American Gods, Part Two

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. ~Matthew 24:24

I saw this earlier, when Pepe Le Pew was trending on Twitter. Some MAGA freak ranting about people "Canceling" Pepe Le Pew and there's pictures of and references to Pepe Le Pew all over the goddamned feed.

Dumb bitch really thought she had some sort of a "Gotcha." Didn't bother to look at anything before posting. This is why this "Own The Libs" shit is dumb. Dumb ass failed to get herself anything but laughed at.

Of course people even brought it up in reference to Ron DeSantis saying that there was some mythical time when people his age were younger that sexuality wasn't ever brought up in cartoons.

My personal response to this was to mention that in the Bugs Bunny Cartoon "The Rabbit Of Seville" it ends with Bugs Bunny marrying a cross-dressing Elmer Fudd and mind you this cartoon was released in *1950.* I grew up on all this stuff, so I really don't want to keep hearing this crap.

First of all "If you don't talk about it, it doesn't exist" or "It'll go away" is a bullshit strategy for dealing with anything. But since Trump, that's the Right's strategy for dealing with literally anything that contradicts their authoritarian politics or makes them feel uncomfortable.

And it's all horse shit.

In my life, I've known plenty of gay conservatives, quite a few of whom were "Out" and perfectly happy being what they are.

I can't say I've ever met a conservative Transgender person...but obviously some must exist.

Republicans could easily create a more welcoming, safe space for all their people, have moderate social values with an emphasis on caution in social matters and keep a focus on economic conservatism and religious values. 

They could legitimately make themselves a genuine political powerhouse that doesn't have to cheat and do all type of dishonest shit to get elected.

They just don't want to, because that would require getting rid of the hate, and the unending outrage.

And increasingly, their voters don't seem to want that either. They seem to want to constantly be mad about shit that doesn't even exist.

All this reactionary bullshit...which seems focused almost entirely on keeping a shrinking base of people ever more and more activated and constantly spinning with endless outrage. It's the "Two Minute Hate" that never ends.

And it seems like it's increasingly likely that this bullshit is going to end in violence...

Internecine violence, at that.

Oh, wait, that's just Blowbert and MTG about ready to throw down at the *Checks Notes* Freedom Caucus committee meeting...

Or pretty much the entire Ohio GOP at this point.

None of these people like each other very much...and they seem to think everybody else is the same way.

And meanwhile, these pure, sexless Evangelical Republican White Boys? 

In private, they're touching each other's dicks, but then they're posting it on YouTube or whatever which makes it pretty damn public. 

Well, I guess Madison Cawthorn and at least one of his staffers do sort of like each other...but obviously not in a way that Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Knott's Berry Farm-wannabe crowd would approve of. I'm not at all surprised, mind you. Disgusted, but not surprised. I don't care about the homosexuality...I care that they vote against LGBT rights and then do this crap in public.

Surprised that with CPAC being some kind of quarterly thing split between Budapest and Orlando these days, that DeSatan hasn't figured out CPAC is a mecca for gay prostitution.

Or is all that closeted bullshit somehow "Liberals" fault too?

Or maybe, just maybe, his Potemkin, pet state Republican caucus is just telling him what they think he wants to hear?

You fuckers need to pick a side. You can't have it both ways forever.

Maybe it's just me...but I don't think all this contradictory bullshit is sustainable, in the long term or otherwise.

And while Republicans may want to go the way of Putin's neo-Soviet Russian totalitarianism and install Zampoliti in every government agency, military unit and private business to push their political dogma, this is America and that's not going to happen. 

Constitutionally and with our current legal system, it simply can't work that way. Not to mention, who the hell would fund such a thing? 

Totalitarianism is expensive.

And I'm not at all convinced that any of these fucking people are operating from the standpoint of reality to start with.

I mean, I get it. Republicans want to make all the decisions and for whatever stupid reason, they feel entitled to do so. 

They're just informationally, mentally, morally and otherwise...and even in terms of their attention span...completely unfit to do so. And so, they're trying to find some kind of a shortcut. This has been made more difficult by the revelation from the Trump years that you cannot do this simply by endlessly stockpiling political power.

And so "Conservatives" look upon Putin, Russia and the Second Coming of the Soviet State not with fear and loathing, but with wide-eyed admiration. But for fuck's sake America doesn't even have the cultural, political or social context that would make something like Putin's rapid re-Sovietization of Russian society even possible.

For one thing, in Russia a lot of the old people and the current "Z" crowd have actually wanted that shit forever, because they...and not entirely wrongly, mind you...think life was better back in those days. Or at least it was if you didn't get shot. The coming of neoliberal Western economics and the crumbling of Soviet-era social safety nets actually did make life too hard for too many people.

And by the time they figure out that life is not going to improve...that between economic isolation and Western sanctions, they'll be pushed all the way back to the low points of the later Soviet era with none of the benefits...it'll be too late.

And when it all comes crashing down...what then? I'm not sure I even want to know, given how the Russians have conducted themselves in Ukraine.

I don't think nationalism will end up being much of an opiate for the Russian masses, same thing with religion. The cynicism and passivity that disinformation seems to breed will ultimately create its own host of political and social problems later.

But I'm not sure these fucking people even care about any of that. I'm not familiar with current rates of substance abuse in Russia...but I remember them being pretty extreme by American standards a few years ago.

I'm not even sure any of these stupid motherfuckers have even thought about most of this stuff. 

Or at least, they haven't thought past immediate emotional reactions and what feels good right now...or what's giving them a chance to steal more money.

And it's obvious that they either don't know, or don't care, about the doubts that all this lying and stealing will create in people's minds when it's discovered. Although it's not like most of these fucking people are doing even one damned thing to try to hide it, either.

And the Russians are very, very clearly in the same boat. Apparently, Russian units of different ethnic groups are getting into firefights over stolen Ukrainian property. It seems to me like bad military discipline, lack of social cohesion and rampant theft pervading a society make for a bad mix.

And oh, by the way, "Conservatives" this is your righteous Holy Army that a bunch of you were hoping to beat the idea of liberal democracy and the West to death with. How's that working out?

Buryats are mostly either Buddhist or Russian Orthodox, Chechens are overwhelmingly Muslim. All of these religions have very strong strictures against murder and theft. Unless of course it's all crap and been subsumed by the worship of the State...which seems to encourage that kind of crap, in the case of Russia it does, at least.

But of course, state-enforced political conformity, and state-sponsored murder and theft and wars of Imperialism combined with wars of Religion are the future that American "Conservatives" think they want. 

Even though we're constantly seeing the downside of that on the news these days.

And the reasons they think they want this are that they've utterly internalized all that "Power Of Positive Thinking" crap, they totally bought into the Prosperity Gospel and its "Ye Are Little Gods" heretical bullshit, and they painted it all over with a good coat of Ayn Rand's greedy, nihilistic Atheism which puts Man at the center of a godless world and gives him only self-satisfaction as a moral purpose for his life. 

Maybe all that made the current mess the Republican Party finds itself in inevitable, I don't know.

But I'll tell you one thing, Democrats and other Liberals. If you lose to this kind of bullshit, it's because you want to, because fighting back against the ravening barbarians that want to burn civilization down so they can squat in the ruins and shit on their own shoes is too hard, or something.

Until we do something about it, this kind of shit is only going to get worse, until it ends with Americans shooting at each other and our country falling apart...the same as Russia surely will if nobody stops the slide over there...and that all is the future that all these "Conservatives" and oligarchs want, too.

We need to fight back against the fall of night just like the Ukrainians are doing.

Republicans may want to be slaves, so long as they get to be the better class of slave...but that won't work for most of us. Most people don't want to live that way.

If nothing is true, and everything is possible...well, this mess is the kind of soup sandwich that you get.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. You have to do the work. And this crap ain't it.

Слава Україна!

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Part One