Blasphemy (Reason For The Season, Fourteen.)

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I saw this a couple days ago.

Some old Russian lady ranting about bestiality and "85 genders" as if any of that is actually a thing in the EU. (It's not, the Right has said this type of shit forever and it's never happened, anywhere.)

Makes me wonder how much of the Q-Anon bullshit is just transplanted Russian conspiracy theories.

That said, these people have a lot of fucking nerve. I saw a Twitter thread that same night about Russian prison culture and just how much of said prison culture is based around abusing anybody who's been raped in prison, regardless of the circumstances. And the prisoners use this rapey system to "reinforce social status."

And from what the thread was saying, this prison mentality is endemic throughout Russian culture and influences the thinking of a lot of people, particularly elites.

Not just that...but apparently PMC Wagner. a Russian mercenary group with some (seriously) Nazi influences is actively bringing Russian prison culture onto the battlefield in Ukraine. As if war, by its very nature, isn't fucked up enough already. Of course I'm fairly sure the Russians think there's some kind of tactical value in the potential for atrocity.

As a veteran...and hell, as a former Christian and conservative, I'm beyond appalled by this. 

Not for the first time, I'm left wondering if these people have ever heard of the rules of war.

But it sure puts the Conservative Movement's obsession with crime and punishment (not to mention sex and sexuality) in some interesting and unflattering lights, now doesn't it?

In general, at this point it's safe to assume that "Conservatives" have absolutely no problem with sex as long as there's neither consent nor love involved. And they're actively in favor of it (regardless of the act or participants) if they can be convinced that it somehow signifies any kind of male dominance and power. You know who else thinks like that?? 

The Taliban.

Oh, and Mike, while I'm at it, you know who produces one hell of a lot of the internet porn that's out there, who owns the companies, hell, the predominant nationalities of the people involved?? The Russians, that's who.

Awkward.

I don't ever want to hear again, how the Russians are so Christian and Conservative, because I know what those words mean, I was one of these people in a different era when this stuff all meant something different. 

I know what I was taught, and this stuff ain't it. 

While I'm at it, I'm damned near as tired of anybody making the same kinds of claims about Republicans.

These fucking people don't give a shit about conservatism, or Jesus, or the Rapture...except insofar as they can use those things as a stick to beat other people over the head with.

I saw today that Father Frank Pavone, a Catholic Priest. anti-abortion nut and Republican activist, was fired from the Priesthood by the Vatican for (their term) literally blasphemous behavior.

Good, but I have a feeling he'll just reinvent himself as some kind of secular Republican politician. A different shade of Roger Stone for the 21st Century, but reeking of incense and pederasty and quoting obscure Latinate texts.

And no one on the Right will care, because blasphemy of everything they ever said they stood for before is exactly what they are now. Hell, it's the goddamned price of admission for both Far-Right and Horseshoe-Theory Left! 

It's as if, in a secret vault somewhere in the bowels of RNC headquarters there is an official portrait of Ronald Reagan...smeared with Elephant dung.

Right next to fountain pen once used by The Right Honorable Sir Winston Spencer Churchill that hangs suspended in a jar of urine and a full size, nude photo of Nick Adams with the handle of a whip sticking out of his ass.

(If you don't get the references, too bad, look it up.)

Consider the example of Trump being obsequious to Putin in Helsinki. If that's not blaspheming everything America and the Republican Party ever have claimed to stand for, I don't know what is.

It will become so that Blasphemy...and nothing being done about it...is a symbol of Power.

And more to the point if these mooks could be convinced that the man in the bad wig and the rumpled suit were some archetype of authoritarian white male power...or somehow spiritually "representative" of Donald Trump...they'd be lining up to be buggered in some perverse ritual.

And again, nobody on the Right would care.

They'd rather make common cause with a nation full of conspiracy freaks and enemies of America than live in our modern nation as she now stands.

Reagan Wept.

One thing I think is worth asking, though, "Conservatives." How is any of this stuff working out for you in real life??

If it was me in your shoes, I'd be looking at things like the disastrous November midterms, and Putin's corrupt, decrepit and perverse nation...not to mention a war his army is decisively losing...and I'd be starting to wonder if maybe I'd gone wrong somewhere and should rethink a few things.

Meanwhile, you can be judged by the company you keep.

But it's the Christmas season, if you want to rethink some things, now is probably a good time. 

Jesus Christ was born in humble circumstances and was a carpenter and itinerant Rabbi, yet he changed an entire spiritual paradigm from that of ritualistic purity and sacrifice to faith and substitutionary atonement. He was not an avatar of secular or social power, quite the opposite in fact.

By design, if you believe all that stuff.

Blasphemy in the name of politics is easy. You have to want to follow the Truth...and then you have to do it.

Слава Україна!

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. ~Ronald Reagan

Thirteen

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

~Amos 5:8-15