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