Polishing The Golden Turd (Age Of Asmodeus, Part Two.)

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 keep seeing and hearing stuff like this.

Some fucking people literally care more about having cheap gasoline than they do about having their own freedom.

Let me ask you this? What the hell good is cheap gas if the Police State can shoot you in the face for no reason, just for leaving your house? There's this picture I saw from the George Floyd protests and attempted suppression thereof, that stuck with me. Little teenage white girl, still holding grocery bags. She'd been shot in the forehead, direct hit from a "non-lethal" round fired from a grenade launcher.

Because the cops were mad about some of their own being held accountable for an obvious murder committed under color of authority live on fucking camera, a situation literally so egregious at the time that it basically seemed to light half the country on fire, and justifiably so.
Because these fucking people don't want equal protection under the law, or law and order. They want to be able to interact with the rest of the world from a position of alleged superiority, with the rest of the world bullied into cowering submission.

And the only way to change that kind of shit without violence and under the color of law your own damn self is democracy. 

Spoiler: If these fucking people ever get what they think they want; A Putinist dictatorship under the Hammer And Sickle in control of some or all of America with political dogmas forced on people, nationalized everything/Soviet style, and prices of gas, food etc. kept low by artificial price controls...except for where the government decides to try to starve troublesome peoples into submission...

Yes, the "Come And Take It" people with the M16's on their shirts will indeed have armed men come to them and take it form them and they will give it up with a stream of warm urine running down one leg. 

If they don't simply get arrested, taken away and "Disappeared" for even having a gun, because in those kind of countries, access to weapons tends to be limited to elites and those who, one way or another, are willing to risk death either for criminal activities or rebellion.

Actually...there's a lot of much more democratic countries where only more well-off people usually can afford to meet (purposely high) requirements to own a firearm legally.

It will, in fact, end up that the only people with guns are the government and those who are actively trying to fight for their own freedom, organized criminals who may or may not be in bed with the regime, rival successor governments fighting the fascists, and whatever foreign dictatorship sends soldiers to provide "support" only to eventually shoot down incompetent fascists the second they're not useful...and then take over and institute their own rules.

Which, by definition, will not favor your dumb ass.

In fact, in such situations, the common people tend to get forgotten first, while the foreigners, the people with the guns, the powerful and the religious fanatics help themselves to the people, wealth and resources of a nation without so much as even bothering to pretend to ask first. 

If, for example wannabe homophobic mass-murderer/"Pastor" Mark Burns were to get the kind of power he wants, to just start killing gay people...how long do you think it will take before "Gay" = "Having something that Mark wants" so then he has you killed and takes your stuff?

That's how authoritarian/non-democratic countries and Fascist states and tin-pot dictatorships work.

And, mind you, while we're faced with multiple potentially existential crises this is the kind of crap that American media and pop culture put out there.

I've been to the Middle East twice (Egypt in 2002, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 1994-1995) and Turkey (OK, Incirlik Airbase) once. Unless you're in an extremely Westernized, secular country like Israel or Turkey (and even then likely in the city) or at a private party at some posh pad in Dubai or Kuwait City...or have the money to pay some serious bribes, nobody looks like that. I'm 100% fucking serious. Most of these countries are either Muslim by law and tradition, or secular countries with large Muslim populations (and in the case of Israel you can add Jews and various Arab Christian sects, who are all (Well, the men are, anyway) surprisingly agreeable on how women should behave.

Sure, there's some places in the Islamic World where certain people might be technically able to dress like those ladies in public...but most likely if you're in Dubai and you're not at some rich-people party at the Burj Khalifa and you run into the wrong cop, there's a good chance you'll get arrested, or at least harassed. Seriously, even most wealthy people in the UAE don't dress like that, at least not in their own country. That's literally what the condos on the French Riviera are for.

And to some degree, all of those countries have one level of authoritarianism or another. With the exception of Iran, all of the Gulf States are monarchies. Trust me, only the elites get the condos on the French Riviera and to dress however they damn well like, even some of the time. As screwed up as it all was, the Revolution brought some degree of democracy, albeit Islamized...to Iran.

And trust me, nobody in places like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, or the UAE...much less Iran...wants to live under the Radical Islam-lite system that Saudi Arabia has (and a whole bunch of Saudis either go elsewhere, or would love to replace that with something much worse. The only reason MBS hasn't gotten much shit for his modernizing reforms is he's a brutal killer, that spell it out for you?)

In point of fact places like Bahrain and Dubai are where the Saudis go for drinking, sexual escapades and shopping...and all this is tolerated because it's a safety valve that prevents people from blowing up the country and there's big money involved for all involved in making the trade.

But The "Reality TV" people don't tell you that type of stuff. 

They don't tell you about all the moral and other compromises that living under radical authoritarianism or whatever harsh religion involve.

Why? Because then you don't get to feel like some member of the jet-setting elite while you sit there in your recliner in your MAGA hat with your beer and Grizzly Wintergreen Tobacco watching the big-screen TV you bought with last year's tax money.

Because if you knew how the rest of the world really was, you'd have some degree of knowledge and be more difficult to manipulate with vapid conservative political...and pop culture...bullshit.

And it's all bullshit. Seriously, this is how much contempt these people have for you. All that money and all they can do is throw these gilded, polished turds at We The People.

Seriously do you think America would be what it is now if so many people had this blinkered, privileged, sheltered mentality all along? Could we have won World War II with so many outright lazy, selfish fucking people?

I'm not so sure.

Freedom isn't free. It takes work.

Letting somebody else...especially some braying jackass...do the work of life for you while you drink liquor until you fall down in the street? That only makes you a slave, sooner or later.

But those who desire the Age Of Asmodeus or consultations with Dis Pater over their stock portfolios? They don't give a damn if you're forced at gunpoint to attend church three times a week or flogged in a public square...or simply shot...for being gay or fighting back against fascism...or worked to death by some greedy corporation. They definitely won't give a damn if the proletarians are murdering each other in the streets, so long as said proletarians clean up the mess and show a decorous face to Authority.

And they sure as hell won't give a damn if you're sent to die in battle against the regime's smarter, better-equipped "liberal" enemies in some never-ending bullshit war.

Because they won't be, and they'll get to have that Dacha in Sochi or that posh apartment in the Burj Khalifa...and you won't, ever. Seriously, this is the grift that the Russian oligarchs had going that Putin blew up by invading Ukraine.

And this, absolutely, is the future modern "Conservatives" want.

Either you believe in democracy and freedom...for all people...or you don't.

Cheap gas ain't no good without the freedom to go wherever you damn well please.

It's that simple. Get with the program, or get the fuck out of the way.

Part One

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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