Polishing the Catturd (Election 2022, Seven.)

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)

I wasn't going to write anything today, but two things have happened so far this weekend that I feel like I need to say something about.

#1 The Muskrat takeover of Twitter is complete, and it is of course, scumbag central. Well, slightly more than it usually is anyway. I rather suspect that since Twitter is losing a lot of users over this, content moderation will have to become less confusing and sporadic than it's been (for months) or Musk and more importantly his shareholders gonna get spanked on a deal where it already looks like he paid way more for the platform than it was worth.

#2 Paul Pelosi got assaulted with a hammer by some mentally-ill MAGA nut, and ended up having brain surgery because of a skull fracture. It very much looks like this was a particularly ill-considered assassination attempt against the Speaker herself.

I mean, shit, this situation even managed to pry some apparently genuine sympathy out of Ted Cruz and a lot of the other Republicans I thought incapable of it.

But, apparently the "Conservatives" think this is hilarious. 

If you need anymore proof that these fucking people think this shit is nothing more than a big game and have bottomless contempt and hatred for other people...including people they never met, who never did anything to them personally or anything that affected them negatively at all in the world...I don't know what to tell you.

Also #3 At least as of yesterday Elon Musk was apparently going out of his way to be performatively solicitous to...Trailer Park Loser Weirdo Florida Man types...on a personal level.

Imagine having all that money and status and thinking some Florida trailer park nut who goes by "Cat Turd" online even deserves the time of day from you.

For comparison I'm a disabled veteran who works part-time and just scrapes by and I blocked this "Cat Turd" idiot years ago...without ever having interacted with them. But of course the vicissitudes of Cheap Internet Fame means this asshole pops up in my feed anyway.

Needless to say Twitter is bleeding off users who don't want to deal with this shit, and has already had advertisers including GM 'temporarily' suspend advertising...and I can't really blame anybody for that.

This shit gets tedious on a normal day.

And I rather suspect I'll be making even more use of the "Block" button because it'll get worse that way.

But, on a societal level, if you think ignoring this kind of shit will make it go away, you're nuts. Anti-liberalism, Antisemitism, LGBT-phobia and Racism are just the canaries in the coal mine.

We face the very real-and very likely-possibility that no matter what the results of the election are, the Right is going to be dissatisfied with the results and start shooting at people...if they don't resort to political violence first...that is. And it's thus far, a concern of Homeland Security that this is exactly what will happen.

Let these assholes have what they want and they'll get to killing each other, too.

I don't give a damn. Show up and vote and tell these sons of bitches to go fuck themselves anyway.

"Civil War" is these assholes default answer to everything these days, they want to kill Americans, and I suspect as soon as these bitches get enough liquid or otherwise-chemical courage in them they're going to try something stupid no matter what happens.

The fight is here, online and IRL, and I think people like Muskrat going to be surprised when they end up being targets too.

Because I guarantee you, nothing and no one is going to be "good enough" for These Fucking People. They'll turn on everybody, and performatively so, because the cruelty is the point.

And when "The Cruelty Is The Point" and you want to cede control to people like that? What you end up with if that happens, very quickly is not a civilization.

The fight isn't just here online, it isn't just in Ukraine. It's out there, in your neighborhood, it's out there in "The World" not just on some far-away battlefield you can put out of your mind. And the less people stand up politically or in social terms the more likely they're going to have to stand up kinetically. This is the lesson of the war in Ukraine. For 20 years people thought if they were just nice to Putin or ignored him, he'd go away. Dude simply took that as license to do what he really wanted to do.

It's not just that the Right wanted Trump Forever and thought they were going to get it, or that the Russians thought they'd conquer Ukraine in three days that needs to be noted. 

It's that Trump is out of power and seething in Florida and has the total power he desired only over the Republican Party (and only because they gave it to him.) 

It's that the Ukrainians have turned Putin's "Pack a dress uniform for the victory parade" campaign into a bloody 8-month grind of a war that stands a real good chance of destroying Russia.

And they were doing that right from the start, even before Western aid kicked into high gear.

And it's that by adopting the mentality of Putinism, the "Conservatives" have somehow managed to adopt...and to adapt for their purposes...the worst traits of both far-Left Communism and far-Right Fascism with a healthy side of "Christian" homophobia and misogyny plus Southern "honor culture" and racism.

But ya know, I think the situation shows that decent people can get results when they fight back.

I understand that some people feel the need to leave certain spaces, oh yes, I do.

But "America is not at war, the Marine Corps is at war, America is at the mall" is not an option anymore, and some people are clearly still needing to internalize that.

The enemy is stupid, but they count on us being lazy.

The fight is here, it's now, and going somewhere else only delays you being engaged since the problem is global. But, all we have to do to win is get off our asses and do something about it.

Six 

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

Слава Україна!

What Dreams May Come (Election 2022, Six.)

[Jyn proposes to the Alliance Council a raid on Scarif to get the Death Star plans, but runs into objections]

Tynnra Pamlo: If the Empire has this kind of power, what chance do we have?

Jyn Erso: What chance do we have? The question is what choice? Run? Hide? Plead for mercy? Scatter your forces? You give way to an enemy this evil with this much power and you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission. [Rebel personnel grumble in agreement] The time to fight is now! Every moment you waste is another step closer to the ashes of Jedha. ~From the film Rogue One.

I saw this yesterday.

Lindsey Graham saying that Herschel Walker "Might make every child of Color in America want to be a Republican." It seems to me, like this ignores the reality not only of Republican racism but also of...Herschel Walker. Now, I'm just a middle-aged white guy...but I can tell you exactly what even the average Black conservative thinks of Herschel. So will they, but there's going to be a lot of laughing involved. These people are, right or wrong, pretty well-versed in dealing with dumb motherfuckers who can't string complete sentences together.

And among those people...guys like Herschel or Kanye are laughed at, not used, for the most part.

Maybe it's just me, but I think for Lindsey Graham all this "Conservative" talk is nothing but a sexual paraphilia. Dude has certainly never met a conservative belief or principle he wouldn't shit all over for the right price...which is always disconcertingly low.

Mostly because a lot of these fucking people are perfectly fine with being assholes for free, if they think they'll get away with it.

And these White "Conservative" wannabe-fascists? They're perfectly content to pretend to let others play, too, so long as it's useful. As soon as that's not needed anymore, though??

They get shot in a prison cell like Ernst Rohm did.

That's all.

You can snarl and puff your chest out in defiance all you want, but the only people who'll see your courage are the executioners. Then the people who lie about everything will call you a "Moral Degenerate" even though you were right there, fighting for their cause, right from the beginning.

How do people study, let alone become obsessed with the history of this shit and not figure out that "Other" people are pretty much expendable where fascists are concerned?

Or even their own, really?

I don't understand how people like Mike Pence, or Ye West for that matter, don't see this shit.

(And in Pence's case, they tried to kill him once already!)

I saw this video yesterday, a Russian convict, dragooned into their army and sent to the front, had been captured and was being interviewed by Ukrainian soldiers...even as he's still laying there, wounded, in the dirt. Dude said that of his platoon of fifty, a dozen or so were still alive.

As I've said many times before, I cannot even imagine having to fight, much less having to lead, under these kind of conditions. Do the officers and sergeants just not give a fuck?

I was a Sergeant in the United States Air Force. You are responsible for your people. Respect is earned by every action, every day. If I'd treated my troops like the Russian junior officers and sergeants treat theirs? I'd have been brought up on charges and I'd have deserved it. 

If people like Vladimir Putin wonder why they're losing this war...maybe they should start with stuff like that. 

The Ukrainians have learned the Western way of war...and that's why they're winning.

Personally I don't get why Republicans aren't leading the charge to support the Ukrainians.

Reagan fucking Wept.

To an extent, I get why the Russians are the way they are. Their cultural memes stem from times when things like Serfdom were normal, and are pretty dysfunctional. And it certainly seems like anybody who tries to do anything different over there gets killed or ran out of the country sooner or later.

But what I don't understand is why so many Americans want to be like that. Fixing a lot of those issues here to any degree whatever has been a century-and-a-half-long fight. I guess the difference is that the American "Conservatives" see themselves as the masters, rather than as the slaves. (Even though slavery devalued most of their ancestors' labor too.)

So naturally, they didn't want that shit fixed. Too bad, you lost. Get over it.

Yet they seem perfectly fine with being slaves themselves, so long as they think they're a better class of slaves than some of the other slaves.

And they seem perfectly willing to outsource the fight for their own freedom, that they seem not to want, to other people...and then to try to undermine the people doing the fighting. And they want to aggressively attack the people standing up for freedom and rights here at home, too.

Like, I don't even know how to tell you this if you don't want to hear it. But lots of fascists got killed by other fascists. It's not some great system, it's chaos only slightly held down by jackboots while a whole bunch of sissies in expensive uniforms fight it out with way more drama than all these Drag Shows I've been seeing "Conservatives" bitching about today.

If you haven't noticed, fascists like to showboat and try and impress people with stupidity in the hope that they'll get to the next level of fascism somehow. I see you; Ron DeSantis.

Drag Queens, at least, tend to realize everybody's got to work together if they want to make things work, put on a good show, and impress people. I've never been to a drag show, personally, but I know a couple dudes who've been in them. Fun fact: I did not believe it when I first found out, in either case. 

I also know a couple other dudes, guys I used to work with, that was aspiring rappers...and one of the venues they regularly performed at was the local gay bar. Why? Because they made good money there. And just as important, anything they asked for in terms of stuff they needed to put on a good show...they got it, no questions asked 99% of the time. When you care about your craft, that matters.

One of these dudes was black, the other one was Latino. They worked in different departments at my old job. Both the kind of guys that worked two jobs, plus their side hustle as rappers, because they had child support to pay, families to feed, things they aspired to be so life wasn't always a grind.

Yo, I worked in an environment where it was not the least bit uncommon to walk past a dude rapping while he sprayed down greasy kitchen hoods, or to walk up on an intense discussion about Christian theology, Movie trivia, or RPG gaming mechanics and the plots thereof. I've often in this life worked with people that you had to work at it to keep up with them, much less to be seen as a leader. I'm proud of that.

Because hope and joy are where you find them.

For those of us who aren't born with silver spoons up our asses, that's life.

It's for that reason that I don't accept or understand how modern "Conservatives" can just take it, just deal with whatever Republicans fart in their general direction and just keep following like good little herd animals.

And I'm damned sick of the cruel, the out-of-touch, and the privileged trying to tell me how to live mine, or trying to make my life harder, or the lives of people I care about worse for no better reason than profits, or they think it's funny. 

I used to be one, and I don't know how the hell anybody could aspire to be a "Conservative" or a Republican these days.

I don't know who the fuck looks at a loser like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin and finds that shit inspiring.

For the exact same reason I don't understand how the fuck somebody could look at some skeevy little shithead like Hitler and think "That's my boy, yo." And I've spent years studying that history.

I look at somebody like Vladimir Putin trying to preach about "Conservative values" and I'm like, yo, dog, you stood there in your KGB uniform and you saluted that flag that was the absolute opposite of anything the conservative values as I was taught stood for. I don't give a good goddamn what you think!

And this is the future some American "Conservatives" want?

Surrender or vassalhood to some fourth-rate neo-Soviet banana republic??

Fuck that.

The world these motherfuckers want sounds an awful lot like the grim, totalitarian Empire of Star Wars, where a very fortunate few don't do much more than go to expensive parties but the majority of people are doing slave labor, or could be thrown into it for no better reason than walking through the wrong place at the wrong time.

Maybe you want to live like that. I sure as hell don't.

Maybe you think it won't happen to you. I don't have that luxury as "it" whatever it may be in a given moment, has already happened to me several times.

Get your act together, people. You get what you tolerate.

And to a great extent, remember, you are what you dream about. 

This is America. We don't have a thousand years of history. All we have...is what we want to be.

Remember that, there's going to be a test soon.

Captain Raymus Antilles: Your Highness, the transmission we received. [Hands Princess Leia the Death Star schematics] What is it they've sent us?

Princess Leia Organa: Hope.

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Five

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

Vote for Dr. Ooze and YOU lose. (Election 2022, Five.)

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 was at work last night, so I only caught clips of the PA Senate debate during slow points and when I was on break.

But apparently the consensus among celebrity media and pop culture types is that Dr. Ooze should be a Senator, because John Fetterman has stroke-related speech issues or something. Seriously if I said shit about somebody else at work like some of these people have said about John Fetterman, I'd get fired.

And that goes for the job I have now, my last job, and pretty much most of the things I've ever done in my life.

Or because Dr. Oz had a TV show and in the Right's new and improved Jackass-motivated mentality, being on TV and saying dumb shit is the end-all, be-all of everything. This is why I saw a video of Elon Musk walking into Twitter HQ earlier...carrying a sink? He doesn't want to really do anything, or run the company, it's all just more of his Peter Pan-syndrome endless quest for attention.

And, like Dr. Oz in general, the whole thing is just a big goddamned scam.

And what is this shit about a woman's health being between her, her doctor, and local political leaders? Try that shit back in Turkey, Dr. Ooze...or in any other Islamic country...and you're likely going to have a mob of angry people assembling outside your house or anywhere you appear in public. In those kinds of countries, privacy is a thing. A woman's health is between her and her doctor, a woman's sexuality is between her and (usually) her husband and people don't want that stuff out in the public sphere.

Why the fuck do American "Conservatives" seem to want any given woman to be the Communal Property of any old dumbass man that comes along?? It's fucking perverted.

I've spent way too much of my time studying religion and...there's nothing Christian or Islamic or anything else about this crap. It's simple perversion born of a bored and debased people whose main tagline is "What have you done for me lately?"

And yet the media laughs it up and hypes Republicans because they, too, want to be in on the grift. Chaos, cruelty, and stupidity sell...and functional society and good government doesn't, or at least not as much.

And hey, fuck anybody who don't have more plastic in them than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or who has less than seven figures in the bank, right?

Well, as one of those people who don't have all that...fuck all of y'all. 

I'm a disabled veteran. I have arthritis and a bad back and I walk with a limp. Because of TBI from a car accident I talk a little bit slower. I walk with a cane. Military high-and-tight, big muscles and six-pack abs has turned into middle-aged balding fat guy and you know what? I'm fine with that.

But as much because of that as anything else, that's exactly why the ableism, boorish stupidity, Prosperity Gospel worship of health and wealth, soft-handed fascism and vapid obsession with attention and beauty that I've seen coming out of everybody from Meghan McCain to all those NYT reporters that were so fiercely anti-Trump during his time just fucking disgusts me.

And the worst part is, you take these fucking people and the chest-thumping tough-talking Republican liars that they support and drop them in a real crisis, they're going to fail the test just like they did and continue to do with COVID-19. Seriously, if it was us fighting the war instead of the Ukrainians? These Fucking People would have shit themselves, ran away and called Vlad to surrender from inside the bunker they were hiding in! 

They'd be all too happy to leave the fight for freedom to people like me. These are the same people who have gladly outsourced the fight for their own freedom to a middle-income, smaller country like Ukraine and then tried, from their high and mighty perch here, to undercut that fight at every turn.

It's like these idiots want to be forced to learn Russian.

I mean, come on. Fuck You!

Do these fucking idiots do anything but glorify themselves? And more to the point how the fuck did so many people become the kind of dull-eyed bovine bottom-feeders who just keep lapping this shit up no matter what these morons fucking do or say?

Jesus, what's wrong with people??

They don't wanna stand up for their own goddamn freedom, but shit, they'll fight like absolute demons if somebody tries to take away the TV.

That's the only reason some fucking ghoul like Mehmet Oz has any traction. At. Fucking. All.

And if these assholes get their way it's back to "Democracy Dies In Darkness (TM) ...Now give us $5" but what about people who don't have $5 or people like me, who aren't all that bad off but still might not have it on the day before payday?

What about those of us who can't...or simply won't...buy off those who fancy themselves "The Great And Powerful" and the games they play with each other and themselves??

Oh, that's right, they're finding tons of paperwork and shit detailing the systematic murder and oppression of their people as they take back large areas of their own country from the Russians.

And if you think this shit would be any fucking different here than it is in Ukraine right now you have another thing coming.

Here's some idiot GOP Rep. bloviating about how he thinks a "Cabal" of "Unelected Elites" (meaning Black People...including *Gasp* Barack Obama) is "Secretly" running the country.

No, seriously, some racist jackass said this.

Never mind that Biden's style of governing and, well, pretty much everything else is completely different than that of Barack Obama.

No, these fucking people's whole basic thing is that now that America has had a Black president, a Black vice president, and People of Color, women, and various others who are not White Conservative Men Who Are The Right Kind Of Christian This Week have something approaching a share in our society...it's time to burn it all down, or something.

Because conspiracy theories and racism, as if those aren't the two most infinitely moveable goalposts in the history of the goddamned world. You let that shit go on for too long, nobody has any rights.

And the media and all these TV people are on board with this?

You know what? If this is how you want to be, Fuck You.

And you will deserve exactly what you get for it, too. How long will you get to laugh it up before these fucking assholes turn on you, too??

No matter what happens, vote for Ooze and you lose. 

It was the same way with Trump. Why would his heirs-apparent be any different?

Everybody thinks it won't happen to them, until it does.

Listen up, yo. If you want a better country you have to be a better citizen. You have to do the work of life and not just listen to some skeevy guy who says "He'll get it for you."

And this ain't it, bro. This ain't it.

Four

Слава Україна!

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)

Angel Of Death (Election 2022, Four.)

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

I saw this a couple days ago.

The "Angel Of Death" is coming for [List of Democratic politicians and public figures plus Lindsay Graham] by the END OF THE YEAR!!"

Can we put that right up there with Harold Camping predicting the Rapture in 2011 and the stupid 2012 Mayan Calendar hysteria?? I just bet it's more of the same old crap.

But you know, Christians, I'd watch it if I was you. Stuff like this is what you're becoming known for. You're not seen as followers of Christ, but as a religious arm of the Republican Party and spreaders of Conspiracy Theories. 

I'd wager more people now would be willing to declare Donald Trump their Lord and Savior than would declare for Jesus Christ. I'm serious when I say I haven't heard a professed Evangelical talk about Jesus since the early spring of 2017. It's all Trump since then.

Republicans seem to actually hate America, and to be against freedom both here and out in the world. 

Most especially, they seem to want Eastern Europe in general and the Baltic States and Ukraine in particular back under a Russian jackboot...which would at this point mean the end of those nations, and of their cultures and languages. I strongly suspect, though, that were the Baltic States and Ukraine to fall, the Republicans would be happy to throw Poland under the bus next, then the Balkans, then Germany and the rest of Western Europe. Germany and France seem to have enough of their own Tankies. 

And some of them have a lot more power than ours do.

With the UK coming apart at the seams, it really does seem like the strong point in this fight is the frontline states, The Balkans, the Baltics States, Turkey and Ukraine itself.

Shit, we don't know who the leader of the UK is going to be next week at this point.

Other than us...provided Democrats remain in power...who else is in a position to provide leadership? The "traditional" leaders in these kinds of fights have become too comfortable and lazy, or too desirous of autocracy themselves...to the point where they don't care if they're the rulers or the slaves...only that such a system becomes global.

And for fuck's sake enough of us sure as hell don't want to make the effort to fight back...it seems to me like ideological masturbation and personal agendas rule for too many of us at this point.

Cheap gas prices? Where you gonna go, when you have to ask the shitty local autocrat for permission to travel? Health care for all? They had that in the Soviet Union, doesn't seem like that helps many people by itself unless it's coupled with democracy and freedom.

We have to win the fight there, in the Eastern EU one way or another. We have to help the Ukrainians win this thing and become global leaders in the fight for freedom because I'm not sure half of America can be trusted to give a shit...not if it means any imposition on their comfort or convenience. 

Hell, these assholes seem hell-bent on preemptively surrendering America to Putin's fourth-rate neo-Soviet Banana Republic wannabe-Oil-Sheikdom and to be honest I'm pretty sure these fucking idiots would be all too happy to bow before the Hammer and Sickle and submit to Russification themselves if they thought it might "Own The Libs."

Not that some of these alleged Liberals are any more trustworthy and I'm looking at you, Progressive Caucus. Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?

The decision to negotiate or not belongs to the Ukrainians, because it's them who's under attack. So far, the Russians have not negotiated in good faith...and Putin seems to be holding out for Republicans to ride to his rescue...think about that one for a second, will ya?

More to the point Ukrainians know all this and keep fighting anyway, why don't you?

And ALL of these fucking people seem not to care who, or what, gets hurt. So long as they get to keep playing their various ideological games and defining themselves by what they're against.

Too many of us have become comfortable and willfully ignorant. We're bored, but too lazy to do anything about that boredom other than slip into lurid sexualized fantasies.

When I went to the store I happened to walk by a pickup truck with a Tea Party "Gun vote" sticker on the back, and an "FJB" sticker...and on the bumper it said "Not a liberal" because obviously this dumb person very clearly thinks the rest of us are that dumb, too, and cannot infer their views from the other two stickers.

How much do you want to bet, though, that if it was us under attack instead of...or even in addition to...Ukraine, these fuckers could not be bothered to pick up all those guns and use them to defend their own country?

No, jerking off like a monkey in a cage because they think it'll shock somebody is more important.

They wouldn't stand up, not without vast amounts of peer pressure and shaming, and even then I think a lot of these fucking people would fight about like French right-wingers did in 1940, they'd surrender the minute things got too difficult and submit to Sovietization if they thought it might damage, roll back or even slow social change.

And I think, right now, there's a lot of Americans who would more gladly join the enemy than stand up for their own country let alone the government we have, that We The People elected two years ago.

Why? Because cruelty, politics as entertainment, and profits over people are more important to too many of us than being free.

Seriously, y'all. How much freedom to spend your money on what you want do you think you're going to have under an autocracy where the first thing these assholes will do is start instituting "taxes" that go directly to the autocrats themselves? 

I mean what the fuck do you think the offering plate in the kind of Evangelical churches that think they can summon forth "Angels of Death" even is? 

Where do you think that kind of shit is going to stop?

It stops only in darkness and fire, and when those who would rather kill and steal than eat can find nothing more. 

Unless we fight back, unless we take back the rhetoric of religiosity from those who cherish darkness and death. 

You might be able to move forward without the framework of civilization or the light of reason, but it'll be hard to see where you're really going. That is, of course, the point for those who push unreason in all things.

We have to stand up, and that's on us. There's nobody on our side calling up "Angels of Death" to go get the bad guys and drag them off to some divinely meted out autocratic justice in the afterlife, one way or another.

We have to be the ones to do that shit, and bring the enemies of freedom to real, visibly seen justice in the real world. Otherwise, this crap will continue. 

So get after it.

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

And what I'm seeing lately, ain't that.

Three

Слава Україна!

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

Brownshirt Jesus (Election 2022, Three.)

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

I saw this article a few hours ago, written by some nut at The Federalist.

He even said these fucking people should stop calling themselves conservatives. 

Well, speaking as a former conservative Republican myself, at least he's honest about that. He, and anybody who acts on this shit...isn't conservative.

Conservatism is broadly defined as "Things as they are" with social change hopefully being slowed to avoid unintended consequences, and based on revealed Truth and the wisdom of our ancestors. That definition is verbatim from Chuck Colson on his "Two Minute Warning" YouTube show.

Oh, how David French of me.

(Yes, this idiot also name-checked the very passionately conservative, Evangelical lawyer and Iraq War veteran specifically because French keeps speaking out against exactly this kind of garbage.)

The author says that the "Conservative Project," whatever that is, has failed and basically demands that the Right rally behind fascism to "Save Western Civilization." The article rails against LGBT people, sex education, and "The Left" and demands that conservatives become radicals and revolutionaries in the service of some neo-Puritan version of Christianity. 

Seriously, somebody tell that fucker it's been done. The Puritans fucking lost, and after the restoration of the monarchy the winning side dug up Oliver Cromwell's corpse, desecrated it, and then put it on trial for treason and mutilated it, beheading Cromwell in a posthumous "execution" before burying his body in an unmarked grave. His head was eventually sold as a curiosity but eventually was disposed of the same way. 

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers. The Pilgrims were not "Audacious and devout Christians." They were a bunch of Calvinist nuts who'd got themselves kicked out of England...and then kicked out of the Netherlands because the famously-tolerant-for-the-time Dutch would not allow them to burn adulterers and heretics at the stake.

In the last couple weeks, I'm just saying, I've seen a hell of a lot of both anti-Democratic (Big and small-D) and antisemitic sentiment.

Often, the two are directly combined.

And then not too long after that, I saw this bit quoting and praising Francisco Franco.

"I answer only to God and history."

Oh, hey, we can do that too.

History will absolve me." ~Fidel Castro

(Also, how has that actually worked out for old Fidel?) 

And not only has history has condemned Franco, you'd also think the (alleged) Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestant sentimentalities of many American "Conservatives" would also rather comfortably imagine the right-wing rabidly Catholic El Caudillo sitting in hell, explaining his misdeeds to the Devil. Or at least, that's how I remember American conservatism anyway...

Again, how very David French of me...consistent values, even if they're wrong? What are those?

Seriously, one only need to look at Spain in the second half of the 1970's...much less the modern nation...to see how little of a hold Francoism had on the hearts and minds of the Spanish people. I would imagine at this point only a few old people there even give a shit about Franco...and he probably has a lot more American idolaters than Spanish ones.

Well, at least nobody dug up El Jefe and skull-fucked him.

The funny part is, these fucking people are basing their support of Franco on anti-Communism.

LOL. Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. I know, I was there.

And then yesterday, I saw this.

A bunch of lurid posts linking "Antifa" with BDSM and (in this guy's mind) sexual deviancy. I think he'd be shocked...shocked I tell you...to find out just how many conservatives and/or Republicans are kinky.

These fucking people don't want to live in America. They want to be the Empire, from Star Wars, as it's currently being portrayed.

In other words, these motherfuckers could give a flying fuck about actual conservatism. They just want an excuse to kill people. And of course the homophobia and transphobia is just more of that shit. These assholes don't give a damn about Christian or conservative sexual ethics or family values.

The motherfucker specifically says so in the damn article I linked to above.

I'd likewise suggest that these fucking people don't give a good goddamn about "Western Civilization" either.

And when they come...and they will...they will be gunning for Republicans just as much as for Democrats, and for conservatives as well as liberals.

I quite suspect that they expect to lose the war, but think that Jesus is going to save them and smite their enemies or something something Gazpacho.

Because there's a portion of Humanity that ever and always thinks they'll get into Heaven if they can just present God with a big enough Body Count.

(God doesn't work that way, and the United States Armed Forces will have their say in this too. How did all that shit work out for Radical Islam?)

I guess it's like how when I used to play World Of Warcraft, roughly between Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King there were three different explicitly Evangelical Christian guilds on my particular server. Two were Alliance, one was Horde. The horde people were cool, but also religious. The Alliance guys (the guilds were both all men) were assholes "Raiding for Jesus" (Yes, their term.) 

They'd hang out in the Barrens and raid Crossroads with their high-level characters, deliberately taking out quest-givers just because they thought it was funny to inconvenience lower-level non-PVP flagged people who were just minding their own business.

I also had Alliance toons on the same server that I used for questing in the Barrens out of  Ratchet and I caught these fuckers talking shit in the open chat often enough. They thought it was funny to be dicks and wreck other peoples' gaming experience. 

The cruelty was the goddamn point.

And all this other shit is basically the same. They just think it's fun to be assholes and hurt people, and politics and religion provide convenient excuses and a thing to cloak their own sexual deviancies in. When these assholes rant about forcing Tween girls to have kids, they're telling on themselves.

You think Russia is turning into a re-Sovietized dystopia? Look at modern American "Conservatism." These two are on parallel...but intersecting...tracks and I guarantee you, one will end up subordinate to the other. 

I mean, seriously, how did all this Christian and Conservative "Anti-Communism" stuff work out?

(Oh, that's how.)

It won't go the way the American nuts think it will, the Russians are just better at this stuff, at least when it comes to manipulating American "Conservatives" even if they suck at everything else. 

Hell, I think the Russians could get these fucking people to denounce Jesus and declare old Joe Stalin as their Lord and Savior...and if things keep up as they are, the Russians might just do this for a laugh and to spit on Reagan's grave one more time.

If these idiots get their civil war, it will end with whatever part of America they end up in control of will become a Cold War-style satellite state to Russia...a Third World, basically neo-Communist dictatorship. 

And the Russians will get it because while the American morons are engaging in political fuckery and sexual deviancy as high art and attacking random minorities and presumed LGBT people, the Russians will be doing the actual work and be in control by the time these jack-offs look up from whatever fun they think they're having.

More to the point, when the American "Conservatives" catch on and realize they're fucked, most of them won't fight back and go out in a blaze of glory. They'll submit to Russification and help the neo-Soviets hunt down anybody who does resist.

I don't know how in the fuck any American could look at something like that and call it a win. What the fuck ever happened to American Exceptionalism, among other things?

They live here, and they don't even appreciate what they have here and they'll happily let other people fight for their freedom, while undermining that fight if they can. They think they're better than the rest of us for it, too.

As a society we shouldn't let these fucking people have shit in a brown paper bag, let alone give them power over anything.

Two

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

In The Temple Of Dis Pater (Election 2022, Two.)

Commandant Beehaz: [Reacting to Rebels robbing Imperial payroll] You'll hang for this!

Lieutenant Gorn: After seven years of serving YOU?! I deserve worse.

~From Andor, S1.E6 "The Eye."

I saw this earlier today.

The fucking MAGAs are apparently starting to directly equate democracy with the Democratic Party...which, to the simple "Republican" rube mind, means it must be a bad thing.

I guess these fucking people would rather be subjects of an Empire, whole worlds of slaves or stormtroopers run by hired proxies controlled by small cliques of agents and the odd Senator here and there, with some shadowy rich people whispering into the ears of both...all in a power structure so remote from the average person as to stagger the imagination, with an Emperor that no one sees whose will is enforced by black-clad agents of terror?

Sure, say the MAGAs, so long as people they don't like might suffer more. 

#1 That's got to be a hell of a way to live. 

#2 That's exactly the kind of world our Founders were against!

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Oh, and as for the above?

Welcome to Elon Musk's dream Sci-Fi Universe.

Except of course Disney isn't trying to present the Empire in some kind of favorable light. I guess that must be this "Woke" shit I keep hearing about. 

Of course the Empire has only been the bad guys since *Checks Notes* 1977.

But that's exactly the Universe some of these rich fuckers...and more importantly the MAGA proletarians...want to live in.

They want the pinch-faced, sneering cruelty of whispers in the right ear and turning in their neighbors to the security bureau for a couple of credits. More importantly they want the evil little thrill of knowing that person will be murdered by the State or spend the rest of their life in some kind of gulag or penal colony at hard labor.

Modern "Conservatism" is a world of ragey hall monitors, rent-a-cop wannabes who didn't have the guts to serve, simpering toadies who know they'd get stuffed in a locker if they said what they believe in public, facing real people...and stupid bullies who only find their courage when there's hundreds of them and dozens of the "enemy."

They want to live in a world where a whisper in the right ear, being a toady to the right person, sets one up for life and beyond. I mean, I suppose there's fabulous wealth in kissing the right person's ass just the way they like it. 

But I'm a man, I never wanted to live that way.

That's not what I was taught being a conservative...or being a grown-ass man was.

But I suppose in some people's minds it beats working for a living.

You see Elon's interest yet?

When you're not taught to have the conduct of a man...or worse, you're taught that being a man stems from whatever kind of sexual antics you can perform with your penis, rather than from character or conduct...of course that kind of bitch-faced fucked up little world sounds cool as fuck.

And that kind of world is exactly what 'access' journalism and power, politics as entertainment and this ridiculous "Own The Libs" stupidity lead to if it's not checked.

And certainly, on the Right, it hasn't been. The Center and the Left fighting for freedom on their own will probably work...but has a good chance of leading to there being two or three countries where this one used to be.

Which is of course the point.

Of course people who literally do not believe in freedom as a concept, not even for their own damned selves simply cannot comprehend *Why* the Ukrainians are fighting so fiercely for their own freedom.

 And of course, Russia doesn't see the point in diplomacy. Not the official kind, anyway.

I mean, why bother when they can just get rid of all their diplomats and embassies and people like Elon Musk, Rand Paul and Ron Johnson will just immediately appoint themselves Putin's ambassadors to the Free World and do it for free??

Sergei probably figures he'll save money that way.

And isn't that what "Conservatives"  and Republicans have been obsessively trying to make it seem like all this is about? 

Gas prices, inflation, Money? Smaller [and theoretically cheaper] government?

It is...Until it isn't. 

Until they see an opportunity to try and slam their boot down on your throat. 

Of course they won't be happy with just that, either...the list of abuses and atrocities will go on...

You have to stand up and stop it.

And when it turns out this way?

When you fight back, and pose with your flag atop their wrecked tanks, and stand a real chance of driving them back to wherever they came from? 

When you fight back against political manipulators with fury and righteousness, science and technology, and start off by winning the war of ideas?

They'll be mad about that, too.

Of course they're going to call fighting for your freedom...much less that of others "Woke."

As if it's a bad thing to be free, or to fight for one's freedom.

But authoritarian ideology and fascism can only build up to a point, that point being whenever it sees an opportunity to use what it has built for destruction...because death and destruction are the point of this shit, and along with a secondary interest in wealth and the power to destroy and get rich.

And on that note, I find it funny that defense contractors...who have to be making bank off all these weapons going to Ukraine...haven't slapped the shit out of Republicans yet.

Oh, wait, I've heard both Boeing and Lockheed Martin tarred with this dumb ass "Woke" slur lately too.

Because it's not really just about destruction, or money, or power. It's about who gets what out of those three...and making sure that stays in line with ever-shifting "Conservative" priorities and probably more importantly, the rationalizations thereof.

And that is exactly why I call this shit the cult of Dis Pater...after the Roman god of Death and Wealth, who the Christians later branded a demon...before taking over the empire their own damn selves.

At that point they just tried to pull a bait-and-switch and started calling Dis Pater "Jesus Christ."

This shit isn't a religion, it's a political cult. Perhaps more to the point, this shit aspires to be an Imperial cult just like the core Roman religion was. Anything was fine, in Roman pluralism as long as one also made their offerings to the Emperor.

That's why Christianity was a problem at first, because the Christians refused.

It's funny how things have changed. Privilege is ever and always the enemy of freedom.

Don't think Elon Musk has forgotten that in Rome, you had to be a millionaire to be a Senator. 

Vladimir Putin sure hasn't. But they're counting on that you might have.

They see wealth as the only valid means to political power, to the personal privileges they claim as some kind of freedom, and they discount any other way of getting it. They assume everybody else cheats by organizing and not being wealthy and they see any social change to the contrary as a curse.

Especially this kind.

Power is sacred to them, they won't say in public, because they know what would happen. People who stepped over certain lines got assassinated or torn apart by the mob or beaten almost to death and then beheaded by a court of their peers (This last is literally the origin of the term fascism.) So they make shit up. Instead it's Something Something Plato's Cave to justify it. There's a part of Western Civilization that's never gotten over this crap.

But this is America and we're not supposed to roll that way.

Why are so many of us listening to rich people who are not even Americans, when it comes to politics these days? Whatever you want...they're not going to get it for you. By definition, they can't.

These fucking people would turn Reagan's Shining City On A Hill into the City Of Dis.

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

You.

Remember that part, there's going to be a test later.

One

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan