some MAGA Banana Republic.

And the answer that comes back in my head is "They'll probably be just fine with it, and thrilled if people like me are bothered by this bullshit."

Of course, shit like that is true across the board, it doesn't matter what it is. What these morons don't realize is at this point all they're getting out of me is an eyeroll. Although, to be honest, I think I rolled my eyes so hard at the "God not being able to recognize your genetic code" line that I hurt myself.

Like I said, it doesn't matter what it is.

There's some people seem to think the guy who drove an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI last night was a "BLM terrorist" because #1 He was black, and #2 he "Liked" a picture of a George Floyd mural on Facebook at some point. (So did I, a few times, and I'm white.) Apparently this "connection" if you want to call it that was the work of Nazi hanger-on Andy Ngo. (Who doesn't seem to realize that if there ever is a Nazi America there will very quickly be Ngo Andy to "report" on this shit.) It is literally complete bullshit held together by the thinnest editorializing possible by some punk with no personal knowledge of the situation and the axe to grind of being a fascist hanger-on who's too stupid to realize the first thing those people would do is make Vietnamese jerky out of his ass. It's another thing that, for the life of me, I don't get.

But the thing is, it doesn't matter. Whether these people are stupid or just that hopped up on political tribalism the result is the same. It's essentially a leaderless Fuhrerprinzip that states if X bullshit originated in Y far-right conservative circles it must be believed no matter what the evidence, people actually involved, or your own senses tell you. 

And once that happens, to at least some of these people, there is nothing else. That and pure racism is why so many "Conservatives" believe that all black people are criminals despite vast and very often directly experienced and observed evidence to the contrary.

We as a people need to start deprogramming this shit if we're ever going to deal with the radicalization it's causing.

It's fucking stupid. It's childish, it's puerile, and again, I'm sick of this fucking bullshit.

But it does fit, at least if you apply my theory of "Atavistic non-state fascism" to these fucking people.

In Nazi Germany, the Fuhrerprinzip was #1 That Hitler's word superseded fact or law, and #2 "The leader is always right."

Out here in the frozen meatspace of the great snowy north, I occasionally hear people grumbling about supply-chain shortages. It started during COVID-19 panics and shutdowns and has continued sporadically since. Toilet paper, certain brands of pet food, consumer electronics, the occasional random food item, heater parts, shit like that...and never all at the same time. All depending on the vagaries of production in other countries, shipping, or transportation in the States.

This is actually a global problem right now, and because of Brexit and some other issues I know from people I correspond with that it's hit the United Kingdom particularly hard.

And it's a huge thing I hear about every day on social media.

But of course American Conservatives be like it's Joe Biden trying to cancel Thanksgiving...as if Capitalism itself hasn't been trying to do that for a few years now, what with the desire by big box stores to expand early Christmas shopping right into the holiday.

Fuck all that, it's ridiculous.

I've got four damn turkeys in the freezer right now, between me and my Mom and a couple of crossed wires on the grocery-listing and turkey being 33 cents a pound at every Meijer store in the country right now. And there's clearly enough of the stuff to be had to support that, people are going to be eating turkey sandwiches for Easter dinner at this point, just off what's available now.

We need to start finding ways to make it not profitable and unpopular to believe in dumb shit and lies, and to make this not be an aspirational state for people. With a lot of this garbage, we're well past "Gullibility" and it's reaching the point of "Belief in an alternate reality to the point of mental illness."

And then this alternate reality gets used to stoke up rage about things that don't even exist, but rage that ends up hurting actual, real, living people anyway. It's the toxic sludge left over from decades of Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones.

This shit is exactly why I think when things do blow up, when the Redcaps try and start the civil war they say they wanna have, it's going to be over something really stupid. Like, millions of people will die because of an insurgent war started over some idiotic Christmas-season shortage or some shit.

We, as a people, need to get control of ourselves and we need to stop believing absolute bullshit just because it came from a Republican. (And trust me, Republicans know they can say any old dumb shit and enough of their followers will buy it to at least make it trend, automatically. They know their followers are a bunch of morons hopped up on tribalism, and they have contempt for their own people.) 

And then in the next breath these people will tell you there is a greater power to whom we all must answer who sets everything down in stone and rigid societal commandments that everyone must obey, basically just because.

But five minutes from now, it'll be the Republicans who are acting like none of this shit is real or at least it doesn't apply to them, because hypocrisy or whatever.

Ya know if even half the shit these fucking people say is true actually is, they're going to be the first ones going to hell when it's all over...and half of them will wonder why, and wonder why Jesus wasn't somehow in on the con, or the joke, or whatever they really believed it all was.

As if we needed any more evidence that it was all bullshit, that the only thing these fuckers ever believed in was themselves, and a man-centered godless world of self and selfishness where the only real "Good" was their own self-satisfaction.

Even their own shitty philosophy claims to say they're supposed to be better than that.

If you can't stand up against this shit, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yes, they're going to hit the wall of reality eventually. Truth is they already did, but they keep backing the truck up and hitting it again and again.

Eventually, something has to give. Don't let it be you.

That's all.

If you want to have a better country, if you want to actually follow and have the values embodied in things like Thanksgiving or Christmas and practice citizenship and decency, you have to be a better person. And this? 

This ain't it.

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

Last Post in the series:

Rittenhouse Part II.

Kirchenkampf (Kyle Rittenhouse Post II)

We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man. ~Martin Niemoller

I wasn't going to write anything tonight.

Hell, I still feel drained and scraped raw from writing yesterday's post and from being sick for three days.

But then I saw this. A church in Phoenix, Arizona giving a standing ovation when the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was announced.

But I saw this and hit the roof, I was irate.

Supposed Christians, cheering for a fucking killer. 

I don't give a damn if you think it was self defense. That's nothing to cheer about. I don't give a damn what you think his victims did. It wasn't a capital crime. And even if it was it would not, in any nation on God's green Earth, merited being gunned down in the street by a kid carrying a weapon illegally purchased for him, that he wasn't old enough to have, in a place he wasn't even from.

Again, I'm going to ask you, Christians, whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

No, don't try and dick me around on translations, or definitions of "murder." I started out as a King James Version Baptist. The Word as far as I'm concerned says "Kill" and that's all there is to it.  Anybody who'll try and get past that point gets marked down as a deceiver. You can't show me something in the Word that countermands the Ten Commandments 'cause it ain't there.

And I say that as a veteran of the United States Air Force security forces. Unless you're a veteran, who is also not the kind of "Christian" who would cheer somebody's death, I doubt you'll understand. Bet your ass I've thought about this more than you have. That kind of life, combat, violence, insurgency, peacekeeping...it's not a fucking action movie. It's not fun, it's not glorious. It's hard work, it's training, it's action by muscle memory and rote and knowing what you're doing without looking because you don't have the fucking time. 'Cause in a real war, you won't. It's praying to Jesus every damned day when you wake up that you won't have to go out and fucking kill somebody.

And my own position and experience is precisely why I chose to quote Niemoller,..who was a World War I veteran of the Imperial German Navy's submarine service.

You wanna know why the Church has less influence and power now? Why people aren't going to church? Why fewer people...including people with deep church backgrounds like  me...no longer identify as Christians?

This shit right here is why.

Christians, cheering something that Christ Himself would be against. Christians, cheering something that looks even to my old secular ass like the work of the damn devil. Christians, caring more about political power than the conduct or love or teachings of Christ.

And that only ends one way, if it goes on long enough.

Do you know what the very first thing the Nazis did when they came to power in Germany was? They took over the churches. The government took over the churches, down to the smallest level. They first downplayed and then actually advocated getting rid of the Old Testament, they instituted Germanic Pagan customs, They didn't make Germany Christian, they tried to remake German Christianity into their own perverse image, up to and including trying to push the idea of a heroic warrior Jesus.

A lot of German Christians hit the fucking roof, said no, and fought back as best they could. They formed what became known as the Confessing Church trying to stay true to the Word of God, which was in direct opposition to the remade "German Evangelical Church" where people were not taught sound doctrine and the Word, but whatever the Fuhrer wanted them to be taught.

We're not to either extreme yet. But I guarantee you, if these assholes get their way and break off a piece of America for themselves, some of us will be forced into that position, to have to accept a religion that bows not to the ultimate sovereignty of God over all matters of life, but to the State.

How that works with these people's atavistic non-state fascism, I'm not sure. But the truth is, there already has been a Kirchenkampf in America...and the Truth lost in far too many places, because there's too much money in lies like Dominionism and the Prosperity Gospel and false promises of miracles.

Hell, in far, far too many places even that's gone out the window and people get nothing but conspiracy theories and Q-Anon garbage and right-wing politics in church and they've even kicked Jesus out of the End Times narrative, replacing Him with Anti-vaxxer crap. Hell, some people even seem to believe Donald Trump is god.

Because they want to be the heroes of the End Times. They think it'll be like an action movie and give meaning to their empty lives.

How, according to Christian doctrine or tradition, or even just the Bible, does that save anybody?

More to the point, I've seen some shit, I'll take that boring job and empty life all damn day.

We need an American Confessing Church to start counteracting this shit, before it's too late.

Because I guarantee you, Christians, if the people you're supporting get the power they want...you ain't going to like how it ends up, and an awful lot of you will end up in concentration camps or prisons like Martin Niemoller and so many of the other Confessing Church members did, or just dead like Dietrich Bonhoeffer because the fanaticism, the demand for submission, this that and the other thing will never stop until the Leader or the State or the Great Caliph or whatever can just jam their hand up your ass and make you do or say only whatever they want, only for their benefit, not yours. 

It's already starting and these fucking people not only don't have that kind of power yet, but they've lost just the regular kind once already. The fanaticism has jumped the shark.

We need to stop this and we need to stop it now.

Before it consumes us all.

It's not just that the fascists don't care about you, or even your God. They don't care about Kyle Rittenhouse or anybody else they manipulate to advance their shitty agenda of the for-profit destruction of America either.

They don't care, so you have to. 'Cause if you don't stand up now, whether you run afoul of the fascists or end up standing before a resistance Epuration Sauvage or a War Crimes tribunal...when you're at the gallows and you say "I die believing in God" like Adi Eichmann did when the Israelis hanged him...well there's a good chance God won't be listening and you're in for a warm afterlife.

The Bible says even the Demons believe, and tremble.

Think about that and think about your conduct. Think about a kid who'll never get to have a normal day in his life because of this fascist horse shit, and no I'm not the least bit sympathetic.

Think what you're doing.

Because you chose to cheer a murderer in His house...and as grotesque as that stadium bullshit looks to me that's still technically what it is.

His house, not yours. A place of spirituality, not worldly politics.

And don't you forget that.

Post I

You were just babies then!" she said.
"What?" I said.
"You were just babies in the war— like the ones upstairs!"
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
"But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"I — I don't know," I said.
"Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
"I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that.

~From the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut