Stealing America (Slouching Towards Idiocracy I.)

 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

My friend sent me this earlier. According to Rand Paul, voting (apparently mail-in or otherwise) in an election is somehow stealing that election...presumably from Republicans.

This is America, people voting in an election is the entire basis of our country.

It's the entire fucking point. 

Literally, this is what America is based on, the idea that people should have a say in how their country is run, and by and for whom. It is impossible to overstate how revolutionary of an idea the United States was when it was established. And to one degree or another, over the intervening couple of centuries, Democracy has become the basis for much of the world's expectations of government and the norm for advanced societies.

But the fact that we've always been a world leader, right from the start, in ideas if nothing else/..simply doesn't matter to those who have no ideas of their own and whose entire political and social brand is not only resisting any new ideas...but increasingly dialing things back to about 1214 or so. The idea (in Western civilization at least) that people have rights and rulers should be subject to the people actually goes much further back...to Ancient Greece...but the 12th Century or early 13th Century will do, as far as these morons are concerned. 

They don't think about what happened to people who lost power or were on the losing side of a dispute back then, either.

Most of them, simply out of fear of losing power and social standing, simply wouldn't have the guts to try and dial things back to where Christianity wasn't a factor for Power or did not exist...or maybe they realize on some level that a lot of us who actually do know Christian history would be among those who were rooting for the lions when these assholes found themselves in the Arena.

Not that history or religion or anything other than what makes them feel good right now matters to these motherfuckers, and it's getting so their ridiculous hedonism and narcissism needs constant reinforcement, too.

Republicans simply believe that life is zero-sum and anybody else having anything at all is "stealing" from them.

Or them facing any consequences for their actions...Or, well, anything else that they don't like.

Basically, they think they should be able to do whatever they want, including hurting, killing and oppressing other people and that anything that prevents them from doing that is somehow a threat to their "Freedom." As opposed to, you know, the idea that we live in a civilization and we should fucking act like it. They don't seem to get that without civilization, without checks and balances and norms and rules...they don't have their power. Not only that, they don't understand that without civilization most of them won't last a day, and are going to end up sliced into thin strips of Conservative Jerky by the starving masses, victims of the Almighty Sarlacc ravening mob that they themselves whipped up in an effort to burn civilization down because they thought that would increase their power or shareholder value or something.

But ya know Republicans are anymore nothing but a clique of mental-13-year-olds who start from the point of having an extremely juvenile worldview and, well, never fucking leave it. 

And they're being pretty explicit about their desire to burn down said civilization so that they can reestablish some sort of modern neo-feudalism among the ruins. Seriously, how else do you explain the Republican attitudes about, or response to, COVID-19?

The thing these fucking people never factor in, is that they really don't (currently or historically) crime all that well, and they're only "tough" because they have people. They all bought into Ayn Rand's vision of the capitalist Moghul not as some short fat guy in a suit but as some craggy, sexy, tough Marlboro Man cowboy type. And that's almost always, historically, bullshit. They don't realize that without civilization...they don't have layers of people to do all the bloody, dirty shit and they have to do it themselves. A hell of a lot of these people don't really realize who their followers are, either, or the physical condition of many of said people.

And you know what? The sure as fuck don't realize that Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion/125th Infantry, Or Razor G and the Homies (or even all those fake "Oath keepers" they thought were on "their" side) are likely to be both far more ruthless and tougher than they are in a "Fall of Civilization" scenario. 

People like Elon Musk will be aiming to carve out technological fiefdoms to keep the power on, and keep the people who can run it alive, because that's what their power and wealth depends on. Their vision of the world might be shitty, but at least it's survivable.

People like Rand Paul will just get beat up by their neighbor again.

And without things like modern medicine that a lot of the Antivaxxers take pride in ignoring, a whole hell of a lot more people will just plain end up dead. What they don't realize is there's no glory in that and it sure isn't any fun. These are people who imagine themselves dying in firefights with Razor G and the Homies when the world ends. They're caught up in that Hollywood-authored, NRA-maintained cult of guns and violence.

They see the word "Death" and they think "5.56mm NATO standard round" and shooting it out with their neighbors or what's left of the government. They don't imagine death as being microbial or viral. They never think that bad water or disease might just be what kills both them and their imagined enemies.

And that's the problem, among other things, massive failure of imagination.

It's like I've been saying since 2015. These "Conservatives" have no problem with being slaves, so long as they're a better class of slave than some of the other slaves. And they have no issue with being ruled by a Dictator, so long as they think that the Dictator is "their" guy. It somehow never occurs to These Fucking People that Dictatorship sucks and slavery is wrong.

At the end of the day, what these fuckers are hoping for is that America will die of disinterest or of rejection of its system by the people, like the Soviet Union ultimately did. I think they know the country as a whole won't survive that. But I think they look at the collapse of the Soviet Union and somehow see themselves as the Russian Federation rather than say, Belarus. (Which is a far more likely outcome for their side.) They think they'll end up with the biggest chunk of land and that somehow that will translate into power and wealth, and that all the wars around the edges won't end up affecting them.

As if an actual, objective look at what Putin's Russia really is wouldn't prove that it's all bullshit. They just think they'll be able to remake society in their own image...or more correctly, in their perverse self-image. The truth of these people is that hundreds of thousands of them are dying of their own petty selfishness now, facing a virus, while civilization is still standing and the means of survival is still easily obtainable right here, in their own country.

"America is not at war, the Marine Corps is at war. America is at the Mall" doesn't work as a strategy when the conflict is right here in America, the Mall is closed, and the killing fields are right outside your door.

If the world these people live in right now came crashing down, a hell of a lot of these people wouldn't last one damned day.

And a lot of them are so fixated on their self-pitying persecution fantasies that they never think "Oh, hey, it could get worse."

It's not so much that they didn't pay attention in history class, it's often that they think it'll work out better this time! They only ever see themselves as the Colonel Sanders-looking Southern Gentleman or the courted and flattered Southern Belle. They never think that they could end up being the slaves out in the field, or the house slaves, at best.

It's worse, really. They don't really care about anything, to be honest, so long as they have a higher relative status than somebody else, and some measure of wealth. They only see the profit and relative status aspects of when people could own people. They don't see...or purposefully ignore...the human factors.

The lady with the megaphone shouting at people walking by doesn't see that without all that civilization stuff she's just ignoring, without all that modern medicine she just wants to bullshit her way out of because of ego or stupidity or whatever, there's nothing to prevent her from ending up a sex slave, or a corpse.

They can't, or won't, think about any of this stuff. Well, somebody's going to have to.

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

And citizenship requires public participation and voting. Republicans want subjects, not citizens, and they seem to forget that only one gets to be King and that person is, by definition, not you.

These Republicans, they want to steal America.

It never occurs to them that We The People are under no obligation to put up with that bullshit, or that America is a thing that people will fight for, and we just saw five years of that shit and their side lost.

They're goat-eager to make another attempt because they didn't get shot the first time.

Don't be these fucking people. Don't be stupid. Stop slouching towards Idioccracy.

And not only is that where this shit is going and it can and will get worse. One side is already there, by choice, because they figured out that if they don't know anything, they can believe whatever they want.

It never occurs to them that viruses don't have beliefs, or care about theirs. It doesn't even occur to them that the people telling them not to get vaccinated might be vaccinated and just want them to die.

And it sure never dawns on them that without a decent, competently run government, most people wouldn't survive and that includes them. They always think they're going to be the special ones.

Again, don't be these fucking people.

Last Post

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