Through The Looking Glass (Election 2022, Ten.)

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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sol·ip·sism

/ˈsäləpˌsizəm/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

I saw this earlier this afternoon.

And, I'm going to be honest, I wonder how long it's going to be before these fucking people decide the rest of us simply don't exist, and start trying to act accordingly?

Now, in any rational nation...in a more rational world...such people would simply be treated as insane and dealt with accordingly.

Instead, poorly-regulated capitalism and Republican ideology give them a fucking platform. Like that doesn't just sound like a bad idea, right out the gate??

Who the fuck thought letting half our political system go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole was a good idea?

But no, somebody looked at this horseshit and thought "That's a lot of damn money."

Fucking seriously, are we done giving these deranged overgrown children and insane village idiots a platform yet? Really?

How the hell do people like Donald Trump or Elon Musk have all that money and they still somehow failed to learn how to conduct themselves like grown-ass adults?? Were they simply not taught by their parents that "Sometimes you're going to win, sometimes you're going to lose??"

Like, what's with Elon's obsession with wanting to charge everybody on Twitter $8 a month? Is it because the obnoxious bullshit is causing advertisers to bail??

And don't even get me started on people like Ali Alexander (AKA Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar) who sounds like he's about half a step away from declaring himself "Gaba Khufu, Supreme President of the Republic Of Huru," thinks trying to overthrow the government will make him more famous than rappers, and wants to build a "MAGA Mega-city" and/or a planned community in South America called "The City of Alexander." 

And, sane or insane, just what in the hell do either a Black man nor a White-Man-who-is-rather-ostentatiously-not-from-here think they're going to get out of this Solipsistic Fascist MAGA garbage?? 

I mean, this really is some Alice In Wonderland, Looking Glass level insanity, if you ask me.

These fucking people have, despite having their own flag, gone rather far out of the way to identify themselves with the Confederate flag. I don't know or understand why even a conservative black person would accept that. 

I really fucking don't.

And I'm not going to start, either. I'm not going to try to understand. I'm going to walk away shaking my head because again, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If you're still playing patty-cake with these nuts after all this time, it's because you want to. 

Like, yesterday Fox News was screaming at college students because...cats on campus, or something...and saying the students needed a "slap in the face" because they were "snowflakes" or something. Now, maybe it's just me and I've been a pet owner all my life, but...it seems like there's few things that would better prepare one for life in corporate America than the enforced servitude that is cat-ownership...or even cat-adjacency given that the average cat doesn't give a FUCK who fills their bowl but Meow, Meow, Meow, Meow until you do it and then they ain't even going to appreciate you.

And they'll be right back when they're done to demand more. Cats are good preparation for dealing with middle management.

But of course Fox News wants to scream about anything that might make somebody who ain't got Billion$ feel like their life is worth living for a few minutes.

I'll never understand the "Conservative" obsession with sucking up to rich people. If they gave a fuck about you, they probably wouldn't be rich.

Also, don't forget to factor in that shit's been passing Donald Trump by for awhile now because like heroin addicts, these fucking people need even bigger hits of cruelty and stupidity to get their shitty little high? This shit is going to get worse, especially if Republicans get their ass handed to them next week, or even if they squeak out a minor win, or don't do as well as they think they're going to, or something. 

Basically, they're going to find an excuse to resort to political violence, because that's what they've already decided they want to do anyway. They're going to lose if they do, because they can't find the maturity level to understand they ain't going to win all the time.

And, like the colonizers of 100 or 150 years ago, or the religious nuts of more recent decades, these puerile shits think they have some kind of a right to just show up and take over. 

I'm going to tell you right now, the only way to disabuse them of that notion is to vote their politicians out, and then to fight when they decide they want to solve the problem of "The rest of us" that way.

These fucking people basically think life, for everybody, should be like the prison planet in the ongoing Andor Star Wars series...just so they think they're a better class of slaves to the Empire than all the other Imperial slaves.

Failing that...they resent the fuck out of the fact that the rest of us exist...and you bet your ass they want to find a way to make sure we stop existing.

And there's a non-zero cohort of grifter-cosplay Tankie Leftist Genocide-ignorers who'll be just fine with fighting for the people being sent to the endless battlefields to have better gear, or for the people being sent to the soulless prison planets have better food...never once stopping to care that either prison or war are bad outcomes or things that destroy other people's lives and souls.

Now, we can continue with the business of stopping all this, just like in 2018 and 2020 and all the ongoing things like the J6 committee since then.

But just voting isn't enough.

You can Vote Blue all you want, but if you go down the rabbit hole of Self and Selfishness, and that being the moral purpose of a person's life...what good is it?

You have to give a shit about other people.

Do you?

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

So, get after it.

Nine

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