Total War (Reason For The Season, Nine.)

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.

Over the weekend, Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republicans, demanded "Total War" in front of a packed audience.

Total War.

From the people who...40 years too early...have decided that the Tabasco Sauce that makes most MRE's palatable is too spicy and that naming a pepper (or a sauce) after a Mexican province reeks of liberalism.

Yeah, Okay, if you say so.

These are people who think their posts not getting enough "Likes" on Twitter is somehow as bad as "Conservatives" getting murdered in the streets. But they're going to go hump a ruck in the boonies and go full Rambo on some motherfuckers.

We're coming up on Christmas. The usual "War on Christmas" horse shit hasn't even started yet this year and these idiots want to declare "Total War?" LOL.

I can see it now, in all cases, a backlog of 10,000 motherfuckers all demanding to be the platoon Zampolit. Nobody wants to be a regular infantryman, or has the ability to be an NCO or an officer.

Going to guess most of these people couldn't beat the tutorial level on "Shogun: Total War" back in the day.

Suffice it to say, I'd have to see all this to believe it.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think people whose regular routine is fake outrage, made-up problems and dishonest moral panics would last a day dealing with the kind of disgusting bullshit that's normal, but often routine for military life. 

Personally I don't think soft-ass bitches like Matt Walsh or Seb Gorka would get past the cockroaches in the chow hall let alone having to shit in a hole in the desert and then bury it.

And that's before you get to stuff like burn pits and wounds, let alone having to keep a cool head and maintain discipline in all type of shitty situations or under fire.

Part of me...the part that remembers what Bosnia was like...is looking at these motherfuckers like "Yes, please, go ahead and declare war on the rest of us. 

I don't think you fuckers could've hacked it even in peacetime." Because yes, that really was hard enough. And I wasn't anywhere near being one of the people whose job was dealing with human remains or talking to traumatized survivors or trying to piece together everything that happened, when I was over there. Protecting the people doing that, and rounding up the occasional war-crime suspects...not to mention trying to keep previously hostile groups of people from killing each other...was bad enough.

We're basically dealing with people who think if they screw for political advantage hard enough and often enough, they'll get to call Black people the N-word again and get to be rich just because of their political affiliations. 

They have no interest in actually fighting a war.

Doing the actual fighting will be for other people, preferably conscripts thrown into the field with little training and shitty weapons who don't want to be there. And their basic job is to try and wear out the other side by sheer mass of forces while (maybe) they're supported by ARTY or airstrikes. The Cruelty Is The Point.

Never mind that isn't working in Ukraine and it's the same scenario the United States Army spent generations training for vs. the Soviet Union and/or the Russians anyway.

Their basic plan when it comes to anything is "Flood the zone with shit until other people give up in disgust and leave, then we win."

Which is pretty much what they're doing to Twitter, and I've seen this a fair amount of times before. And when these idiots wreck the place, and it's not fun or profitable anymore, Elon will sell that shit and it'll probably go the way of MySpace or whatever and never be heard of again.

I just find it all kind of sad, really.

But this whole "Twitter Files" stupidity lately and all the conspiracy theories and the whining have about done it in for me. I spent years fighting against this kind of shit elsewhere when I was younger and had more of a tolerance for stupidity.

And I can't say I ever really tried to stick it out and fight on a site where the CEO/New Owner was going around acting like he was the personal Maitre D' to various extremists and nuts.

But it's worth noting that Twitter isn't real life...as we all just found out with last month's midterm elections. I strongly suspect the Republican side of the House is going to collapse into chaos, among other things.

And the thing is, these fucking people hate that Twitter isn't real life, or that America is not Hungary or Russia (Never mind that neither country is what it says it is) and there aren't enough of them to just swamp the rest of us out and get us to give up and leave on a national or global level. They hate that the rest of us don't just complacently accept their bullshit or regard power or wealth as their due...like they do among themselves.

They hate that the rest of us have a right to exist and live our lives without them telling us what to do...and that even when they do so, nobody is required to obey them.

At the end of the day, these fucking people's problem is that other people exist.

And you can't reason with that. We cannot live with people who think that other people do not have a right to exist.

And we don't (and shouldn't) have to put up with that crap online, either.

I feel like we're close to a tipping point where the Right resorts to mass violence, probably some kind of right-wing insurgency. I don't think it'll turn out well, and I sure don't think they'll win.

The truth is, neither do they. 

You have to have an achievable, concrete goal...besides constant inchoate rage...first.

These people want some kind of Forever War to give meaning to their lives, but I think that it will be short.

Why?

These idiots are also getting to the point where it's literally impossible for anyone to be "Conservative" enough for them, thus their movement keeps shrinking. And they call this "Winning?"

More to the point, if these fucking people's goal, such as it is, is some kind of eliminationist pogrom...where does that leave all these fucking people who absolutely live for having somebody to yell at on places like...Twitter??

It seems like a hell of a way to live, going around mad all the time.

But that's literally how these people want to live. I couldn't do it. I deal with the leftovers of addiction and depression every day as it is.

I'm just...so tired. Dealing with this crap day in and day out has gotten old.

When they come at the rest of us out here in the real world...well, like it or not, I at least know how to deal with that. I can process things like gunfire and people I've never met treating me like the enemy.

But in the meantime, I'm tired of the endless puerile bullshit and conspiracy theory stuff.

I can't hack how some people can just endlessly bang on with this shit, with nothing changing, day in and day out basically forever. Like, what's even the goddamned point??

Some people are apparently so angry that they're angry about being angry, even. And all they want to do all day is tell the world about how angry they are and be rewarded for their upraised middle finger.

Even thinking about that crap depresses me, to be honest. I could not live like that.

So, I'm going to probably be reducing my level of engagement on Twitter and posting more back on Facebook, I just started a Mastodon account and I'm going to get on Counter Social and on the list for Post this week. I'll still post on Twitter sporadically, when I have a new post up, until I can find my footing somewhere else.

Y'all be good.

Слава Україна!

Eight

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