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