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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