Fallen (American Revelation IX: Postscript.)

Well the government bugged the men's room
In the local disco lounge
And all she wants to do is dance, dance
To keep the boys from sellin'
All the weapons they could scrounge
And all she wants to do is dance
Yeah, but that don't keep the boys from makin' a buck or two
And all she wants to do is dance, dance
The still can sell the army
All the drugs that they can do
And all she wants to do is
All she wants to do is dance
And make romance. ~Don Henley, All She Wants To Do Is Dance

I saw this last night.

Sarah Palin lost the special election to replace Don Young-who had recently met the True Death after so many years of Vampiric undeath-in Alaska. I remain uncertain...especially given that he pulled a knife on John Boehner...whether Young was a Brujah or a Gangrel but I'm fairly sure he was a vampire. I mean, how the fuck does even an old white man be in Congress longer than I have been alive and still always look the same?

Anyway....

L...and I cannot stress this enough...OL.

How the mighty are fallen. LOL.

14 years ago this week, I was still a Republican. 

Sarah Palin's nomination as John McCain's running mate had added a whole new level of disgusted to how I felt about things. I...an Air Force veteran who had two friends who'd been wounded over there...was tired of the Iraq war. I was tired of the conspiracy theories and racism. I was tired of the "But who would you rather have a beer with?" ethic of the Republican base at the time...which isn't a lot of fun to be around if you're a recovering alcoholic. And I, recently a declared Agnostic, was sick and tired of the religious bullshit from the Evangelicals. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'd voted for Bush twice...and I figured Bush himself...or Cheney for that matter, seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with any of this crap.

And I quite literally had lost friends over my response to all the Birtherism bullshit, which simply was to point out thus: 

If you're anywhere in the nuclear chain of command or custody from the President on down to the Security Forces troop guarding the ALCM Structures, the CIA, FBI, whatever-the-fuck-branch-Office Of Special Investigations and the goddamned military industrial complex will know what kind of cereal you ate as a kid, at what age you started jerking off, and with which hand. 

Considering that a lot of the people I'd said this to were your basic uptight non-veteran conservative Christian, you can imagine how well that went over.

As of August 29th, when Palin was announced as VP-nominee-presumptive I still leaned slightly in favor of McCain...in contrast to my grandfather, a staunch conservative Democrat and retired Naval Aviator who'd been in the twilight of his career when he'd at some point encountered John McCain at the start of his own. I never did get the details. 

Anyway, my Grandpa...a swing voter for obvious reasons, he'd voted for Reagan twice...was already leaning toward voting for Obama. He didn't like it, but his literal words to me were "Yeah, I'll vote for a Black before I'll vote for that son of a bitch and you can tell him I said so" followed by a spit on the garage floor. 

My Grandma on the other hand, voted for McCain/Palin, just to cancel him out. They almost always did that.

Perot in 1992 was the only exception.

I liked Barack Obama, but I wasn't sure I thought he had enough experience for the job.

And then along came Sarah...my thought, and a running joke about this shit that I cracked at work...was that she had to have sucked on somebody's wrinkly old balls to get the nomination and every dumbass vapid utterance I heard confirmed this in my head. I spent like a week being like "What the actual fucking fuck!" 

And that was before Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey got ahold of Sarah.

More to the point, I'm looking at John McCain like "The fuck you thinking, Captain Queeg?" Except that McCain, himself was starting to sound all to much like that same character from the Herman Wouk novel The Caine Mutiny, sounding a lot like Bogie's performance in the eponymous film, and looking rather unhealthy to boot! And then he wants to put this dumb bitch a heartbeat away from the Presidency?

No. Fucking. Way.

The shit I heard from those idiots that week was prequel to all that's come and gone since, and I could see it. I knew voting for the crazy was death. Most people couldn't see this, even many of those who voted for Obama.

And by the time it was official at the Republican National Convention, the religious nuts...including my ex-wife, mind you...were coming out of the woodwork calling Sarah Palin the reincarnation of several different Biblical heroines. I'm just like "What? One of these things is not like the other one! Christians don't believe in that stuff!" But there it fucking was. And Palin herself is Pentecostal, so I knew pretty much any false-doctrine arglebargle would be up for grabs.

(And remember, as bad as Peter Meijer is he voted to impeach Trump, he voted for aid to Ukraine, LGBT rights and post-Uvalde gun control. His presumed replacement will be much worse. Remember, it's an actual articulated viewpoint of MAGA that America-as-it-is isn't worth defending, and that our decisions should be made for us by perverted old Catholic men in foreign countries, or by Russian dictators, whichever gives MAGA Republicans more money.)

So the following Friday...at that point, a day off because I had my days switched to Fridays and Saturdays for about a year...I went down to the Secretary of State and changed my voter registration to Independent. I voted for Obama and I never looked back.

And the more the Republican Party goes off the rails crashing like a train full of POL tank cars through a small Quebecois town...the happier I am that I made that decision.

To even be a standard, "moderate" Republican these days, you've got to hold some pretty monstrous views, have no pride or self-respect and be more concerned about "Owning the Libs" than even defending America or our allies...or you're out.

Even one deviation, like believing that Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves with weapons from the Russians who want to destroy their culture, erase their nation and kill them...is too much. Ironic, considering that Republicans as a whole think they want to go out and fight the whole world.

And, given the very real, very likely threat of war with Russia and threats by Russian media of terrorist attacks against Americans, that's a hell of an ideological stance for the Republican Party as a whole to take. 

They can't wait to be poodles to every dictator that comes along, and for America to be the same.

Have to wonder how they'd feel about Russification?

And this is America?

Reagan fucking wept.

Well we barely make the airport
For the last plane out
As we taxied down the runway
I could hear the people shout
They said, "don't come back here Yankee"
But if I ever do
I'll bring more money
'Cause all she wants to do is dance
And make romance
Never mind the heat
Comin' off the street
She wants to party
She wants to get down
All she wants to do is
All she wants to do is dance
And make romance
All she wants to do is dance.

~Don Henley, All She Wants To Do Is Dance

Nine

Слава Україна!

I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley