Dark Side (Empire, Four.)

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse"
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around
The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around
Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

~Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around.

I saw this yesterday.

Just the world's alleged richest man trading White Supremacist-code references with Internet Nazis.

Also, that "Christian Nationalists" are openly threatening violence against LGBT people.

If this is what These Fucking People consider to be their "Brave New World" count me the fuck out of it.

Seriously, is it just me or is there something wrong with these fucking idiots?

Now that App stores are threatening to not carry Twitter because Elon has made a soup sandwich of things, evidently he made some off-the-cuff comment about designing his own brand of phone...and the fanboys immediately got to work circle-jerking out ideas for it.

Like, let's get real here. People who's idea of arch political commentary is racist 1488 memes don't give a rat's ass about Astrophotography, or tend to even know what they're looking at.

Reactionaries, generally speaking, do not build Starships. They use the rockets to bomb London from launch sites on the Baltic coast instead.

Also given the actual mechanics of Crypto mining? LOL.

Assuming this somehow was a possibility, I would not put it past these fools to melt their phones and set themselves on fire while walking around doing Crypto mining on their damn cell phones. 

Also wouldn't a phone with that much processing power be hella expensive? 

(If it was even possible?)

Um, speaking as a sometime forum admin and I.T. and tech support guy here...do we really want to risk giving some kind of neural computer interface to the kind of people who both routinely need professional grade virus-cleanings on their devices from downloading so much porn and who need to be told not to save their dick pics right in their main Pictures folder because the goddamn I.T. guy doesn't need to see that shit?

Also, maybe it's just me but I'd think even fantasizing about Nazis having the keys to the universe and theoretically infinite un-backed currency...with or without the capability to interface their brains with technology...sounds like something out of the kind of really bad science fiction that used to be on Showtime after 1 AM where you got to see the lead actress's boobs a lot as she and some generic unshaven sidekick character actor saved the world from even-more-improbably-stupid villains.

I mean, that's assuming, at the end of the day, that technology is even legal in their reactionary little world??

Seriously some nut from the Indiana GOP wants to bring back the Inquisition. How does that even work with the First Amendment (Much less the Second? Seems like they'd go through a lot of Inquisitors.) Not only that, but this kind of bullshit is exactly why the United States of America was founded on the values of the Enlightenment and not those of the Church.

Among other things, people got tired of that kind of garbage. And by "tired of it" I mean "fought dozens of Wars Of Religion over several centuries so that people could be free to, among other things, read the Word of God at all, much less read it in their own languages...and ultimately to have the freedom to choose their own religion and to have a government that wasn't beholden to some simpering priest that was dressed up in more bling than a mid-1990's rap concert.

For one thing, for technology to be developed, to work and to continue working requires both belief in science, widespread education and a functional civilization, almost certainly (at minimum) globalized, considering that making this stuff actually work will require resources drawn from pretty much everywhere.

And so much of this whole mess, whether it's Elon making a hash of Twitter in some monomaniacal quest to find the Liberal Secret Sauce or Putin invading Ukraine and trying to exterminate Ukrainians, but then getting his ass kicked, boils down to the fact that all these reactionary motherfuckers simply don't understand the modern world.

But it's more than that. They don't want to.

Not for some grand ideological or philosophical reasons, for the most part, but simply because modernity constrains their power.

Reactionaries are, to a great extent, infinitely able to be manipulated, so long as you keep them angry or riled up. This is what "Populism" is, yo.

Any talk of "Traditional" anything is usually just camouflage. The reasons these people like bigotry, classism, misogyny, racism, sexism etc. basically, without fail, comes down to the fact that these kinds of people are forever looking for an excuse to be a dick and get away with it.

Thus far Elon has run Twitter with no care for functionality, much less labor laws, and he's going to get himself in a huge mess that way. The fanboys who think being an exploitative, extractive dickbag is some kind of hilarious joke aren't the ones who are going to get stuck cleaning up the mess.

It's stuff like this that's why I say "Bring back the ass whuppin." Because, I guarantee you, if you do that...simply bring back a thing that I, being the middle-aged white male, was raised with...you know, a fairly immediate and visceral form of consequences for your own actions. I think a lot of this shit would stop pretty quick, if not right away.

And leave the guns out of it, you shoot somebody they're dead or possibly dealing with a lifetime of disability and injuries and likely that contributes to an escalating cycle of violence because the immediacy of death and retaliation prevents thinking too deeply.

No, what you do is you punch one of these chuckleheads right in the face. Then his homies see him cry like a bitch and maybe somebody stops and thinks "Hey, is this really a good idea?"

You know, maybe has an actual conservative thought process for a second.

"Oh, pain? That hurts. Do I want to proceed?"

And that gets harder when somebody's dead, because they can't feel anything anymore.

(And the industrialized State that industrializes the war doesn't feel anything either. It takes more for people to see that there's a problem)

Seriously it's taken basically wrecking Russia's economy, the Russian Armed Forces being exposed as a theft-riddled junk heap of a soup sandwich and thousands of dead people for even some Russians to see that Putin is a goddamn loser.

And the goddamn Russian media is still talking shit, like Red Army 2.0 ain't getting its ass kicked every damn day??

"A state of war is only natural for an empire of Russia's size?"

I mean "What the Mongol horde-raiding FUCK???"

Excuse me, but how in the hell is it that the first thing all these goddamned "Christians" purposefully forget is "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

And somehow, it always comes down to the fact that they do this while following after some basic Antichrist Superstar like Putin.

Look, I don't know a better way to put this, but unless we as a species want to start living through some really bad science fiction, we need to stop putting up with this fucking bullshit.

'Cause ya know what? If we don't put a stop to it, maybe it's just me and that Christian background and education bubbling up again, but I don't think God or the Universe or the planet we live on is somehow obligated to put up with our bullshit.

Christ didn't come to Earth to build an Empire. He came to show us that His Kingdom was not of this world, and neither are we.

Christ came not with the sword, but to tell Peter to put up his sword.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. ~Yoda

But you know, you have to want to understand that. And some people just won't. You can't tell these fucking people anything. They seem to want to speed-run the last 2,000 years of bad ideas.

Somehow they think it'll work out different this time, or people won't get tired of it. These people could do anything, yet they make the choice to follow some rich loser who's taking orders from a guy with the internet handle of "Cat Turd." I mean, what the fuck?

It's like the Dark Side from Star Wars, but a lot dumber.

And some people seem to view this as a "little intellectual elite" but it's "theirs" so it's OK.

You want to be free of this small, mean bullshit, sooner or later you're going to have to fight for it.

Three

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

God of Hate (Empire, Three.)

Ruby, are you contemplating

Going out somewhere?
The shadow on the wall
Tells me the sun is going down

Oh, Ruby
Don't take your love to town

It wasn't me
That started that old crazy Asian war
But I was proud to go
And do my patriotic chore
And yes, it's true that
I'm not the man I used to be

Oh, Ruby, I still need some company. 

~Kenny Rogers; Ruby, don't take your love to town.

Earlier this week, I saw this.

US Army Soldiers walking through a shopping mall in Poland, being harassed and insulted by some American idiot that was dropping racial slurs and talking stupid. (And then he presumably posted this shit online somewhere.) 

They studiously ignored him, but you can see from the tension, if you watch the video...that this could have gone another way. Having been an Airman myself, if it'd been me and my bros back in the day, it would've taken all of them to keep me from curb-stomping that little punk ass, and I'm not joking.

I'm a veteran. I'm very well aware that there's a segment of the US population that gets off on treating members of the military and veterans like dirt. 

I'm also particularly well aware that white conservatives have a shameful history of abuse toward non-white members of the military and veterans.

I've written about this before, most recently just over a year ago in fact;

In February of 1994 I was a young Security Policeman in the United States Air Force. The local university was having a Black History Month event at which a few Tuskegee Airmen would be speaking. The higher-ups thought it would be a good idea for the local Bomb Wing to represent, so a bunch of us got told to go get our dress blues and drive into town for this thing. 

Hey, I thought, easy duty!

So I spent a fair amount of time that evening standing at attention while some old black dude talked about having been one of the Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group, a no-shit hero whose unit never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action over Nazi-occupied Europe, only to come home and find out that little if anything had changed. Segregation was still in effect and all that. This guy talked about how he'd drive from Chicago down to Mississippi to visit family and how the Jim Crow bullshit started at Cairo, Illinois. Yes, the 1950's, the good old days of the Negro Motorist's Green Book and segregation. You know, what the MAGA's are talking about when they say "Make America Great Again." 

These people were honest-to-god heroes and came back to an America that didn't want to let them use the goddamned bathroom same as everybody else.

Think about that for a second.

That's America's history. 

You have to acknowledge the bad along with the good. You don't really get to pick just one or the other. If you think the more recent panicky bullshit about transgender people and bathrooms is some kind of novel or new thing, well, it ain't.

I'm very serious when I say: If you don't think this is a problem, fuck you!

But suffice it to say that people like the Colorado Springs mass-shooter's dad who'd rather their kid be a murderer than a gay man are not the least bit uncommon. 

Hate is some people's real religion.

I mean, I don't get how an obviously drug-using former porn star with a violent mentality gets to claim to be a Mormon either. One of these things is not like the other one. But, there's a lot of people like that motherfucker out there.

For some people, the cruelty really is the goddamned point...of everything.

Heaven isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go, America isn't America if everybody gets a slice.

And as a former Christian also, I'm here to tell you that some people design their entire religion around this mental construct.

Heaven doesn't feel like Heaven to them if they don't know for a fact that somebody else is going to hell. No, the Word does not actually say any of this or support this kind of view. Jesus preached about the Underworld and Sheol (which is a place of nonexistence where the souls of the truly evil people were sent to be destroyed.) The modern folk-Christian idea of Hell has more to do with Dante's Inferno than it does with the Word.

In point of fact, Christianity was just one of many neo-platonic cults that...spoiler...offered people a relatively free and easy way to get to the more blessed aspects of the afterlife.

So yeah, this shit has nothing to do with the Bible, it's pure Gnosticism.

And because these fucking people are not getting their way politically and/or socially, the time is going to come, and soon, when they will resort to violence (at least, in a more organized, systematic fashion than they're already doing) in order to try and create a political system that reflects their shitty beliefs.

They want to live in the Empire from Star Wars, and call that shit "Freedom."

And they're willing to hate, and yes, to fight their fellow Americans...including the United States Armed Forces...if that's what it takes to get what they want. They see the Black soldiers walking with the White soldiers...and the restraint of both in the face of stupidity...as weakness.

Then they look at a goddamned mess like Russia where most of the country still lives like they did 100 years ago, and they see strength. 

(Even as these same people denigrate the Middle East where it's nothing for the same family to have lived in the same neighborhood since before America was America...but at least most of them have some of the same stuff we're used to. And I still remember a Muslim friend of mine telling me that he thought so many Americans hated Islam because it discourages racism, forbids drinking alcohol and mandates charity...all on a scriptural level.)

It's not just that they "like" authoritarianism or fascism...it's that they only "like" a certain kind of it. And they see everything else as weakness. I'm afraid to ask what an American Far-Right version of North Korea would look like...but that shit is what these assholes think they want.

They're wrong, but they can and will only find that out the hard way. You can't tell these fuckers anything.

And by then, it'll be too late for somebody. People will die. And don't you forget it.

That's the part that gets me, I remember when regard for life, and for the existing social order (if only because it was the existing social order) was a thing conservatives collectively had. Now they don't care, and they're perfectly well willing to Kamikaze themselves for something as vague as hurting somebody else's imagined feelings.

The Right-wing "god" is a god of hate...because that is these fucking people's most important value and thus what they construct their entire worldview around in any modern sense.

You simply cannot run a society on hate.

It's time to step up and stop this shit. Either you believe in civilization or you don't.

If you want a better country you have to be a better citizen. ~Stonekettle.

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

...

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. ~Yoda.

Unnatural (Empire, Two.)

The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. ~Darth Sidious AKA Senator Palpatine, Star Wars Episode III, Revenge Of The Sith.

...

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

I saw this a couple days ago.

Elon Musk, literally Blaspheming Jesus, in order to make a joke intended to, I don't know, possibly lure Trump back onto Twitter?

(Trump hasn't posted, last I checked.)

I...don't even know what to say about this, honestly. I'm not a born-again anything and haven't even identified as a Christian at all since 2008. At a bare minimum it's vastly disrespectful of Christianity, in my opinion it's outright blasphemous. 

Yet, all of the complaints about it that I've seen are from either anti-Trump conservatives or liberals. Not a one from any Republicans that I'm aware of, let alone any of these "Christian Nationalists" I keep hearing about. And no less of a "Western Chauvinist" than Jordan Peterson apparently thinks this shit is funny.

And they're telling on themselves, because for them, none of this crap is really about Jesus or ever was. All this religious talk is just to fool the feeble-minded. 

There's literally nothing else to it, it's a goddamn lie.

These fucking people would gladly become atheistic Communists if it got them more power, or enabled them to hurt and kill more people or to justify their hatred of LGBT folk, people of Color, and women....and the attempts to subjugate all those people.

And yet supposedly all these people's "beliefs" stem from Christianity?

I don't think so, bro.

They can't understand "But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up" conceptually, because to do so would require having principles.

You want to know how much these people care about God or religion? Look at how much they ignore the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill." 

Look, among other things if I would have threatened my Mom at some point and then got into a standoff with the cops and made bomb threats, she'd wait for her chance, take my ass out and leave me hog-tied on the driveway with a cheery note telling the cops to take me away and make sure that I never showed my fucking face around there ever again. And neither one of us has been a conservative in decades.

As my Grandpa used to say, some things just aren't done in the better places.

I'm used to there being a moral code that has nothing to do with laws, yet it was enforced. If you didn't have shame, you learned it. If not by understanding social disapproval, you learned it from the back of someone's hand. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I'm simply saying that's how I was taught.

I call it...think of it as...being old-school. Such beliefs are neither Left nor Right, but you have to have some degree of empathy and respect for other people. Elders, the young, people of different races or have different politics or sexuality or whatever. Not because they can do anything for you but simply because they're people. 

If you can't understand this, I can't explain it to you and I'm not going to try. Hell, I don't want to. 

You figure it out.

This is why I don't...can't...and more importantly don't want to understand people who filter everything through narrative, politics, privilege, religious woo woo, etc. I can't do it. 

I was taught right from wrong.

In these days, sometimes that knowledge can be a curse, I think.

And more to the point, I don't want to understand somebody who would threaten their mother with a bomb, or who would kill people who had done nothing to them for no damned good reason.

And I sure as hell don't want to understand somebody who would be offended by a thing like the Colorado Springs PD posting photos of the victims of a shooting with their preferred pronouns "As if that is what is most important to their humanity."

Because you know what, bitch?

For some of those people, it absolutely was the most important thing to their humanity, and that is not an exaggeration!

The ability to define yourself, to have sovereignty over your own body and personhood...not in some kook Sovereign Citizen mumbo-jumbo type way but in actual fact, by defining yourself and having that definition backed by law and society. 

This isn't just a goddamned human right, these may well be the most important rights we have. If we cannot be who we are, cannot define what that is, then who makes that call?

These fucking people?? The ravening mob? The State?

Bitch, I was in the military. I sure as fuck don't want the government defining who I am, not least because I'm not the same person as I was 29 years ago.

These fucking people want to live in a world where only certain kinds of people get to do things, where there is no individuality except whatever the mob defines as "Free Thinking" (which is mostly about who they can hate.) 

As if we're Carpenter Ants on rage steroids or some shit.

What good is having "Freedom of Speech" if you're only free to say certain things or free to do certain things, or if there are no social consequences for bad behavior or hurting other people?

What maintains actual order in such a society? The people with the guns? 

They're often as fucked in the head as anybody else!

The truth is, I'm starting to wonder if people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Jenna Ellis and Randy Voepel are so high on the smell of their own farts that they think they could say "Let there be Light" and there would be light.

As if they are gods or some stupid shit like that. 

And then these same fucking people, despite their own constant talking stupid about "freedom" and being some kind of "freedom fighters" because they like the idea of avant-garde shitty behavior, can't resist mocking those people who are actually fighting for their own freedom in Ukraine or those of us who support the Ukrainians over here.

I suppose when you reject the idea of individual rights or personal freedom out of hand, you can't understand why other people would fight for that stuff. 

But at the same time, these fucking people are literally obsessed with atavistic talk and made-up existential crises for no better reason that because LGBT people, liberals, and people who are different from them exist and are not in some kind of state of servitude to them.

But the Ukrainians, both their army and all too often the civilians themselves, are literally fighting for their rights to exist as a culture, as a nation, and as individual people!

And they're fighting against an enemy that literally throws the bodies of their own recently-killed soldiers in a fucking garbage dump.

If that's what these motherfuckers do with their own soldiers, what would they do to the Ukrainians, or you, or me??

If they decide they could just unilaterally target Ukraine for Assimilation or Europe for conquest what's to stop them from doing the same thing to America??

Force? Oh please. Weapons are no good without the courage to use them and the knowledge and skills to use them correctly. Modern "Conservatives" are people who see buying an AR-15 as a political statement, or as a means to intimidate people they don't like.

Do you think, if these fucking people are under fire, let alone forced to retreat, that they're going to drag their dead or wounded bros back to their own lines?? Really??

Do you think the cowardice, the learned helplessness, or the sociopathic, self-dealing, self-interested crap is going to stop on the battlefield and all these fake "Conservatives" are just going to buck up and pull together on the battlefield and do what needs to be done?

I want you to stop and think about that for a second. Just do it.

I don't think they will. And I think they look at the Russian way of war and see all the atrocities, sociopathy, self-interested crap and stealing and think that's what they want to be.

And honestly, I think they look at the schlocky way the Russians fight or maintain their gear or how they shove unprepared mobs of men into harm's way gets these idiots off, for cruelty's sake if nothing else.

I'm sorry, but I served in the United States Air Force. I was taught the ethic of 'Leave no one behind' that, alive or dead, we all should get to go home. That no one gets left behind was instilled in me.

When I was in uniform, that I and my personal conduct represented America abroad was a thing I was taught. Endless training, by rote, until you had it down to muscle memory...because that's how you win.

Integrity Above All. Service Before Self. Excellence In All We Do.

Maybe they don't use those exact words, but the Ukrainians get this. I've seen video of whole villages full of people on their knees when a dead Ukrainian Army soldier is brought home, because these people love their country and understand that person died fighting for their freedom.

Somewhere along the way, the Ukrainians learned the Western way of War and internalized the very values that "Conservatives" claim to champion.

But the Ukrainians did it for real, because when they said words like "Revolution of Dignity" they meant it. Not because they thought this or that particular act served as a cudgel to beat their "enemies" with.

And that's why these fucking people hate America, that right there.

Because for some of us...and for some people in the world...Ronald Reagan's dream of America as that shining city on a hill has not died.

Because dreams and aspirations can restrain one's behavior as well as rules and laws can. Because we aren't some ethnic or political monoculture and all we have is what we want to be.

Some people look at that and they see a chance to define themselves, to stand up against Power.

For some people, taking the chance is the only option they have.

But you can't explain that to these fucking privileged people who've never had to fight for one single thing all their lives, yet consider themselves oppressed because Endless Cultural War Grievance Shit.

Instead these fucking people hold up the Russian way of politics, and of war. They love the idea of every act being politicized (and that means religion, too) of everyone-who-matters being an oligarch or a politician or a spy or a hanger-on thereof, and of everybody else getting fucked. 

They love the idea of the military being a bastardized afterthought that isn't even properly paid, because they love the cruelty of it. They hate the military, except when it can be used as a stick, either physically or politically, to beat somebody else with. And frankly, to be honest, I think at all levels these motherfuckers love the idea of a culture where everybody is constantly stealing from everybody else and somehow the military gets the worst of it.

The rest of the time, Rudyard Kipling was probably being optimistic.

Most of all, they love the idea of all this shit being scripted to make so-and-so or such-and-such feel good about themselves...all these fake ass political statements and religious rituals, because all of these idiots think they're going to be the ruling class someday and just sit around and get rich somehow while somebody else does the work.

And these people, who think themselves so holy and religious, are willing to blaspheme God or tolerate somebody who does the same to get it. 

Why? Because their idolatry of self and selfishness and their worship of Power is more important to them than anything else.

These fucking people would worship the Devil if he took them up to a high mountain and showed them all the nations of the world.

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not test the Lord thy God.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

~Matthew 4:1-11

And don't you forget it.

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

What I'm seeing, too much of it isn't that. Not even close.

Too many people look at the Empire from Star Wars and think somehow, they gonna get to be the Emperor. Or they think they gonna be Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin someday, if only they believe in it hard enough.

But that's only one guy.

I think it's realistic to expect that ain't gonna be you.

Be careful what the fuck you aspire to, or think you wanna trade your soul for.

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

Choke (Empire, Part One.)

[Darth Vader is choking a Rebel Officer]
Stormtrooper: [to Vader] The Death Star plans are not in the main computer.
Darth Vader: [to Rebel] Where are those transmissions you intercepted? What have you done with those plans?
Rebel Captain: [Gasping for breath] We intercepted no transmissions. This is a consular ship. We're on a diplomatic mission...
Darth Vader: If this is a consular ship, where is the Ambassador? [crushes the officer's neck, then throws him against the wall] Commander, tear this ship apart until you've found those plans, and bring me the passengers. I want them alive!

~Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Is it just me, or is Elon Musk running Twitter about the same way that Darth Vader ran the investigation trying to find the Death Star plans in the first Star Wars movie?

It's like he's trying to Force Choke whatever Liberal secret sauce he thinks there is out of the company, and firing people (or getting them to quit, with severance) and basically trashing the whole system until he finds whatever he thinks he wants.

And of course it won't work, because he missed the damn point a long time ago, and so did most of his fans.

He never even considers that it's us, the people, the users, who make the platform and its culture. Seriously these people thought the Blue Checks were some kind of a secret society or something.

Modern "Conservatism" even before Trump was rabid, slavish loyalty to ideas over and above people, country, or anything else. This is regardless of how those ideas would affect them or other people in the real world. And these fuckers literally seem to count on the rest of us to save them from suffering the effects of these ideas, or to exempt the "Conservatives" from the damage they do while suffering it ourselves.

When we don't...or simply can't...the result is death and destruction.

And they don't care.

And this shit was that way before Trump came along. 

You want my honest opinion? This garbage started a long damn time ago, but  it truly gained its modern form with the congressional term of Newt Gingrich in the 1980's and it was given dominance over the Republican Party starting with Newt's speakership in the 1990's. The "Compassionate Conservatism" of the Bush 43 years was a disdained sideline that never bore fruit...for a reason. These Fucking People didn't want it. And that was 20 goddamn years ago. 

Trumpism is a hologram. We're living with...yes, the logical conclusions of the Same Old Shit.

This is Republicanism as it has existed for two generations. These fuckers have wanted a President like Trump since 1964. It's just that Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the Bushes didn't...would not have...given them what they wanted. And believe me when I tell you these motherfuckers deeply resented that too, and they eventually ran out all the other Republicans.

I know, I was there, I was one of those people who got chased out.

You can draw a direct line from Ayn Rand to Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert. And then, yet further from there to people like Donald Trump and downwards from him to "people" like Kyle Rittenhouse. 

And far, far too many of these "Conservatives" will tolerate literally infinite bad behavior up to and including outright fascism and murder so long as those "ideas" of hierarchy and power in the service of the wealthy...with racism, rape and religion handed out like Opioids in a Kentucky mining town to keep the masses...or at least the only masses that matter to these assholes i.e. White Conservative male voters...pacified.

Except the problem with that is that the addicts have hit the point where they need ever-larger doses of hate and rage and sexual debasement to get the same old high. But don't worry...there's people out there who are willing to set that shit up.

Doesn't matter to them if it eventually kills the, uh, consumer, I guess. And it certainly will if this puerile "Own The Libs" bullshit isn't reigned in.

And we're literally at the point where killers...who are known for nothing else and who have done nothing else but openly commit murder...figure they have a real shot at getting into our government.

There's something...there's a lot of things...wrong with this picture.

How in the hell did we reach the point in our society where people are so bored...or their lives so empty...that they'll sign on to a set of propositions that is pretty much built around the destruction of life for the power and profit of so very few of us? And by definition...you aren't going to be one of those people.

For the average person this amounts to even the destruction of basic societal norms or institutions or things that some of us depend on for existence; like Medicare and Social Security...or something as simple as Twitter that is far less of a requirement for life...but stuff that we all depend on every damn day, just to feel like they "Belong" to something?

They don't care if they die choking on their own hate, so long as they think somebody they don't like will feel bad because of it?

Maybe it's just me, but I think we, as a people, need a better set of things to aspire to.

Otherwise, what the hell are we?

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

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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

Vampires.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves false teachers, having itching ears;

~2nd Timothy 4:3

...

So, folks, let’s remember who in God’s name we are — I really mean it — what our values are, what we believe.

“We the People” — that how our Constitution starts — or the Declaration. “We the People.” It’s who we are.

And, by the way, no one expects politics to be a pattycake. It sometimes gets mean as hell. But the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, “If such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street.”

Where the hell are we?

~Joe Biden

This truck was parked outside of Mar-A-Lago when Trump announced his candidacy.

"Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President."

 Seriously if you ever wonder why so many people regard the name "Jesus Christ" as little more than a swear word, well there you have it.

Not just in the present, but historically, the Christian religion has never failed to align itself with the absolute worst of humanity. At least not until Power has gotten what it wants from Christianity and the Christians end up being the next ones facing persecution...or they and their political leaders run out of power by mobs with guillotines and guns, who usually start by making things worse.

This happens literally every time you try and run the experiment, in situations large and small, local and national, all alike.

That's the funny thing, these assholes are very often trying to impose their shitty, selfish religion on the rest of us and/or get whatever debased shit they think they want.

And then they get mad when they get used, and are at best ignored, by the very Power whose ass they thought they could get ahead by kissing...which does not give a fuck about them and indeed may well try to destroy them. And then they will remain cloyingly, desperately loyal anyway. (See Also: Pence, Michael.)

There's a faction of Christians that has never forgotten the power of the medieval Catholic church and longs to have it again...and aside from a very small number of reactionary Catholics this is mostly a Protestant thing. 

Most Catholics seem to understand they're part of a worldwide community and they're just...part of it. You don't really see very many examples of the Irish constable, the old Lebanese farmer, and the Mexican dishwasher who share the same faith thinking they're better than one another.

And it's funny that even in this, there's a huge divide between those who were colonized and those who were colonizers. You can see it in the differences of conduct between the current Pope (who is from the Global South) and the Knights of Malta, who are mostly European, with a few Americans added in.

Basically, there's a faction of Christianity (Again, mostly Protestant...no, the Church of England is not Protestant so the British Empire does NOT fit the bill) that still wants some kind of Christian empire ruled by some kind of preacher/philosopher emperor. (This is basically the point of Bush 43-era Neoconservatism.) 

Never mind that it seems very much like one can be Christian or Imperial, but not both, in terms of the history of the whole mess.

Never mind that the excesses and perversions of the whole damned mess were things I learned about in religion class in Lutheran school in the fifth grade, and later in life for that matter.

Never mind the best these people could really come up with and still be happy with it was...Trump.

They have a narrative, damn it!

Of course what wrecks the narrative is...them. Nobody acts more like they think it's all crap than the White Conservative Christians do.

(And then they go out and find other people who basically prove their point.)

Along the way they either forget what the fuck they were doing or expose the fact that it was all a lie and they never really gave a shit about any of that stuff in the first place. And it's really hard to say which happens more. It's a chicken-or-the-egg question, but with, like, inquisitions and sexual scandals and various filth that would shame a hog.

Then, when you point this out, you're the bad guy, or all those other people weren't really Christians or it's a conspiracy...ONE BIG DAMN CONSPIRACY!

And it's *Always* the "Party Of Personal Responsibility" types that don't ever want to own any of their own actions.

It's funny, really. I think it's gotten to the point where whatever the core beliefs of the Republican Party actually are, they've gotten so shitty that they cannot be spoken aloud in public and these sons of bitches are reduced to recruiting people who simply cannot speak coherently, people like Blowbert, Herschel Walker and MTG, so somebody doesn't just go on a rant and get them all in trouble.

For all that...these same fucking stupid idiots just cannot wait to tell on themselves if you get them in front of what they think is the right audience. They think they're going to get some kind of a reward for shitting in the pool. They literally cannot wait to out themselves as incompetents, misfits and shitty people because they think they're going to get something for it.

(I think a lot of this is what's going on with Elon's ongoing destruction of Twitter, but I digress. I suspect his idea of a "fork in the road" will end up sticking a fork in the Bird App.)

It's either that...or Herschel Walker really does believe that he knows actual vampires. (Yes, for the record I am eventually going to work this stupid shit into a Vampire: The Masquerade game somehow.)

There's your choice next month, Georgia. The Reverend...or the guy who straight up thinks he knows actual vampires and that they're..."cool people."

And on the other end of the spectrum, you've got people like Tucker Carlson who apparently don't believe that freedom really exists, or at least they don't understand why anybody would fight for it.

It's funny how all these American "Culture Warriors" just let it go over their dumb heads how the stated goal of the Russians in this is to eliminate the Ukrainian people, to physically exterminate them, to destroy their culture and language and nationhood and to then impose Russification at gunpoint, and then go after everybody who helped them fight back, including us. Because, no, these assholes do not see America as a unified culture or even political polity.

Actually, I think the American "Culture Warriors" jack off to the idea of doing the same things to people that they don't like, here in America.

I think if Republicans break off a piece of America for themselves, and it gets colonized by the Russians like some modern version of East Germany, people like Tucker Carlson will be just fine with those preppy suburban white kids being forced to learn Russian and taught to hate America. 

Just so long as the preppy Black or Latino or liberal white or Middle Eastern kids they used to go to school with and whatever's left of their families are struggling refugees just getting by in some other part of what remains of America. All this while people that used to all be Americans kill each other over the shape and form of some kind of 'Inner-American Border.'

And if we don't reign in this whole situation, that's where it's going to go. With the midterm victories, we likely saved Democracy, the assorted fuckery likely to happen in the House will almost certainly hurt Republicans in 2024 because standard-issue Republicans won't stand up to the goddamn fascist mutant parade.

So unless the rest of us stand up and start smacking these fucking people in the mouth for being hateful, or otherwise make this puerile conspiracy theory and "Own The Libs" bullshit unpopular again, start making all these debased boy-men own their shit instead of blaming everybody else for their problems, these motherfuckers are probably going to resort to violence the more the "Culture" or whatever you want to call it spirals out of their control and the more they allow TV demagogues and shitty billionaires to stoke their grievance and revenge fantasies. 

These assholes, their basic problem is that *Other People Exist* and it only wasn't a problem before because they didn't see it every day and could pretend it wasn't a thing. The Right saw their shitty selfishness and decided to try and exploit it to get ahead politically.

You can't live with that. You can't reason with that. You can only punch it in the mouth, or shoot it, or drop bombs on it until either it's been eradicated or at least it gets off your land and stops trying to kill you...and at that point it comes down to years of deterrence and military buildup and in its own way, that sucks too.

If I had to guess, in the next couple of years...this tiger that they tried to ride to glory? It's going to eat them, too.

And it's not even that any of these people really believe any of this stuff. People who'll say anything to get what they want see people who really believe in stuff...even that which they purportedly also believe in...as a threat. They've marginalized and forced out the vast majority of those who do believe in conservatism to one extent or another. Hell, I was an early casualty of this. Even the ones stubbornly hanging on...like Mike Pence...are on the outside looking in, hoping somebody will let them back into the Party.

And no one will.

Because they'd rather laugh at the poor schmuck out there shivering in the cold. Hell, they'll do so all the more performatively so they don't get thrown out. Because that's all Republicans are anymore.

Because the cruelty is the goddamned point.

Because racism is more important than society, to them.

Because they reject the whole idea of civilization.

Because those who call themselves Christians all too often stand up to be counted with the enemies of everything Jesus Christ ever stood for.

If we cannot, as a group...despite our differences...come together and stand up against that bullshit, where are we?

What are we?

I don't have an answer...every one of us has to find that answer, for ourselves.

Because the alternative, even in the immediate term, is that some people could very well end up with a Senator that apparently believes vampires are a real thing, rather than gaming material or legend or mythology.

Who's going to make that guy's real-world decisions for him??

Sure as hell not the people in his state, and goddamned well not the people who elected him. No, it'll be some balding little butterball of a sociopathic white MBA who thinks having a black dude for a puppet makes him "Not Racist."

If you think those people, either the power structure or them that leech off it like they some kind of real vampires are gonna help you, you're an idiot.

If you want a better nation, you have to make it better, one act, one person, one vote at a time. All the time, until you die. 'Cause if you don't, there's sure as hell those willing to do the same to make things worse...for no better reason than their personal profit.

You get what you tolerate, America.

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

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The Orange Also Rises (Make Trump Lose Again.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A. we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

...

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

So, today, this happened...

(And it's funny how so much seems to be happening at the same time as Elon Musk is disrupting both the economy and social media, but I digress.)

Two Russian cruise missiles, fired from occupied Ukrainian territory, struck a farm in eastern Poland today and killed two people. It's possible the missiles may have overshot their target, but it's also very possible this may have been a deliberate act. It doesn't much matter, there's going to have to be a response. The Poles have already convened their national security council and talked to NATO leadership. From what I hear, there's a meeting tomorrow to decide what to do about it, with the possibility that Article Five may be invoked if the strike is determined to have been intentional. 

(Given the state of the Russian Armed Forces, it could very well have been an equipment failure of some kind, or generalized incompetence, but I'm saying when it comes to cruise missiles that might not matter very much.)

The Polish Army has some units on alert, the Polish Air Force has sortied Combat Air Patrols. There's a lot of NATO and US assets forward-deployed in Poland right now, too. 

Not to sound that way, but I'm a veteran, I *Know* this could get very ugly, very fast.

That was this afternoon.

So what's everyone talking about...

Oh.

Right.

Of course...

Fucking seriously??

Trump announced...in a surprisingly low-energy fashion (Sad!) that he's running for President in 2024.

As if we haven't all been seeing "Trump 2024" flags, hats and signs for a year and a half already? And he did it in a hall that looked like the place an all-male revue or a bad drag show might perform, where everything is sticky and the air reeks of cheap Cheyenne cigars that are $2.12 a pack.

I mean...really?

Maybe he should add that exclamation point like Jeb Bush did. (Trump!)

It'd be less tiresome than recycling "MAGA" again.

So, seriously, let's get real.

FOX News fell down Trump's sweaty orange butt-crack too damned fast for it to have been spontaneous. They knew what was going to go down.

Oh, wait,  Everybody did.

If there is, or ever was, a "Former Guy" it's probably Ron DeSantis. He was former before it was cool.

To state anything else is pure unadulterated fabulism.

It's just as well, the patently false "Free State Of Florida" rhetoric and Ron's "Campaign" such as it was were already getting old. A series of GOP polls had shown DeSantis ahead of Trump. Yeah, how'd the polling for last week turn out? 

We shouldn't trust any major pollster and about 3/4 of the media ever again.

Republicans got their clocks cleaned. 

If they even win the House (and that's still an "If" at this point) it will be barely. Even if they don't the "Freedom" Caucus is already threatening to make the Republican side of the aisle an uncontrollable shit-show. Whoever ends up Republican leader won't last very long.

As for DeSantis? If I had to guess, I'd say that four-flushing imbecile has probably been playing for second this whole time. 

Dude, it won't happen. MTG has bigger tits than you do, and fewer morals. If she doesn't end up Republican Leader (and possibly Speaker Of The House...Ew) and likely even if she does, Trump is going to want her for V.P. not you.

How far Mike Pence has fallen should be a lesson in the failure of both American Evangelicalism and traditional conservatism. By any measure, MAGA's openly don't give a fuck about any of that stuff.

On the other hand, though, the anti-Trump attack ads and more importantly, the Ten Thousand Media Nut-Slaps started before the announcement was even over.

Playing for second might be a prudent strategy for DeSantis after all. 

It seems like Trump isn't going to get the same media boost this time and his cult is smaller now, too. More to the point, the critical reception by the media and most non-Republicans might end this thing before it gets out of control this time if everybody keeps on it.

But for the moment, keep in mind that we have a potential global crisis, up to and including global war, that could flare up tomorrow. 

And everybody's talking about...Trump?

(Even if it's in a negative way, he's a narcissist, that doesn't really matter.)

<-----Case In Point. 

Do you really think any of the MAGA's...you know, that 50% of the Republican Party that he locked down instantly just by showing up...read the National Review?

Do you think the boys at NRO will keep their spines for more than 10 minutes??

(All the major 2016-2020 NRO Never-Trumpers have their own companies now, for a reason, yo.)

The Department of Justice, Media mockery or Official Conservatism won't do it. They can't, not really.

Any of those things take down Trump, as long as he's still capable of speaking he'll call for a civil war and set his mob against whoever removed him from his beloved spotlight, even for a moment. And that, an internal conflict here, would be something the Russians would take advantage of.

We voted a lot of the fuckers out last week. We're going to have to do that again, and again, and again. And I'll note few if any Republicans have made any effort to or noise about contesting that issue.

We are the first, and the last line of defense. We have the numbers, they don't. They know it now. 

They want what they want? Their best option is probably secession and how'd that work out the last time?

We're the only line that's always held whenever we come together as a people.

And that's what these sons of bitches will be trying to stop.

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

And this ain't it.

There's a real chance that if things continue as they are, there will be blood. 

Indeed, there already has been much blood shed.

But if enough of us do the right thing, maybe we can stop things from getting worse.

The buck has to stop with us, it sure as hell won't ever stop with Trump.

You get what you tolerate, America.

Think about that for a second, will ya?

Last Post

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