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