Power Gamer (We Are Spirits, Not Animals, One.)

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

There is a thing we are going to have to face, as a people.

It happened in bits and pieces over decades, and I'll admit I was a part of it once myself.

Republicans have managed to make basically everything political. I'm serious, every single aspect of life is a political statement according to some of these damn people, and that right there IS the essence of MAGA.

And then, to top it off, these fuckers basically reworked even that to an even simpler "Lifestyle Brand For Assholes" until basically damn near nobody at the street level could tell you what Republicanism means, is doing, or even stands for.

You know who else did that type of shit?

Communists.

I'm serious. 

By the end of their time, effectively nobody in the Soviet leadership had the slightest idea what was really going on, much of their economy wasn't so much political idealism as conjured directly from some far-left economist's spank bank and then lied about for 20 years. 

Reagan and George H.W. Bush...and to a lesser extent now that we know what was going on in the background with cruise missiles and stealth aircraft during his time, Carter...get a lot of credit for ramping up the arms race to the point where the Soviet economy smacked hard into the wall of reality.

But the lies weren't really about economics or political positions, that's just the excuse. It was all about power. If you pointed out that the government's economic statistics or reports on, say, the factory where you worked were nothing but so much Bovine Exhaust, bare minimum you'd end up with a letter in your file from the local political officer, hell, you might even get arrested and get sent to a labor camp or shot.

And, well, Republicans may lack that kind of power in the United States but look at how they've treated everybody from John McCain to George H.W. Bush to Adam Kinzinger to fucking Liz Cheney. Hell even Trump gets booed whenever he says vaccines work.

In the context of the Party, go against the progressively dumber and more terrible hivemind and they will soft-power PNG your ass. They'd rather be able to do to dissenters what the Soviets did.

And again, for the 1,000th time, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent. You had to be a Communist's Communist just to get into the selection pipeline for that. Dude may not have revived any of the economic or most of the social aspects of Communism (yet) but he's sure working on bringing the rest back online...including the personality cult of Old Joe Stalin.

And again, it's about power. 

Putin is a real-world equivalent of that min/max power-gamer that any given gaming group gets at least once, who's very, very good at one or two things and convinced they can ride that ability to some kind of ultimate power that exists only in their own heads.

Trouble is, if you're not careful, like attracts like and then it's just work, work, work all the time in dealing with it. The rest of the world let this shit go on for too long.

And now it's out of control.

Why in the hell else do you think Franklin Graham, of all fucking people, would be deliberately making the choice...with all the other moving parts in this thing...to pray for Putin first?

Let me save you the time and just point out that, ideologically, that's who Frank wants to support.

I can't put it any simpler than that.

And Frank, ultimately, is the one who...for a lot of These Fucking People...will provide the ultimate cover.

He knows what's left of conservatism and Evangelicalism won't push back and say that people like Vladimir Putin used to persecute Christians.

These fucking people don't care about that anymore, if they ever really did at all.

I've been saying for a very long time now, that "Conservatives" want someone worse than Trump. I've been saying that person would likely arise from the various situations we're in.

What I wasn't counting on was that it would be Vladimir Fucking Putin.

I mean, you'd at least think given their jingoistic attitudes about everything else that they would want somebody who was an American.

But that's clearly not the world we live in anymore.

We've hit a point where these fucking people want to say that Justin Trudeau is some kind of terrible dictator for declaring an emergency, enforcing bilateral Canadian/US Federal COVID-19 checks at the border, and sending the Police to arrest the truckers who've been jamming up his capital for weeks, much to the anger, frustration and wrath of the local populace...and a wider Canadian public, nationally...who overwhelmingly did not support the "Truckers" most of whom weren't even actual truck drivers.

But the same people calling Trudeau a dictator for enforcing the law and going with the demands of the majority rather than kowtowing meekly to the far-right as Republicans do...immediately pivot to accepting whatever neo-Communist trash the Kremlin is spewing on any given day. 

They fall down in slavish worship of Vladimir Putin and say he is merely "Defending his country" from something something Gazpacho "Sexual Anarchy!" by massing armies and preparing to invade Ukraine...up to and including daily false flag attacks, provocations and terrorism.

And when the Ukrainians fight like hell to defend their own country from an unjust and unprovoked invasion, the Republicans will call them the enemy...for doing what the citizens of any nation worthy of the term ought to do at such a time. I mean, can you really call it your country, if you will not stand up to defend it?

When NATO and ultimately the US are required to step in to prevent atrocity...and it will come to that, just as it did in Iraq when the US stepped in to fight ISIL in Iraq in 2014...they will call our own government and military the enemy.

And I believe, given the choice, that Republicans would rather take up arms for Vladimir Putin than they would for America. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the Russians are going to try to incite These Fucking People to revolt...just as they and the American far-right were doing in Canada with the "Truckers."

And "Conservatives" went for it...because modern Conservatism, again, is nothing but a lifestyle brand for assholes.

Because America, at the end of the day, ain't their land, and refused to submit and become theirs during the Trump years. So, I think that Republicans are going to try and carve out their own space, by force if necessary...and I think the Russians will help them, if only to force America to divide its attention and have less resources to help defend Europe.

Just as the Ukrainians will most likely have to fight to keep their own country, if the United States of America wishes to remain United...well, we're going to have to fight for that, too.

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

And sometimes that means, whatever one's ability or station in life, that you have to fight for it. As Churchill said and Reagan quoted, we are spirits, not animals.

And there is something coming, that spells duty.

The Ukrainians have learned this, why don't we?

Last Post

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she give him a smile
So he said would you mind sittin' down for a while
And talking to me, I'm feeling a little low
She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go
So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says
A soldier's coming home

~The Chicks, Travelin' Soldier.

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