Bleeding Kansas, Again. (Also, WTF, Republicans?)

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 the other night. And it pissed me off. Michigan GOP governor candidate Tudor Dixon saying she'll "Keep Drag Queens out of schools." Bitch, what?

Ain't no Drag Queens in no schools. This is not a thing that's happening. Drag Queens are grown-ass, usually straight men who dress up like women. That'd be against the dress code in most schools.

Of course, this dumb bitch is using "Drag Queens" as shorthand for Gender-nonconforming and LGBT people in general, and transgender kids in particular, because she's nothing but another two-bit bigot. 

As if somebody who's known mostly for posting dumb shit on Instagram, softcore Vampire Porn or Zombie Apocalypse videos can just drink some Potion Of Conservative Assholery and instantly turn into Rush Limbaugh. (No, I'm not even going to give Trump's own simpering grade-school antics consideration here.)

Why? Because I guess even if she sucks at it, she has to at least try. Without bigotry, without discrimination, the entire modern Republican "Thing" falls apart into a maelstrom of competing factions and everybody sees manipulating the bigoted MAGA yokels as the tiger they can ride in their victory parade.

Besides, if you really want to Conservative Asshole the right way and "Own The Libs" you want to be on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, not some stupid Playboy video shit. Rush might've sucked gigantic festering necrotic donkey balls, but at least he still did shit in an identifiably conservative way even when it didn't necessarily benefit him. And yes, it cost him when he tried to be a TV sportscaster.

I frankly detest people who want to talk like they're some kind of bigoted 1960's Union dock workers or something, but then claim all the modern shit, too...especially when they get into politics, or if things stop going their way. Tudor wants to talk about "Drag Queens" but if people who talked like the old Republicans I knew did about somebody like her, to her face...she'd be demanding all the "Woke" shit for her own defense, trust me.

And I thought the same thing about seeing a picture of Caitlyn Jenner at Trump's Radical Islamic golf tournament. You do not want to know what my people would have said about her back in the day. My dudes might've been willing to mind their own business or keep their piece about certain things. But there were, shall we say, limits.

And they'd say what they said whether it necessarily was to their advantage or not. Yes, a lot of these people were bigoted assholes, but they were neither two-faced, nor nanny-state eliminationist about dealing with that which was different.

As long as "different" didn't make a point of bothering them, they didn't bother it. The jokes told around beer, cigars, and whiskey might be the kind you can't really tell anymore, but we didn't try and rub people's noses in it or try to make a scene.

And a lot of us eventually rolled with things and evolved, because life.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's how it was.

But, see, I was taught "Live and let live" even if I didn't like somebody.

Maybe it's just me, and I know I'm a lot more old-school than most of these people, whose beliefs move with the latest fanaticism, or the wind on a clear day and then they want to evangelize the world into their (newfound) point of view...but I think people have a right to do what they need to do without any of these fucking people bothering them about it.

And yes, that absolutely includes LGBT kids, or parents for that matter.

And again, yes, I say that as somebody who told plenty of jokes about gay stuff back in the day.

But there was limits, and they was enforced.

These motherfuckers in the modern Republican Party don't have the sense to blow off steam out of sight or keep their bigotry behind closed doors. Hell, they act like they should be able to act out in public and get a prize for it. 

They likewise don't really seem to give a shit that all the bigotry and craziness and outrage-addiction will eventually eat them like it's a hungry tiger and they're the sheep that couldn't get away fast enough, because eventually everybody does something to offend the mob. 

Why? Mostly because the mob nowadays doesn't wait for something to annoy them, it is actively out there 24/7 looking for something to be offended by, and an excuse to be mad about it in the most performative way possible. And who needs the back deck or the smoking room when you have the internet?

And yes, that's exactly what these fucking people are, nothing but a goddamned mob. 

More to the point, like I said they want to act out publicly, rather than privately, and think they should get some kind of medal for it.

Cracker Barrell evidently joined, ya know, every other major restaurant chain out there in offering "Impossible" brand plant-based sausages and shit. 

Hey, I don't much care for the stuff (I think a lot of this plant based stuff tastes like eating a paper bag) but if somebody else likes it...or has to or wants to eat it, it doesn't matter to me. I might laugh about it later, but I'm not going to mock some Vegan person to their face about their life choices or get mad that my favorite source of grease and cholesterol is providing a service to somebody else.

Ya know, Capitalism? Freedom?

The company sees the chance to make a few extra bucks by expanding their customer base by offering different stuff. What's wrong with that?

Evidently a bunch of rednecks and shit got all mad about it, because mob behavior and they have to have something to be mad about. And they can't enjoy a good (??????) meal [Fuck, it hurt to even think that] if the place doesn't serve only food that nobody but them likes. Cracker Barrell isn't Cracker Barrell if some tofu-eating Vegan might eat there someday, or some shit. Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go. Bigotry and excluding others are, quite honestly, the only thing most of these idiots seem to actually like doing.

Seriously, y'all, fuck this silly bullshit. I've never eaten at a Cracker Barrell in my life and I'm not about to start.

And it gets worse, because of course it does. After last week's debacle over the PACT Act and the resulting public backlash to Republicans blocking it and then celebrating on the Senate floor, the Senate voted on it again and it passed this time.

Except some of these fucking people, like Rand Paul, voted against it again, claiming the PACT Act in particular and government spending in general will "wreck the economy." 

Seriously, I'm not going to, but I'll bet you money that if I look through Rand Paul's social media feeds there's a post somewhere touting the economic benefits of producing a whole bunch more F-35 Lighting II jets that only work maybe half the time.

But ya know, if the pilots, ground crew, maintainers and assorted support personnel were exposed to carcinogens via burn pits or some other shit while deployed? 

Republicans be like "fuck them. The economy damn it" blah blah blah. I've got news for you, Rand. Your war machine ain't going to work without the people that run it. Republicans hate the military. They love the defense contractors who give them money. It's really that damned simple.

And I have to say that I find it interesting that when all these international alliances and weapons are used for their intended purpose...that is, defending the global order and protecting the less-powerful from the ruthless...I find it interesting that that's the cutoff point where a lot of these Republicans say they don't want to play anymore. 

Sweet Jesus, can you imagine Reagan or George H.W. Bush if, say, things would have been less peaceful at the time, and Ukraine had ripped down the Hammer And Sickle and told the Russians to go fuck themselves while either of them was in office? 

Especially Bush after the fall of the Berlin Wall when...yes...we were looking for something to use all that big green and haze-gray firepower on while we still had it at the ready, simply to prove that there'd been a need for it all this time? The response would've been right out of all those Cold War novels and it would've been on like Donkey Kong...because Freedom, and at the time that was more than just an empty slogan to these people.

True enough, I think both parts of that are a big part of why Desert Storm happened, but it amply proved the damned point. Sweet Jesus, if the Ukrainians are fucking the Russians up this bad with a few HIMARS systems and flood of more basic weapons we've given them...any conflict where it's us against the Russians would make Desert Storm look like slow motion, leave a big smoking crater where the Red Army used to be, and leave the Russians wondering what the fuck even happened. 

The difference between the citizen-soldiers of a free nation and their courage and values, and the subservient conscripts of Putinist Neo-Communist totalitarianism in their obedience to Power could not be any more plain than the battlefields of Ukraine have made it.

And back in the day Uncle Sam would've kicked their ass, used the Red Banner for toilet paper and put Lenin's taxidermed ass in the wax museum at Knott's Berry Farm (Look that place up, its history and who started it, I fuckin' dare you.) and triple-dog-dared anybody to do anything about it...judging from the performance of Putin's New Soviet Men, anyway, we'd have probably gotten away with it.

Bomb 'em until they glow and use they asses for runway lights, as some of the older ex-SAC guys used to say.

That's the conservative attitude as I remember it. What the fuck happened? Now, Republicans pick the losing side, the side that lost the Cold War, with malice aforethought, and ally with them gleefully simply because they hate the rest of us?

Fuck That.

'Cause right now there's entire previous generations of Republicans (and not a few older-school Democrats) looking down at Josh Hawley from Capitalist Valhalla like "What's wrong with you, you interior-decorator-looking motherfucker??" 

Although I could see people like LBJ, Nixon, or for that matter Reagan using less...politically correct...euphemisms. I'm sorry, but these guys...particularly Reagan...cultivated a certain image that stuck in the minds of people like me. And it was Ayn Rand's attempt at Capitalist Chic, or the whole Marlboro Man cowboy thing, it sure as all fuck wasn't Josh Hawley's pathetic run away from his own goddamned mob. 

Fist in the air my fucking ass. Yeah, pencil-neck power. Fuck you, man.

Thing I don't get about Hawley...other than the fact that he has Putin's dick up his ass...in this matter is that neither Finland nor Sweden joining NATO is going to cost us much of anything, and both bring advanced, robust military forces with their own...damned near everything they need already, and already networked with NATO to cover what they don't have...to the table, straight up. 

In point of fact the Finns are set to buy a shitload of F-35's (Even though, since they already use the earlier version of the Hornet, Super Hornets would probably serve them better and the force would be on line a whole hell of a lot faster. But, whatever) and were actively planning to expand their Navy before this whole thing with Ukraine even started.

But of course, it's not really about any of that, is it??

You'd think, whether on issues of bodily sovereignty, family planning, sexuality, what people eat, or even the things they've said for so long are so fundamental like one's right to defend themselves or their own country or to make alliances in the world and have a stronger defense or foreign policy, that Republicans would mind their own damned business on the former...or as they so often did in the past, simply leave such things up to the individual (Which was exactly the point of Roe Vs. Wade.) 

We used to be all about supporting the latter. People have to have the right to make their own choices, even if you don't like those choices. That's what freedom even is.

And yesterday, Kansas voters broke their foot off in the GOP's ass, and this is the first time We The People have really had much of a chance to weigh in on the whole abortion rights issue.

Kansas, of all places, Wow. I'm a lifelong student of history. Shit starts in Bleeding Kansas, yo. Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory...

I guess not all Republicans have forgotten what freedom means, or that words have meaning.

Or that somebody's biology or gender or sex shouldn't put them in chains.

But current Republicans don't give a shit about any of that. 

They're more interested in a collective right to boss other people around and bully them, or to discriminate, or simply to hurt or kill people. And all the evidence suggests they wouldn't even be very good at it, certainly not against anybody who's going to fight back.

Modern Republicans are used to conducting themselves like strutting, jackbooted goons while the media and much of the political class equivocates on their behalf, as if they have some kind of valid societal role to be assholes. Like, it's the old stupid "just ignore the bullies and they'll go away" shit.

No, the way you make that shit stop is punch somebody right in the mouth. Repeat this until you understand it.

Well, come November, We The People have another chance to remind these sons of bitches what usually happens to people like that. Democrats had best get used to the idea of using the big stick, because ain't nothing else going to make this shit go away. 

Let's get after it. The Republican Party seems to be trying to commit mass political suicide, but we ain't got time to wait around for them to succeed. What replaces them might be worse.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this bullshit, and I don't want it to get worse.

And yes, I say that as a former Republican myself.

We were what we were...but given what they've become, goddamn, I miss those assholes. Modern Republicans combine the worst traits of far-left and totalitarian Right in the service of one thing only; Cruelty. 

It was so much better when cruelty wasn't the point. You want to make these people find something else to do with themselves, you have to step up, whup they ass, and make them think it might be in their best interest to find a new hobby.

But you have to do it. You want a better world, you have to be a better citizen.

You have to be the citizen-legislator or the citizen-soldier or simply the dedicated citizen and tell Power and Authority what they can go do with themselves.

You.

Get after it.

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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